This won’t be my only post on the Mueller Report, so it will be a short one. However, there are a few things I think need to be said at this early stage.
Firstly, that we are at an early stage. In relation to the report itself, the most important thing to say is this: it’s really important we remember that all we have now is a 3½ page summary by a partisan Attorney-General who got the job because of his legal opinions around not indicting a sitting president. In my opinion, though this may be unfair, the “no indictment” rule relates especially to a Republican president.
I’ve said before that I thought actual collusion by Trump would be difficult to prove even if occurred.However, I do remain of the opinion that Trump, along with his eldest son, was an unwitting Russian agent. Trump is too stupid to realize how he was being played, and Don Jr. too naïve. Further, despite what Trump and his supporters are saying, it’s clear that Mueller did not actually exonerate him of obstruction of justice. We need to read the report to know just what he found.
At the moment we are hearing we will see it within “weeks,” but A-G Barr would not commit to releasing the full report. The Democrats are giving him a hard time about this, but there are things that perhaps should not be seen by everyone. For example, ways and means in relation to the counterintelligence part of the investigation should perhaps be at least partly confidential.
Trump and Putin
The evidence of how Trump can be played is seen by anyone looking. Putin, Xi, Kim, bin Salman, Duterte, and Netanyahu, all lavish Trump with praise and receive benefits in return. At the same time, Trump has treated those who are his closest allies very badly, apparently for the crime of being honest with him.
The most memorable of the occasions that saw Trump supporting his country’s enemies and openly dissing his own people (especially Dan Coats) was a press conference he gave with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Another shocking moment was when he accepted the word of President Kim of North Korea that he had no knowledge of how Otto Warmbier came by his fatal injuries while in prison there. Just today, the US State Department is still side-stepping questions from the media in relation to Warmbier’s death. (Link: Video from CNN)
Trump’s Response
An artwork by Trump supporter Jon McNaughton entitled ‘Expose the Truth’
As so often, Trump’s reaction can be summed up with three words: lies and denial. On top of claiming “complete and total exoneration,” he’s even making up a new line of attack on Mueller.
Even Attorney-General Barr is admitting that Mueller was unable to exonerate Trump of some charges, although there was not enough evidence with which to charge him.
That’s not what Trump is saying though. Reporters caught up with him as he was on his way to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend. (Where he even charges the Secret Service for the use of the golf carts they use to follow him when he plays golf.)
He said:
It was just announced there was no collusion with Russia, the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. There was no collusion with Russia. There was no obstruction, none whatsoever.
He also said the investigation was, “an illegal take down that failed.”
Trump has since made comments on the Mueller investigation at his first rally since its completion in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he said:
The single greatest political hoax in the history of our and guess what? We won. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing. We love to win.
RawStory also reported:
Trump said: “The Russia witch hunt was a plan by those who lost the election to try and illegally regain power by framing innocent Americans – many of them, they suffered – with an elaborate hoax.”
It’s quite frankly appalling that he’s reacting this way. A man of integrity would simply thank Mueller and his team for all their hard work and welcome their conclusions.
Counterintelligence Investigation
The main focus of the media in relation to the the Mueller Report is in relation to Trump. Trump also acts as if that was the only thing Mueller was looking into. However, the investigation began as a counterintelligence one. The FBI had good information in relation to Russian interference in the US elections. All US intelligence agencies now agree that there was Russian interference in the US elections. Further, the evidence is that Trump was their candidate of preference.
The investigation as a whole has made more than 200 charges against more than 30 people. Many of these will never come to court as they are Russian nationals and Russia will not allow the US to extradite those facing charges.
My Conclusion
It goes without saying that the Mueller investigation was NOT a “witch hunt,” as Trump repeatedly said. It was a valid investigation and the report likely has solid and verifiable conclusions.
However, the Mueller Report makes no difference to whether or not Trump should be president. Those facts remain what they always were.
Trump became president because of Russian manipulation of US voters and the way the US electoral system works.
In three states in particular, (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) there were massive attacks against Hillary Clinton that led to, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters failing to turn out to vote. Trump won those states by a very small margin, but most states are winner takes all when it comes to Electoral College votes, so all votes counted for Trump in the Electoral College.
Further, he lost the popular vote by millions. Most USians do not want him as president. It was only the Electoral College that saw him make it into the White House.
