Month: April 2019

In 2017, a group of feminists in Brooklyn formed Persisticon, a female-led activist group dedicated to getting Democratic women elected to public office.

With several members with backgrounds in comedy and music, Persisticon’s main efforts have centered on stand-up comedy events—featuring mostly women performers—to benefit EMILY’s List. Persisticon’s next event is Sunday May 5 in Brooklyn. (Full details at bottom.)

I sat down with some of Persisticon’s founders—Diana Kane, Theo Kogan, Leslie King, and Christina Clare—to talk about the group, its activities, and the current state of play in the USA. (Another founder, Lynn Harris, weighed in via email from overseas.)

ORIGIN STORY

THE KING’S NECKTIE: For folks who don’t know, how did Persisticon get started? What was the origin?

DIANA: Our origin story? (laughter) The idea behind Persisticon is to take the things that we‘re passionate about, that we love, and employ them to further equality in elected office. That’s the ultimate mission, and the idea is to do it through promoting female performers and bringing our community together.

THEO: When 45 won—I can’t say his name—I just felt so incredibly hopeless. And I thought, “OK, this is the time. I’m so upset and angry, I have to do something aside from signing every petition online.” So Diana and I were talking about it, and she said, “You have to meet my friend Lynn,” and I said, “You have to meet my friend Leslie,” (laughter) and it just snowballed from there.

LESLIE: And then Christina came along and helped us organize everything, to project manage, and make it all happen.

DIANA: Theo and I kept talking about wanting to do something that we could actually do, because we are not lawyers, and we cannot run down to the airport and save somebody’s life with our laptops. But what we’re good at is throwing parties, and creating a community, and having fun. It seemed to us that if there were more people in policy-making places who genuinely represented us and all the things that matter the most to us—like clean air, and water, and education, and racial justice—that’s where we could put our energy to have the greatest effect. Civic engagement doesn’t always have to look like marching in the streets.

TKN: And what are your events like?

CHRISTINA: In the past we’ve had comedians and musicians like Bridget Everett, Janeane Garofalo, Murray Hill, Aparna Nancherla, Michelle Buteau, Abbi Crutchfield, Jon Glaser, Tiger Bay & Fancy Feast, Jo Firestone, Negin Farsad, Kendra Cunningham, DJ Tikka Masala, DJ Swoon, Ashley Nicole Black, Tammy Faye Starlight, and of course Theo, who’s the lead singer of the Lunachicks and Theo & the Skyscrapers. And we also have people outside the entertainment industry, like Emily’s List CEO Emily Cain, Evelyn McDonnell, editor of the new book Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyonce. Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl, and contributors Caryn Rose, and Jana Martin….

THEO: It’s a whole event. You come into the venue and there are vendors selling things, and photographers, and drinks with funny names, and you can drunk shop, which is always fun. And then the show itself is comedian after comedian after comedian, and maybe there’s a singer, maybe there’s an activist or writer who speaks…..it’s a huge array of different types of humans—mostly women—from all different backgrounds and skintones and points of view. And it’s really fun—I always leave crying and laughing. And we raise all this money to get women elected, and raise awareness, and bring people together in the community. Just getting people feeling hopeful is a huge part of it.

LESLIE: it’s a way of activating the community, and making people feel less alone, and finding ways for them to find a voice. People leave and they start doing things themselves, which is ultimately what we want to happen. So people feel they have a voice and can use their talents, whatever they are, to make a change.

DIANA: And the thing about Persisticon promoting female performers is that, in so many shows I’ve gone to in my life, the lineup has been 80-90% male. And I never really questioned it. And it just struck me at some point that this was so imbalanced, and there are so many spectacular performers out there who need a stage, and if you bring them together you get out of the area of being token. There’s a whole panoply of spectacular women performers, and we get to experience them.

CHRISTINA: We do have men on the lineup too. David Cross will be doing our next show….

TKN: Yeah, men can do comedy too, I heard….

CHRISTINA: (laughs) Yeah, men can do comedy….

DIANA: But are they funny? 

(laughter)

TKN: So what’s the next event?

DIANA: The next event is Persisticon III: There Is No Planet B, which has an environmental focus. Because we’re in between elections at the moment, we thought we’d concentrate on issues that need to be on the forefront of people’s minds going into that next election cycle. The world is burning down, and it’s just so clear—and it has been for some time—that whoever we’re voting for needs to be paying careful attention to that. And because it’s springtime, it seems like a good time to bring everybody’s awareness to that. That’s on May 5^th at the Bell House in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn.

TKN: And where does the money go?

DIANA: For these larger events, EMILY’s List is the organization that most strongly aligns with our values, which is to get pro-choice Democratic women into office. For some smaller events we’ve given to some smaller, more local organizations, but EMILY’s List has the structure to train candidates and support them throughout the entirety of the campaign process.

CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE

TKN: I’m loath to give “45” credit for anything—I don’t even want to give him the number 45—but the one thing I might backhandedly give him credit for is inspiring this kind of activism, as its target of course.

THEO: That was the thing I thought when “It” got elected: that it was gonna invigorate some art and people were gonna fight. I feel like we’ve been pummeled with shit by him and this whole situation, and I was just feeling like: (groans). Just rundown. And things like Persisticon just help me to believe, “Yeah—we’re gonna keep fighting.”

LYNN: But I will say this about this presidency—quoting one of my early mentors, Patricia Ireland: WE COULD HAVE DONE WITHOUT IT. Given that it happened, yes, thank GOD it sparked activism, not just complacency and doom. But I don’t think it’s a silver lining. I think it’s an imperative. And I do think we would have had record numbers of female candidates and a rise in activism and determination even without it. We just would have had a different fuel: not rage, but hope. Imagine where we’d be right now if we’d been spending this time building our democracy, not trying to save it from the fire!

TKN: Yeah, I do feel like there is some hopefulness in the country, despite it all, precisely because of this kind of activism. Is that a sense you get?

DIANA: I was telling somebody in Congressman Nadler’s office about Persisticon, and she was lovely, and the thing she said that most inspired me was that she’d heard of other things like Persisticon…..not precisely like us, but little pockets and bubbles all over the country. And that gave me hope. There are organizations that have sprung up like Indivisible, or Solidarity Sundays, or #GetOrganizedBK, that have really picked up the mantle. Everybody’s doing the thing that works for them—some people show up at Chuck Schumer’s office every single week. So I do think there is hope.

But it’s exhausting. We’re two years into this, and people are getting tired. So I also think that things like Persisticon are rejuvenating, because you come back together and remember that you’re not alone and there is still hope and things we can do.

I look at things like the fight for civil rights. We’re not getting beaten by policemen. We’re still in easy activism, in large part. There’s a long way to go. Our bodies aren’t on the line in the same way that the bodies of people in some communities are. I look at the beatings that John Lewis took and I think, “OK, this is exhausting and hard, but it’s not that.” There’s a long way to go.

TKN: I always think of that quote from Rev. William Barber II where he says, this is bad but this is not the worst thing we’ve ever faced. Not to minimize it, but just saying that if people made it through slavery, and the Depression, Jim Crow, we can make it through this and in fact use it to for positive change.

LESLIE: I think we’re in a very privileged position. We’re not living under that same sort of attack and oppression. So we have the duty to use our privilege to take action and try to activate change.

DIANA: One of the places where we do have power is that we are regular people in our community. There’s nothing special about us, there’s no massive history of activism or study in that area. So if we can do it, anybody can do it. It’s just taking the things that you’re passionate about and putting them to service. 

MISOGYNY (est. 50,000 B.C.E.)

TKN: I don’t wanna go back and relive 2016, but it seemed to me that misogyny was— if not the driving factor—certainly one of the driving factors in what happened. And I don’t feel like that’s changed.

DIANA: No. It’s funny, I work for myself. I own a boutique, and most of my customers are women, and even with all that exposure I feel like I was blind to a lot of it for a long, long time. It was really in the run-up to the 2016 election, like a solid year before, that I started to understand how deeply, deeply rooted misogyny is in this country, and in the world. It’s just shocking. It’s been a shock and an eye-opening experience, and it just continues to be revelatory. I lived in a privileged little bubble, and I didn’t realize how hateful the world has always been towards women, and continues to be.

LESLIE: Don’t you feel like Persisticon was born out that? After the election, all my women friends and I kind of held on to each other and kept talking about ways to support each other, and this felt like a way to do it on a much bigger scale. Bringing women together in a public space—performers, designers, activists—all in one room, celebrating women. And inviting men into that room as well, but women were the first ones to show up, which was powerful and exciting.

CHRISTINA: One of the amazing things about Persisticon is that, since 45 has been in office, I’ve wanted to be involved more politically, but I can’t stand hearing his voice, I can’t stand seeing him. The fact that we’re able to bring together these comedians who can talk about the issues and not talk specifically about him—that’s a beautiful space to be a part of. The idea that we can be politically active, but not talk about the people like him that are so enraging. I love the fact that Persisticon is not about 45, it’s about change. And I love being part of that.

DIANA: He’s the ultimate example of the misogyny that’s in this country, and beyond, for so long, that for me he’s sort of beside the point in a lot of ways. He just exemplifies the worst of it, but it’s so much bigger than him.

TKN: Right—he’s the symptom, not the cause. That was made clear recently with his hostility toward AOC, and the hostility of the whole right wing toward her, and other female politicians. I mean, where does that come from? Can you guys explain that to me?

