As John Podhoretz observed last night, President Donald Trump had every reason to dismiss FBI Director James Comey. Contrary to the passionate response from Trump’s more reflexive detractors, nothing about the FBI director’s firing exceeded presidential authority, violated the Constitution, or was even unwarranted. But the way in which the White House went about dismissing Comey creates an impression that something untoward has happened here. Trump’s sloppy preparation, miscalculations, disregard for public opinion, and utter lack of any coherent communications strategy have robbed the president of the benefit of the doubt.
Suddenly, despite assurances to the contrary from President Trump, the way in which Comey handled the Clinton email affair morphed into an offense meriting termination. At least, that was the assessment of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The members of the inner circle in the Trump White House were kidding themselves if they thought the public and their political rivals would accept this at face value.
Immediately, Senate Democrats turned the heat up to boil. “Chilling,” declared Kirsten Gillibrand. “We are in a full-fledged constitutional crisis,” Brian Schatz averred. “Not since Watergate have our legal systems been so threatened,” Richard Blumenthal remarked. Perhaps more compelling was the response from Senate Republicans, who will take an active role in advising on and consenting to Comey’s replacement. GOP Senators Richard Burr, Jeff Flake, John McCain, and Ben Sasse all expressed reservations about the timing and intent of Trump’s maneuver, to say nothing of its impact on the investigation into Russian meddling.
The White House was caught entirely off guard. Sources soon began leaking to reporters that the administration didn’t expect Democrats to be able to protest Comey’s firing too loudly because they had criticized his behavior in 2016. If the White House’s strategy rested on politicians declining to indulge in hypocrisy, it’s the most naïve organization in history.
The White House recalled all its communications staffers to mitigate the unexpected fallout, but the strategy they employed was nothing less than incompetent. “You want to question the timing of when [the president] hires, when he fires. It’s inappropriate,” Kellyanne Conway asserted with maximum petulance. “He’ll do it when he wants to.” When pressed as to whether this firing would affect the investigation into the Trump campaign and its links to Russia, Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted that it was “time to move on” adding “when are they going to let that go?”
Demonstrating even more naked contempt for public opinion, President Trump announced yesterday that he would take a rare meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the White House fewer than 24 hours after Comey’s dismissal. Thus, not only did the White House refuse to allay the voting public’s concerns about Russia, the 2016 election, and the Trump administration’s alleged links to Kremlin agents, they contributed to those fears.
It’s hard to begrudge anyone who reaches the worst possible conclusions about those allegations now; the president and his administration are not behaving like innocents. In many ways, that is a more dangerous condition for the president than if he was facing concrete charges that could be rebutted. Instead, a cloud of vague suspicion will now hang over his administration. There are no charges that he can define, isolate, and counter. Trump will struggle with a general mistrust of his conduct that will only sap the public of faith in his leadership. If this White House believes Republicans in Congress will continue to play blocking tackle for Trump even as faith in this administration erodes, it may soon learn that public opinion has a way of shaking things loose.
There is no hard evidence to suggest Trump was acting in bad faith in exercising his constitutional prerogative to fire an executive branch official in whom he had lost confidence—and those in the commentariat who see creeping fascism around every darkened corner would do well to exercise more prudence. And yet, even if this White House were entirely in the right, its bizarre failure to prepare for this moment and its disregard for public opinion may well lead previously skeptical observers to conclude there really is a scandal here. For that, Trump only has himself to blame.
