Americans finally got to see the Mueller report. What did they think?

GROVE CITY, Pa. — More than a year after the phrase “Mueller report” entered the national conversation — and after an exhausting stretch of subpoenas, arrests and furious presidential tweeting — the country on Thursday was finally met by the real thing. And while Americans disagreed about what the report meant, one reaction seemed nearly unanimous: disgust with the country’s political leaders.

“I don’t know how he gets out of it all the time,” Judy Campagna, a 58-year-old Democrat, said of President Donald Trump’s ability to remain in office while so many of his associates have been indicted.

“A colossal waste of time,” Ray Ablanalp, a 63-year-old Republican standing at a bar with Judy’s husband, Gene, said of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Mueller’s findings showed that the real culprits were Democrats and other backers of the investigation who had just wasted two years of time and money, Ablanalp said. “Somebody should be accountable for that, and it should not be the taxpayers.”

Gene Campagna, a 68-year-old Republican who reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016, had only one conclusion about what could happen next: “All the options are lousy.”

From the bar stools of western Pennsylvania to the sidewalks of Southern California, for many Americans, the actual details of the report were almost secondary to the intractable problems the investigation had come to symbolize: in the eyes of Democrats, the administration’s essential corruption and the failure of Congress, prosecutors — anyone — to hold the president accountable; for Republicans, false smears from the Democrats and nearly two years wasted on a special counsel investigation.

But for many across the political spectrum, there was also a sense that the report reflected a basic breakdown of functional government and that critically important issues, such as health care and infrastructure, remained ignored.

“Trump has shown us how flawed our system is; he is the product of a system that has failed, and he’s just doing what the system allows him to do,” said Dwayne A. Jones, 49, a regular Democratic voter in Los Angeles who believed the “circus” surrounding the Mueller investigation had mainly been driven by partisan interests in Washington. “And the people in our Congress, they are more committed to retaining their positions than they are to using their positions.”

Democrats, generally, saw the report’s release as a starting point, not an endpoint — a detailed sketch of a corrupt administration and an outline for congressional investigations. The report included specific and extraordinary details about the president’s behavior behind closed doors and his campaign’s receptiveness to Russian overtures.

Some people said the circumstances around the report’s release, particularly the relatively benign description of its contents by Attorney General William P. Barr, were proof that the fix was in.

“It was not as if this were ever a truly open case,” said Cyrus Marshall, a 43-year-old Democrat in Fullerton, California, who said he was not surprised to see parts of the report blacked out.

If the executive branch were not properly policing itself, some said, the release of the report now shifted that duty to Congress — which had not been as aggressive as it should be when it came to the possibility of impeachment.

“If they’re not willing to do that, what are they doing there?” asked Jin Ming, a 22-year-old artist who was also in Fullerton on Tuesday. “This is what we sent them to do, to really resist what this man has done and is trying to do.”

Trump voters, on the other hand, were almost unanimous in what they saw as the day’s takeaway: “It’s over, it’s done with, let’s go,” said Elizabeth Damon, 54, a veterinarian in Eagle Point, Oregon, and a registered Democrat who voted for Trump. “I can’t believe how much time they waste on garbage when there’s so much more important stuff going on.”

As they saw it, the relevant news was already a month old, with the announcement that there would be no further indictments from the special counsel. Some said they did not oppose the investigation in principle, and some, such as Gwen Johnson, a Trump voter in Kentucky, granted that “Russia did try to stick its nose in what was going on.” Many accepted that Trump did some ugly things behind closed doors.

But: “Is he the first or last politician to do that? No,” said Debra Skoog, a retired executive in Minneapolis and a lifelong Democrat who voted for Trump in 2016. “Did he break the law? They can’t prove it.” Still, the exasperated relief that the two-year investigation had come to an end bumped up against another, contradictory impulse among Trump supporters. If a waste of time goes on long enough, some said, shouldn’t someone be held accountable for all that wasting?

“I’m kind of torn,” said Emily Ellis, a Trump supporter and paralegal on her way home from her job at a Pittsburgh law firm. “I would love it if everybody would say, ‘Let’s just end it and move on.’”

But if the Democrats insisted on continuing to investigate Trump, she said, Republicans should insist on scrutinizing Trump’s investigators, including, as some vocal Trump supporters have demanded, a deep look into the actions behind the Mueller investigation.

“It depends on how the Democrats behave,” Ellis said. “If you’re in a battle, you don’t want to roll over and let them run right over you.”

While many said they were processing the Mueller report findings through the pundits, often from their preferred partisan outlets — Fox News or MSNBC, depending — others welcomed the opportunity to see the facts straight on. In two years of learning about the report through anonymous leaks and pundit speculation, and weeks of knowing only the attorney general’s brief summary, Thursday was the first chance to see for themselves.

Bruce Bell, a heavy-truck electrical systems technician in Michigan, was eager to download and read all 448 pages. The release of the report was a rare shot of reality, undiluted by the media speculation that had long surrounded it — the “truth of the matter, not conjecture,” said Bell, 32.

Jayne Navarre, 61, sat down on at her computer Thursday morning to begin reading through the report herself and said it “felt objective.”

Navarre, a legal marketing consultant, said she is used to skulking around at parties as a Republican in liberal Key West, Florida.

“I think they were going down rabbit holes and the potential for exposing Trump was there — they did not hide that — but it didn’t feel like a vendetta or have a want-to-get-Trump feel,” she said, pointing out the meticulous sourcing. “I guess I’d say I was relieved.” About 170 miles and a political spectrum away from Navarre was Morgan E. Harris, 56, in Miami, who considers it “crazy” to vote Republican and who was prevented from reading the Mueller report as soon as it came out by an unfortunately timed colonoscopy.

“Would I personally read 400 pages? Absolutely,” he said after returning home from the doctor.

Harris trusts Mueller, he said, but was skeptical of the special prosecutor’s conclusions. The evidence of obstruction and collusion were there in broad daylight, Harris said. But he was planning to read the report anyway. “I am certain that what I see is different than what the attorney general sees,” he said, referring to Barr. “I don’t think that guy is smarter than me, just that he’s a lawyer. I can read things and comprehend what I am reading.”

Reading the report firsthand was something, but for the most part, many said, there was little to do but watch what sort of political madness came next while far more important issues remained ignored.

“We’re so far removed from the whole political process,” said Gene Campagna, finishing up his stout at the bar. “All this stuff happens on TV, and you can only watch and you can’t do anything.”