If Trump’s cheery meta-mood persists, and is rooted in this sort of new confidence, it would represent a genuine turn in the Trump presidency. Although he tried to paper over it with his trademark bluster, Trump was clearly overwhelmed by the job during the first year of his presidency. He made his unhappiness clear in the first (and to date last) press conference of his term. He marveled in February 2017, “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” Two months later, he complained to Reuters, “I loved my previous life. I had so many things going. This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.” In the fall, he raged that he didn’t get more credit from the press and pundits.

The problem with overly exuberant weekends is they tend to impart hangovers. Trump may feel that he has now mastered the presidency, but there’s little evidence that he has actually done so—as the very same statements over the weekend illustrate.

The president delighted in McCabe’s firing, calling it “a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy.” For good measure, he called Comey a liar and said the Mueller probe (launched by his own Justice Department) “should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities.” He fumed, “Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans?” (This question is misleading in at least one big way: Mueller himself is a lifelong Republican, unlike Trump.)

Trump either still does not understand or else does not care about the effects of his tweets. In a vacuum, Sessions has the authority to fire McCabe for lack of candor; a forthcoming report from the DOJ’s inspector general reportedly finds he misled investigators, though the report is not yet public. The problem is that the firing didn’t occur in a vacuum, but in the context of Trump’s very public, sustained critique of McCabe. McCabe’s attorney has already said that he will use the president’s tweets to argue that his client’s firing was illegitimate and politically motivated.

Trump’s lawyers have, for the most part, also counseled him against attacking Mueller, on grounds both political and legal—since he’s already being scrutinized for obstruction of justice, his poking at Mueller, and his discussions with Mueller witnesses risk reinforcing the impression of interference.

To see how this sort of tweeting backfires, look to Trump’s travel ban. Independent of his public statements (both tweets and other comments), the president has broad (though not unlimited) legal authority over immigration. Yet because of his many statements describing the ban in plainly discriminatory terms, several federal judges ruled the travel ban unconstitutional. Aides have tried to get Trump to avoid similar acts of shooting himself in the foot, but as previously discussed, he sees little need for their counsel.