Now that the Mueller report has confirmed that there is no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, what will change and what will remain the same in the political landscape?  First, as RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen pointed out yesterday, Democrats will continue to cast doubt on the 2016 election because they still cannot accept that Hillary Clinton lost to President Trump.  The collusion narrative was one way how they justified this inconceivable loss, and being a "sore loser" has become a feature of the modern Democratic Party establishment:

Today, the Democratic Party is the party of sore losers. More than anything else the Trump-cheated-and-colluded-with-Russia-to-win-the-election conspiracy theory was born out of the simple fact that Hillary Clinton lost the election.

Hillary herself has thrown out so many wild theories of how the election was stolen from her, it is hard to keep track. In 2017 it was over Wisconsin’s voter ID law, even though she did not campaign in Wisconsin and white women’s inability to think for themselves — meaning they did not blindly accept the liberal female candidate, and she is still going. Well over two years after the election they are still coming, as Hillary earlier this month claimed she lost because of the Supreme Court saying parts of the Voting Rights Act were unconstitutionally outdated. . . .

It is not only Hillary who is the sore loser but the entire Democratic Party establishment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer picked another sore loser, Stacey Abrams, to give the Democrats’ response to President Trump’s State of the Union address last month. There is no doubt that Abrams lost the Georgia gubernatorial election outside of the range of a recount. Yet Abrams says she accepts she is not governor, but not that she lost the election. . . .

The effects of this are clear and it is not just about being sore losers. President Trump’s nominees have faced unprecedented obstruction with the primary rationale being that President Trump did not win the election.

Hans von Spakovsky described how the Russians attempted to influence the 2016 election through disinformation and hacking, and those threats to our elections from bad actors foreign or domestic will certainly continue, but the Russians were unsuccessful in convincing the Trump campaign to join them:

Most importantly, according to Barr, was that in both cases the special counsel “did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with” the Russians. And this was despite “multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.” . . .

So did the Russians try to influence the 2016 election through a disinformation campaign that used social media and disseminated stolen information? Yes, they did. But our intelligence agencies reported this before Mueller even began his investigation.

Now Mueller’s long and extremely thorough investigation finally removes a cloud that has been hanging over the president – the question of whether he or his campaign worked with the Russians. . . .

After almost two long years, the Mueller report is a complete vindication for the president and a victory against his detractors.

Post-Mueller report, the Trump administration should be able to move forward and conduct the functions of government without the "cloud" hanging over it, but the Democrats are already doubting the Mueller report that they have been pre-emptively praising and anxiously awaiting for years because it did not reach the results they had determined it must.  See Mr. Thielen's commentary about sore losers above.

RNLA Vice President for Communications Harmeet Dhillon questioned what will happen to those who promoted the false collusion theory:

So many questions remain unresolved. Who ordered this coup against Donald J. Trump, and who were/are the conspirators? What role did the Obama White House play in unmasking General Flynn and spying on Carter Page and potentially others? What lies were told by senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to the FISA court in warrant applications? How dirty were the many senior FBI officials who violated department rules by using fabricated evidence passed through the DNC, Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie, and Christopher Steele to go after a sitting president? . . . Who told former FBI Director James Comey to protect Hillary Clinton from prosecution, and what relation did that cover-up have to the collusion conspiracy to unseat Donald Trump? . . .

It is slowly dawning on the American people that they have been lied to again and again by elected officials condemning the president on a daily basis with dark, evidence-free hints of their “knowledge” of the information that’s “going to drop” once the Mueller investigation concluded. Any good trial lawyer knows that you never promise, in your opening statement, evidence that you don’t actually have – but that is exactly what Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Jerry Nadler, Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden, and others, who should have known better, did again and again on national television – slyly promising that they had the goods on Trump, and that he and his family members would soon be exposed as traitors. Their constituents should hold them accountable for their repeated lies. . . .

Night after night, television hosts ranging from malicious to merely ill-informed, allowed their airtime to be hijacked by the planted false narrative that our president was a Russian stooge, a traitor, engaged in a cover-up – when in fact it was the media that betrayed the truth and their audiences. . . . As a nation we have come to the point where our Fourth Estate is bemoaning the fact that no American colluded with Russia to interfere in our elections. . . .

In order to ensure that this utter travesty of justice is never repeated, it is important for the Department of Justice to clean its own house, get rid of the bent cops in the FBI, show the underlying evidence that may be legally released to the American people, and investigate and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law the government officials and their accomplices who conspired to bring down a presidency through their concerted, organized, and persistent lies.

Whether the American people will hold elected officials and the media accountable remains to be seen, but part of what Attorney General Barr promised to do when he once again became the leader of the Department of Justice was to restore its reputation.  He will need to reduce the politicization and perception of politicization that had infected the DOJ under President Obama.  The American people deserve a DOJ they can trust, and the conclusion of the Mueller investigation should allow the DOJ to focus on its core missions, enforcing the law and promoting the rule of law.