Choosing Ignorance: Majority of Republicans (and Trump) Oppose Full Release of Mueller Report

On Thursday a version of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller will be released by Donald Trump’s plant in the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr. It will be heavily redacted by Barr to prevent the American people from seeing all of the facts accumulated during the investigation that they paid for.

Donald Trump

Even before the release of the redacted Mueller report, there has been enough voluminous evidence of Trump’s conspiracy with Russia, WikiLeaks, and other nefarious characters, to warrant impeachment and/or indictment. But the report almost certainly contains new information that likely further incriminates Trump, his family, and associates. Even the senior legal analyst at Fox News said so. Which explains why Trump is so panicked by the impending release. He is exhibiting a palpable fear of what might come out, and he feverishly expresses that fear in his Twitter rampages. But he isn’t the only one who is consumed with the dread of imminent truth.

A poll by Monmouth University asked voters if the Justice Department should “provide the full Mueller report to Congress.” The response overall was a resounding majority (60%) saying that the full report should be made public. That’s in line with every other poll on this subject. What’s more interesting is the breakdown by political affiliation. The poll found that Democrats were overwhelmingly in favor (81%) of an unfettered presentation of the facts. Which speaks to their confidence in Mueller and their appreciation for openness no matter the results. Likewise, a solid majority of Independents (61%) also favor full disclosure.

On the other hand, Republicans were committed to burying their heads in the sand to avoid what they must be assuming will be bad news for their Dear Leader. Only thirty-three percent said they want the full, unredacted Mueller report released to the public. In other words, two-thirds of GOP voters are choosing to remain deliberately ignorant. They have no problem with wanting to see all of Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails, or President Obama’s thirty year old school transcripts, but the sight of the product of a two year investigation of the current president by Republican law enforcement officials is too much for them to bear.

Trump is also terrified by the prospect of this information becoming public. His comments on it reflect a man who is deeply disturbed and irrational as a result of this publicity. He has tweeted about Mueller nearly every day this month and over three dozen times just this year. He wavers wildly from insisting that he has been “totally exonerated” to hostile assaults on Mueller’s team (who he says exonerated him) as being corrupt and biased. Sometimes in a single tweet:

So Trump thinks that Democrats in Congress – and by extension all of the American people – don’t have the right to see what he himself calls the “No Collusion Mueller Report.” Why wouldn’t he want everyone to see a report that he says proves his innocence? What’s more, he absurdly claims that Democrats have abandoned their respect for Mueller, even though this poll proves that they still look forward to seeing what his report says:

Clearly Trump is lashing out blindly in all directions at once and making no sense at all. Even his complaint about the cost of the probe is completely off-base. It was more than paid for by just the asset forfeitures from convicted Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. But the opposition by Trump and his Republican Nationalist constituents to the release of the full, unredacted report, along with the underlying documents, is proof that they have something to hide.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Consequently, they are taking the peculiar position of begging to be kept uninformed. It’s not an unfamiliar state of affairs with the Republican base (remember the Tea Party?). And to an even greater extent, enforced stupidity is a sacrament to the right-wing cult followers of Trump. After all, they still regard him as an honest, faithful, law-abiding, humble, diplomatic, brilliant, successful, family man, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.