#trump impeachment
TO ALL YOU TRUMP LOVERS….
Can there be any better case study of how Republicans are so effective at manipulating media and public discourse than the Barr DOJ’s handling of the Mueller report?
1. Barr’s “summary “ letter established the basic spin of “no collusion, no obstruction“, even though it’s now clear the report is more nuanced. And of course taking advantage of nuance to establish favorable spin is a classic Republican tactic.
2. The letter set off a completely predictable round of Democratic retreat, recriminations, navel-gazing etc.
3. Congressional Democrats’ fully proper demand for the full report was recast as a”tiff”, part of a “feud” between Trump and Nader. Recasting straightforward legal issues in terms of personalities- also classic.
And the future course of events is perfectly obvious:
4. When the redacted report appears, the redactions will almost certainly shade the report in Trump’s favor. Congressional Democrats who have seen the full report will angrily assert this, and Mueller’s investigators will confirm. But Barr and Republicans will deny. And the media will report the controversy.
5. Democrats will subpoena the full report, Republicans will refuse, and it will go to court. Eventually - well after Trump has (hopefully) left office, it will reach the Supreme Court, which will rule in favor of Trump. The full report might well be leaked at that point, but it will attract little notice by journalists, because it’s no longer at the forefront of the news: “the country has moved on.”
6. And, many years later, historians will review the whole sorry history of the Trump presidency and find things that are even more shocking. But that will be much, much too late to matter.
