Glee and vengeance

God, this picture...

[A]ny caveats in the [Barr] letter or the possibility of surprises when more of the [Mueller] report is released has not put a damper on the celebratory dinners at downtown Washington restaurants, the number of teamwork-focused photos posted on social media or the hugs in the White House driveway between television interviews.

“We’re colluding,” Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the president, told reporters as she embraced Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, in the driveway after returning from a Fox News appearance on Monday.

[...]

Ms. Sanders posted, and then deleted, a celebratory Instagram photo of a scowling Mr. Trump flanked by a team of lawyers and his social media director, Dan Scavino.

  NYT

Why delete it?

Later that day, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, surfaced at one of his favorite haunts: the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Relieved by the investigation’s results, which he had framed a day earlier as “better than I expected,” a jovial Mr. Giuliani and Brad Parscale, the president’s campaign manager, drew a crowd of supporters who waited for the opportunity to mingle.

“We feel totally and completely vindicated,” Harlan Hill, a Republican strategist and campaign advisory board member who took a thumbs-up photo with Mr. Giuliani. “It feels like a validation of the election.”

Such a misreading of what happened.

He added, “The mood from the pundit class to friends of mine that work in the White House is over-the-moon ecstasy.”

I hope their crash isn't too bad.

Along with wisecracks, there was a decidedly less playful theme emerging that once the party is over, the president’s perceived enemies should pay.

Mr. Hill said he shared the president’s grievances, including the suggestion that anyone involved in the Russia investigation’s origins had engaged in treasonous behavior.

That mood is shared within the administration. Ms. Sanders is using her Twitter platform as press secretary to single out Mr. Trump’s “haters,” using a March Madness-style bracket to identify perceived enemies of the administration, most of them journalists, by name.

Mr. Trump, who has barely contained his anger over what he feels was a sustained personal attack in several encounters with reporters since Sunday, suggested on Tuesday that the origins of the Mueller investigation could be traced to the Obama White House, and made it clear that for him, the process had not been political but personal.

[...]

On Twitter, Mr. Trump has continued his usual drumbeat against the news media, but has cast a wider net by calling all “mainstream” journalists the enemy of the people.

[...]

In a closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans at a policy lunch on Tuesday, where he promoted his emboldened administration’s decision to try to strike down the Affordable Care Act, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Barr for releasing such a quick summary of Mr. Mueller’s report.

“I love the A.G. He works fast. I love this guy. You told me I would,” Mr. Trump told the group, according to a person familiar with his remarks, before suggesting that he would not like to see any leaks coming from the meeting.

There are ALWAYS leaks. He knows that.

He also shared his reasoning for doubling down on his targets.

“People love it when you attack the press,” he told the group.

[...]

Senator Lindsey Graham, a White House ally, said he would investigate anti-Trump bias at the F.B.I. and Justice Department, presumably shifting the focus back to Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent from 2016, Hillary Clinton.

What position does Lindsey Graham hold that allows him to investigate anything?

Representative Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat and vocal critic of the administration who heads the House Intelligence Committee, is among those facing pressure from the White House to resign. Asked by a reporter Monday evening whether he feared that Republicans would keep up the pummeling in a public hearing on Russia hosted by his committee on Thursday, Mr. Schiff laughed.

“I’ve gotten used to the attacks from Trump and his allies in Congress,” he said. “There’s nothing particularly new or novel about that.”

One figure conspicuously absent from the president’s ire is Mr. Mueller himself, but Mr. Trump’s earlier suggestion that the special counsel acted honorably during the process was undermined by Mr. Giuliani, who said on CNN on Tuesday that he was not left with that impression.

“I would have to disagree with my client,” Mr. Giuliani said. He also suggested that Mr. Mueller was “confused” about what Mr. Barr said was the special counsel’s conclusion on obstruction of justice: that although the evidence fell short of proving Mr. Trump committed a crime, it “does not exonerate him.”

Mueller is confused about what Mueller did or did not conclude?

“Maybe I was in the trenches more,” Mr. Giuliani said.

Whatever, Rudy.

Joe Lockhart, a Democratic strategist who was President Bill Clinton’s press secretary when was impeached, said in an interview that the White House was playing a dangerous game by declaring full victory and going on the attack before the full results of Mr. Mueller’s report — including full details on the actions Mr. Trump took during the course of the investigation — became public.

Actually, that's the typical GOP playbook move. And they haven't had to pay a price for it in my lifetime.

He added: “I just think they struck the exact wrong tone. Right now it can only go one way, which is bad for them.”

Only if you mean that evidence will be against them. It won't cange anything. They DID strike the wrong tone, but that's their standard tone.

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