The Monday Night Massacre

Trump Fires Acting Attorney General Over Immigration Directive.

In the video above, Harvard law professor Larry Tribe is asked about what Trump has done. In part, Tribe said, "For him [Trump] to turn the Justice Department, though this discharge, into part of his fiefdom and compromise its independence suggests that he has no commitment to the institutional integrity of the department we rely on to represent the rule of law and not simply the will and whim of the president of the United States."

And here, Yates is grilled by Sessions at her 2015 confirmation hearing for deputy attorney general about her willingness to stand up to the president on principal ...



Something like this hasn't happened since the Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus during the investigation into the Watergate scandal.

More from The Atlantic: Trump Fires Acting Attorney General for Defying Order on Muslims

So it took Trump 10 days to go Nixon.