Hollywood collectively assumed Special Counsel Robert Mueller would prove President Donald Trump colluded with Russian agents to steal the 2016 presidential election from Hillary Clinton. Even worse, Trump did everything he could to obstruct the fight to learn the truth.
Saturday Night Live made Mueller a recurring character, brought to life by arch Trump critic Robert De Niro. The Trump presidency, the show declared, was on borrowed time.
Stars waited anxiously for Mueller’s final report, with one star lighting a votive candle with his likeness.
The report finally arrived April 18. The results? No collusion, no obstruction of justice after a nearly 18-month long investigation which cost north of $31 million to complete.
The industry’s players couldn’t believe what they heard. It’s a lie, they cried. Some, like director Rob Reiner, acted as if The Mueller Report said exactly what he expected, nay hoped, it would say.
Others slowly followed suit.
The first sign came with yet another celebrity video pretending the Mueller Report delivered the smoking gun they craved. Stars like De Niro, Stephen King and Laurence Fishburne joined in, declaring the Report all the evidence needed to start impeachment proceedings.
Virtually no one actually read the report, the stars insisted. Otherwise everyone would see impeachment had to proceed immediately. The Mueller Report is available to purchase on Amazon. It’s hard to imagine any news journalist who didn’t read it cover to cover the moment Mueller shared it with the world.
Had a smoking gun passage existed, the “pistol” would have been the lead story in every media outlet nationwide, and the world, for that matter. President Trump would be having some long talks with Vice President Mike Pence about taking charge.
It didn’t happen.
Plus, as Dan Bongino routinely points out on his podcast, Mueller’s team did some selective editing that made nothingburgers look suspicious via its report.
Next, some very big names gathered in New York City’s Riverside Church to perform a dramatic reading of the very same Report. Sigourney Weaver, John Lithgow, Martin Sheen, Kevin Kline and more donated their time and energy to the task at hand, dubbed “The Investigation: A Search For The Truth In Ten Acts.”
The event, which took place June 24, enjoyed a livestream viewed by more than one million people.
More recently, a gaggle of stars “auditioned” for a project based on the Mueller Report, hoping to show how it revealed the president’s crimes.
Once again we’re left with one nagging question.
Why?
Hollywood is the land of make believe. The modern version is simultaneously a bubbled community where fiction springs to life. Outside thoughts aren’t just rare. They’re not welcome.
You won’t hear robust political debates behind the scenes or in between takes. The groupthink is considerable, and conservatives within the industry routinely hide their views for fear of reprisals.
They have every reason to be fearful.
It took time, but media outlets, late night comics and celebrities eventually embraced elements of the Mueller Report. Only they dug into every nook and cranny to find scraps they could collect for an impeachment battle cry.
The media couldn’t fully give up on the Russia-Trump connection. Nor could Hollywood, Inc.
That isn’t a universal opinion. MSNBC, the home of the Russian collusion hoax, saw its ratings collapse following the Mueller Report’s release. Enough liberal viewers realized two years’ worth of collusion wishful thinking was just that.
Hollywood begs to differ.
Stars understand the power of “story” and “narrative” in modern times. Hate the Second Amendment? You can write shows and movies that defend your point of view, leaving out inconvenient truths along the way.
For example, the fact that so many gun massacres occur in “gun free” zones.
The stars are doing their very best to resurrect the Mueller Report. They’re picking and choosing sections, sans context, to show us the media allegedly got it wrong.
The same media, mind you, that served up so many fake news stories to attack Trump even hardcore liberals barked in defiance. Rolling Stone’s hard-left reporter Mike Taibbi tried to deliver some hard truths, but too many Leftists wouldn’t listen.
The inability to quit the Mueller Report is a neon sign of the industry’s cognitive dissidence. Or, possibly, the fear that Trump’s 2020 re-election chances are increasing with every Democratic debate.
[Cross-posted from Hollywood in Toto.]
