I drove up to Fremont from LA early this morning, and listened to Fox News in the car, and heard Barr’s press conference, then commentary on the released document.
The notion that Trump obstructed justice is now clearly absurd, but we’re going to continue to be dragged through this mud right up until the election. I hope that the Democrats badly regret it on November 11, 2020 (which coincidentally, will be Armistice Day).
[Update early evening]
The Barr has been raised:
…here is the existential issue that the report confronts us with. William Barr observed at one point that ‘all Americans can and should be grateful to have [the president’s innocence] confirmed.’ And yet many people, far from being grateful, will be enraged. And that is a huge problem for the Republic.
What has happened over the past two-plus years is a fundamental attack on the legitimacy of our democratic republic. Tactical partisan maneuvering has overwhelmed the institution of presidential elections. Note that this is a one-party party. It probably started in earnest with the election of George W. Bush in 2000. Al Gore withdrew his concession and put the country through months of legal wrangling. Republicans were unhappy when Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and again in 2012. But there was no question of his legitimacy. But when Donald Trump won in 2016, the sort of antidemocratic forces that beset George Bush had mutated from an angry squad of activists into an army of deniers.
Should that substitution of weaponized tactical maneuvering continue to intrude upon the legitimacy of our elections, those elections will be decided less and less at the ballot box and more and more by interest-group jockeying, bribery, and intimidation.
It’s going to get uglier before it gets prettier.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Democrats continue to destroy themselves over the Mueller report.
I don’t mind that much, but my fear is that they’ll take the rest of us down with them.
[Friday-morning update]
“Mueller completely dropped the ball with his obstruction punt.”
Unlike some, I don’t think that Trump owes Mueller an apology. It seems clear to me that he dragged this out, even though he knew many months ago that there was no collusion, for no purpose other than to provide the Democrats with ammunition to continue to if not impeach, to cripple the administration. People keep telling me that he’s a Republican, but if so, he would appear to be a Never Trumper. Frustrated himself that, despite loading his team with Clinton supporters and donors, he couldn’t get anything solid against Trump, he instead decided to smear him.
[Update a while later]
Mueller, Trump, and ‘two years of bullshit.’
[Noon update]
Volume II of the Mueller report is a two-hundred page op-ed that should never have been written.
[Late-afternoon updates]
Mark Penn (former Bill Clinton pollster): Mueller is over. Democrats should move on. Trump is no Nixon.