We take you now to the White House where Donald Trump is talking to reporters from Time magazine. He's talking about his favourite subject: television.
He's got something to say about Stephen Colbert, CNN's Chris Cuomo, whom he said looks like a "chained lunatic," and CNN's Don Lemon, whom he says is "perhaps the dumbest person in broadcasting."
On some subjects, Trump is, as everyone knows, either lacking in eloquence or very grudgingly engaged. On the matter of TV, he's always got lots to say. You think yours truly, the TV Critic, has things to say about TV? That's nothing. This guy's a ceaseless fountain of opinion and analysis.
Read more: Comey, Trump and the firing fallout: Five things to know
Here's the rub: Trump has never stopped seeing himself as a reality-TV star. His time on The Apprentice defined him, utterly. This thing, the presidency, is his TV show and he expects to top the ratings with it. He studies TV and follows its coverage of his show, obsessively. His supporters are not so much voters as they are viewers watching his show, superfans of the show, and to keep the ratings at the desired level, the show's fans must get the twists, turns and dramatic manoeuvres they expect. So he tries to deliver.
Think about it. The man is, essentially, indifferent about the job he's landed. He has relinquished the job and empowered a group of well-off corporate types to do it for him. They can take care of the economy and whatever the heck administrations normally manage, foster and nourish.
He is engaged in running a show. His viewers must get what they went. Everything else on TV is competition for his show. The people on those shows are jealous of his show's success and want to demean it.
As Trump learned from reality TV, the path to success is in controlling the narrative. He is doing what winning competitors on Big Brother and Survivor have always done – manage the story with fierce bombast, give the watching viewers what they want by adopting the braggadocio of a born winner. Not only will the viewers support you, the broadcaster wants you to keep doing that winner thing because it boosts ratings.
All manner of extrapolation has been done on the firing of FBI director James Comey. Possibly, it simply comes down to controlling the narrative of the Trump show – Comey kept obscuring the narrative with this Russia thing. Besides, "You're fired!" worked very well as a dramatic twist for years on a hit TV show. It gave his viewers what they wanted and, when he fired Comey, it gave his base – the superfans of his show – what they needed and wanted.
Of course, there are many kinds of reality TV shows. There is the Real Housewives franchise, which feature women shopping, competing in looks and clothing, and backbiting one another. What Trump is most familiar with is the male-centric reality shows. That category includes everything from Big Brother to The Bachelorette, the latter focusing on a group of hunky guys competing for a woman.
When Trump fired Comey some of us found it hard not to think of those guys on The Bachelorette engaging in their alpha-male rituals of sidelining the threat. Comey is charismatic, 6-feet, 8-inches tall and younger than Trump. That guy had to go. It's what happens on the reality show, inevitably.
And part of the alpha-male context is the boasting about ratings – "mine's bigger than yours." In that Time magazine interview, on the matter of The Late Show's Stephen Colbert and his controversial remark – called "homophobic" by some – about Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump was all over it.
"There's nothing funny about what he says," Trump told Time about what he also called the "no-talent" Colbert. "And what he says is filthy," Trump said. "And you have kids watching. And it only builds up my base. It only helps me, people like him. The guy was dying. By the way, they were going to take him off television, then he started attacking me and he started doing better. But his show was dying. I've done his show … but when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high – highest rating. The highest rating he's ever had."
That's not true. But it's a reality-TV type of boast. It's all about TV. It always was and it explains everything.