Buchanan: Deputy AG ‘Delivered a Real Potential Blow’ to Trump

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein this week “delivered a real potential blow” to President Donald Trump, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan said Friday.

By bowing to political pressure and appointing former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel, Buchanan said on “The Laura Ingraham Show,” he gave license to dig for years to find a crime for which so far there is no evidence.

“The media want that story to be on the front page every single day … Who feeds it more than the tweeter?”

“You have an investigation that’s gone on 10 months now by the FBI,” he said. “They have discovered no collusion between Trump’s campaign, apparently, because no one’s been indicted, and certainly not Trump, and everybody that speaks out says there’s been no collusion established.”

“So you have no crime or even alleged crime, and you appoint a special prosecutor who is gonna be there for years, who now has authority to rummage far beyond an investigation of the Trump campaign-Russia connection, etc.”

Buchanan said the move guarantees that Trump will be dogged by the issue.

“Rosenstein has really delivered a … potential blow to the president of the United States,” he said. “He’s going to be now under a cloud. It’s not gonna be concluded soon.”

But Buchanan said Trump compounds the problem every time he speaks out on the issue.

“I would tell him that, ‘You’re not helping the cause when you continually respond.’ The media want that story to be on the front page every single day,” he said, adding that every new statement or tweet is more fuel for the media storm. “Who feeds it more than the tweeter?”

Buchanan said the White House should adopt a strategy he suggested when he was a staffer in the Ronald Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra scandal. He said the White House brought in an outsider to investigate the matter and told reporters to call him on all Iran-Contra questions. That allowed press secretary Larry Speakes to avoid the daily fire.

Buchanan said Trump should keep the focus on the crimes that have been identified — illegal leaking of classified information. It is a job that the Republican-controlled Congress can assist with in its oversight capacity, but expect no help from media-hungry Republicans such as Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), Buchanan said.

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“McCain runs with the media,” he said. “What’s going to get him on the front page of The Washington Post, and what’s going to get him on TV?”

Buchanan also ridiculed allegations by Democrats that Trump tried to obstruct justice when he asked then-FBI Director James Comey in February if he could back off from an investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. That was Trump’s “acting like a human being” in reaction to a friend in trouble, he said.

If Comey believed it to be a crime, Buchanan said, he had a duty to report it to the Justice Department and Congress.

“If it was an attempted cover-up, he colluded with it,” he said.