At WaPo, on the naming of  Robert S. Mueller as special counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein:

Rosentein’s order charges Mueller with investigating “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” Mueller is also empowered to probe possible attempts to stymie his investigation. That language gives him leeway to interpret his mandate broadly if he chooses. It also might mean he goes after people who leaked classified information related to the bureau’s Russia investigation. He can continue his work however long he wants, and he is broadly “authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation.”

— That means this could last for years – potentially through the president’s 2020 reelection campaign.

We can discuss what should happen until we are blue; what’s going to happen is what’s going to happen. The wheels are in motion; the game is afoot; etc. If Mueller is the tough and honest guy everyone says he is, then I trust many things will come to light.  And I suspect those “many things” will go way beyond a mere attempt to interfere with the 2016 election. The election issue is the least of what might have been going on.

Original photo by Evan Guest, flickr.com

Here is the latest, from Josh Marshall:

Reuters says that Mike Flynn and other Trump campaign officials were in contact with Russian government officials at least 18 times between April and November of last year.

McClatchy reports that shortly before President Trump’s inauguration, Mike Flynn effectively killed a military operation against ISIS that would have used Kurdish paramilitaries. The plan was later revived after Flynn’s ouster. But his decision delayed it for months. Any US operations with the Kurds would be firmly against the wishes of Turkey. This was while Flynn was working on behalf of the Republic of Turkey as an unregistered foreign agent.

The Timesreports that on January 4th, Flynn notified Trump Transition lawyer and now White House Counsel Donald McGahn that he was being investigated for his undeclared lobbying work on behalf of Turkey.

And that’s just the stuff about Flynn and Turkey. See also Report: Russian bank whose CEO met secretly with Jared Kushner helped finance Trump’s Toronto hotel. And I still say there’s something going on with Trump and the Russian mob.

Josh also says,

Vice President Mike Pence is often portrayed as Trump’s squeaky clean, perhaps goofy second, ready to take over if the avalanche of scandal overwhelms Trump. As I noted earlier this week, this is far from the case. Pence has managed to get implicated in most if not all of the big scandals – that just hasn’t gotten a lot of attention yet.

There’s a lot of arguing that we can’t get rid of Trump because then we’ll end up with President Pence, which could be worse.  I’m inclined to think that if Mueller’s investigation brings Trump down, Pence would go down with him.

But that’s in the event of a standard (if such a thing could be called standard) impeachment process. Trump clearly is not a stable person. And that brings us to the 25th Amendment:

The 25th amendment describes a process by which a president may give away power owing to his or her own disability, and a separate process by which power may be taken from a president owing to disability or inability.

The key players in the second case are the vice-president and the top 15 members of the cabinet. If the former and a majority of the latter decide the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”, they submit that information in writing to the House speaker (currently Paul Ryan) and Senate president pro tempore (currently the Utah Republican senator Orrin Hatch) and just like that, the vice-president would be acting president.

The president may challenge such a decision, at which point a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress would be required to stop the president from regaining power.

I can easily imagine Republicans in Washington preferring this option to watching both Trump and Pence being ground to bits by endless investigation. And if Trump’s behavior grows increasingly bizarre, as I expect it will, watch out for this. I’m sure the Republican establishment would rather cut Trump off at the knees and have Pence in the White House than endure a Whitewater-type investigation dragging their own party through the mud. The investigations would continue, but much of the heat would be removed from the Republican Party — unless Pence becomes a target, too.

I’d want congressional Dems to block Trump from being removed this way. Don’t let ’em off easy.

The other possibility is that Trump will leave the White House voluntarily, whether horizontally or vertically (someone with his ego is unlikely to be able to face the ignominity of being perpwalked out of the White House). Again, that would not necessarily be the end of  the political fallout.

So, hang on to your butts.

One of the most interesting things I read yesterday was from Erick Erickson, for pity’s sake. Yeah, I know, it’s loathsome Erick Erickson. But here it is:

What sets this story apart for me, at least, is that I know one of the sources. And the source is solidly supportive of President Trump, or at least has been and was during Campaign 2016. But the President will not take any internal criticism, no matter how politely it is given. He does not want advice, cannot be corrected, and is too insecure to see any constructive feedback as anything other than an attack.

So some of the sources are left with no other option but to go to the media, leak the story, and hope that the intense blowback gives the President a swift kick in the butt. Perhaps then he will recognize he screwed up. The President cares vastly more about what the press says than what his advisers say. That is a real problem and one his advisers are having to recognize and use, even if it causes messy stories to get outside the White House perimeter.

