Donald Trump tells aides he’s willing to take himself down just to satisfy his own rage
Over the past several days it’s felt from the outside looking in that something has fundamentally changed about Donald Trump’s mindset. He’s now firing people out of pure spite, no matter the consequences. He’s posting tweets that are more self incriminating than ever. He seems to no longer care if he takes himself down, as long as he gets to satisfy his own lust for rage. Now confirmation is coming from within the building that Trump has more or less admitted this exact same thing to his remaining advisers.
With the recent departure of Hope Hicks and the shunning of John Kelly, Trump doesn’t have many advisers left in the building whose advice he’s willing to take. That became evident when he insisted on firing Andrew McCabe on Friday night, in a move which gave Trump no advantage in the Trump-Russia scandal, while further exposing him to obstruction of justice and/or witness intimidation charges. Then Trump began tweeting bizarre lies about Robert Mueller and his team, making things even worse for himself.
Now Trump is telling his remaining handlers that he’s going to ramp up his rage-tweeting about the Trump-Russia investigation, “even if it means exacerbating his legal standing” according a new Daily Beast report (link). Some will argue that this means Trump is simply following the logic that he has nothing left to lose and might as well take some desperate shots at those investigating him, on the off chance they might work. But that would require there to be some logic to Trump’s actions, and there simply isn’t any.
Donald Trump didn’t gain anything by firing Andrew McCabe; he simply wanted to punish the guy for being a witness to his obstruction of justice, and because he’s convinced himself that McCabe was somehow a Hillary Clinton plant. Trump’s rage-tweets about Robert Mueller have forced several of his key Republican allies in Congress to speak out against him, which hurts his standing in the eyes of the public. Most importantly, this kind of raging behavior only makes it easier for Mueller to build an overwhelming criminal case against him.
