Robert Mueller III was a Bronze Star Marine veteran, an FBI director, and an American citizen. When the president of the United States heard the news that Mueller died today, he put it this way: “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”
Mueller was honored for his service in Vietnam, and served presidents of both parties as the director of the nation’s top law-enforcement agency. Donald Trump, whose diagnosis of bone spurs kept him from being sent to that same war, has repeatedly denigrated the American war dead as “losers” and “suckers,” and has expressed disgust in the presence of wounded troops (“No one wants to see that, the wounded,” Trump once complained to the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff).
Trump has never tried to be the president of all Americans. That deficiency was on grotesque display as he celebrated the death of someone who devoted his life to the country Trump now leads. Of course, Mueller spearheaded the investigation into whether there was collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump never forgave him.
Even by the low standards that Trump has set, cheering the death of another man is abhorrent. Not that it hasn’t happened before. Just four months ago, Trump posted on social media that the filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered in their own home because Reiner was a frequent Trump critic. (The couple’s son has been charged in their killing, and investigators have not said that politics played a role in the murders.) Generally speaking, ugly personal attacks are Trump’s go-to mode: He has repeatedly made fun of women’s looks. He called African nations “shithole countries.” He embraced the racist lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. He made a punch line out of the brutal assault of Nancy Pelosi’s husband. The list goes on from there.
Mueller, in recent years, had retreated from the spotlight. He made few public appearances after his 2019 testimony before Congress at the end of his investigation into Trump; his performance then was, at times, faltering and confusing. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease two years later. He died at the age of 81.
Trump, with his nation at war, spent the day golfing near his lush Palm Beach estate. He was still at his club when news of Mueller’s death broke. Trump fired off his reaction a short time later. The pushback was swift. Representative Seth Moulton, a veteran and Democrat from Massachusetts, responded with his own post to say that Trump is “a horrible human being and an embarrassment to the United States.” His colleague Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor, said, “Mueller and Trump represent polar opposites of what a public servant should be.”
The Russia investigation—or, as Trump put it, the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax”—has long infuriated the president. Questions swirled throughout the 2016 campaign about possible links between Moscow and Trump and his associates. Trump himself fueled much of the speculation and, in May 2017, abruptly fired the FBI director, James Comey, who was leading an investigation into the possible collusion. Trump made no secret of why he did it: The very next day, he hosted the Russian ambassador in the Oval Office and told him that firing Comey had “taken off” the “great pressure” that Trump had faced over the investigation. Just over a week later, the Department of Justice named Mueller, who was then retired, as special counsel to investigate a sitting president.
The investigation shadowed Trump, who only added to it by routinely making policy decisions and pronouncements that favored Russia and its authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin. This was most vividly on display in their July 2018 summit in Helsinki when Trump, in response to a question I asked about Moscow’s election interference, sided with Putin over his own nation’s intelligence agencies and then went on yet another screed about the Russia probe.
Meanwhile, back home, Mueller became an unlikely pop-culture figure. Democrats pinned their hopes on him—there were T-shirts, mugs, and more social-media memes that you could count—as they fervently hoped that the Mueller probe would rid themselves of Trump. It was an uncomfortable fit; Mueller stayed out of sight and instructed his team to stay silent; despite the constant attacks from Trump and Republicans, his team would not comment. That silence and resulting air of mystery, in a way, only inspired Democrats more; surely, they said, Mueller would save the day.
He did not. Trump never sat for an interview, and Mueller’s team leaned on a DOJ guideline that stated that presidents could not be charged with a crime. Mueller concluded that it could not be proved that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. And he did not offer an opinion as to whether Trump obstructed justice in trying to block the investigation. Mueller first gave his report to Attorney General Bill Barr in March 2019, and Barr framed it for public consumption, painting it in the most favorable light for the president. Trump claimed that the outcome was “total exoneration.” It was not. But his presidency survived.
Trump has always governed as an “us versus them” president. Every other man who has sat in the Oval Office has at least nodded toward unity or made an effort to win over those who didn’t vote for him. Trump never has. Instead, he has vilified his perceived opponents—whether Democrats, journalists, or any other average Americans—and deemed them traitors or enemies of the people. In his second term, he has used the Department of Justice, the same agency where Mueller worked for nearly 30 years, as a tool to carry out retribution. There traditionally was a bright line between DOJ and the West Wing; these days, the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington has Trump’s face displayed on a giant banner hanging out front. The agency has opened investigations into several Trump foes, including Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and others. Trump has instead used the government’s levers of powers to punish law firms, universities, and blue states. He surged masked ICE agents into cities that did not vote for him. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s post about Mueller.
Other presidents have been partisan; other presidents have exhibited vile behavior. But Trump alone has publicly exulted in the death of an American. Mueller never sought the attention, though his life story was worthy of biopic treatment. He volunteered to fight in Vietnam and won numerous citations, including the Bronze Star for combat valor when he rescued a wounded Marine under enemy fire during a 1968 ambush. The following year, he was shot in combat. He returned to lead his platoon a few months later. He later practiced law, became a U.S. attorney, and rose through the ranks of the Department of Justice before being chosen by President George W. Bush to become FBI director shortly before the September 11 attacks.
At the conclusion of Mueller’s 10-year term, a president of the other party, Barack Obama, asked him to stay on for another two years. Mueller was approved by all senators, Republican and Democrat alike, 100–0.
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