Mueller is trying to get fired

In most lines of work, if you fail to execute your assigned tasks, you get fired, and getting fired destroys your résumé, your reputation, and your earning potential. But if you're a partisan hack in Washington, the opposite can be true. Case in point: James Comey. Until May 9 last year, the former FBI director was the most hated man in Washington. Republicans hated him because they thought he'd whitewashed the Clinton email investigation, and Democrats hated him because they thought his last-minute reinvestigation into Clinton's emails had thrown the election to Trump.

If Clinton had won the election, it's a fair bet that her first act as president would have been to fire James Comey. It's an even better bet that most Republicans would have applauded her decision. Things didn't work out that way. Instead, Trump won, and he fired Comey, and instantly Comey became a sainted martyr, an American Jeanne d'Arc, to be remembered forevermore as a good and honest man burned at the stake by an evil tyrant. Likely he is also becoming a wealthy man, helped in no small part by – oh, the irony! – Clinton sycophant George Stephanopoulos, who will conduct a fawning interview with Comey on the release of his book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. Being fired doesn't get any better than this. Special Counsel Robert Mueller must be watching and longing. He's come up empty in his investigation of links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and so he's has taken a new direction and moved his performance to the theater of the absurd. Midnight raids on Trump's lawyer, reportedly in search of matters salacious and prurient, are the acts of a man who's trying to get fired. Mueller calculates that the riches and reverence that would accrue from hearing Trump tell him "you're fired!" are far more appealing than being remembered for digging a dry hole. This is why Trump mustn't fire Mueller no matter what stunts he comes up with. So long as the president lets him keep his job, Mueller will become increasingly frustrated (and more brazen, perhaps) as he sees fame and fortune slipping from his grasp. To paraphrase Henry II speaking of Becket, Mueller must be thinking: "Is there no way I can rid this man of my meddlesome self?" Ultimately, the absurdity of the Russia collusion narrative will become apparent, and the narrators will be seen for what they are: conspirators who attempted to nullify the election of the president of the United States. There's not much time left to cash in.