Cranach

President Trump’s order firing F.B.I. Director James Comey said that the action was taken because of how he handled Hillary Clinton’s e-mail case.  Then we were told that the F.B.I. Director was fired because of recommendations by Justice Department Officials.

Now in an interview with MSNBC’s Lester Holt,  President Trump says that he was going to fire Comey “regardless” of what the Justice Department had to say.  He also called Comey a “showboat” and a “grandstander.”

In the interview, the president kept returning to the F.B.I.’s investigation of Russian influence in the U.S. election, insisting that Comey told him three times that he was not under investigation.  And, indeed, looking into Russian efforts to influence the election does not mean that the president himself is under investigation, as such.  Meanwhile, accounts from inside sources within the White House–leaked by somebody–say that the president was indeed pre-occupied and “enraged” over the Russia investigations.

But firing the head of the F.B.I. does not make those investigations “go away.”  Agents assigned to that investigation will keep on doing their work.  The interim head of the agency, Andrew McCabe, said as much.

This is why I think President Trump’s action is not equivalent to Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” in which he fired the Special Prosecutor investigating him.  Even if that were Trump’s intention, the action would not squelch the investigations.  (And we see how well Nixon’s more calculated action worked for him.)

I think we are just seeing, again, the results of President Trump’s impulsiveness, his undisciplined words, his dysfunctional staff, and his governmental inexperience.

Those things can be fixed or compensated for, but they need to be addressed soon lest they fatally damage his presidency. [Read more…]