DIANA: I wish. He hates women. They hate women. They hate anyone who’s different from them, and challenges them, or challenges the power structure, and they capitalize on it. I really think it’s that simple.

LESLIE: Just look at who he gathers together in a room when he makes any sort of “decision”: it’s all old white men. Consistently. If there is a woman, she’s in the background, or by the door, or getting coffee, or used as a token.

DIANA: I place my own awakening around those crazy incel guys, that shooting in Santa Barbara. People who just openly hate women, and come out with guns blazing. I just wasn’t prepared for that. I wasn’t ready for that in my bones, until some of those hashtags showed up. The #yesallwomen hasthag was incredibly powerful for me. Because a lot of women thought they were alone, and because that kind of behavior has been normalized in such a mass way, all these experiences that all these women have had forever were treated like, “Well, that’s just the way it is.”

I think #metoo, all of that, is deeply important. We set what’s normal. Our culture sets that. And if we don’t want that to be normal anymore, we need to lay that down. And I think that’s part of what this is too, and it speaks to the growing awareness of what 45 represents.

2020 VISION

TKN: Which raises the question of 2020. When I look at the presidential field, there are numerous strong female candidates. Do you think the Democratic Party is definitely going to—or needs to—nominate a woman?

THEO: No idea. I hope so.

LESLIE: I dunno. It’s so early….

DIANA: It’s too soon.

THEO: I’m hoping some of the “repeat” people will back down….not mentioning any names.

LESLIE: I think it’s definitely a time when we can have new voices, and I don’t know exactly who that is, but I think people are ready for a fresh voice.

LYNN: Personally, I think the number of white men who should be running for president this time around is zero. Especially the young ones. I like those fellas well enough, but it is NOT YOUR TURN, BRUH. Sit down for a minute and throw your resources behind a woman. Jeez.

LESLIE: There are certain people who are running that I would definitely rather not vote for, but whoever is our candidate is going to be better than what we have right now.

DIANA: Yeah, our strategy is to continue supporting all the women candidates that we possibly can. I think that was the turning point for me, really. When I realized that Congress was made up of 80% men, I was like, “Whaaaat???? How can that be? How can that be? What’s going on that we’re stifling those voices?”

But the 116th Congress is a spectacular thing—it really is. It’s remarkable and exciting and we feel like we helped contribute to that, and even if some of that contribuiton is just a backlash against what’s-his-face, we’ll just keep on going. Because there’s still so far to go. That’s part of why it’s called “Persisticon.” And in some way that’s super exciting. There’s so much room for improvement that anything you do is welcome. You don’t even have to try that hard—just showing up helps! Just the awareness of the problem is a huge step.

LESLIE: It has a ripple effect. People come to the shows, and then they talk to their friends, and that grows the conversation, and that’s ultimately what we want.

TKN: It does feel like it’s way bigger than just one horrible guy or one issue; it’s this consciousness that’s been raised.

THEO: It’s just so crazy, the dichotomy. All this is happening, this awakening, all these people are being called out in #MeToo, and then we have this horrible aggressor that’s still there. I dealt with so much, being in the music business, and the amount of sexism—all kinds of stories from that time. The music business allows a certain type of woman to succeed, and not the others ones that are maybe stronger and more “threatening,” and scary to them. We saw that a million times in the Lunachicks. We were like, “But we’re funny! And we’re good musicians!” And we went very far, but it was always there. And it’s still there. A lot of things have changed and there’s been progress, but it’s still there. Even just our right to choose…..a fetus is a person that can file a lawsuit? It’s insane. It’s completely horrifying, and unbelievable to me.

LESLIE: Yet not surprising at the same time.

PAGING AL GREEN

TKN: It seems clear that this movement—Third Wave Feminism or whatever you want to call it, I don’t want to put a label on it—is threatening to the patriarchy. That’s why they’re lashing out. But how do you keep the movement together? How do you keep it from fracturing?

DIANA: I think that’s kind of the wrong question. Because it’s not really about that. Every single person is living in their own body and has their own experiences that they’re drawing on to make their own choices, and that’s a powerful thing. But it also means we’re not seeing everything through the same lens all the time. And I think the attention spent on how much division is in the women’s movement feels like a distraction, and we should all be vigilant and keep our eyes on the prize.

Look: we’re a diverse group of people with lots of different priorities, but for the most part, we’re all headed in the same direction together. So that kind of thinking is just a red herring, a way to get us off our game.

It’s like looking at the Democratic presidential field, where some people want to tear each other apart. But there’s over 90% agreement among every candidate on all the issues, so any one of those Democrats is going to be a good answer. Any one of them. So that divisiveness feels like it’s been inseminated—and I use that word on purpose. It’s intentional, to get us fighting with each other. And it works.

TKN: Right. I’m thinking specifically of the Women’s March. The first one was so inspiring: Ferne and I were out of town in a hotel, and I have a picture of our daughter watching it live on a laptop, and she was mesmerized. She was six.

But of course—and I don’t think it was a coincidence—there was controversy around the second march, which I’m sure was spurred by people who were looking to split the resistance. So how do you stop that?

DIANA: It was a moment—a spectacular moment. But I think marching in general is not always the answer. The answer is finding ways to go forward and keep progressing.

LESLIE: I think things change even in activism. We’re not going to have a women’s march like we did the first time. Things evolve and change. People want to recreate that moment again, but it’s not possible. It has to change. We can’t hold on to the past. It has to keep moving forward.

We’re about results-driven activism rather than ego-driven activism. That’s where people get really hung up. It becomes more about being right than about the endgame. And people on the other side know that and they feed it, and that’s where things get stunted.

CHRISTINA: There are no easy answers to a lot of these issues, and we’re still struggling to figure out the best way to consolidate our fight, and seeing that we have to find ways to bring groups together. And that’s going to be a constant issue that we’re fighting against, to make sure we have a united front. And it’s exciting to be a part of that.

LYNN: No matter what, we ALL need to stay at the table. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.  

TKN: Well, it does feel like people are aware of that—of the deliberate attempt to split us, and the need for us to stay together and focused. Because there are always opponents who are going to want to attack the movement and break it apart, and those differences are pressure points they go for: racial differences, economic differences, political differences. But to take an almost absurdly extreme example, the only way we could beat Hitler was by making a deal with Stalin. So we can work with people who have different points of view, to say the least.

DIANA: In order to get where we want to go, we need all voices. So there’s no reason to stifle anyone, even if you don’t agree with them 100%. The truth is, like I was saying, you’re gonna agree with them like 90%! (laughter) So I do think that as much as possible you need to keep including all voices, even if they contradict yours.

LESLIE: And those conversations are also very important, because you’re gonna wrestle with different ideas and you may learn something. We all do, in some way. But if you squash anybody who doesn’t agree with you on every single point, then we’re done.

Many women and oppressed communities are finding that we are more alike than we are different. So with the women’s march, we’re realizing that we need all voices to make change. It’s not just about women, or the black community, or immigrants: we’re all connected.

DIANA: One of the things that I most admired about the organizers of the Women’s March—particularly early on, and I don’t know where they’re at now—was their willingness to listen and adjust and make the changes that are called for. In the beginning it was like, “Wow, you’re too white, you need to listen to other voices.” And they did. And I really admired that. The evolution of that organization—at least initially—was pretty fantastic.

LESLIE: It’s something all women are unlearning that was reinforced in us, deliberately. People keep pushing that narrative that women are bitchy and are gonna fight. So there are a lot of things that women are breaking free of. We can do things together, we can work together in so many ways: in our activism, in our personal lives, in our professional lives. There’s more than just one spot for one woman; there are many spots for many women.

DIANA: For me it comes down to women’s bodily autonomy. Period. If you don’t have control over your reproductive rights—and I hate that it has to be framed by abortion, because it’s that, but it’s also bigger than that—but If you don’t have control over your choice, your destiny, and your body, then we’re sunk. Everything else is adjacent to being able to choose whether or not to have a child. And to have some man dictating whether or not you can do that is absolutely not OK. That affects every single woman, no matter what color or where you are in your life. And that’s where women come together: protecting your rights to your body.

TKN: And that issue is in the hands of five Catholic men. Which is grim….but they’re up against this groundswell that Persisticon and other groups like it represent.

DIANA: The way our country is set up, childbearing and childrearing falls mostly on women, still. There are pockets, and in this room right now we are all lucky to have partners who are fantastic, but in general, women’s economic health takes such a huge hit—a massive hit—and it all comes down to how we equalize opportunity for women. And a lot of that is in bodily autonomy.

LESLIE: It is grim. And if you are a person of color, your body is thought of as “different,” as far as women’s health, mortality rates, and so forth. It’s a real crisis, to even recognize a person of color as a full human being.

MANSPLAINING FOR BEGINNERS

TKN: I want to thank you all again for speaking with me. Is there anything we haven’t covered that you want to add?

THEO: Can I flip the script and just ask, why do you think men hate women so much?

TKN: I wish I knew. But I don’t. I feel like you all felt: I was shocked by how much hatred came out in 2016. I feel stupid in a way. Here I am, over fifty years old, and suddenly I was like, “Wow—there’s a lot of misogyny in the world.”

People really hate women. Even women hate women! There are plenty of conservative women out there who are as misogynistic as any man. And I always say “misogyny” not sexism because it went so far beyond what I think of as garden variety chauvinism or sexism. It was hatred. And I’ve had this argument with a bazillion conservatives: the hatred toward Hillary was so out of proportion to anything she did. It was irrational in its extremity, and it stands for the hatred toward all women.

