Hearing narrative work of fiction

The GOP narrative that came out of the Mueller hearings on July 23 could have been written by Clive Cussler, John Le Carre or Ian Fleming.

It was compelling fiction and, like much good fiction, it was inspired by true events. But the story Republicans laid out in the hearings and the truth are two different narratives.

Against their better judgment, even knowledgeable Republicans rush to defend President Donald Trump, supporting even his attraction to conspiracy theories and the con artists who concoct them.

Spy novelists at least admit their work is fiction.

Conspiracy theories make a complex world simple. That has appeal to Trump and others who have either rejected education in favor of long-held prejudices as he has, or have cut it short, whether or not by their own fault.

Conspiracy theories are easy to invent, and if you can communicate them with practiced conviction, you can get people to believe them.

All you need to do is attach undue weight to coincidences, claim that some events happen as a result of events that have nothing to with them (non sequitur), give minor developments earthshaking importance when they serve your narrative, add a few lies that your audience will believe, and weave them together into an engaging story that would make a spy novelist proud.

And then, as a cynical old public relations hand told me early in my public relations career, “It’s all about sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it in the bag.”

During the Mueller hearing, Republicans spent more time spinning out their fictional narrative than they did in attempting to corner Mueller into admitting their novel might be credible.

Mueller, a wily old Washington operative, would have dodged them anyway.

Some key plot points of the Republican fiction are these:

• The Steele Dossier got the Mueller investigation started. (Not so. The Steele Dossier was long ago dismissed as unsubstantiated hearsay.)

• Mueller made sure his investigative team was laden with Democrats who hated Donald Trump. (Huh? Mueller, a registered Republican, served at the highest level under Republicans.)

• The email exchanges between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page prove that the investigation was designed solely to discredit Donald Trump. (Strzok was really dumb to reveal a bias in emails, especially after Clinton’s email trove had been exposed. The report, however, shows no evidence of bias. A bias would have implicated the president on both conspiracy and obstruction. Part 1 of Mueller’s report shows insufficient evidence of conspiracy and says so.)

• Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic, should have been completely discounted and arrested for lying to the FBI. (Arrested? Mifsud lives in Europe and wasn’t employed by an American political campaign. His role was to meet with Trump campaign worker George Papadopoulos to tell him about Russian “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Later, in a London pub, Papadopoulos bragged to the highest-ranking Australian diplomat in England that Russia had dirt on Clinton. The Austrialian told American diplomats about that conversation after Clinton emails started leaking to the public. That’s what got Mueller’s investigation started.)

I have read Part 1 and a substantial amount of Part 2 of Mueller’s report.

After you read even part of the report, however, you can only laugh when a conspiracy theorist asks, in effect, “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a semi-retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at:

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