One of the big new items Friday morning is this Trump tweet.

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

The most obviously concerning aspect of that message is that it appears to threaten ex-FBI Director James Comey with the release of incriminating recordings of their Jan. 27 dinner together and/or subsequent phone calls. A secondary issue of interest, though, is the conditional phrasing. He’d better hope there aren’t tapes?

One of the neat things about Trump’s allegation that Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower was that he made the accusation without knowing whether it was true. (It isn’t.) Now he has done something similar concerning surveillance of the White House, which he is in charge of, and whose monitoring he would have had to order himself. I hope there aren’t tapes! I wonder if someone taped all this—you never know! If only there were some way for the president, who lives in the White House and controls all the federal law enforcement agencies that use recording devices, to find out!

Who does Donald Trump think is actually in charge of the White House and the country, if not him?