Trump tries to soothe himself with Fox and Twitter after Mueller report

With all the revelations in the Mueller report, it was a rough day for Trump, so on Thursday night, he took refuge in what he likes best: watching Fox News and tweeting.

It likely felt very soothing for Trump to spend the evening viewing entirely uncritical coverage of himself. After all, he’d spent the day getting exposed as a serial obstructor of justice. He was so nervous, he dodged reporters while fleeing town despite White House adviser Kellyanne Conway saying he would speak.

And the entire world learned that when Trump first heard a special counsel had been appointed, he was so worried that he declared, “I’m fucked.”

Trump started the night by falling back on a favorite line of attack: the entire Russian investigation is Obama’s fault. “Anything the Russians did concerning the 2016 Election was done while Obama was President. He was told about it and did nothing!”

Of course, President Obama had wanted to speak out during the 2016 election, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused even to sign a bipartisan statement condemning Russia’s actions.

Trump then watched “The Five” and started bragging about how he could have shut down the investigation, but didn’t.

“I had the right to end the whole Witch Hunt if I wanted,” he tweeted. “I could have fired everyone, including Mueller, if I wanted. I chose not to. I had the RIGHT to use Executive Privilege. I didn’t!”

The Mueller report made clear that what really happened was that Trump did make multiple attempts to stop the investigation, but failed.

When Martha MacCallum came on, Trump quoted her confusing analysis: “When there is not an underlying crime with regard to Collusion (in fact, the whole thing was a made up fraud), it is difficult to say that someone is obstructing something.” Of course, the special counsel laid out very clearly exactly how and when Trump obstructed justice.

Tucker Carlson said precisely what Trump wanted to hear, calling the Mueller report “perhaps the single most humiliating thing that has ever happened to the White House Press in the history of this Country.” The Mueller report was humiliating indeed, but not for the press.

Trump took a break from Fox to read Wall Street Journal opinion columnist Kimberly Strassel’s twitter feed and announce that she deserved a Pulitzer Prize for her consistent stance that the Russia investigation was a hoax.

By Friday morning, however, Trump seemed to have realized that all was not well. He decided the report he’d been calling a “total exoneration” was instead “the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters.” He then called it “the ‘Report'” and declared statements in it from members of his own team are “total bullshit.”

At present, Trump’s pinned tweet is one of those self-congratulatory memes he likes so much. In a quasi-“Game of Thrones” font, it declares NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION, GAME OVER. HBO issued a statement saying it doesn’t want its intellectual property used for political purposes, but that hasn’t deterred Trump.

Mueller referred 14 additional criminal prosecutions to other offices, and no one yet knows who 12 of those are. The House is poised to meet on Monday to decide what to do next. Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler has already asked Mueller to appear before his committee.

Trump is going to need to watch an awful lot of Fox to deal with everything that’s going to happen.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.