President Trump’s hostile rhetoric towards the FBI diminishes its status, hurts American intelligence work and puts the spotlight on the wrong kind of issues, believes James Bamford of The New Republic. His obsession with diminishing any narrative that backs up the Russia collusion story has put the intelligence community in chaos and distracted from other, more important issues. Ironically, his attacks uniting much of the public behind the FBI is also bad, as the agency needs to be regarded with healthy skepticism for other reasons, such as mass-surveillance. Trump’s war on it has shaken up the whole country.

President Trump is right to criticize the FBI and Robert Mueller’s potentially biased investigation, suggests Andrew C. McCarthy of National Review. The way that Mueller went about pursuing Paul Manafort and Richard Gates was not according to law-enforcement norms. The felonies he pursued them with, such as bank fraud, tax evasion and money laundering, have been met with a highly lenient plea deal. Charges against them, for which Mueller used his full force as special counsel, were swept aside once he had them under his thumb. Whatever his rationale may be, Mueller's investigation is not going normally. Trump’s criticism is warranted.