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On Wednesday, the hundred and forty-fifth day of his Presidency, Donald Trump did something out of character: he acted Presidential. A few hours after James Hodgkinson, a sixty-six-year-old building inspector from Illinois, shot up an early-morning practice of the Republican congressional baseball team, Trump issued a statement at the White House. He provided an update on what had occurred, praised the two Capitol Police officers who were shot while exchanging fire with Hodgkinson, and said that he and the First Lady were praying for the victims.

We may have our differences, but we do well in times like these to remember that everyone who serves in our nation's Capitol is here because, above all, they love our country, Trump said . We could all agree that we are blessed to be Americans, that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace, and that we are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.

Almost as notable as Trumps statement was the period of dignified silence that followed it. While some conservative media figures, such as Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones, immediately sought to blame the shooting on anti-Trump liberals, Trump himself stayed above the fray. His Twitter account was quiet for most of the day, until, at 9:41 P.M. , he reported that he had just left the hospital after visiting one of the shooting victims, Representative Steve Scalise.

For once, Trump had followed protocol and done what a President is supposed to do in a crisis: act as a unifier. Even some of his harshest critics gave him credit. The Washington Posts Jennifer Rubin wrote, I was impressed with President Trumps well-crafted remarks. Stephen Colbert, the host of The Late Show, said , I want to say thank you to the congressional leadership, and to the President, for responding to this attack of terror in a way that gives us hope that whatever our differences, we will always be the United States of America.

The Trump transformation lasted twenty-four hours. Shortly before 7 A.M. on Thursday morning, he was back to his old ways on Twitter. Responding to news reports that Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation, is now investigating him for possible obstruction of justice, Trump wrote , They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice. About an hour later, he posted another message: You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA

Trumps fury didnt diminish as the day went on. Why is that Hillary Clintons family and Dems dealings with Russia are not looked at, but my non-dealings are? he wrote in a mid-afternoon tweet. In a follow-up message, he added , Crooked H destroyed phones w/ hammer, bleached emails, & had husband meet w/AG days before she was cleared- & they talk about obstruction?

These outbursts can be read in at least two ways. The rational actor explanation is that Trump and his allies are engaged in a deliberate campaign to destroy the credibility of Mueller, a Republican and a former director of the F.B.I., by depicting him as a friend of James Comey and the Democrats. Newt Gingrich, a key Trump surrogate, has been taking this line in recent days, and Trumps mention of very bad and conflicted people seemed to be a reference to Mueller.

The attacks on Mueller could be preparing the ground for Trump to fire him. But the White House is well aware that such an incendiary move would create a constitutional crisis that would probably end with Congress insisting on the appointment of another independent prosecutor. (Thats what happened in 1973, after Richard Nixon forced the Justice Department to fire Archibald Cox. Within two weeks, Leon Jaworski replaced Cox.) The Administration, therefore, might be playing a longer game. Few people in Washington think that Mueller will end up bringing charges against the President. The conventional wisdom is that, if he concludes that an obstruction case is justified, he will hand the matter over to Congress, which would then have to decide whether to impeach the President.

If that happens, the survival of Trumps White House would depend on its ability to keep Capitol Hill Republicans in line. And one way to accomplish this is to exert pressure on them via Trumps base. In an interview with Bloomberg View , Bob Inglis, a former G.O.P. congressman from South Carolina, explained that, even with the Presidents approval rating in the thirties, his diehard supporters can kill you in a Republican primary, which is why elected Republicans are terrified of those voters. Trump must know that he is unlikely to convince most of the country that Mueller has an axe to grind. But it may still make sense for him to rile up viewers of Fox News, readers of Breitbart, and his own Twitter followers.

Yet there is a second way to read these attacks on Mueller. It is possible that Trump, having seen his decision to fire Comey boomerang on him in spectacular fashion, is simply ranting and raving.

The reports about Muellers investigation shouldnt have come as a surprise to him. The existence of Comeys memos, in which he recorded what the President said to him about dropping the investigation of Mike Flynn, has been known for a month now. And, in his testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, Comey said straight out that Mueller would have to reach a judgment on whether an offense had been committed.

Officially, the White House stance is that it wont have much more to say on the matter until the President is exonerated, and that questions should be directed to Trumps personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz. But Trump clearly cant stop himself. He reportedly watches hours of news coverage about the Russia investigation every day, and vents about it to anybody who will listen. Aides have tried to change the subject, with little luck, Politicos Josh Dawsey reported on Thursday. Advisers have tried to buck up the president by telling him to be patient, agreeing that it is a witch hunt and urging him to just let it play outand reassuring him, Eventually, you will be cleared, in the words of one. But none of that has changed Trumps response.

