Q Toon: Tea and Bessentpathy

You have, of course, heard about Donald Joffrey Trump bleating on Trump Social, “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” (Unless you’re a Fox Noise junkie.)

There is no bottom to the depravity of the nasty, brutish, and short-tempered man befouling the Oval Office and the nation. Many have come forward this week to condemn this indefensible shitpost.

So instead, I'm condemning the lickspittles who are defending it.

Meet the Press host Kristen Welker concluded a contentious interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on March 22 by asking him about Trump spitting on Mueller's grave before the body was even cold:

Kristen Welker: "Do you think it's appropriate for the president of the United States to celebrate the death of an American citizen, someone who's a Bronze Star, Purple Heart recipient and who served in Vietnam?"

Bessent: "Kristen, I was with the president in the green room at Davos and there was a video playing of the — what may have been an illegal raid on his home at Mar-a-Lago. They are going through his wife’s wardrobe. And I watched the look in his eye, and I think that neither one of us can understand what has been done to the president and to his family."

Welker: "But to the question of the president’s post, I mean, Robert Mueller didn’t order that raid. Is it appropriate for the president to celebrate the death of any American citizen –"

Bessent: "Again —"

Welker: "– Mr. Secretary –"

Bessent: "I think that given what has been done to President Trump and his family it is impossible for either of us to understand what he has been through."

Welker: "So, you don’t think that there’s anything wrong with the post, saying, 'Good. Robert Mueller’s dead.'”

Bessent: "Again, I think that we should all have a little empathy for what has been done to him and his family."

Welker: "All right. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, thank you as always for being here."

Think about that one for a second. Retired FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed in 2017 to conduct the investigation into candidate Trump's collusion with Russia, and published a report in 2019 that was immediately mischaracterized by then Attorney General William Barr as exonerating his boss. Mueller had nothing to do with the 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago when Trump was refusing to return presidential papers illegally stored there.

By the way, kudos to whoever it was at the 2026 Davos seminar whose brilliant idea it was to have video of the Mar-a-Lago raid playing on the television in the green room while Trump was in it. Well played! Maybe next year you can put together a montage of courtroom sketches from his 2024 fraud trial.

So anyway, Mr. Secretary Bessent behooves us to muster up some empathy — which I thought was one of those woke mind viruses Republicans want to stamp out — for the most amoral, ill-mannered, foul-minded, self-absorbed, overgrown brat ever to escape the clutches of the law and the Peter Principle to ascend to the Presidency of our late Republic.

Personally, I hope that Donald Commodus Trump lives long enough to see the next occupant of the White House demolish his precious ballroom; and if a giant sinkhole swallows up Mar-a-Lago at the same time, that would be bonus. But I have wondered many times over the past couple of years what we editorial cartoonists will draw (if there are any of us left) when he at long last faces the Grim Reaper like nobody has ever seen before.

Now I know.

If You're Listening

So Attorney General William Barr issued his book report on the Mueller report, saying, essentially, "Move along, folks. Nothing to see here."

If the Republicans have their way, we may never see Bob Mueller's actual report; but Barr's summary finds it necessary, in the four paragraphs about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, to iterate and reiterate four times that "the Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia."

Yet for all the crowing by the Corrupt Trump Administration that Mueller's report "totally vindicates" the president (except for that sentence in which Barr's summary expressly says it does not), his investigation has yielded a remarkable number of indictments and guilty verdicts for Trump cronies.

As for the central issue of Trump campaign collusion with Russia, who can forget Don Jr.'s "if it's what you say I love it, especially later in the summer" meeting at Trump Tower to discuss Russian intel on Hillary Clinton? And of course, there was Don Sr. a month later publicly egging the Russians on to publish Mrs. Clinton's emails. And his telling Jr. to lie that the meeting was about adoption policies.

But move along, folks.