And most of all, Donald Trump is a narcissistic, petty, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, cowardly, bullying, liar, with a penchant for authoritarians and authoritarian behaviour. He’s completely unfit for any leadership role whatsoever, let alone the presidency of the USA.
Update: 30 March 2019
I meant to include this cartoon in the post, but forgot. It’s a reference to the way Trump’s supporters are reacting to the attorney-general’s summary of the Mueller Report. In my opinion, A-G William Barr has been very savvy in the way he has done this. His letter is the first thing people know about the result of the Mueller investigation and thus the most likely to stick in people’s minds, especially if they’re not following things closely.
Also, about five minutes after I put up this post, I saw Senator Adam Schiff’s response Republican demands for him to resign for saying there is evidence of President Trump’s collusion with Russians. If I’d seen it earlier, I would have put this in too.
At the Trump rally in Michigan mentioned in the post, the president spent some time abusing Schiff. As is usual with Trump, the attack wasn’t on the facts. Instead, Trump made insulting comments about Schiff’s personal appearance. The closest Trump came to addressing the substance of Schiff’s comments was to call them “bullshit”.
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Your last paragraph is dead-on. One minor quibble, though. The first paragraph of “My Conclusion” says that PO(tu)S calls the Mueller Report a “witch hunt”. That is slightly inaccurate. He called the investigation a witch hunt. And the investigation was based on legitimate (and solid and verifiable) concerns and evidence and was not based on solid and verifiable conclusions.
You’re quite right. I’ll fix it.
I actually do think Trump knows that he is being played by Putin. I suspect he views it as a tit-for-tat arrangement, saying to Putin, “You give me a good deal on Trump Tower Moscow, help me wherever you can, and I will be your friend, do you favors, whatever that entails.” I don’t think Trump really views concessions to Putin and Russia as negatives for the US. He figures that Russia is never going to really threaten the US while we have the most powerful military and Trump is in charge. He also doesn’t care much about Russia’s plans in the world. In Trump’s mind, this is just how powerful leaders like him and Putin do things.
Your article is just what many of us believe. Thanks!
I will try to make it short since most do not agree with me on this and have not since the beginning. If we ever get to see the actual report it will then be time to comment on that. At this point, we may not get the whole report even after considerable delay. So the question all should be asking right now is, why are we not getting the report and what are they attempting to hide. Probably lots of damaging stuff.
I do find it amazing that so many people want to make pronouncements and conclusions on something we have not seen as yet. It leads me to believe most are taking this attorney generals report as truthful, honest or worth more than nothing. I respectfully say it is nothing but a PR report for Trump and nothing else. They are right now attempting to scrub Muellers report of all the negative and condemnation facing Trump. This two bit lawyer who auditioned for the job with a 19 page report months ago with his mind already made up. How can you give this guy any respect. He is nothing but another Trump lackey and a dishonest lawyer. Imagine that…a dishonest lawyer.
So in conclusion, what I see are many people, even democrats and media people who have been taken in and suckered by Trump. If this is how it continues to go, there is not much hope and people, on average are even dumber than I can credit them for.
Trump’s approval ratings have not budged much since the Barr letter so perhaps there’s hope. On the other hand, it probably reflects the fact that the anti-Trump folks base their opinion of him on way more than the Mueller report. That is certainly the case for me. As many are now saying, voting him out is better anyway.
Just saw that Mueller is helping prepare the redacted version to be released in mid-April. “close to 400 pages.”
Here’s the link to that article which just came out: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/us/politics/william-barr-mueller-report.html?emc=edit_na_20190329&nl=breaking-news&nlid=68865887ing-news&ref=cta
Although it may be a bit simplistic, I contend that the public of a modern democracy are entitled to information with the exception of including material which could result in harm to the public interest.
I suspect that the reason for the reluctance of Attorney-General Barr to at least release the summary is that he likes being Attorney General. He can only continue to be this by keeping Donald Trump happy. In other words self-interest.
Similarly whilst The President of the United States (POTUS) states that he is keen to see the release of the report in reality he is also concerned with his self interest. If the report suggests that if there is a possibility that Donald Trump may have obstructed justice then it is not in his personal interest to see either the summary or the full report released to the pubic. After all, he might not get re-elected.
A underlying issue is that it seems to me at least that Donald Trump does not, or does not want to, understand and appreciate the difference between the public responsibility of the President of the United States and his own self-interest.
I agree completely Martin. The public are entitled to see the report. The only thing I think they can justifiably leave out is if there is reference to sources/methods re counterintelligence gathering.
I don’t think Trump can claim executive privilege on anything for two reasons:
1. Before he was president there was no executive privilege to claim.
2. You cannot use executive privilege to cover up illegal behaviour.
Personally, I think much of what Trump did in relation to the Russians would be treason if he wasn’t president. There’s also no way he would get a security clearance if he wasn’t president. He couldn’t get permission to build a casino in Australia in the 1980s because of his Mafia connections.
Even being president is all about himself, as you say. I suspect there are occasions where he’s had to choose between his own interests and those of the US, and I’ve no doubt he put himself first without even thinking about it. If someone questioned him, he probably would not even see that there’s an issue with him doing that.
Just this afternoon, word from the Justice department is that the report will be released about mid April. What or how much damage will be done by censors in that time is hard to tell. Probably way too much. I think that after a week of heavy pressure from the democrats this is their next trick. We may have to get Mueller in the hearings to uncover redactions. The Trump lackeys can only cover so long but eventually we will get this crook. Hopefully also his entire family. I will continue to predict conspiracy and obstruction. Any moral congress would impeach but probably not this one.
You and Ann German are together on that one. We’ve been arguing on Twitter for days about whether or not to impeach Trump. Like you, she thinks it’s the moral choice, and the right thing to do. There are some good links to check out on her Twitter feed @wankerjustice
I see that argument, but I’m currently not for impeachment. The reason is that right now, it wouldn’t succeed. Most Republicans (and one or two Dems in states Trump carried) care more about holding onto their job than doing the right thing. So you try to impeach Trump, he wins, and we all know how good he is at playing the professional victim. With his new martyr status he may even win the 2020 election. There are still too many sheep amongst the public who believe that Trump is a victim of an unfair investigation. Public opinion has to turn against him before impeachment would succeed. I think Nancy Pelosi would do it in a heartbeat if she thought she’d get the votes.
Right now, the Dems need to concentrate on getting rid of him at the ballot box. That won’t be as easy as it should be because not enough has been done yet to stop the ongoing Russian interference in the elections.
I’m very leery of this redaction process. I wonder if Mueller would cry foul if the AG took liberties with it. He’s such a boy scout, perhaps he wouldn’t. On the other hand, this is his life’s work and it is not like he has his career in front of him. In fact, he came out of retirement to lead the investigation if I recall correctly. I doubt he’d run afoul of any laws if he simply told people Barr’s version was inaccurate. The real danger is they leave things out for security reasons. I doubt Mueller could challenge such decisions.
It appears Barr and Mueller are doing it together. I worry that all the Grand Jury stuff will be taken out because it’s such a big and important part of what’s likely in there. They need a court order to release it, but there is precedent for that; it was released in the Nixon case. However, Barr may argue that Nixon was being impeached and Trump isn’t.
There is one good source (can’t remember which media outlet now) saying that Mueller is prepared to reveal all to Congress if he’s called.
The challenge will come from the House of Representatives. If necessary they will subpoena Mueller if necessary and get it this way. They may not actually need to subpoena but they will get him in to testify.
Now that AG Barr has announced, as of this afternoon, that the report will be made public within two weeks, but it will be redacted, just how much is redacted remains to be seen, but Democrats in the House have demanded they be given the unredacted report and background documents. If so, they should be able to judge the worthiness of the redactions because the report released to the public will be redacted. But will they get the unredacted report? I wager there will be a fight over that. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with their demands. I say wait until then before passing judgment on the contents and conclusion of the Muller report. I don’t trust Barr, but I think the public will soon know something more than they know now, but I wouldn’t speculate just what that what is.
I don’t think the reply part of the site is working properly. Oh well. I think the idea of lets just vote the guy out and not impeach, mentioned above is what Pelosi has said. That is fine up to a point. Again, not having the details of the Mueller report or more input from the Committees just getting started that is okay. However, once we have what I think we will have – total or absolute proof of obstruction and conspiracy, they will move forward with impeachment. They will because it will be their duty. At present it is not but I think it will be soon. Maybe 6 months.
