Erick Erickson: "Shut the hell up, Mr. President" a/k/a The Inverse Rule of Trump

Do you ever find yourself reading something and nodding along the whole time?

Yeah, I did that today with this column from Eric Erickson. Erickson begins by recounting all the breathless reports that have swirled around the Comey firing, and how they've been shown to be  entirely incorrect.

He then makes the point that I think is beyond dispute:

Everything made sense and was justified, despite the partisan outrage. It was defensible, even if the timing looked bad.

But God help us all, the President felt overshadowed. He was subservient to checks, balances, systems, and recommendations. So what did the President do? He lashed out and said he’d made up his mind to fire James Comey even before the Department of Justice recommendation. On top of that, he said he would have fired Comey regardless of Justice’s recommendation.

In one short interview, the President made liars of every single person who mounted a credible defense of the decision — a decision that remains defensible.

But the decision is not defensible if the President did it just because Comey wasn’t loyal to him personally. The decision was not defensible if the President did it because he felt personally offended by the FBI Director.

The President’s behavior is juvenile and asinine. He undermines his Vice President, his communications team, and the very foundational reasons for firing Comey. He can’t help but make it about himself and in so doing he undermines his own integrity in the process.

At some earlier point in the Trump administration, someone else came up with the "Inverse Rule of Trump", and this whole Comey thing is a textbook example.

The Inverse Rule of Trump posits that for everything the Trump Administration does, the less that Trump is directly involved in it, the more successful that action will be. However, the more that Trump is directly involved in an action, the less successful that action will be.

With the Comey firing, everything was pretty defensible until Trump decided to just bigfoot everyone and make it all about himself. Now, Trump is facing even more legitimate criticism about the firing because he's gotten more involved.

Trump needs to take this advice and shut the hell up. Being Trump of course...he won't.