And it’s changed a little bit, but it hasn’t really changed. There’s a pushback now, and that’s the best thing that’s come out of this, as we were saying before. But the hatred hasn’t changed or gone away, and I don’t know how to make it go away, because I don’t know where it comes from in the first place.

So I don’t begin to know how to answer that question.  

LESLIE: One of the big changes is that now there are men asking “Why?” That’s a big first step. “Why is this happening and how am I contributing to it?” And they’re questioning the sort of community they live in, and the system they live in, and I think that is a huge step, that men are becoming part of the conversation and it’s not just women screaming from the sidelines.

The 45s of the world have this attitude toward women like, “Oh, they don’t know their place.” But I feel like men are recognizing that women don’t have to remember their “place” and stay in it.

DIANA: That whole glass ceiling thing is so apt. Even the guys on your side are only good up to a point. When you want true equality, when you actually want to run the company, they’re not so excited about that. And that’s been eye-opening too. I’m always like, “Wait—I thought you were one of the good ones! I thought we were in this together.” It’s startling.

(laughter)

TKN: It’s so ingrained. I’m conditioned, you’re conditioned, we’re all conditioned, and that doesn’t change overnight. Even if intellectually I understand it, sometimes I catch myself in a retrograde way of thinking. And sometimes I don’t catch myself. And it seems to me—you’d have to ask a sociologist, but it seems to me—that that takes a long time to change. A couple of generations at least. So let’s start.

LESLIE: If more people are asking why, and catching themselves in moments, that’s everyone. Really questioning the norms and asking, “How am I part of the problem?” That’s a huge step toward change. And that’s a big part of the battle, just having some self-awareness.

THEO: And can I say, for the next election, if the person you like isn’t the Democratic candidate, can you please just vote for whoever is running against 45, even if you don’t really like them? How about that?

****************

Poster by Johanna Goodman

https://www.persisticon.com/

PERSISTICON III

Sunday May 5, 2019

The Bell House

149 7th St, Brooklyn NY 11215

(between 2^nd and 3^rd Avenues in Gowanus)

Where COMEDY, ART and electing FEMINISTS collide. Laugh, listen and party and help raise cash for EMILY’s List: committed to electing progressive pro-choice women and equalizing the representation of all genders in government.

Click link below for tickets:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/persisticon-iii-there-is-no-planet-b-tickets-59198566506

Bar Opens 5:30pm, Doors 6:30pm, Show 7:00pm (over 21 only)

With emcee Ophira Eisenberg of NPR’s “Ask Me Another”

Featuring (list subject to change): Alex Borstein, Michelle Buteau, Bunny Buxom, Carolyn Castligia, Kerry Coddett, David Cross, Ana Fabrega, Aparna Nancherla, Model Majority, Amber Tamblyn, and special guest rabblerouser Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director of Uprose, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, dedicated to environmental and social justice.

*********

TEAM PERSISTICON

DIANA KANE ENGLISH is a retailer, designer, and activist. She is the owner of Diana Kane, a Brooklyn boutique highlighting the work of emerging and established independent, sustainable designers. She’s the creator of the viral FeministGold t-shirt and a passionate feminist, jewelry designer, and community organizer.

CHRISTINA CLARE is a comedy and social justice activist and founder of TheMicHub, an online comedy concierge and aggregator promoting inclusivity through a diverse comedy database. She has worked as a project manager in the translations industry for years and is passionate about music, comedy and all the restorative mediums that entertain, teach, and heal “by accident.”

MARTHA CORCORAN is the curator of The Art of Resistance, a feed that celebrates social justice art and creative resistance. She is a photo editor and researcher for book publishing, digital media, and documentary film, and has worked on projects for Hearst, Abrams, PBS, Barnes & Noble, Nat Geo, and Time Inc.

LYNN HARRIS is founder of GOLD Comedy, which aims to give girls/women/”others” the comedy skills to take over the world. She is an award-winning journalist, retired comedian, and former Tonya Harding lookalike (long story).

LESLIE KING is a Brooklyn-based designer and owner of the sustainable handbag company LK. She is also actively working with local and citywide groups committed to addressing and dismantling segregation in New York City public schools.

THEO KOGAN is best known as the singer of Lunachicks. She was a model, actress, and honorary drag queen, a DJ, party promoter and creator/CEO of Armour Beauty lip gloss. Theo grew up in Brooklyn and is currently a pro makeup artist and mom.

SASADI ODUNSI got her roots in protesting at a young age, speaking out to protect the land and mountains where she grew up in Colorado. Since then, she’s been an active supporter of many causes. She is a mother of four who has worn many hats, but mostly chases after kids and beads earrings these days when she’s not posting stories for Persisticon.

FERNE PEARLSTEIN is a prize-winning director/cinematographer who is one of a handful of women featured in Kodak’s “On Film” ad campaign. Her latest film, THE LAST LAUGH, about taboos in humor, features Sarah Silverman, Mel Brooks, and many others, and continues to screen around the world since its premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

ANDREW E. WAGNER is an Emmy Award-winning producer with over 25 years of experience developing and managing creative projects of every size and shape imaginable. He has a soft spot for people who want to make the world a better place.

*********

Previous King’s Necktie essays on feminism, sexism, and misogyny:

Bette and Joan and Mary and Offred (and Hillary) – May 23, 2017

Feminism in the Age of Monsters: A Conversation with Alix Kates Shulman (Part 1) – February 8, 2018

A Spark Is Lit: A Conversation with Alix Kates Shulman (Part 2) – February 15, 2018

“Blessed Be the Fruit”—Patriarchy, Tyranny, and the Supreme Court – August 13, 2018

Oh, How Our Standards Have Fallen – February 11, 2019

 

Read anything good lately?

The events of March 24—that is, the release of Bill Barr’s four-page Cliff Notes version of the Special Counsel’s report—seemed to reset the entire calculus of politics in these United States. But a series of events since then began to call into question the credibility of Barr’s conclusions, giving rise to a growing sensation that a mass gaslighting was underway.

With the publication of the redacted version of the actual report, we now have confirmation of what many began to suspect: that Barr’s topline summary/non-summary (depending on how he felt like characterizing it on any given day), and the subsequent high-fiving by Trump, the GOP, and the rest of MAGA Nation, were not just premature, but the deliberate deployment of the reddest of red herrings. Bright fucking fire engine red.

It is now clear that, in an appalling display of dishonesty and deception, Trump, Barr & Co. consciously waged a disinformation campaign to try to convince the American people that the SCO’s report says things that it pointedly does not. (Whoda thunk?) And for a while they succeeded. The apotheosis of that campaign came today with Barr’s disgraceful press conference ahead of the overdue release of the public version of the report.

But now the emperor’s nudity is on display for all to see. (Yuck.)

As many predicted, the actual Mueller report—even the redacted version—contains a Mount Everest of damaging information about Donald Trump, information that by almost any measure rises to the level to high crimes and misdemeanors, even if it does not consist of prosecutable crimes under the narrow interpretation of the law and DOJ policy against indicting a sitting president. Because “The president didn’t commit a crime!” is all we ask of our head of state, right?

And God knows what’s in the unredacted version. Ironically, the expected outcry demanding it may not emerge, simply because what we’ve already been told is so sufficiently mind-blowing.

A lot of us worried that the details would be too nuanced to overcome the right wing’s false but meme-ready mantra of “No collusion, no obstruction!” And those details are indeed voluminous and complex. But happily, the sheer breadth and weight of the information is scale-tipping for any reasonable person. (Which admittedly, lets out everyone in the Republican Party.)

And so the political calculus has been rocked and reset again.

Welcome to the wilderness of mirrors that is Trumpian America.

THE PERSECUTION AND (CHARACTER) ASSASSINATION OF ROBERT S. MUELLER III AS PERFORMED BY THE IRONICALLY NAMED DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE UNDER THE DIRECTION OF WILLIAM BARR

Let us now briefly turn to Bill Barr.

As I wrote two weeks ago—among a chorus of others—Barr has proven to be the kind of Roy Cohn figure that Trump always wanted as his AG, and his shameful performance on television today was the final nail in the coffin of his reputation. It might as well have been an episode of “Hannity”; even Chris Wallace of Fox noted that he was behaving more like Trump’s defense lawyer than like the Attorney General of the United States. (Which many thought the media-obsessed Trump would take as a “bad review,” though I wonder if perhaps he was actually delighted by that.)

Many have pondered aloud why a man like Barr, who had already been Attorney General under Bush 41, and whose career and reputation were secure (cough cough—more on that in a bit), would want the job in the first place. Whatever the reason, it was assumed by almost everyone, even critics of Trump, that he would act honorably in the role. The presumption was that a man of such integrity and principle—an “institutionalist” as many former colleagues on both the right and left attested—would serve as a brake on his boss’s criminal-cum-autocratic instincts.

Yet since the moment he was confirmed, Bill Barr has done nothing of the sort. Very much the contrary. Instead, in two short months, he has volunteered over and over to be Trump’s human shield, and his sword as well.

So at the risk of wading into both vulgarity and misogyny, why did Bill Barr agree to be Trump’s bitch?

There was some speculation that, at 68, and having been out of public life for many years, Barr simply failed to appreciate how fast the news cycle moves these days, and the impact of the myriad new avenues of reporting in the Internet Age, such that you can’t get away with the bullshit you did in 1992.

But that’s not a reason why he would take the job: only an explanation of why he mistakenly thought he could behave so abominably in it.

