‘His Own Worst Enemy’

Trump Tweets Turn Up the Heat on the President

President Trump is turning out to be his own worst enemy.

His tweets this morning about fired FBI Director James Comey have Washington lawyers reaching for their impeachment archives from the Nixon and Clinton years and reading up on executive privilege, obstruction of justice, and witness intimidation. He’s provoked Comey’s former colleagues at the FBI and the Justice Department and needlessly picked yet another fight with the Washington press corps.

All that before 9 a.m.. Who knows what the afternoon may bring?

Trump started his morning tweets with a fresh claim that suggestions that his campaign colluded with Russian agents last year in efforts to disrupt the election are being “fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.”

Then he shifted to the media, clearly reacting to morning headlines and cable news chatter about the administration’s shifting, contradictory explanations of the events that led to Comey’s dismissal. “As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” he tweeted at 7:59. Eight minutes later came a suggestion that “Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future ‘press briefings’ and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”

And 19 minutes after that came what can only be viewed as a threat to Comey. The former FBI chief “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump tweeted.

If Trump thought all that would help him get beyond the Russia story and put his administration back on track, he soon learned otherwise.

On MSNBC, former Republican Congressman and sometime Trump friend Joe Scarborough said Trump had made “every one of his spokespeople out to be liars.” The president has now admitted, on camera, that “they fired James Comey because they wanted to kill the FBI investigation that was reaching into Trump’s affairs,” Scarborough said, adding later that “this man… ends up making fools of everyone that works around him.”

And on CNN, former CIA analyst Philip Mudd had a warning for the president. “If you think you’re going to intimidate the FBI, you’ve got another think coming.”

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