The clearest indicator yet of Donald Trump’s guilt
Imagine you’re being investigated for a crime. The good news is that most of the cops investigating you are on your side. That is, most of them belong to the same political party you do. You tell all your friends you’re completely innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever and you committed no crime. You insist on this over and over in tweets, in speeches, and in person when talking to your friends.
Now, let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s true, you really are every bit as innocent as you say, and it is also true that all the evidence out there will completely exonerate you. Then you find out the investigation is drawing to a close and a report summarizing its findings are about to be published. Do you:
1. Call the investigation a witch hunt.
2. Tell your friends you may not let them read the report when it comes out.
3. Tell your friends the report exonerates you even though you’ve never seen it.
4. Celebrate the report’s impending publication and your inevitable exoneration.
Obviously “4” is the correct answer. If you’re truly innocent, that is. If you’re Donald Trump, on the other hand, your answer is numbers “1” through “3.”
On Sunday, Donald Trump was interviewed by Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation. In the course of the interview Trump, as usual, said many staggeringly stupid things on a range of topics from border security to Iraq and Iran. On the subject of the Mueller investigation he was particularly self-incriminating and, at one point, hilariously self-contradicting.
For example, when asked about the Mueller investigation Trump rambled, “So far this thing’s been a total witch hunt. And it doesn’t implicate me in any way. There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. There was no nothing. Doesn’t implicate me in any way but I think it’s a disgrace.” One has to ask, why is the Mueller inquiry a “disgrace” if it doesn’t implicate him in any way?
Donald Trump also said, “Even the Mueller report said it had nothing to do with the campaign.” Actually the Mueller report has not been published yet. So how does he know this? He doesn’t. Trump invents his own reality as he goes along. Trump’s behavior is consistent with the behavior of a guilty man for the simple and obvious reason that Trump is guilty.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.