The other explanation is that Barr is a Trump true believer after all, presumably drunk on Fox News, who wanted to lend his—ahem—credibility to defending the administration in its hour of need. His behavior certainly suggests that (and Nicole Wallace today reported that a reliable source close to Barr had confessed to her exactly that.)

In truth, that should have been apparent from the git-go, based on his unsolicited 19 page memo attacking the very existence of the Mueller probe, and arguing that a president literally cannot obstruct justice, by which he auditioned for the AG job, and his well-known belief in the unitary executive theory.

For that matter, as I also wrote two weeks ago, what reason was there ever to believe that Barr was a man of integrity? In reality, his history as a bag man was clear after his run in the first Bush administration, including enabling the Christmas Eve ’92 pardon of six high-ranking underlings implicated in the Iran/contra scandal, among them SecDef Caspar Weinberger. That was an abuse of power so blatant and egregious that the special prosecutor in that case, Lawrence Walsh, publicly assailed it as a coverup. Even the conservative pundit and former Nixon speechwriter William Safire dubbed Barr the Coverup-General.

That history is precisely why he got the job a second time. Barr is the go-to AG for a Republican POTUS who needs covering fire from a reasonable-seeming faux “statesman” who in truth doesn’t mind behaving like a mob consigliere. Which is exactly what Trump desperately, openly wanted.

So it was instructive this week to watch smart, admirable people like former US Attorneys Joyce Vance and Chuck Rosenberg, who, despite being Trump critics, were among those who nonetheless praised Barr at the time of his appointment, now shaking their heads and admitting that he is just a right wing hack after all. Even at the time of his appointment I didn’t buy it, simply because there was no reason to believe that Trump would EVER hire anyone of integrity. And it turns out he didn’t. (His streak is intact!)

Turns out, Barr is just Giuliani disguised as your grandpa.

(See also Barr’s recent ruling that asylum seekers must be held in custody while awaiting their hearings—a ruling designed to give Stephen Miller an orgasm—and his outrageous and deliberate use of the term “spying” to refer to judicially authorized surveillance by law enforcement, a comment designed to feed the tinfoil hat fantasies of neo-John Birchers.)

Barr stands as the missing link between Trump’s mouthbreathing GOP and the old school Bush family GOP, which has undeservedly benefited by comparison with the horrors of Team 45. But the fact is, the former grew out of the toxic seeds sowed by the latter, and the two are more alike than many “mainstream” conservatives care to admit. And Bill Barr, who served as Attorney General in both incarnations of Republican monstrosity, represents the undeniable connection between the two.

Now Bill Barr has permanently trashed his reputation and his legacy, destroying whatever illusory goodwill he once had. In that there is some poetic justice, as he never really deserved that reputation in the first place. He will go down in history as a shameless, unprincipled shill for Donald Trump, and rightly so. And as icing on the shitcake, his heretofore largely forgotten subservience to George H. W. Bush has now been resurrected and appended as an ugly prelude.

A FUNERAL FOR BILL BARR’S REPUTATION

So how exactly did Barr disgrace himself in the course of this particular goatfuck? Let me count the ways.

There was the aforementioned smoke-and-mirrors statement of March 24, when he not only deceptively spun Mueller’s conclusions on collusion, but also usurped the authority to decide the issue of obstruction (which Mueller pointedly had chosen to cede to Congress), and in so doing handed Trump an invaluable political weapon, not to mention freeing him from legal jeopardy. How far over the line were his actions? So far that members of Mueller’s famously tight-lipped team broke their silence or the first time, sending word via emissaries of their irritation at how their work was being mischaracterized for partisan purposes.

Then came the three week period of redaction which conveniently allowed Trump to go around using his bully pulpit (and I do mean bully) to pound his lie of “complete and total exoneration!” into America’s head. Then, in an unconscionable breach of legal protocol, he shared the contents of the SCO report with the White House ahead of time, allowing it to get a headstart on its counterattack. And finally, there was today’s press conference in which he spun the report like a dervish, all before delivering it to Congress—inexplicably—in a CD boxed set from Columbia House, yours for only $6.99 a month (allow six weeks for shipping).

In that presser, Barr used the legally meaningless words “no collusion” numerous times, sounding almost like his boss, and then launched into an absurd defense of Trump’s behavior, arguing that he didn’t obstruct justice, that he was just angry that he was being investigated at all, that his feelings were hurt, and that he was frustrated that the investigation was making it hard for him to do things like cage infants and praise neo-Nazis. (In real time, Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), tweeted in response, “No one is above the rule of law…unless you’re frustrated that is.”)

As my friend Tina said, Barr sounded like should have been wearing a MAGA hat. Frankly, a lot of the language read like it had been dictated by Trump himself, much like Donny Jr’s letter about his meeting with the Russians at Trump Tower.

Barr’s characterization of the Mueller investigation as “binary”—that is, either bringing indictments or not in each given matter—was also predictably dishonest and ignored the investigation’s counterintelligence aspect, not to mention the fact that Congress and the American people deserve to know much more than just whether or not their president is a felon.

Ironically, one of the few honest things he said bluntly contradicted Trump. On the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 election Barr supported the unanimous conclusion of the US Intelligence Community that Moscow did in fact mount such an attack, rejecting Trump’s own disgusting refusal to acknowledge as much, let alone take any steps to stop Russian interference going forward. But just as telling, Barr pointedly refused to say anything about Trump’s silence and inaction on that count.

Once the (redacted) report finally was published, even more of Barr’s lies became clear.

He blatantly lied about Mueller’s consideration of the DOJ policy on indicting a sitting president in coming to his conclusion on obstruction (Mueller plainly states that he did consider that factor), and on leaving that decision to the AG (he did not: he left it to Congress).

Barr’s claims about how cooperative Trump had been with the special counsel were already laughable, of course, which was apparent to anyone who had watched our toddler-in-chief throw his tantrums over the past 23 months, and were further contradicted by the report itself, which detailed the number of people he had pressured to lie to investigators, derail the probe, or to stop it completely. Another zinger was the report’s observation that Trump actively tried to obstruct but was stymied because his deputies (notably, Don McGahn) refused to carry out his orders, like his directive to fire Mueller himself.

Barr claimed that the report says no Americans conspired with Russian assets, which is definitively at odds with what we know about the actions of Manafort, Stone, Prince, Gates, Page, Papadopolous, and others. In truth, the SCO report goes into stunning detail in painting a portrait of the Russian attack on our electoral system and the Trump team’s connections to it, witting and otherwise, and eagerness to benefit from same. (Meanwhile Mueller basically said DJTJ and Jared were too stupid to know they were colluding.)

Most notably, in order to try to make Trump look innocent on that count, Barr had famously cherrypicked a half-quote, out of context, to use as his lede in this four-page distraction of March 24th:

“….the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Now we could see what he left out, which was the crucial subordinate clause, which as George Conway predicted, begins with the word “Although”:

“Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected that it would benefit electorally from the information stolen and released through Russian efforts….”

In other words, Team Trump was happy to have the help of the Russians and did not lift a finger to stop it, including refusing to notify the FBI, CIA, or other authorities of the help that was offered. Everybody OK with that?

Among the most damning parts of the report are Trump’s own words, foremost among them these from p290, which are likely to go on his tombstone:

According to notes written by (DOJ chief of staff Jody) Hunt, when Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, ”’Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”

Ironically, it will likely not be the end, as he has miraculously survived—cockroach like—all manner of previous scandals that would have doomed any other president of either party. But the quote from Trump’s own mealy mouth tells us that even he knows that by all rights this should be the end.

In sum, we can now see for ourselves that Barr’s misrepresentation of Mueller’s findings rises way beyond mere spin and into the category of overt deception, abetted by abuse of his power in withholding the actual report for three weeks in an effort to let his preferred narrative set in stone. But should we be surprised that such deceit is the strategy of the Trump administration, or that Bill Barr eagerly carried it out?

So please stop telling me what a reputable jurist William Barr is.

CONFIRMATION NATION

Which bring us to the question: will any of this matter? In the twenty-five days since Barr issued his initial summary/non-summary of the Mueller report, polls have shown remarkably little change in how Americans view Trump, which is a measure of how entrenched the partisan divide has become, irrespective of the actual facts. Call us Confirmation Bias Nation.

Accordingly, the release of the SCO’s report (redacted or otherwise) is not likely to result in the deus ex machina that many of us on the left privately dreamed. Perhaps we never should have, as David Frum sagely warned way back in May 2017 (“A Special Prosecutor Is Not the Answer”). Barr’s reputation was already in tatters, so no one left of Mitt Romney was swayed by his “prebuttal” today. Conversely, all the evidence of wrongdoing in the redacted report meant precisely zip to Trump Nation, who would stand by their man even if were captured on video wearing a French maid’s outfit and shining Putin’s riding boots.

But I do think that, for any reasonable person, the sheer weight and volume of Trump’s sins, now confirmed by the SCO, ought to hurt him going forward into the 2020 election. (Wow, was it necessary to write that? That’s where we are these days.) And in the coming weeks, as we pore over the Mueller report with even more scrutiny, more and more explosive details will surely emerge.

Meanwhile the administration’s laughable attempts at damage control continue. While Kellyanne Conway told the press that this was “the best day” for Trump since November 8, 2016, Trump himself spent the morning busily sending out furious, vitriolic tweets again attacking Mueller and his team as “crooked cops” conducting a “witchhunt”…..you know, like you do when you’re totally happy and feel exonerated.

