Conservative Author Accuses Trump ‘Shills’ Of ‘Gaslighting’ American Public

In a series of Twitter messages posted Saturday, conservative author and U.S. Naval War College professor Tom Nichols accused President Donald Trump’s allies of “gaslighting” the American public, Raw Story reports.

Nichols argued that the president’s allies — “shills” is what he called them — are purposely misleading the public about the findings presented in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Trump’s “shills,” according to the conservative author, continue falsely claiming that the president has been fully exonerated by Robert Mueller.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Mueller has cleared the president and his campaign of conspiring or colluding with the Russian government, but the special counsel has not exonerated Trump of obstruction. Mueller simply refused to weigh in on the issue, but presented findings demonstrating attempted obstruction of justice by the president.

This has caused a rift among the Democrats, with Democratic leaders and chief promoters of the Trump-Russia theory — like Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff — refusing to commit to impeachment, as House progressive and other Democrats call on impeachment proceedings to begin.

The president and members of his administration have, however, claimed that the Mueller report fully exonerates Donald Trump.

“No collusion, no obstruction,” Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed. But this is simply not true, according to conservative author Tom Nichols, who claims that Trump loyalists are gaslighting the American public.

Robert Mueller's report is more damning than Trump has publicly claimed, detailing the president's aggressive efforts to interfere in the Justice Department's Russia probe and declining to rule out that he obstructed justice https://t.co/wDI5oKCIXv

— POLITICO (@politico) April 20, 2019

According to the professor, Trump and others are gaslighting the public by distorting Robert Mueller’s findings, and attacking the media, which spent the better part of the past two years covering the Trump-Russia saga.

“One interesting aspect of the Mueller Report is not what’s in it, but how Trump’s shills have reacted to it. They have taken two positions,” Nichols opined, suggesting that the first position is that the Mueller report “says exactly the opposite of that it says,” with the second position being that “the media totally screwed up this story.”

“The first strategy is pure gaslighting, like Kellyanne demanding apologies,” Nichols tweeted, blasting counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway for demanding that those who accused Trump of conspiring with Russia and obstructing Mueller’s investigation apologize.

The conservative author said that Trump and his allies “know only the strategy of doubling down,” which is why they’ve decided to completely misrepresent Robert Mueller’s findings.

Acknowledging that the mainstream media got some Trump-Russia stories wrong — like Michael Cohen’s supposed trip to Prague — Nichols argued that President Trump’s confidants are deliberately focusing on television personalities who “went too far in believing the myth that Trump would be led across the South Lawn in handcuffs,” and therefore misleading the public about the media’s coverage of the Trump-Russia story.