Dahlia, it's 9.30 p.m. on Sunday night. How was your weekend?

Yeah, super fun. How was yours?

This is Dahlia Lithwick, Slate's legal correspondent.

I felt like I was in labor. Like, I felt like it was like a three-day labor from Friday night until

Saturday afternoon, except that there was like no ice chips. Did you want the ice chips? It would

have made it better, like crunching. With vodka, with vodka, I think would have been very nice.

So was this a good weekend for President Trump? Yeah. I think that there, I mean, even, you know, Friday night, even before we knew what we now know on Sunday night, it was a good weekend because his kid wasn't indicted and Jared wasn't indicted. And it felt already by Friday night. Like maybe Mueller wasn't going to indict anyone else. And the whole thing was wrapping up. And I think that, you know, it allowed him. He was very quiet. Let's be clear. But I think it allowed him to feel like the massive pressure had been released. And then I think it's fair to say that by Sunday afternoon, it was a very good weekend for President Trump. And he tweeted as well he's called it a complete and total exoneration.

So from the beginning, you have told me and everyone else not to expect a lot from the end of Robert Mueller's investigation.

You've been like, just don't, don't get excited about it. Like, don't hype yourself up about it. Is this working out how you thought it would?

Kind of. I don't think I was ever saying that Mueller might just punt, which is a little bit of what happened today. But I did say if you're expecting whiz-bang fireworks, you know, the president

dragged off in cuffs, you know, on the White House lawn, that Mueller was never going to do that.

And it was so fanciful to think that we could all just sit back and, you know, not care about

anything because Mueller was going to handle it. And so I wasn't deliberately dampening expectations.

I was just trying to think through what a lifelong institutional, careful, cautious, minimalist

actor would do. And I just didn't think it was going to be like riding in on a white horse

with a flaming, you know, sword, not how he rolls.

But is this the end?

It's not the end.

It is certainly the beginning of a huge fight about seeing the entire report.

Now it becomes a political problem.

And I think in a weird way, and I don't purport to speak for Robert Mueller, but I think in a weird way, he wanted it to be a political problem.

And part of the reasons he punted, and we don't fully know and we're not going to know anything until we see the entirety of the report.

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