The attorney general is about to release a Mueller report to Congress that has undergone several layers of redaction. To get to where we are now, first the twists and turns of the three weeks since Mueller and cohort turned in their work, weeks in which "complete and total exoneration" has turned into something highly suspect and an attorney general accused of acting as President Trump's personal lawyer

Right off, the media was in for a drubbing. "A catastrophic media failure" by "the leading lights of journalism who managed to get the story so wrong, and for so long", wrote Federalist co-founder Sean Davis in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. "It wasn't merely an error here or there. America's blue-chip journalists botched the entire story, from its birth…to its final breath".

"It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD", wrote Matt Taibbi at the otherwise liberal Rolling Stone. "Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor [sic] Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media". Rich Lowry at National Review said, "Never has so little come of so many screaming chyrons. The last two years have been a disgrace".

Sean Hannity was "pissed off and so should the rest of the country be".

"The so-called mainstream media, so-called journalists, they should be embarrassed tonight, they should feel humiliated tonight, they should be apologizing tonight to the American people."

Even the The New York Times was contrite. An op-ed was headlined, "We Were All Seduced By Collusion". Columnist David Brooks' headline was "We've all just made fools of ourselves — again". Peter Baker, a lead reporter of the Trump administration, wrote on the front page that "It will be a reckoning…for the news media…Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?”.

When Attorney General William Barr's summation letter was released, minimally quoting that Mueller's collected evidence "did not establish" that the Trump campaign "conspired or coordinated" with Russia, and that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime" of obstruction… Read More »

When President Trump walked away from Kim Jong-un's offer, Democrats began breathing again after fearing he would give away too much and called the summit a failure. Republicans tried to make it a success, applauding Trump for toughness in turning down a deal that no fool would have accepted.

The summit failed for lack of preparation, for neither side knowing the other's demands, for not having worked out agreements well beforehand by each
country's negotiators, for not thereby following the usual protocol of the heads of state only then arriving to shake hands, sign the finished document, enjoy a fine dinner punctuated by flowery toasts, and go home.

But Mr. Trump wants to substitute his personal, one-on-one diplomacy, cutting the deals himself in the belief he is a master deal-maker who will charm foreign leaders into accepting his position. Instead, Mr. Kim offered only to dismantle an important nuclear facility, demanding in return that the U.S. lift sanctions in their entirety. All other weapons facilities would be left in place with the hermit country free to continue development of fissionable material… Read More »