This morning we have a columnist, Michael Barone, giving us a work titled, “James Comey is the latest victim of the Clintons.” Barone is a pundit for the “Washington Examiner,” a weekly Washington D.C. paper leaning very rightward. He has paid attention to President Trump’s rationale as stated by his flacks for firing Comey.

High on this list was an analysis of Comey’s shortcomings requested of, and provided by, Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General. Barone recounts the sterling credentials of Rosenstein, he tells us of Rosenstein’s rise to power, of his crime fighting successes, of his approval by several stalwart Maryland Democratic senators.

Barone finishes this fulsome praise by claiming, “This makes mincemeat of Democrat’s cries that Trump fired Comey to kill any investigation of Russian collusion in the presidential election.” Well, maybe not; as Sarah Huckabee Sanders tossed off as she was leaving her last press briefing, “Maybe this (the firing of Comey) will help bring the Russian-Trump election controversy to a decisive conclusion.”

Unfortunately for Barone, Trump’s interview with NBC’s Lester Holt makes it quite clear that the Rosenstein memo had nothing to do with Comey’s firing, and therefore his firing had little to do with the Clintons. Trump claimed in that interview that he had planned to fire Comey for some time. He claimed that Comey was a “showboat.” He insisted that Comey had wanted to have dinner with him, perhaps to convince Trump to save his job. Then Trump insists that Comey assured him that he, Trump, was personally not under investigation by the FBI. Virtually every word of this flies in the face of standard FBI procedure and is disputed by those close to Comey who insisted that it was Trump, Comey’s superior, who demanded the dinner meeting and that Comey was reluctant to attend it.

Now the issue is whether tapes of this meeting exist. Trump’s people aren’t saying but Trump very bluntly says that Comey should hope there are no tapes. The issue is whether or not Comey told Trump he was, or was not, the target of an investigation. For Comey to comment about the bureau’s investigation is unlikely to say the least and it is an enormous breech of protocol.

Trump complains that Comey has lost the support of the rank and file FBI people but the new acting director, Andrew McCabe, when asked about that directly has said it simply isn’t so. I guess it is just another Trump lie…then we discover that Trump has cancelled his little make nice speech to the FBI because he was informed that his presence would not be well received.

Barone’s final foolishness was to write, “So does the… Phoenix airport meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch…that meeting was surely meant to be secret…” Is this man serious? Two very large airplanes with famous people and their retinues meet on the tarmac of a public airport and this meeting was meant to be secret? Either Clinton or Lynch, or perhaps both must have suddenly have developed some degenerative mental disease. Ridiculous!

Barone is just another casualty of Trump’s torturous mental gymnastics. Barone should have known that Trump could change his mind and make him look foolish before his column could be set in type. Now he joins Trump’s flacks and his vice president in assuming, incorrectly, that Trump means what he says and will stand by it for at least 48 hours.