We begin today’s roundup with Stephen Collinson at CNN and his analysis of the Comey memos:
The documents written by the then-FBI director, detailing his interactions with Trump, present a contemporaneous and deeply unflattering view of a President throwing his weight around in his first days in the White House -- that at the very least seems highly inappropriate.
Paul Waldman at The Week writes about the pending constitutional crisis:
[M]any of the people Trump trusts and relies on most are telling him that the Mueller probe must be shut down by any means necessary. Who's on the other side of that argument? Most of the media, any respectable person in Washington, and some of Trump's old antagonists in the GOP like Lindsey Graham. In other words, a bunch of people the president can't stand.
If they're battling for Trump's heart and mind, it doesn't seem like a fair fight.
There's another message in what Trump's most ardent fans are doing, beyond "Fire Mueller!" Their recent actions tell him that if he does finally go ahead with his own Saturday Night Massacre, they'll have his back. There will be Republicans rushing to defend him, cable news programs that will tell his loyalists why he had no choice, and an amen chorus to counter the condemnation that will inevitably come his way from the establishment's nattering nabobs.
Over at USA Today, the editorial board takes a look at legislation to prevent Mueller’s firing:
Next week, we'll see how much courage is left in the Senate, along with common sense. The time to put on a seat belt is before a vehicle crashes, not afterward.
Meanwhile, Frank Rich gives his thoughts on the latest Michael Cohen developments:
Last night both The Wall Street Journal and Politico posted stories suggesting that Cohen is a worm who, to save himself from prison, will turn on Trump as fast as you can say “Michael Flynn.” The threat he represents to the White House is clear from its scramble to portray him as a minor figure in the Trump cosmography. Much as Sean Spicer tried to rewrite history by purporting that Paul Manafort, Trump’s indicted campaign manager, had only a “very limited role for a very limited amount of time,” so Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now claiming that Cohen, whom Trump has frequently and recently described as “my attorney,” is only one of “a large number of attorneys” in his employ. One thing that’s certain: Sanders is only one of a large number of liars in this White House.
Bob Dreyfuss ties it all together:
It’s reasonable to say that both the Manafort and Cohen raids have likely brought Mueller much closer to being able to conclude whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in its unprecedented assault on our democratic system in 2016. [...] Like Manafort, Cohen, Trump’s virtual mini-me and the real-estate tycoon’s “fixer,” is himself multiply connected to Russia. That’s the case even though what triggered the April 9 raid on Cohen may relate to payoffs to a porn star and to a Playboy Playmate, charges perhaps unrelated directly to Russiagate but which could potentially result in Cohen’s being indicted for bank fraud, money laundering, and/or campaign-finance violations. Like Manafort, then—also dinged for financial crimes unrelated to Russiagate and who now faces the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence—Cohen may soon have to face the same Hobson’s choice that confronts Manafort: Cooperate with Mueller, or spend a big chunk of the rest of his life as a guest at a federal detention facility.
At The New Yorker, Susan Glasser examines how Jim Mattis became “the last man standing”:
Blunt and no-nonsense, a retired four-star Marine Corps general deemed so tough on Iran that President Barack Obama’s team often clashed with him, Mattis has turned into the secret “peacenik” of the Trump Administration, as a former government official put it to me last week. A year ago, Mattis had also been wary of the first Trump-authorized missile strike on Syria, at least in the absence of a broader strategy toward the civil-war-torn country that eludes the Administration still. In the year since then, there had been numerous other occasions—some reported, many more not—when a blustering Trump had demanded military action only to run up against the calm but implacable opposition of his defense chief. And that dynamic more or less played out again last week in the White House Situation Room. “He was inclined to a farther-reaching strike,” the Republican adviser who spoke with Trump said, “but he deferred to Secretary Mattis.”
And as always, Eugene Robinson is a must-read:
The Trump administration is succeeding wildly at one thing: sowing utter confusion about its foreign policy.
Perhaps “foreign policy” is the wrong term. “International lurchings” might be more apt. Allies and adversaries alike are having to learn which pronouncements to take seriously, which to ignore and which are likely to be countermanded by presidential tweet.