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“We’ll not be having this on the floor of the Senate.”

That’s Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, describing a bill meant to protect Robert Mueller from being fired by President Trump.

McConnell has been forced to take this stand because — in a rare display of Republican independence from Trump — the Senate Judiciary Committee moved the bill forward yesterday. The vote was 14-7, with four of the 11 Republicans on the committee joining all 10 Democrats in support. “It’s not about Mr. Mueller, it’s not about Trump,” Senator Lindsey Graham, who cast one of the yes votes, said. “It’s about the rule of law.”

And yet the bill will not pass — will not even get a vote — because of the obstinacy of McConnell.

Or at least that’s the story that you may have read in virtually every media outlet yesterday. The full truth is a bit different.