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Pre edit: I was struggled to think of a good poll question to ask about the legacy of the Mueller investigation. If you have any choices I should add, let me know.
Now that the Trump Presidency is about to come to an end, and we are left to clean up the mess and grapple with his legacy, the question presents itself of how we should view the Mueller investigation.
I, for one, have complex feelings on the matter. While I think the conclusion of the Mueller report should have been damaging to Trump, the reality is that it was not... in fact, it probably helped him politically.
Read objectively, the Mueller Report all but says Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice, but it does not provide any evidence of collusion, and most Americans seem to have bought into the framing that, since no collusion was found, the whole investigation was a witch hunt or a hoax.
Additionally, many Republicans now speak of the "Russia Hoax" as an offense that justifies Trump's "Stop the Steal" nonsense. What's more, I would be willing to bet that, if the GOP retakes the House in 2022, they will launch an investigation into Biden as retaliation for the Mueller Investigation.
In the minds of many Republicans (and even some independents), the fact that 70%+ of Trump voters will view Biden's victory as illegitimate is justified by the fact that many Democrats "believed in Russiagate!" In other words, the well has been poisoned, and the Russian investigation will be pointed at by a major part of the population as a precipitating event.
Another potentially damaging outcome of the Russian investigation is that, to the extent that it monopolized media attention, it arguably hurt the progressive movement within the Democratic party by distracting discourse from policies such as Medicare for All. While I don't find this argument particularly persuasive, for a variety of reasons, I do think there is a kernel of truth in it. There was certainly an energy and vigor about the Bernie movement in 2016 that was subsumed by the perceived urgency of defeating Donald Trump in 2020-- and everything that made Trump seem like an existential threat to democracy-- arguably added to that.
Yet, balancing all of this, is the simple fact that I think Congress acted rightly in launching the Mueller probe. The plain truth is that every intelligence agency agreed that Russia interfered in the 2016, the clear balance of that interference was on the behalf of Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has Russian contacts and connections that make it plausible, or even likely, that he was aware of that interference. It is the House of Representatives job to investigate such potential corruption-- or at least conflicts of interest.
Then of course, there is this:
At the end of the day, weighing it all up, I am forced to the conclusion that both of the following are true:
Now that the Trump Presidency is about to come to an end, and we are left to clean up the mess and grapple with his legacy, the question presents itself of how we should view the Mueller investigation.
I, for one, have complex feelings on the matter. While I think the conclusion of the Mueller report should have been damaging to Trump, the reality is that it was not... in fact, it probably helped him politically.
Read objectively, the Mueller Report all but says Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice, but it does not provide any evidence of collusion, and most Americans seem to have bought into the framing that, since no collusion was found, the whole investigation was a witch hunt or a hoax.
Additionally, many Republicans now speak of the "Russia Hoax" as an offense that justifies Trump's "Stop the Steal" nonsense. What's more, I would be willing to bet that, if the GOP retakes the House in 2022, they will launch an investigation into Biden as retaliation for the Mueller Investigation.
In the minds of many Republicans (and even some independents), the fact that 70%+ of Trump voters will view Biden's victory as illegitimate is justified by the fact that many Democrats "believed in Russiagate!" In other words, the well has been poisoned, and the Russian investigation will be pointed at by a major part of the population as a precipitating event.
Another potentially damaging outcome of the Russian investigation is that, to the extent that it monopolized media attention, it arguably hurt the progressive movement within the Democratic party by distracting discourse from policies such as Medicare for All. While I don't find this argument particularly persuasive, for a variety of reasons, I do think there is a kernel of truth in it. There was certainly an energy and vigor about the Bernie movement in 2016 that was subsumed by the perceived urgency of defeating Donald Trump in 2020-- and everything that made Trump seem like an existential threat to democracy-- arguably added to that.
Yet, balancing all of this, is the simple fact that I think Congress acted rightly in launching the Mueller probe. The plain truth is that every intelligence agency agreed that Russia interfered in the 2016, the clear balance of that interference was on the behalf of Donald Trump, and Donald Trump has Russian contacts and connections that make it plausible, or even likely, that he was aware of that interference. It is the House of Representatives job to investigate such potential corruption-- or at least conflicts of interest.
Then of course, there is this:
At the end of the day, weighing it all up, I am forced to the conclusion that both of the following are true:
- The Muller investigation was the right thing to do.
- The main legacy of "Russiagate" will be its contribution to our continuing and intensifying polarization.
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