(Among his tweets, bizarrely, was a supercut of himself saying “No collusion,” which to my mind makes my point not his. Does he really think if he bludgeons us enough with the repetition of a lie it will make us believe it’s true? Apparently he does, and with some evidence to back him up, if one looks at the psychology of brainwashing and the credulity of his followers.)

So I say “laughable,” but their base does seem to lap it up.

On the other side of the aisle, the House of Representatives—led in this effort by genuinely reputable public servants like Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff—have made it clear that they will now be like a dog with a bone, and good on them for that. That kind of oversight is Congress’s job, particularly with a brazenly lawless, gangster president like this one.

And yes, impeachment is back on the table. I make no tactical assessment about whether that is a smart move going into 2020, gamesmanship wise, or what its prospects are for success. (Slim, I suspect.) I mean only that it is now all but impossible for Congress to ignore its duty to address the incredible smorgasbord of malfeasance that Bob Mueller has laid before them.

No matter what Billy Barr says.

 

 

Recently The Daily Beast reported that Donald Trump is already excited about the idea of writing a “tell all” memoir:

[Trump] is planning on it being explosive and assumes (not without reason) that it will be a New York Times bestseller. And since the early days of his administration, he has conveyed his eagerness to get started on the project. “He sounded excited about it,” said one person who was present last year when the president made comments about writing a memoir. “He said it would sell better than even The Art of the Deal.”

Another source, who is a friend of Trump’s, said the president has casually discussed how such a book could be used to dish dirt and settle scores with his foes in the media, the Democratic Party, non-loyal Republicans, law enforcement, and even individuals in his own administration. Trump, according to this person, noted that this memoir could help “correct” the “fake news” already published in popular books and newspapers, and give him the opportunity to spin a juicy yarn on his time at the heights of power.

********

Mick Mulvaney stared at me from behind his desk in the chief of staff’s office. The man exuded honesty, integrity, and principle in a way matched only by the likes of McConnell, Nunes, or Ross.

“Blood test go OK?” he asked.

I nodded. “And you’re sure my family is all right?”

“You bet. I checked their handcuffs and gags myself. And there’s Netflix and Amazon in the safehouse.”

“Thank you.”

He peered down his granny glasses at me as the quizzing began. “What great author do you see Trump most resembling?”

I thought for a beat.

“Shakespeare?”

Mulvaney scowled. I tried again.

“Faulkner?”

The scowl deepened. “Think harder. In human history, who’s the greatest author in the English language—or any language, for that matter?”

I racked my brain. Then it came to me.

“Donald Trump?”

Mulvaney’s scowl transformed into a broad grin.

“Circle gets the square. You’ve read his previous bestsellers, I presume.”

“Naturellement.”

“Sorry?”

“Yes, I have.”

“What do you think the president’s greatest literary strength is?”

“I think he’s very good at creating fiction.”

“The president sees this book as a chance to set the record straight; to call out all the ‘fake news’ he’s been subjected to for the past three years.”

“Right.”

“Also he wants people to know he has really long fingers.” Mulvaney winked. There was a pause. “And everyone knows what that means.”

I forced a smile. There was another pause, until Mulvaney spoke, helpfully:

“It means he wants people to think he has a really big dick.”

“I think people are well aware that Mr. Trump is a really big dick.”

“Has one, has one,” Mulvaney corrected.

I made a note and took advantage of the lull to ask a question of my own.

“Will there be much back and forth with Mr. Trump while I’m writing? Normally I’d interview the subject at—”

Mulvaney cut me off. “We need someone who can run with this without needing their hand held. Dig?”

“No problem. But I assume, when it’s done, Mr. Trump will at least read it over to approve it?”

Mulvaney furrowed his brow. “We’ll give him the manuscript, yes.”

That furrowed brow worried me. “Are you saying he doesn’t have the attention span to read his own book?”

Mulvaney was silent, furrowing some more. I narrowed my gaze.

“He can read, right?” I asked.

“We’ll get Bill Barr to do a four page summary and someone can read it to him.”

I decided to let it go. “Any books he particularly admires that I might want to read, as models?”

“Two Corinthians.”

I wrote that down.

“Any thoughts on titles?” he asked while I was writing, as I thought he would, and I had some ready to pitch.

“Sure thing. How about, Trump: Almighty God-Emperor and Savior of Democracy (Part I)?”

“Bit subtle, don’t you think?”

“How about No Collusion: How I won the Presidency Without Really Trying?”

“I like it, but a bit narrow. Think bigger.”

“Mein Kampf?”

“Love that. Might be taken, though—we’ll do a copyright search.”

“Any topics you’d like me to avoid?”

“Just his refusal to release his tax returns, his multimillion dollar deals with Russia that he lied about to the American people, the $50 million bribe he offered Putin in the form of a penthouse apartment, the money laundering for Russian oligarchs, the real estate fraud, felony campaign finance violations, hush money for mistresses, anything having to do with abortions he might have paid for, the Trump Foundation, the Trump inauguration, his previous marriages, his temper, his early onset dementia—“

I stopped him. “I get it,” I said. “And I presume there will be an audiobook too?”

“For sure. The President will read it himself.”

My eyes must have gotten big, because Mulvaney’s got narrow. “He can read!” he barked, reading my mind.

“Of course.” A coughing fit came over me. Mulvaney looked rattled. He looked down, mumbling to himself, and I noticed for the first time that in his hand he had prayer beads. “If they’ll let him record it from Sing Sing,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, regaining his composure. “Anyway, we can always get Alec Baldwin to do it.”

I nodded. He seemed mollified. “Any other questions, or can we button this thing up?”

“Just one. Why don’t you just hire Tony Schwarz again?”

Mulvaney’s lip curled into a sneer. Actually, it may have done that around 1967 and been fixed that way ever since.

“That is a name we don’t mention around here. The man you’re talking about proved to be a shameless publicity hound and traitor to his country. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I hesitated.

“We’re also looking into that rumors he might be Jewish. Jared’s on the case.”

I was confused. “But isn’t Jared—”

Mick cut me off again. “It’s because of people like Schw—I mean, that author—that we’ve developed the GLAS protocol.”

“GLAS protocol?” I asked.

“Ghostwriter Loyalty Assurance System. It’s all in the fine print in the contract. A microscopic silicon chip will be inserted behind your ear, subcutaneously. Should you violate the terms of your contract at any time—say, by getting all uppity and mouthing off to the press—a small electrical shock will be applied remotely, as a reminder of your obligations. Should you continue to act out, the voltage can be increased accordingly. And should you prove completely uncontrollable, the chip is capable of releasing a nerve agent into your bloodstream that will induce a violent and painful death within 24 hours.”

“Is that legal?”

“Normally no. But as a great man once said, it’s not a crime when the president does it. Cool with that?”

“Actually, that’s not much worse than some of the deals I’ve signed in the past.”

“Anything else? I have to get over to the Oval Office and look at paint swatches for the re-education camps.”

“One last thing. Not to be crass, but…..about the pay?”

Mulvaney waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, there’s no money upfront. It’s an honor just to be asked to write this book, don’t you think?” He continued before I could answer. “But don’t worry: you’ll make a killing in profit-participation. It’s the same deal President Trump has always given his contractors. Ask anyone in Atlantic City.”

I frowned. He seemed to sense my anxiety.

“Hey, if you can’t trust Donald Trump, who can you trust?”

I threw up in my mouth a little.

Mulvaney opened a desk drawer. “So, if there’s nothing else, it’s just a matter of dotting i’s and crossing t’s…..”

He pulled out a fountain pen. I could see that it was filled with my own blood, which the White House medical staff had drawn earlier. He held out the pen and slid the contract across the desk, nodding for me to sign on the line which was dotted. “Just think,” he said, smiling, “you’ll always be remembered for your part in telling the Trump story.”

As I took the pen, I smelled sulfur.

********

Over the last few weeks, all the focus on the fallout of the still-under-wraps Mueller report has obscured the central and ongoing reality of the Trump administration: its fundamental sadism, greed, corruption, and inhumanity as it marches into history as far and away the worst presidency of modern times by any metric you care to apply. Untoward footsie with Russia (and the Saudis, and the Azerbaijanis, and the Israelis, zzzzz) is but one aspect of it, and—as many critics on the left have pointed out—the attention paid to that sucks the oxygen away from a raging forest fire of other sins.

We were reminded of that this week with the abrupt firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kirrstjjen Nielssenn (did I spell that right?), apparently ahead of the impending departure of a half dozen other senior DHS officials in a purge orchestrated by the reptilian Stephen Miller, with Trump’s eager endorsement, but without any sign of succession by competent replacements. “Decapitation,” one anonymous insider called this Sunday Night Massacre…..and this at the agency responsible for addressing what Trump claims is a “national emergency.”

No tears will be shed for Kirsten, of course—screw her and the broom she rode in on. But that purge, we’re told, in turn precedes Trump’s fuming desire to “get tougher” on the situation at the southern border, to halt all asylum seekers in defiance of federal law, and to ratchet up his xenophobic immigration policy full stop.

“Get tougher”? Are they kidding?

Let’s not concede them their preferred terms. Ain’t no “tougher” about it. What they’re talking about is better described as raising the already appalling level of institutional cruelty to an even more stomach-churning level, which is saying something. That would include an attempt—again, in defiance of the courts—to reinstate the unconscionable policy of “family separation,” a euphemism for ripping children away from their parents and caging them, as a deliberately brutal ploy to deter future asylum seekers. (Suck on that, Emma Lazarus!) It is a policy that some mental health professionals have described—and not metaphorically—as torture.

