So are we as a nation still just going to not talk about how freaking nuts this is.
President Trump has a new morning ritual. Around 6:30 a.m. on many days — before all the network news shows have come on the air — he gets on the phone with a member of his outside legal team to chew over all things Russia.
Trump now has a dedicated morning phone call for the Russia investigation. It's like the presidential daily intelligence briefing—but for what people have been saying about him and Russia, and nothing else. It is now a scheduled part of the White House day. It specifically targets, among others, the special counsel leading that investigation.
The calls — detailed by three senior White House officials — are part strategy consultation and part presidential venting session, during which Trump’s lawyers and public-relations gurus take turns reviewing the latest headlines with him. They also devise their plan for battling his avowed enemies: the special counsel leading the Russia investigation; the “fake news” media chronicling it; and, in some instances, the president’s own Justice Department overseeing the probe.
Oh, thank goodness. A dedicated morning call so that his team can battle his avowed enemies: anyone who talks about Russian election hacking and the specific investigators investigating it. That is a brilliant idea that is no way a symptom of a deranged narcissist losing his everloving s—t while his entire team watches.
His advisers have encouraged the calls — which the early-to-rise Trump takes from his private quarters in the White House residence — in hopes that he can compartmentalize the widening Russia investigation. By the time the president arrives for work in the Oval Office, the thinking goes, he will no longer be consumed by the Russia probe that he complains hangs over his presidency like a darkening cloud.
Spoiler alert: It hasn't been working. Another spoiler alert: Anyone who thought it would work hasn't been paying attention to just how bottomless this man's need for ego-fueled vengeance against his invisible enemies has always been.
And so we're treated to stories like "Trump is struggling to stay calm on Russia, one morning call at a time" which is a headline you would expect to see written about a celebrity battling their rampant drug usage, not a sitting president battling an investigation which he insists will find nothing and is completely meaningless except as vehicle for making him, ensconced in the most powerful office in the nation, feel bad.