× Expand Pete Souza Robert Mueller Robert Mueller

What’s left to say about Donald Trump that could possibly change people’s minds?

That Trump lies? That he asks his aides to lie for him?

The redacted Mueller report—released by Attorney General William Barr at a press conference Thursday in which he sounded like Trump’s personal attorney, even repeating Trump’s favorite line about no collusion with Russia—reveals more details about a lot of things the public already knew.

Trump is a foul-mouthed bully who tried to fire the people who were investigating him and pressured his staff to lie to protect him. His tirades against the media are transparent posturing; he knows perfectly well that the reporting he derides as “fake news” is factual.

One surprise in the report is the degree to which people who work for Trump have drawn their own ethical lines in the sand. Trump advisor Steve Bannon, of all people, told Trump not to fire FBI director James Comey and that doing so would not stop the investigation (Trump fired Comey anyway). White House counsel Donald McGahn refused to follow Trump’s order to fire Mueller, and later refused to lie to the press about Trump’s efforts to have Mueller fired when Trump ordered him to do so. Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, wiggled out of Trump’s demand that he demand that Attorney General Jeff Sessions limit the scope of the investigation. White House communications director Hope Hicks urged Trump and his son Donald Jr. to come clean about meetings with Russia in which the younger Trump discussed Russian “dirt” on Hillary Clinton during the campaign.

Trump “was saved from an accusation of obstruction of justice, the report makes clear, in part because aides saw danger and stopped him from following his own instincts,” The New York Times concludes.

Reactions to the Mueller report’s release follow a predictable script. Rightwing outlets are insisting there is nothing there, and urge Democrats to let the whole thing go. Leftwing outlets are stoking outrage about Trump’s lies and Russian interference in the election.

I tend to agree with Kevin Williamson in the National Review that Democrats are kidding themselves when they seize on the report to blame the outcome of the 2016 election on Russian interference.

Democrats are kidding themselves when they seize on the report to blame the outcome of the 2016 election on Russian interference.

The fact is, Trump won. Yes, Russia helped push his candidacy. Yes, the playing field is tilted by an electoral college system in which a majority of voters cast ballots for Hillary Clinton and yet Trump was able to win by capturing a majority of states.

Trump won because he amassed a lot of support. And to get too caught up in Russian interference and the unfairness of the American electoral system is to overlook Trump’s power, and to risk not learning the lessons of his popularity. Trump retains his supporters in spite of, and even because of, his most abhorrent qualities. Our task is to figure out what to do about that.

I happened to be on a United Airlines flight to Washington, D.C., when the Mueller report came out. United, the airline that pioneered the use of violent physical force against its customers, recently came up with a new rule for its lowest-fare flyers: restricting carry-on bags to the size of a “personal item” smaller than the average school backpack. My family was already harried when we got to the airport, after trying to arrange our luggage so that the kids could transport their homework without paying hundreds of dollars in extra fees.

I was crammed into a middle seat in economy class, next to my six-foot, two-inch husband, who was trying to figure out where to store his legs when the woman in the seat in front of him, who was watching footage of Donald Trump giving a speech throughout the entire flight, eased her seat back.

My husband stretched his legs under her chair, and the woman spun around to face him and told him to move his feet. My husband pointed out the difficulty of the situation, and the woman grudgingly inched her seat back up part way, but not enough to let my husband extract his legs. After a brief pause, the woman began stomping on my husband’s feet.

As the 2020 election approaches, we need political leaders to focus on a vision for a better future, not on what we already know about Trump.

Somehow we made it through the rest of the flight, with my husband awkwardly positioning himself to avoid further contact. I only heard the whole story after we landed.

It seems to me that this more or less sums up our current political situation. Americans are feeling more and more harassed and squeezed in an economy that has become steadily more skewed to pamper the rich and degrade the rest of us over the last thirty years. Trump appeals to the worst, most aggressive instincts of people who are already on edge and ready to lash out.

Unless we figure out how to come together and address the systemic problems that afflict the great majority of us, we are in danger of devolving into tribal bands, satisfying our impulse to take out our anger on each other, but accomplishing nothing in the way of real progress. Trump is a monstrously incompetent, corrupt, self-serving president. That much is abundantly clear. As the 2020 election approaches, we need political leaders to focus on a vision for a better future, not on what we already know about Trump. It’s time to turn the page.