Rats in a cage will turn on each other

And the biggest rat of all is in the White House.

“Here’s what Manafort’s indictment tells me: Mueller is going to go over every financial dealing of Jared Kushner and the Trump Organization,” said former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg. “Trump is at 33 percent in Gallup. You can’t go any lower. He’s fucked.”

[...]

“His options are limited, and his instinct is to come out swinging, which won’t help things,” said a prominent Republican close to the White House.

[...]

For the first time since the investigation began, the prospect of impeachment is being considered as a realistic outcome and not just a liberal fever dream. According to a source, advisers in the West Wing are on edge and doing whatever they can not to be ensnared.

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According to two sources, Trump has complained to advisers about his legal team for letting the Mueller probe progress this far.

  Vanity Fair

How were they supposed to stop it?

Speaking to Steve Bannon on Tuesday, Trump blamed Jared Kushner for his role in decisions, specifically the firings of Mike Flynn and James Comey, that led to Mueller’s appointment, according to a source briefed on the call. When Roger Stone recently told Trump that Kushner was giving him bad political advice, Trump agreed, according to someone familiar with the conversation. “Jared is the worst political adviser in the White House in modern history,” Nunberg said. “I’m only saying publicly what everyone says behind the scenes at Fox News, in conservative media, and the Senate and Congress.”

You just knew sonny boy would end up on the short end of the stick sooner or later. He was too close in.

The collapse of Obamacare repeal, and the dimming chances that tax reform will pass soon—many Trump allies are deeply pessimistic about its prospects—have created the political climate for establishment Republicans to turn on Trump. Two weeks ago, according to a source, Bannon did a spitball analysis of the Cabinet to see which members would remain loyal to Trump in the event the 25th Amendment were invoked, thereby triggering a vote to remove the president from office. Bannon recently told people he’s not sure if Trump would survive such a vote.

Roger Stone - the ugliest of the uglies - may be the one to get Trump to take the initiative to throw a wrench into the Mueller investigation. Here's how:

Stone wants Trump to call for a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton’s role in approving the controversial Uranium One deal that’s been a locus of rightwing hysteria (the transaction involved a Russian state-owned energy firm acquiring a Canadian mining company that controlled 20 percent of the uranium in the United States). It’s a bit of a bank shot, but as Stone described it, a special prosecutor looking into Uranium One would also have to investigate the F.B.I.’s role in approving the deal, thereby making Mueller—who was in charge of the bureau at the time—a target. Stone’s choice for a special prosecutor: Rudy Giuliani law colleague Marc Mukasey or Fox News pundit Andrew Napolitano. “You would immediately have to inform Mueller, Comey, and [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein that they are under federal investigation,” Stone said. “Trump can’t afford to fire Mueller politically. But this pushes him aside.”

But I'm assuming Mueller is directing the investigation more than doing the legwork, and the rest of the team might be able to take up any slack caused by the distraction such a move would cause him. It certainly wouldn't take him off the case immediately.  And I don't think it would be a smart thing to start pinching him. He's holding some big ammunition. But at this point, Stone is probably in his own danger from Mueller's wide-ranging investigation (he sure went ballistic on Twitter when Mueller's Monday throwdown happened), and he's going to no doubt be pulling out all the stops he can to try to deflect it.  (And, frankly, I hope that asshole winds up behind bars for the rest of his miserable life, which , ojalla, will be short.)

Does Trump want to add to the likely charges of obstruction of jutice he's facing right now by pulling anything on Mueller?  He's not known to be a deep thinker, but he's well proven to be a knee jerk reactor.

We shall see.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.