Donald Trump is aggressive, Donald Trump is brazen, and Donald Trump might just convince undecided voters that special counsel Robert Mueller is a partisan hack and that the Russia probe really is a witch hunt.
That’s seems like the calculation coming out of the White House. While the legal strategy has stayed steady, as Jonathan Swan points out at Axios, the public relations campaign to discredit Mueller “is growing slightly larger, and significantly louder.”
Trump tweets, and his lieutenants cast aspersions.
Rudy Giuliani warns that Mueller is in danger of getting “into what I call ‘Comey territory,’” a reference to the former FBI who told the public the agency was re-opening its probe into Hillary Clinton just days ahead of the election. Mark Penn, a former Clinton-loyalist turned Trump-ally, writes that the investigation has turned into an “open-ended inquisition.” Sean Hannity rails against the investigation like it was a Watergate-worthy scandal.
The strategy makes the White House message stand out.
Normal people don’t have time to comb through Washington Post and New York Times reporting, then crosscheck it with alternative outlets, scan through chatter on Twitter, and watch the White House daily briefing before forming their opinion. Trump knows they are lucky enough to catch the 6 o’clock news. So he delivers a simple, memorable, and often comical message for a supportive chorus to trumpet.
And as Noah Rothman notes, there is evidence that message sticks.
A joint focus group conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal found significant cynicism about the special prosecutor among both Trump and Clinton voters in Wisconsin. There were four Republicans, three Democrats, and five independents. Asked about the main purpose of the special counsel, four of the 12 participants agreed it was to “find the facts.” The rest dismissed the probe as an effort to “alter public opinion.”
This should frighten those who, as Mathew Continetti writes, are “desperately seeking Trumpslayers.”
Granted the focus group provides a relatively small sample size. And no, truth is not relative to tweets or cable news rants. But still, a year and a half into the investigation, no evidence of collusion has been found and the White House is only getting better at hacking at Mueller. The longer the probe lasts, the more its credibility will wane.
