The poor Democrats. Can you believe that they actually practiced in mock hearings what was going to go down today during the Mueller testimony?

Oh, yes, they did. Jerry Nadler admitted yesterday that they were staging rehearsals for today’s hearings to CNN. I can just see them now, scribbling out questions with glee and practicing just the best way of saying them, like they were middle schoolers preparing for the talent show.

And then Robert Mueller actually showed up, and as Nina and Toni have both recounted, he neither looked good nor gave the Democrats any additional ammunition to use against President Trump. This, of course, is a colossal disappointment to the left. They were really and truly invested in the narrative that IF they could just get Mueller into a committee hearing and under oath, OF COURSE he would spill the proverbial beans on all the awful, horrible, and totally illegal things the Bad Orange Man did to get elected!

It didn’t happen.

In fact, none other than Lawrence Tribe is raising the white flag on Twitter.

Much as I hate to say it, this morning’s hearing was a disaster. Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it. The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set back, not advanced.

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) July 24, 2019

Wow. That is a lot of defeat packed into 240 characters or less. And round two is not shaping up to be any better for the Democrats at the moment, because they just lost a major talking point. Representative Ted Lieu was super excited that he got Mueller to say that the only reason that President Trump was not charged was because of the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion that a sitting president couldn’t be charged. He tweeted it out and everything. And then Mueller promptly killed that talking point in the opening minutes of round two.

Mueller adding a correction to his testimony this morning…

"I want to go back to one thing that was said this morning by Mr. Lieu who said, and I quote, 'you didn’t charge the president because of the OLC opinion.' That is not the correct way to say it." pic.twitter.com/H0iUJ03nyi

— Andrew Clark (@AndrewHClark) July 24, 2019

Wow. That’s gotta sting. And you know Ted Lieu was probably telling his media team to start making ads and everything with his shining moment in the committee.

Sooooo…. what happens after you admit defeat? You start assigning blame for why things went bad.

Also to folks who are like "WHY IS THE MEDIA FOCUSING ON OPTICS INSTEAD OF SUBSTANCE?!?!?" the whole reason the Democrats held this hearing was because they thought it would make for good optics; Mueller made clear ahead of time that the substance was all in the report itself.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 24, 2019

The finger-pointing, infighting, and blame game that is sure to start immediately after the second hearing concludes is sure to be epic. I hope you all have popcorn at the ready.

There is just no way that the Democrats don’t come out of this situation without egg on their faces at a minimum. Of course the true believers are going to hang on to the narrative, come hell or high water, but the reality is that the Democrats had banked on Robert Mueller to undo the 2016 election. They waited patiently over the course of over two years, trusting that out of a pile of manure that they kept building, Mueller would appear with a pony JUST FOR THEM. Instead, there are now really legitimate questions about just how much work Mueller himself actually did over the course of the investigation, as well as speculations on Mueller’s health and mental capacity. The Democrats wanted Mueller to come in and save the day. Instead, they look like the abusive spouse who just dragged Grandpa out of the nursing home to stand as a character witness in a divorce hearing.

Featured image via Pixabay, Pixabay license