IRAN/MICHAEL COHEN/ROBERT MUELLER/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TWITTER: “President Donald Trump is lashing out in all directions as the fallout from his summit with Vladimir Putin becomes ever more toxic, the Russia investigation grinds on with no end in sight, and his frustration boils over on a lack of progress on North Korea. The tensions reached a new level Sunday [7-22-18] night when the President issued an all-caps threat against Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who had warned the US that war with Tehran would be the ‘mother of all wars.’ Trump tweeted that Iran would ‘suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before’ if its government again threatened the US, immediately ratcheting up tensions. Exacerbating a sense of a White House under siege is the President’s full-out assault on his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who recorded a conversation with Trump about a payment to a former Playboy model who alleges she had an affair with the former real estate tycoon before he entered politics. The controversies raging around the Oval Office underline how the President is increasingly taking control of his own defense and is willing to dictate high-risk political and legal strategies. But his incessant and often false attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation also give the impression of someone who fears its ultimate conclusions and is unsettled that his fate may be out of his hands.”
–Stephen Collinson, “Rattled or frustrated, Trump is lashing out all over,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, July 23, 2018 3:11 pm