Like a toddler with a flamethrower.

Nearly two years ago, FBI Director Chris Wray set up an office tasked solely with stopping the type of Russian interference efforts that infected the 2016 campaign.

On Wednesday night, President Donald Trump undercut the whole operation in a matter of seconds.

Which, if you think about it, makes total sense – the Russians want Trump, so naturally he wants them to interfere. He doesn’t want the FBI to stop them; he wants the FBI to open the door for them and ask if they’d like a sandwich.

In an ABC News interview, the president first proclaimed he would have no problem accepting dirt on his opponents from a foreign power, then said Wray was “wrong” to suggest the FBI needs to know about such offers.

The comments, according to interviews with nearly a dozen law enforcement veterans, have undone months of work, essentially inviting foreign spies to meddle with 2020 presidential campaigns and demoralizing the agents trying to stop them. And it has backed Wray into a corner, they added, putting him in a position where he might have to either publicly chastise the president and risk getting fired, or resign in protest.

…

Just three months after Wray assumed the top FBI post in August 2017, he told Congress that he had set up a “foreign influence” task force to stymie future election meddling efforts.

The team brings together counterintelligence, cyber and counterterrorism officials — nearly 40 in total, according to a New York Times story — and coordinates with all 56 FBI field offices. It also works with the Homeland Security Department, state and local governments, as well as the major social media companies that Russian agents used to spread disinformation and stage fake rallies meant to incite voter anger.

The breadth of the effort has to match the scale of the problem, Wray said at a White House briefing last August. “Make no mistake — the scope of this foreign influence threat is both broad and deep,” he said.

…

“It has to be demoralizing to some extent and confusing and, let’s face it, unprecedented, to have a commander in chief who has such a lack of fundamental understanding about the work the Justice Department and intelligence community do in this area,” added Greg Brower, the former top FBI liaison to Congress who served under Wray during his first months as director.

“To flat out say the FBI director is wrong on this or any other issue is, in and of itself, stunning” Brower added. “It’s tougher for the leadership, the appointees of the president, who know the president is wrong, who have to wonder about his fundamental lack of understanding about what those agencies are doing.”

There’s nothing to wonder about. He’s a criminal, and he has the mindset of a criminal. He does what’s good for him, and is wholly indifferent to everyone else. It’s not complicated.