I am told that what the President did is actually far worse than what is being reported. The President does not seem to realize or appreciate that his bragging can undermine relationships with our allies and with human intelligence sources. He also does not seem to appreciate that his loose lips can get valuable assets in the field killed.

Wingnuts, by definition, are people who can’t see reality until it personally smacks them in the face. But let’s go on … this has a ring of truth for me, and it certainly is consistent with everything else we hear about Trump. (See, for example,  I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal’ with Trump. His self-sabotage is rooted in his past.) He’s a walking character pathology incapable of doing the job he was elected to do. I mean, he can’t even do it badly; he is not doing it at all.

I keep hearing from people, some of them lefties, who are calling the Russian leaking/Comey firing stuff a “distraction.” No, it is not. It is the fruit of a political crisis in the U.S. that is unprecedented in our history. That such a man could actually have been elected — and I believe he was more or less fairly elected; the Russian hacks didn’t have that much impact — and that he continues (although perhaps not for long) to be protected by a major political party, tells us that our political culture has utterly failed. We need a new one.

So no, the meltdown of the Trump Administration is not a “distraction.” It really is the main event. See also Paul Waldman on Why the GOP could face 2018 with nothing to show for it, despite total control. No, Republicans in Congress are unlikely to be able to pass a bunch of nasty new laws while we’re being “distracted” by the Trump antics.

About a year ago I wrote a post about managed democracy and about how the two front-running presidential candidates were unpopular:

But what I really want to write about is, it appears the general election campaign will be between two unpopular candidates. How did that happen? And what does that say about the status of democracy in America?

First, this tells me the political system is being played, and not by the people. An honest competition actually decided by the people ought to have given us more popular candidates. What we’re seeing is a symptom of managed democracy, a term usually aimed at Vladimir Putin’s Russia but which, many argue, describes the United States.  In a paper about managed democracy in Russia, we find,

According to Tretyakov’s definition, managed democracy is a democracy (as there are elections, voters have alternative options, there is media freedom, leaders are changing), but it is corrected by the ruling class (or rather that part of it that holds power).

Put another way, this is why we can’t have nice things. We aren’t really in charge.

See also Ted Morgan in Salon, “This Isn’t How a Democracy Should Work.”

I blame both parties for this.

Anyway — After this week, I don’t see how Trump’s situation is salvageable, especially since he seems incapable of learning from mistakes. We’re in for many more weeks of drama, of course, and there are some smart folks who think Trump will stay in office. but too many forces are in motion that point to an early termination of the Trump Administration.

WaPo just reported this:

Congressional Republicans are increasing pressure on the administration to produce records related to the latest string of controversies involving President Trump, amid flagging confidence in the White House and a growing sense that scandal is overtaking the presidency.

As the White House sought to contain the damage from two major scandals, leaders of two key Senate committees asked the FBI for documents related to former director James B. Comey, who was leading an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election before Trump fired him last week.

At the same time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) broke his silence on the Comey affair to say lawmakers “need to hear from him as soon as possible in public to respond to the issues that have been raised in recent days.”

See also Jonathan Chait on how the Republican wall protecting Trump is cracking.

Another signal the rats are deserting:

When President Donald Trump casually shared highly classified intel with top Russian diplomats last week, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who was in the room, did not immediately realize the significance of what Trump divulged, according to an NBC News report out Wednesday.

Citing an unnamed U.S. official with direct knowledge of the matter, NBC reported that McMaster “is not steeped in counterterrorism” and thus was not immediately aware of the importance of the information Trump gave to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

McMaster, who originally had forcefully said the reports of Trump blabbing information were totally false, possibly is realizing he is the new Colin Powell — the guy who blew his sterling reputation by providing an authoritative face for a pack of lies.

There are reports that Trump is coming unglued. If he’s as unstable as I think he is, someone had better make sure he doesn’t have access to sharp knives or loaded guns.

The New York Times is reporting that Trump asked James Comey, while Comey was still FBI director, to shut down the investigation into Michael Flynn. This happened in an Oval Office meeting in February, and Comey had documented this request in a memo written shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” Trump said to Comey, according to the memo.

