When Robert Mueller was originally scheduled to testify to Congress last Wednesday on his report into Russian meddling in the 2016 election cycle, the White House organized one of the president’s by now infamous MAGA rallies for the same evening, ostensibly with an aim of distracting from anything that may have emerged during the Special Counsel’s appearance.

That strategy may have worked better than Trump could probably have expected, as his crowd’s chants of “send her back” aimed at Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar dominated the headlines for the following few days, prompting congressional GOP apologists to rally to his defence and hardening support among his base.

Then again, there’s always debate over whether anything this president does is remotely strategic at all, or simply subject to his whim at any given moment. Either way, even as the row over racism continues to rumble – and likely will resonate for weeks and months  after the president inevitably doubled down – all political eyes now turn to one of those classic theatrical moments that Washington does so well and has generated a-plenty over the past couple of years.

In the end, Mueller’s testimony was delayed by a week, so tomorrow he will appear before the House Judiciary Committee in the morning (beginning at 8.30 ET), then face questions from the Intelligence Committee at noon.

President Trump will be in West Virginia for a fundraiser on Wednesday evening and is set to take the opportunity to comment after the testimony in one of his usual exchanges with reporters on the South Lawn at the White House before boarding his helicopter. Given his well-developed propensity for setting the news agenda, anything he says there could at least dilute the impact of anything new that might come out of the hearings.

Setting testimony’s boundaries

While Mueller is a reluctant witness, he’s also an experienced one. This will be his 89th appearance before Congress and as the New York Times points out, he’s tired of partisanship and will know exactly how to avoid saying anything he doesn’t intend to say; certainly anything that might deliberately give a political advantage to one side or the other.

Since Mueller – now a private citizen – has already said that “the report is my testimony” there is a broad expectation that he may not say anything particularly earthshattering. He certainly seems determined not to be drawn beyond the “boundaries” of the report and looks set to stick closely to that and the text of his opening statement. In an interesting last-minute twist, Mueller requested that one of his deputies appear alongside him.

Even with that in mind, though, Attorney General Bill Barr has already attacked the hearing as a “public spectacle” and his Justice Department felt it had to warn Mueller in in a letter on Monday night what they would prefer he can and can’t say, particularly when it comes to “un-charged persons.”

The onus therefore is on Democratic members of both committees to formulate questions and their phrasing in order to weaponize the occasion as best they can. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has co-ordinated a messaging blitz to try and keep her caucus on the same page, while House Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler convened a strategy session with his committee members on Tuesday afternoon.

There’s no shortage of advice on what they should ask. The New York Times offers 19 questions (with links to relevant sections of the report that might contextualize Mueller’s answers) beginning with “Why didn’t you subpoena the President?”

Former FBI Director James Comey wrote a piece at the Lawfare blog spelling out  ‘What I Would Ask Robert Mueller’.

NBC News also suggests some questions related to Donald Trump Jr’s role in the report, while Neal Katyal argues that the most important questions will be those that require simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. For context, meanwhile, ABC News reminds us of the timeline of the federal counterintelligence probe into Russian interference, a primer for some of the characters who may feature in Mueller’s  evidence.

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post suggests that even reluctant testimony could damage Trump if Mueller states “that Trump ordered his White House counsel to fire Mueller, then pushed him to actively cover that up. That Trump tried to get his former campaign chair to not cooperate with the investigation. That Trump ordered a top campaign official to tell his then-attorney general to severely restrict the probe. That Trump demanded [James] Comey’s loyalty and urged him to go easy on his national security adviser, before firing Comey after that loyalty wasn’t forthcoming. In multiple of those cases, Mueller’s report does in fact establish the corrupt motive necessary to support a criminal obstruction-of-justice charge, which Mueller stated he did not bring due to Justice Department regulations.”

But the high-stakes move to subpoena the Special Counsel could also backfire on Democrats and play into the hands of the president. Republicans on the committees will also get to question the witness, of course, and will be looking for their own soundbites. Trump’s hardcore supporters, meanwhile, remain full of characteristic bluster.

Perhaps the key thing to remember in contextualizing what’s happening tomorrow is to understand that by and large Americans don’t read – it’s estimated that fewer than 10 per cent of people have read any part of the report at all; let alone how few members of Congress. But they watch TV, and having the author walk them through his work might help bring the narrative to life.

The risk is that if Mueller doesn’t say anything, there may end up being little drama for anyone other than hardcore political junkies and the general public will switch off. Widely respected as Mueller is, he’s no Robert DeNiro, who played him brilliantly on Saturday Night Live.

The problem has always been that the hearing’s inevitable framing as political theatre is likely to overshadow getting to the bottom of what actually happened and simply end up denying any much-needed clarity.

For the media, as Margaret Sullivan writes at the Washington Post, covering Wednesday is a chance for a “do-over.”  She writes: “The New York Post, in huge red letters, wrote “No Collusion, No Obstruction” — and (implicitly) slammed the media: “Two Years of Hysteria End in Trump Vindication. And Trump himself was trumpeting just that, and more, from every available rooftop. All of this put [Attorney General Bill] Barr, as the New York Times’s James Poniewozik put it, in the position of  ‘the editor who writes the clickbait headline for all the browsers who never actually read the piece.’ Those who read the full report, or detailed coverage of its findings, or even the more nuanced, less breathless press coverage, would have come away with a far different view.”

So, it should be a compelling day’s television. But can anything Mueller says change Americans’ minds? It’s highly unlikely. If you think his report exonerated the president, you’ll probably still believe it. If you think he’s guilty of something – anything – you’ll likely still think so, but you might just end up even more frustrated.

Writing in The Nation, Tim Weiner – who interviewed Mueller at length after the 2016 election, describing him as “an institutionalist down to the soles of his wingtips” – says that America is “at a moment of great peril, and the rule of law is all we’ve got.”

Weiner writes: “Our lawless president represents a great and growing danger to what’s left of our ideals of American democracy. He is being aided and abetted by an amoral attorney general, now charged with criminal contempt for defying lawful subpoenas, determined to shield Trump from further investigation at all costs; by Republican leaders whose conduct vacillates from cynical to conspiratorial; and, inexplicably, by their deeply cautious and seemingly uncourageous Democratic counterparts, who so far haven’t managed to summon the will to mount a muscular investigation of Trump’s criminal and unconstitutional conduct.”

Whatever, if anything, the country and Congress might end up doing about it will emerge over the coming days.

But as FBI Director Christopher Wray told senators on Tuesday, Russia remains “absolutely intent on interfering” in US elections; and as Robert Mueller has previously made clear, regardless of any political spin surrounding his report, that in itself is something that should concern all Americans.