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Americans need sunshine on Trump/Russia and the Clinton-funded dossier — now

After the midterm elections, Americans were still trying to see past the political spin to the serious implications of it all.

Did the Democrats win a short-term victory by taking the House and, with it, subpoena power allowing them to investigate and harass the White House on Russia, or even impeach President Donald Trump?

Or did Republicans win a far more significant long-term victory by expanding power in the Senate, thanks to Democrats trying to destroy the reputation and life of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh?

The Democratic strategy on Kavanaugh backfired. Several Senate Democrats in states that Trump won voted against confirming Kavanaugh. They lost their elections the other day.

And now a larger Republican Senate majority has made it easier for the GOP to add even more conservative justices to federal district courts and the Supreme Court, and the impact of those judges will be felt long after Trump or whoever follows him is gone.

That’s the discussion America should be having. But instead, the president changed the national subject and served up his usual platter of steaming Trumpian hash.

He fought with reporters at a White House news conference on Wednesday and continued his quest to make CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta the preening Sir Galahad of his network. But before the news conference, Trump had quietly forced out Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Once that story broke, cable news was able to feast breathlessly on its favorite menu: salted palace intrigue sweetened with doom.

Sessions’ departure wasn’t really a surprise. Trump has wanted him gone forever. He’d ridiculed Sessions endlessly for not protecting him from special counsel Robert Mueller and the so-called Russia probe.

And he repeatedly and publicly referred to Sessions as a weakling for not aggressively going after Democrat Hillary Clinton and the politically partisan dossier that started the Russian investigation.

Trump installed as acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker, the Department of Justice chief of staff, who has been publicly critical of the Mueller probe into allegations of collusion between the president’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

What is significant here?

Whitaker, in a CNN interview in July 2017, discussed a scenario in which Trump could toss Sessions out. In his place, Whittaker said the president could appoint an acting attorney general who could strangle the Mueller investigation by squeezing its budget.

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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

His Twitter handle is @john_kass.

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