So much for total exoneration

but it was nice while it lasted

The aim all along has been to turn the justice department into Trump's own private legal services.  He wasn't able to have his way with Sessions, who despite all his fealty to the president couldn't bring himself to openly defy the Constitution.  However, it now seems Trump has achieved that goal with William Barr, who showed in his press conference yesterday that he is answerable to the president first, not the Constitution, and certainly not the will of the people.

It's not surprising given Barr's track record.  This is a man who has worked tirelessly to insulate Republicans in the White House from the long arm of the law, first acting as George H.W. Bush's fixer and now Trump's fixer.  To hell with Congress and its special investigations.  Short of launching impeachment hearings, there is little chance the House will be able to get to the bottom of the Mueller Report, which only went a short way down the rabbit hole.

For whatever reason, Mueller limited himself in his investigation.  Part of it was because of the parameters set by the Justice Dept. and the other was Mueller's inability to find a "willful" attempt to break the law.  This was certainly true of Donnie Jr. and Jared, both of whom lied about their meeting with Russian operatives during the campaign, but Mueller was unable to establish criminal intent.  This also goes for the numerous attempts by Trump to thwart the investigation, including at least one attempt to fire Mueller.

In his report, Mueller laid out the groundwork for Congress to take the investigation further.  In no way was Trump "totally exonerated."  In fact, there were many instances where the president tried to obstruct justice and many patterns of collusion with Russian operatives to benefit himself during the election.  At the very least, Congress should follow up on the role Donnie Jr. and Jared had in working with Russian operatives and officials to influence the election, assuming the president was oblivious to it as he claims.

The odd part is that I wouldn't be surprised at all if Trump was oblivious to what was going on around him during the campaign.  He never really wanted to be president, he just wanted the national exposure the campaign brought him.  It allowed him to reach an entirely new market, the religious conservative base of America, which I doubt he had previously ever imagined doing.  It also opened him up to a number of new international contacts that he wouldn't have gotten otherwise.  Trump is after all a businessman.

Nevertheless, he became president and should have at least made the effort of rising to the role as the "leader of the free world," as everyone likes to call the president.  Instead, we have seen the same pettiness throughout his administration that we saw throughout his campaign.  When persons wouldn't respond to his wishes, he demeaned them as he mercilessly did Jeff Sessions.  Where he could, he fired them.  The turnover rate in the White House is greater than that of McDonalds.  Only a very small core of Trump confidants have remained, shuffled from one position to another with all the vacancies.  Many positions remain unfilled because Trump's closest advisors have figured out that they don't need Congressional approval for acting department heads.  This is why you see Stephen Miller currently heading up immigration and Mick Mulvaney acting as the de facto Chief of Staff.  Pompeo is apparently doubling as Sec. of Defense, either that or Bolton is filling this role as Trump has yet to even put a name forward after Gen. Mattis left at the end of last year, tired of having to defy Trump's tweets on a daily basis.

The bulwark that had kept Trump relatively in check the past two years is now gone.  Everyone from Gens. Mattis and Kelly,  former Sec. of State Tillerson, Attorney General Sessions, to White House lawyer Don McGahn tried their best to defuse tense situations by not carrying out Trump's tempestuous orders.  In the end, they all resigned because the pressure became too much to bear. Even Kristjen Nielsen, who seemed to have no problem enforcing Trump's draconian immigration laws, ultimately yielded to the federal courts, the result of which she was fired.

You don't have to look at the report of find Trump's woeful pattern of abuse of power.  He has made it plainly visible everyday in office, even calling Robert Mueller a traitor for carrying out an investigation commissioned by his very own Department of Justice.  That in itself is slander.  Yet, for some strange reason you have to establish a willful intent to break the law in order to indict a high ranking official.  Apparently, the DOJ and FBI take these daily rants as that of an incoherent old man not responsible for his words.

Why let Donnie Jr. and Jared off the hook?  Everyone was expecting indictments to be served against them, even the two themselves.  Yet, Mueller couldn't prove they willfully broke campaign finance laws, presumably because they weren't aware of them.  Most of us aren't aware of all the IRS laws but that doesn't let us off the hook when it comes time to pay taxes.

