The media and pundits had something new to salivate over this morning. The burning question on their minds was …will Trump fire Rod Rosenstein?

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was joining President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One on Monday, a likely indication that his Justice Department job is at least temporarily safe following a chaotic two-week period that fueled speculation that he was preparing to resign or be fired.

The flight to a police chiefs’ conference on Monday provides an opportunity for their most extensive conversation since news reports last month that Rosenstein had discussed possibly secretly recording Trump to expose chaos in the White House and invoking constitutional provisions to get him removed from office.

Yes, the AP did say that Rosenstein’s job was likely safe, but as you read further into the article, you’ll see  that the tone and tenor was one of ‘but hey! he still might get fired!’

DOJ has confirmed that DAG Rod Rosenstein plans to join Trump on Air Force One. What will they discuss? No details provided, but this is their first face-to-face since the NYT story came out about Rosenstein discussing recording Trump + the 25th Amendment https://t.co/GTLKu7unqP

— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) October 8, 2018

All of this, as we wrote about here, was in response to a NY Times story that breathlessly reported that Rosenstein is a spy and wanted to invoke the 25th Amendment in retaliation for James Comey’s firing.

A. It very quickly became evident that the wags at the NY Times don’t understand sarcasm

B. The NY Times and the rest of the media is all too happy to run with unverified claims by anonymous sources because TRUMP!

But Rosenstein’s meeting with Trump and the oh so anticipated firing didn’t happen last week.

And, as we know, the meeting was delayed until today and Trump was blunt that his preference was to keep Rosenstein in place. You just KNOW that the media was hoping Trump would fire Rosenstein so they could then opine endlessly about how this means Trump did collude and this means that Trump is gonna remake the FBI and this means that Trump is MEAN! ELEVENTY! MAKESTUFFUPBECAUSETRUMP!!

And then this happened.

.@POTUS on Rosenstein: "I actually have a good relationship, other than there's been no collusion, folks." pic.twitter.com/HZsluGKclt

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 8, 2018

So is Rosenstein fired?

President Trump was just asked, about Rod Rosenstein: "Do you have any plans to fire him?" His answer: "No, no I don't."

Rosenstein is flying on Air Force One today as Trump goes to Orlando for a law enforcement speech.

— David Martosko (@dmartosko) October 8, 2018

And just like that, the media lost another opportunity to slam Trump. However, I give it about two hours and they’ll spin something up about Trump Russia Mueller because that’s how they roll.

Feature Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty