Last night we reported that “while Bill Barr may think his actions are protecting Donald Trump, they are only increasing the chances that Democrats will formally open an impeachment inquiry.”
This is just the latest evidence that Trump’s plan to hide the Mueller report is going bad, and in fact is turning into a disaster.
And, according to MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilemann, Trump and Barr’s strategy with respect to Mueller’s report is going to look worse every day.
Appearing on MSNBC with Brian Williams, when asked if the report could contain any good news for the president, Heilemann said:
“No. I think it’s evident that things are bad, and are going to get worse for the White House as it goes forward.”
Heilemann then explained that Barr’s actions make clear that he is acting in a partisan political way. And he doesn’t think in the long run this is going to help Trump at all politically.
In fact, he questioned if Trump even has a well thought out political strategy, saying:
“It is increasingly hard for people of good will, who wish for the Attorney General to be not a political actor. It’s almost impossible now to not see him as a political actor given where we’re headed, given the flimsiness of the explanations, given the lengths to which he seems to be going to protect the president.”
“He made a political and PR judgment to do this and it strikes me as a foolish one in that.”
“There was the idea of getting the best possible case out early, thinking this would cement public perceptions. They hoped the president would then be able to claim exoneration, so when the bad news does come out people won’t notice because everyone will have bought the exoneration line.”
“Part one has happened,” Williams pointed out, saying that they did succeed in getting out the best news first when Trump claimed total exoneration. But that wasn’t good enough, and it could backfire eventually.
According to Heilemann:
“Part one has happened, but I think it’s a woeful misreading of the news environment we live in now, where everything is changing so fast, where everything just vanishes into the air.”
“Winning the day now is not winning the first day, it’s winning the last day in the argument. It seems to me the trajectory of this only gets worse for the president and that this strategy fails on its own merits in that sense, but also looks increasingly bad as you go forward.”
Trump’s Mueller Report Strategy Is a Disaster and Will Only Get Worse For Him
Once members of Bob Mueller’s team leaked to the press that Bill Barr’s short letter was very misleading, things have only gone downhill for Donald Trump.
He was able to claim “total exoneration” for two days, but since then it has become clear that nobody believes this is really what Mueller’s report says.
Now Trump and Barr have decided to deflect public attention by starting to investigate the FBI itself, as if this will really do any good.
House Democrats are demanding to see a full, unredacted Mueller report, and if they don’t get it, they will immediately sue.
Donald Trump’s attempt to hide the report from Bob Mueller will fail, and in the long run will be a political disaster that will make it very unlikely that he will win reelection next year.
CLICK HERE to watch the Heilemann interview on MSNBC
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