Washington (CNN) On May 12, just three days after he fired James Comey as the FBI director, President Donald Trump tweeted this: "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Like many of Trump's tweets, this one immediately came to dominate the political conversation. Did he actually have a secret recording system in the White House? If not, why say it?

And, like many of Trump's tweets, it produced a chain reaction of events that backfired on Trump. The threat -- I guess that's the best way to describe what Trump did -- of the existence of recordings spurred Comey to pass along memos he had written detailing his conversations with Trump to a friend, with the express goal of them being leaked and, hopefully, triggering a special counsel to be appointed.

So, there's a direct line between Trump's odd "tapes" tweet and the appointment of Bob Mueller as special counsel to oversee the probe of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. That is, almost by definition, cutting off your nose to spite your face.

But, now, there's even more to the Trump tweet on "tapes" of his Comey conversations. Why? Because we have Comey and Trump saying absolutely contradictory things about the nature of those meetings and phone calls.

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