Yes, this.
If you’re looking for Mueller to drop some tasty morsel of impeachable awesomeness that isn’t in his report, you may likely end up disappointed by his testimony.
But the value here is to have him talk, and in plain language say the things that are in his report. That’s the thing that moves public opinion.
Or, take it from Jerry Nadler:
vyshka
3455
They should have her come in to ask the questions.
This is…something else.
Trump accusing Mueller of the crime of destroying evidence of the FBI conspiracy against him…
Yes, because I’m sure the people that have been dismissing the report so far will tune in to the hearing and be turned around.
Have you guys seen the same electorate I’ve been watching? They aren’t going to watch these hearings. They’ll read snark tweets and watch summaries from their outlet of choice which will reinforce whatever position they leaned towards anyway.
Well, there’s two ways to go. On the one hand, the House could subpoena Mueller to come and answer questions about the report with the hope that the voting public will be better informed; on the other, the House should not do that, on the theory that no one will care. I’m kind of for the former, myself.
The people who support Trump wouldn’t care if he suspended elections and said we were allying with Russia and N. Korea. They would cheer for it.
Right, but, the news media will record him. Any bombs he says will be played on the evening news. It will be disseminated across social media. It may, maybe, even get played on … Fox News.
I don’t see how that’s going to sway a bunch of staunch evangelicals, racists, and fuck-you-got-mine tax hawks into thinking “Hey this report seems pretty damning. I guess we better support impeachment.”
Timex
3462
There are three groups of people:
- People who have read portions of the report, and are informed of its contents. These people almost universally think that Trump did some bad stuff.
- People who have not read the report, but have consumed propaganda from Barr et. al. and think that the report somehow clears Trump (while at the same time thinking that the report is a witch hunt and illegal and bad… because reasons.) These folks are not likely to be swayed, because they are true believers.
- People who have very little exposure to the report at all. This is probably the vast majority of Americans. And these folks, if they start seeing video clips of Mueller saying some of the bad stuff Trump did, that is in his report? Those folks may start to say, “holy crap, I didn’t know that.” Hell, there were even cases of Trump supporters who were at Amash’s town hall who straight up said, “I thought the report cleared trump, I had no idea it said bad things about him.”
Sometimes, simply hearing someone who you respect (meaning, not some talking head reporter on TV) actually verbalize something has a real impact on folks.
You don’t NEED to sway those people. They are a tiny portion of the population.
You need to get the support of the MIDDLE.
We’ll see. You guys are more optimistic than me, I guess.
I predict this shitshow will just go until the election. Trump won’t get impeached. He’ll just leave office and smugly tweet and sell bullshit for the rest of his life.
KevinC
3464
I’m with you, Telefrog. The way information is siloed these days, I don’t think those who voted for Trump but could be swayed back will see this. Those type of people that I know get all their information from Fox, and Fox will paint the testimony in a very different light. Just like they did with the report itself.
haha, no, I agree with you completely. In fact, I doubt Trump will leave office voluntarily or quietly on Jan 20, 2021.
Timex
3466
The thing you guys really need to understand, which I think is often missed, is that the country isn’t split up between you guys and the GOP die hards.
Both you and them are minority groups.
The majority of the country are folks in the middle, who are not die hard believers either way, and often just don’t give a shit about any of this stuff… they just want to be left alone and live their lives. This is probably a big part of why voter turnout is so low. Folks just don’t really care that much about any of this stuff. Not even because they don’t care about stuff like treason and putting kids in cages, but because they are blissfully unaware of most of this stuff even happening.
You can win over those guys, as long as you understand that they don’t agree with you on a lot of stuff, while simultaneously not being part of the far right’s camp. In a lot of cases, you can win them over just be being less extreme than the far right, because I think a lot of the middle is inherently pushed away by extremism. On some level, they’re inherently conservative in that they probably don’t want everything to change dramatically, since change is inherently disruptive, but they aren’t conservative in the way the far right is (which is really reactionary if anything, and in that way, wants to disrupt stuff just as bad).
Rather than trying to destroy the far right, you will likely have better luck by appealing to the middle… and in doing so, you’ll destroy the far right.
I’m trying to understand the idea of someone who doesn’t know any of this is happening, but will somehow see Mueller (or anyone, really) testify - an event which will only be available through methods that, if they were seeing those, they would already know about much of the stuff that is happening. It’s not going to get distributed by some magical method that hasn’t previously been used.
rowe33
3468
Is there a clip out there somewhere where Trump doesn’t sound like a dementia-ridden conspiracy nut ranting on a bar stool? Just amazing how utterly unhinged he always sounds.
A lot of people ate up DJT’s “NO COLLUSION AND NO OBSTRUCTION MUELLER REPORT” bullshit, especially when Barr seemed to support that conclusion in the most mealy mouthed way possible. Remember that story a few weeks of the female Fox viewer who was shocked hearing Mueller speak, since all she had heard was that the report exonerated the president.
Oghier
3470
Nothing will sway those true-believers. But not everyone in the GOP is a cultist, and stories like this (or kids in cages) can impact those voters. That’s critical. We don’t need Trump’s support to drop from 42% to 0 – even a small reduction could have a large impact on 2020.
Yeah, I was thinking of that too.
There are several. They all have in common they are at least two decades old.
