The media feeding frenzy about Donald Trump firing Robert Mueller is out of control
Donald Trump is going to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller any minute now, according to nearly every political news outlet in the country, based on no evidence whatsoever. Last month’s logic: Mueller arrested Paul Manafort, therefore Trump is about to fire Mueller. Last week’s logic: Michael Flynn cut a deal, therefore Trump is about to fire Mueller. This week’s logic: Mueller is probing Trump’s finances, therefore Trump is about to fire Mueller. It’s a media feeding frenzy, and it’s out of control.
Remember all the media buzz about Donald Trump firing James Comey just before it happened? No, you don’t, because there was none. That was the entire point. Trump was trying to catch everyone off guard by firing Comey at a time when no one was expecting it, hoping that he would get away with it because not enough of the public was paying attention to the Russia scandal at the time. It backfired on him, but there was a logic to it.
Trump firing Mueller right now would be completely logicless, even by Trump’s warped standards. He knows everyone is watching him right now. He knows the public is eager to eat him alive if he does it. He knows his own Republican Party might even have to dunk him for it. They could, and at this point probably would, turn around and immediately reappoint Mueller as a more powerful Independent Counsel. It’s not that the GOP cares about doing the right thing. It just doesn’t want to go into the midterms having to answer for why it let Trump fire Mueller. Trump, for all his deranged ideas and increasingly addled brain, knows this.
So why is the media pushing the narrative so vigilantly about Donald Trump preparing to fire Robert Mueller? It’s the same reason the media has begun automatically hyping this same narrative every time Mueller has made a breakthrough. It comes down to one word: ratings. People hear this, they get scared, they tune in for more. It’s not that the odds of Trump firing Mueller are zero. Anything is possible. It’s just that the odds of it are no better now than the last time ten times the media breathlessly overhyped this particular narrative.
