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Waiting for Mueller
At the beginning of this long investigation, I wrote that if convincing evidence is presented that candidate Trump colluded with Russians — that is, he knowingly participated in or otherwise facilitated illegal Russian interference in the 2016 election — then I would call for his impeachment.
I also wrote that I think the entire charge is a fabrication of the embarrassed and almost pathologically mendacious candidate Clinton, and that in fact it’s largely a projection of her campaign’s own shady dealings with Russia via the Steele dossier and related nonsense. That is still my belief.
However, if Mueller provides that convincing evidence, I will admit my mistake and call for the President’s resignation or removal.
But if he does not, then I will call for the resignation of most of the nation’s press, as these clowns will have, in typical print-first-ask-questions-never fashion, poisoned the national discourse for years with their relentless and baseless claims, and given comfort to the posse of corrupt and scheming apparatchiks who, until recently, ran much of our federal law enforcement.
So let’s wait and see.
P.S. No, I don’t expect the press to accept its responsibility. I don’t even expect them to significantly change their message, when and if Mueller’s report exonerates the President. Most of the press supports Democrats, the more left-leaning the better, and that isn’t about to change.
Published in Politics
How are we defining collusion here?
Because if it means having business interests in foreign countries then most entrepreneurs will be automatically disqualified from the presidency. Does collusion mean having business relationships with government officials of foreign countries as a private citizen? If the answer is yes, then we can forget about considering, let alone electing, a large swath of the nation’s best and brightest. Do business in China? Forget it. Met Xi Jinping? Forget it. Have business dealings in Russia as a private citizen and before taking the Oath of Office? You’re KGB. Have conflicts of interests? Forget it. You can’t be trusted straight up. (Note conflict of interest rules don’t apply to the president.) Don’t want to release five years of your tax returns only to have the Senate Majority Leader say on the Senate floor (when he can’t be sued for slander) about you what he said about Mitt Romney in 2012? We’ll investigate you and try to hound you out of office.
Defining collusion the wrong way serves the interests of career politicians and rent-seeking bureaucrats, who don’t like it when business people run for the presidency.
There is a whole generation of entrepreneurs whose energy, ability, and patriotism will be lost to our country if we tell them that they can’t be president.
Speaking for myself, I assume Mueller remains the same blockhead who got duped by the corrupt FBI office in Boston during the 1980s.
Amoral Never-Trumpers?
I think you are right about Clinton. The only thing I had reservations about was whether or not Trump had any troublesome business dealings with Russia.
The press has little credibility so I wouldn’t expect them to apologize or start telling the truth. But they will move on to cover House anti-Trump Committee’s. I hold out hope that Barr pushes forward charges against Comey, McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Strozk, Brennan, Clapper, Yates & anyone else involved in inventing crimes against Trump.
The anti Trump folks will have to change strategies so will. Some of these people, especially at a high level, have to be prosecuted so that the left shows some caution and this nightmare is seriously restrained. They have a vast mindless, uneducated youth who may still be educable we have to move or we have no future.
At least you are asking for factual evidence – not imaginary evidence. I took a long pause regarding your last statement because irrelevancies from you are rare..
I didn’t think it was irrelevant. I believe that people who are Trump-obsessed — and I include all non-critical Trump enthusiasts and all relentless anti-Trumpers in that — are pretty much incapable of being reasonably balanced. I’m just saying, again, that I’m neither of those.
I just fail to see how liking or not liking Trump, (I assume this means as a person), has any bearing on his performance as POTUS or on one’s views towards his policies. I know it does but I don’t understand why.
Bob, that’s a very good question. I think we’re talking more about human nature than any particular aspect of knowledge or policies.
On the pro-Trump side, I think some people are inclined to elevate people to hero status and, having done so, feel a need to refute any criticism of the person they’ve elevated. I think, for a lot of the fiercely hear-no-evil pro-Trump people, that’s what’s going on.
(In fairness, some may honestly see no flaws in Trump; others may be so fed up with what they perceive as unfair criticism of Trump — and I’m particularly sympathetic to this group — that they simply refuse to admit any criticism because they resent the injustice.)
On the anti-Trump side, I think some people are embarrassed and offended by Trump: they don’t want to be part of any party/movement/electorate that would have Trump as its President. They resent the fact that he represents them in some sense, and so they do everything they can to distance themselves from him, surrendering all perspective in the process.
Both extremes are, in my opinion, childish and counter-productive. But there’s a difference between them, for me, and it’s this:
Most of the fiercely pro-Trump people are people who, absent Trump, would tend to agree with my view of America and my political and social goals.
Most of the fiercely anti-Trump people are people who, absent Trump, would still disagree with me about pretty much everything.
So, given that, it probably isn’t surprising that, if I have to choose, I prefer the company of the strongly pro-Trump to the strongly anti-Trump.
