Does the Mueller Investigation Matter?

Friday evening I heard the news that Robert Mueller had completed his two year investigation into possible collusion between Trump and Russia to aid in Russia’s interference in our 2016 election and also to determine whether or not Trump’s firing of James Comey was obstruction of justice. I realized during the announcement that his findings don’t really matter to me.

The findings don’t matter because I can see who this president is. For these two years, Donald Trump has made his character known by his words, tweets and actions. I don’t need the results of an investigation to tell me that Trump skirts the law and even breaks it when it suits him. I don’t need the Mueller investigation to tell me that Trump and his administration lie about practically everything. They are masters of misrepresentation. They are thieves who are using their positions for personal financial gain. We see it pretty much every day in their dealings using tax payer dollars. They routinely scoff at the laws and ethics. They arrogantly see themselves as above it all and the rest of us as law-abiding suckers.

The truth of the matter is that we put a crime boss in the White House. The folks around him are criminals and some are finally going to prison. His lawyer, Michael Cohen, was his personal henchman who turned on him. Cohen’s descriptions of how Trump operates and of the things he did on behalf of Trump for the past ten years, including during and after the election, only confirm that the man has no business being president. It bothers me that he remains in the White House when we can see clearly who he is and how he has greatly diminished the office of the presidency. He has made our country a laughing stock across the world.

What bothers me most is that too many Americans don’t care. Their admiration of this mob boss in the White House seems to stem from their distain for corporate and government elites and their fear of minorities. It’s as though a third of the American people are cheering for Bonnie and Clyde. Back in the day, the public knew Bonnie and Clyde were breaking all the rules, but they were wooed by the bold personalities that gave the middle finger to the elites. Trump does the same. He loudly and proudly voices their bigotry in public, strokes their egos, and ignites the lowest instincts in the human brain. On one of the news shows, a woman takes an audience microphone and tells Steve Bannon that she wasn’t for dictatorships until now. Trump is the only person she would welcome as a dictator in our country. And the audience applauded. What the hell?

So, this is how low some of us have sunk. This is how low Republican lawmakers have sunk. They are either silent or they betray themselves to publicly defend the indefensible. This is precisely why the Mueller investigation doesn’t matter. The best it can do is confirm what we already know and a third of the country won’t believe it anyway. But still worse, it may be inconclusive. It may point toward wrongdoing, but no indictments for crimes dealing with collusion are being issued.

For many Americans, like me, the decision about this president has already been made. We either want him in or we want him out. Personally, I want him out. I don’t need the Mueller investigation to determine that.