Ashok Dhillon
Jun 1, 20196 min
The raging partisan war that is tearing America apart and is going to define this era in history, ebbs and flows with every event that adds fuel to both sides, as in the latest spurt of gasoline that was squirted on to the conflagration by the less than 10 minutes of retiring Special Counsel’s Robert Mueller’s ‘Yoda’ speak.
The taciturn and unusually reticent public commentator took the rare step of stepping out into the public arena with its inevitable glare, for approximately 10 minutes, to comment on his and his team’s 400 page report, officially titled ‘The Report On Russian Interference Into The 2016 Presidential Election’, Volume I & II.
Mueller’s unusual step was presumably taken to set the record straight after the obvious and blatantly partisan obfuscation of the report by the current Attorney General of the United States, William Barr, who in his 4-page summary of the report seemed to largely clear the President of any wrong doing.
Trump and his sycophantic Republicans immediately grabbed the misinformation to falsely declare the President ‘fully exonerated’. The two year exhaustive investigation captured in the Mueller Report had by no means done that, and for the second time (first time was a letter to the Attorney General), Mueller felt impelled to step up and correct the wrong perception wilfully created by the Attorney General of the United States.
This egregious betrayal of public trust is exactly the kind of serious wrong-doing that would draw the publicity shunning, straightest of shooters, like Robert Mueller to take the unusual step to follow up his initial admonishing letter to the Attorney General, by a brief but highly significant public address, meant to set the record straight once and for all. And that is what Robert Mueller did:
He declared that his investigation found irrefutable evidence that Russia had definitely interfered in the 2016 Presidential Election in favour of Trump, and had helped him get elected by specifically hurting his expected ‘shoo-in’ opponent Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
That Trump and his campaign team did interact with the Russians, but the Mueller’s investigating team decided that the evidence was not legally infallible enough to charge the President with a crime (although Mueller did charge and indict a number of Trump’s campaign team members and a host of Russians). The significant number of guilty pleas and indictments, Mueller stated, were evidence of the validity of the accusations against Russia and Trump’s campaign.
And that the constraints put on him and his team by the Department of Justice under which his mandate was defined, and the investigation parameters were strictly set, did not allow him to charge a sitting President, even though, there, his investigation did find enough evidence that the President had attempted to obstruct justice multiple times (in the report, Mueller and his team listed 10 instances where Trump actively attempted to obstruct and terminate the ‘Russia/Trump Investigation’). And he went on to expand that while his and his team’s hands were tied by constitutional precedent and the DOJ, it did not prevent the addressing of an errant President through ‘a process’ (impeachment) by other government bodies (the Congress).
Except, the opposing side (opposing the conclusions of the original report) the Republicans, were not interested in the additionally ‘clarified truth’ by Robert Mueller. They were from the very beginning, and still are, only interested in shielding the indefensible and glaringly guilt ridden Donald J. Trump. And so Mueller’s attempts to clarify the truth did not sit well with Republicans who along with Trump are taking aim at the upstanding and hereto unblemished Mueller.
As to why the Republicans would choose to dismiss Robert Mueller (a life time Republican, decorated Vietnam war hero, with multiple citations and medals for valour under fire, a distinguished public servant with a reputation for unshakeable integrity, a storied career, and a sterling record) and back Trump (an almost comical, vain, narcissistic, famed habitual liar, with an extremely spotty business record), remains a mystery to most Americans, as to most of the World. And the Republican irrational backing of Trump over their heroes, does not stop there.
The Republicans have allowed Trump to attack and insult the late great Senator John McCain, who like Robert Mueller is a bona-fide war hero, whose service in Vietnam, grievous injuries, capture, lack of medical treatment, and years of brutal torture, refusal of an out-of-sequence early release, showed his exceptional courage and strength throughout those years, and whose war experience has become one of the legendary tales of strength, courage, exceptional fortitude and heroism, from the iconic defining Vietnam War years.
After the war, and his release, John McCain went on to serve the United States in the House of Representatives, then the Senate for five terms, and ran twice for the Presidency of the United States. All in all, John McCain served his Country honourably and heroically on the front lines in war as a Navy pilot, and later in the United States government for almost four decades.
Both John McCain and Robert Mueller are men of exceptional moral and physical courage, exceptional records for ‘Service-to-the-Country’, front line acts of valour and recipients of numerous medals of honour and bravery in the line of fire.
On the other hand, Trump has been known to be a shameless publicity seeker all his adult life. A man of questionable character (putting it mildly), a repeated ‘draft dodger’ who used every underhanded means to escape war service, including the infamous and dubious medical condition of ‘bone spurs’. His public behaviour and utterances have shown him to be a gutter-mouth sexual abuser of women, a man of distasteful and weak character who is proud of shafting employees, workers, students, banks and his country, for monies owed. A businessman who according to the New York Times, from their access to tax information from 1984 to 1994, has the distinction of losing more money (over a Billion dollars) than almost any other individual American during that decade. A person to whom making money of off bankruptcies and ripping off banks was a self-confessed ‘sport’, and who in the sport of golf, according to some of his partners, is a chronic, shameless, and open cheater. A man, whose only service to his country was his runs for the Presidency, for the sole purpose of self-promotion, and whose eventual win, was the direct result of the intervention of Russia on his behalf, as Putin knew that there was nothing that Russia or he could do to harm their age old rival, America, more than to help elect Trump as President.
Putin and Russia not only succeeded, but they succeeded beyond their dreams, as from the time of Trump’s election, America has been damaged beyond measure; its democratic institutions have been systematically attacked, its progressive policies reversed, its consumers stripped of all protections, its healthcare system ravaged, its Constitution made largely irrelevant, its intelligence agencies openly disbelieved, contradicted, repeatedly attacked and dismissed in favour of confidence and belief in foreign and adversarial dictators. On top of all that, since Trump became President, he has broken with all of America’s most important allies and created distrust and animosity where there had been decades of mutual trust and partnerships, and the sharing of democratic and progressive values.
Instead, Trump has embraced America’s traditional enemies as his preferred and closest friends, shared State-secrets with them, praised them and their countries and openly boosted them globally. All of this was accomplished in the two years of his term. As we reiterated earlier, Putin succeed brilliantly in inflicting across-the-board damage to America, by electing Trump as the US President (in a recent tweet, Trump admitted that Russia elected him, before back tracking).
And now Trump is busy destroying America’s credibility, and eventually the economy, through his impetuous, ill-considered and disruptive Trade Policies.
Still, in spite of his repeated cowardly ducking of war service, or the lack of service to his country generally, and the fact that he is one of the most abusive, morally deficient and bankrupt persons (apart from his multiple (6) business bankruptcies), the Republicans have thrown caution to the wind and thrown their lot in with a perennial liar and law breaker to further their agenda, which seems to be to torch America’s democratic and progressive values. This wholesale sell-out to the 'Dark Side' means they are not only, not interested in the truth, but are equally disinterested in safe guarding America from Russia, instead, they rather burn their (Republican) and America’s war heroes, in favour of a loser.