Trump 'would like' to fire his own FBI director but 'can't stomach' another Comey debacle: Ex-officials

President Donald Trump has ratcheted up criticisms of FBI Director Christopher Wray after he said that Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report found no evidence of a "deep state" conspiracy to bring down the president.

Given that Trump is now openly feuding with the man he picked to run the FBI, there are questions about whether the president would actually fire Wray, which would make him the second FBI director fired by the president in his first term alone.

Axios reporter Jonathan Swan has been reaching out to his sources in the White House and asking them why the president hasn't fired Wray yet, and they say that the president feels his stuck with his FBI director given that the firing of former FBI Director James Comey in 2017 was what led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

"I was texting this morning with a number of Trump officials, current and past, about this very question -- the remarkable fact that Trump hasn’t fired Chris Wray," Swan writes on Twitter. "Most think he would like to but can’t stomach the trouble of firing another FBI director."