In this effort Trump, Miller, and rest of their odious crew seem motivated in equal measure by their own innate sadism and by a tactical desire to appeal to that same quality in their salivating base. There is no discernible plan or policy beyond that, at least not one rooted in anything resembling reality. Some have speculated that mere cruelty is itself the goal, with some vague, nihilistic notion of “disrupting” the entire body politic. If that is so, they have succeeded in spades. But how is that any kind of coherent objective?

Typically, Trump (falsely) blamed Obama for the policy of taking children from their parents, claimed he is the one who stopped it (the exact opposite of what really happened) even as he openly considers re-starting the policy, while at the same time taking credit for its (mythical) deterrent effect. All of which is reminiscent of his claim that he “ended” the birther lie that he himself fueled: another example of the malignant, self-spun reality of the malignant sociopath.

Just to be clear: the Trump administration and only the Trump administration has ever systematically employed family separation as a deliberate deterrent, effective or not (NB: it’s not), to stop immigration on America’s borders.

Small children have died of negligence in ICE custody. At least one infant was stillborn as a result of the policy of detaining even pregnant women and the lack of suitable medical care. Children already detained during the previous stint of the “family separation policy” have shown signs of PTSD and permanent neurological injury that will require years of psychiatric treatment. The Trump administration recently admitted that it estimates it will take two years just to identify all the thousands of separated children, let alone reunite them, which in some cases will prove impossible.

To co-opt the words of Fannie Mae Hamer, “Is this America?”

These days, I guess so.

These are correctly described as crimes against humanity; if we were watching them unfold in some Third World country we would all recognize the horror and decry the barbarism of the government administering it.

So why are the American people not out in the streets in outrage? Why am I sitting at my computer writing this instead of doing that? In terms of federal policy, what’s going on right now—let alone what will happen next when Trump gets “tougher”— ranks as one of the most shameful episodes in modern American history, recalling the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Will we remember this as a low point in modern American history? You bet your ass we will.

THE RAGEAHOLIC-IN-CHIEF

This week I had intended to publish a humorous piece about reports that Trump is anxious to write his post-presidency memoirs. (I’m anxious for the “post-presidency” part myself.) But leave it to Don to leech the pleasure out of even the briefest moment of levity.

The sixteen days since Barr released his eyebrow-raising summary of the Mueller report have seen surprisingly little change in the political landscape, especially given the apocalypse that was expected. In part this is because Mr. Barr continues to carry out what increasingly looks like a blatant coverup of the full contents of the report. (Or really any of them, except his own two cherrypicked sentence fragments.) His appearance before Congress today did little to change that impression.

Even Trump seems stunningly unchanged. Writing in the New Yorker in the first week after Barr weighed in, Susan Glasser noted:

What’s been remarkable, this week, is how much Trump triumphant has sounded like Trump at every other point in his Presidency: angry and victimized; undisciplined and often incoherent; predictable in his unpredictability; vain and insecure; prone to lies, exaggeration, and to undercutting even those who seek to serve him.

And that trend has only accelerated since then. You’d think that Trump would be luxuriating in the news that he won’t be indicted for conspiracy with a foreign power (at least not by the special counsel) and the opportunity to spin that news—dishonestly—as “compete and total exoneration.” And he did revel in it…..but only for a nanosecond before returning to the familar, seething persecution complex that seems to be his natural state, calling for criminal prosecution of the “treasonous” and “evil” people he blamed for the appointment of the special counsel in the first place. (And Devin Nunes came running, Igor-like, bleating, “Yes, master—you rang?”)

In so doing, Trump instantly reminded us all of why that special counsel was needed. In Bloomberg News, Jonathan Bernstein writes:

Trump and his allies immediately reminded everyone how little respect this president has for democratic norms and set themselves up for political damage if the Mueller report doesn’t live up to their spin. Instead of taking a win and building on it, Trump took all of one day to oversell it, increase the likelihood that more damaging information will be publicly released, and remind everyone that he’s still unfit for the office he holds.

Is anyone really surprised?

Clearly Trump believes that the Barr spin on the Mueller report is a useful weapon for him going forward, but he seems motivated just as much by sheer infantile rage and lust for vengeance.

In that sense, the entire special counsel probe actually served Trump’s interests by giving him a useful enemy to demonize and a massive distraction from the other crimes against democracy he was in the course of committing. Throughout his life Trump has always needed an enemy to fulminate against, which may in part be why he is so unhinged lately with the vanishing of the “deeply conflicted” Bob Mueller and his witchhunt, much as he was when he lost Hillary as a foil.

What a sad and pathetic individual this man is, this 72-year-old infant, consumed with rage 24/7. As a wise, Zen-like man once said, “If you’re angry, you’re wrong.”

That Zen-like man was Vladimir Putin.

Of course, regular readers of this blog might raise a brow and note my own, uh, anger issues. But I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!

That too I blame on Trump.

THE POLITICS OF GRIEVANCE

And thus Trump’s “politics of grievance,” in Glasser’s phrase, continue into the post-Barr report era, as our fearless leader predictably overstepped, declined to breath a sigh of relief and take the win and change the subject—the way most humans would—and instead plunged into an inexplicable string of rage-driven self-inflicted wounds, including yet another attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act, a frantic but empty threat to close the entire Mexican border, and now this attempt to revive a policy of kidnapping children so horrific that it even put off Republicans.

This is not the same thing as seizing the momentum to push one’s policy agenda. It’s more like squandering it with a series of spasmodic, ill-advised policy moves. But that’s what you get when Stephen Miller is your spirit animal.

Some have suggested that these things do help Trump, the best analogy being his continued attacks on John McCain. Most people think that slandering a revered American war hero, even after he’s dead, is a bad look on anyone. But Trump’s base thrills to it, which is the thing that our thirsty thirsty commander-in-chief craves the most. The same logic—we’re told—applies to Obamacare and the border.

Maybe. But I question whether that is in fact a winning strategy, and even if it is, whether Trump is able to think strategically in that way, or is merely lurching transactionally from one fistfight to the next, with any “strategic” considerations merely grafted on after the fact by outside observers invested in the idea of Trump as idiot savant. (Perhaps they’re only right about the first part of that sobriquet.)

In part this parade of disasters flows from the fact that the fruits of Trumpian incompetence and corruption continue to flower, and will never stop, even in the post-Mueller world. This week alone we saw further revelations about Kushner’s security clearance; what looks very much like a Chinese agent wandering around Mar-a-Lago; ongoing (and proper) Congressional oversight including a request for six years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns; a Congressional subpoena for the full, unredacted Mueller report; and more. Amid all that Trump is doubling down on red meat issues that only solidify his base—which would already follow him right off a cliff, and needs no incentive to get out and vote—at the risk of further alienating everyone else. And he can’t win in 2020 with just his base, assuming the Democrats can get out their own voters.

But once again, I don’t believe Trump is even think in those kind of practical terms.

I think he just like to hear his crowds cheer.

GUILT TRIP

Having begun this essay by stating how much the focus on Russiagate has distracted our attention from the other horrors perpetrated by the Trump and his administration, indulge me in a brief digression on that point, as it’s relevant and instructive. (I promise.)

Over the past two years, one of the things that made me most confident that there was as yet unearthed, direct evidence that Trump conspired with Russian assets beyond what we already know (which is substantial) was his daily, almost comical insistence that he didn’t. He used “NO COLLUSION!” the way other people use commas. That, as many noted, was not behavior typical of an innocent man.

In retrospect, I think there are three possible explanations.

One, as I wrote a few weeks ago (amid of chorus of many others), is that there was collusion however you want to define it, even if it didn’t rise to the level of a prosecutable felony….so much so that Trump was terrified of it coming out. He may remain thus. Note his characteristic 180 on his initial braggadocious claim that the public should see the full report.

Two, that he was—and remains—terrified that the Mueller investigation would uncover his impressive resume of other crimes over a lifetime of grift, which of course it did. Indeed, it lifted the lid off the whole Gowanus Canal/Superfund site sewer that is the Trump business empire, which the intrepid frogmen of the SDNY and others are currently exploring (in hazmat drysuits, I hope).

And three, that he is quite simply a rotten little child who doesn’t behave like a normal adult human being, which makes for a frustrating and unpredictable foe. As Steve’s illustration for this essay suggests, Trump’s tweets alone make the case for obstruction.

In New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan endorsed that theory:

Trump would happily obstruct justice even if he knew he was as innocent as the driven snow. It’s his core instinct. He’ll always act guilty—whether he’s guilty or not. He cannot see the process of an inquiry as a way for the entire system to examine and fix itself—let alone exonerate him. He instinctively recoils from any independent challenge to his control. Letting the law take its course would require a modicum of appreciation of a liberal society, and an understanding that the world doesn’t simply revolve around him. And he is clinically incapable of either.

And so if Trump is charged or accused of anything, he has the identical reflex. Always deny. Always lie. Always undermine. Never concede. Accuse your opponents of doing exactly what they accuse you of. Even if you’re innocent. This is the Roy Cohn playbook, and it’s damaging when even a real-estate developer deploys that kind of tactic, but in a president, charged with the faithful execution of the laws, it’s potentially fatal. But it will also mislead others, as it may have in this case. Most people tend to assume that someone who is acting incredibly guilty probably is a little guilty. But that misses the particular mind-set of this particular president.

We knew all this, though we’d rarely seen it so baldly on display as in the last two weeks.

