Anyone want some objective qualified Hopium? Bear with me. It's a simple point but I want to be clear on what I think.
On Friday afternoon I says to Mrs. Stinkles, I says, "I bet you a hundred bucks that Barr releases whatever he's going to release on Sunday evening - after the morning shows because they would not be able to control messaging with that many educated proxies sitting on panels with data and insight. If they're going to try to suprress the report, Barr will do what he said he's gonna do the whole time: Make a judgment that Trump cannot be indicted or prosecuted as a sitting president.
I actually expected worse - the inclusion of the Mueller "not exonerated" line was surprising to me because I thought he'd quash anything that could be seen as tea leaves or casting suspicion on the president. I suspect that he included that to mollify what had to be a fucking stunned Mueller that evening. Likely something he promised to include - leaving Mueller to expect he was going to protect the president on "collusion" but give "obstruction" to Congress. He screwed his friend, no matter how you look at it. So I was disgusted, but oddly relieved on Sunday.
The media stampeded to be first to say what the Barr memo meant - and they made a disgrace of themselves as usual, effectively repeating a partisan press release that was itself built on falsehood and was itself a diretc effort to obstruct justice. Just as Barr always promised he would. The Senate confirmation of Barr was a tragic and avoidable mistake by the dems - who should have kicked and screamed - not to block his nomination - they don't have the numbers - but to give better context for what bullshit was released on sunday. Their capitualtion lent credence to Barr, who deserves NONE. He's a partisan plant. Bought and paid for and planned for.
But here's the important bit:
1. On Sunday evening, the most compelling, binary GOP interpretation of the report was at its zenith of success. Even MSNBC and some actual liberal outlets were reporting it as doom and gloom and "practically" exoneration. Every major media outlet marketed this all night as a win for Trump.
But yesterday, right at the peak, the crest of the wave of how convincing this cover-up effort will ever be, CNN polled their usual credulous both sides know nothings - using normal polling methods - which historically overstate Trump's popularity or impact. And it's a disaster. It's not what they hoped for. Trump's approval ratings did not move beyond the margin of error. He has saturated what is available to him, period.
CNN Poll is disastrous for GOP plan and Barr Press Release
And 56% of Americans not only didn't think this exonerated Trump of obstruction of justice, but also not the LESSER charge of "collusion" (conspiracy, really) and the one Mueller actually DID state couldn't be proven within the confines of his investigation. And even more meaningful, 58% of INDEPENDENTS (usually shy repubs, Libertarians, shy liberals, don't tread on em types etc) think Trump is guilty of one or both. In all the noise, I don't think has gotten enough traction. Because this is the BEST it's going to be for Trump and the GOP. After this, with every passing day and revelation, it's going to get worse.
Today, the (Qatar perhaps) secret Grand Jury investigation connected to the Mueller report is still "robustly continuing" and there are still multiple trials, sentencing and cooperation agreements in flight. The Mueller Report is not only not over, it's now known to contain significant evidence of obstruction of justice and other crimes - and it's also known that Trump is not exonerated by the report. And that's without considering the handoffs to State authorities.
Barr is going to be subpoenaed. Mueller is going to be subpoenaed. Multiple high level players have committed perjury and will again. The report is eventually coming out. If the GOP thinks this helps them in 2020 they have not understood what happened in 2018 and what is going to happen again at some level - in 2020. Instead of coming at the King and missing with one shot, the dems have been handed a box of a thousand razors to make little cuts with, for two years.
And the GOP couldn't help but overplay what is turning out to be their shitty hand - they immediately tried to repeal Obamacare again (continuing inadvertently to educate the public on what its benefits are, by eliminating them). Betsy DeVos zeroed out the meaningless tiny funding for Special Olympics because they are too tone deaf, or too confident in Trump's horrifying base's slavish tailgating of his worst instincts. Lindsay Graham claimed with a straight face - and I think he even believed it thanks to magical thinking - that Trump now had "tremendous political capital" despite never actually cracking 50% approval - even in the wake of his "exoneration."
Don't get me wrong. Sunday was the biggest victory they've had in this matter. But it's also the biggest one they're ever going to have and it hasn't changed anything. The media, clearly embarrassed by their predictable idiocy on Sunday, is now starting to walk it back and ask important questions. And the congress has the ability to get a lot of those answers. And the momentum looks clear. The more they try to cover this up, the more people will want to see what they're hiding. It's Streisand Effect at a SPECTACULAR scale.
Barr has risked his "public" reputation which was already shitty. He only cares about his private reputation at his cigar club and power broker K-street circle jerk. He will have no appetite for the long haul. He achieved his mission and probably wants to get back to corpulent venal trash and enjoy some of the back-patting.
The first question they need to ask Barr under oath btw - is this:
"Did you or a proxy communicate with the Trump administration to tell Donald J Trump to stop tweeting from Friday to sunday? Was Lindsay Graham part of a group
SPOILER
including Kid goddamned Rock help me jesus
asked to ensure that Trump didn't blow up the marketing plan?"
In summary, shoezaldroppen ist kommen.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Someone send an ambulance to 343i plz
