From Winamop.com

The Mueller Report
by Martin Green


 

 

On Friday, March 22, 2019 the Mueller Report was finally handed to the Department of Justice with no further indictments to be made. That was all on Friday. As usual, the lack of any further information didn’t stop all of the TV and other media pundits from speculating on what else was coming, when would it come, what would President Trump say or do, what about the Democrats, what would Alexandria Ocasia Cortex say? No, I put in that last one because it seems nothing could happen without bringing her into it.

 

I was interested in the Mueller report announcement because in my last column for the monthly paper that went to our retirement community I’d written that no newscast was complete without someone saying that the Mueller report might wrap up the next week. Now it had actually done so. What would all the talking heads talk about now? I’d also written that Alexandria Ocasia Cortez was the media’s current darling and that everything she said or did had to be breathlessly reported on. I was already composing my next column; I’d write that somebody on the Mueller team, or maybe Mueller himself, must have seen my column and so decided it was time to wrap things up so I wouldn’t be able to continue making fun about it.

 

In my own life, I didn’t do anything special on that Friday but on Saturday my wife Sally and myself took our oldest son Ken and his wife out for his birthday lunch and, casually asking about how his job was going, found out that it might be in jeopardy. He was having a meeting the next week and might find out more then.

 

During the day on Saturday the media continued to speculate on the Mueller report, with the Democrats demanding that the entire report and everything that went with it be released. This demand suggested that there was a sinister conspiracy not to release the report although Trump all along said he was all for releasing it and Attorney General Bill Barr said he’d release everything the law allowed. 

 

On Sunday Barr released a summary of the Mueller report. It said that that neither President Trump nor anyone on his campaign had colluded with the Russians to rig the 2016 election. Trump all along had been saying “No collusion.”    So I guess he was right. On the subject of obstruction of justice the summary was less definitive, coming to no conclusion but leaving that to the Attorney General. Of course, it there was really no crime then how could there had been obstruction of justice? The Attorney General evidently thought the same; he wrote there was no obstruction.

 

The thing uppermost in my mind that Sunday was my son’s job. I’d told him to call after his meeting and let us know the latest. I was also concerned about my oldest friend Jake Bloom, back in New York, who was waiting for a cancer diagnosis. Jake and I had been on our high school handball team and he was probably the only person alive who remembered I’d been a pretty good player back then. Closer to home, I wanted to know about my fellow pool player Walt who’d fallen the week before and was in the hospital.  

 

I had the TV on the news channels for most of that Sunday afternoon. The news was all about the Mueller report. As expected, on Fox, the Trump camp was exultant about the results. Trump was exonerated. On CNN, Trump might still have colluded but legally wasn’t guilty and he’d certainly obstructed justice. Bill Barr, who’d ruled he hadn’t, was now the Trump-appointed Attorney-General and so a Trump lackey who couldn’t be trusted. Besides, all we had was a summary of the Mueller report. We needed to have the whole report, which Trump and Barr were trying to hide, although they kept on saying they’d release it. When I wrote my column I’d say that maybe there were two reports as Fox and CNN seemed to be reporting on different things.   Alexandria Ocasia Cortez was bound to get involved so I’d get her in there, too. From what I’d written, it appears I’m more on the side of Trump than of the Democrats. The first time I saw Trump on TV I thought the word for him was “obnoxious.” Unfortunately, the Democrats, suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, were just as bad if not worse. 

 

In bed that night I thought about the next week. I’d call about Walt on Monday. I’d wait until I’d heard from our son and his job situation and then I’d call Jake. As a diversion, I’d keep watching Fox and CNN on TV. The politicians and pundits all kept saying that the American people had to or wanted to or deserved to know all about everything. If the American people were like me they were thoroughly sick of Mueller, Trump and the Democrats and everything else going on in Washington. The only useful thing about that sad circus was its entertainment value. My son, Walt, Jake, that was what mattered.


 

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