July 23, 2019 | Reading Time: < 1 minute
Wednesday is Mueller’s time
Everyone is talking about Robert Mueller’s testimony tomorrow. Here are few thoughts. Mueller is going to tell us what he’s already told us. It’s important for people to see that on TV. GOP says if Mueller doesn’t have anything new, Trump’s in the clear. That’s nonsense. Did the Dems wait too long? I don’t think…
Everyone is talking about Robert Mueller’s testimony tomorrow.
Here are few thoughts.
Mueller is going to tell us what he’s already told us.
It’s important for people to see that on TV.
GOP says if Mueller doesn’t have anything new, Trump’s in the clear.
That’s nonsense.
Did the Dems wait too long? I don’t think so.
But Thursday is the right time to open an impeachment inquiry.
If Dems don’t, it’s unlikely to happen. Ever. That would be wrong.
Dems will then be complicit in Trump’s crimes.
Please add your own thoughts.
This will be the subject of the Wednesday edition. I’d love to quote you!
Thanks. JS
John Stoehr is the editor of the Editorial Board. He writes the daily edition. Find him @johnastoehr.
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I agree with everything you’ve said. I’ll add a couple of things: I believe Nadler is ready to open an impeachment inquiry (his vote on Rep. Green’s move to impeach says as much). I don’t think we should rush to judge whether Dems will open an inquiry; it won’t be like flipping a switch. They’re on recess, after all, so we won’t know anything for sure until September. But what MOCs say between now and then — and the pressure their constituents place on them — will be telling.
Excellent point re recess.
I fear the focus on Mueller and Trump is ill-advised in our current circumstances, while Trumpists control the highest offices in DOJ and other Federal agencies. The problem — and, conversely, the opportunity — lies in the fact that Trump has had the time to install apparatchiks who will use their power to protect him. It will be extremely difficult to extract Trump from office while they shield him from justice and from the will of the people.
Given this context, I am afraid that democratic and republican (both adjectives are advisedly uncapitalized) resistance strategy must accept the reality of creeping authoritarianism and look to history to discern methods of resistance. Specifically, and crucially, political struggle within authoritarian regimes takes place on the peripheries, not at the core, or to put it more clearly, the monarch — or the dear leader — cannot be challenged until his henchmen have been peeled away. This is, of course, why the impeachment of ministers was such a significant element in eventual deposition/regicide of Charles I in 17th Century England (and the Constitution’s authors knew this history quite well). It is also why much of the work of 20th ‘Kremlinology’ in the Soviet context focused on how and when the secondary and tertiary figures in the Kremlin (literally) disappeared from the picture.
In our familiar context of ‘normal’ American politics, this kind of concern for the henchmen and sub-rosa political alliances tended to be much less salient: politically commentary and political strategy focused on ‘local politics and potholes’ or national politics and polling. And it is tempting and comforting to think of the Trumpian challenge in this way. But it may be fatal, and it certainly neglects some of the opportunities that Trump’s opposition can grab.
Specifically, the opposition needs to be thinking and pursuing ways to threaten, indict, or impeach the most politically and legally vulnerable members of Trump’s clique and his political coalition. (E.g. Alex Acosta comes to mind as a potential target and a missed opportunity, because of his ’embarrassed’ situation with respect to Epstein but also because of likelihood that he was a pawn in the tacit truce between Jeb Bush’s partisans and Trump’s). Inevitably, these are people in an asymmetrical relationship with the president: they will do more for him than he for them, and, in the context of our political struggles, it is important to demonstrate — repeatedly — that they need to fear Trump’s opposition as much as they hope for support from Trump himself.
In short, we likely need to think about opposing Trump by eroding the foundations and edifices supporting him, imposing deserved political and legal liabilities on his allies and enablers… then challenging Trump himself as the foundations crumble.
In the context of the Mueller hearings it would be best if Mueller’s testimony could be used toward that end. Can Mueller’s testimony help illuminate his relationship — and Barr’s — with the presidency? Can it help to expose colleagues and staffers who did the president’s bidding without regard to their own oath of office? If it cannot quite put Barr into the position of facing impeachment, can it place him in a position where he needs to risk his own political/professional capital to — in turn — defend one of his own underlings?
The lack of an impeachment inquiry, the inability of Dems to generate much faster rapid response and accessible narratives, makes us all complicit in the horrors being carried out in our name.
I wrote a piece before the hearing today predicting the Dems would go into this trying to work within Mueller’s restrictions, while Republicans would ask a bunch of “when did you stop hitting your wife” questions knowing he couldn’t respond. That’s been pretty much the case, although there have been some notable exchanges that will likely give Dems what they’re looking for-some clips that will play on tonight’s news.