It seems Mueller got cold feet.  He wasn't satisfied with the answers Trump's lawyers provided to his questions, but decided it would drag out the investigation too long to issue a subpoena at this late stage.  No doubt Trump's lawyers would have tied up the subpoena in courts for the remainder of his term.  Mueller had gone as far as he could go without directly challenging the president, and so he kicked the can to Congress.

There are those in the House that want to immediately launch impeachment hearings but Nancy Pelosi is cold to the idea, largely because she thinks it will throw the 2020 elections into chaos.  Trump is not about to resign, as Nixon did two years out of the 1976 elections.  He will do everything he can to remain in power, and with a Republican Senate willing to oblige him Nancy knows the impeachment would never go beyond a House vote.

This will not stop the House from further investigating Trump's actions now that it finally has the Mueller Report with a relatively limited number of redactions.  So, it will be a messy two years for the president with plenty of fodder to use against him on the campaign trail.

More heads are likely to roll, maybe that of Sarah Sanders herself, who was called out on numerous lies in the report, along with her predecessor Sean Spicer.  Remember him?  Turns out the much maligned "fake news" wasn't so fake after all.  This thoroughly erodes whatever credibility she tried to project at press conferences.

What gets me is why CNN and other mainstream news networks were so quick to declare Trump the victor when Barr released his four-page summary of the report last month?  Journalists had to know it was nothing more than a feeble attempt to protect the president.  Barr was quite testy when answering questions at the press conference, refusing to admit he in any way tried to cover for the president.  Yet, he seems to think he is answerable to the president first and foremost.

The mainstream news networks now feel vindicated in the wake of the release of the report, and are sure to go after Trump tooth and nail in the remaining months of his tenure.  No one has any illusions anymore that he will pivot and become more presidential in the build up to 2020.  The only question is how much more damage can he do in the White House?

He has shredded any aura of respectability.  Even Russia now openly challenges American authority in global politics, having no qualms bolstering Maduro's hold on Venezuela much to the chagrin of a White House that was hoping for a quick foreign policy victory here.  Instead, it is back to the same old ways with the US threatening Latin American countries, and Russia offering aid and succor.  Only now the US finds itself at odds with Canada and the EU as well.  Even the great diplomatic plum Trump hoped to get from his talks with Kim Jong-un has ended in bitter resentment with North Korea calling Mike Pompeo immature and refusing to further negotiate with him.

Trump can't even bring himself to offer simple words of sorrow for the great loss of Notre-Dame.  Instead, he tweeted better means of putting out the fire and that he will lend great experts to France for the restoration of the hallowed cathedral.  Yet, despite all these ongoing gaffes and gross misjudgments, he still seems to think he has improved America's standing in the world.

His greatest crime of all is his gross incompetence.  Even when his staff goes out of its way to protect him, as it did by dismissing media claims that Trump wanted to dump migrants on sanctuary cities, he readily admits to it in his tweets and says he might go through with it now.   This on the heels of his absurd claim that wind turbines cause cancer and numerous other beauties he said at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he gloated over Barr's summary exonerating him of all crimes and misdemeanors.

How do you hold a man like this accountable for his words and actions?  Mueller was obviously unable to do so.  It's not like he could have indicted the president even if he had found hard evidence of collusion and obstruction of justice.  This would have been left up to the Department of Justice, which has become Trump's legal aid services.  What it seems we need at this point is a thorough psychological evaluation of the president, whose mental capacities appear to have eroded considerably since assuming office, no longer able to demonstrate any coherent train of thought, as virtually all his rallies and press conferences dissolve into babble.

Who knows, maybe the president is speaking in tongues?  That's what Michelle Bachmann would like us to believe.  She considers him the most "biblical president" in our lifetime.  Whatever the case, Trump is proving to be remarkably elusive in ways Ronald Reagan couldn't even imagine.  Another president who began losing his mind in office.

Sadly, we are stuck with Trump until the end of the term.  Even if the House were to pursue his impeachment it would drag out for months and most likely Trump would survive the challenge to his authority.  We can expect many more petulant actions in the months ahead as Trump caters to his religious conservative base, hoping to at least hold Republicans in line during the primaries.  Not that it would do him much good at this point.  He is now alone in the White House, surrounded by his most loyal sycophants.  Nothing short of a miracle would gain him another term in office.  So pray as hard as you can, Michelle.  He'll need it.