That sharp intake of breath you just heard was the sound of Washington suddenly realizing it might soon hear what’s been discovered by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged collusion between President Trump and Russia. You probably wonder how we swamp dwellers can still be interested, and ask yourself, doesn’t everyone already know there won’t be a bombshell or anything on that account to inculpate the president?
If your mind was running in that direction, you’re probably on the right track for, as Andrew McCarthy explains in our cover story, Mueller’s conclusions shouldn’t quicken the pulse of ordinary people; he won’t reveal national security crimes or, as Democrats fervently wish, that Trump is Putin’s puppet. But ordinary people don’t obsess over minutiae or scour nuances to see if they can scrape together a smidgen of political advantage. By contrast, however, that’s exactly what Washington always does, and it will treat Mueller’s findings not as a long-desired end of the affair, but as the beginning, just the first chapter.
Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has made it plain that he won’t change course even if, as expected, Mueller finds no evidence of the outrages Schiff has been retailing for the past two years. (Remember when he said he had more than circumstantial evidence of Trumpian collusion with Russia? Oddly, he doesn’t say that anymore.) The chairman won’t allow this to slow him down. No dud from Mueller will deflect him from his No. 1 task, which is to cast doubt on the legitimacy of an elected president who comes from the wrong party and wasn’t supposed to win. Absent Trump being inculpated by Mueller, Schiff will start another investigation of his own. He and other Democrats want something impeachable. That doesn’t mean they’ll actually try to impeach Trump, but their left-wing base is clamoring for it.
Brexit is coming. The necessary law is in place, and if no one does anything, Britain will be out of the European Union at 11 p.m. on March 29. In this issue of Washington Examiner magazine, Brexit-supporting Sumantra Maitra, an immigrant to Britain, explains that it’s the decision of a frustrated population restoring desperately needed self-government to repair their broken social contract.
Conservatives’ internecine hostilities over Trump took a new turn last week when contributor Steve Hayward wrote a letter to combatants pleading for rules of civilized engagement to avoid smashing long-standing friendships on the rocks of strategic, tactical, and ideological difference. Hayward has expanded his plea into an open letter and drafted a “Geneva Convention for the Trump Wars,” which is likely to be increasingly necessary as the 2020 presidential election campaign hammers wedge deeper into the fissures splitting the conservative movement.
Finally, make sure you don’t miss our visit to New York’s Museum of the Dog, our effort to get to the bottom of a flat glass of beer, and both Paul Bedard’s mania for bonfires and Trent Reedy’s job of chauffeur in gun-toting Afghanistan.
