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President Trump sure had a lot to say about Robert Mueller’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees for someone who said “No, I’m not going to be watching, probably, maybe I’ll see a little bit of it,” as Trump told reporters on Monday in the Oval Office.
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In fact, Trump was live-tweeting in a social media counter-programming to the testimony that was dominating cable news coverage.
Trump tried to pretend that he was merely responding to what he learned about the testimony on a second-hand basis — attacking Mueller’s denial of ever having interviewed for becoming the replacement for James Comey as FBI Director after Trump fired Comey as if he learned it from others.
….interview, including the Vice President of the United States!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2019
Discarding the question of whether Mike Pence or anyone else aligned with the president would be a reliable witness, the dispute over the nature of the meeting essentially will come down to whether you believe the word of a president who has been documented as a compulsive liar or the straight-arrow prosecutor with an impeccable reputation for integrity.
Trump gave away the fact that he was indeed watching the Fox News coverage of the testimony with his next two tweets by posting quotes from the right-wing news channel’s hosts that made him look as good as he could given the devastating facts in the Mueller report that the Special Counsel was confirming in his testimony.
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“This has been a disaster for the Democrats and a disaster for the reputation of Robert Mueller.” Chris Wallace @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2019
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“Mueller was asked whether or not the investigation was impeded in any way, and he said no.” In other words, there was NO OBSTRUCTION. @KatiePavlich @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2019
While Katie Pavlich may believe that the answer she quoted exonerated the president of obstruction of justice, the fact is that the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee walked Mueller through numerous incidents documented in his report that were clearly intended to impede his investigation, including telling White House Counsel Don McGhan to fire Mueller and then lie about Trump ever making that request.
Trump close following of the proceedings was definitively proven with his next series of tweets which were simply eight retweets of excerpts of the testimony that he felt were favorable to his case. Every excerpt retweeted by the president was simply footage of Trump’s Republican allies regurgitating conspiracy theories about the origins of the investigation or attempting to discredit the report’s results.
Perhaps the most telling retweet that Trump sent today so far was his last, a retweet of a post from his personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, essentially attacking Mueller’s investigation as a faulty politically-motivated probe that eventually exonerated the president and declaring the “case is closed.”
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THREAD: Statement from Jay Sekulow, Counsel to the President:
“This morning’s testimony exposed the troubling deficiencies of the Special Counsel’s investigation. The testimony revealed that this probe was conducted by a small group of politically-biased prosecutors…
— Jay Sekulow (@JaySekulow) July 24, 2019
The American people understand that this issue is over. They also understand that the case is closed.”
— Jay Sekulow (@JaySekulow) July 24, 2019
Try as he might to deny and discredit the realities of Mueller’s findings, Trump’s credibility — meager as it already is given his long and documented history of promulgating falsehoods — was undermined by his lying about whether he would even watch the special counsel’s testimony this morning.
If he can’t be trusted to tell the truth about something as simple and trivial as that, how can anyone expect him to be telling the truth about anything else?
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