The NYTimes also says “The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation.”  Comey had shared the memo with senior FBI officials and close associates, one of whom read it to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Josh Marshall:

With the latest revelation – that President Trump straight up asked James Comey to end the Flynn investigation – this is starting to feel like a prize fight where one boxer just took three straight punches to the head. It’s hard to know how much longer this can go on. But I suspect the answer is this: a lot longer.

We talk a lot about smoke and fire. But this isn’t smoke. This is the fire. It’s not clear to me what more we need to know. The only question is whether we decide to put it out or just let it keep burning. As I said above, I bet we’re going to let it burn for quite a while longer. …

… Firing an FBI Director while such an investigation like this is afoot is something like that, breaking a fence. In theory, the President has every right to fire an FBI Director. But doing so while such an investigation is underway has the look of trying to end the investigation. But in this case, asking Comey to end the probe itself doesn’t break one of the fences. It’s the thing itself. There’s no question of intent or misunderstandings. It’s the hand in the register. There’s just nothing more to know. It’s the thing itself.

However, with a Republican majority in Congress there’s not exactly going to be a stampede to write up articles of impeachment. (And if Hillary Clinton were POTUS and got caught doing the same thing today, those articles would be on their way to the Senate already.) The degree to which Republicans will attempt to brush this off will be a precise measure of their own corruption.

Best sentence he ever wrote:

We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.

See also Digby at Salon.

WaPo just reported:

President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said that Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump’s decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and National Security Agency.

“This is code-word information,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

Let’s see him tweet his way out of this one.

Update: More from the article.

U.S. officials said that the National Security Council continues to prepare multi-page briefings for Trump to guide him through conversations with foreign leaders but that he has insisted that the guidance be distilled to a single page of bullet points, and often ignores those.

“He seems to get in the room or on the phone and just goes with it – and that has big downsides,” the second former official said. “Does he understand what’s classified and what’s not? That’s what worries me.”

It really is entirely possible he just blabbed something out loud that was in his head without understanding that it was classified.

In WaPo:

As the distance between rich and poor grows in the United States, few consequences are so overlooked as the humiliating divide in dental care. High-end cosmetic dentistry is soaring, and better-off Americans spend well over $1 billion each year just to make their teeth a few shades whiter.

Millions of others rely on charity clinics and hospital emergency rooms to treat painful and neglected teeth. Unable to afford expensive root canals and crowns, many simply have them pulled. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans older than 65 do not have a single real tooth left.

This is the problem with “free market” capitalism, in a nutshell. According to “free market” ideology, as long as government doesn’t interfere the Holy Free Market naturally finds the most cost-effective and efficient way to provide what people need. It’s like a natural law; water flows downhill, flowers bloom in the spring, free markets create abundance for everybody. But in the real world, that’s now how it works. Without government intervention, free markets let some people sink into genuine deprivation in favor of providing boutique, luxury services for the wealthy.

This is particularly true where it comes to health care. There are some things that can’t be done on the cheap, no matter how free the markets are. And I believe we are the only developed nation still trying to provide health care through a mostly private system, and which has little to no controls in place to stop price gouging.

The Affordable Care Act amounted to a system of regulations and subsidies designed to make the existing system fairer, which it did, although not perfectly so. It had several cost-control measures in place that seemed to be having some effect to slow the increase in health care cost, although that is disputed.

But the Republican plan primarily seems to be to lower insurance costs allowing companies to cover fewer medical problems, without doing anything to tackle the factors that are driving up medical cost. This is like driving down the cost of home owners insurance by selling policies that don’t cover fires.

But getting back to dental work — modern dentistry is not going to make itself more affordable to the poor in the same way that consumer electronics companies might find ways to lower the prices on their gizmos. (See Why Your Dentist Costs So Much.)

The WaPo article describes a two-day clinic “event” in which a bunch of dentists volunteered to see people for free. Mostly they pulled teeth that were too far gone to save. People who hadn’t seen dentists for many years drove there from five states. Many people had jobs, but they had no dental insurance and no “leftover” cash to take care of dental problems as they came up.

Matello had both problems, adding to her frustration about being cut off from a world that many wealthier Americans take for granted.

“The country is way too divided between well-off people and people struggling for everything — even to see the dentist,” she said. “And the worst part is, I don’t see a bridge to cross over to be one of those rich people.”

Matello voted for Barack Obama in 2008, thinking he offered the best option for working people, but she sat out the 2012 election. Last year, she rallied behind Trump after listening to him talk about “the forgotten men and women of our country, people who work hard but don’t have a voice.”

