The Bob Mueller Report Was Wrong

Written by Tom Being Tom

Let’s tackle the elephant in the room first. Well, not so much tackle as address. Tackling an elephant would be really, really hard. I just heard my step-father say, “Tommy, let’s do the impossible thing first and the hard things later.” I also just heard him say “Rome wasn’t built in a day, Number Seven, because I wasn’t there.”

Okay, I’ve already digressed. Sue me; I haven’t done this in a couple of weeks.

But in honor of Rusty Steele (yes, that was his name) I’ll do the impossible thing while doing the hard thing and get another post out while tackling an elephant. And I’ll do it in less than a day. Ready?

The Bob Mueller report was wrong.

Or, at least, the 4-page summary of the 300-page document was. Wrong, that is. Actually, to be more precise, a lot of you out there interpreting the Mueller Report for the last seven days are wrong. The president, in particular (POtuS, if you will), is completely and utterly wrong. Here’s why.

Since the release of the summary, written by the president’s hand-picked myrmidon, the clown-in-chief has been running around saying words like “totally exonerated.” If you’ve been watching the Jussie Smollett thing you’ll see that word, or its likeness, applied there as well, by the guilty individual or his representatives. Because a justice (or jury) decides not to prosecute or incarcerate an individual does not mean that person did nothing wrong. In fact, in both cases, the actual investigator goes so far as to say that their findings do not exonerate the individual. Remember Shawshank Redemption?

Red:
You’re gonna fit right in. Everyone in here is innocent. Heywood, what’re you in here for?

Heywood:
Didn’t do it. Lawyer fucked me.

Everybody is innocent in their own eyes. Even hardened criminals. Even corrupt presidents. Nixon had the best quote of all before being tossed out of office for being a crook when he said, “I am not a crook.” He was. So is Donald Trump.

During the Mueller quest pieces of Donald Trump’s criminal empire fell. His former campaign manager and personal fixer both went down. One of them, Donald Trump’s lawyer, has even named our corrupt president as a co-conspirator in his crimes. It looks likely, at this point, that the entirety of the Mueller Report lays out a set of findings on the mob boss’ criminal activity but fails to completely connect the dots. Happens all the time in mob investigations, particularly when many of the loyalists feel that their allegiance will be rewarded in some way. In this case it’s likely the dangling pardons.

If you’re a fan of the president, which is still unfathomable to me, then relax. Go easy on those still clamoring for this fella’s head. The situation was reversed not so long ago and y’all are still mad about the conclusions the Justice Department found in regards to them e-mails. Bad people get away with bad things all the time, particularly when they have money or influence. Be mad about that. Very mad.

But your anger should reach beyond a seething indictment of Jussie Smollett and Hillary Clinton, if you support this incompetent boob of a president, and should reach to the mob boss, too. Likewise for you on the other side. If you feel that Donald Trump got away with one with the release of the Barr memo, you’re right. But so did Jussie Smollett and so did Hillary Clinton and so do a lot of other privileged people. In the meantime our prisons are needlessly overcrowded with folks who had neither the privilege nor the power to “exonerate” themselves. You want to be mad at something, be mad at that.

Not to say we should ignore the elephant in the room. We need to correct our politics and elect better leaders, better representatives. It’s going to be really, really hard to do, but it’s a thing worth doing. And all we have to do, first, is the nearly impossible. We have to set aside our own biases and see the elephant for what it is.

We have to stop defending the bad behavior of those who do more stuff for our side. We don’t need them; there are plenty of good folks willing to take up the cause. To borrow an overused phrase, we need to actually drain that swamp. Plenty of crocodiles on the left and on the right, including the man who made that phrase famous. That’s where we start. Before you know it we’ll be able to argue about politics again instead of arguing about politicians.

At this point Rusty would probably say something like “let’s get started.”

There’s still plenty of daylight, he’d add. We’ve got a lot of work to do before the sun goes down.

