Donald Trump is either sleeping very late or in the office tweeting. Wherever he may be, his third Tweet of the day after being hit with a Special Counsel who happens to be a squeaky-clean former FBI head is a repetition that kills two birds with one stone. The first is that in this tweet he corrects his misspelling of counsel in his earlier tweet. The second is that if you had any doubt that his defense is the garden-variety attack on Clinton and Obama, think again.
Repetition
With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special counsel appointed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2017
What do we make of this mid-morning reiteration of what he said three hours earlier?
Clearly, it is base fodder because it is not generally believed that there was anything in either the Clinton campaign or Obama administration that rose to the level of needing a special counsel to come in and clean things up.
Defensiveness
That distinction has been bestowed on Donald J. Trump. But if it is base-fodder the fact remains that until today almost 90 percent of Republicans have approved of the president's performance. This is almost double what could be considered a fully-committed base. A decision to feed the base could be seen as the most defensive move in the Trump playbook.
Grasping at straws
Another interpretation is that the president is shell-shocked. This might be the result of his actually being guilty of various infractions.
Did he have enough dealings with and within Russia to qualify as evidence that he has been lying when he denies any significant ties? Did he obstruct justice and does being hung on that petard frighten him to the core? Is he reeling? The suspicion is admissible for one reason. We are not getting a series of enraged tweets. They sound more run of the mill.
Is Trump resigned to losing?
Those who want Trump gone from the government would be happy to hear that Trump could be on the verge of leaving. The truth is that we have no idea from the evidence of this and two other tweets this morning that he is doing anything but feeding his base and marking time. His state of mind in recent days has been described by the legion of leakers in the West Wing as toward the depression range But such judgments could be based hearsay rather than actual observation.
Minute by minute analysis
The analysis of Trump is not without an invitation. Trump has been looking for reactions since his baby eyelids opened to the world. The analysis will continue. And his tweets will continue to light up the cybersphere until he becomes, like everything else, a memory. An hour has passed since the tweet above. The clock is ticking.
