Last week, President Trump created a media firestorm by sending out a tweet in which he seemed to warn Jim Comey against leaking stories about their conversations, lest he be contradicted by recorded evidence of the actual exchanges.  Some journalists have taken the tweet to imply that Trump himself may have actually taped the exchanges covertly, à la Richard Nixon, or was making a bluff to that effect, either way broadcasting a thuggish threat to punish the former FBI director if he dared contradict the president's version of what transpired between them.

It's easy to see why the Resistance/Fake News Media would adopt this interpretation of the tweet so eagerly, since it is luridly melodramatic and undignified, and that is how they wish to portray the president at every opportunity.  Nevertheless, I believe that Trump's message bears a simpler explanation that I have not yet seen broached, so here it is: the tweet was an ironic joke about the FBI under Comey's leadership. 

It would not be so terribly surprising to discover that Comey's exchanges with Trump actually were recorded – by the FBI.  After all, the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies have recorded, at least "incidentally," personnel associated with the Trump campaign, and perhaps even Donald Trump himself.  Who knows what the FBI has or hasn't recorded, or what recordings made by others it can't obtain?  And in view of ex-FBI director Comey's public disclosure that the bureau was conducting a probe of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian meddlers, it might not even be unreasonable to suspect that the FBI's surveillance of Trump had "incidentally" picked up Jim Comey himself – who, now that he's a civilian, might have a much harder time finding out whether that recording exists and controlling its circulation than he would have two weeks ago, when he was still top dog of the whole kennel of bloodhounds.

So the message of Trump's tweet would have been, You enjoyed it, didn't you, Mr. Comey – that feeling of dealing with people who didn't know what you had on them, or could get on them, or could spread around about them from a source like Christopher Steele?  Well, welcome to the non-FBI world.  Signed, POTUS.