**Abandon The Swamp**
Abandon The Swamp
_Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,_ (https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/20/abandon-the-swamp/)
**Suppose a document drops in the wilderness and no one is around to hear it. Does it make a sound?**
I submit that John Durham just tested this Bishop Berkeleyesque query. The special counsel spent four years beavering away in the forests of the deep state and what did he produce?
**Three hundred pages telling us what, for the most part, we already knew and with the result that exactly nothing, apart from a little hand wringing, will happen.**
We already knew that James Comey, Robert Mueller, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Michael Sussmann, Kevin Clinesmith, and all the other characters in and around the Russia Collusion Delusion had fabricated the story of Trump’s supposed connection with Russia out of whole cloth.
We already knew that they had gone out of their way to protect Hillary Clinton.
We knew that there was no predicate for obtaining a FISA warrant against Carter Page (one of many thousands of such warrants), thus opening a back door into the Trump campaign.
We knew that the surveillance apparatus of the regime had been weaponized to prevent Donald Trump from being elected and then, when he surprised everyone by winning anyway, to taint his administration and render him radioactive.
**What should we make of Durham’s non-revelatory revelations? I think that, wittingly or not, they were just a big exercise in track-covering, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Well, nothing beyond the sound and fury, anyway.**
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**Still, Durham’s bulletin is useful as a marker of the futility in which we labor.** André Gide touched on this point when he reminded us that “ _Toutes choses sont dites déjà, mais comme personne n’écoute, il faut toujours recommencer_.” Over the past five or six years, virtually everything that Durham said in his report had already been said. But because no one was listening, it is necessary to start again and say it once more.
In this spirit, I am going to say again some things I have said elsewhere, beginning with what has become my ritual invocation of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s observation that a week is a long time in politics. That’s time enough, as T. S. Eliot said in another context, “for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.”
Until the night of March 5, 2023, I suspected that “The Donald Trump Show,” which has been such blockbuster entertainment, might have entered its final season. That’s still possible, of course. The people clamoring for its cancellation are many and vociferous. Moreover, they have another concession with which they propose to entertain us: “The Ron DeSantis Deliverance.” Someday, I’d like to see that show myself.
I wonder, though, about the most profitable time to air it. 2024? Perhaps. But I think the jury is still out on that. We’ll know more after DeSantis finally announces what he has already made clear, namely that he, too, is running for the presidency in 2024. He will, if the past is any guide, get a bump in the polls. But at the moment, anyway, I am inclined to think that 2024 belongs to the Donald. Why? There are many reasons.
**One vivid reason was vouchsafed us during the final hours of the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) program in National Harbor, Maryland, in March. It was then that Trump addressed the crowd (https://www.c-span.org/video/?526456-1/president-trump-speaks-cpac). C-SPAN described the speech as “remarks.” To me, the word “remarks” suggests something brief and casual. Trump’s performance was long and, for Trump, well-prepared.**
As usual with the former president, the talk was peppered with digressions and offhand observations. But he was clearly following a script. Chris Christie, formerly an ally, sighed that the room was only half full (was it?) and that Trump was “not what he used to be (https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/3885066-chris-christie-on-trump-hes-not-what-he-used-to-be/).” Opinions about that vary. I thought the talk bristled with rhetorical electricity. And in terms of substance, it was one of the most forthright and powerful political speeches I’ve heard.
Earlier that day, Trump had won the CPAC straw poll (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/cpac-2023-trump-wins-straw-poll-desantis-loses-support) with 62 percent of the vote. DeSantis was the runner-up with 20 percent. As of May 19, with a half a dozen Republican candidates in the field, Trump leads by 42 points (https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo…