If we needed a microcosm of the administration of President Trump we found it early Saturday morning.

Friday we learned that Mr. Trump went ballistic on learning that Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation of the Trump administration’s relationship with Russia. This came after Mr. Trump professed “total confidence” in Mr. Sessions.

In the wee, small hours of Saturday morning Mr. Trump tweeted that former President Obama wiretapped him.

It’s a pattern for Mr. Trump. When faced with negative attention he attempts to divert attention to something else. I’m pretty certain that’s what he tried to do.

But this time he overplayed his hand. This latest accusation created a firestorm that nobody seems to know how to manage. Like many of his tweets it caught everyone off guard, even his own staff. By Sunday morning several staff members attempted to regain control of the story. Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared on ABC’s This Week. When asked where Mr. Trump is getting his information Ms. Sanders said this:

Look, I think there have been quite a few reports. I know that Jonathan and others earlier in the program mentioned that it was all conservative media, but that’s frankly not true. The New York Times, BBC have also talked about it and reported on the potential of this having had happened. I think the bigger thing is, let’s find out. Let’s have an investigation. If they’re going to investigation Russia ties, let’s include this as part of it. And so that’s what we’re asking.

When asked again for the basis of Mr. Trump’s charge, Ms. Sanders said this:

Look, I think the bigger thing is you guys are always telling us to take the media seriously. Well, we are today. We’re taking the reports that places like The New York Times, FOX News, BBC, multiple outlets have reported this. All we’re saying is let’s take a closer look. Let’s look into this. If this happened, if this is accurate, this is the biggest overreach and the biggest scandal.

I could go on, but you get the point. Mr. Trump tweeted that he “just found out this happened” but has not told us where he got it. When asked, his staff insists that a Congressional inquiry should look into it.

Perhaps they should ask him where he got this.

Mr. Trump, when you look back on the rubble of your Presidency, this past weekend will be instructive.

On the night of January 29, 2017 Seal Team 6 executed a raid in Yemen for the purpose of acquiring intelligence.

It didn’t go exactly as planned, and to be fair, most military operations don’t. And, like countless previous operations, not everyone survived. Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens lost his life that night.

This operation has commanded national attention for several reasons, chief being the fact that it was the first military operation ordered by President Trump.

But it’s also commanded national attention because of the reaction of the Trump administration. And with so many issues, it’s become a battle between Mr. Trump’s interpretation and the rest of us. Much of Mr. Trump’s reaction troubles many of us.

Earlier this week Mr. Trump spoke to Congress and commended CPO Owens. He also invited his wife Carryn Owens and publicly recognized her. She received a well deserved standing ovation.

And yet many of us still find ourselves troubled. Mr. Trump quickly moved the discussion into a debate between “success” and “failure.”

As I said earlier, many of us find ourselves troubled by Mr. Trump’s binary view of the world. A binary world contains only two colors: black or white. There is no in between, there is no gray. Any act is either a success or failure. There is no mixed result.

In the world of American military action there are several examples of success and failure. Virtually all of us see the killing of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011 as a success. Osama bin Laden was killed and no members of the American military died.

On the other hand, we view the attempt to rescue our hostages in Iran on March 24, 1980 as a failure as eight soldiers died and none of the hostages were rescued.

These are extreme examples. Most operations have both costs and benefits. But from the very beginning the White House has scrambled to portray this as a complete success.

Within a week we were reading that it may not have been. According to an NBC News report from March 1st, none of the laptops, hard drives, or cell phones have given us anything useful. Additionally, Arizona Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) also questioned the success of the raid.

Typically, Mr. Trump attacked Senator McCain by tweeting: “He’s been losing so long he doesn’t know how to win anymore.”

Mr. Trump’s demand that this raid be deemed a complete success distracts us. In fairness we may not know for some time how to value this raid but his actions going forward chill many of us. As Commander in Chief he orders our brave men and women in uniform into harm’s way for our defense and freedom. I pray that when he is called to do this, his primary concern is for them and not his own reputation.

President Trump’s immigration stance has struck many of us as heartless and problematic. This past weekend we found out just how heartless it can be.

In an article in the San Diego Union Tribune, we learned that Mr. Trump has now turned his sights on family members of active duty service men and women.

As Mr. Trump is finding out, immigration policy (like health care) is a complex series of issues, and that’s why his January 27th plan met with such opposition.

