The biggest mystery of the Mueller investigation is why Donald Trump was so obsessed with stopping or stymying it. The outcome, in his post-fact universe, was always destined to be rewritten, revised and repurposed in order to cast the Donald as the perpetual winner he imagines himself to be.
Not even Lewis Carroll could have envisioned a scene like this: Trump beaming from ear to ear as he declared himself to be having “a very good day. . .no collusion, no obstruction.” Such joy and jubilation from a 448-page report that paints a picture of an incendiary White House led by a dishonest, paranoid and prevaricating president who repeatedly orders his aides to lie and falsify documents. God only knows what it would take for this guy to have a bad day.
Robert Mueller’s meticulous report has been analyzed, annotated and otherwise sliced and diced since its release. In many ways, the magnum opus is the legalese version in the glut of Trump books that hit the market over the past few years. It portrays 45 as an out-of-control narcissist who views events through a prism of whatever makes him look good in the moment, a man who bows to no norm or ethical standard.
Yet, there is little in this report to stun an American public that has sadly developed an immunity to Trump shock over these past tumultuous 27 months. Take one of Muller’s more pedestrian findings: that the president dictated a deliberately falsified press statement relating to the Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer and her entourage. In any other administration, that would have been a page one story for days. Instead, it was merely Trump meeting our expectation of untruthfulness. After all, we’re talking about a guy who, according to a former Mar a Largo butler, used to falsely tell guests that nursey rhyme tiles in Ivanka’s room were the original work of Walt Disney because, as Trump told his employee, “who cares” if it’s not true?
One of Trump’s pre-presidential biographers, Michael D’Antonio, prophetically anticipated a major theme of the Mueller report weeks before the inauguration. In describing his vision of the then-incoming presidency, D’Antonio told Politico, “. . .he’ll give orders and they may not be followed, and he wouldn’t care if he doesn’t find out about it. He’s not going to be that concerned with the actual competent administration of the government. It’s going to be what he seems to be gaining or losing in public esteem.”
Therein lies Trump’s biggest ego bruise from the Mueller investigation. Revelation of his constant fabrications or utter disregard for ethical behavior does not faze him. That’s simply Trump being Trump, a persona he has embraced for 72 years. For this president, the real kryptonite in Mueller’s findings is that his staff regularly ignores the Donald’s orders, otherwise known, in the words of former White House counsel Don McGahn, as “crazy shit”. For a man who ran for president on the theme of “only I can fix it”, a pathological egotist who takes counsel from no quarter, the Mueller report had the impact of Dorothy’s dog, Toto. It pulled back the curtain on this boisterous, vile-tweeting, bombast-spewing loudmouth to reveal that the mighty Oz is actually just a feeble old man who nobody pays much attention to.
Of all of Mueller’s findings, this one sentence carried the heaviest blow to Trump’s ego: “The president’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
According to Mueller:
WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL MCGAHNrepeatedly refused Trump’s orders for him to have Mueller fired.
DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF RICK DEARBORN took Trump’s written instructions for the Justice Department to limit the Russia probe to future elections and threw them into a trash can.
ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS continuously refused Trump’s pleas to “un-recuse” himself from the Russia investigation so he could protect the President.
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DANIEL COATSrefused the president’s request to say there was no link between the Trump campaign and Russia.
DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY DIRECTOR K.T. MCFARLANDrefused Trump’s order to write a witness statement saying that the president hadn’t told her then-boss, Michael Flynn, to discuss sanctions with the Russian ambassador.
CHIEF OF STAFF REINCE PRIEBUSignored Trump’s order to fire Jeff Sessions.
DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ROD ROSENSTEINrefused Trump’s order to falsely announce that James Comey’s firing was Rosenstein’s idea.
The list goes on and on. In many cases, as Trump biographer D’Antonio prophesized, the refusal of presidential orders took the form of passive resistance. They simply ignored the assignment and waited for Trump’s attention to move to the next shiny object.
While the Mueller report provides the most extensive documentation of how many of Trump’s aides routinely ignored his commands, it’s not the first we’ve heard of this phenomena. His former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, refused Trump’s order to assassinate the president of Syria and provide options for military action against Iran. Aides also prevented Trump from pulling out of trade deals by removing papers from his desk and waiting for him to forget about it. Other top assistants reportedly declined Trump’s instructions to lobby the Justice Department to prevent the AT&T-Time Warner merger as a way of punishing CNN for what the president regarded as negative news coverage.
There is, of course, only slight solace in the fact that so many of the president’s subordinates found ways to avoid doing “crazy shit”. Of those identified above, all except Coats have either left the White House or are about to.
Now that the curtain has been pulled back on the illusion of the great and powerful Oz, passive resistance offers little comfort for the future of Trump’s presidency. That means, unless we find a way to cut this nightmare short, we will need a pronoun change in what has been the most quoted line in the Mueller report, the part where Trump, upon learning of Mueller’s appointment, said, “This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.” The truth of the matter is that if his presidency doesn’t end soon, WE are fucked.