Trump tried to order political prosecution of Clinton and Comey

Doubtless Trump supporters will lamely try to dismiss these reports because they come from  sources critical of the president (and I myself respect MSNBC as a new source about as much as I've come to respect Fox News, which isn't much), but facts are facts- and the facts are well documented in the videoes below: the president tried to order the prosecution of James Comey and Hillary Clinton.

It doesn't work that way. The Justice Department makes those calls on the basis of whether there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Under our system, the president doesn't get to just order the prosecution of his critics and political enemies. That may fly in third-world dictatorships, but not in the United States or any other Western democracy.

Mr. Trump's own White House counsel warned him that not only would trying to order the prosecution of his enemies would be a mistake but that it would be a potentially impeachable offense. We don't live in a country in which presidents get to order their critics prosecuted!

He didn't push the matter. He did, however, continue to agitate for the prosecution of Comey and Clinton.  And the truly scary thing about Donald Trump isn't his emotional immaturity, his psychological instability, his narcissism, his lack of filters, his fondness for tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories, or his massive ignorance on just about every subject he has to deal with as president. It's the radical disconnect between his own values and principles on one hand and those of the Constitution and of flat-out democracy on the other.

Mr. Trump is not simply incompetent, ignorant, and unstable. He's an authoritarian. He does not believe in our American system or our American values or in the rule of law. That's why he's so fond of people like Putin and Kim and Duterte and all his other authoritarian buddies around the world and has such trouble dealing with President Macron of France and Chancellor Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister May of the United Kingdom. He's more comfortable with the bullies and thugs of the world than with the democratic leaders of the world because the bullies and thugs are his kinds of people. He shares their attitudes and values. The safeguards of our system (thank God!) won't let it happen, but he would like to be one of them.

No, I'm sorry. You can't write this off because the story comes from MSNBC. It's too well documented and too much in character.

It's not just the Democrats and us Never Trumpers who have such little trouble connecting the words "Trump" and "impeachment" in our minds.

It's his own White House counsel.