Donald Trump friendless in today's newspaper editorials

Los Angeles Times - Trump’s Mueller meltdown
Americans have become accustomed, if not resigned, to the spectacle of the president of the United States attacking his own attorney general and denouncing the investigation into possible collusion by his campaign with Russia as a “witch hunt.” But this week, after the FBI executed a search warrant on the office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer, Donald Trump became even more unhinged, to the point of publicly speculating about firing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. ...
It isn’t enough for Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to offer anodyne statements of support for Mueller’s right to “do his job.” They need to strenuously condemn Trump’s attacks on the special counsel’s investigation, vigorously support legislation to allow special counsels to appeal their dismissals in court and, last and most important, make it clear that firing Mueller will lead immediately to impeachment proceedings. If the price of such a principled stand is to alienate Trump’s base, so be it.
Chicago Tribune - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Trump
Which president will the nation see tonight, today, five minutes from now? It’s still not a question we’re accustomed to asking. Or maybe the opposite is true: In his 14 months in office, President Donald Trump has toggled so frequently between reason and rant, between normalcy and lunacy, we’re no longer surprised by his emotional outbursts. We’re inured to the circus in his head.
Then comes a moment in which Trump battles his demons in public. We see his twin personalities — his twin presidencies — and recognize again the cost to the country of his erratic behavior. If only America could just have Good Trump, the one who got Congress to pass tax reform, and silence Bad Trump, the one attacking special counsel Robert Mueller.

We saw Trump’s Jekyll and Hyde routine unfold Monday night at the start of his White House meeting with military leaders and others to discuss a response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons. It was a serious moment that Trump disrupted with a paranoid tirade about the Mueller investigation.
New York Times - The Law Is Coming, Mr. Trump
Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado. Those methods may be proving to have their limits when they are applied from the Oval Office. Though Republican leaders in Congress still keep a cowardly silence, Mr. Trump now has real reason to be afraid. A raid on a lawyer’s office doesn’t happen every day; it means that multiple government officials, and a federal judge, had reason to believe they’d find evidence of a crime there and that they didn’t trust the lawyer not to destroy that evidence.
New York Daily News - Trump vs. Justice
When the President unleashes his inner Roy Cohn, calling the execution of a judicially approved search warrant on his lawyer’s office, home and hotel room “an attack on what we all stand for,” that is, well, an attack on what we all stand for. Namely, the rule of law, not men, and the pursuit of wrongdoing without fear or favor. ... With Michael Cohen now in the investigative crosshairs, the President is clearly afraid of what the Russia probe might yield, and petrified that a combing through contacts between foreign operators and his campaign is bleeding into what he perceives as his personal and professional life.
 New York Post - Play It Cool, Mr. President
President Trump was understandably apoplectic over federal prosecutors’ raid Monday on his personal lawyer’s home and office, in which they seized documents involving their attorney-client relationship. But he needs to keep a level head here to avoid making his problems worse. ... Trump’s gut instinct is to counterattack, but it just won’t work here: He can’t stop these investigations, and trying to hit back will only leave him open to other punches.
USA Today - Trump threats are the real ‘attack on our country’
In a meandering eight-minute rant Monday evening, President Trump sat with arms folded and his face sullen, casting himself before cameras as the personification of America.
Hours earlier the FBI had raided the office, home and apartment of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and to the extent this has offended Trump, it was an offense to all Americans. “It’s an attack on our country. ... It’s an attack on what we all stand for,” he said.
In fact, Trump has it backwards. Nothing is a better testament to “what we all stand for” than how the United States is a nation of laws where no one is above legal scrutiny — not even the president and his personal lawyer. ... But Trump is carefully a building a public case that he’s the subject of a “witch hunt” by left-leaning prosecutors. Of course, this is utter nonsense.
The Washington Post - No one is above the law. How a presidential president would have responded to the latest news from the Justice Department.


HERE IS how President Trump responded to Monday’s news that the FBI obtained a warrant to search the office of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen: “It’s a disgrace, it’s, frankly, a real disgrace, it’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on all we stand for.” “Attorney–client privilege is dead!” “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!!!” Here is what a presidential president, and one with nothing to hide, might have said:
“No one is above the law. Michael Cohen has been my personal attorney for a long time, and he is entitled to a presumption of innocence. But his association with me does not and should not shield him from the workings of the law. Monday’s FBI raid proves the strength of our democracy and the institutions that sustain it. ... Under extreme political pressure, our justice system has worked honorably, and I trust that it will continue to do so, which is why I have assured the Justice Department that Mr. Mueller and all other prosecutors can continue their investigations for as long as they need with no interference, pressure or carping from me.”

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