Trump’s FBI hissy fit harms – him

Ronald Reagan, with a grin and a shrug, dismissed his 1980 opponent President Jimmy Carter’s debate points about Reagan’s opposition to Medicare and the need to expand health care for all by saying, “There you go again.” It was one of the moments that helped Reagan take the White House.

But when applied to President Trump and his penchant for bombastic, silly tweets, there’s nothing funny about Trump going again. His latest bellicose, inarticulate rant against the FBI – pegged to the removal of an agent from the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller who’d sent anti-Trump texts – referred to the agency, which is now his FBI by the way, as “worst in History” and “in Tatters,” and neither of those claims is true. He called on his appointed director Chris Wray to “clean house.”

What is true is that Trump, with virtually no knowledge of how the FBI or any government agency works, is feeling the heat as Mueller’s probe seems to be getting closer to 1600 Pennsylvania with the charge against Michael Flynn, Trump intimate and briefly his national security adviser, and Flynn’s cooperation with Mueller. But by attacking the FBI, Trump isn’t going to intimidate Mueller, but he’s certainly going to cause some Americans to wonder if the president doth protest too much.

He does. All the time.

This story was originally published December 5, 2017 at 10:24 AM with the headline "Trump’s FBI hissy fit harms – him."