(CNN) The resignation of John Dowd, Donald Trump's top personal attorney, is the latest -- and largest -- signal that the President of the United States is shifting his strategy in regards special counsel Bob Mueller's ongoing probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The message is unmistakable: The closer Mueller and his team move to Trump himself -- the terms of an interview between the special counsel and the President remain a matter of considerable debate -- the more the President appears to be bracing for a very negative end result from the probe and putting the pieces in places to win the PR battle that will follow the conclusion of the Mueller probe.

Remember that Dowd was part of the legal braintrust that assured Trump that this whole Mueller probe would be wrapped up by the end of the year, that there was absolutely nothing to worry about and that the best course of action for Trump was to ignore Mueller.

What appears to have dawned on Trump is that playing nice (or his version of nice) with Mueller isn't working. Mueller doesn't appear to be moving to end the probe any time soon and he seems disinclined to treat Trump nicely. Of course, this was always a ridiculous supposition by Trump: Mueller is leading a criminal probe and will go wherever the evidence leads. The idea that he would go easy on the President because Trump didn't attack him by name is totally without grounding in anything we know about Mueller.

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