“I’m running to be their voice,” Trump said repeatedly.

What Matello heard was a promise “to restore pride to the working poor.”

A big part of that promise was Trump’s assurance that he would build a “beautiful” health-care system to serve every American, a system that would cost less and do more. But nearly four months into Trump’s presidency, Matello sees Trump backing a Republican health care plan that appears to leave low-income people and the elderly worse off.

“I am hearing about a number of people who will lose their coverage under the new plan,” Matello said. “Is Trump the wolf in grandma’s clothes? My husband and I are are now saying to each other: ‘Did we really vote for him?’ ”

We might argue that Ms. Matello and others like her were hopelessly naive to believe anything Trump said, but television news media were normalizing him way too much. Nobody on tee vee ever explained why Trump couldn’t possibly deliver what he was promising.

And here’s why we should be more concerned about dental problems:

George Acs, director of the dental department at Chesapeake Health Care, a clinic near Salisbury, said people with oral pain and infections are inundating hospitals. Last year, more than 2 million U.S. emergency room visits were attributed to neglected teeth.

“What I am seeing is absolutely horrifying,” said Acs, who recently testified about the problem before the Maryland state legislature.

Although those hospital visits cost an estimated $1.6 billion a year, the ER is generally not equipped to fix dental problems, Acs told lawmakers. So ER doctors just medicate people with “a perpetual cycle of antibiotics and opioids.”

That cycle is feeding a nationwide epidemic of opioid addiction.

The business of keeping dentistry separate from other medical problems is stupid to begin with and needs to stop. But as some of the people interviewed in the article say, having bad teeth is a real social and economic impediment as well as a medical problem.

Over two days, 116 dentists treated 1,165 patients, providing $1 million worth of fillings and other care, according to the Mission of Mercy. Matello was grateful. She was told her panoramic X-ray and extraction would have cost $600 to $800 in a regular office.

She looked at some of the others who had come here, despite working for a living cutting down trees, building homes, minding a town library, running small businesses.

“We are not staying home, not sleeping and living off the government,” she said.

She wondered why there wasn’t a better system for people like her. She tried not to look at the 51-year-old truck driver lying next to her who had three teeth pulled, his mouth stuffed with bloody gauze.

“I am trying to think that this is not demeaning,” she said as she cleared the chair for the next person in line. “But it is. It’s like a Third World country.”

Yes, and it’s maddening that people like Ms. Matello support politicians who are making things worse for her, but in the recent elections, what did Democrats offer to do for her? If anything?

The s0-called president started his day at 8:26 am by tweeting threats to James Comey, a man he had just fired from his job as director of the FBI.

James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Now, it may very well be that Trump was not the first president to threaten someone to keep his mouth shut. But I believe he is the first one to do it so publicly.

The New York Times, backed up by NBC News, reported that Comey was summoned to the White House for dinner a week after the inauguration. And in that dinner conversation, Trump pushed Comey to declare his loyalty to Trump.

The conversation that night in January, Mr. Comey now believes, was a harbinger of his downfall this week as head of the F.B.I., according to two people who have heard his account of the dinner.

As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.

Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not “reliable” in the conventional political sense.

In this, Comey was correct. FBI directors are supposed to operate independently of the president.

Here is Donald Trump’s version of the dinner, from his interview with Lester Holt:

HOLT: Let me ask you about your termination letter to Mr. Comey. You write, “I greatly appreciate you informing me on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation.” Why did you put that in there?

TRUMP: Because he told me that. I mean, he told me that.

HOLT: He told you, you weren’t under investigation with…

TRUMP: Yeah, and I…

HOLT: …regard to the Russian investigation.

TRUMP: …I’ve heard that — I’ve heard that from others. I think…

HOLT: Was it in a phone call? Did you meet face to face?

TRUMP: I had a dinner with him. He wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on. We had a very nice dinner at the White House…

HOLT: He — he asked…

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: …very early on. That dinner was arranged. I think he asked for the dinner.

And he wanted to stay on as the FBI head. And I said I’ll, you know, consider. We’ll see what happens.

But we had a very nice dinner. And at that time, he told you are not under investigation…

HOLT: That was…

TRUMP: …which I knew anyway.

HOLT: That was one meeting. When was the — when was the other two?

TRUMP: First of all, when you’re under investigation, you’re giving all sorts of documents and everything. I knew I wasn’t under. And I heard it was stated at the committee — at some committee level that I wasn’t, number one.

