Republican day of shame with Mueller
Robert Mueller has finally testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. We learned nothing new about his report, but we learned a lot about the Republican Party – and especially how low elected Republicans are willing to go in order to defend President Donald Trump.
There were no surprises from the former special counsel, but Republicans put on a real show – attacking Mueller while rehashing the fever-swamp theories they know will land them prized moments on Fox News.
Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas started by putting into the record a hit job he wrote on Mueller — Robert Mueller: Unmasked, then railed at Mueller about perpetuating “injustice.”
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio tried to get Mueller to explain why he didn’t indict Joseph Mifsud, the shadowy Maltese academic identified in Mueller’s report as “connected to Russia” and who told the hapless George Papadopoulos about the Russians having Hillary Clinton’s emails. “Is Mifsud Western intelligence or Russian intelligence?” Jordan asked – as though Mueller could, or should, answer a stupid and loaded question like that in public.
Trump, of course, is the president of the United States and could get this answer himself any time he wanted it. Jordan knows this. But Jordan wasn’t trying to get to the truth; he was trying to imply that Mueller was doing the bidding of dark forces aligned against the White House. Jordan then blasted Mueller for indicting “13 Russians no one’s ever heard of, no one’s ever seen” – as though spies from Russian military intelligence aren’t real unless they’re personally known to the U.S. congressman from Ohio-4.
Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas insisted that the entire question of exoneration was above Mueller’s pay grade: “Nowhere does it say that you were to conclusively determine Donald Trump’s innocence or ... determine whether or not to exonerate him.”
Trump picked up on this point in an angry, panicky meeting with reporters. After claiming Mueller had exonerated him, he irrationally pivoted to Ratcliffe’s claim that Mueller “didn’t have the right to exonerate” him in any case. Ratcliffe must have been pleased because, according to administration sources cited by CNN, he’s apparently under consideration for a position in the Trump administration.
And then there was Rep. Devin Nunes of California. Last fall I argued for voting against the GOP from top to bottom, in part to deprive Republicans such as Nunes of their leadership jobs. Then chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, he was acting as a Trump cat’s-paw.
Nunes, now ranking member of the intelligence panel, opened by regurgitating the full Deep State catechism. He welcomed the room to the “last gasp of the Russia collusion conspiracy theory” and gave his own cover versions of Trump’s greatest hits: Mifsud, Hillary Clinton, Bruce Ohr, Fusion GPS, Peter Strzok and “his lover.” Like Ratcliffe, Nunes may be up for an administration job and was speaking to an audience of one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Republicans once prided themselves on being the toughest opponents of America’s enemies. They are now reduced to inane babbling about conspiracy theories, excusing the Russians, whitewashing the hostile foreign intelligence service called Wikileaks, and attacking a man of indisputable honor and probity – a fellow Republican, no less – all in the name of covering Trump’s tracks.
Mueller’s appearance was a day of shame for the GOP, and a preview of the tactics we can expect from the former party of national security should its leader ever be called to account before the American people.
Tom Nichols is a national security professor at the Naval War College, a member of USA TODAY’S Board of Contributors and author of “The Death of Expertise.” The views expressed here are solely his own.