Ari Melber had a terrific hour of his MSNBC show, The Beat, on Friday night. His was the first hour-long news show following the breaking news that Mueller had submitted his final report on the wide-ranging investigation into Donald Trump and his Russia connections (among other things). His guests ranged from legal minds, scholars, Mueller witnesses, and even a lawyer who defended one of them (G Papa).
He ended with what I think was the best 2 minutes of the show: a reflective closing that really summed up the magnitude of the day.
Let me close with a thought about what has happened. This entire investigative process began because Donald Trump did something remarkably stupid and against his self interest. He publicly fired James Comey, came up with a fake cover story that's been exposed, and then put pressure on his own appointees in the Justice Department. Rod Rosenstein, fresh from his appointment, tapped Bob Mueller for this role. Here we are about 22 months later and Bob Mueller has racked up 37 different indictments of people and organizations in this country and abroad and secured so far an unblemished record. He hasn't been overruled in his investigative techniques, warrants, searches and even when he took extraordinary measures, like going after the sitting president's lawyer.
We've had a huge public debate in this country about what this all means. There are a lot of bad faith actors want to convince you that something in here means you should automatically mistrust our institutions or processes. It's usually pretty easy to tell who they are and what their agenda is because they don't want you to believe anything works. Tonight the system worked. The attempts to fire Bob Mueller failed. The report is in. And what comes next involves our Congress, our public, you. So stay tuned, stay involved and thank you for watching our special coverage on The Beat.
.
The key takeaway is to read and listen to the report yourself. The system worked. Trump, FOX and the GOP tried to take Mueller down and it didn't work. He completed his mission. Many on the right have tried to convince their followers that the system is rigged. That Trump is a victim, it is a witch-hunt, and that nothing Mueller finds will be true because the investigation was rigged.
That is simply not true. So now we wait and see.