HOLT: So, that didn’t come directly from him.

TRUMP: Then, during a phone call, he said it. And then, during another phone call he said it.

So, he said it once at dinner and then he said it twice during phone calls.

HOLT: Did — did you call him?

TRUMP: In one case I called him and one case he called me.

HOLT: And did you ask am I under investigation?

TRUMP: I actually asked him, yes. I said if it’s possible, would you let me know am I under investigation. He said you are not under investigation.

Starting with the part about how Comey “asked” to have dinner at the White House, or somehow arranged for a White House dinner without being invited — I don’t think so. And, anyway, FBI directors are appointed to ten-year terms these days; it’s presumed they will stay in office through changes of administration unless they choose to leave.

I believe the only other FBI director to have been fired was William Sessions, by Bill Clinton. The circumstances were very different from Comey’s firing.

In 1993, Bill Clinton became the first US president to dismiss the head of the bureau. He did so after the Department of Justice produced a 161-page internal report with sworn testimony from more than 100 FBI agents citing the numerous and severe ethical failures of its director, William Sessions.

Clinton called Sessions twice the day he fired him — once to inform him he was dismissed and again to remind him his termination was effective immediately. He then held a press conference to explain his decision. He also had Louis Freeh lined up as a replacement.

Clinton’s moves are in dramatic contrast to President Donald Trump’s Tuesday dismissal of FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing an investigation involving the president’s campaign.

The White House said that Trump relied on two brief letters of recommendation. One came from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a former campaign surrogate who had recused himself from investigations involving the Trump campaign but waded into the debate about Comey’s dismissal. Sessions’ deputy, Rod Rosenstein, wrote a lengthy memo detailing his concerns about Comey.

BTW, I want to share my Facebook friend Jeffrey F’s version of the Lester Holt interview:

I had beans three times for dinner. Well, actually it was one time for dinner. I open the beans and ate them. Somebody else actually opened the beans. I didn’t eat all the beans, but they were nice beans. You know that, I know that, everybody knows that. I’m not going to even consider eating beans unless they are the best, biggest beans out there. These were the best. The other two times I ate beans for dinner it was not actually dinner. It was breakfast, the one time. I didn’t actually eat the beans, but I was having breakfast and there was somebody else in room eating beans and I said “Those are nice beans.” And that was the second time. The third time I had beans for dinner was on vacation and I had finished lunch and then a waiter was carrying this amazing tray of beans into the room and the waiter says to me he says, “You really need to try these amazing beans.” And I said to him–and this is absolutely true–I said, “I already ate.” Extraordinary guy. Very smart. But there were the beans. So that’s three times. And you can ask anybody.

Brilliant. But Trump implies that he might have tapes of the conversations he had with Comey. And Comey had better keep his mouth shut, or those tapes will be played.

So now Washington is buzzing about tapes again. Reminds me of Nixon. Democrats in Congress are demanding that any tapes or documents related to Comey’s firing be turned over, btw.

The Independent reports that FBI employees are changing their social media photos to James Comey’s. Word is the FBI is pissed off. This is Vox:

It’s not often that you hear members of the FBI threatening to go to war with the president. But that’s where we are after Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey.

“[Trump] essentially declared war on a lot of people at the FBI,” an anonymous FBI official told the Washington Post. “I think there will be a concerted effort to respond over time in kind.”

Do read the whole thing at Vox; the FBI could do Trump a lot of damage.

It seems to me that in spite of his vast past experience of stiffing underlings, dodging lawsuits and doing business with the New York and Russian mobs, Trump is not very good at keeping his ass covered. Everything he does makes him look more guilty.

For example, this afternoon he had some lawyers trot out and proclaim that

his income tax returns do not show income from Russian sources or debt owed to Russians, with the exception of $95 million paid by a Russian billionaire for a Trump-owned estate in Florida and $12.2 million in payments in connection with holding the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013.

The statements are contained in a letter from two lawyers, Sheri A. Dillon and William F. Nelson, to Mr. Trump, which the White House released on Friday. The president cited the letter in an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News as proof that there were no hidden financial ties between him and Russia.

In addition to the Florida estate and the beauty pageant, the lawyers said Mr. Trump received undisclosed payments over 10 years from Russians for hotel rooms, rounds of golf, or Trump-licensed products, like wine, ties or mattresses.

These last payments wouldn’t have shown up on tax returns as coming from Russians, the lawyers say. So let’s see the tax returns, and let us make up our own minds.

