Donald Trump has no idea what just hit him

| 7:30 pm EDT July 25, 2019
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The reviews have been mixed at best when it comes to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony yesterday. There were important questions he refused to answer, presumably in the hope of maintaining his own nonpartisan legacy. There were other questions that confused him. There were things in his report that he seemed to know less about than the average political pundit knows. The thing is, Mueller wasn’t the one on trial here – or should we say, the one who’s going to end up on trial.

Though Robert Mueller fell into the well-worn trap yesterday of damaging his legacy by trying too hard to preserve it, none of that matters when it comes to Donald Trump’s fate. Mueller said just enough yesterday to convince a number of non-political Americans watching at home that Trump really is some kind of criminal who needs to be dealt with. When William Barr testified before Congress earlier this year and it went poorly for Trump, we saw pro-impeachment poll numbers spike by five to ten points and stay there. Mueller’s testimony, though uneven, will prompt another spike.

But if you’re Donald Trump, you’re not paying any attention to any of that, because your political reasoning doesn’t play at that level. Trump thinks that because Mueller’s performance yesterday isn’t going to land him any starring movie roles or Law & Order cameos any time soon, it means Trump won the day. Trump’s own tweets this morning were entirely about Fox News, giving away that he spent the morning watching his favorite channel so the sycophants on there could tell him how great things are for him.

Meanwhile back in the real world, that’s simply not where things are for Donald Trump. Robert Mueller made clear yesterday that Trump will be indicted and arrested on federal charges the minute he’s no longer in office. The 2020 polls show that Trump is currently on track to lose humiliatingly – meaning he’ll have to find a way to make himself significantly more popular before election day. In two and a half years in office, Trump has shown that he has no idea how to make himself more popular. If Trump can’t pull it off, he goes to prison in a year and a half. That’s the reality, regardless of whether Robert Mueller would ever make it as a contestant on the Apprentice.