Fired And Vilified Former FBI Director Takes His Swings
One hundred and thirty-eight days into his presidency, Donald J. Trump’s lawyer is holding a press conference defending his client against charges of obstruction of justice and borderline treason.
Let that be the lead. Everything else pales.
That is not entirely true.
Here is something worth considering: The entirety of the United States intelligence community, including the NSA, CIA and FBI has all confirmed that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 presidential election. The president of the nation under siege denies it ever happened and calls any investigation into these crimes a “witch hunt”. When no one listens to his carefully crafted delusions, he fires the director of the FBI. In exile he publicly humiliates him; calling him “a blowhard” and “a showboat” and finally “a nut job” (that part was in a secret meeting with Russians, if you can believe it). This all stemmed from the firing of his national security advisor, who is currently under criminal investigation and whom, for reasons only known to the cosmos, he keeps defending, including asking on numerous occasions several officials connected with the investigation to back off. This list boasts the aforementioned sacked FBI Director James Comey.
That guy got his day in court yesterday when he testified to all this and more in front of the U.S. Senate.
Like most of my columns lately on Donald J. Trump, this is merely a review of the facts, which has been taken by the Trump Cultists as some kind of commentary. What is above actually happened, and more hilariously or frighteningly—the word you choose depends on how much you “love” the country and whatever bullshit it might represent to you—it is still happening and will continue to happen while our game show host is running things.
To wit: After Comey’s testimony the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, no fan of this president but gleefully trading in his so-called principles to get his agenda signed by him, defended Trump’s actions as a sign he doesn’t know what he’s doing. “He’s new to this,” Ryan said, and not with a straight face—I shit you not, the man was smiling, watch it—“He doesn’t get the traditional protocol.”
This is where we’re at now, making the point for those who argued that despite his overt misogyny and overall juvenile behavior and a virile disdain for the truth and much of the English language that would have felled a normal candidate, El Douche was woefully ill-prepared for the position in which he holds. Obviously the analogies are endless, but as I like to use houses as my go-to, it is tantamount to hiring a guy who won a fishing contest to build your house, and a few months in there are obvious signs he is fucking up and then someone named Paul comes to your dilapidated dwelling and says, “Well, come on, give him a break, he’s a fisherman.”
Be that as it may, what Comey told congress and the world yesterday was both damning and not-so. Facts, as we have seen these last months, are squirrely little annoyances open to interpretation. Some will see high crimes and as Trump’s sleazy divorce lawyer claimed, “vindication”. For instance, there were also arguments posed that Comey’s testimony both buried and vindicated Hillary Clinton. One way of the other one must ask, as I have for months, why does the president act as if he is guilty or at least hiding something? I don’t know, beyond my theory that he is either stupid or guilty or both. You come up with a reason. I’m out of guesses.
Still, it was riveting television for those who live in this mire as I do. But what did we actually learn that wasn’t already leaked beforehand?
I was more than mildly curious to hear how Comey, supposedly a button-down hardcore lawman, would explain why when, according to him and his copious notes on his infamous “dinner with the president”, he was being bullied and, let’s face it, bribed and threatened by the president, he did not report it immediately to the justice department or quit. Comey had two excuses; not queering his ongoing investigation by alerting the president to his doubts he was grounded in reality and secondly to avoid alarming those within the FBI that their boss was unhinged.
I am not sure I buy any of it. I think Comey was under his own delusion that he could keep his high-profile gig. Comey is nothing if he is not a media whore. His performance when clearing Hillary Clinton of any criminal activity last July was a joke and almost everything he has done since then has been goofy. Not that this is any reason not to believe him, but okay, let’s just leave that to the ether and move onto what Comey thinks of the president: He is an asshole. That is basically what you get out of a couple of hours of this. Comey thought Trump was acting at the very least inappropriately with a guarantee to lie about anything done or said in private conversations.
But to be fair we already knew Trump was an asshole and we already knew he had no grasp of decorum. Even those who voted for him thinks these things. They wanted him to be their asshole and do something radically different than what would be normally accepted as decorum, which is why I vowed from day-one to not hold this guy to the same scrutiny as those who were actual politicians.
And this is the key for a lifer like Comey. He has no idea what the world of New York City real estate is like. It is something between organized crime and blood sport. People like Donald Trump have little or no use for things like decorum or law for that matter. Law is a roadblock to progress. For examples of Trump’s obliteration of every possible law just check his record over the past 40 years, but for a general understanding of what we’re dealing with in the White House now look up what has happened to my beloved Chelsea Hotel since it was absorbed by a real estate mogul in 2007. When you stop throwing up, continue reading…
And decorum, well that nonsense is for the meek and the meek suck pipes and go home. A real estate mogul in Manhattan would have no trouble “leaning” on someone who wasn’t “playing ball”. Comey spoke as if he were shocked at this. What does he know about this crazy wild, wild west shit? He thinks he is dealing with a president. He is dealing with El Douche. You don’t get on TV with petty things like pride or integrity. You get there like a bulldozer rolling over a slave burial ground south of Canal Street. Pave, crush, evict and shame. This is the armory of the real estate mogul.
And in a strange way this is why Comey’s testimony, while damning to everything including the mainstream media, the justice department, the president and even his own department is merely a sidelight to this key sentence: One hundred and thirty-eight days into his presidency, Donald J. Trump’s lawyer is holding a press conference defending his client against charges of obstruction of justice and borderline treason.
This is what we have now.
Enjoy.
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James Campion is the Managing Editor of The Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey”, “Fear No Art”, “Trailing Jesus”, “Midnight For Cinderella” and “Y”. and his new book, “Shout It Out Loud—The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon”.
