American HustleJuly/August 2019 65
a special counsel had investigated President Lyndon Johnson’s cam-
paigns and White House years while Johnson was still in oce: the
results would not have been pretty.)
Trump’s campaign and his presidency, too, are x-rays, revealing
much o what has gone awry in American politics and society in re-
cent years. His undisciplined depredations could present an oppor-
tunity for the United States to prove itselÊ better than Trump and,
even more importantly, to rise above the conditions in which he tri-
umphed and holds sway.
A THOROUGH REPORT BUT INCOMPLETE
Mueller’s report conÃrms that the president has performed yeoman’s
work in corroding norms o democracy and basic decency, but that de-
bilitation far predates him, and it is mirrored by not a few oÊ his po-
litical adversaries. Trump Ãts into a longer and wider arc obscured by
the tellingly derogatory use o the label “populism.” His carnival-barker,
conÃdence-man persona is anything but alien to the United States. His
marketing prowess, applied to the political world, is outrageously good.
Consider the take on the Mueller investigation that Trump tweeted in
June 2017: “They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story,
found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction o justice on the phony
story. Nice.” Pithy—and, in its self-serving way, prophetic.
Trump’s rise looks like a great American hustle, despite the inter-
national links. Candidate Trump appears to have desperately wanted
to build a high-margin Trump Tower in Moscow at least as much as
he wanted to be elected president. Mueller’s report also captures
the parallel pursuits o the innumerable wannabes, hangers-on, and
swindlers who gravitated toward Trump and his campaign. Like a
crime thriller, the report brims with shady characters, and, true to
form, some o them beat the rap (or at least they have so far). But
they’ve gotten away with it owing not to their criminal ingenuity.
“The evidence was not sucient to charge that any member o the
Trump Campaign conspired with representatives o the Russian
government to interfere in the 2016 election,” the report concludes—
but only because doing so was simply beyond them. As Trump’s son-
in-law and adviser Jared Kushner privately related to congressional
interns back in July 2017, “They thought we colluded, but we couldn’t
even collude with our local oces.” It’s a pitiful yet accurate exculpa-
tion: not guilty by reason o ineptitude.