The Mueller Report is the end of the beginning of the Trump Presidency

Liberals, leftists and anyone who doesn't want the world to end in the next few years have been waiting with baited breath for the release of the Mueller Report. For those lucky people who have been living under a rock, the Mueller Report is the final report from the investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign’s possible connections to Russia conducted by Robert Swan Mueller (yes that is his real middle name). The idea was to answer the question of whether the current President of the United States colluded with a hostile power to cheat his way into the White House. Writing that sort of unbelievable sentence is the new normal. 

Anyone who hasn't gone that peculiar type of mad that the American Right has gone have been hoping that the Mueller Report would be the end of the Trump Presidency. Or, hopefully, the end of Trump as a public entity, after he had been thrown in prison for a long time for conspiring with the enemies of the country he professes to love so much.

Sadly, the Mueller Report doesn't look like it will be the end of Trump. It didn't lead to the Republican Party finally turning on him and holding him accountable for all the ways he has threatened the democracy they claim to love so much. (There is more than enough hypocrisy to go around when it comes to Trump.)

The Mueller Report doesn't appear to be the beginning of the process to get rid of Trump. Even if the Democrats in the House of Representatives start impeachment proceedings, there is not enough in the report to have him convicted in the Senate or forced from office. The Mueller Report seems more like the end of the story of Trump impeachment than the beginning.

When thinking about the sorry state of US politics (summed up by the fact that their President is a reality TV star who lost money opening a casino) I am reminded of a Winston Churchill quote: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

This is the end of the beginning of the Trump Presidency as it ends the questions raised by the campaign. The Mueller Report settles the issue of whether the way that Trump became the President means that he is not legally allowed to be President. It reminds me of when the Supreme Court ruled on the election of President Bush in 2000; it means that a legal process won't end the nightmare the world has found itself him.

I think that Trump is completely unfit to be president because of his character, the fact that he is a bully, he mocked the disabled, he stirred up racial tension, attacked the institutions of democracy, lied a lot, refused to condemn Nazis, was endorsed by the KKK, is a failed businessman, is an idiot and for many more reasons than I can think of right now. He doesn't need to break election law to be bad for the whole world. However, the Mueller Report shows he hasn't invalided his Presidency by his own actions.

The Mueller Report is not a complete exoneration of Trump, whatever he claims. There are many wrongdoings highlighted by the investigation and many senior people from the campaign, including the man who ran it, are in prison. The problem is that the Mueller Report isn't going to be the impeachment ejector seat that many people, myself included, hoped it would be.

The struggle against Trump and the ethnonationalism he exploits continues. It will be a long struggle and there will be many painful defeats along the way. However, we must continue to fight Trump and his ilk with everything we have. The far-right won't be beaten by a legal technicality.

We need to defeat the far-right at the ballot box, in culture, online and in the streets. This fight is bigger than one report or even the Trump Presidency. It is a struggle against authoritarian and ethnonationalist ideas that we can see in Brazil, in Poland, in Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Russia and elsewhere. We can see it in the UK with the rise of Tommy Robinson and UKIP's change into being an openly xenophobic party. The tolerant people of the world need to repudiate intolerant.

The hope that the Mueller Report would neatly remove Trump without the need for a messy election is similar to those in the UK who think that if we can just revoke Article 50, and stop Brexit, then everything will go back to pre-2016 automatically. Even if Remain can win a second referendum, Tommy Robinson will still be a blight on our politics. We need to organise against everything that is wrong with Britain, not just Brexit.

Everyone needs to get involved. You can contribute in big and small ways. You can vote, volunteer, march or join a group. What you do doesn't have to be party political. You can volunteer at a woman's Shelter or with a group who support migrants or stand up to Uncle when he says “that Gerard Batten chap makes some points.”

The lesson here is the way to defeat Trump and the far-right is not to claim that there has been an administrative mistake, like someone who has been served the wrong thing in a restaurant, but take to the streets.

2020 is when we end Trump. George Bush won a second term, we can’t let Trump win again. The Mueller Report shows that the origins of Trump won’t be his undoing; only a movement of resistance will be.

This is the end of the beginning of the Trump Presidency and now the real the fight begins.

Donald Trump picture taken by Gage Skidmore and used under creative commons.