Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.com
Trump unleashed his most unhinged and troubling attack yet on special counsel Robert Mueller this weekend. Yet the vast majority of Republican senators have nothing to say on the matter.
After the abrupt firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe late Friday, Trump began digging himself in even deeper as far a potential obstruction case. His lawyer John Dowd explicitly connected McCabe’s firing to the Russia investigation — a statement Dowd tried to walk back.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted that “The Mueller probe should never have been started” — the first time he has mentioned Mueller by name on Twitter.
Then Sunday morning, he rattled off more tweets, lashing out at Mueller, McCabe, and former FBI Director James Comey.
“Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans?” Trump ranted. “Does anyone think this is fair?”
The increasingly rabid shots at Mueller’s credibility seem to indicate that Trump is getting closer to firing the special counsel. And that would be nothing short of a constitutional crisis.
But very few Republican senators have thus far shown the courage or the patriotism to stand up to Trump’s demagoguery.
In fact, as of Sunday afternoon, only Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Jeff Flake of Arizona have done so.
CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Graham if he was “worried that the president is preparing to order the firing of Mueller.”
“If he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency,” Graham replied.
Also on CNN, Flake noted that “all along, it was … once he goes after Mueller, then we will take action.”
“I think that people see that as a massive red line that can’t be crossed,” he continued. “And I would just hope that enough people would prevail on the president now: ‘Don’t go there.’”
And on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rubio flatly dissented from Trump’s undermining of the investigation. “I remain confident that the special counsel is going to conduct a probe that is fair and thorough and is going to arrive at the truth,” he declared.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul came close to taking a stand. But he only offered the weak response that he wouldn’t “advocate” for Mueller’s firing.
And thus out of 51 Republican senators, only 3 seem to evince any real concern that their president is ready to throw the Constitution out the window in order to save his own skin.
Their colleague in the House, Trey Gowdy, had this advice for Trump’s lawyer: “If you have an innocent client, act like it.”
And if the client acts as guilty as Trump has this weekend, that demands loud condemnation from everyone in government.
Yet 48 Republican senators have suddenly lost their voices.