The reply part isn’t working properly. I was supposed to tell someone before I posted this so they could insert a code to find out why, but I forgot. It’ll have to wait until next post, which hopefully won’t be far away.
Identity politics is now cult politics…the Trump identity is to be caught up in a cult of personality. Now we know the report was 400+ pages…a 3.5 page summery is laughable; each page summarizes 100 pages. Talk about a piss-poor book report “F”. Trump goes out lying and spewing garbage any chance he gets. He talked to Michiganders last night about saving the great lakes…a project Obama started and Trump defunded and yet he takes credit for starting it in the first place. It’s really sickening. The loathsome lies spew-out, poisoning the minds of his willing minions. Quite an astonishing transformation to witness…if it wasn’t so fucked up, it might be interesting to study; as an anthropologist or historian…as witnessed by an average thinking American, it’s downright unAmerican and unsettling to say the least.
This post actually started off as one about the Betsy DeVos/Special Olympics saga. Now that I know the full story, I’m glad I didn’t write it because I was going to give Trump credit for funding the SO. However, it turns out that DeVos’s budget really has included funding for the SO, and it was Trump that demanded it be taken out. He’s saying he overrode her, but he overrode himself when he realized it would be bad for him politically to de-fund the SO. There was bad stuff by DeVos though. One example: while she was proposing cuts for public schools, she was proposing that donations to private schools be made tax deductible.
In response to Heather, I can’t look at Twitter feed on anyone because I do not do Twitter. Same applies to Facebook. I just don’t do it. Sorry but it’s not my bag.
The whole report will come out but may require a fight. This political hack we call the attorney general is out there on his own planet and his only concern is protecting Trump and family. He is not following any precedent in what he is putting out. The democrats see right thru his BS and if the report is not released Tuesday as they provided for as deadline they will be taking action.
Let me remind any of you who do not know or remember, this guy was attorney general once before back in the early 90s when Bush was president. His job then was protecting Bush from trouble in the scandal from Reagan’s time with Iran – Contra. He advised Bush to pardon a bunch of those crooks back then. So when I call him a hack, it is because he is a hack.
I’m finding out stuff about Barr I didn’t know all the time now. It concerns me that this stuff didn’t come up at his conformation hearing. He is clearly an expert political manipulator.
Indeed, we do not know what is in the Mueller report, Mr Barr just presented his own conclusions. What puzzles me is that Mr Mueller asked for an extension until June, but a week or so after that he handed in his report. Did Mr Barr put pressure on him?
That being said, I doubt whether there are solid proofs that Mr Trump did indeed actively participate in the Russian conspiracy . Mr Barr may be a hack, but if there were strong evidence Mr Barr would have been more circumspect, I’d say, these things tend to come out sooner or later.
What we know, indeed:
– There was a massive Russian conspiracy to get Mr Trump elected.
– Mr Trump did obstruct Justice. We don’t need Mr Mueller’s report for that, we saw it with our very own eyes and heard it with our very own ears (Mr Comey fired for this “Russia thing”).
What we do not know is to what degree Mr Trump conspired, and it appears he didn’t, or at least not blatantly enough for a strong case.
A small detail: “Trump became president because of Russian manipulation of US voters and the way the US electoral system works.” True, but there are several more reasons, not the least counting fraud, when we compare the exit polls with the final count. In 5 swing states, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan that discrepancy swung the vote in Mr Trump’s favour. In the first three the discrepancy was well outside the margin of error. Those three alone would have sufficed to give the EC to Ms Clinton.
http://tdmsresearch.com/2016/11/10/2016-presidential-election-table/
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I agree. My list wasn’t meant to be exhaustive and the additional details you provide are important for everyone to know imo.
I think you’ve said before, and it’s true, that discrepancies between the vote count and exit polls like that in another country would see the US questioning the validity of the result. It’s barely and rarely mentioned in the US.
For someone outside the U.S. you sure know allot about this business. The only area where I think you may be in error is the conspiracy. Once the report is available and all the stuff Barr attempts to hide is uncovered, I think the conspiracy thing will be just as apparent as the obstruction. It already is far as all the things we have seen and discovered. The lying alone tells us this as well. The Tower meeting way back in June of 2016 and all the lying about that is a good show of conspiracy. Remember it does not need to be criminal as in proof for a court. It just needs to stand up for congress in the impeachment they will be singing for after they get the Mueller findings.
