What if Mueller hasn’t got this? I’ve been asking this question a lot lately, as it seems that many people in this country believe without hesitation that Donald Trump and members of his campaign team and administration willfully and knowingly conspired with a foreign adversary to sway the 2016 election in Trump’s favor, yet are perfectly willing to just sit around and wait for Robert Mueller to take care of the problem for us. The mantra “Mueller’s got this” has been resounding on Facebook and Twitter, and the expectation appears to be that Mueller will produce a mountain of damning evidence against Trump and his cohorts and that will be the end of that. The evildoers will be carted off to prison and we can just go about our lives as if this painful national episode was a mere blip on the radar. So, I ask once again, what if Mueller hasn’t got this? What do we do then?
The answer is simple: We do what we should have been doing all along. We get off our lazy, complacent behinds, get out into the streets, and demand that we put an end to this disturbing slide into fascism and begin to move toward a government that truly represents we, the people, and not just the billionaires and corporate CEOs. This isn’t Donald Trump’s country. This is our country. It’s high time we took back the America we love.
I’m not talking about violence here. I’m talking about concerted, dedicated, non-stop, peaceful protest. We need to be out in the streets today, and we need to stay in those streets holding signs and demanding our rights, until Donald Trump has been removed from office. Then we need to stay out there and protest some more because Donald Trump is merely a symptom of a disease that has been growing in America for many years.
I’m not disparaging Robert Mueller in any way, either. He is an extremely dedicated, competent professional, and if anyone has the ability and gravitas to get the goods on Donald Trump, it’s him. I’m saying that Robert Mueller is not going to be enough. He was never going to be enough. This constitutional crisis and this fight for our country and way of life were always going to happen. It’s not going to be enough for us to just sit back and watch. Before this thing is over, we are going to need to be active participants in our own salvation. That’s the way American democracy works. If we won’t take the responsibility to fight for it, then we will surely lose it.
Look at what is going on right now. All indications point to Trump firing Mueller the first opportunity he gets. Why wouldn’t he? You think Trump is just going to stand around as the dragnet closes around him, then be peacefully led away in cuffs? According to an article in the Hill on Saturday, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) says there is a rumor going around Capitol Hill that Trump is planning to fire Mueller by Christmas. All of the Trump-friendly right-wing media has been pointing to this for the past couple of weeks, calling Mueller a “dirty cop” and saying that his investigation is loaded with agents possessing “extreme anti-Trump bias.” Judge Jeanine Pirro, a constant Fox News mouthpiece for the Trump administration, has gone so far as to demand that the loyal, patriotic agents of the FBI working with Mueller be rounded up and arrested.
"The only thing that remains is whether we have the fortitude to not just fire these people immediately, but to take them out in cuffs…."
My #OpeningStatement : pic.twitter.com/BNUtLVydah— Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) December 17, 2017
Of course, Trump can’t just fire Mueller easily. He would either need to force Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein to do it (and Rosenstein has given no indication that he will) or fire Rosenstein and appoint a replacement who will. A new article in the Hill on Monday, however, gives credence to the idea that firing Rosenstein to get to Mueller is exactly what Trump plans to do. In the article, Trump calls Rosenstein “a threat to his presidency” and says he’s a “weak Democrat” (Rosenstein is actually a Republican).
Trump may very well understand that making any moves to fire Mueller or Rosenstein would seriously increase his chances of getting impeached. What seems most likely to me, however, is that Mueller could very well prove Trump’s guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt and it won’t matter at all. This Republican-led Congress has paid a lot of lip service to oppose Trump, but when push has come to shove, they have done precious little in the way of action to stand up to him. The RNC deciding to go all in and support the candidacy of Roy Moore in Alabama, after first calling on him to drop out of the race, tells me all I need to know about the amount of backbone they possess. I fully expect that they will do nothing again when Trump is exposed as a conspirator and obstructor of justice.
What I am saying is that nobody is coming to save us. Robert Mueller won’t save us, and neither will any of the congressional inquiries into the Trump-Russia scandal. We are on our own here and we have got to do this ourselves. It’s past time to steel ourselves for what is certain to be a long fight, but we need to stop being silent and make our millions and millions of voices heard. We may have been able to count on our constitutional protections and our country’s checks and balances and rule of law in the past, but those days are over. We are not going to have a decent America, a diverse America, an America that cares for its most vulnerable citizens, an America that respects science and education and expertise, an America that has freedom and opportunity for all Americans, regardless of skin color or sexual preference or gender identity, unless we fight for it ourselves. It’s up to us to take our country back from Donald Trump.