This instinct is now playing out on multiple fronts, as the lack of empathy that puts Trump in a perennial state of rage in the first place is the same force that makes him turn it on the weakest and most vulnerable members of humanity.

As I’ve written in the past (Dear Huddled Masses: Go F—- Yourselves, June 21, 2018), when it comes to immigration, the entire rationale of “law and order” and “securing the border” is just a fig leaf for the real animating factor for Trump and his disciples, which is sheer racist nativism and hatred of immigrants, legal or otherwise. Not for nothing is immigration Trump’s signature issue, going all the way to back to his announcement of his candidacy nearly three years ago, anchored on the “Mexicans are rapists” theme. And need we mention Trump’s own familial hypocrisy on the topic, and Melania’s on chain migration, and Miller’s on asylum seeking?

As New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg notes, “Trump is growing ever more lawless and autocratic.” We are seeing it before our eyes: with the madness at the border, with his administration’s open defiance of Congress, with the continuing, coy incitement violence among his supporters, and with hints that he may not yield power even if defeated in 2020. Nothing suggest that trend is going to get better; in fact, very much the contrary.

Meanwhile, Ms. Nielsen rides off into the sunset, where—as Goldberg and others such as Jeffrey Toobin noted—she ought rightly be remembered as a monster and pariah.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer gal.

*********

Illustration: “It Was Tweets Killed the Beast!” by Steve Bernstein

 

If I ever have to stand trial, here are the conditions I would like.

After the police and the prosecutors have done their job and gathered the evidence and made their case, I’d like my lawyer—handpicked for his expertise in this area—to go through their brief and take a big fat black Sharpie to anything he finds objectionable.

I’d like it if he had total authority to do that and didn’t really have to explain or defend his decisions to anyone.

I’d like it if had a really impressive blue chip résumé and a lot of experience in covering up the kind of crimes in question.

I’d like it if the jury was not allowed to see the case against me until after my guy had blacked out all the incriminating evidence to his satisfaction—which is to say, to my satisfaction, except even better because he’s a lawyer and knows the nuances, which I don’t.

I’d like it if he had three or four weeks or so to do that, while I commanded a gargantuan public pulpit from which to proclaim that I had already been exonerated.

I’d like it if the large chunks of the press obediently reported and repeated my claims.

And finally, I’d like it if most people didn’t really think any of this was weird, and were unbothered that I was able to engineer it that way.

That sounds like a pretty good arrangement, doesn’t it?

THE CONSIGLIERE

Bill Barr is the Attorney General that Donald Trump always dreamed of.

In 21 months of public humiliating his previous AG, Jeff Sessions, Trump made it clear that what he wanted in that job was a Mafia-style consigliere, an attack dog who would protect and defend him and persecute his foes with the full force of the Department of Justice, in keeping with Trump’s vision of the entire DOJ as his personal Schutzstaffel.

It’s a perfect example—maybe the signature one—of Trump’s fundamental misunderstanding of the most basic principles of democracy and the rule of law.

(And yes, I’m using both Mafia and Nazi imagery in the same sentence. Let me know which is more egregious: the “hysterical” analogies or the mixed metaphor.)

Trump famously, and falsely, characterized Eric Holder as having served that “attack dog” role for Barack Obama. The guy he really wants in the job, of course, is Roy Cohn, and should Barr leave the gig at some point, I would not be surprised to open my web browser and read that Trump has proposed exhuming Cohn’s corpse and nominating his rotted bones for the position.

We’ve heard a lot—even from progressive pundits on MSNBC—about how Barr is an honorable public servant, with integrity and respect for the rule of law, an eminence grise from the days of the “old school GOP.” Yeah, that’s the old school GOP that gave us Iran/contra and secret sales of WMD to Saddam Hussein, which Barr actively covered up during his first tour as AG under Bush 41. Bush pardoned six underlings implicated in Iran/contra, including his Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, with Barr providing legal cover and help in shutting down an investigation by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh. It was behavior so egregious that William Safire—the former Nixon speechwriter turned conservative columnist (!)—nicknamed him the “Coverup General,” and called him that in print.

So I am unmoved by the hosannas attesting to what a fine and honorable man Bill Barr is. It strikes me as a farce, and a measure of how low the sliding scale had slid when it comes to “public service.” On the contrary, he seems to be a veteran of exactly this kind of unethical bullshit, which is surely why he got the job with Trump in the first place. As Thom Hartmann wrote in reporting Barr’s ugly backstory for Salon, “History shows that when a Republican president is in serious legal trouble, Bill Barr is the go-to guy.”

It’s an open secret that Barr auditioned for an encore in the Trump administration with an unsolicited 19-page attack on the very legitimacy of the special counsel (almost five times the length of his summary/non-summary of Mueller’s report), which he sent to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the head of the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel and even discussed personally with Trump (double !!). In it, he called the SCO’s whole obstruction inquiry “fatally misconceived,” in keeping with his well-known, expansive view of executive power (in a word: unfettered), including the eye-popping, anti-democratic belief that a President by definition cannot obstruct justice.

Neal Katyal, the former acting US Solicitor General who helped draft the current special counsel rules (and like the late Mr. Safire, another self-identified conservative), wrote that Barr’s unsolicited memo reflected “bizarre legal views,” and “should be understood for what it is, a badly argued attempt to put presidents above the law.”

In other words, Barr seems to have been hired specifically because he offered the implicit (if not explicit) promise that he would support an imperial presidency, ensure that Trump would never be charged with obstruction, and would bury the results of the Mueller probe.

Now he appears to be doing precisely that, in plain sight.

RETURN OF THE HANGING CHAD

For all the grief and ridicule the White House suffered for being unprepared to counter the Mueller report, it turns out that they actually had a pretty good strategy—one that didn’t hinge on rebutting it at all, but simply on blunting its impact by misdirection and misrepresentation. It may not be working quite as well as they hoped, but it’s still a classic of distraction, disinformation, and dishonesty.

First they succeeded in keeping the human perjury machine that is Donald Trump from being interviewed face to face by the special counsel.

Then they got Barr installed as AG—a man cloaked in the veneer of Gipper-era respectability, but with vast experience in covering up presidential crimes, and an avowed animus to the whole special counsel probe, especially its obstruction piece. This step was essential, since the outcry would have been deafening—even for a Teflon presidency like Trump’s—if an obviously unqualified bozo like Matt Whitaker was still in that job and doing the things Barr is doing. That fact was apparent to a number of observers during Barr’s confirmation hearings, but got little air time. (Behold the value of a news cycle tuned to the attention span of a goldfish, lurching from crisis to crisis in a permanent state of emergency cultivated by and beneficial to the crooks atop our kakistocracy.)

Barr’s opportunity to get the first (and thus far only) look at the final report then enabled him to cherrypick two sentence fragments—not even full sentences, and totally decontextualized—and spin them as exoneration for the president on one count, while blithely rendering a snap decision on specious grounds on the other count—in 48 short hours—one that the meticulous Mr. Mueller deemed so delicate and complex that he pointedly declined to render a judgment at all. (I know that Barr and Rosenstein supposedly had a couple of weeks’ advance notice that Mueller would not charge Trump with obstruction, giving them more than 48 hours to prepare their pre-judgment on his innocence, but that hardly makes it much better.)

Then the White House and its amen corner began pounding that narrative in the press and public while Barr and his people are busy redacting the report of anything embarrassing to Donald Trump.

And up next, they will release this heavily expurgated version, and act as if they have been totally transparent.

It’s a plan that is at once audacious in its bald-faced contempt for democracy and the rule of law, and yet sufficiently slick that they just might get away with it, especially with a base that—as we’ve already painfully established—would blithely excuse Trump even of cold blooded murder in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

The comparison has been drawn between this strategy and Florida in the 2000 election, where the GOP tenaciously staked out its position—“We won!”—and hammered it home in the press and the courts, while the Democrats dithered and (to their credit) worried about the rule of law and setting a dangerous precedent by refusing to challenge the vote count, and (to their detriment) basically failed to realize—butterknife-to-a-gunfight like—that we had entered a whole new era of authoritarian politics.

But today’s Democratic Party seems to have learned that lesson, as Jerry Nadler is having none of it, and apparently neither are the bulk of the American people.

BARR TAKES OFF FROM THE TOP OF THE KEY

To that end, I have no confidence that this bowdlerized report will reveal much of anything. Correctly, Rep. Nadler and other Democratic Congressional leaders are insisting on seeing the full, unredacted report from the special counsel, as they have both a right and a duty to do so as a co-equal branch of government charged with acting as a check on the executive.

It appears that this was Robert Mueller’s intent in declining to draw an conclusion on obstruction: to provide the pertinent information to Congress, which constitutionally is the appropriate body to act on it, given the DOJ policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

It’s doubtful that his intent was to turn it over to Bill Barr so that he could casually and unilaterally decide that Donald Trump should go scot free.

Former assistant US Attorney General and Duke law professor Walter Dellinger suggests that in declining to make a determination on obstruction—while explicitly saying he was not exonerating the president—the special counsel was attempting to follow the example of Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski:

Mueller’s office may have properly drafted a detailed and damning account of Trump’s obstruction of justice and simply cast it as a set of facts, a road map for the analysts who must decide what to do about it: members of Congress….What Mueller may not have anticipated (and perhaps could not have avoided) is that Barr would improperly declare the president’s guilt or innocence….