34 thoughts on “The Bob Mueller Report Was Wrong”

  1. drain the swamp at all levels please. On tuesday we have a referendum in my village for increasing our taxes for another ambulance to be added. With all the name calling and belittling that people are doing, I’ve stopped attending the meetings and reading the posts. I don’t understand how people can be so hateful. On voting day I hope their will be an ambulance on site because I fear someone may need one. Sometimes I really do not like people 😦

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. It’s crazy to me, Grace, how much we all seem to hate each other (especially in print). Like I wrote about a few weeks ago*, we have to rise above that. “Do we need another ambulance?” should be a simple question, shouldn’t it? And if a majority of folks say we do, and are willing to pass a tax to fund it, so be it. If they aren’t, so be it. But instead these things lead to all caps and screaming and shouting and, as you say, name calling. We can all agree we can’t all agree, but we don’t need to make a bloody war out of it.

      *https://tombeingtom.com/2019/02/18/choosing-love-or-hate/

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  2. I’m fine with holding all crooks responsible for their actions. In an ideal world we’d especially hold those in power responsible while they’re still in power, but I’d also prefer a justice system that works slowly and well over one that works quickly and badly, and with that in mind I’d like to point out that just because Mueller has filed his report doesn’t mean the investigation is over. He’s not pursuing any further indictments himself but he’s sent indictment recommendations to other districts.
    Also I’d like to see something that Shawshank touched on: an end to for-profit prisons.
    And most importantly WordPress is giving me a recommendation of a blog about elephants, so if I have trouble dealing with the elephant in the room I can go deal with the elephant in the blog.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Really good point about the for-profit prisons, Chris. Big money is being made to put people away, so the incentive is to put away as many as possible. This is why America continues to lead the world in incarcerations, a stat that should make us all ashamed. I was gonna make that point but didn’t want to digress (again) so I’m glad you made it!

      Also a good point about the investigation continuing. That’s another way Trump and his followers are wrong about the report. In fact, you made a great point about the justice system needing to work slowly and well instead of quickly and badly.

      You made so many good points that you should probably just write my next article. 😁

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      1. Well, if I do write your next article I promise to take it seriously and imitate both your style and ideas, offering a serious and well-reasoned and non-partisan consideration before descending into a bizarre fantasy about aardvarks being used as currency and several gratuitous comments about genitals.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. It’s always so great to read a post from you Tom! I was wondering how the report (now he’s saying it’s not a summary) on the Mueller Report by the “myrmidon” 😂 had affected you. I know a lot of people from the Resistance were disappointed, they were hanging all their hopes on Mueller finding the Cheeto guilty. I can imagine how let down they must feel. Lucky for me, I wasn’t expecting such a thing. It’s not that I’m a pessimist, it’s just that I don’t have faith in the American political and legal system. But I still vote and believe in fighting for something better, as you wrote so well. You’re right, the swamp needs to be actually drained, it’s was designed by the rich for the rich. It’s doing what it was intended to do: maintain the status quo for the establishment. It needs new architects.

    Living in Europe while this whole thing is happening, I notice how critical Germans are about Americans, especially our patriotism and Republicanism, it all looks ridiculously naive from over here. For this reason, I think the Cheeto in office might be a great thing, he is a symptom of a much bigger problem: the lack of support, understanding and political power for a vast array of Americans, grossly underrepresented in government. This painful, humbling, fall into the mud of this demented senior citizen’s tweets and rallies may be just the thing America needs to take a long, hard look at itself and what it truly stands for.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Oh, MP, I agree completely! I wasn’t expecting any kind of retribution from this report, but I did expect what I believe (at this point) we still will get (and have seen already with the indictments): a comprehensive look at this fool’s corrupt world. I’ve long since accepted the fact that his base, with their blinders, will never see Donald Trump for what he is. He can, as he said, shoot an innocent person point blank in the face in a crowded arena and it wouldn’t move the dial for those who have come to (for lack of a better term) worship him like a god (or a representative of the same). He appeals to the deepest intuitions of the deeply disenfranchised conservatives and once you climb on top of the elephants inside the minds of the populace, you take the riders, too.

      But this is, as I’ve said all along, a bump in the road. The long path of humanity tends towards progressivism, as it must, and deterrents to that path in the form of anti-pluralism only strengthen the resolve of the enlightened populace. We’ve already seen the results of this sort of isolation and hatemongering in the most recent election, which swept into power a wave of young, smart, diverse, anti-corruption pluralists. Progressives, for the future of mankind.

      So you’re right. Perhaps America needed this, right now, to expose the alligators of our society. As they scurry out from under their rocks, spreading the ideals of hate and prejudice, we see that we have not come as far as we’d hoped. We see that the binding of cultures continues to create animosity and fear, and we see what can happen if a corrupt individual takes advantage of that fear and hate and taps into it for his own personal gain and glory.

