THE MUELLER REPORT RELEASE

Acting Attorney General William Barr held a press conference last Thursday in which he did the same thing that every member of the Trump administration is forced to do routinely: praise his boss repeatedly.  Sounding just like Trump himself, Barr  used the words "no collusion" several times to describe the findings of the report.  Then he released the full  four hundred plus page report of Bob Mueller's two year investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 election, and even his spin couldn't shake the stink off of Trump's behavior.
While it is true that the report does not reveal outright conspiracy with Russia on the part of the Trump campaign, it does show a campaign that was aware of Russian interference and openly welcomed it.  (The New York Times documented in the report 140 contacts between Mr. Trump and his associates and Russian nationals and WikiLeaks or their intermediaries, which may not have been part of a conspiracy, but they certainly look bad.) One thing is sure, Russian influence is now an undeniable fact, despite the reluctance of the president to admit that fact.  It's amazing to think that, after decades of the confrontations of the cold war between the US and Russia, Russia's greatest victory over us may have been its disruption of an American presidential election and the victory of their chosen candidate.  While we  can't know for sure just how much of an influence Russia had on the election, the Washington Post has pointed out their campaign of fake Facebook news feeds reached over a hundred million people in this country.  Add to that the hacking and leaking of the Democratic National Committee's emails, and the importance of the timing of those leaks (thousands were released as a distraction less than an hour after the infamous tape of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women went public), not to mention the closeness of the election itself, and it's safe to say that Russia played a hand in Trump's victory.

As to the report itself, it gives further insight into a president that has always been wildly unqualified for the job, lacking the patience, intellect and temperament to run a country.   He is reported to be a egotistical, tantrum throwing brat that is extremely difficult to work for.  Furthermore, there are reports of him ordering the outright firing of Mueller, causing White House council Don McGahn to threaten to quit while telling other members that the president was asking him to "do crazy shit".

Yes,  the report shows us that the president clearly wanted no investigation at all, and may have obstructed justice in order to stop it.  But is that truly an impeachable offense?  Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, thinks so.  She recently tweeted "The Mueller report lays out facts showing that a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump and Donald Trump welcomed that help. Once elected, Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into that attack."  While I agree with her that the president acted terribly, I don't see any advantage to the House of Representatives pursuing an impeachment process that will inevitably die in the Senate, where Republican support is both crucial and almost impossible.   Furthermore, such a partisan exercise could wind up helping Trump in the election by firing up his base.  Although I'm a fan of Warren and her policies, I can't help but thinking that she is saying this as a way to stand out from the many other Democrats currently running for the presidential nomination.
So do we just let the president get away with possible criminal behavior?  Sadly, the answer seems to be yes, just like we let the Reagan administration get away with selling arms to Iran, Bill Clinton get away with lying under oath, and George W Bush wiretap Americans without a warrant.  In America, we give our president so much power, and make it so hard to remove him from office, that only overwhelming evidence and strong public disapproval (like Nixon had with Watergate) can successfully impeach him.  And while I agree with the idea that impeachment shouldn't be easy, it's allowed Trump to skate into potential criminal territory without any serious penalty.  Sadly, he may even win reelection in 2020, much to our nation's deep disgrace.