1. SO MUCH more than that. What Barr & the GOP pulled off w the release of the Mueller Report was demonstrated mastery of the American media & the news cycle.

They manipulated both brilliantly.

The reason reporters are conditioned to report a stalled bill as "Congress failing

2. to pass a covid relief bill"- the norm of objectivity- has allowed the RNC/GOP/Trump to develop a system to manipulate the media into doing their dirty work. But never have we seen it orchestrated so deliberately & cleanly as it was to neutralize the Mueller Report. By his
3. "Letter to Congress" where he intentional mispresented the findings of the report on 2 crucial areas- the investigation's conclusions regarding the activities of the Trump campaign and Russia and whether or not the President's actions to damage/disrupt the investigation
4. constitutes obstruction of justice, Barr & the GOP team understood that if the report was released, the media would likely get out on its own this meaning: Trump campaign's contacts with Russia did not rise to criminal charges and that Trump can not be charges w obstruction
5. while being president. BUT, by sending out this letter that interprets the report for the media in advance (well in advance!) of the actual report- Barr can instead tell the media a different narrative, far more favorable to Trump. These, of course, go on to become the
6. prevailing narratives bc even AFTER the report gets released showing contradictions to Barr's interpretations, most the media, beyond Fox News STILL uses Barr's frame about Trump saying things like "the Trump campaign was cleared of collusion" or "no collusion was found" which
7. which drives me NUTS bc if you take away Barr's memo & presser & effort to frame it as such, actually reading the report does NOT leave you with any such notion that the Trump campaign didn't collude with Russia! Yet, to this day, in defense of their "investigation of the
8. investigators" you'll hear Rs talk about a Trump campaign that was vindicated of involvement w Russians by the Mueller Report/Russia investigation. And they get SO MUCH help with this from reporters/journalists that were manipulated, intentionally manipulated via this planned
9. roll-out system w the memo that includes headlines like Mueller Finds No Conspiracy when f'ing Paul Manafort is slipping the Kremlin their Blue Wall targeting plans!! I'llbe writing about it in the book as THE greatest manipulation of the media in history.

More from Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌

1. I think so. I don't think the issue are plans. The issue is that the ability of our govn't to function-to create & enact policy- has been seriously abridged the past decade to the point where it can't function. We've seen virtually no legislation this past decade & pretty


2. much none relying on just "regular order." Although the Ds spent almost a year trying w the ACA before giving up & using a procedural trick in the end. Keep in mind, McConnell changed the operation of senate so that all bills, ALL, had to reach 60 vote threshold in the senate

3. That was a MASSIVE change to the legislative filibuster (a massive abuse of it). It creates a super majority requirement for laws that the Framers didn't design. And given the issue of misrepresentation the senate, which is causing a Tyranny of the Minority, its really shut

4. down the federal lawmaking apparatus. If Ds flip these 2 GA senate seats, the legislative filibuster will be right back in the spotlight bc McConnell will use it to lockdown Biden's legislative agenda. And we'll have to see how Biden responds. I agree that Biden needs to give

5. McConnell an opp to change his behavior, but if he doesn't Biden will have to go w EOs or ending the legislative filibuster. Either that, or getting nothing done. The GOP will seek to do to him what they did to Obama- use control of the senate OR the filibuster to prevent

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