Updated 1:13 p.m. | At the White House, special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s Russia election meddling investigation has quickly morphed from a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” into the “gold standard.”

“The Mueller report was great. It could not have been better. It said no collusion, no obstruction. It could not be better,” President Donald Trump told reporters at the Capitol as he arrived for a meeting with Senate Republicans.

On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, his team hammered the probe for two years as illegitimate and based on a Democratic hope that his 2016 campaign conspired with the Russian government to hand him the general election win over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Just on Sunday, minutes after Attorney General William P. Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report was released, Trump called the probe an “illegal takedown that failed.”

[Mueller report isn’t changing 2020 campaign dynamics — yet]

The president, his White House aides and his surrogates on Capitol Hill have since taken a victory lap over Mueller not establishing his campaign was involved in a conspiracy with Russians, while also downplaying the former FBI director being unable to exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice. In a classic case of Washington’s ever-changing landscape in the Trump era, Democrats are questioning Barr and even Mueller, while White House officials have begun praising the latter’s work.