.. When he confesses the problem to mother, she responds with the most reproachful reassurance in movie history:
“We are protected by the enormity of your stupidity — for a time.”
Just so with our 45th president. His views are often malevolent, and his conduct might ultimately prove criminal. But we, too, are protected, for a time, by the enormity of his stupidity.
.. In corporate life, the usual practice when firing someone is either to say nothing or to say something nice, on the theory that the unlucky person is likelier to respond in kind. Trump has now given his former director the opportunity and incentive to do the opposite. Congressional hearings, should they happen, will be fun.
On the Comey Firing, a Race to the Bottom
Yet, the manner of the firing was ham-handed: The president’s bodyguard was dispatched to deliver the termination documents to what turned out to be an empty office, the White House having failed to check on the director’s whereabouts (he was on FBI business in California). And, as has become ever clearer over the last few days, the justifications for the action from the White House have been deceptive.
.. In a nutshell, Trump wanted to be rid of Comey but deflect responsibility for removing an FBI director less than four years into a ten-year term. So he directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein to prepare a memo explaining the grounds of termination. Then, his team spun the firing as if it were the Justice Department’s idea, occurring now only because Rosenstein just started on the job. (Sessions has recused himself from aspects of the Russia inquiry, though the scope of the recusal is uncertain.) The White House tried to make it appear as if the president were merely concurring in the decision. Only when Rosenstein reportedly protested did Trump own up.
.. He also, disturbingly, said that he was thinking of Russia when he made the decision, contradicting everyone in the White House who said that had nothing to do with it.
.. It is understandable that Democrats are screaming bloody murder about events of the last few days — certainly Republicans would be doing the same if a Democrat were in the White House and axed an FBI director the way Trump has. But the analogies to Watergate — ubiquitous in the media — are overwrought
.. The objective of a foreign counterintelligence investigation is not to gather evidence of a specific violation of law in order to build a prosecutable criminal case against a suspect. It is to determine the actions and intentions of foreign powers to the extent they bear on American interests.
.. There have been reports that the FBI has been scrutinizing business dealings former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had with Kremlin-connected Ukrainian politicians between 2005 and 2014, and business conducted in Russia by Carter Page, whose connection to the Trump campaign — which listed him as an adviser — appears remote. Trump’s shady longtime crony Roger Stone has boasted of a relationship with WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, and there are suspicions he may have had prior knowledge that WikiLeaks would publish e-mails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta
.. In short, it may be that this investigation really does have nothing to do with Donald Trump directly. That makes his petulant and self-destructive response to it all the more mystifying — except against the backdrop of his entire adult life, which has involved bullying and blustering his way to fame and fortune.
.. The more he complains and lashes out, the more the opposition turns up the heat. The race to the bottom may have just begun.
Democratic Hypocrisy and Hysteria Don’t Make Trump Right
the evidence is accumulating that Trump fired James Comey in the middle of an accelerating investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and then lied to the American people about the reason. No amount of Democratic hysteria can make that right. There is no amount of leftist hypocrisy that makes that acceptable.
.. To believe Trump’s story, you have to believe that he did a complete about-face, that he’s repudiated his previous praise and his previous critiques of Comey. For example, at a campaign rally on October 31, he said, “It took guts for director Comey to make the move that he made” to publicly announce that the FBI had reopened its e-mail investigation. Now that gutsy move is grounds for termination?
.. throughout, there was a consistent theme: Trump’s thoughts about Comey always directly reflected Trump’s political self-interest.
.. Lawyers are familiar with a term called “pretext.” Employment lawyers encounter it all the time. For example, if a boss wants to fire an employee because she’s black or Christian, they’ll rarely say: “I hate Christians. Pack your things.” Instead, they’ll look for another justification that masks the real motivation. “Jane was late Friday. She has to go. Jill didn’t fill out her TPS report correctly. Time to leave.”
.. Lawyers are familiar with a term called “pretext.” Employment lawyers encounter it all the time. For example, if a boss wants to fire an employee because she’s black or Christian, they’ll rarely say: “I hate Christians. Pack your things.” Instead, they’ll look for another justification that masks the real motivation. “Jane was late Friday. She has to go. Jill didn’t fill out her TPS report correctly. Time to leave.”
.. It’s time to stop enabling Trump and start seeking the truth — even if the truth hurts.
Breitbart on Comey Loyalty: Failed to Stop Leaks
“We don’t believe this to be an accurate account,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary. “The integrity of our law enforcement agencies and their leadership is of the utmost importance to President Trump. He would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty, only loyalty to our country and its great people.”
According to the White House, one of the many reasons Comey was fired was because he failed to stop sensitive leaks of information to the media.