Voters doubt Mueller can 'trap' Trump

For those who are keeping count, the proverbial “Mueller investigation” began on May 17, 2017, when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, “the No. 2 Justice Department official, appoints former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia,” according to a helpful Reuters timeline of the big doings. If we do all the math, that means that on Dec. 17, the investigation will have gone on for 19 months.

The investigation has mesmerized journalists, who have produced hundreds of stories about it. Major news organizations have made the investigation a whole subgenre, bolstering the topic with advisories, explainers, alerts, fluctuating polls, videos and op-eds — even as critics like talk radio kingpin Rush Limbaugh have insisted from the beginning that the investigation has yielded “nothing.” Protesters who back the probe have taken to the streets waving signs with the motto “Save Mueller.”

Others mull the cost. President Trump recently has suggested that the investigation has cost $40 million; a speculative estimate based on available figures by the nonpartisan fact-checker PolitiFact put the cost at “$27 million or so.”

Americans, meanwhile, appear to be unconvinced.

“Hope breeds eternal in the hearts of Democrats, but other voters see little chance of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation trapping President Trump,” notes a new survey from Rasmussen reports.

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