Mitch McConnell is having a bad day

| 9:40 pm EDT May 7, 2019
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With Robert Mueller tentatively set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee next week, and Don McGahn set to do the same the week after that (no, the current document feud with the White House doesn’t preclude McGahn from testifying), we’re about to see Donald Trump’s worst nightmare play out on live national television. Suddenly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has something to say about it.

Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor today to deliver a lengthy and impassioned monologue about how the Trump-Russia scandal is over. Here’s the thing. When you have to go to such lengths to declare that something is over, it means it’s definitely not over. In fact it means you’re worried about where things are heading, and you’re taking histrionic measures in the hope of steering things in a different direction. There’s also more to it.

It’s not as if a lot of people were sitting home watching Mitch McConnell’s diatribe today. He’s hoping it’ll get some mention during the evening news cycle, when people get home from work and are watching, so they can hear him say that the Trump-Russia scandal is over. We’ll see if it has any impact, but don’t count on it. That said, the most interesting part of McConnell’s rant today is what he didn’t say.

Mitch McConnell spent a lot of time today trying to convince everyone that the Trump-Russia scandal is some kind of hoax. But McConnell didn’t really try to make the case that Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice scandal is a hoax. This strongly suggests that McConnell knows the obstruction scandal is about to blow up in Trump’s face, and that most Americans are going to conclude that Trump must be punished for it. Accordingly, McConnell isn’t currently willing to stick his neck out to protect Trump on obstruction. That tells us a lot.