But he’s giving it the old college try.
I think it’s important to recognize just how feverishly the Trump cult is working to erase the Russia investigation and create the illusion that it really was a hoax. It would be one thing if he were just using his twitter feed and Fox news to do this. But he isn’t.
This piece in the Washington Post by Philip Rucker tells the tale:
Seven months after Mueller’s marathon testimony brought finality to the Russia investigation, Trump is actively seeking to rewrite the narrative that had been meticulously documented by federal law enforcement and intelligence officials, both for immediate political gain and for history.
Turbocharged by his acquittal in the Senate’s impeachment trial and confident that he has acquired the fealty of nearly every Republican in Congress, Trump is claiming vindication and exoneration not only over his conduct with Ukraine — for which the House voted to impeach him — but also from the other investigations that have dogged his presidency.
This includes lawsuits filed against Trump by the state of New York over his finances as well as alleged misuse of charity funds by his nonprofit foundation. Trump sought last week to turn the page on these probes, declaring on Twitter ahead of a White House meeting with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) that “New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment.”
Still, Russia is foremost on Trump’s mind. Since even before he was sworn in as president, Trump has viewed the FBI’s Russia investigation as a dark cloud over his administration that threatened to delegitimize his claim on the office. And more than three years in, Trump remains haunted by all things Russia, according to advisers and allies, and continues to nurse a profound and unabated sense of persecution.
As his reelection campaign intensifies, Trump is using the powers of his office to manipulate the facts and settle the score. Advisers say the president is determined to protect his associates ensnared in the expansive Russia investigation, punish the prosecutors and investigators he believes betrayed him, and convince the public that the probe was exactly as he sees it: an illegal witch hunt.
“The whole Mueller investigation was a shakedown and a disgrace. It probably should be expunged,” Trump said in an interview last week with radio commentator Geraldo Rivera, a longtime friend.
Referring to Mueller, Trump added: “I don’t call him special counsel because special counsel is not an accurate term. It’s a special prosecutor, because what he and his 13 angry Democrats — all horrible, just horrible people — what they did to destroy the lives of people that you know, but to destroy the lives of many, Geraldo, should never be forgiven, should never be forgotten, and something has to be done about it.”
He cannot succeed in this, of course. The people who try to do this never do. But it’s stunning that we are dealing with a president who is doing it openly in 2020 and there’s a chance he’s going to be re-elected in a few months.
Last week alone, Trump called the Russia investigation “tainted,” “dirty,” “rotten,” “illegal,” “phony,” a “disgrace,” a “shakedown,” a “scam,” “a fixed hoax” and “the biggest political crime in American History, by far.”
He argued that the probe into Russian election interference was based on false pretenses, despite a recent report from the Justice Department’s inspector general stating the opposite even as it criticized the FBI’s surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide. And he claimed, again without evidence, that Mueller, a former FBI director regarded for his precision with facts, lied to Congress — which happens to be one of the charges Stone was convicted of by a jury last November.
Absent from the president’s many public comments about the Russia investigation, however, was a warning to Russia not to interfere in the next election, or even an acknowledgment that U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to do so.
Of course he hasn’t. He needs all the help he can get and he knows it.