Current betting at PredictIt is currently a coin toss for Trump facing a Mueller interview, but I think that's overly optimistic for Mueller. Trump bloviated for a bit about letting himself speak under oath, but that's because Trump bloviates, and his lawyers quickly put the kibosh on that. And that brings me to my point for today.
Mueller wants to ask Trump about why he fired Comey, given the contrast between the Rosenstein memo and the Lester Holt interview, Flynn's communications with Sergey Kislyak, other communications between the campaign and Russians, Trump's discussions on firing the special counsel, etc.
Obvious stuff, all. Here's the thing. Why bother? Really?
Is Mueller an investigator or a prosecutor? The answer is, "yes."
As an investigator, there is no reason to ask Trump any questions about anything ever. Why not? Dude's a liar. He lies about everything. All the time. At his rally the other day, he had the chutzpah to reference Jon Lovitz's "Tommy Flanagan," character from an old Saturday Night Live bit. It looks like the first time I called Trump that was in this October post. And, um... c'mon. Trump lies more than any politician in history. I have a lot of problems with PolitiFact's methodology, but here's Trump's current scorecard. You don't interview this guy if your goal is to learn something. He lies too much. They have to go out of their way to find true stuff that comes out of his mouth, and stop looking at lies because he tells too many of them.
Why do you interview him? If your goal is to get him to perjure himself so that you have a prosecutable crime. As soon as Trump said he'd consent to a Mueller interview, Trump's lawyers (the real ones, not Cohen) quashed that because they knew he'd perjure himself. He can't help it. "Pathological liar" is not a diagnosis in the DSM, but I would ask my colleagues in the adjacent discipline to consider including it because...
... have you seen Donald Trump? Have you listened to him? He really can't stop himself. We can get into a debate about what constitutes a "pathology," and whether or not his is truly separable from his antisocial personality disorder, but seriously people, his lying is pathological.
You don't interview Tommy Flanagan if your goal is to learn something. You only interview him if your goal is to set a perjury trap. You knew this was coming, right?
Mmmmm.... calamari.... Ahhhhh....
Trump, though, is the walking embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect. He thinks he's a genius, even though he's about as smart as Homer Simpson. Of course he wants to talk to Mueller. His lawyers, though, are smarter than that. Except Michael Cohen, but he isn't a part of this. Normally, that wouldn't save anyone. However, if the President simply says, "no," who's gonna make him? Funny, but Trump might actually find a context in which he respects the meaning of the word, "no!" Just for him, though.
There is nobody who can force Trump to face a Mueller interview, and as long as his lawyers remind him that he could face perjury charges, and just tell him that it's a perjury trap, it won't happen. It really is a perjury trap anyway. There is nothing to be learned by talking to a pathological liar.
Don't listen to liars. Call them for what they are, disregard their words and focus on facts. That means you have no reason to act as though any word that escapes the mouth of Donald Trump-- or Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for that matter-- deserves to be treated as though it conveys information about unknowns.
"Lie."
"Liar."
Political dialog, journalism and society more broadly shy away from these words, but there are a lot of craven liars around, and by refusing even to name the act or the people for what they are, we allow the actions to proliferate and the lies to fester. The result of a refusal to call out lies and liars is Donald Trump. There is no reason to pretend that any word he speaks, or tweets, conveys information.
But, what follows from that is the observation that a Mueller interview really is just a perjury trap. And it ain't gonna happen.