Don's Tuesday Column

       THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   4/23/2019

           Party’s over, the fat lady sings

Other euphemisms for the now-public Mueller report and Attorney General Bill Barr’s and Assistant AG Rod Rosenstein’s summary: Stick a fork in it (the refuted Trump/Russia “collusion” theory); the buzzer has sounded, the fans have left the stadium.

Country and blues songs have bemoaned the loss of something (dog, horse, better times) or someone (Mom, Dad, girlfriend, spouse and their love); that could apply to the evaporating mists of “closing walls,” “dropping bombshells,” and “beginning of the end” of the Orange Man Bad, AKA Donald Trump. (Look up the origins of “Orange Man Bad” on reddit, shorthand for Trump’s critics and haters) We have never denied the Russian interference; but Trump wasn’t wrong to refuse to call Putin a liar and start a diplomatic row. Like Trump’s and my critics, the Intelligence Community has a spotty record and shouldn’t be expecting blind acceptance of its pronouncements. Useful, I guess, when they fit the party line.

His election spawned the rage machine stuck in the “Denial” and “Anger” stages of grief (virtual primal screams remain); Barr’s 4-page summary is now supported by the Mueller Report itself. No collusion, no obstruction, no American was found to have conspired with Russian efforts to influence the election. My letter-writing critic simply has no case that Russian actions changed any votes—cite a name, quote a real person that was going to vote for Hillary Clinton until they read some Russian social media post. It’s ludicrous to claim an ephemeral 80,000 voters would have chosen Hillary absent Russian meddling. Conjecture doesn’t count. Obama presided over and dismissed the efficacy of such meddling.

“Bargaining” (grief stage 3): Congressional Democrats launching subpoenas, demands and threats thinking there’s some perfidy, some pony under the dung, so to speak. Trump and his supporters have told the truth from the start. The Democrat/media complex have now lost credibility; those who lapped it up should apologize and reject it. Look for “depression” and “acceptance” after November 2020.

Alternate reality: Instead of hatching 1) the Trump/Russia conspiracy, when Hillary’s campaign picked that to blame for her loss; 2) the Steele Dossier, bought and paid for by Hillary’s people, that precipitated the Intelligence and Justice/FBI skullduggery, actual spying and manipulation of the FISA courts, 3) false accusations and “trumped up” lies by Democrats; and

4) the fallacious efforts by that disgraced, “justifiably fired” James Comey to bring about the Special Prosecutor Mueller—In that reality, Democrats accepted Trump’s win, licked their political wounds, learned some valuable electoral lessons and “moved on.” They tried to win back the faith of Americans that they have workable ideas for fixing America’s problems. Instead, by hopping on the “conspiracy bandwagon,” they’ve encouraged the worst characters and traits in their political followers. Republicans then easily portray them as unhinged, undemocratic (only accepting the elections, laws and judicial rulings favorable to Democrats) and dangerous, socialist totalitarians.

Witness the shameless, shameful physical assaults on MAGA-hat-wearing people. The mob mentality (funny when the little fascists cry out for support from bystanders who ignore them) tries to make Trump’s people leave or avoid being in public spaces—guilty of walking, eating, relaxing, schooling or gassing their cars “while conservative.” For 14 years local leftists have provided rationales to “prove” that this, the only local, weekly conservative column in Northern California, shouldn’t be printed.

Rather than a “disservice” to readers, this column is the only voice of an actual Trump voter to appear among local columnists on this page. Local leftists cherry-pick some inconsequential “distinction-without-a-difference” or try to discredit someone’s opinion because they once said something the left condemns. Know this: A person falsely accused of the worst perfidy and crime—who knows he or she is completely innocent—is not suspect because they lash out at those disingenuously spreading lies and trying to deprive them of their life, liberty or property (or the office to which they were legitimately elected).

Lashing out can cross the line but Barr accurately described the horrendous abuse that Trump (rightly) believed he was being singled out for, and correctly stated it to be “unprecedented” in our history. Read this carefully: The legal actions of someone falsely accused and fighting back in the war over public and political image are not, repeat not, “obstruction of justice” when the only actual “justice” is that person’s exoneration.

“Donald Trump was being framed, he fought back. That is not Obstruction.” (Jesse Watters) Trump: “I had the right to end the whole Witch Hunt if I wanted. I could have fired everyone, including Mueller, if I wanted. I chose not to. I had the RIGHT to use Executive Privilege. I didn’t!”

Tucker Carlson rightly wrote: “If dozens of Federal prosecutors spent two years trying to charge you with a crime, and found they couldn’t, it would mean there wasn’t any evidence you did it—and that’s what happened here—that’s what we just learned from the Mueller Report. The Mueller Report is perhaps the single most humiliating thing that has ever happened to the White House Press in the history of this Country. They knew they lied…Many reporters lied about Russia Collusion and so much more. Clapper & Brennan, all lies.” Have any of them, any Democrat candidates, apologized to Trump? I’m waiting.

“For approximately 3 million people nothing in the Mueller report could exonerate President Trump of ‘Russian collusion,’ obstruction of justice and various other high crimes and misdemeanors of which they are certain he is guilty. For those 3 million people (the average weekday primetime audience of CNN and MSNBC) Trump’s guilt is an indisputable fact, his presidency an ongoing crime against humanity, his 2016 election a fraud.” (Robert S. McCain) Such readers should just walk away…from those channels and the Democrat Party. Stop poisoning yourselves with vile, hate-filled propaganda.