Come to think of it, now that Trump is making claims about what his tax returns do or don’t say, wouldn’t that make it easier for some investigatory group to get a judge to subpoena them?

Finally, do read Charles Pierce, who reminds us that the three truest words in journalism are follow the money.

Reviewing the news of the day, it strikes me how exhausting the so-called Trump Administration is. We’ve gone from No-Drama Obama to the Perpetual Pandemonium President. And this is particularly remarkable in that nothing unusually catastrophic is going on right now. The Donald is just one unforced error after another. My new name for him is The tRumpus.

Anyway … Today the tRumpus made yesterday look worse. Aaron Blake writes at WaPo:

In one fell swoop, Trump totally contradicted his three top spokespeople and offered a polar-opposite version of events than they had provided.

After they had spent the past 45 hours emphasizing that this was a decision Trump arrived at after receiving a memo and recommendation from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, Trump just blurted out that he was going to fire Comey all along. Basically, he admitted the memo was a ruse and a political ploy.

This was today’s unforced error: Trump told NBC News’s Lester Holt that he had decided to fire Comey before he had received a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. You’ll remember that yesterday’s story was that Trump fired Comey on Rosenstein’s recommendation.

Notice that Lester Holt didn’t trick Trump into admitting this. Trump just blurted it out. He can’t even keep his own stories straight.

It didn’t help that the Washington Post had reported earlier that Rosenstein had threatened to resign after realizing the decision to fire Comey was being pinned on him. The Wall Street Journal is reporting (source) that Rosenstein asked asked White House Counsel Don McGahn to “correct what he felt was an inaccurate depiction” of his involvement in Comey’s firing.

The Real Story, from several news sources, is that Trump had been growing increasingly agitated about Comey for not backing up the claim that Trump had been wiretapped by Obama, and also for Comey’s continued pursuit of the Russian hacking issue. And then last week when Comey said in testimony that he felt “mildly nauseous” about his possibly having affected the outcome of the election. Trump took that as a personal insult.

So Comey was unceremoniously dumped from his job only because Trump was pissed off at him, and he was dumped without even the grace of being asked to resign. And today Trump piled on by calling Comey a “showboat” and a “grandstander.” As in most things, Trump probably has no clue that this is not How These Things Are Done.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are considering a new kind of “nuclear option” if they feel they aren’t getting answers to What the Bleep Is Going On. Jeff Stein at Vox explains:

Unlike the House of Representatives, the Senate operates under what are called “unanimous consent” agreements. If Senate Democrats withhold their consent, the routine functioning of the body — from committee hearings to routine floor votes — could grind to an immediate halt.

“It would stop everything in the Senate and effectively shut it down,” said Josh Huder, a congressional scholar at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute. “If they go down this road, things could get pretty slow and ugly in the Senate.”

They haven’t decided to do this, mind you, but they’re seriously talking about it.

On top of that, this happened yesterday — Josh Marshall writes,

I wanted to add some context to one of the more surreal moments of this surreal day. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met first with Secretary of State Tillerson and then a short time later with President Trump in the Oval Office.  …

… Many also noted that while US press was barred from the meeting, Lavrov was allowed to bring the the Russian state news agency to photograph the event. …

…Foreign Ministers don’t usually meet with the President of the United States. I’m not saying it never happens. It does sometimes, especially if its the foreign minister of a major power, which of course Russia is. It also happens when there’s some particular business of importance to be hashed out. But Foreign Ministers generally meet with the Secretary of State, Defense Ministers meet the Defense Secretary, etc. It’s a rather straightforward matter of counterparts, parity and status. A Foreign Minister meeting with the President, particularly a chummy meeting in the Oval Office, is not standard procedure and generally signifies a warmness of relations between the two countries or some specific business to be hashed out. …

… According to Susan Glasser, Trump had the meeting because Putin asked and said it was important.

And the timing couldn’t be better, right? But today CNN reported that Trump was furious that the Russians published the photographs taken by the Russian photographer.

Photos of Wednesday’s meeting, taken by a Russian state news media photographer one day after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey amid questions about possible Trump campaign collusion with Moscow, were ultimately posted by Russia’s news agency, TASS. …

I mean, what the bleep? Were these clowns born last week?

And this afternoon, the White House continued to dance in its own doo-doo by announcing that Comey’s firing will help bring the Russian investigation to an end. That’s supposed to be reassuring?