In the End, In the Most Understated Way Possible, Robert Mueller Conveyed His Disdain for...Trump

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/robert-mueller-donald-trump-unpatriotic-unethical.html


In the End, In the Most Understated Way Possible, Robert Mueller Conveyed His Disdain for Donald Trump

By Ben Mathis-Lilley
July 24, 2019
5:17 PM


For two years, special counsel Robert Mueller hovered silently over the United States’ political system. His office’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia almost never issued statements, and no one on his staff seems to have leaked information about its ongoing work to the press. His report, when finally filed and released, was carefully—some would say maddeningly—written so as to neither condemn nor exonerate the president. When he appeared in public to discuss it, he spoke briefly from prepared notes and largely reiterated what was in the report.

The same pattern held throughout most of his testimony Wednesday before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. If a question was put to him that required him to do anything but confirm information in the report, he demurred: “I cannot get into that,” “Those are areas I’m not going to discuss,” “I don’t feel comfortable speculating on that,” and so forth.

Taking his final questions of the day, though, from Intel chairman and California Rep. Adam Schiff, Mueller briefly became non-noncommittal. Schiff and the other Democrats on the committee had spent two-plus hours enumerating the various ways in which the Trump campaign, while it may have stopped short of joining an illegal conspiracy, had nonetheless welcomed, celebrated, and encouraged the crimes that Russian intelligence operatives committed against his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Schiff asked Mueller, essentially, what he thought about all that—and Mueller, however monosyllabically, told him.

SCHIFF: I’d like to see if we can broaden the aperture at the end of the hearing. From your testimony today, I gather that you believe that knowingly accepting foreign assistance during a presidential campaign is an unethical thing to do.

MUELLER: And a crime.

SCHIFF: And a crime.

MUELLER: And a crime in given circumstances.

SCHIFF: And to the degree that it undermines our democracy and institutions, we can agree that it’s also unpatriotic.

MUELLER: True.

SCHIFF: And wrong.

MUELLER: True.

It was only a quick back-and-forth, and in the strict sense Schiff’s questions were hypothetical. But it followed another exchange in which Mueller, after being shown a slide of Trump’s enthusiastic comments about WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic emails, responded that to call the president’s remarks about the stolen material “problematic” would be “an understatement”; it also took place just after Mueller told Florida Rep. Val Demings* that it would be “generally” fair to say that the president’s written answers to investigators’ questions were not entirely truthful or complete. If you cared to hear it, the message was there: After two years, Schiff was able to get Mueller to be as direct as he’s ever going to be about judging the way that Donald Trump and the people close to him conducted themselves in 2016—and we learned that the words that Mueller thinks it’s fair to use to describe that conduct are ones like unethical, criminal, unpatriotic, and simply wrong. True, indeed.

[AJT]

1. The 90% of the country that rarely pays attention to what

is going on does not get subtly. The repukes know how to get noticed and listened to, the dems just sit quietly and politely whisper.

[babylonsister]

2. 'Walk softly and carry a big stick'.

Dems got plenty out of Mueller, politely. Nothing wrong with that. Their very countenance marked a stark contrast compared to the rethugs who for the most part were loud and ignorant. Theirs was a witch hunt. Not one of them was seeking the truth.

[pazzyanne]

3. I watched both hearings and was not bored!

Anyone watching should have come away with a deeper understanding of what we are facing. Now on to the solution!

[burrowowl]

4. Yes! A Crime!

[KentuckyWoman]

5. And ABC World News replayed the exchange.

Blasted out there, but I'm a big doubter that it matters.

At "cards" tonight, all us geezers were talking about the statement Russia is currently working on 2020 disruptions. I seemed to be the only one who thought something should be done about that....

It baffles me no end...

[anarch]

6. yes, and any reasonable person reading his report would say "good god! this guy needs impeached!"

At this point, I don't think anything's going to come of it...more hearings, through the election season, and more obstruction from the administration and their cronies, but none of the GOP base is going to change their minds (or their votes) on account of any of it.

[Mc Mike]

7. Lofgren: Who did the Russians want elected? Mueller: That would be tRimp.

Last edited Sat Jul 27, 2019, 06:35 PM - Edit history (1)

Rhymes with 'wimp', 'pimp', 'simp', 'blimp', 'gimp', 'shrimp'.

Also, limp and chimp, scrimp.