Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

I really should read my own blog.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Let there be snark.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

In my day, never was longer.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Late Night Mueller Report Open Thread: It’s the End of the Beginning

Late Night Mueller Report Open Thread: It’s the End of the Beginning

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Interesting thread, stripped for your reading convenience:

… and it surprised me then! Some of these primaries had a half-dozen viable candidates, all of whom needed to distinguish themselves. And yet with rare exception none called for Trump’s removal from office. I figured that might be set to change in 2019, after the MR comes out…

it made sense — nearly every Democrat the last two years, when asked about impeachment, said they would wait for the Mueller report to come out before making a judgment. Stood to reason that they would face a lot more pressure to back it after it came out…

but when i called around to activist leaders last week, I was once again surprised to find that, nah, they still didn’t care. Most said as long as House Dems kept investigating (close to a given) they’d be fine if impeachment never became an issue…

don’t get me wrong — they support impeachment and have since 2017. But they never made it a priority, and never pushed Dems to adopt it as a core issue the way they did on, say, Medicare for All or, more recently, the Green New Deal…

this last week the stated reason was, basically, the Dem primary is underway, the 2020 election is in ~18 months, we’re already moving on. Most said anything short of a smoking gun would likely keep impeachment a lesser-tier issue…

But also gets to a fundamental reaction among liberal activists to the Trump phenomenon that I think still gets a little missed. They hate him! But they actually care more about, in their view, correcting the issues that gave rise to him, i.e. income inequality…

and that’s where they’ve always applied their pressure, to issues. maybe there’s also a recognition that influencing their own party’s positions was always going to be easier than persuading Senate Rs to remove DT. But at its core these people just have a different view of world.

Excellent advice, from someone who knows:

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  3. 3.

    Anne Laurie

    @Jerzy Russian: There *will* need to be redactions made, for purposes of national security, and defining the necessary redactions cannot be done in an instant. I’m hoping Adam & Cheryl will take the time to explain for us the difference between such redactions, and the predictable attempts by Trump’s enablers to hide suspicious details of collusion or at least obstruction.

  4. 4.

    The Dangerman

    Full Mueller by April 2nd isn’t going to happen but a feller can dream, I guess.

    I’m more concerned with the ACA thing right now; want to crater the economy? Just take the ACA away this way. And this close to 2020 … are they idiots?

  6. 6.

    CaseyL

    They’re not going to get the report (unless someone i the DOJ has the access, the integrity, and the courage to leak it), so I hope they have some Next Steps planned.

    I am kind of curious about Mueller. What he knows, what he suspects he knows: not a word.

    I mean: yes, there is being a prosecutor’s prosecutor, going by the evidence, etc. etc.

    But we have a foreign asset in the Oval Office, an entire political party dancing to his tune, and an ongoing series of institutions being suborned and sabotaged.

    If Mueller has evidence of who’s pulling the strings, he damned well should be shouting it from the rooftops. Even if it’s true that Dolt45 his own self wasn’t part of the plot but just a happy dupe who benefited from it, everyone around him was in on the deal, including most of the GOP: someone is using Dolt45 to destroy the country. You’d think a priority would be NOT allowing the people engaged in enemy action to use your work to declare themselves vindicated.

    It’s like insisting on maintaining formal seating arrangements while the ship is sinking.

    Ah, well.

  7. 7.

    JWR

    I have a question: I keep hearing that this 3-1/2 page letter/synopsis is the result of both Barr’s and Rosenstein’s work, but Barr’s is the only signature. Why is that, and is this normal procedure? (Or, as in my dreams, Rosenstein refused to put his signature to such butchery and we’ll soon find that out.)

  8. 8.

    The Dangerman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Rhetorical, right?

    I guess their idiocy is obvious and unquestionable, but every once in a while they do something that makes you think what the ever loving fuck? Striking down the ACA by judicial fiat will make Trumpers gleeful … until the market meltdown happens. I don’t even want to think about the hit the markets will take …

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    @JWR

    Not just Rosenstein, there were other DOJ personnel involved in deciding what and how to include the little content there is, so IMHO I see nothing unusual with it bearing only the signature of the head of the department and think maybe you’re chasing phantoms.

  10. 10.

    piratedan

    @JWR: i think what has been posited is that since Barr was put into position, Rosenstein has been providing updates et al. I fully expect Barr to whitewash this away (or attempt to) but this aint the Reagan administration and the country is not in love with Trump (despite the networks and the GOP attempts to claim otherwise)

  11. 11.

    Aleta

    The Hoarse Whisperer @HoarseWisperer

    We saved the ACA through mass action and pressure. We’ve risen before.

    We’ve been spectating since the midterms.

    It is time to get back on our feet and back in the streets.

    Nothing is happening Friday per se. We just cannot let the immediacy fade.

    If we are not on our feet and fighting by this weekend, momentum will be lost.

    We can afford to regroup for a day or two.

    We cannot afford to sit idly by as justice is hijacked for an entire week.

    I know everyone is regrouping after yesterday but we need to be roused to anger by Friday.

    There is an active coverup underway.

    If we do not rise en masse to protest it, we will have signaled that we will put up no fight no matter how egregious the injustice.

  12. 12.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    @CaseyL:

    Republicans always put party over country. They don’t care if they tank the US—they’d rather have total control over a shitty country than 50% control over a superpower.

    When/if the USA becomes a shithole the wealthy republicans will take their billions and move somewhere else. The non-wealthy will blame the brown folks right up until global warming floodwaters wash them off planet earth.

