The View from Right Field

Farewell to Attorney General Barr – And Thank You

Attorney General William Barr is resigning effective December 23.  Who knows why.  You can never tell with Donald Trump, except when the President says so in a nasty tweet.  President Trump’s tweet about Attorney General Barr was nice, so you can’t tell anything from it.  In any case, Attorney General Barr has done an excellent job, and he deserves a thank you as he leaves.

Attorney General Barr was appointed by President Trump in January of 2019.  Early on, the mainstream media began calling him a “Trump loyalist” because of things he did.  For example, when he initiated an investigation into the question of whether the FBI investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign, Democrats and the mainstream media went crazy.  (See my post from back then here.)  After all, President Trump had been complaining about surveillance on his campaign for a long time. 

It’s Time for Republicans to Face Facts. Donald Trump Lost.

My question on the on-going and, from a legal perspective, increasingly silly and insubstantial arguments being made by the Trump campaign and its supporters, is this: Do Donald Trump supporters really think he won the election?

As for President Trump himself, I don’t know what he believes.  What I am interested in is whether his supporters think he was cheated.  There are polls that seem to indicate a large number of people who supported President Trump think he really won the election, but I don’t know how the polls were conducted or how the questions were worded – or whether the news media is interpreting or reporting the results of these polls correctly.

Might It Have Been Possible to Oppose Donald Trump Without the Fury?

As we enter the last year of either Donald Trump’s presidency or President Trump’s first term, it seems like an appropriate time to look back on the last three years.  First, in looking at my posts about President Trump, I see I started out complaining a lot about what he did and his style of doing it.  Just look at some of the titles of my posts in his first nine months:

• “Donald Trump at Seven Weeks. This Is Not Working.”
• “Donald Trump Meets Angela Merkel. Things Keep Getting Worse.”
• “Donald Trump: Will the Embarrassment Ever End?”
• “@realDonaldTrump: Such a Small, Small Man”¹

But eventually, I got tired.  It wasn’t making a difference (obviously), and I was saying the same thing over and over again.  I got bored writing it.  I can only imagine how bored people got reading it.

Is an Attempt to Impeach President Trump Coming – And Who Will It Help?

I never thought I would sympathize with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and I still don’t.  But if ever I was going to sympathize with her, we are getting close to when it would happen.  Two people who might sympathize with her are a couple of her predecessors, John Boehner and Paul Ryan.  Messrs. Boehner and Ryan understand the problems that Ms. Pelosi is having with the impeachment wing of her party because of the problems they had with the right-wing crazies in their caucuses.  The members of the “Freedom Caucus” and others among the House Republicans seemed to have this theory that somehow it was better to hold out for 100%, and wind up with nothing, than to agree to accept 70%.

The impeachment wing of the Democratic caucus is causing Speaker Pelosi many of the same problems – and maybe even more because it appears to be bigger than the right-wing crazy group in the House Republicans.¹ 

President Trump Is So Bad Anything Is a Reason to Get Rid of Him – Or At Least Some People Think So

Democrats are upset that Attorney General William Barr has authorized an investigation into whether the law enforcement and intelligence communities had proper basis for investigating the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign.  The main point they seem to make is that Donald Trump is so bad that, of course, there were proper grounds.  It’s sort of like the Robert Mueller investigation.  When it started out, the Democrats, et al, “knew” Mr. Mueller would find evidence that then-candidate Trump, or at least the Trump campaign, colluded with the Russians – because, after all, Donald Trump is bad, so how else could he have won.  When Mr. Mueller didn’t find evidence of collusion, they pretty much decided that Russian interference was the same thing as collusion in terms of justification for getting rid of President Trump.¹ 

They are also upset that Attorney General Barr has been given authority to declassify information in connection with this investigation.  Because they say he will do it, without regard to national security, in order to help President Trump.  Of course, many of these same people want to breach laws and ignore privacy concerns with respect to the redactions in the Mueller report (also here), so consistency doesn’t really seem to be a real issue here – other than “President Trump is bad” and nothing else matters.

Did the FBI “Spy” On the Trump Campaign – And Was It Justified?

Before Attorney General William Barr releases the redacted report from Special Counsel William Mueller on Thursday, let me comment on the furor he caused last week when he told a Senate committee that he was going to have the Justice Department investigate whether the “spying” by the Justice Department on the Trump campaign during the 2016 campaign was, in his words, “adequately predicated.”  Attorney General Barr said, “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” and he said he wants to make sure there was a legitimate reason for it.

A number of Democrats went ballistic.  Even though Attorney General Barr merely said he was going to have the Justice Department investigate whether there was an adequate basis for the surveillance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “the chief law enforcement officer of our country is going off the rails.”  The head of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, said that Attorney General Barr’s comments struck “another destructive blow to our democratic institutions.”

Comments on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation

A few comments on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, not in any particular order.

1.  First, I have no idea when Mr. Mueller will be completing his investigation and/or issuing a report. While there have been reports in the press that it might be soon, nobody knows – or at least nobody who is talking about it in the media knows.

2.  While the original impetus for Mr. Mueller’s investigation was the alleged collusion between Russia, or Russians of one sort or another, and the Trump campaign,1 what has come out of the investigation so far does not have anything to do with that question. Obviously, nobody knows what might be coming or will be in the final report, but while we have seen some things involving Russia/Russians, we haven’t seen anything about collusion between Russia/Russians and the Trump campaign.

Where Does the Republican Party Go After Donald Trump?

While Donald Trump has only been president for a little over a year and a half (it seems longer, doesn't it?), with the 2020 election starting in January of next year (assuming it hasn't started already), it is perhaps not too early to start looking at the question in the title this post, since it could happen in a little more than two years.¹

In an editorial (“What has become of the Republican Party?”) and a long article (“How the elephant got its Trump”) back in April, The Economist touched on this question.  One of the most interesting points in the article was that Trump supporters came to the Republican Party before President Trump did.  Donald Trump didn’t create the populist wing (or whatever you want to call it) of the Republican Party.  He merely took advantage of it.

Any Publicity Is Good – As Long As They Spell Your Name Right

My father-in-law used to say that, for politicians, any publicity was good publicity – as long as they spelled your name right.  It didn’t matter what the article said about you.  If they spelled your name right, it was good publicity.

While my father-in-law passed away long before Donald Trump became political, I think he may have gotten President Trump – and the media – exactly right.  Since President Trump entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination three years ago, the media has been “All Trump, All the Time.”  The media loved then-candidate Trump – especially the TV and cable networks – during the Republican primaries.  While other candidates were pretty much ignored, Donald Trump was covered 24-7.  Because people would watch and ratings mean money.

The Media Is “Shocked, Shocked” That Companies Are Paying Consulting Fees to Michael Cohen, Et Al.

The media are aghast at the payments companies made to Michael Cohen for consulting services with respect to the Trump administration.¹  Apparently, even Robert Mueller is investigating some of the payments.²  Which raises the question: What kind of rock have these people been living under?

Of course, companies are going to pay big bucks to people who they think they might have connections with, or insight into, the powers-that-be in Washington.³  That’s the system.  That is part of the swamp that Donald Trump said he was going to drain.  I realize President Trump is not doing all that much to drain the swamp, but given all of the other things he has said that were not entirely accurate, why would anybody have believed him on this one?