Increasingly, Senators say Trump is toast if he tries to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.
Trying to fire the man investigating the president and his campaign’s feared collusion with Russia would be “suicide for the president to want, to talk about firing Mueller,” says Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. “The less the president says about it, the better off he would be, the strong his presidency would be.”
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas says Trump trying to fire Muller is a mistake he should not attempt.
“I think he consequences of doing so are some that even the president can anticipate. I think it would be a mistake,” Cornyn added.
“He’d have to fire (Deputy Attorney General Rod) Rosenstein first,” says Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Intelligence Committee. “I’m not worried.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump “certainly believes he has the power” to fire Mueller, but Trump also believes he is above the law simply because he is the president.
Democrats say Trump should not be so stupid.
“This would be the end of the Trump presidency if he were to take this precarious action,” says Sen. Mark Warner, (D-VA), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
Both Republicans and Democrats admit they thought Trump claiming that the seizure of the records of Trump attorney Michael Cohen by FBI agents was an “attack on our country” was way out of line.
“Donald Trump gets confused when he thinks he’s the country and it reports to him,” says one senior aide to a Republican Senator. “He forgets that he serves the country, not the other way around.”
Most Senator remind anyone who asks that Trump cannot directly fire Mueller. He would have to get Rosenstein to do it and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she is confident the deputy attorney general would not follow such an order and “if he president were to fire the deputy attorney general, that would be an extraordinary crisis and a real problem.”
A real problem — kind of describes the presidency of Donald John Trump.
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1 thought on “Senators to Trump: ‘Leave Mueller alone’ or regret it”
I shall send another letter to the editor on this one. I don’t imagine it’ll do a blind bit of good. Jon
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