I think there was collusion, and I think Trump knew about it. Imo it’s impossible to prove for several reasons. Mainly:
1. Trump himself rarely puts anything in writing. He doesn’t use email for example.
2, People are too scared to cross him. His Mafia links are real. Cohen has admitted threatening hundreds of people. Etc.
3. Stone is denying his links with Wikileaks, though the indictment appears to show those links are real. Because of the size of the Trump campaign team, I think it must be Trump who told a “senior campaign official” (wording from indictment) to get Stone to connect with Wikileaks.
3. The obvious willingness of Trump Jr when it came to the Russians supposedly providing dirt on Clinton. You can say he was naive, but Manafort was in the meeting too and he’s a very experience campaign person. You can’t tell me that Trump didn’t know and that the whole campaign team wasn’t open to collusion.
3. Not sure if you’ve seen the comments by Adam Schiff. I saw them just a few minutes after I put up this post, and I’ve now added the video to the post. He lays things out clearly.
I meant to add that they didn’t interview Trump himself, so it’s hard to get evidence without doing that.
It is good that Mueller is willing to testify but don’t expect him to reveal much more that is not in the redacted report, unless his editing sessions with Barr go wrong somehow. Mueller will have reasons stuff was redacted or not put in the report in the first place. It’s unlikely he’ll change his mind when testifying in person. (Perhaps if it is behind closed doors but then we won’t hear about it.)
I think Adam Schiff’s recent speech got it about right on the conspiracy/collusion issue. Even if Trump and associates didn’t actively conspire with Russians, they got as close to the line as they could and committed a lot of unpatriotic, immoral acts involving the Russians. Trump may not be guilty but he is far, far from innocent.
Exactly.
One must remember, in the end, Congress has the power and now with the democrats in charge in the house, they should win whatever fight this president and his lackey attorney general want to give. It may take a bit longer but it will come their way. Look at history and the way these things were treating when Clinton was impeached. Or even Watergate. Kenneth Starr’s report was delivered right to the House of Rep. in vans. Even Grand Jury testimony can be provided and was. This Hack, Barr, instead of making up memos nobody wants, could have gone to a court and asked permission to release all grand jury evidence to the congress. That is what a real attorney general would do.
Well said.
Strangely, when this first started, I trusted the process (“though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist and will appear…); however, I despair now that Donald Trump will endure.
It both shocks and horrifies me that he continues to get away with so much. I’m not sure how you can have faith in a system that allows him to continue as president despite all the obvious issues.
In our countries, parliamentary representatives, including PMs, temporarily step down or resign in situations like this. We had an MP step down over speeding tickets he hadn’t admitted to! Another was sacked for buying $50 silk boxers on his parliamentary expense account, and most agreed that was appropriate. We’re far from perfect of course; we have our issues. But there’s still some integrity in our respective systems.
Exactly. I was wrong to trust the process (faith isn’t something I have or recognise). And I also trusted that he could not possibly be above the law. This thinking on my part must be reassessed: will he eventually be made to answer for all he has done or will he persist?
And there are things we have here in the UK which are far superior; however, then I remember a monarchy and Brexshit and then despair all over again.
At least there are cats.
And your two are sooooo gorgeous! Just being with them must be a like a balm for the mind.
They are DELIGHTFUL!!!!!! x
You should not despair. One way or the other this white house attendant will be going away. His fixes and crooked attorney general have gained him some time but I don’t believe will change the results. The real despair I think comes from the realization that this country has become so dumb down or ignorant of it’s own politics and all this has lead us to this condition we are now in. I am not sure that is even truly fixable now. And throwing out 15 or 20 candidates for the next election or at least through the primaries is not helpful. It all becomes a long distance popularity contest and that accomplishes nothing. We do not need 75 year olds running for president – that is stupid and Bernie and Bidden should forget it. My person thought at such an early stage is just a far out guess but Harris or Warden are probably the best right now.
In the back of my mind I’m still half betting on impeachment. That is a mistake, I think.
Barr’s memo and (probably) the redacted version of the Mueller report are not likely to convince the Senate to condemn Mr Trump. On the contrary, the Senate appears bent on investigating the investigators. An impeachment without condemnation is very likely to strengthen Mr Trump’s hand.
I think Ms Pelosi was and is right: forget about impeachment, concentrate on ‘bread-and butter’ policies.
It is an uphill battle though, not only is Mr Trump the incumbent, hence difficult to unseat, the economy is still doing fine (for which Mr Trump takes unjustified credit), despite indications of a turn down, and there is as yet no real candidate standing out behind which the dems -and the electorate- can rally.
I agree with Randall that Mr Biden and Mr Sanders are too old, heck, I think even Mr Inslee is too old.
I think the youngest candidate is Mr Buttigieg (apparently Buttigieg is a Maltese name), and he has some very positive things going for him, he eg. got his city, South Bend, out of a ‘shithole’. However, he’s openly gay, which might be just a step too far for US voters.
I don’t think a gay man could win the presidency in the US currently.
Btw, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that the deputy leader of the Labour Party here is gay. He would have been deputy PM except for the need to make the leader of one of the coalition partners deputy PM in order to make the coalition deal in the first place.
Oops, I forgot one of the most important things: nothing much has been done about counting fraud, that could be repeated. An uphill battle.
Yep. It even seems that Trump is actively stopping changes being made.
I think Pelosi is right to suggest that Dems should not focus on impeachment. It is much better to vote Trump out. However, they also need to see the Mueller report because they have to fight Trump’s insistence that it exonerates him from everything and that the whole investigation, and MSM reporting on it, was fake. Trump is clearly going to go with an “us vs them” theme in his 2020 campaign. The more he can delegitimize the Mueller probe, the easier for him to make that case. Dems have to fight that.
One thing I especially like about voting Trump out is that he cannot claim any conspiracy to get rid of him. The votes will hopefully show that most people don’t want him to be president any more, and being a one-term president is pretty unusual. You failed dude. Bush Snr followed two GOP terms, so he doesn’t really count.
Of course, most people don’t want him now. But he likes to make out that it was his superior strategy that saw him win the Electoral College and he even says that’s actually harder than winning the popular vote. Well, it is, but only if you’re a Democrat. And it wasn’t so much his strategy that was superior, but the Russians. And it that was his strategy, is he admitting to collusion with them?
Yes, agreed on both accounts.
That is a very true statement that a gay person could not be elected president here and certainly the same is true for an atheist. What does that tell you about the people here?
We’ve elected atheist or agnostic PMs continuously since 1999. We did have a devout Catholic for a short time when one of the atheists resigned and he was PM for a short time until the next election. But then he was beaten by the current PM (agnostic). She became agnostic after a Mormon upbringing because she didn’t agree with Mormon attitudes etc towards gays. Her deputy leader is gay.
Note: “It was just announced there was no collusion with Russia, the most ridiculous thing I ever heard,”
Yes, I can agree, it appears ridiculous to announce there was no collusion, indeed,
That’s the way I heard it too! 😀
Correction: Adam Schiff is not a senator. He is a Democratic representative from California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Randall, I said: “That being said, I doubt whether there are solid proofs that Mr Trump did indeed actively participate in the Russian conspiracy . Mr Barr may be a hack, but if there were strong evidence Mr Barr would have been more circumspect, I’d say, these things tend to come out sooner or later.”
I have to retract that, my doubt was wrong. Now that the (redacted) Mueller report is out it is clear that Mr Barr -and mr Mueller in a sense, with this footnote 1- did exactly that.
There are solid proofs of coordination and soliciting there, and Mr Barr simply just denied them, hiding behind a ridiculously narrow definition of ‘conspiracy’. I stand corrected.
Don’t feel too bad Nicky. Every time I try to predict without waiting instead, the results are not good. I see the date on your comment is 25 April, however, when I look at the clock here it is the 24th.
There is lots to be done before they get this creep out of office and it is no more certain now than it was months ago. We know more and it makes us think it should happen but it may just be a mirage. Trump is now circling the wagons and declaring war on all enemies. That might hurt him in the end because his cult 35% is all he has. If that starts to go he will be done. Meanwhile he will hide behind his justice department, his republican Senate and maybe his supreme court.