Mulling Over The Mueller Report

By Hank Silverberg

Wait!  This is not another review over what is and what isn’t in the 400 pages. You have probably read and heard enough about that already, and like me, you may be sick of it. But there are other things to think about concerning this report besides the words.  

(Courtesy of  USDOJ)

I am troubled by the reaction to it, specifically by members of the Republican Party. 

         

Mueller’s report DID NOT exonerate President Trump. Yes, it said there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians to manipulate the election. But it also laid out numerous incidents in which Mr. Trump tried to obstruct justice. It apparently was NOT enough for Mr. Mueller to recommend charges against the President. It’s what lawyers would call “enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.”                                                                                                                         

It is clear that the President has no moral compass and may have lost touch with reality. He has refused to even accept the main focus of the report, that the Russian government DID interfere with our election. At the very least the Russians waged a propaganda war on the Internet and at its worst, attempted cyber attacks on state election boards in an effort to actually manipulate votes.  https://www.cnet.com/news/mueller-report-dives-into-russian-election-interference-and-trump-campaign/

That should scare the hell out of you. And it should have lawmakers of both parties rushing to acknowledge the danger in that and move quickly to find ways to combat it.

It hasn’t! With the exception of some light criticism from Senator Mitt Romney, the GOP has remained on the Trump bandwagon. That brought to mind this often-used quote from reporter Carl Bernstein, who helped break the Watergate scandal open in the 1970’s that forced Richard Nixon out of office:  

    "The heroes of Watergate were Republicans who demanded that the president be held accountable, who demanded that he be transparent, who demanded to know what did the president know and when did he know it, and who conducted bipartisan investigation that led, in fact, to understanding and finding out what Nixon had done," 

https://www.history.com/topics/1970s/watergate

But today there is no one like the late Senator Howard Baker to lead the Republicans in the right direction.  Instead, the GOP has come up with the ridiculous idea of investigating the investigators. Instead of looking at the report as a call to action against Russian espionage, they want to undermine the entire investigation and the people who gave up two years of their lives, and in some cases their jobs, to protect us from foreign treachery.

Don’t get me wrong. The Democrats are not exactly taking the high road either. There should and must be more investigation and congressional hearings using the Mueller report as a guideline. Oversight is a big part of the job Congress is supposed to do. But with the 2020 election just over 18 months away, the focus needs to be on how to stop the Russian hacking and interference to make sure the election is clear and unencumbered.   

In 1973, when the Watergate scandal broke, President Nixon had just been elected to a second four- year term. The only way to get him out of office was impeachment. But this time, the voters can do it easily on November 3^rd, 2020.

Calls for Impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump are a wasted effort.  Even if the Republican leadership were on-board, and they are certainly not, it would take more than a year to produce any results. Instead, Congress should use that time to shore up cyber security on our election system and the Democratic Party should use that time to produce a trustworthy, formidable and knowledgeable candidate to soundly beat Mr. Trump at the polls. Any of the dozen or more candidates out there now who really want to be President should stop the Impeachment rhetoric and concentrate on proving their worthiness for the job.

The Trump Administration is already among the most corrupt in the history of our country.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/22/how-many-of-trumps-close-advisers-have-been-convicted-and-who-are-they

His leadership is as bad or maybe worse than Herbert Hoover, who could not deal with an economic crisis that became the Great Depression in 1929, and he is gaining on James Buchanan whose political ineptness led us into Civil War in 1861.

For the public, there is another job. We must evaluate how our own Congressmen and Senators have behaved during this period. Have they taken the high road or have they continued to support a President who lies every day and seems to have no moral focus? 

It is tough. The economy appears to be good and unemployment low, though some economists continue to worry about stability, particularly because there has been NO progress on health care.  

The crises at our southern border, exacerbated by the current Administration’s discriminatory policies and turmoil in Central America, gets worse mainly because of inaction by a Congress focused on revenge and payback rather than the good of the people.

The air we breathe, the water we drink, is getting dirtier and the planet's climate more unstable because of a President who rejects science and a group of enablers who call themselves Republicans. 

As voters, taxpayers and Americans, we must hold our leaders up to higher standards. The system is cracking. They need to fix it before it breaks.

 Note to my readers:   

This week I am going to try an experiment. After this blog is posted, I will be taking a week away from social media. I will not be posting or reading on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. I will be checking my email because I have to for work. And I will be checking baseball scores because I have to for my sanity. But other posts--NO!  It is an effort to clear poison from my system, which has been fighting off a contagion of fake news, vindictive rhetoric and people who can’t simply agree to disagree without hostility. I will write about the outcome of this project next week.   

       (Your comments and suggestions are welcome)

(Copies of my book “The Campaign” are available at Amazon.com, BB.com, hanksilverbergbooks.com or you can purchase a signed copy directly from me at a reduced price by sending me an email hanksilverberg@gmail.com)