The Union Tribune article, excellently written by Nathan Fletcher, tells us that in 2013 the Department of Defense made a formal request to the Department of Homeland Security asking that undocumented parents, spouses, and children of active duty service members not be deported. DHS issued a policy memorandum called “Parole in Place” and did not include family members who committed crimes. In other words, if your child, spouse, or parent is an active duty service member (and you don’t commit a crime) you need not fear being deported.

And more to the point, if you are that active duty service member you can concentrate on your mission (to protect our safety) without worrying about your loved one being deported.

But the Trump administration has removed that protection. We can’t know if this was deliberate or careless, but it doesn’t matter. People who deserve protection can no longer count on it.

Mr. Trump, I call on you to make America great by allowing our brave men and women in uniform to concentrate on their mission. Because in the final word, they are making us great.

President Trump’s displeasure with the press is well known. In a tweet last week he called the press the “enemy of the people.”

That comment perked the ears of many of us history buffs. We were certain we had heard this charge before and we were right. I encourage you to read an excellent article from the Washington Post that traces this phrase through the speeches and writings of Adolph Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung.

If there are any Republicans reading this, I’m sure you’re screaming at me that President Trump didn’t mean it in that context. Fair enough, but as I wrote last December, words matter. I don’t expect President Trump to be a history buff and recognize the danger of this charge, but I do expect that he chooses his words carefully.

I live in the Catholic Diocese of San Diego and we are led by Bishop Robert McElroy. He’s been our bishop since March of 2015 and he’s been wonderful. On January 29th he responded to President Trump’s executive order on immigration. I’ve never been prouder to be a Catholic:

For the Catholic community, the Gospel mandate to ‘welcome the stranger’ is a searing responsibility, not only in our personal lives, but also in guiding our efforts to create a just society in a world filled with suffering and turmoil.

For this reason, the historic identity of the United States as a safe haven for refugees fleeing war and persecution is for American Catholics both a source of justifiable pride and an unswerving religious commitment, even as we recognize that at shameful moments in our nation history prejudice, fear and ignorance have led our country to abandon that identity.

This week is just such a shameful moment of abandonment for the United States.

The executive order signed by President Trump on Friday [Jan 27] professes to be a necessary step in securing the safety of Americans. But the design of the order – and its chaotic implementation – unmask the reality that this presidential order arose not from a careful effort to balance the needs of security with our commitment to welcome refugees amidst the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. Rather, this executive order is the introduction intolaw of campaigning sloganeering rooted in xenophobia and religious prejudice. Its devastating consequences are already apparent for those suffering most in our world, for our standing among nations, and for the imperative of rebuilding unity within our country rather than tearing us further apart.

This week, the Statue of Liberty lowered its torch in a presidential action which repudiates our national heritage and ignores the reality that Our Lord and the Holy Family were themselves Middle Eastern refugees fleeing government oppression. We cannot and will not stand silent.

Bravo Bishop McElroy.

I’m a big fan of the National Public Radio’s economics podcast Planet Money. Most of what I know about economics comes from listening to this podcast.

Planet Money explains wonky economic terms in ways laypeople like myself can understand and they also use historic examples to explain current events. In a recent podcast they spoke about the danger of tariffs and protectionism.

In 2010 Argentina elected Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner President on her promise to bring back jobs.

This is a broad topic but she demanded that all cell phones sold in Argentina be manufactured in Argentina. Some companies, like Apple pulled out of the Argentinian market, but Blackberry agreed to build a factory in Argentina.

President Fernandez then demanded that Blackberry build their factory in a place that supported her Presidential bid: Tierra del Fuego, Spanish for “Land of Fire.” It’s at the southern tip of the country, the place where explorers begin their journey to the South Pole. Blackberry soon learned that they needed to pay workers enormous wages to locate there.

Two years later, when the first Argentinian Blackberry came off the assembly line, it was two years out of date and twice as expensive as the current Blackberry sold in the United States.

This phone was a bonanza for the black market. Smugglers made horrific profits smuggling Blackberries into Argentina and Argentinians paid less money for newer, better phones.

Because of this and other protectionist policies, inflation rose to 40% per year. The factory in Tierra del Fuego couldn’t sell the Blackberrys they were turning out. After cutting production for two years, Blackberry closed down the factory because they couldn’t find a way to sell the expensive obsolete phones.

And the protectionism wasn’t just with Blackberrys. Instead of finding ways the Argentinian government could invest in valuable exports they spent their energy propping up unsustainable manufacturing. As for their exports, if you’ve tasted an Argentinian Malbec, you know what I’m talking about.

