On Monday, Donald Trump sent 101 tweets. Even if each of those thumb-twiddling missives took only a few minutes, that’s a solid effort at trying to block out the final day of impeachment hearings in the House and the release of the “no political bias or improper motivation” report from the Justice Department inspector general into the Mueller investigation. It’s also likely the greatest amount of work that Trump has done in years.
But fresh off of muscling through that hard day of hate, lies, and hate lies, Trump is back at it again on Tuesday morning with an attack on FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In just the last few days, Wray has had the temerity to repeat earlier FBI conclusions that it was Russia that hacked into the DNC, stole emails, and provided them to WikiLeaks—with no help from Ukraine. And then he answered questions about the DOJ inspector general’s report by providing a formal response in which he proposed changes meant to address the procedural issues identified by the inspector general. But Wray also noted that Horowitz’s report shows that the investigation into Russian interference was opened with “an authorized purpose and with adequate factual predication.”
Wray then went on to defend the FBI and its workers against charges of spying on Trump’s campaign. Just as he did in May after Attorney General William Barr accused the agency of conducting illegal surveillance of the Trump campaign. And just as he did in September of 2018 as Trump fired off a series of attacks on the agency. In fact, it often seems that Christopher Wray’s entire job as FBI director is simply going through the day-to-day task of sheltering the agency from the man who installed him in that role.
In particular, Wray was offended by the term “deep state,” telling ABC News, “That's the kind of label that's a disservice to the men and women who work at the FBI who I think tackle their jobs with professionalism, with rigor, with objectivity, with courage. So that's not a term I would ever use to describe our work force and I think it's an affront to them." It’s also a term that Donald Trump has applied to them 17 times just in the last few months on Twitter alone.
Despite Wray explaining that he takes each problem mentioned in the report seriously, and a 40-step plan that seems like vast overkill for the scope of the issues pointed out, Trump opened Tuesday morning with an attack on Wray, saying, “I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me.”
That may be because the report was longer than one page, and contained no infographics. So it probably was not the same report given to Trump. However, Trump went on to to complain about Wray’s “attitude” and to say that Wray “will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken.” Which does not seem like the sort of thing that is going to be followed with an announcement of full support.
After a two-year career that has consisted mostly of appearances in which Wray has either come before Congress to explain how Donald Trump and Devin Nunes are placing intelligence assets at risk or come before Congress to explain that Trump is simply wrong—or simply lying—about claims of “deep state” action at the FBI, it’s not clear if the latest jab from Trump represents a genuine threat that Wray is on his way out the door. But he probably wishes that he was.
Then America can see if, since Mick Mulvaney is currently both head of OMB and chief of staff, maybe he can have the job. Or, since William Barr is the boss of the FBI anyway, maybe Trump will just cut out the middleman and put the agency directly under his thumb. Or there’s Jared. Now that he has those Middle East peace, China trade, and opioid crisis things completely solved, he has time on his hands. Failing that, there is a whole host of TV pundits who could do the job. Jonathan Turley just did Trump a solid. Maybe he’d be interested.
But really, it doesn’t matter. Because neither Trump nor the Republicans have any respect for the FBI or any concern over what it discovers.