Tag: Mueller Report

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Wall

CREDIT: Reuters | Lucy Nicholson

A report released this week by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency revealed that in the two-and-a-half years since President Donald Trump came into office, 51 miles of border wall have been built — all of it erected to replace barriers already in place.

You may remember Trump’s signature campaign promise was to build a big, beautiful wall that would run the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, and that Mexico would “pay for it.” Not so much, it turns out. The border wall, like so many things the president talks about, exists only in his mind — and in the minds of those who take his words at face value. But the sad truth is, Trump has managed to build a wall. It’s big, but it’s not beautiful — and we’re paying for it.

Trump has built a wall between those who think that separating refugee children from their families and putting them in cages along the border is an acceptable solution to our immigration problem and those who believe that policy is cruel, inhumane, and unworthy of who we are as Americans.

Trump has built a wall between those who believe in the science of climate change and those who believe our rapidly warming planet is just a natural occurrence and we can’t do anything about it.

Reuters | Lucy Nicholson

U.S.-Mexico border fencing in Santa Teresa, New Mexico

Trump has built a wall between those who think Americans should celebrate our country’s diversity and those who think people whose ancestors are from countries that aren’t white should “go back where they came from” if they criticize the president.

Trump has built a wall between those who believe we should work with and respect our traditional democratic allies and those who believe, like Trump, that those alliances are worthless and that murderous dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un should be fawned over and coddled and emulated.

Trump has built a wall between those who think cheating on your wife with porn stars and other women and paying them to keep quiet about it doesn’t conflict with Christian “family values” and those who think such behavior is despicable.

Trump has built a wall between those who believe the Mueller Report’s findings that Russia interfered with the 2016 election and that the president obstructed justice 10 times and those who think the report simply said “no collusion.” That wall also divides those who think our intelligence agencies serve to protect America and those who think those agencies are part of a “deep state” conspiracy to bring down a president who is innocent of any nefarious activity.

Trump has built a wall between those who think the U.S. Department of Justice should be an independent agency serving the American people and those who think it should exist only to protect the interests of the president.

Trump has even managed to build a wall within the Republican Party — between those who think the president doesn’t reflect the party’s values and those who think he is the party. (He’s also built a wall between Lindsey Graham circa 2016 and Lindsey Graham today, but I digress.)

Trump has built a wall between those who think Fox News is a purveyor of misinformation and a blatant propaganda outlet for the president and those who believe the network is “fair and balanced.”

Trump has built a wall between longtime friends, between brothers and sisters, between parents and their children and grandchildren, between blacks and whites and browns, between gay and straight, between women and men — a wall of anger, distrust, and wounds that won’t easily heal.

Trump has built a wall between his lies and the truth, between those who believe him and those who don’t.

Some day, historians will write about all this — the time when America was riven in two by a man who came into the presidency sowing anger and resentment and divisiveness, who disparaged and ridiculed former presidents, war heroes, political opponents, members of Congress, the disabled — a man who told lie after lie, day after day, tweet after tweet, and built a cult-like “base” of followers who bought into every damn word.

Yes, someday, God willing, this will all be in American history books. And your descendants may rightly wonder as they read this odd and terrifying chapter: Which side of the wall were you on?

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

I Dreamed I Was Flying …

I’ve gotten lots of emails in the past few days. Many are gloating, “told you so, liberal scum” type deals. Others are from my fellow liberal scum suggesting that we “accept the findings of the Mueller Report and move on.” Only one problem with either of these suggestions: We haven’t seen the Mueller Report. In fact, Senator Mitch McConnell just blocked Senator Chuck Schumer’s proposal to replicate the House of Representatives’ unanimous vote to release the report.

Listen, people, it’s too early gloat, and it’s too early to lament. We have no idea what’s really in that report. Just chill. And bear in mind, if the report was really a good thing for Trump, the GOP would be passing it out on street corners and using it to sell MAGA hats, not trying to keep it under wraps. Don’t buy the “Trump is exonerated” line until we get to see the actual report and not a brief, butt-covering summation by Trump’s hand-picked attorney general. Stay woke.

And for the record, if the actual report proves that Trump was nothing more than an innocent but useful idiot in the (very real) Russian interference in the 2016 election, and not a knowing collaborator, I will say so in this column. Then you can gloat.

In the meantime, savor these words from Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” written during the darkest days of the Watergate era. Even better, go listen to it. Turn it up.

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I’m all right, I’m all right
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it’s all right, it’s all right
We’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we’re traveling on,
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all, I’m trying to get some rest.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

No Backing Down. Release the Mueller Report.

Yes, we are dismayed, but not for the reasons you might think. We are not troubled by any imagined derelictions of the mainstream media or by any presumed credulousness on its part or by any putative conspiracy, in tandem with the Democratic Party, to mislead the nation about a fictitious involvement of Donald Trump, his campaign, or his administration with the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin.

What concerns us instead is the tail-between-the-legs attitude of some of our brethren in the Fourth Estate, or the chastisement of fellow journalists by the likes of The New York Times‘ David Brooks or gonzo progressive Matt Taibbi.

No, we have nothing to apologize for, those of us who pointed out the practical symbiosis between the Trump campaign and administration and the organized conspiracy of the Russian government to undermine both our democratic (small d) processes and the electoral chances of the Democratic Party.

No, we were not deceived, and we had no difficulty discerning a pattern in the ever-proliferating number of relationships between the Trumpians and the Russians, even if, bafflingly, special counsel Robert Mueller, who unearthed so many of them, supposedly did. (And we pause here to observe that, in these first few days of shocked reaction to the hands-off conclusions attributed to the Mueller report, what is being reacted to is William Barr’s summary of that report, an interpretation of its contents by an attorney general hired by Trump, in effect, to serve as the personal presidential lawyer that Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first AG, declined to be.)

Michael Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser, did have conversations with Russian officials, which he later lied about, promising them relief from sanctions properly applied by former President Barack Obama. He pleaded guilty.

Earlier, Trump’s most intimate campaign assistants, including a son, a son-in-law, and his campaign manager Paul Manafort, took a meeting — in Trump Tower in New York, no less — with Russian emissaries who promised them help with the campaign and dirt on Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Even earlier than that, Manafort had agreed to share the campaign’s polling information with a Russian oligarch close to Putin, and presumably close also to the cyber-sabotage being organized and conducted by Russians, a dozen of whom would go on to be indicted at Mueller’s behest.

It goes on and on, the litany of relationships and the network of lies told in both countries to conceal them. In more recent weeks we have learned about Trump’s hopes for an extravagant payoff from Putin via the Russian dictator’s approval of a Trump Tower to be built in Moscow.

We have all been lessoned as to the fact that the word “collusion,” indicating an intimate working relationship, is not a legal term. Fine, we accept it for what it is, an indication of an intimate working relationship. And everything we have just described, along with much more that we don’t have space for here, is collusion on the face of it. We — and others in the media — have nothing to apologize for in having pointed this out. Let the American people know the truth, one way or the other. Release the Mueller report.