A week ago today, the issuance of the Mueller Report finally popped the long-inflating bubble of the Trump/Russia collusion hoax. After thousands of excited and breathless press reports and cable news segments over two-plus years (“new bombshell,” “the walls are closing in,” “impeachment,” etc.), it turned out that there was nothing there. So is there any point in wasting any more time on this? Why don’t we all just move on?
You won’t be surprised that many voices in the media are already advocating for that. At the New York Times, they had barely made it to Tuesday when the lead front page article, headlined “Trump, Citing ‘Evil Deeds,’ Turns Wrath on His Critics,” started pushing for Trump to “drop the subject,” citing the precedents of Reagan and Clinton:
[Trump’s] approach [of seeking retribution against his critics], if it lasts, contrasts with those of other presidents who survived major scandals. After the Iran-contra affair, President Ronald Reagan happily dropped the subject and focused on arms control talks with the Soviet Union and other issues. After being acquitted at his Senate impeachment trial, President Bill Clinton was just as eager to move on to Social Security and other initiatives.
Less expected, perhaps, was the op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the same day from long-time G.W. Bush advisor Karl Rove, with the headline “Move On From Robert Mueller, Mr. President.” That article’s gist was captured in its sub-headline, “Obsessing over the investigation’s origins isn’t the way to win over swing voters.” Rove urges Trump to switch his attention to focusing on a positive message, including the strong economy.
I’m not here to advise the President on how to conduct his messaging or his campaign. But I do think that it is of great importance not to let the perpetrators of the Russia hoax — both media and deep state actors — off the hook. It’s not just that the respective Reagan and Clinton controversies are not remotely relevant. (Both Reagan in Iran-Contra and Clinton in the Lewinski matter had been caught in actual wrongdoing. You might think the wrongdoing was trivial in either instance or both, but wrongdoing it was. Of course those two were only too happy to move on.) More important is that getting out the positive message of more freedom and less government and less government dependency — whether by the President or anyone else — is critically dependent on maximally discrediting and sidelining these hoaxers. . . .
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