* No two perfect storms are alike. This one is where karma and irony meet narcissism and ineptitude.
We’ll start with former FBI Director James Comey, a guy who, however inadvertently, helped make Donald Trump president. We know the bumbling back story of emailGate and its last-minute cameo thanks to questionable Comey judgment and Huma Abedin’s Weinermobile.
But we can imagine the part of Comey’s rationale that does make sense. He was trying to look bipartisan and, as with most of the American electorate and media, he assumed Hillary Clinton would win anyhow. The FBI director who was appointed by Barack Obama would likely become a forgotten footnote, not a notorious kingmaker.
Predictably enough, candidate Trump was effusive in his praise of Comey’s “gutsy,” game-changing decision.
But then it all headed south.
Comey didn’t pledge loyalty over dinner, which may or may not have been taped. Comey, in effect, then publicly rebuked Trump for his fake news about being “wiretapped” by Barack Obama. And nothing came of Trump’s apparent request that Comey back off the Michael Flynn inquiry. These were all personal affronts to the easily affronted, egomaniacal president. Especially if they were emanating from a “showboat-grandstander.” The die was cast.
Then Comey asked the Department of Justice for enough resources to properly investigate allegations of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. An actionable offense in Trump World.
Ironically, Comey was now positioned to potentially bring down the man he had enabled into the presidency. If he could stand up to Hillary Clinton over a private server and (when he was deputy attorney general) to President George W. Bush over warrantless wiretapping, he could likely stand the heat of a Trump Administration that wanted the Russian investigation to go away in the worst way.
So, Comey had to go away in the worst way. Thus, the summary firing that was more heavy-handed, inept and classless than anything ever witnessed on “The Apprentice.” It was hardly happenstance that the day before, the previously fired acting attorney general, Sally Yates, had testified about the potential security concerns posed by the, yes, ultimately fired Michael Flynn, former national security adviser.
Trump’s media hucksters–an in-over-their-head, Amateur Hour outfit befitting a narcissist who values sycophancy over competence–could only make it worse. Their messaging was continuously upstaged and undermined by the president. Their main talking point was that the president was a “strong and decisive leader.” It has become an ongoing, transparent mess that might even embarrass “Saturday Night Live.”
And nobody but Trump could have thought a sit-down with NBC’s Lester Holt was a good move. It was a cluster-Trump disaster.
Allies consequently guffawed and groaned; adversaries guffawed and plotted. “American exceptionalism” and banana republic should not be appearing in the same sentence.
This is where we are. Thanks again, white nationalists, rationalizing 1 percenters and moody, non-voting members of the Democratic base.
What the temperamentally unhinged Tweeter-in-Chief says depends on whoever he has been binge-watching on a given TIVO night. These worrisome traits and optics are likely to continue. Trump has no James Baker or George Schultz or Joe Biden to rein him in. He has 30-something family members and a token deconstructionist. He’s not rein-able. At 70, he remains an arrogant, hair-trigger, billionaire brand who doesn’t like briefings and takes everything personally.
He’s also a pathological liar but, ironically, still isn’t very good at it.
This won’t go four years.
* And this just in. The Administration rolled out H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, to parse and nuance his way through reports that Trump might have revealed some highly classified information about Islamic State militants to visiting Russian officials. In a previous incarnation, McMaster was a 4-star Marine general.
For what it’s worth, there are more than seven days left in May.
* Early comments by Sen. Richard Burr, 61, who now heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, were likely surprising to the Trump Administration. “The timing of this (Comey firing) and the reasoning for it doesn’t make sense to me,” stated Burr.
Keep in mind that Burr is the North Carolina Republican who literally embraced Trump on the campaign trail last fall and acted as a national security adviser to his campaign.
Of course, being recently re-elected and already having announced that this is his final term, could be factors. No longer being in CYA mode could be liberating for Burr, something Trump doesn’t need from the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman.