Trump Calls Story He Ordered Mueller Fired ‘Fake News’ And Other Video Highlights From Friday

As you know, Donald Trump is loose in Switzerland where world leaders, titans of industry and various other luminaries are being forced to entertain the U.S. President in the interest of giving American citizens a well-deserved break from humoring the failed mail order steak salesman masquerading as a hapless autocrat.

This hasn’t been a great week for Trump. Of course no week is a great week for Trump. The only two questions are: i) will next week will be worse than this week? and ii) how high does the Dow need to climb to take the edge off?

So far this week we’ve learned that i) Jeff Sessions tried to have Andrew McCabe fired only to have Christopher Wray threaten to quit, ii) Jeff Sessions was interviewed by Robert Mueller for hours, iii) Robert Mueller is hell-bent on interviewing Trump face-to-face, and iv) Trump ordered Mueller fired last summer only to have Don McGahn threaten to quit if he went through with it.

Of course you won’t hear any of that actual, important news if all you’re tuning into is Fox and fringe blogs begging for clicks by shamelessly posting FBI conspiracy theories, but fortunately, most of us live in the real world where all of the stuff enumerated there matters.

Trump will also have to come back to the real world in due time and it looks like John Dowd is going to go ahead and postpone that date, because he told CNN on Thursday evening that only he will decided if Trump sits for an interview with Mueller and he hasn’t made that decision yet. Then again, I’m not sure Trump should be taking any legal advice from Dowd if John was telling the truth about having reviewed a tweet that literally implicated the President in obstruction of justice. Dowd has also suggested the Trump is above the law and by virtue of the fact he’s President, cannot be guilty of obstruction. That, by the way, simply isn’t true.

Meanwhile, Trump has “succeeded” in throwing the FX market into utter turmoil by arguing with himself about whether he wants a weaker or a stronger dollar and subjecting the public to that internal debate via one of his economic spirit animals, Steve Mnuchin.

So on Friday, Trump is attempting to manage all of this at once from Davos where he’s also attempting to play down the idea that he’s a racist. This effort is going about like you’d think it would be going.

First, here’s Trump shouting a little “secret” at a reporter who asked if it’s true that he tried to fire Mueller:

And here he is trying to talk his way around apologizing for retweeting Jayda Fransen, a move which he seems to now acknowledge was done without the first idea about who she is:

"I would certainly apologize if you'd like me to do that. I know nothing about them."

President Trump answers questions from Piers Morgan about retweeting anti-Muslim videos posted by British far-right group Britain First. pic.twitter.com/JIJNqvRynt

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 26, 2018

Finally, here he is on CNBC explaining how “the word reciprocal is the most important word to Donald Trump when it comes to what we talk about”:

President Trump to CNBC: I favor free trade, but it must be fair. https://t.co/ojWsDIG1dE pic.twitter.com/G8gBUyDMEe

— CNBC (@CNBC) January 26, 2018

You get the idea.

I sincerely hope it occurs to Trump supporters and especially to his surrogates (both willing and begrudging) on Capitol Hill, that the entire world is laughing at this spectacle. This has become a side show. It’s almost as if they invited him to Davos to serve as the entertainment.

In any event, here’s the full interview with Kernen for anyone who can stomach it: