Another anticlimax, yesterday’s testimony by Robert Mueller before a House committee.
It’s anticlimactic for the very simple reason We the People (excluding, of course, those Trumpists who still hold — god knows how — to the demonstrably false proposition that their president is somehow a decent human being) expected way, way, way, way too much from the Special Counsel. They felt the same way back in March when US Att’y Gen. William Barr released his whitewashed version of Mueller’s final report. At that time, the anti-Trump forces (including anybody and everybody who’s paid the slightest bit of attention to events since the grifting, not-officially-yet-diagnosed personality disordered chief executive first declared his candidacy for King of the United States) were crestfallen when the very first sentence of Muellers’ report failed to read “Donald J. Trump is a depraved psychopath whose 2016 election victory shall be immediately overturned because he’s such a jerk.”
Mueller, previous to that, had been viewed as some kind of combination of Shane, Rambo, a White Knight, Batman, and even a justice-serving Supreme Being who’d redeem our tainted nation. The Mueller Report, as it’s now known, was hoped to right the wrongest wrong committed in our holy land since slavery was outlawed and the Native American holocaust petered out for lack of any remaining appreciable numbers of potential victims.
So it was leading up to Mueller’s appearance yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee. The Pollyannas among us hoped, prayed, gritted their teeth and crossed their fingers that the salient words to emanate from the former FBI director’s mouth during the hearing would be, “Here’s what I really meant to say in the report: Trump is an agent of the Russian spy services, Vladimir Putin possesses a specially-fitted dog collar for him, he was urinated on by Russian hookers, he fondled his daughter’s breasts regularly, he’s broke, he doesn’t know how to read, he moonlights as a stick-up man, and Melania detests the very sight of him. Oh, and his kids are felons and at least one of them is mentally disabled.”
Well, guess what. He said none of that.
Not the superhero many ached for.
What Mueller did say was Trump and his Mob were not at all exonerated by the Special Counsel’s investigation; the Special Counsel was legally and by Justice Department directive unable to indict him; the president and his people were involved in highly-questionable, quite possibly illicit activities during and after the 2016 campaign; and the president is liable to be indicted for those and other transgressions after he leaves offices.
Which, for my money, should be as good as a kick in the groin for Trump reelection campaign.
Sadly, there are still tens of millions of Americans for whom those findings are irrelevant and will gleefully mark an X next to the incumbent’s name come November, 2020. There is, after all, the stain of a dark-skinned president’s legacy still to be thoroughly bleached from this nation’s swiftly shrinking alabaster soul.
That said, the ’20 contest remains a pick-’em affair, with many on both sides of the aisle still anticipating the Democratic Party to shoot itself in the foot once again.
We’re disappointed in the Muller Report and its fallout when, in reality, we should be disappointed only in ourselves.
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I had no expectations. I DO BELIEVE, however that Mr. Mueller could have said something along these lines. “The number of indictments speak for themselves. This was an exhaustive, professional investigation untainted by leaks or publicity. We found significant evidence of numerous incidents of obstruction of justice. This unwritten ‘policy’ of Presidential immunity from the consequences of breaking the law must be put to rest, now. Respect of Rule of Law and the upholding of our Constitution are absolutely sacrosanct to the survival of our democratic form of government.”