Trump was feeling great about Attorney General William Barr’s very short summary of the Mueller report when Barr first released it last month. Trump even declared that the Mueller report, which he has not seen, was a “complete and total EXONERATION” — despite Barr’s summary stating that the report “does not exonerate” Trump.
Since then, however, Trump’s confidence has been steadily crumbling before our eyes. Now, with the Justice Department announcing a redacted report will be released Thursday, Trump is launching a desperate attack on the report he once bragged about.
“The Mueller Report, which was written by 18 Angry Democrats who also happen to be Trump Haters (and Clinton Supporters), should have focused on the people who SPIED on my 2016 Campaign, and others who fabricated the whole Russia Hoax,” he tweeted Monday. “Since there was no Collusion, why was there an Investigation in the first place! Answer – Dirty Cops, Dems and Crooked Hillary!” he added.
Trump initially praised Mueller when the report was turned over to Barr’s office, agreeing that Mueller acted “honorably” in his two-year investigation of Trump and his campaign. He even said it wouldn’t “bother” him “at all” for the report to be released to the public.
But almost immediately, Trump started backtracking and coming up with excuses for why the report shouldn’t be released after all.
“The problem is, no matter what the Radical Left Democrats get, no matter what we give them, it will never be enough,” he declared on March 29, in the midst of demands from Congress and the American people to see the full report and not just Barr’s summary. “Just watch, they will Harass & Complain & Resist (the theme of their movement). So maybe we should just take our victory and say NO, we’ve got a Country to run!”
Trump also started to claim — without any evidence whatsoever — that Democrats were turning on Mueller because they were not satisfied with the results of the not-yet-released report.
“Now that the long awaited Mueller Report conclusions have been released, most Democrats and others have gone back to the pre-Witch Hunt phase of their lives before Collusion Delusion took over,” he tweeted April 1. “Others are pretending that their former hero, Bob Mueller, no longer exists!”
Trump also started claiming — again, without any evidence whatsoever — that there was no way to satisfy the demands of Congress to see the full Mueller report, and that there was thus no point in letting them see anything.
“No matter what information is given to the crazed Democrats from the No Collusion Mueller Report, it will never be good enough,” he tweeted, also on April 1.
“NOTHING WILL EVER SATISFY THEM!” he all-caps tweeted the next day, citing “Fox & Friends.” Later that morning, he insisted again that Democrats were somehow ignoring Mueller — “a God-like figure to the Democrats, until he ruled No Collusion” — even as they continued to demand that Barr turn over the full report, without redactions. “Now the Dems don’t even acknowledge his name, have become totally unhinged, and would like to go through the whole process again,” he added.
Minutes later, Trump insisted it was “time to focus exclusively on properly running our great Country!”
But instead of taking his own advice, Trump went on and on, on Twitter and to the press, repeating his demands that the country — and Congress in particular — stop caring about the contents of the Mueller report he had been so certain was great news for him.
But the last few weeks have suggested Trump isn’t quite as confident as he’s pretending to be. He has ramped up his racist attacks on immigrants in recent days, reportedly in an attempt to distract from the report.
Last week, he delivered an extended rant about the Mueller investigation, calling it “phony” and smearing it as “crooked” and “illegal.”
And now Trump is once again invoking his same old smears on Mueller and his team — falsely claiming they are all Democrats and “Trump Haters” — in a transparent attempt to undermine the report.
Maybe Trump’s advisers have warned him that the report isn’t quite as good for him as he’d hoped. A report earlier this month that members of Mueller’s team were upset by Barr’s summary, saying it did not paint an accurate picture and that their conclusions were far more damning than Barr indicated.
Or maybe Trump has taken note of polling that shows the majority of Americans think he’s probably a criminal.
Whatever the reason, it’s clear that Trump is not eager for the American people to see the full 400-page report on his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia and his attempts to obstruct that investigation. If Trump were really so certain that it is a “complete and total exoneration,” he wouldn’t be so nervous about its release.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
