WATCH: Nicolle Wallace wonders why Trump constantly 'acts so crazy' on Twitter

During a panel discussion on President Donald Trump's latest flurry of attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department a MSNBC analyst said the president's continuous drumbeat of criticism of law enforcement is his way of setting the stage for firing special counsel Robert Mueller.

On MSNBC's Deadline White House, host Nicolle Wallace began by reciting the details of the New York Times bombshell report that George Papadopoulos boasted to an Australian diplomat that the Trump campaign had dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Turning to Trump's Tuesday tweets lashing out at the Justice Department and the reporting on Papadopoulos, Wallace asked MSNBC analyst John Heilemann why "Trump acts so crazy," while noting that the Papadopoulos revelation, "obliterates one of the cover stories that the Trump administration made up."

"There are two things to think about and they conjoin the two things that we're talking about, one is why they behave the way they behave and the story itself," Heilemann began. "Just remember now: the New York Times is again killing it on this story, this is an incredibly important piece of reporting. The coffee boy, supposedly, according to the Trump White House, knew enough that he was drunkenly going around to top Australian officials in London, months before the DNC hack became public."

"Donald Trump's standing up on the eve of the Democratic Convention saying, 'Russia, unleash the emails!'" he continued. "We now know that the coffee boy -- not a coffee boy it turns out --  knew enough to be talking about it with Australians. We don't know who he talked about it other than with the Australians, but we know he may well have been talking about it to some of his colleagues on the Trump campaign."

"So this is a really important piece of reporting, which leads to the question you first asked: which is why?" he elaborated. "I don't think this is a paranoid delusion. I think this is softening up the ground,  these relentless attacks on Justice Department and the FBI are all about softening up the ground with his political supporters and others on the day he has to wage a war on Bob Mueller.  And when the report is finally done, he wants to have had months of attacking this set of career officials and appointed officials so that the ground will be softened for the moment that he has to do what right now many people still believe to be unthinkable -- but I don't think is unthinkable at all."

Watch the video below via MSNBC: