Fresh off the high of "lock her up" chants at his Florida rally Wednesday night, Donald Trump treated White House reporters to a grievance fest Thursday with Robert Mueller taking center stage. "Bob Mueller's no friend of mine," Trump said during remarks aired on MSNBC. He accused Mueller of being "in love with James Comey" and claimed he had originally wanted the FBI job. Real time fact check: neither are true. Comey testified that he didn't even have Mueller's phone number. Rather it's Attorney General William Barr who has testified about his friendship with Mueller. Also, Mueller did discuss the FBI position with the White House, but Trump is either deliberately lying or having paranoid delusions about how that all went down. But we'll get back to that fact check in a second.
Trump quickly took to framing the special counsel as the media's "judge" of Trump's actions.
"Your judge," Trump told reporters, "has a business dispute with me ... has a fantastic relationship with James Comey ... has a situation where he wanted to become the FBI director—we chose Director [Chris] Wray instead."
Yeah, keep dreaming, Don. All of those wing-nut theories have been debunked. Importantly, Mueller was appointed special counsel on May 17 several weeks before Trump first announced Wray as his pick for FBI Director in June. Additionally, former White House aide Steve Bannon testified to the special counsel's team that the White House invited Mueller to discuss the FBI position, not the other way around. From the Russia report:
As for Mueller’s interview for FBI Director, Bannon recalled that the White House had invited Mueller to speak to the President to offer a perspective on the institution of the FBI.532 Bannon said that, although the White House thought about beseeching Mueller to become Director again, he did not come in looking for the job.
Trump has reportedly been miffed at Mueller ever since he accepted the special counsel post despite having discussed the director’s position. In fact, Trump associates started fanning the flames about Mueller's supposed "conflicts of interest" right around the time that Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller: June of 2017.
Back at the White House on Thursday, Trump declared that when Mueller's report came back, "it's perfect, it's beautiful ... it comes back totally exonerating Donald Trump." But somewhere between the moment when Trump expelled that total-exoneration lie and drew in another breath for more gaslighting, Trump assured reporters that Mueller has it in for him and can't be trusted.
"This man now is judging me," he said of Mueller. Whether he’s lying or hallucinating, Trump sure is committed to slandering Mueller as much as possible before he gets a chance to sit for testimony.