ROM Watches Entire Day of Mueller Testimony So That You Don't Have To

Damn, that was painful.  Physically and psychologically painful.  

With nothing else to do today, this Retired Old Man (ROM) decided to spend the whole day watching the two back-to-back hearings of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller before Congress.  I mean, what else are we going to do?

In fact, we're especially well suited for the task.  Not only do we have the interest and the available time, but we've actually read the report.  No, not every word of every page  of the 448-page report, that would be ridiculous, but the report's laid out very logically and it's easy to skim past pages and pages discussing precedent and policies and focus on the findings themselves.  Also, the report is copiously footnoted and no one needs to read all the footnotes (it isn't Infinite Jest).  Given that it's heavily redacted, we were able to get through the report in less than 8 hours.

So Mueller said nothing today that we hadn't already read - that Russia engaged in sweeping and systematic interference in the 2016 election; that although the Trump campaign directly benefited from the interference and even aided and abetted in the interference, that assistance did not, in Mueller's opinion, rise to the level of "conspiracy" as defined by the law (and there is no statutory definition of "collusion"); that Trump and his administration actively interfered with Mueller's investigation and attempted to obstruct justice, citing at least 10 specific examples of obstruction; that it is DOJ policy that criminal charges cannot be brought against a sitting President while he is in office, so that it is up to Congress to decide what to do with Mueller's findings (e.g., impeachment, censure, or nothing). 

Democrats on both the morning Judiciary Committee hearing and the afternoon Intelligence Committee hearing tried to get Mueller to say more or be more explicit on which option he thought Congress should pursue, but Mueller refused to opine on anything and just kept reiterating that everything he had to say was in his report.  Republicans on both Committees kept trying to trick him into admitting that he and his staff were biased and prejudicial and out to get Trump (the old "witch-hunt" accusation), and Mueller refused to concede their point.

But the pain was in the slow, halting manner of Mueller's testimony.  He kept asking for questions to be repeated, he seemed to not remember what was in his own report without first looking it up, he had trouble hearing questions, and he generally appeared, well, not completely competent. At one point, he seemed to be searching and unable to recall the word "conspiracy."  It was a shocking and disappointing performance, and although by the end of the day he had succeeded in not letting Democrats embellish or Republicans dismiss his report, he didn't do much to enhance his reputation or credibility.

It was also painful to watch blustering Republican congressmen airing conspiracy theories and trying to get Mueller to agree to outlandish accusations, and try to make up for their lack of credibility or logic with volume, emotion, and faux outrage (Fox outrage?).

But it was also physically painful to sit indoors in front of a t.v. from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on a beautiful summer day watching this.   After the testimony was finally over, we went outside and took a nice, 3-mile-plus walk along the Beltline trail to get some fresh air and our blood circulating again.

From the very beginning of his testimony, Mueller made it clear that the report was not a full and complete exoneration of the president as Trump has claimed, which might have been a surprise for those inside the right-wing bubble who only get their news from the president's Tweets.  But given the partisan times, very few, if any, conservatives are going to reconsider the case against the president, and very few, if any, progressives are going to dismiss the investigation as a partisan with hunt.

Nothing changes, and that's probably the most painful part of all.