John Oliver didn't have too much to say about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian election meddling and possible malfeasance by President Trump's campaign, mostly because almost nobody has seen that report. "We only know what Trump's own attorney general thinks we need to know," he said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight, and William Barr is a suspect source. Despite the ostentatious victory lap by Trump's supporters and Fox News friends, however, there's plenty of bad news even in Barr's four-page summary.
Mueller's "report did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump's campaign, which is undeniably good news for the president," Oliver said. But "Trump was not completely exonerated. In fact, the report literally says it 'does not exonerate him.' The only way Mueller could have been clearer on that point is if he put hand-clap emojis between every word." Ordinarily, such news "might prompt headlines like 'President May Have Obstructed Justice,'" he said, but news organizations, like Trump's supporters, took "one piece of good news and rounded it up to two."
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