Vladimir? It’s Estragon. Has It Dropped Yet?

It’s always interesting to me because a deputy, that didn’t get any votes, appoints a man that didn’t get any votes, he’s going to write a report on me. I had one of the greatest election victories in history. Would you say that’s true? They came from the valleys, they came from the rivers, they came from the cities, they came from all over, they voted in one of the greatest elections in the history of our country, and now I have a man, because we have an attorney general who — nobody can even believe he didn’t tell me, but he recused himself — so I have a man who is a deputy who I don’t know, who I didn’t know at all, and he appoints a man who had just left my office, I didn’t give him the job at the FBI, [James] Comey’s his best friend, but listen, you know it better than anybody, you’ve been very fair in this, but listen, I have a deputy, appoints a man to write a report on me, to make a determination on my presidency? People will not stand for it.

Trump, March 21, 2019 – waiting on Mueller, just like the rest of us

Here we all are, waiting for Mueller. We wait and we wait. What will he say? Will his long-awaited report take Trump down? Wait – I hear it’ll be a dud, and we shouldn’t get our hopes up. Really? Cuz I heard that it’s going to be 6,000 pages long, and by page 50 there won’t be anything left at 1600 Pennsylvania but a smoking hole. Nah, get real, it’ll be inconclusive – except Don Jr. will get indicted. Etc.

All we need now is a guy named Lucky to enter stage right, tethered by a rope to somebody named Pozzo.

As I write this, Mueller may already have delivered his fabled report – a lot of the pundits thought it could be today, and I’m so tired of bouncing over to the CNN website to check that I figure I’ll just wait until four, and hear what’s what from my beloved Nicolle Wallace.

Really, though, does it even matter?

I’ve been as guilty as the next guy of wanting it too badly, vibrating and panting like a basset hound balancing a doggie treat on his nose, waiting for Mueller to speak. It’s the hope, you see – the sweet, consoling hope that this, finally, will spell the end of that awful talking cheeto with the bizarre ‘do. Surely, once Mueller offers incontrovertible proof of Trump’s nefarious, traitorous dealings with the Russians, even loyalists as appallingly sycophantic as Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham will be forced to contend with reality. Surely that must be so. Then, at last, Orange Mussolini will face the music, and his ass will be impeached straight out of the Oval, and sent packing in the general direction of the NY State prison system. Yeah, I know Nancy (to whom Trump refers as “Nancy”) said she’s against impeachment, but she left herself some wiggle room, and when she gets a gander at what Mueller has to tell her, and starts feeling the heat from the Party, she’ll know she has no choice. Right! That has to be the case. Any day now, Mueller will drop the hammer and it’s b’-bye, asshole, send me a selfie when you’re fitted out for the orange jumpsuit.

Yet nothing, so far, has done the trick. Will the report change any minds? Would anything? I’m reminded of the great Doonesbury strip from the Watergate era, with the Congressmen investigating Nixon howling with frustration at how nothing ever seems to be enough to show Tricky Dicky the door. “If only he’d knock over a bank or something” moans one.

Well, Trump more or less did knock over Deutsche Bank, and his partisans remain as loyal as ever.

Mueller’s report might not even include the stuff that should send Donald up the river, but what if it does? What if that snake of an Attorney General that just came on board even lets it go public? His idiot base will never abandon Trump. He’ll tell them again, as he’s been telling them for months and months, that Mueller is a biased hack, that his team was 100% angry Democrats, that it’s all fake news, and that it’s all just one big leftest attempt at a coup. They’ll believe it. As long as they do, the GOP won’t lift a finger.

Did you know that a recent poll of Fox News viewers, commissioned by The Daily Beast, found that almost 80% of the slack-jawed brainstems agree that “the Trump administration has accomplished more than any administration in history”? You’d have to be as dumb as me arse to believe that, but they are and they do, and they do because Trump told them so, and unlike the members of the UN General Assembly they didn’t immediately burst out laughing. They ate it with a spoon, just like they believe that Trump’s electoral victory was the biggest landslide in American history, that Trump’s inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama’s, that Hillary lost the popular vote if you subtract the millions of fraudulent ballots cast by illegals, that there was No Collusion, and that caravans of middle eastern jihadists are streaming north from Guatemala, disguised as Hispanic women and children, which is just more proof that immigration is a crisis, and we have to Build The Wall, if it’s not built already, which some days it is.

What misguided liberals like me have never fully processed is that these idiotic white people really do believe all of Trump’s shit, they’ll eat all of it, every stinking, steaming heap, and tell you it’s meatloaf. It seems impossible. We can’t come to grips with it.

Trump has come to grips with it, though, you bet he has, and he knows just what bilge to spew. Read what he says in the above quote – I know you probably skipped over it, not wanting to waste your time on bullshit that’ll only make you angry, but give it a go – it’s classic Donald. Look, folks, says The Donald, his victory in 2016 was a monumental triumph of the popular will over the swamp creatures of D.C., the first time in decades that enough millions turned out, at last, to vote for a guy who is on their side. They came from the valleys, they came from the rivers, they came from the cities, they came from all over, they voted in one of the greatest elections in the history of our country. They came from the rivers!! Even the Riverfolk made it to the polls!! And now look! The filthy Dems want to take it all away, and steal from the people their sweet vindication! And who do they use as their hatchet man? That lying Democrat stooge, Robert Mueller. Mueller, who’s still pissed at Donald because of that fee dispute at one of Donald’s golf clubs. Mueller, who begged to be appointed as head of the FBI, and holds a grudge over Trump’s refusal to do it. That guy! The fix is in! And who voted for Mueller anyway? The people didn’t. They voted for Donald. Only Donald is their legitimate leader. This guy, this biased liberal toady, is going to issue some report out of the blue – out of the blue, folks – and that’s supposed to be enough to depose their beloved chosen Trump? Oh yeah? Bullshit. It’s always interesting to me because a deputy, that didn’t get any votes, appoints a man that didn’t get any votes, he’s going to write a report on me.

This is why Pelosi is leery of impeachment, and why James Comey, of all people, wrote an op-ed in the Times yesterday expressing his fervent desire that Trump not be removed from office before the 2020 election, a sentiment that an MSNBC pundit called “crazy-making”. It is crazy-making, but is it wrong? I don’t know. Do you? What would those yokels do, if Donald was thrown out of office by a cabal of D.C. swamp creatures, while Trump screams Coup! Coup! on Fox and Friends? Leave aside that the Republican Senate would never do it – what if they did? Do you think The Base would shrug and think “better luck next time”? Do you suppose they’d say “well, if they all voted to do it I guess it must be right”?

Or is Trump right, and they won’t stand for it?

And what does not standing for it look like?

Meanwhile, we wait. In this moment of not knowing, it’s Schrodinger’s Report. It’s damning. It’s exonerating. It’s damning/exonerating. Sometime soon we’ll pop the lid and see. It’s going on four o’clock. Maybe I’ll flip on the goggle box and Nicolle will tell me it happened, the report finally came, and it’s said to be 6,300 pages of exquisite detail that should be enough to send Trump to the goddam electric chair. Or maybe not. What do we do, though, when Godot strides on to the stage, looks quizzically at Vladimir and Estragon, pronounces himself ready to answer all of their questions, and they stare back at him blankly and say “who cares what you think”?