Bot. I think?

It’s been less than five months since Donald Trump became commander-in-chief. But for the president’s detractors, it’s felt like centuries — long medieval centuries chock-full of plague, illiteracy, and barbarians running roughshod through the ruins of the old republic. But we aren’t actually living in the dark ages (yet). So we might as well shed some light on what the barbarians have been up to.

Trump has given progressives so many causes for fear and outrage, it can be difficult — both practically and psychologically — to keep on top of them all as they happen.

To help you stay informed despite this challenge, Daily Intelligencer will provide regular inventories of Trump’s assaults on civic norms, common decency, and/or liberal democracy. Here is a rundown of everything the president has done on that front in the period between April 28 (the date of our last edition of “Terrifying Things”) and June 9, arranged in rough order of each affront’s apparent significance and severity. Prior editions can be found below.

Fired the director of the FBI for failing to demonstrate personal loyalty to him.

The president has the authority to fire the director of the FBI. But before last month, that authority had only been exercised once — and in that case, Bill Clinton only fired William S. Sessions after a Justice Department investigation found him guilty of flagrant ethical violations.

Historically, presidents have avoided firing the head of the FBI out of respect for federal law enforcement’s independence. After all, FBI directors serve ten-year terms precisely to ensure a measure of distance from the Oval Office’s occupant.

Respect for the rule of law has also, typically, prevented presidents from demanding the FBI director’s personal loyalty; suggesting that he demonstrate that loyalty by dropping investigations into White House allies; and then firing the head of federal law enforcement for failing to honor such requests.

But Donald Trump is not a typical president. And so, he did precisely that.

The president did not give James Comey the opportunity to resign. Instead, the FBI director learned of his unemployment when his gaze drifted to a television monitor, in the middle of speech to bureau employees in Los Angeles. Comey laughed, and complimented the officers on a “fairly funny prank.” Then someone asked him to step into a nearby office.

Meanwhile, the White House had the chutzpah to claim it had fired Comey because he had been unfair to (“Crooked”) Hillary Clinton during the investigation of her email server. Last October, Jeff Sessions had applauded Comey’s handling of that investigation. But then, the attorney general had also recused himself from the Russia investiation — and this did not stop him from advising the president to fire the man leading that inquiry.

But the bizarre nature of Comey’s ouster was far less significant than the reasons behind it. By all accounts — including, to some extent, his own — Trump seemed to view the FBI director as his private detective and/or PR representative. When the president accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his phone — an allegation made on the basis of news articles that he had misread — Trump was reportedly furious that Comey wouldn’t publicly vouch for his baseless felony accusation.

According to accounts from Comey and his associates, Trump asked the FBI director to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn; redirect the bureau’s resources toward combating leaks to the press; and consider imprisoning journalists who report on classified information.

According to the president himself, Comey’s firing was the direct result of the FBI director’s handling of the investigation into his campaign.

“When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,” Trump told NBC News’s Lester Holt, contradicting the White House’s narrative — and, arguably, confessing to obstruction of justice.

Tried to intimidate his former FBI director into silence by threatening to release secret recordings of their conversations.

After Comey’s associates told the New York Times that Trump had demanded a loyalty pledge, the president sought to prove that he wasn’t an amateur authoritarian, by tweeting this: