The mainstream media—mostly–continues to disgrace itself in the wake of the Mueller report, as do others, like the despicable Bill Maher. I can’t wait to see how Stephen “Cockholster” Colbert tries to spin it, while being hilarious, of course. Remember, this was a destructive smear on the character, patriotism and loyalty of a newly elected U.S. President, launched without any justification other than the fact that Democrats , and especially Hillary Clinton, cannot accept the fact that someone like the real estate mogul/ reality TV star could beat the party’s coronated successor to the Great Obama. Surely, some sinister conspiracy had to be at work. Based on this, and nothing else, we have  seen a nearly three-year, oppressive inquiry interfering with the President’s ability to govern, while subjected to a non-stop barrage of news reports finding looming impeachment in every leak.

Ethics Alarms flagged it as the coup attempt it was from the beginning. This didn’t require any special acumen. All it required was objectivity, common sense, and a rueful appreciation of how totalitarian the Democratic Party has become in its values and tactics.

Some notable and illuminating reactions, and some heroes and villains….

• Bill Maher scripted the reactions I am reading from the bitter-enders on my Facebook feed:  “I don’t need the Mueller report to know Trump is a traitor. I have a TV.” Imagine: Maher considers a confession of blatant bias virtue signaling to his bleating, Trump-hating audience. But saying this after the report is no more evidence of unethical bias than what we heard from the Trump-Deranged commenters here. They just knew he was guilty, and they probably still do. Last year, Maher was certain that Mueller would prove impeachable offenses. For example, he tweeted,he tweeted, “Hey Trump, if Mueller is hunting witches he’s finding them.” No, he wasn’t. “Witches” were Trump agents who colluded on his behalf making quid pro quo deals with Russia. They didn’t exist.
• CBS expatriot-turned truth-teller (she admits that the news media is biased) Lara Logan told Fox News—they’d never let her say this kind of thing on MSNBC—

My question is this: If charges had been brought against the president, then the headlines would all be screaming about, you know, victory, right, for the left. Vindication. This proves that what the left has been saying is right. Now, no charges have been brought but I don’t see screaming headlines that say this vindicates the President….There is something else that bothers me with much of the reporting on this from the beginning is that you keep seeing high-up, featured prominently in many articles, this line that ‘six members of the Trump campaign have been indicted by the Mueller investigation’ — but you don’t read in the same space right there, nobody writes ‘although none of them were charged with conspiracy with Russia,’ the central question of the Mueller investigation. That always comes way, way, way down further in the reporting.

Huh. How odd. Why would they do that, I wonder?

• MSNBC continued to befoul itself by being unable to just report the news and admit that its analysis was dead, dead, wrong. Rachel Maddow appeared to be choking up as she revealed the bad news that the President wasn’t proven to be a traitor, and that Democrats would have to live with the results of a rigged election exploiting the evil Electoral College (Alexander Hamilton didn’t like it, so there) using the votes of racist morons. Chris Matthews furiously demanded to know, “How can Mueller let him off the hook?." and was livid that President Trump was not “interrogated.".  He wasn’t “on the hook if he didn’t do anything wrong,”  and if no evidence implicated Trump, Mueller had no basis to demand an interview.

Best of all was the incompetent Joy Reid, joined on a panel by Perpetually Angry Elly Mystal, whose increasingly outrageous leftist rants have kept me from touching “Above the Law” with a metaphorical ten foot pole.   Mystal:

“Is Trump’s flunky going to release a report that might be damaging to his sugar daddy? I don’t think so. I don’t even know why we think that Barr isn’t the one who stopped the investigation. This is a 22-month-long investigation, Barr’s been on the scene for a month, and now we’re done? That doesn’t strike anybody as odd? No, I have absolutely no confidence that Bill Barr will do anything other than what is in the best interest of Donald Trump.."

What an asshole. There is no justification for calling Trump Barr’s “sugar daddy.” This isn’t journalism and it isn’t punditry. It’s just hateful partisan poison. Then Reid joined in:

“The fact that this investigation takes place within the Justice Department, which Donald Trump essentially controls, and that he got rid of the problem, Jeff Sessions, who––the one decent thing that he did was just recuse himself. This guy is not recused. It feels like the seeds of a cover-up are here.."

Sessions had to recuse himself, you irredeemable idiot, because Sessions was part of the Trump campaign, and might have been subject to investigation himself.  Reid didn’t insist that Eric Holder, Obama’s pal AG (unlike Barr, who has no personal relationship with the President)recuse himself from the many investigations, actual and potential, that had possible impact on the President, such as the extremely suspicious IRS scandal.

• CNN distinguished itself from unprofessional and openly “resistance”-allied MSNBC by at least being willing to face reality without spin. Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, was straightforward:

“Let’s be specific .This is really good news for a lot of people around Donald Trump. …There has been a lot of suspicion around certain people. And a lot of negative things have been said and imputation of criminal activity. Mueller has said, I am not proceeding. There is no better news to receive than you are not being indicted by the United States government.."

Eva Perez added,

“After an investigation that has frankly clouded his administration since the beginning of his presidency. The president can begin to probably breathe a little easier that the idea that his vindication is coming. He knows that so far from the Mueller investigation, the public information that’s been released by Robert Mueller, there’s been nothing that comes close to what looks like collusion or conspiracy, which has been at the focus of this investigation, the idea that there was somebody in the president’s campaign who was colluding with the Russians.."

•  I guess no one should be surprised that the  impeachment-cheerleading  New York Times did not take the bad news well, or professionally. It issued an editorial essentially stating, “We don’t need to read the Mueller report." because we know Trump is guilty.
• Down the memory hole, except that so many conservative pundits are revealing in re-surfacing them, are the many irresponsible predictions by talking heads and Democrats that the President’s eventual destruction was inevitable, since they knew he was guilty, and that Mueller would prove it.

—In December 2017, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski said the Trump Team was might be going to jail “for the rest of their lives.”

—A year later, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Delaware Sen. Coons if Trump might be facing jail time.  Coons said there was a good chance, since “the issues outlined against both Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, I think, continue to sharpen the ways in which it is clear that the Mueller investigation has produced a whole series of actions not previously exposed to the public. “

—Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who has been the leader of House Furies convinced that Mueller would find impeachable crimes,  said Trump could be the first President “to face the prospect of jail time,” saying “My takeaway is there’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. We have been discussing the issue of pardons that the President may offer to people or dangle in front of people. The bigger pardon question may come down the road as the next President has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.  In March of last year, ABC’s Joy Behar told the audience: “I think they’re all  [The Trump family] going to end up together in prison and maybe that’s a good thing.."I

—In March 2018, ABC’s Joy Behar hopefully predicted of the Trump family: “I think they’re all going to end up together in prison and maybe that’s a good thing.."

There are many, many more.

• Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi, no Trump-lover he, joined the thin ranks of the journalists willing to accept the sad reality, and wrote

Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media. As has long been rumored, the former FBI chief’s independent probe will result in multiple indictments and convictions, but no “presidency-wrecking." conspiracy charges, or anything that would meet the layman’s definition of “collusion." with Russia….Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. As Baker notes, a full 50.3% of respondents in a poll conducted this month said they agree with Trump the Mueller probe is a “witch hunt.."