I missed this gem from old-line conservative and Never-Trumper Jennifer Rubin in WaPo concerning the Mueller testimony:
I worry that we — the media, voters, Congress — are dangerously unserious when it comes to preservation of our democracy. To spend hours of airtime and write hundreds of print and online reports pontificating about the “optics” of Mueller’s performance — when he confirmed that President Trump accepted help from a hostile foreign power and lied about it, that he lied when he claimed exoneration, that he was not completely truthful in written answers, that he could be prosecuted after leaving office and that he misled Americans by calling the investigation a hoax — tells me that we have become untrustworthy guardians of democracy. …
Trump reads from the same hymnal of disinformation and recites the same slander of democratic institutions that 20th-century totalitarians deployed, yet too many in the media call him the “winner” because Mueller did not pass their ridiculous tests (e.g. add new information, persuade Republicans).
It’s a beautiful opinion that cuts right through the fluff and gets to the heart of the matter.
Unfortunately, for all that I admire her pithy, stop-the-nonsense piece, I fear too many people have given up on rational thinking, and instead look to presentation to tell them what to think – and Mueller’s presentation was not as compelling as it might have been. Whether he was being lawyerly, overwhelmed with information, or even ill, as he struck me, he didn’t give a compelling story about the morally depraved man whose desperate pursuit of money endangers this country. Perhaps he didn’t have that story to give, perhaps the Republican interlocutors were too good at breaking up the story, or maybe he’s not up to a performance like that.
But a lot of people are going to read the performance, not the facts, and proceed from there.