    BTW, a rep from Alabama quoted Mein Kampf on the floor of Congress today. I suspect tomorrow we’ll get a selection from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

    What a time to be alive.

  13. 13.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @CaseyL:

    I am kind of curious about Mueller. What he knows, what he suspects he knows: not a word.

    All evidence we have is that Mueller is a professional, whose approach to this has been to go strictly by the book. That puts him now in the position he least wants to be in. I guarantee it is wildly against norms and ethics to publicly say that the Department of Justice has lied about the report you gave them. He had to have seen it coming and taken steps. A good, simultaneously ethical (which is different from moral) and devious way would be to distribute as many prosecutions as possible, so that no matter what the White House says the wheels of justice keep grinding. It would be a loud declaration that he does not trust the Department of Justice he works for.

  14. 14.

    Jay

    @hervevillechaizelounge:

    The only place they can move to is gated communities in the US, Sawdi Arabia or the Emirates. The rest of the world doesn’t want them, and many would face criminal charges were they to set foot outside the US.

  15. 15.

    JWR

    @NotMax:
    @piratedan:

    Thank you both. I suppose that someday we’ll find out what happened. Until then, I tend to be one of those hoping/wishing/praying that Robert Mueller testifies that the snippets of his report referenced by Barr do not tell the full story. (Hey, I can dream, can’t I [And please don’t say no!])

  16. 16.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    @Jay:

    The rest of the world doesn’t want them

    You and I know that, but they honestly believe they’ll be greeted as liberators.

    Time is a flat circle; I keep waiting for Trump to give Scooter Libby a job in the White House.

  17. 17.

    sukabi

    @JWR: yes, dream those dreams. ?

    What are the chances that a profesional like Mueller, who has been by all accounts a dedicated public servant and patriot, would turn over the only copy of his report knowing that the chances that it would never see the light of day would be in the 75% or more range?

  18. 18.

    Sebastian

    I guess I am as guilty as many others in hoping for a cathartic moment. We had a few of those already, haven’t we?

    I keep thinking how we are exposed to hope peddlers (Mensch) and doomsayers (Kendzior) alike, all of them giving us a fix.

    But now that the initial shock has worn off, I keep thinking is this all they got? It’s not like the report is going away and “we saw the report and it says we are A-OK” becomes old and boring news for only 72 hours and then what?

    The longer people stare at those 65 words the more they want to know what the other 29,935 are. Be patient, the report will come out and then we get to see all those things we didn’t know!

  19. 19.

    Mary G

    I think the attempt to kill the ACA completely is a gift to Democrats. We need to scream loudly about it and put the blame squarely where it lies.

  20. 20.

    Jay

    @hervevillechaizelounge:

    Nope, they know that they are vile.

    There’s a reason Needy Amin’s Minions all live in a hellscape on the wrong side of the tracks in DC, where even Uber won’t go, cook ramen at home and are desperate for MAGA apps that can get them safely fed, safe drycleaning and safely laid.

  21. 21.

    Mary G

    @Sebastian: Various permutations of the hashtag Release the Full Report have been trending on twitter all day. I don’t think anyone but diehard MAGAts really believe in the “complete exoneration.”

  22. 22.

    Sebastian

    @Mary G:

    Yeah, there is no way this stays secret. Is this it? Is this the big turning point and we are just missing its historic significance? It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what’s next: the report comes out one way or the other and then it’s suddenly all out in the open.

    The Trumpsters and FOX will scream Fake News but how will the rest react? Will SDNY indict Jr, Eric, and Jarvanka?

    Btw in any normal world Barr would have to step down immediately once found out he lied to the US Public about Mueller’s report.

  25. 25.

    Mart

    Mr Kasparov with an extremely high IQ also benefits from an extremely high EQ. Also too, has amazing command of English. An impressive man.

  26. 26.

    JWR

    Elizabeth Warren killed it on Colbert. And Mr. Colbert made me feel better, reminding everyone that the Mueller investigation was one of very many remaining other investigations, but doing so in his typically fun way. I hope the Gayle King’s and Scott Pelley’s of his network take note, because I’m sick of this narrative that Mueller was the be all, end all of reports.

  32. 32.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax: Not just DOJ personnel, but in particular the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel:

    By delegation from the Attorney General, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel provides legal advice to the President and all executive branch agencies. The Office drafts legal opinions of the Attorney General and provides its own written opinions and other advice in response to requests from the Counsel to the President, the various agencies of the Executive Branch, and other components of the Department of Justice. Such requests typically deal with legal issues of particular complexity and importance or those about which two or more agencies are in disagreement.

    In this case, it would seem to me (an IANAL), that the DOJ shouldn’t be looking at Donnie’s actions via this office. There seems to be an inherent conflict to me. IOW, I don’t think that an office that looks at legal opinions of the office of the presidency should be looking at a report on an investigation of a the particular holder of the office of the president and deciding how to summarize it and what to release.

    They could have thrown a copy of the report over the wall to Donnie’s personal lawyers, the same day that they delivered it to both houses of Congress.

    Yeah, I’m a dreamer…

    As to why few people in the real world are talking about the Mueller report – it hasn’t been released yet so nobody really knows what’s in it. Duh.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  33. 33.

    randy khan

    It’s kind of funny how many people apparently didn’t notice (willfully in quite a few cases) that Dems never really had been calling for impeachment.

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