Today is April Fools’ Day. It is one of those “holidays” that ranks with Halloween in its silliness in my opinion. The idea is to go around telling tall tales and just when you have someone believing it exclaim, “April fools”. Attorney General Bill Barr and President Trump are attempting to play such a game with the American public except they will never issue the “April fools” disclaimer. Trump is simply betting that enough Americans will fall for it and to date he is winning. Let’s explore.
Campaign season is upon us again (does it ever end?) and you will hear every national politician proclaim that the American people/voters are smart. Few if any believe that. Trump has repeatedly lied to and deceived the voters; that is the basis of his entire campaign and presidency. In 2016 he proved that a sufficient number of voters were gullible enough to win an Electoral College victory.
Late on Friday afternoon, March 22, 2019 Robert Mueller turned his report in to Barr. Sunday March 24th Barr issued his four page book report which Trump and his minions spun as a complete and total exoneration. From the tiny bit we know of Mueller’s report it is not! Apparently that doesn’t matter to a substantial portion of the American electorate because polling suggests the lie is working.
Last week I wrote an article in part reviewing the book Dopesick. The article was around one thousand words in length. While I don’t have an exact count the book is exponentially longer. It would be impossible for me to cover everything Beth Macy did in a brief article. Plus it was my article and therefore tainted by my interpretation of Ms. Macy’s work. If you really want to know about the book you have to read it, not just my article.
The public and most certainly the appropriate Congressional committees need to see the Mueller report. Barr is Trump’s handpicked Attorney General. Barr “auditioned” for the job by submitting an unsolicited 19 page paper outlining how the Mueller investigation never should have happened and therefore Trump was innocent. Trump fired an Attorney General who followed the law and professional principles by recusing himself from the investigation. He temporarily replaced him with someone incredibly unfit for the job which greased the skids for Barr’s narrow Senate confirmation. (In some ways what choice did the Senate have?) This is another example of Trump turning America into a banana republic.
In defiance of an April 2nd deadline, last week Barr’s office stated they would be releasing an ever increasingly more heavily redacted version of the report to Congress by mid-April. How many times have we heard from Trump or his minions that something would be forthcoming in two weeks or shortly only for it to never occur?
Some redaction may be necessary for a publically released version of the report. Congressional committees need a fully unredacted version if the truth is the goal. You may believe that Barr and Trump seek the truth; based on their track records I need that proven to me.
Under Democratic control the House is now actually doing its job of oversight. Elijah Cumming’s House Oversight Committee is about to issue subpoenas for Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (that is another set of scandals) to testify and answer questions.
Has Barr become Trump’s version of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (a/k/a Baghdad Bob)? Telling everyone that there was no problem and everything is normal when his country was under attack.
To continue with the book analogy, will Barr’s book report become the new forward for a redacted to the point of uselessness Mueller Report? The only thing I am certain of at this point is that Trump and company will keep the clock running as long as possible. A lie is somewhat like concrete in that the longer it is left undisturbed the more solid it gets. A lie Trump’s base believes for a period of time becomes almost impossible to disprove to them. History does repeat itself and this administration looks more like several European fascist regimes from the 1930’s daily.
I will conclude today’s article with a succinct message to Messers. Barr and Trump: my readers and I are not your April fools!
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How do you know that the intelligence of the majority of the country is at the 6th grade level? Trump is president.