      Trump is a bad guy. A really bad guy. He has been his entire life. The blinders of partisanship are strong enough to distort that image for those with tunnel vision, but the rest of us see the reality of what it is. I’m not saying I’m always right, but this is wrong. On every level, wrong.

      So we must continue to support those who carry the message of pluralism, of unity, of anti-corruption and of progressivism. The better world of our futures depends on exposing charlatans like Donald Trump. Far from exonerating him from his misdeeds, the Mueller Report overturned the rock under which he hides. Producing a summation through a surrogate does not change that, and the House is right to demand the full, un-redacted report. The equal branch of government must run a check on the executive. America does not need or want a king.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Awesome response!!!!👏👏👏 Amen Tom! SO many gems in your writing, I love what you wrote: “The long path of humanity tends towards progressivism, as it must,” I completely agree with you, it feels to me like we go into a repetitive spiral once we shift towards authoritarianism it always leads to suffering and death, the only way forward is to break out of the cycle of hate, ignorance and fear mongering, if it doesn’t happen within our lifetimes, or in a 1,000 or a million years, it’s the only way to actually “progress”.💚 Much strength and love to you brother!

        Liked by 1 person

  8. I am so far behind on being able to read and comment on all posts, but this one just couldn’t wait. I am so glad to read your thoughts on the Mueller report and tend to agree with you. The problem is, Mueller is either just as corrupt as the rest of them or Barr is lying to protect his leader. There is absolutely NO way with all the clear evidence Mueller had he couldn’t nail that idiot Trump. I do believe Trump is not only very deceitful and a complete idiot but his cult followers are worse and the reason Trump is where he is today. I think he is trying to destroy this country with his temper tantrums and stupidity, but hopefully something will change someday. I think there has been so much destruction it is going to be really hard if not impossible to fix.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I tend to think that Donald Trump doesn’t so much have a plan as a personality of self-importance and an ego driven by that narrative. He wakes up every day and does whatever he has to to feed that ego. All the other stuff that happens as a consequence is a by-product of his natural state. In a sense, that makes his followers far more culpable then even he, since they ought to know better but they blind themselves in the interest of their talk-radio-driven hyper-partisan hopes.

      Glad you joined in on this one, Alyssa! I’m with ya on the lost time!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. You know I always agree with you! That man child has no real personality and doesn’t care about anything or anyone other than himself and that daughter he has a strange/uncomfortable relationship with. His ego and ignorance is crazy, but his followers are why is where he is!

        Liked by 1 person

  9. I really just don’t get politics. You have a guy who is an absolutely immoral douchecanoe but he’s still untouchable, while people are calling for our PM to resign because people in his office may have asked the AG to defer a prosecution against a Canadian company too many times for her liking. Also, he snuck a chocolate bar into the House of Commons because he was hungry. WTF?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I think it’s a matter of standards.

      All other things being equal, a progressive populace will hold their own politician accountable more than a right-wing populace will. What’s happening in America is that 100% of conservatives (or a number damn close to that) will approve of the current president NO MATTER WHAT, because he is their “servant from god” sent to purify the state of what generally amounts to an infidel presence in this Christian nation. Those fooled most by ideology will also be fooled most by strongman bravado.

      On the left side we want our ideologies portrayed, sure, but we want it initiated by folks of good character and conscience. The other side will always despise the opposition (right hates lefty leaders, lefties hate right leaders) but lefties will hold THEIR OWN leadership more accountable, overall. What you end up with, then, is 100% doubt on the right for the good Canadian guy, and some percentage of doubt on the left side, too. So progressive folks in charge need to be extra-pure of intent to pass muster.

      Or, at least, that’s what I came up with off the top of my head just then. Could be we’re all just inconsistent dummies floating on a speck of mud twirling in a sea of black, stumbling through a finite existence without a damn clue.

      You pick. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  10. Pingback: A Matter of Perspective – Tom Being Tom
  11. Pingback: Circumspect Old Sphere – Tom Being Tom
  12. Pingback: What Have You Been Up To? – Tom Being Tom
  13. Pingback: Interesting Times – Tom Being Tom
  14. Pingback: Just Me, Talking About Stuff – Tom Being Tom
  15. Pingback: Meme Machine – Tom Being Tom

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.