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Friday, February 15, 2019

Coming to the End of the Island

The word is that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report will end not with a bang but with a whimper. There'll be no evidence adduced, those in the know are whispering, that President Trump engaged in any collusion with Russia.

Adam Mill (a pseudonym), in a column at The Federalist, claims that everyone should have known this all along but that those on the left have convinced themselves that the only way Mr. Trump could have defeated Hillary Clinton was by receiving aid from those nefarious Russians. They've been as sure of this as any True Believer could be of anything.

But Mill thinks they're in for an enormous letdown. He compares the situation to an old Seinfeld episode. Here's his lede:
In episode 171 of “Seinfeld,” George Costanza makes up a story about having a house in the Hamptons in order to avoid attending an event with his dead fiancĂ©e’s parents, the Rosses. He soon learns they know of his deception but the Rosses nevertheless accept an invitation to the fictitious house.

George picks them up and begins driving towards a house that doesn’t exist. Both the Rosses and George maintain the pretense until George drives to the end of [Long Island] past the last house in the Hamptons. George silently pleads for the Rosses to put an end to the charade. The lie’s momentum took on a life of its own as the players all continued acting their parts long after the truth was known.

The episode comes to mind as the media has started backing away from the Russia collusion hoax. Like Costanza, many of the media perpetrators seem to know a reckoning is coming. Politico warned Trump haters, “Prepare for disappointment.”... Mueller’s longtime top deputy at the FBI recently warned, “A public narrative has built an expectation that the special counsel will explain his conclusions, but I think that expectation may be seriously misplaced.”
Mill goes on to give a half dozen signs that should've been obvious from the beginning that the entire "Russian Collusion" investigation was a charade. Anyone interested in why no one should've been duped should read the column.

But many people were duped, perhaps willingly, perhaps not. Consider the good folks at progressive cable outlets like CNN and MSNBC. I think many of them truly believed that Mr. Trump was guilty as sin, and they've invested their entire professional lives for the last two years in promoting the story that Mueller is just one discovery away from ridding us for good of the loathsome imposter in the White House.

They've scarcely talked about anything else every hour of every day since November of 2016. Like lovesick teenagers it seems to be all they think about both waking and sleeping. Some of them have spent the two years past in gleeful expectation of seeing Mr. Trump frog-marched to the metaphorical scaffold.

The prospect of his humiliation has animated them, filled them with the thrilling anticipation of a child on Christmas eve, infused their lives with meaning and purpose.

If Mueller presents them instead with a resounding nullity I'm afraid that some of these poor media folks will have to be put on suicide watch. It'll be too much for them to bear.

Having suffered the incredible shock of election night's stunning upset of Hillary Clinton, whose electoral victory they all assumed was a mere formality, and now having to endure this second crushing disappointment of learning that what they just knew was beyond question - that Mueller would show that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians - is simply false, will be devastating.

If that's what unfolds in the near future the trauma will be like discovering that one's most profound convictions were all complete fabrications. If reporting the election results in front of the cameras was close to torture for them, a nothingburger from Mr. Mueller will be cruelty compounded.

Where is the soul so callous and cold-hearted that he could fail to feel sorry for them?