Trump is floundering disastrously on multiple fronts. Stop pretending he's in control.
By Greg Sargent
Opinion writer
April 5 at 10:33 AM
Because so many of us got it so wrong in 2016, there’s a tendency among many commentators to reflexively assume President Trump possesses some kind of hidden, magical sway over the political environment that we’re all missing. But if there’s anything that should shatter this illusion, it’s the events of this particular moment.
When Trump brashly proclaimed “total exoneration” based on his attorney general’s four-page summary of the special counsel’s findings, it was widely proclaimed that Trump and Republicans were now “turning the tables” and going “on offense” against the media and Democrats for supposedly blowing the Russia scandal. Some in the media flagellated themselves upon Trump’s demand, and others absurdly overstated the scale of Trump’s new command of the political narrative.
Yet now new reports have badly damaged that story line by revealing that some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators say Attorney General William P. Barr’s letter underplayed just how damaging their findings really are for Trump — and that they prepared summaries of their findings, expressly for public release, that Barr did not divulge.
Barr is now facing sharp criticism by some in the legal community for his handling of this affair. And Democrats are now demanding these summaries, as well as communications with the special counsel about Barr’s decision-making. Whether or not these are forthcoming, it’s clear Democrats have new openings to pressure Barr for much greater disclosure than before.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/05/trump-is-floundering-disastrously-multiple-fronts-stop-pretending-hes-control/
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