This past Saturday President Trump held a campaign rally in Florida. In the course of the rally he said this:

We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany. You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what’s happening in Brussels. You look at what’s happening all over the world. Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris.

The problem? Nothing happened the night before in Sweden. Of the nations who have welcomed refugees, Sweden has taken the lead. They have accepted 30,000 Syrian refugees. I assume Mr. Trump was attempting to make the point that Sweden has paid a high price for their welcome.

When asked what he was talking about, he tweeted that he got his information from a report on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News and later claimed he wasn’t speaking of a specific event, but a general rise in crime that he linked to immigration.

So is it true? I know, I know, truth generally means nothing to Mr. Trump, but it means something to me. Tucker Carlson interviewed documentary film maker Ami Horowitz who did claim that there has been an increase in gun violence and rape in Sweden that the Swedish government has covered up. He, of course, gave not evidence of this.

I’ve written about this before. Mr. Trump regularly ignores security briefings. Turns out he gets them from Faux News.

It’s going to be a long 1357 days.

December 29, 2016 was a busy day, and only in the last few days have we learned how much.

In the weeks before that, the administration of President Obama learned that high levels of Russia’s government (and likely Vladimir Putin) worked to sway the Presidential election toward Mr. Trump. In response President Obama ordered expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and sanctioned several individuals. We expected Russia to retaliate.

Unknown to us at the time, Mr. Trump’s pick for National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn made a phone call to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. It was reported at the time that this was a “courtesy call” and the sanctions were never discussed. We’ve since learned that wasn’t true and that he spoke about sanctions.

Later that day Mr. Putin (after previously threatening), elected not to retaliate.

Then President Elect Trump tweeted that Mr. Putin was “very smart.”

When asked about the call between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak, Vice President Pence reported that it was a simple courtesy call and they did not discuss sanctions. General Flynn was fired this past week when it was reported that they did talk about the sanctions.

I’m a firm believer in Occam’s Razor, the belief that “when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.”

In other words I find it most plausible that last December 29th Mr. Trump directed General Flynn to call Ambassador Kislyak and tell him not to worry about the sanctions as they would be rolled back after January 20th. General Flynn is an experienced Army officer and previously served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and certainly would have known not to make that call unless he was given a direct order.

I have no confidence that there will ever be a full investigation of this, but I find it telling that Mr. Trump had no problem throwing someone else under the bus to save his own reputation.

After the election I created a category I called The Trump Chronicles. Now I’m thinking I need to create a sub category of the Trump Chronicles called “Amateur Hour.” So far I’ve chronicled missteps of both President Trump and Kellyanne Conway. Now we can add White House aide Stephen Miller to this revered community.

Like most people, I hadn’t heard his name, but he lit up the skies this past weekend. On Sunday he appeared on ABC’s This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation, and Fox News Sunday.

From what I could gather, he was sent to talk up Mr. Trump’s executive orders on immigration. That’s find, but it seems nobody told him that he might be asked questions that were not on his talking points. It didn’t go well for him.

Yesterday I spoke about about how Mr. Miller advanced the false claim of voter fraud. Not satisfied with that, he just kept going and going. I’m certain I’ll be writing about this, but we’re finding that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn may have improperly communicated with the Russian ambassador about sanctions.

When asked about this by George Stephanopolous he responded: “Well, I don’t have any news to make today on this point.” Mr. Stephanopoulous responded: “Then why are you coming on if you can’t answer the questions being posed about the White House?” Mr. Miller responded: “I don’t have any information, George, to change anything that has previously already been said by the White House on this matter. General Flynn has served this country admirable and with distinction. He is a three star general. He served in the Defense Intelligence Agency. There’s no information that I have, as a policy director for this White House, to contribute any new information to this story this morning. And I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s just where things stand.”

Later, Mr. Miller appeared on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. Asking about General Flynn and whether or not Mr. Trump still has confidence in his National Security Advisor, Mr. Miller responded that Mr. Todd should ask the President or his chief of staff. When pressed he answered: “They did not give me anything to say.”

Wow. I’m not sure who came out worse. The poor, stupid kid who was in way over his head or the idiots who sent him out there unprepared.

For what it’s worth, Mr. Trump’s response (on twitter, of course) was this: “Congratulations Stephen Miller- on representing me this morning on the various Sunday morning shows. Great job!”