Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics

and the Trump presidency for the new Spectator USA website. I'm joined today by Jacob Heilbrun,

who is editor of the national interest and columnist for Spectator USA,

and we're going to be talking about the arrival, finally, albeit redacted, of the much-anticipated Mueller report.

Jacob, it's just dropped the Mueller report about half an hour ago.

I've sort of scanned through it.

It's 400 pages.

I won't claim to have read it.

And it seems to me that it is what, I'm afraid to say,

and I know we're going to disagree with this,

it is what the Trumpist said it was all along,

quite a lot of hot air.

Why am I wrong?

Freddie, I would be loath to say that you are ever wrong, but you could be

misguided in this instance. The truth is we don't know exactly what the Mueller report says,

because we haven't read it, but we do know that it contains sentences such as that, or it makes clear that Trump was rescued from obstruction of justice by the refusal of his own subordinates to take the actions that he had ordered them to take.

And it does, as the Washington Post points out, detail, quote,

a damning timeline of contacts between the Trump campaign and those with Russian ties,

much of it already known, but some of it knew, unquote. I think it's obvious that the Mueller

report, again, is something that was never going to settle the debate.

The views are baked in on each side.

If you believe that Trump is an innocent victim, the report isn't going to sway you.

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