It has become a clich in Washington to say that Trump is his own worst enemybut its true. By leaning on Comey to drop the Flynn investigation, and firing him when he didnt, Trump transformed an F.B.I. probe that was still focussing on his campaign aides and associates into a special-counsel investigation in which he is now a principal target. And, although almost all the Republicans on Capitol Hill are still supporting him, the trends are in the wrong direction. Earlier this week, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, issued what was effectively a public warning to Trump not to fire Mueller. On Thursday, the Senate approved a bill that would impose additional sanctions on Russia and make it difficult for the Administration to lift them. Meanwhile, a new poll from the Associated Press showed that Trumps approval rating has dropped to thirty-five per cent, while his disapproval rating has risen to sixty-four per cent.

A different President might look at these figures and decide to change course. But, of course, we are not dealing with a different President. This President apparently learned no lessons from the way his measured response to the shooting at the congressional baseball practice was received. On Friday morning, Trump launched yet another fusillade of tweets, in which he mocked the Russia investigation, lambasted the Fake News Media, and turned against Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, who told Congress earlier this week that he supported Muellers investigation and wouldnt fire him without proper cause. I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Trump wrote. Witch Hunt.

In response to this fusillade, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a statement, saying that Trump was sending a message "that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him and that anyone who thinks otherwise will be fired.... We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the president would be wise to learn." But is Trump, in this mood, capable of learning anything?'

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A Cornered Donald Trump Lashes Out - The New Yorker

"The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media - over 100 million people! I can go around them," Trump tweeted.

If Trump believes this -- and he certainly seem to -- it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the media views the president's Twitter feed and how he employs it.

The reality is this: Every political journalist in the world is absolutely thrilled that Donald Trump not only tweets but does with the frequency and bluntness that he does. NO reporter wants Donald Trump to stop tweeting. Not one.

Trump's Twitter feed gives the political media -- and anyone else who follows him -- a direct look into his thought processes. We know what he is thinking about -- or angry about -- at all times of day. That's absolutely invaluable. It's "The President: Raw and Uncut."

Even as his White House will be excoriating the media for focusing too little on some policy roll-out or another, Trump will drop a series of tweets about the "witch hunt" Russia investigation or complain, as he did yesterday, about why the Justice Department isn't investigating alleged improprieties surrounding Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

All presidents have private thoughts that sometimes (often?) run counter to the official message the White House is pushing in a given day, week or month. But, no past president has been willing to put those discrepancies on public display in front of the tens of millions of people who follow him on Twitter before Trump.

What sort of reporter would want that pipeline to end?

The people who do want Trump to stop tweeting or to tweet less aren't the media. They're Republicans and Trump loyalists who believe his willingness to tell people exactly what is on his mind at any minute of the day fundamentally undermines the White House's efforts to find some consistent messaging and build the momentum the administration has been sorely lacking to date.

"[Twitter is] a powerful tool, but I do believe that it can be used more effectively to achieve his purpose," New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Trump supporter, said on CNN Friday morning. "I don't know the strategy behind, you know, this morning -- this latest tweet you are asking me about. But if there is a bigger strategy that makes sense, I'm all ears."

If you're reading this, Mr. Trump, let me be crystal clear as a card-carrying member of the media: Please keep tweeting. It provides us insight into how you think that we have never had before and may never get again from a president. Period.

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The one big thing Donald Trump gets totally wrong about the media - CNN

And, man, did she have something to say Friday. Here's her full statement on President Donald Trump's latest tweets about the special counsel investigation being led by former FBI Director Bob Mueller:

"I'm growing increasingly concerned that the President will attempt to fire not only Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible obstruction of justice, but also Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein who appointed Mueller.

"The message the President is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him and that anyone who thinks otherwise will be fired. That's undemocratic on its face and a blatant violation of the President's oath of office.

"First of all, the President has no authority to fire Robert Mueller. That authority clearly lies with the attorney generalor in this case, because the attorney general has recused himself, with the deputy attorney general. Rosenstein testified under oath this week that he would not fire Mueller without good cause and that none exists.

"And second, if the President thinks he can fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will shut down the investigation, he's in for a rude awakening. Even his staunchest supporters will balk at such a blatant effort to subvert the law.

"It's becoming clear to me that the President has embarked on an effort to undermine anyone with the ability to bring any misdeeds to light, be that Congress, the media or the Justice Department. The Senate should not let that happen. We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the President would be wise to learn."

Just a few lines worth reading again:

* "The message the President is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him."

* "If the President thinks he can fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will shut down the investigation, he's in for a rude awakening."

* "It's becoming clear to me that the President has embarked on an effort to undermine anyone with the ability to bring any misdeeds to light."

