They would pretend to be interested in separating the warring factions while the camera rolled. When he felt he had gotten enough footage for great tabloid TV, he would say: “We’ll be right back.”
The climax of a typical “Maury Show” is when the host reveals to an excited audience and a disputing couple the result of a DNA test that proves who the real father of a child is. If the redacted copy of the Mueller Report were released on the “Maury Show,” it would have happened like this: Maury Povich would have raised the brown envelope up and flapped it in the air to the cheer of his audience. He would have opened it, brought out the paper inside, and read:
On the issue of collusion with Russia, Robert Mueller did not find enough evidence to prove that you, Donald Trump, or your campaign colluded with Russians to rig the 2016 election. But the report noted that your campaign benefited from the Russian intervention in the election and also openly encouraged Russia or any other bad actor in the dark web to interfere in your favor during the election.
This would have drawn loud cheers from Trump’s supporters. Mr. Povich would pause for the cheers to subside. Then, he would read again.
On the issue of obstruction of justice, Robert Mueller did find enough evidence of efforts by you, President Trump, to influence the investigation. There were at least ten episodes of attempts by you to either fire the special counsel or to terminate the investigation itself. In most cases, your subordinates who received orders from you to fire the special council ignored you. Because of the Justice Department’s long-standing policy of not indicting a sitting president, Robert Mueller punted to Congress on the matter of what to do about your obstruction of justice.
This would have led to a division in the audience with one side cheering for President Trump, while the other side would be jeering. There would be clashes with punches thrown and someone throwing chairs at others. Mr. Povich and his security men would intervene. They would pretend to be interested in separating the warring factions while the camera rolled. When he felt he had gotten enough footage for great tabloid TV, he would say: “We’ll be right back.”
That is Maury Show. And that is not very different from the show going on in America’s Capitol.
The reality is that the Democrats know that even if they impeached the president in the House of Representatives, the Senate will not convict or remove him. As a result, there is no stomach for an impeachment proceeding in Congress. It is, therefore, right to assume that President Donald Trump is as free as a bird.
In fact, the president celebrated this freedom by calling the Mueller Report a crazy work by 18 angry Democrats Trump haters. The man who celebrated no collusion and no obstruction a few weeks ago when the report was submitted turned around to deny what his aides told Robert Mueller. He called them total bullshits. One of such statements reported to have made the president mad was a quote on his reaction the moment his former attorney general Jeff Sessions told him that a special counsel had been appointed to look into the matter of Russian collusion.
The Mueller Report quoted Trump to have said, “Oh, my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”
As it stands now, the worst is over for the president. In the words of White House Counsel Kellyanne Conway, the day the redacted Mueller Report was made public was the best day of Trump’s presidency. Other Republicans agreed with her. They quickly urged the country to move on.
In the next few weeks, the democrats will try to set up scrimmages but they will all amount to nothing. The nation will move on to the weighty issue of who will run the United States from January 2021 to January 2025.
Having said that, something that must not be ignored was what Kellyanne Conway’s husband George Conway wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece. He stated that President Trump has become a cancer on the presidency of the United States and as such must be removed.
The failure of the polarized political class in America to objectively review what had transpired since Donald Trump stepped onto America’s political scene comes with an inherent danger. The danger has a name. And it is called, the consequences of the miseducation of President Donald J. Trump.
Washington Post fact checkers have calculated close to 10,000 times that President Trump told a lie to the American people. It is not okay to have it as a new normal that the words coming out of the mouth of the president of the United States are meaningless. Beyond the Mueller Reports, there have been scores of episodes where the president asked people working for him to break the law. Again, it is not okay to have this as a new normal.
For the president’s supporters, the only acceptable analysis of these flagrant violations of rules and norms is that the president had never been a politician and so does not know what is politically right or wrong. If he does not know, who is going to teach him? Mueller punted and so will Congress.
The supporters of the president who have an iota of moral code concede that the president does not care because he is single-mindedly determined to deliver on his campaign promises to the American people. An African proverb says that before you put down a fence, find out why it was put up in the first place.
Those who make these excuses for the president are not curtailing his miseducation but enabling it. When the consequences of Trump’s miseducation stare us in the face, I hope they will proudly call themselves his accomplices.
Oh, dang. They did that already. We’ll be right back.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo’s latest book written under the pseudonym of Rudolf t. g. Hess is “The Secret Letters of President Donald J. Trump age 72 1/6“