So I've pondered the Mueller Report, and there are some layers for analysis. First, there may have been some smoke, but there was no fire. Trump did not collude with the Russian government to do anything illegal. The overwhelming majority of the Left as well as the supposedly unbiased media jumped wildly to self-serving conclusions on the matter and pumped up the allegations for 2 years and now look like fools.
Second, just because there was no fire doesn't mean the matter shouldn't have even been investigated. Even if the Steele Dossier was ********, the Russian interference was real and was worth investigating. It should not have just been dropped.
Third, though I think Mueller did a respectable job and think his report has a lot of useful information, people shouldn't view his report as unbiased or having supreme authority. It isn't and isn't supposed to be. It is a prosecutor's analysis and findings. When I sued insurance carriers, it was not my job to be fair to them. My relationship to them was entirely adversarial. It was my job to make them look as bad as I possibly could and argue that the law should be applied to them under the most onerous of interpretations. Likewise, Mueller's relationship to Trump is adversarial, and every factual conclusion and legal argument in his report has an anti-Trump spin, as it should. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with his report. It just means that it is one-sided, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.
Fourth, despite Mueller's wishi-washiness on the obstruction of justice angle, there was no obstruction of justice. Only under the very broadest of interpretations of the obstruction statute is there even an argument (See my third point.), and even then, it's a big stretch. Trump had the power to the shut the investigation down. He didn't, even if he whined about it to subordinates and flirted with shutting it down. The media is making a big deal about people refusing to obey orders, but the bottom line is that the President has the power. If someone put up resistance to him, he could have shitcanned him or her on the spot and forced his orders through. None of that happened. He could have told people to lie to investigators or hidden damning documents or information. He didn't. Basically, he let the FBI do its job (even Comey admits that) and let Mueller do his, whether he acted like an adult in the process or not.
Fifth, just because Trump didn't collude and didn't obstruct justice doesn't mean he was a "good guy" in this. He bullshat and lied countless times and had his people lie. Furthermore, he publicly whined and pitched tantrums about it. I understand why he was pissed off, but he needlessly gave the opposition a ton of material. He cooperated with the investigation. He should have acted like he was cooperative and then declined to comment on it when asked about it. In other words, he should have acted like an adult and controlled his emotions. Then we'd really be looking at an unmitigated exoneration.
Sixth, I'll make my last point by answering this comment:
Yes, he has been caught in some lies. The problem is that reporters who make this observation have no credibility. Trump lied about something that was fake (Russian collusion). You can't get righteous and condemning about that if you were OK with Clinton lying about the Lewinsky matter (which was under oath and a felony), shrugged off "if you like your health plan, you can keep it," and rolled your eyes when people had a problem with "the attack happened because of an internet video." This not "whataboutism." None of it makes Trump's lies OK, but it certainly makes the critics freak-outs ring extremely hollow. If you want to call Trump out on his dishonesty, you have to call out dishonesty when it's not politically convenient to do so.
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