Part of the sadness of Donald Trump is that even in moments of triumph he can’t enjoy himself. This was true after his victory in 2016 and it’s true now. Instead of basking in vindication, he’s become even more vindictive.

“There are a lot of people out there who have done some very, very evil things,” Trump told reporters earlier today. “I would say treasonous things against our country. Hopefully, people that have done such harm to our country — we have gone through a period of really bad things happening — those people will certainly be looked at. I’ve been looking at them for a long time, and I’m saying, ‘Why haven’t they been looked at? They lied to congress.’ Many of them. You know who they are. They have done so many evil things.”

To get a sense of what Trump has in mind, we have Lindsey Graham, newly transformed into the president’s attack dog, calling for a special counsel to go after the Obama administration:

There is a political logic to going on the warpath which can be seen by the contrary position the Republicans are putting forward: claiming the Mueller Report exonerates Trump but trying to stonewall the release of that very report. The current moment, when all that is known of the Mueller Report is Attorney General William Barr’s summary, is as good as it is going to get for Trump. Post-Mueller, as I’ve been arguing over the last few days, the job of oversight passes to Congress. So Trump is trying to use his moment of strength to cow Democrats as much as he can.

Will Wilkinson of the Niskanen Center has a good twitter thread laying out Trump’s strategy. Here is the opening of the thread:

Trump cronies are incoherently claiming BOTH (a) that the report exonerates him AND (b) the investigation was so ethically compromised and politically biased nothing that came of it can be taken seriously and shouldn't be made public. Obviously can't be both. — Will Wilkinson 🌐 (@willwilkinson) March 25, 2019