In 1939, the ads for “Ninotchka” proclaimed “Garbo Laughs!” After a string of movies in which she played prostitutes, adulteresses, women who threw themselves under trains or died of tuberculosis, an appearance in a comedy was big news.
Now, eighty years later, “Mueller Speaks!” Unfortunately, this show was not a comedy and no one’s laughing. The special prosecutor was apparently moved to break his silence by annoyance. First, at how political partisans — from the president and his pet attorney general on down — have mischaracterized his report.
Second, at how dense the public is. After 22 months and 448 pages, they still didn’t get it. So he gave the country one more chance to wake up, by providing a nine-minute course in remedial reading.
He found copious evidence that Putin and his regime declared cyberwar on American democracy with the goal of defeating a perceived foe, Hillary Clinton, and electing a useful idiot, Donald J. Trump. The investigation also revealed an elaborate web of connections between the Putin operation and Americans associated with the Trump campaign. And Mueller is clearly alarmed that too little has been done to guard against a repeat of Russian interference in 2020.
The report pointed out that here is no such crime as collusion, but there are such things as collaboration, cooperation and conspiracy with foreign adversaries. They found plenty of smoke, but not enough evidence to charge arson, in part because they were unable to compel testimony by foreign actors and by some Americans, including the president, and were hampered by obviously perjurious testimony.
Mueller also pointed out that the report went to great pains to document a pattern of obstruction of justice designed to impede the search for truth. He also reminded viewers that justice department rules prevent sitting presidents from being indicted, but pointedly said that did not mean the investigation exonerated Trump, If it had, he would have said so.
Instead, the Mueller intended his report to be delivered to the only remaining body capable of holding the president accountable — Congress. There’s no Justice Department ruling that says impeachment has been eliminated.
As if to further drive home the point, Mueller said his job is done, the ball is in the legislature’s court, and he has no reason to comment further. The report is his testimony. For old English majors, this has an odd echo of Iago’s final line in “Othello.” — “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word.”
There is, however, a giant flaw with this thinking. Mueller is an old-fashioned, old money, literate, patrician, public servant who thinks the report will speak for itself and the pubic will get the message. But that is not the world we are living in, one where most of us can read but won’t.
The report became a huge bestseller in its first week, but that means it sold 47,000 copies. Who knows how many people really read all 448 pages. Apparently most members of Congress haven’t. And numbers like that are insignificant next to those of the falsehood industry.
Trump’s supposed 55 million Twitter followers (though research firms believe only about 22 million are legit). Rush Limbaugh has 13 million listeners a week and has been the number one radio show every year since 1987. Fox News has been the number one cable news network for 17 years, and Sean Hannity averages 3 million viewers a night.
Facts like these explain a pleasant senior citizen interviewed at the Michigan town hall meeting of Congressman Justin Amash. The only elected Republican who has called for Trump’s impeachment. he was explaining his thinking to his constituents. The nice lady said she listened to a lot of conservative radio and TV news, but this was the fist time she’d heard anyone say Donald Trump had done something wrong.
The reason for the House to follow Mueller’s advice and begin Impeachment hearings, and to call him to testify in spite of his lack of enthusiasm, is to educate the public. In the case of Watergate, Nixon was regarded as innocent by a majority of the electorate, until televised testimony day-after-day revealed the scope of his villainy. Minds were changed. And that changed the minds of their representatives.
If Mueller is right in believing courts are not able to provide justice if presidents go astray, then it is up to the legislative branch to act. They are, thus, confronted with a stark choice. They can gather evidence, provide an indictment and conduct a trial, or they can let a criminal conspiracy by a foreign power against our electoral system, and a cover-up by beneficiaries of it, go unpunished.