Congressional review is especially appropriate, because the worst offenses may not be criminal, and may demand something broader than a legalistic focus. It would be a grave offense for a presidential candidate secretly to be indebted to a foreign power and to lie about that relationship, for instance. But nothing in the criminal code forbids it. This is why we have the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Count Preet Bharara, the former US Attorney for the SDNY, as another who thinks Mueller was trying to tee up Congress with a no-look, behind-the-back pass, but didn’t anticipate Barr intercepting it and taking it the other way for a backboard-shattering tomahawk dunk. (Bill’s pretty nimble for a guy his size.) Here’s Preet, speaking to Crooked Media:

It didn’t much matter what the facts would show, and so in the absence of Bob Mueller making a determination about whether or not a crime was committed, Bill Barr right on cue sort of swoops in to say, “No crime here”….

Former US Attorney and deputy assistant Attorney General Harry Litman—now a law professor at UCLA—also agrees, emphasizing the egregiousness of Barr’s insertion of himself in the process:

I am unaware of a single instance in my years in the Justice Department in which a final prosecutorial decision was left to the attorney general without so much as a recommendation from the actual prosecutor. We need to know the answer. If, say, Mueller’s reason for refusing to exercise this judgment was that he believed the involvement of the president made the question a political one for Congress, Barr’s move would represent a rank overruling of a key conclusion of Mueller, as well as a power grab from Congress.

OBSTRUCTED VIEW

So what of Barr’s hamhanded conclusion that there was no obstruction of justice, despite all the evidence in plain view, not to mention anything additional the special counsel uncovered, to which he apparently alludes in his report?

I went to law school for exactly—let me count them—zero days, but even I know that there need not be an underlying crime for obstruction to take place. (Most obviously, because successful obstruction might prevent the underlying crime from being proven, or evidence of it even discovered.) Indeed, in their varying capacities as prosecutors and DOJ officials, all these jurists—Barr, Rosenstein, Giuliani—have overseen the prosecution of plenty of defendants for obstruction, irrespective of the crime they were covering up, or lack thereof, or lack of proof thereof.

I also didn’t get hired to teach constitutional law at Harvard (geez, you wear Crocs to one interview and they never let you forget it), but I do have common sense enough to know that the Framers didn’t intend to put the president above the law by making it impossible by definition for him or her to obstruct justice. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, they fought a whole war to free us from precisely that sort of governance.

Barr surely knows this too, yet miraculously promulgated the opposite view in his shameful summary of the Mueller report. (You know, the one he later backpedaled and said wasn’t a summary at all, just a quick Post-It note of its “principal conclusions.”) Somehow I doubt he would hew to that same standard were a Democratic president under this kind of investigation. Just a hunch.

And forgive me for noting that there are underlying crimes. Here’s Chairman Nadler himself, in a Washington Post op-ed:

Did the attorney general forget that the special counsel indicted 37 other people, including the president’s campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman and former national security adviser, for various crimes, including conspiracy against the United States? Did he lose track of his own prosecutors, who effectively named the president as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Southern District of New York?

Hence the GOP’s desire to keep the actual Mueller report hidden for as long and in as much detail as possible. If it really exonerated Trump, it would already be online in full, and in the bookstores, and in a special edition of the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, and WorldNetDaily.

COVER AND CONCEALMENT

Since issuing his summary, Barr has been on the defensive, putting out a clarification (that may only have muddied matters more), announcing a timetable (albeit rather long) for the release of the Mueller report itself (albeit heavily expurgated), all of which suggests that he—and the White House—may have overestimated their ability to pull a fast one on the American people. As Dana Milbank notes in the Washington Post: “Suppose a special prosecutor in the Obama administration had filed a 400-page report about crimes possibly committed by President Barack Obama, and Obama appointees sat on the report while offering a ‘nothing to see here’ summary.”

(Trump himself has, with the utter predictability of a Swiss watch, flip flopped on his original bluff assertion that the public ought to see the whole report.)

It goes without saying that Congress MUST see the unredacted report, and the American people should see as much of it as possible within the bounds of legality and security considerations. I know it takes time to declassify material, and that there are other legal issues as well. My concern, of course, is that the redaction process is being abused; employed as a fig leaf for partisan interference and obfuscation of information that both Congress and the American public have a right to know. It wouldn’t be the first time. Chairman Nadler again:

The entire reason for appointing the special counsel was to protect the investigation from political influence. By offering us his version of events in lieu of the report, the attorney general, a recent political appointee, undermines the work and the integrity of his department. He also denies the public the transparency it deserves. We require the full report—the special counsel’s words, not the attorney general’s summary or a redacted version.

We require the report, first, because Congress, not the attorney general, has a duty under the Constitution to determine whether wrongdoing has occurred. The special counsel declined to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” on the question of obstruction, but it is not the attorney general’s job to step in and substitute his judgment for the special counsel’s.

That responsibility falls to Congress — and specifically to the House Judiciary Committee—as it has in every similar investigation in modern history. The attorney general’s recent proposal to redact the special counsel’s report before we receive it is unprecedented. We require the evidence, not whatever remains after the report has been filtered by the president’s political appointee.

And we’re now being told that even some members of Mueller’s team— heretofore Sphinx-like—have broken their silence for the first time to complain that Barr is misrepresenting their findings and downplaying the amount of information therein that is damaging to Trump.

Hmmm.

The vote by the House Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Nadler, to subpoena the full, unredacted report with all its appendices and underlying data, is a step in the right direction. That Barr, the DOJ, the GOP, and the White House intend to fight it tells you all you need to know. Even more telling, every single Republican on that committee—all 17 of them—voted against issuing that subpoena….this after those very same Republicans joined in a unanimous 420-0 House vote the previous week to endorse the release of the full report. Was that just a charade?

Forget I asked.

The stink of coverup is growing, and the longer the AG and White House delay and demur, the more suspicious it gets. Dellinger again:

There was a time when it was thought that firing Mueller would lead to mass demonstrations nationwide. Prominent lawyers quietly discussed the necessity of being arrested for chaining themselves to the doors of the Justice Department if it came to that. Would that outcome really be so different from one in which the release of the report is indefinitely delayed or its contents excessively redacted? Both cases would prevent the public from finding out what the government discovered.

If Team Trump digs in—which is their usual MO, democracy be damned—and we are not allowed to see the full report, will we take to the streets? We’ve seen that sufficient pressure does work on the Trump administration, despite its general indifference to the democratic process and ability to function in a Bizarro World of alternative facts. (See: the border wall, Obamacare, even Barr’s recent defensiveness.)

Jennifer Rubin (yet another conservative):

The weeklong, premature victory lap by Trump and his vicious assault on Congress and the press were possible only because Barr made it seem as if Trump had gotten a clean bill of health. (Harvard law professor Lawrence) Tribe argues that, in his first letter, Barr was “exploiting legalistic formulas—like saying Mueller hadn’t been able to ‘establish’ conspiracy with Russia—to help Trump create the impression that no treacherous collusion took place and that there is no substantial evidence of Trump’s improper coordination with the Kremlin—much of it in plain view.”

When the entire report comes out, both Barr and Trump may appear to have misled the public. Mueller, we know, did not exonerate Trump of obstruction and his report will provide us with hundreds of pages explaining why and, further, enlighten us as to why Trump, for example, hid from voters his attempt to pursue a lucrative deal with Russia during the campaign and why so many in his campaign had so many contacts with Russians, contacts they tried to cover up.

Whatever the temporary political benefits to him and his boss, Barr has permanently stained his reputation and politicized the Justice Department. He adds his name to a long list of people who have tossed away their credibility to protect the most unfit president in history.

HISTORY HAS ITS EYE ON

All that said, I’m not expecting bombshells in the Mueller report, should we actually see it.

It seems clear that this was the GOP strategy from the start: to release an almost comically brief summary that appears to exonerate Trump; to let that narrative marinate in the public consciousness for almost a month while the DOJ scrubs the report of anything incriminating; to let progressives build up the release of the report as their next salvation; and then to dump a redacted report on us that obscures the full story, so its impact is blunted as the coup de grace to smack the Democrats down yet again.

So let’s not set ourselves up for another disappointment when we can clearly see that a thumb is being put on the scales.

While I do expect there to be damaging information in the full report, my concern is that the text will be pulverized to camouflage that fact. As I wrote last week, even under the best of circumstances the damning details are likely to be complex and nuanced, which is not exactly MAGA Nation’s strong suit. They are almost sure to lack the screaming impact of inaccurate headlines like “Mueller finds no collusion!” Even as pundits and legal experts parse the report, the right wing will dismiss their conclusions as grasping at straws. We can’t let them get away with that.

The optimistic view is that in laying out the whole story of Trump’s corruption and malfeasance, a moment of political epiphany will hit the American people, or at least its sentient segment. As many observers have written, if all the scandals of the previous three years came out all at once rather than bit by bit as they have, our collective head would explode.

So we don’t need bombshells. Even if the report contains nothing but a comprehensive summary of what we already know, the story for Trump will be extraordinarily damaging in the eyes of any objective observer.

I realize that lets out the entire GOP. But it does not exclude the cold eye of history.

Will we eventually view the preliminary Barr report as a red herring, and the ensuing Republican High Five Festival as woefully premature? Maybe. It sure would help settle the question if we could see the actual Mueller report itself before November 2020.

Bill Barr will soon reveal whether he deserves the respect of his former colleagues who have praised him on TV and will go into posterity as an honorable man, or prove that he never did and never was, and go down as a soulless hack and accessory to the biggest crime in American political history.

**********

Illustration courtesy Michael DeNola