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-- Am I the only one that's not hearing this right? Trump never says I fired Comey because of the Russia investigation. He says he fired him because Comey was incompetent --

To "get" what Trump was saying, I break "the Russia thing" into distinct and different things.

Russia endeavored to influence the US election
Persons in the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to get election advantage
Trump personally was somehow involved in colluding with Russians - knew about it, endorsed it, whatever

On the last point, this is where all the secret reports from Comey to Congress and to Trump were "nothing there," but Comey refused to go public with that. That is the sense that I take Trump as referring to in the Holt interview. And not that this is the only reason or even the major one, but who knows, that's in Trump's head, and Congress (and we the public) have to deal with it. I think Trump absolutely understood and agreed withe the Rosenstein memo, which is an exceptionally powerful indictment of Comey as unfit for an office of trust in the US government.

Mueller's charter is the second point. This is what Sessions is recused from, not because of Russia, but because he was involved in the campaign.

The first point is an issue that everyone agrees is important, but nobody is describing how to deal with it, and what parts of it have to be accepted on 1st amendment grounds. Hacking is a federal crime, and the Russians have a lesser payoff in risking an illegal hack, than players in any political party do.

Back to the original story - the DEMs would have you think that Trump's remark to Holt was referring to the second bullet point. That Trump intends to obstruct investigations into Flynn, Manafort, et al, and if Comey won;t back off after being suggested to, then he's going to fire Comey. That's what the DEMs sincerely believe is the case. Just like Comey takes everything Trump says in the most sinister way possible - they are biased.