Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who became a household name during the years-long Russia investigation, has died at age 81. The news prompted an immediate and characteristically direct response from President Trump, who didn’t mince words about his feelings toward the man who spent two years investigating his campaign. Trump’s reaction was exactly what his supporters have come to expect—unfiltered, unapologetic, and completely unconcerned with Washington’s etiquette of speaking no ill of the recently deceased, as reported by various conservative outlets covering his statements.
The Mueller investigation consumed American politics for nearly three years, cost tens of millions in taxpayer dollars, and ultimately found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to the Mueller Report released in 2019. For Trump and his base, Mueller represented everything wrong with the permanent bureaucracy—a career official who lent his credibility to what they viewed as a politically motivated fishing expedition designed to undermine a duly elected president. The fact that Mueller’s report became a rallying cry for impeachment efforts that ultimately failed only cemented his place in MAGA lore as a symbol of establishment overreach, as noted by commentators on Fox News.
Washington’s media class is already clutching pearls over Trump’s refusal to observe the traditional decorum of presidential condolences. But Trump’s supporters see something different—a man who refuses to play by rules that were never applied fairly to him in the first place. When the establishment spent years calling him a Russian asset based on Mueller’s investigation, did they really expect him to deliver a eulogy? Sometimes the most honest thing you can say is nothing at all—or in this case, exactly what you’re thinking.
Providence watches over the bold.
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