There may be no smoking gun in the Russia investigation; that’s what a MSNBC host admitted on the Australian show Q&A. Katy Tur was asked about the upcoming presidential elections. Tur said she doesn’t know who the Democrats will run in 2020, nor is she entirely sure that anti-Trump Republicans will run someone to primary the president. She did say that in the recent Pennsylvania special election in the soon-to-be axed 18thcongressional district, Republican Rick Saccone ran as a Donald Trump carbon copy, while Democrat Conor Lamb ran a very local campaign and did not tie himself to the national Democratic Party. He was also anti-Nancy Pelosi and against a ban on so-called gun rights. In some ways, Lamb ran as a moderate Republican—and he won (barely). Tur added that Democrats have to choice a path concerning 2020. Do they follow the Lamb route or jump into the gutter. It remains to be seen.
The second part of the question posited to her was the Mueller investigation. Tur doesn’t think there will be evidence of collusion, though she feels that it’s important that news about it convinces the die-hard core of Trump voters that this investigation matters (via NTK Network):
As for the Mueller investigation, I – as an American, as a citizen, I am fascinated to know what he finds. I’m not so sure that he’s going to find this smoking gun of coordination or collusion. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did,” Tur said.
Tur then said that the question really is what Mueller needs to find to convince Trump supporters that it’s real and it matters.
“I don’t know how it ends,” Tur said.
Well, I don’t think there will be a smoking gun either, and that goes for most people since the investigation, an ongoing venture for over a year now, has yielded zero evidence that the Kremlin colluded with the Trump campaign. Every new hot take or explosive development has not been worthy enough to last a week or more. It’s been an endless series of nothing burgers and gross speculation by the press. Was the Senate Intelligence Committee looking into a meeting between a wealthy Russian investor and Anthony Scaramucci, who gained notoriety for serving as White House Communications Director for less than two weeks? No. It was based on one anonymous source and it led to three members of CNN’s investigative reporting team getting the axe.There was the infamous email from a Trump donor who emailed the Trump team, including Donald Jr., and the then-candidate at the time, which included a decryption keyto a trove of documents on Wikileaks from the DNC and John Podesta. CNN said the email was sent on September 4, 2016. It was actually sent September 14 and the Wikileaks dump had already occurred a day earlier.
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There are other trip ups. So, even members of the media are coming around to the conclusion that there could be nothing to these allegations of collusion, which seemed more like an exercise in Democrats being exposed as sore losers over the 2016 election. Even now, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly told Trump that he more or less has nothing to fear over the Russia probe. This is worse than the Florida debacle in 2000. At least both sides accepted their fates in the recount that ended with George W. Bush winning the 2000 election. For 2016, we have a special counsel, whether its his intention or not, acting like a barnacle for Democrats’ dreams of removing a democratically-elected president because their gal couldn’t seal the deal.
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