The only line that matters any more is legality...

or it all means nothing

he has the power of pardon, which means he can make deals for people to stonewall or lie for him in exchange for a get-out-of-jail-free card. in the end, he might even pardon himself. that's never been tried or tested. it very plainly goes against the obvious intent of the constitution, but there's no explicit limitation.

my guess is that the supreme court would have to uphold it, and then we'd have a quick constitutional amendment to fix that problem, though this would happen too late to apply to benedict donald.

moreover, a republican house won't impeach; and the senate won't remove unless it is overwhelmingly democratic, which won't happen.

He can order Rosenstein to fire him. Rosenstein can do it or he can refuse or resign. He could order Sessions to fire Meuller but if Sessions does that he is opening himself up to his own obstruction of justice charges. I don't see Sessions doing that, way to self-serving. If Twitler fires Rosenstein or he resigns there is pretty much nobody to lead the DoJ Russia investigation. The positions that are under Rosenstein have people that have been appointed but they are not confirmed so it would leave DoJ pretty much leaderless as far as the Russia investigation goes. With the front page of Bloomberg reporting that 39 state electoral systems were hacked by the Russians, I don't see that being a very popular decision.

... and as for the rest of it, I suppose that's my point.

They don't care about their decisions being popular. They (the administration at least) believe that the core Trump base is enough to see them through and that is their sole singular market.

They would love nothing better than a leaderless DoJ investigation so that's a plus in their column.