General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: ok, put in your guesses. what is the most likely *realistic* outcome of the mueller investigations? [View all]Igel
(35,359 posts)Have two strikes against me for saying there was no way Trump could win the primaries, and then doubling down on dumb by saying there was no way he could win the general election. So why not?
--indictments of a small number of cronies. Perhaps one conviction, and that far from necessarily for anything done during the campaign.
--a list of suspicions about Trump, but a short list. Most of the suspicions that Mueller has will remain that, and we can all fight for a copy of his best-selling book outlining all the things that he thinks Trump did but didn't really have much evidence for. Remember, Trump delegates for real. That both frees up time, let's subordinate take actions on their own, and provides plausible deniability.
--the media will call the report historic and they'll be right in a trivial sense. The report will say that Russia tried to meddle, and outline the meddling activities. It will have no evidence that the meddling moved the needle because it can't, but any speculation will be taken as conclusive proof. Remember, it's the Russian meddling that's the target of the investigation, Trump's collateral. Instead, Mueller will echo the intelligence community's findings: Russia tried to weaken the US body politic and electoral system as job 1; it targeted HRC before it had any reason to help Trump for any reason except to hurt the carousel of (R) front runners during the primary; and late in the game Russia helped Trump, but by then he had racked up numerous primary wins and was probably going to win the primaries overall. (This will, of course, be heard by many as "mmmmmmmm Russia helped Trump mmmmm." The first part has again surfaced in the consciousness of the body politic as a scapegoat for all the partisanship and internal divisions. HRC said they "sowed" division, but really, you sow seed; Russia fertilized crops well on the way to maturity.)