Paranoia has always been an animating force in the world of Donald Trump, whether instilled in his supporters over such topics as Barack Obama’s birth certificate, or manifested in the closely-held belief that he is dogged by nefarious-yet-ill-defined consortiums of shadowy foes. But there’s something especially unhinged in his conspiracy-peddling since the release of Robert Mueller’s redacted Russia report, which did not establish collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, but which laid out pages upon pages of evidence suggesting that the president sought to obstruct the probe.

On Thursday, the president made these feelings plain to Sean Hannity in his first interview since the report’s publication. Calling into Hannity’s show, Trump repeated his typical “witch hunt” nonsense, but also laid bare his preoccupation with getting revenge on the “very serious Trump haters” who, in his estimation, sought to “overthrow” his government via the special counsel—a “far bigger” scandal than Watergate, he claimed. “This was a coup,” Trump said in the predictably self-pitying, meandering interview Thursday evening. “This was an attempted overthrow of the United States government.”

“Now it’s time to look at the other side,” he added, saying that some involved in the Russia investigation should be “very nervous.”

Trump has made similar claims on Twitter, in passing remarks at the podium, and in press scrums since (and even before) the report’s release. “INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS!” he demanded last week. But there’s always something disconcerting about hearing him mash all these talking points together. Thursday was no exception, with the president lamenting that biased investigators spent two years “ruining” the lives of the criminals on his campaign staff while also bragging that, despite what Mueller wrote in his 400+ page report, the special counsel’s investigation had vindicated him.

That insistence upon his innocence might be little more than background noise, particularly considering Democratic leadership appears to have little appetite to act on Mueller’s conclusions with the 2020 election a year and a half away. But Trump’s continued attacks on his investigators, and calls to punish those involved in the probe, are increasingly hard to ignore.

From the dawn of his unlikely presidency, Trump has made clear he believes federal law enforcement is there to serve him personally. He repeatedly called for Hillary Clinton to be prosecuted long after defeating her in the 2016 election, an obsession crystalized by Mueller’s findings. Ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s failure to do so was seen as a contributing factor in his breakup with Trump. But Trump has since ousted Sessions, along with others who have hesitated to indulge his most immediate impulses. In Sessions’s place is William Barr who, in introducing the Mueller report, parroted the president’s own talking points and chalked up the appearance of wrongdoing to Trump’s hurt feelings. Indeed, Barr not only controversially cleared Trump of collusion and obstruction, but he also seems to agree that authorities were “spying” on the Trump campaign, and told Congress this month that he is conducting an inquiry into the probe’s origins. “I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” he said.

It’s one thing for Trump to rant online and on Hannity’s television show, but another for those around him to cater to his preoccupations—a possibility that seems all the more likely, even as Trump seems to undercut his own conspiracies. In discussing his false claim that President Obama “wiretapped” his campaign, even Trump seemed to acknowledge he’d blown the story out of proportion. “I said that just on a little bit of a hunch and a little bit of wisdom, maybe,” he said. “It was pretty insignificant I thought when I said it, and it’s pretty amazing.”

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