Trump and Comey

Set aside the hysterics and the usual ‘Waterholocaustgate!’ rhetoric that’s filled the airwaves and it’s pretty simple.   Why did Trump fire him? One of two probable reasons.  If there was a conspiracy between Trump and Russia to get Trump elected, then clearly Trump fired him to hinder the investigation.  Duh.

If there wasn’t collusion between Trump and Russia, then likely it was the timing.

Let’s face it, it took United Airlines to become more unpopular than Comey.  Over the last year, almost 100% of our government has, at one point or another, piled on the Bash Comey bandwagon.  He’s been accused by both sides of compromising the FBI, compromising trust in the FBI, overstepping his role, and basically hurting his ability to lead this or any other investigation.  This isn’t George Martin deciding to fire Paul McCartney in 1967.  Or Phil Jackson suddenly firing Jordan in 1996.  This was a man with serious damage to his reputation, who almost everyone had to know was living on borrowed time.

So if Trump is guilty of collusion with Russia – which isn’t the hardest thing in the world to believe – he obviously canned Comey in order to hamstring the investigation.  Hopefully we will find out and justice (and impeachment or more) will be done.

If not, and it turns out there wasn’t collusion, then the timing makes sense.  Within a week, Hillary blamed Comey by name as a reason for losing the election, Democrats had already criticized him with some calling for his removal, the much anticipated Yates/Clapper testimony laid an egg,  and the previous day was spent with headlines exploding all over about Comey’s false testimony: CNN, Daily Kos, Axios, The Telegraph, The Week, USA Today, NYT, Pro Publica (to name a few from a variety of sources in a single day).

What better time to fire him?

The only thing that’s surprising is the backlash from people who seem to have forgotten the last 10 months and were shocked to discover there were problems with Comey in the first place.