That’s right: A new report at Politico on the appointment of a special counsel in the Justice Department contains the sentence “He didn’t yell or scream” with reference to Donald Trump when he got the news.
But let’s go back a bit, and see how we got there. Earlier in May, Trump fired FBI director James Comey, who would normally have finished out a ten-year term. (That system began after J. Edgar Hoover died. Hoover ran the FBI from 1924 to 1972, when he died. He was immune to being fired because he apparently had dirt on the various presidents whom he served under and would gladly blackmail them to keep his job.) Then, on Monday, May 15, the New York Times reported that Comey, while still in his job, had written a memorandum documenting that Trump, right after Michael Flynn left the position of National Security Adviser, asked Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn’s Russian connections. Over these last couple of days, we’ve been hearing talk of the possibility of an impeachment trial for Trump for obstruction of justice.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from being involved in the investigation of the whole Russia affair, so it fell to deputy AG Rod Rosenstein to make the next move, where the Justice Department was concerned, and what Rosenstein did–independently of Trump, acting within the discretionary power of an executive department with a job to do–appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation of everything connected with the Russian allegations. That special counsel if Bob Muller, who has a lot of bipartisan support.
Again, this was the Justice Department acting on its own. Trump didn’t call for it; rather, he found out about it as a fait accomplit. And indeed, the Politico story on Trump’s reaction includes the sentence “He didn’t yell or scream.”
Politico story on the appointment of the special counsel (May 17, 2017)
Politico story on Trump not yelling or screaming (May 17, 2017)
NPR story on prospects of Trump getting impeached (May 17, 2017)
And this NPR story (May 18, 2017), an interview with Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold, illustrates how some Republicans in Congress are still talking about Trump as if he were a normal person who just needs to remember to act like a normal person a little more often, and talking about the Democrats as being anti-Trump because they’re sore losers. “He’s still learning” seems to be their mantra about Trump.
