Donald Trump Hates the Mueller Report Except When He Doesn’t

The Justice Department has announced that they plan to release a redacted version of the Mueller report this Thursday. We don’t know exactly how much information will be redacted—if it will just be details related to national security or if it will be as skewed as Attorney General William Barr’s initial summary. Barr’s report did nothing but confirm whatever we already thought of Mueller’s investigation; Trump and his supporters latched onto the Trump was not found to have “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” bit, while others focused more on the this report “does not exonerate” him from crimes part. No matter what the actual Mueller report says, hopefully we’ll just get some answers.

But of all the people looking forward to/dreading the Mueller report’s release, Trump himself might be the most conflicted. Because this guy simply cannot pick a lane when it comes to his feelings on the report. Does he love the Mueller report or despise it? Oh sure, he says he hates it. He’s spent nearly two years railing against special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He’s called it “totally conflicted, illegal and rigged!” He’s called it a “witch hunt” more times than we can count. (187 on Twitter.) He is clearly not a fan of the Mueller investigation.

Except when he is.

Because sometimes he loves the Mueller investigation. Like when he incorrectly inferred that it proved his “total exoneration.”

Or when he thought that one tidbit from it should be receiving a lot more attention.

Trying to keep all this straight, he hates the Mueller investigation and thinks it’s a made-up witch hunt, except when it reveals something damning about a person who once worked for Obama, in which case it then deserves all the attention from news outlets that he’s spent his tenure in the White House also calling “fake.” Got it. Very legal, very cool.

(image: Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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