Is this insanity ever going to end? Will the Mueller report ever be released, unredacted for all to see? Is anyone else tired of this 21st century version of the Red Scare?

To sum up this weekend: the media went on a frenzy when President Donald Trump, in response to a question by Jeanine Pirro, which she jokingly asked in response to a New York Times story saying that Trump might be a “Russian asset,” said it was the “most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked.”

Which then lit a fire under the media because “OMG HE DIDN’T DENY IT!!11!ELEVENTY!!1!!”

As I write in my new @PostOpinions column, if Trump isn't a Russian agent, he's doing a pretty good imitation of one: https://t.co/jNI2krCF4Z https://t.co/tbbXQimQHV

— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) January 13, 2019

This is already the biggest scandal in American presidential history. No other president has so closely aligned himself with a hostile foreign leader, and no campaign has been so intertwined with Russian operatives. Even Richard Nixon didn’t do that. https://t.co/lQAXPcqLLG

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) January 13, 2019

It says a lot about these media types that they are willing to buy into this story lock, stock, and barrel, forgoing all other evidence to the contrary. Byron York listed 8 reasons on Twitter. Andrew McCarthy of National Review (not exactly a pro-Trump outlet) wrote a piece detailing that we have an FBI problem more than a Trump problem.

We have to remember: The FBI believed the Steele dossier – the collection of faux intelligence reports compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was ultimately working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Justice Department on four occasions brought surveillance applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), in which the FBI swore that it believed the dossier allegations.

Ostensibly, the surveillance application targeted Carter Page. But Page was just a side issue. The dossier was principally about Trump – not Page, not Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, or other Trump associates referred to by Steele. The dossier’s main allegation was that Trump was in an espionage conspiracy with Russia to swing the election to Trump, after which Trump would do Putin’s bidding from the White House. The FBI and the Obama Justice Department could not verify the dossier, but they undeniably believed it.

If you believe the dossier, then of course Trump is the main focus of the probe.

The FBI and DOJ knew this would be controversial – the incumbent administration spying on the opposition campaign in the absence of corroborated evidence of a crime. So, they designed the investigation in a way that allowed them to focus on Trump without saying they were doing so. Before Trump was elected, they papered the files to indicate that they were focusing on the Trump campaign or people connected to it, like Page and Papadopoulos. This way, they could try to collect evidence about Trump without formally documenting that Trump was the target.

After Trump was elected, the FBI realized that Trump was soon going to have access to government intelligence files. If they honestly told the president-elect that they had been investigating his campaign in hope of making a case on him, they had to be concerned that he would shut the investigation down and clean house at the FBI and DOJ. So, they misleadingly told him the investigation was about Russia and a few stray people in his campaign, but they assured him he personally was not under investigation.

This always seems to circle back around to the Deep State, their lackeys, and their horror that the man they loathed is actually president. The problem? What if Robert Mueller can’t actually produce anything? Is this investigation going to drag on endlessly, producing nothing? When is it all ENOUGH? When the media gets the result they want, or we actually get the truth?

ABC News' Jonathan Karl on Mueller's upcoming report: "People who are closest to what Mueller has been doing, interacting with the special counsel, caution me that this report is almost certain to be anti-climactic." pic.twitter.com/DkFWGKNJyi

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 13, 2019

If (and this is a big if, as everyone is speculating on what the Mueller report will actually say) Donald Trump walks away from the investigation without any charges, he wins the entire match. He wins every argument he’s made about a witch hunt, about media bias, about the Deep State being out to get him. And the left will lose their minds. I mean, LOSE them. If this happens, I expect everything up to and including “Mueller was paid off by the Russians” from the left.

I think Trump is actually in more danger on the campaign finance violations via Michael Cohen’s payments, but those have nothing to do with Russia. Will it be enough of a bone to toss to the rabid left that wants heads on platters? Given the history of what has happened in the past, it’s unlikely that this results in anything that will satisfy those calling for Trump’s impeachment. If being a jerk was an impeachable offence, nearly half of all U.S. presidents would have been impeached. Could Trump be impeached? Of course, because the House votes on impeachment and the Democrats control the House. Would he be removed from office? No. The Senate holds the trial, and the Senate is controlled by the Republicans. It’s Bill Clinton all over again.

This investigation has been ongoing since May 2017. The American people deserve to have the Mueller report finished, presented in an unredacted form to the public, and then we deserve to go forward into the chaos of the 2020 presidential cycle without the sword of Damocles Robert Mueller continually hanging by a thread in perpetuity.

Featured image: President Donald Trump at G7 Summit, June 2018 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead, public domain)