A few inescapable facts staring out of the Mueller report at anyone who still wants to believe in Trump:
(1) The “fake news” was right. Again and again, reporting by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC, and the rest is corroborated by contemporaneous records and the testimony of sworn eye-witnesses facing jail time if they lied — the same people who were the supposedly made-up anonymous sources for reporters. The “fake news” about Trump turned out to be as real as it gets.
(2) “Spying” (aka legal, court-ordered surveillance) doesn’t play a role in the report. As Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman has pointed out, the federal indictments of Russians were full of evidence obtained by (legal) surveillance, but the Mueller report is based on testimony and documents.
(3) The same report that the president claims is a “complete and total” exoneration (BTW can someone explain the difference between “complete” and “total?”) can’t be phony, as the president also claims. Mueller can’t be both “honorable” and a “dirty cop.”
(4) The President of the United States is a fraud: both dishonest and incompetent. The report shows him repeatedly lying, instructing others to lie for him, attempting to commit crimes, and often being saved by how bad he is at it. President Trump is the demagogue the founders warned us about: corrupt and unqualified, possessed only of what Hamilton described as “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” (Federalist 68). None of this is surprising to anyone who saw the reality of Trump’s business career as opposed to the reality TV show version — basically, the entire City of New York. But it should be shocking, and disqualifying, when seen in a president.