Republicans demonstrate they aren't up to the task of confronting Trump
By Jennifer Rubin March 19 at 10:15 AM
Republicans fanned out on the Sunday shows, only to reveal how entirely unwilling they are to confront a president growing more unhinged by the day. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) when asked about the need for legislation to anticipate Robert S. Mueller’s firing asserted, “I don’t see the president firing him. I think the White House has said ten times, maybe more, that they’re not going to fire Robert Mueller, they want him to be able to finish the investigation. So I — I don’t even think that’s going to be necessary, because the president’s not going to fire him.” What!? Trump’s lawyer over the weekend declared Mueller should close up shop; Trump himself went after Mueller in a Sunday tweet. (“The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime.”)
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) insisted that firing Mueller would be “the beginning of the end” of Trump’s presidency. But why would Trump believe that? Republicans have been too afraid to pass legislation protecting Mueller, and they have lamely accepted everything from the vengeful firing of former deputy director Andrew McCabe less than two days before his retirement to smears on the FBI to threats against former FBI director James B. Comey.
Republicans still refuse to be candid about what the investigation has already found and why Trump’s attacks on the FBI and special prosecutor are themselves evidence of “corrupt intent.” It would be nice if they called out Trump as, for example, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) did. “If they didn’t do anything wrong, why are they going to such extreme lengths to undermine this investigation, which is being carried out in a very responsible way? You have noticed there haven’t been many, if any leaks from the Mueller investigation, nonpolitical,” he said on “Face the Nation.” “They’re trying to get to the bottom of a very complicated set of facts. And anybody that says there’s nothing to it, well, they have already had three or four guilty pleas and 15 or 20 indictments. That tells me that there is something going on here, and there’s something serious.” Is it really so hard for GOP leaders to say something as obvious as that?
Instead we get these musings from GOP senators — who you’d never know had the power to restrain the president if only they put their minds to it. “I would hate to demoralize the workforce. And more importantly, I would hate to discourage new people from coming into that. So I just don’t like the whole tone,” Sen Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) complained on “Meet the Press.” He later said, “I think we need to be very careful about taking these very important entities and smearing everybody in them with a broad stroke.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/03/19/republicans-demonstrate-they-arent-up-to-the-task/?utm_term=.b4bdec07ffeb
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