Trump still thinks working in his administration=working for him.

President Trump has discussed dismissing the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, because Mr. Atkinson reported a whistle-blower’s complaint about Mr. Trump’s interactions with Ukraine to Congress after concluding it was credible, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

He’s been whining about the subject for weeks.

The president has said he does not understand why Mr. Atkinson shared the complaint, which outlined how Mr. Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals at the same time he was withholding military aid from the country. He has said he believes Mr. Atkinson, whom he appointed in 2017, has been disloyal, one of the people said.

In other words the president is mentally a child. It’s surely been explained to him a million times, but he can’t grasp that the people who work in his – and any – administration are supposed to be “loyal” to the country, the people, the Constitution, not to the crook who sits in the fancy chair. The more of a crook the crook is the more urgent that norm becomes. The IG isn’t supposed to be loyal to Trump despite Trump’s wildly abnormal and destructive and wrong actions, he’s supposed to do something about them.

Mr. Trump’s private complaints about Mr. Atkinson have come as he has publicly questioned his integrity and accused him of working with the Democrats to sabotage his presidency.

It is unclear how far Mr. Trump’s discussions about removing Mr. Atkinson have progressed. Two people familiar with what took place said they thought that Mr. Trump was just venting, and insisted that Mr. Atkinson’s dismissal was never under serious consideration.

But the mixture of public attacks and private discussions about a possible dismissal is a familiar way Mr. Trump has undermined investigators who have examined his conduct or that of people close to him. The president publicly criticized James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general, before he dismissed them for perceived disloyalty.

There is no “just venting” with Trump. He always means it, whether he gets around to acting on it or not.