A month ago, Donald Trump targeted his former handpicked FBI director, Christopher Wray, in a new and creative way. As part of a weird and discredited conspiracy theory, the president spun a ridiculous tale about Wray having lied about imaginary FBI agents who participated in the Jan. 6 attack.
Though none of this made any sense, the Republican told NBC News a day later that he believed Wray engaged in “inappropriate” behavior during his tenure at the bureau and said he “would think” the Justice Department is investigating him.
“I would imagine. I would certainly imagine. I would think they are doing that,” Trump said when he was asked whether the Justice Department should investigate Wray.
A month later, the president was even less subtle. The New York Times reported:
Trump called for prosecution of former Attorney General Merrick Garland and former F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray, among others, in a rant on his social media platform on Friday night — replete with misinformation and debunked lies about the 2020 election. Trump, seizing on the release of documents showing the Biden Justice Department requested metadata on calls between the White House and Republican senators during the investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, claimed without evidence that the department ‘taped’ the calls.
For reasons unknown, Trump, while presumably focused on his trip to Asia, published an absurd online tirade about newly disclosed “documents” that don’t appear to exist. As part of the same harangue, the president claimed there’s now “conclusive” evidence against Wray, former special counsel Jack Smith, former Attorney General Merrick Garland and former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
According to Trump, the quartet “spied on” members of Congress (which never happened in reality), “taped” the lawmakers’ phone calls (which also never happened in reality) and “cheated and rigged the 2020 Presidential Election” (which was not rigged).
The post concluded, “These Radical Left Lunatics should be prosecuted for their illegal and highly unethical behavior!”
None of these people are “radical left lunatics”; three of the four weren’t in office on Election Day 2020 and couldn’t have “rigged” anything; and there is literally no evidence of any of them engaging in “illegal” or “unethical” behavior.
Trump’s hysterics, in other words, reflect the perspective of someone living in an alternate reality.
But while the broader conversation about the president’s cognitive state continues to have merit, what I cared most about was his “should be prosecuted” phrase.








