Early last year, Donald Trump and his advisers gathered for a quiet, afternoon meeting at the White House to discuss immigration. But something else was weighing on the president’s mind as he and his team began to address the policy matters at hand.

During the start of the meeting, “all [Trump] wanted to talk about” was “how much he hated [Andrew] McCabe,” according to a source who was in the room. McCabe, the former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had recently been sacked by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, citing a “lack of candor.” And around the time of the Trump meeting, he had lawyered up and accused the Trump administration of launching an “ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation.”…

To those who know Trump, the fixation on McCabe comes as absolutely no surprise. The former acting FBI director, who is currently on an anti-Trump media blitz, has long been a subject of particular, blood-boiling ire for the 45th President of the United States. He is a longtime, career law-enforcement official, a creature of government and public service who represents the very elements of Washington D.C. and so-called “Deep State” that the president rails against.