I think you have accurately described the issue many Republicans have with Trump. Many Republicans like the “product” (the tax cuts, the US Supreme Court nominees and so on) but the “advertising” (Trump’s tweets and off the cuff comments at rallies) they believe is so offensive, they fear that the “consumer” (the voters) will end up rejecting the “product” (the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s reelection in the 2020 election) as a result. Also their own personal ideas about how a President and a political party ought to present itself to the public is in the mix.
I think I understand this and the potential result it yields is the same go along to get along that has been the Republican product since Reagan. There is a comfort zone associated with the more traditional, and acceptable, Republicans, but we don’t get much for it. A lot of cleaning up is necessary of the debris generated and left by Trump, but I like what I see after that work is done.
I’ll put it another way by using a hypothetical, a thought experiment.
Let’s say it’s the year 2032 and there is a Democrat in the White House, but this Democrat president isn’t going to seek reelection. Several Republicans are running for President. One of them says publicly that
Somehow this Republican wins the nomination and wins the general election. Once becoming president, this person signs into law lots of things conservatives support (tax cuts, conservative judicial nominees and so on).
There is a division within the Republican party. Some have no problem with publicly supporting the Republican president, despite his comments about the Nazis. Others like the tax cuts and the conservative judicial nominees, but really have a hard time supporting the Republican president because they don’t like the Republican president’s comments regarding the Nazis.
Some say, “Well, do you really want to see a Leftist Democrat become president in 2036?”
HW, I think that group you describe is real — I’m probably in it, actually — but not quite the anti-Trump group I’m talking about. You’re describing a fundamentally pragmatic problem with Trump, that he will ultimately be bad for the party and bad for conservatism. I think there’s a lot of merit to that view.
But that isn’t how I’d describe the staunch anti-Trumpers, such as a very few here on Ricochet and the likes of Nordlinger and Sykes and Kristol and Rubin. I think they are repelled by Trump and generally unable to honestly evaluate pros and cons of his administration. They’ve gone beyond pragmatism, and are inhabiting the world of singular righteousness.
I might have a higher opinion of the Republican Party in general, and in particular of the Republican challengers to Trump who didn’t make the cut — for reasons about which you and I might disagree. But I like your comment about debris; yes, I think we’ll have a lot of cleanup work to do, when Trump leaves office. That’s one of the reasons I’d like the pro- and anti-Trump factions to grow up and start talking to each other like civilized adults. We need each other.
Gary:
“What if the evidence is not enough to convict Trump in a criminal trial, but is clear and convincing?”
Hate to tell you this Gary, but there will be no “clear and convincing evidence”. The jig is up. The Mueller Special Counsel was always a fishing expedition that hoped to find something/anything to exploit to nail Trump on political impeachment charges, but they came up empty or we would have heard of it by now. It was always a political op, not a legal investigation. Any fruit they got was of the”poisoned tree” from the beginning and it would have never held up in court. Mueller, Comey, Brennan, Rosenstein and friends knew from the gitgo they had nothing. That is why they had Downer and his MI-6 friends try to fabricate evidence and then try to pin Papadoulous with it. There are very few Americans who could have survived the illegal scrutiny, including massive NSA database searches, that the Mueller Gestapo put Trump and his campaign under .
Btw, in any case, no matter what The Mueller Gestapo tries to come up with in the end, they committed serious fraud before the FISA Court and should be prosecuted. No doubt about it. Anything less than life in prison for the entire gang will be too little.
I think that we will have to agree to disagree.
At this point, probably the only thing we can agree upon is to turn this over to God and trust that he has our back.
I like voting for a Republican for the policy positions to be followed and not just to keep the Democrat from becoming POTUS. Surprised me when we got both with Trump.
Or, at the very least, just wait for the darned report to come out.
Gary, I just don’t get how you can deny that the Mueller gang lied to the FISA Court? They all knew the Steele Dossier was fake; Bruce Ohr testified to that.
You have resorted to the “magical thinking” delusion of the Progressives that somehow, this time, really, really, there miraculously will be evidence that will somehow exonerate Mueller, Comey and friends. Not bloody likely for you forget that they leaked anytime they could before with the least shred of information they thought could damage Trump.
@henryracette, @garyrobbins, @unsk2, @bobthompson, @heavywater, @sweezle, @iwalton, @gumbymark, @justinhertog, @josepluma, @nohaaj, @stad, @cdor, @phcheese, @jimmcconnell, @hangon, @randywebster, @joelb, @joshuabissey, @arizonapatriot, @edisonparks, @dong, haven’t you heard? The report is already out! According to AP “Court records reveal a Mueller report right in plain view“. Problem solved.
You are missing the forest for the trees. I am waiting for the report.
Of course, even the existence of either a forest or its trees is, at this point, conjecture.
So, yes, let’s wait for the report.