The latest burst of hail
Charles Pierce at Esquire says things are speeding up on Trump’s train to the cliff edge.
The latest burst of hail comes from a federal appeals court in Washington. From the Washington Post:
The request followed closely on the heels of Friday’s conviction of longtime Trump friend Roger Stone. Testimony and evidence at his trial appeared to cast doubt on written replies from Trump to Mueller about the president’s knowledge about attempts by his 2016 campaign to learn more about the release of hacked Democratic emails by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. “Did the president lie? Was the president not truthful in his responses to the Mueller investigation,” General Counsel Douglas N. Letter said. “The House is trying to determine whether the current president should remain in office. This is unbelievably serious and it’s happening right now, very fast.”
If the president* lied to Mueller’s people, that’s the entire ballgame.
Is it though? If Barr and the Senate won’t admit it’s the entire ballgame then it isn’t, right?
And that’s not even to get into the possibility that he—or nature itself—may be crafting a medical bailout for him even as we speak. (Reports are that he received the Fed chair in the residence today, and not in the Oval Office. Edith Wilson, white courtesy phone, please.) The rivets are all popping and the gears are springing loose. And now there’s a whistleblower from the IRS charging that a political appointee at Treasury may have monkey-wrenched an audit of either the president* or of Vice President Mike Pence. The hailstorm’s getting stronger, and the jackasses are running out of room.
Interesting.
Right.
And I really wish pundits will stop doing that. If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard a variant of, “well, that’s it, he’s toast”…
In this case, is lying to Mueller really going to be seen as worse than trying to force the Ukraine to undermine Biden? Especially if the lying isn’t 100% conclusive.
Barring a true bombshell, what will sink Trump is smaller revelations chipping away at his support until the Republican Party sees sticking with him as clearly detrimental to their future. With more polls showing majority support for impeachment and removal coming out, we may well be heading there. We’re not there yet, and lying to Mueller might move the needle a bit, but it’s unlikely to be decisive. Most people probably already figure he lied to Mueller.
I’m skeptical that he’s preparing a medical excuse. He seems embarrassed by the whole thing (allegedly “chest discomfort”, but Trump claims a surprise decision to start his physical early). I suppose he could be playing it up by pretending to play it down…but then I don’t generally buy into the theories that Trump’s apparent incompetence is actually part of a brilliant master plan.
As Skeletor says (and O.B.), no reason to assume that lying to Mueller (or anyone else) will take him down. The Republicans simply see it as a good thing, because they are holding onto all three branches of government, and that is all that is important to them.
Particularly ironic, though, in view of the outrage that arose when Bill Clinton lied to Congress. I know, I know, some will say Clinton was under oath. But you don’t have to be under oath to be in deep s**t for lying in a situation like this.
Of course, the same people who brought Clinton to impeachment for sexual improprieties are more than wiling to overlook even larger ones from the Donald (none of our business seems to be their attitude). What’s the likelihood that a Democrat with Kavanaugh’s history would have been confirmed? The Senate would (rightly) have pointed out that there were plenty of qualified people out there without all the baggage, and that the credibility of the testimony made it imprudent to give him a position on the court.