Mueller and Trump Prepare for War with America the Loser, by Roger L Simon.
Watergate ended with a whimper, not a bang. After months of sturm und drang, Richard Nixon finally mounted that helicopter, gave that famous farewell peace sign and flew away. Most Americans were relieved to see him go. Our long national nightmare was over.
If something similar happens to Donald Trump, it will be entirely different. A significant portion of the American public — myself admittedly among them — will be convinced he has been railroaded in a partisan hatchet job. The voters who elected the president are going to feel, at the very least, undermined, more likely betrayed, by their own government and public officials. Many are going to feel this has nothing to do whatsoever with justice and will act accordingly.
The exact results of this mammoth national split are not easy to predict but they could range from massive civil disobedience to outright civil war.
The behavior of special prosecutor Robert Mueller has exacerbated the situation. Even CNN admits he has staffed his investigation almost exclusively with Democratic Party supporters and donors. It’s hard to say whether this is brazen or stupid or both, but it certainly doesn’t lend credibility to his eventual decisions. …
The situation is grim all around. Trump, lawyering up, is obviously preparing for war against Mueller who, in his turn, is apparently digging into information regarding the president’s ten-year-old Russian business dealings. Again, this is a fraught decision because everyone in the informed public is aware of the myriad Clinton-Russia connections (including Uranium One) detailed in Clinton Cash that were, as far as we know, never investigated by the FBI, not to mention the well-documented Russian business connections of John Podesta and his brother.
If Trump and his family are singled out for this when the Democrats have skated, this will be regarded by a vast proportion of the public as selective prosecution …
To take any of this seriously as a search for truth is absurd. It’s more like a blood sport, the modern equivalent of gladiatorial combat. Trump baiting. And Trump, as the bear, lashes out.
It started out as Democrat allegations that the Russians rigged the elections, is now a witch-hunt reduced to trivialities for lack of evidence, but may spark a civil war.
Glenn Reynolds:
Our political class, oblivious to this … is playing with fire, but it is too foolish and self-obsessed to realize it. …
People were talking about impeaching Trump before the election results were official. That fact tells us less about Trump than about the people who hate him.
Trump, as I keep saying, is a symptom of how rottenly dysfunctional our sorry political class is. Take away Trump and they’re just as awful and destructive. He just brings their awfulness to the fore, where it’s no longer ignorable. Now they’re willing to play with fire, risking the future of the polity over little more than hurt feelings, in a way that would have been unthinkable not long ago.
