David Brooks:

Yes, the news event is, a piece of paper was handed from one office to another office. That is what happened today.

This takes place in a political context. And I think a lot of people — we have been talking about the Mueller report. And some people were treating it as the messiah that was going to come and rid them of Donald Trump.

And there was an expectation that it would shift fundamentally the ball game. Right now, there are daily allegations about Trump about this or that, bad tweets. Republicans have stuck with him. Democrats have opposed. And we have been in this World War II situation.

And so the question is, does the report change that trench warfare, essentially? And if there are no indictments, I really have trouble seeing how it does that. No indictments on collusion, but even the ones I expected there might be were on the obstruction piece.

And this started as an obstruction investigation, after the Comey firing. And so if there's no indictments even on obstruction, then there will be bad stuff, presumably, but we will fundamentally probably be in the same situation.

And so I think the smart money for the past month has always been shifting, as we have been saying, to the Southern District of New York and to his financial crimes. The collusion, I have always been a skeptic, just because I don't think there was a Trump campaign. There was no organized thing to actually do the collusion.