* "We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the President would be wise to learn."

Any one of those lines is a 99-mile-an-hour fastball thrown way, way inside. Taken all altogether, it's a statement very clearly designed to send a message to Trump.

That message? Enough! Time to start acting like a president.

To be clear: Feinstein is a Democrat. She represents one of the most Democratic states in the country and risks absolutely nothing, politically speaking, by issuing a statement like this one that blisters Trump.

But she is also one of the institutions in the Senate, having spent the last 25 years in the chamber. Unlike her longtime colleague Barbara Boxer, who retired in 2016, Feinstein is not seen as terribly partisan and generally enjoys strong across-the-aisle relationships.

"Every conversation that I've had with her now that she's ranking member has been not only friendly, but has been productive, and these little heads-to-heads that you see us having when the committee's actually functioning, work things out right then."

In short: Feinstein isn't just a predictable partisan or someone who pops off at the slightest political provocation. This statement is a purposeful attempt to make clear that Trump has crossed a line and that he needs to take one big step back.

My prediction: He won't.

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Dianne Feinstein is done pulling punches when it comes to Donald Trump - CNN

New York Times

Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing New York Times Steve Garvey, a former major league star, led a prayer before the congressional baseball game in Washington on Thursday. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times. (Want to get this briefing by email? Here's the sign-up.) Good morning. Here's what you need to ... and more »

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Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing - New York Times

Where Trump falls curiously short, though, is in his day-to-day commitments. They'll come. It'll just be a few weeks, he says. But then the weeks drag on. The phenomenon isn't new, exactly, as his campaign was filled with empty threats -- the infamous "beans" were never spilled on Ted Cruz's wife -- and unfulfilled guarantees, like the press conference Trump said, in early August of 2016, Melania Trump would hold "over the next couple of weeks." It never came.

Trump carried this tic into the White House, where after five months in office, his habit of touting, then failing to deliver either timely policy proposals or evidence to back an assortment of claims, has become a recurring theme of his presidency.

"We're going to be announcing something, I would say over the next two or three weeks, that will be phenomenal in terms of tax and developing our aviation infrastructure," Trump said on February 9. The actual outlines of a tax plan (cuts, not reform) didn't arrive until late April.

On June 5, he held an elaborate signing ceremony for the purpose of suggesting to Congress in a memo it move to privatize air traffic control.

To this day, no clear legislative text has emerged for either issue on Capitol Hill.

Funds to build "the wall" have been a budgetary nonstarter, despite Trump's claim at CPAC in late February that construction "is going to start soon, way ahead of schedule." He came closer to the mark on health care. The House unveiled the first edition of the AHCA on March 6, in the ballpark of what Trump promised on February 18, when he told supporters in Florida, "We are going to be submitting, in a couple of weeks, a great health care plan."

But many of Trump's most high profile dodges and delays have less to do with legislation than his untamed Twitter finger and the administration's subsequent clean-up efforts. The suggestion he was using a secret taping system inside the White House set off a chain of events that led Trump to claim last week that he was "100%" willing to testify, under oath, about his conversations with fired FBI director James Comey.

We'll see how Trump responds now if special counsel Robert Mueller comes calling, but it's hard to imagine he would -- especially with a private lawyer now on the case -- rush to offer sworn testimony. Meanwhile, those alleged "tapes" have been much longer in the offing -- and are, so far as they are real, very much Trump's to deliver. At his convenience.

Speculation over the nature of the would-be recordings began on May 12, when the President threatened his erstwhile FBI chief in a morning tweet.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!", Trump said.

The "tapes" tweet echoed an earlier allegation, from March 4, when he alleged -- without any evidence -- that President Barack Obama "had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower" before the election. Despite repeated expressions of "confidence" that vindication was near, both by White House press secretary Sean Spicer and Trump, no proof was ever produced.

More recently, Trump and his top aides have been asked repeatedly about the Comey "tapes," and have, repeatedly, declined to provide a definitive answer as to whether or not they exist.

Asked by a reporter at his Monday briefing, Spicer punted again, saying that "the President made clear in the Rose Garden last week that he would have an announcement shortly."

Those comments, made during a joint news conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, came last Friday. Asked on three times in the course of two separate exchanges, Trump first replied, "I'll tell you about that maybe sometime in the very near future," then, "I'll tell you about it over a very short period of time," and eventually, "Oh, you're going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer. Don't worry."

At this point, after all the hints and speculation, there is a precisely zero percent chance a real answer would be in any way "disappointing." Unfortunately, if past performance is any indication, Trump making good on his promise to tell seems about as likely.

Excerpt from:
Donald Trump promised. Now start waiting - CNN International