Trump is preparing the way to fire Mueller. It has been obvious for some time, and getting more so.
A quick look at the other media: Fox and Breitbart partners and allies of Trump.
Readers of this blog who mostly follow so-called mainstream media are missing a big part of the picture. Fox, Breitbart, and talk radio are the news sources for Trump's base and they are getting a very different understanding of the world.
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| Fox |
***Mueller is a deep state operative, who is putting a witch hunt into place. There is nothing to investigate and there has never been anything to investigate. There are no ties between Trump and Russia.
***Mueller has deep ties to Democrats and has hired Democratic operatives as assistants. Mueller is a Democrat in FBI clothing.
***The whole special prosecutor thing is a bad idea. Look at how poorly the Kenneth Starr thing operated, with him outrageously going on for 7 years and looking for trouble with Paula Jones. Terrible!
***There are major conflicts of interest with Mueller. He was a friend of Comey. He isn't part of Trump's legitimately elected team. His professionalism is a problem, not a solution, because he will want the Justice Department to find something even when there is nothing.
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| Breitbart |
***Mueller will invade Trump's financial privacy and it is a fundamental breach of privacy in an area where voters have already consented not to look, i.e. Trumps taxes and other financial affairs.
***Looking into Trump's children is an outrage. They are criminalizing politics.
***This is a concerted effort to distract Trump from the agenda he outlined in his campaign and which the public overwhelmingly supported. It isn't an investigation; it is a device to cancel out the Trump agenda.
***Hillary is way worse! Democrats are way worse! Uranium! Loretta Lynch! What about Bill Clinton's speeches? The mainstream media is looking at nothing instead of something way worse. Way, way, way worse!
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| Irrelevant. |
The Trump base does not think Trump or his campaign had inappropriate connections to Russia, not in the campaign, not in his presidency, and not in his prior business dealings. They perceive Trump as the set-upon victim of Democratic sore losers.
Democrats need to get their heads around that reality if they are going to understand the current situation. It means that when Trump fires Mueller the Democrats will call it a Saturday Night Massacre but Republicans will not pile on. They will sit back.
This won't be a constitutional crisis. It will be Trump getting his way.
3 comments:
"Keep Your Enemies Close"
As the Washington Post put it today: "In Trump Country Russia Isn't Big News" (https://goo.gl/feTCx3). But as your blog aptly explains, the prosecutorial probe of Trump is not just big news, it is an injustice cause celeb and rallying cry to the Trump base. Prominent voices on the right and left are concerned with the fairness and reliability of an investigation fraught with leaks, misinformation and journalistic glee. Like illegal immigration and the Clinton "bimbo erruptions, the Trump "witch hunt" crosses partisan boundaries. From McCarthyism and the Rosenbergs to Hillary emails and Benghazi, American DNA is wary of politically tainted investigations and prosecutions.
Trump knows this and his denunciations of the Comey/Mueller leak-plagued probe are not aimed at just his supporters but to the American DNA. If there ever was an investigative apparatus easy to delegitimize, it's Comey-Mueller. Comey the leaker
(and Hillary basher), and Mueller with his "DNC donor staff" have together set back the FBI's reputation to J. Edgar Hoover disrepute.
Mueller hasn't been quite tainted enough yet to fire, but a few more big leaks from his staff and he will be. The question then will be whether Trump gains more by firing him or keeping a politically discredited prosecutor right where he is--nearby.
No one mourns Comey, and he has faded as a weak and unethical political operative not unlike General Flynn. Mueller may well be in their company soon whether or not Trump fires him.
One basic fact that this otherwise perceptive analysis overlooks is that everything that is happening in opposition to the Trump presence is the DC establishment seeking to preserve its norms. The Trump infection has stimulated the body politic's immune system and all the antibodies, the press and other institutions, are fired up and attacking the intruder.
Why is Trump unwilling to release his tax returns? There is something hiding there that cannot bear the light of day. it may be benign, simply an exposure of his actual net worth being far below his claims, or it could reveal his de facto employment by Russia, and evidence of being compromised. This is the goal of the special counsel.
In the meantime we speculate; I posit that if Trump dares to remove the investigation it will be the excuse Congress needs to act on impeachment. Certainly the public will howl. It may be inevitable, and they are stalling mightily in an effort to get past the mid-terms without turmoil. It's not working very well.
This is the first serious test of the American democracy, and shows how young it actually is. The fear is that these unique institutions are not strong enough to withstand the invasion by a non-democratic force. Germany went through this and provides a cautionary tale that both instructs and terrifies. Russia is seeking to co-opt the U.S. and with Trump they have found an ally.
I'm not Trump base, and can't wait to see him out of power, but this Russia thing does strike me as all the bad things you list as being what his admirers think.
I mean, the job of all foreign embassies in Washington is to lobby and variously interact with US politicians, at all levels. From the president down, to the lowliest candidate. It is their regular job to do so. There's nothing unusual. It goes on all the time in all the world's capitals. It's just the normal business of national and international politics.
As for the substance of US-Russia relations: these foundered over Crimea and Syria, respectively in 2014 and 2013.
Before that, it's worth mentioning that the US owed the conquest of Afghanistan to Russia. The Northern Alliance that defeated the Taliban in 2001 was organized, supplied and directed by Russia through Tajikistan. Its components (Massoud, Dostam and the Hazara) had all been armed and supplied by Russia during the preceding civil war: they constituted for all intent and purposes Russian proxies. After the overthrow of the Taliban, they then ensconced themselves in Afghanistan and became US proxies.
If Russia had failed to do this "small" favor to the Americans, all the latter could have done would have been to bomb Afghanistan from the air, which would have made little difference to the archaic Taiban.
Until the breakdown of US-Russian relations over the Syrian gas scare (which actually was about supporting Assad vs. supporting the CIA-armed Syrian rebels) in 2013, US forces in Afghanistan depended on Russia for most if their supplies. Without this Russian logistical support, Obama could not have sent 100,000 men to Afghanistan. To some extent, today this limits substantially the possibility of a new military escalation. I suspect that a new surge might not be logistically feasible without the Russian land supply routes, especially since the only alternative is the Pakistani route, which is inherently unreliable.
Carlo Cristofori
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