Robert Mueller is getting the last laugh

| 9:10 pm EST December 13, 2017
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Pay no attention to your television screen. That’s probably good advice in politics most of the time, considering the breathlessly hyperbolic and absurdly narrowly focused nature of most cable news programs. But now more than ever, it’s a good week to ignore the increasingly absurd prevailing narrative. No, Robert Mueller isn’t about to be fired, no matter how many times per minute the media repeats that prediction. The GOP is feeding the media a grand theater performance, and the media is eagerly lapping it up for ratings. Let’s talk about what’s really happening.

Let’s say the Republican Congress really did want to oust Robert Mueller before he can finish taking down Donald Trump. The GOP knows that Mueller’s firing would be extraordinarily unpopular, and that it would blow back on whoever is perceived to have been involved with it. In such case the GOP would be doing everything it could to publicly distance itself from the notion of Mueller being fired, even as it worked behind the scenes to try to force him out.

Instead we’re seeing the opposite. The Republican Congress is making a point of publicly marrying itself to the idea that Mueller must go. That means that not only does the GOP have no intention of ousting Mueller, it has no intention of allowing Mueller to be ousted by Trump. Instead, the GOP is trying to muddy the waters in order to keep Trump afloat until his signature is on whatever finalized version of the tax scam bill it ends up passing, if any.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump suddenly thinks he has the upper hand in the Russia scandal, because he sees the Republican Congress publicly trashing Robert Mueller left and right. This is setting Mueller up to get the last laugh. He’s still plugging away in the background, dismantling Trump’s world piece by piece. The GOP clearly wants Mueller to take Trump down, so it can go into the midterms without Trump hanging around their necks. The GOP just wants to make sure Trump’s base doesn’t blame it for Trump’s demise. This is all just theater.