Thoughts on Comey’s Testimony, and One of the Most Telling Moments
There was a lot to parse in today’s Senate testimony by former FBI director James Comey; he reiterated that Donald Trump asked him to pledge loyalty not to the country or the Constitution, but to Donald Trump.
Comey stated quite explicitly that Trump had simply “lied” about the nature of their conversations, and that he began making detailed notes about his meetings with Trump because he was concerned Trump would lie about them. This was eye-opening stuff; he directly accused the president of lying on numerous occasions.
And he repeated his statements that Trump had “suggested” to him that he make the investigation into Michael Flynn’s Russian connections go away.
Right wing media are all crowing that Trump never explicitly ordered Comey to drop the Flynn investigation, but let’s face it — when the president of the United States calls you into the Oval Office, tells everyone else to leave, and then makes a “suggestion,” that’s a little bit more than just a casual remark, wouldn’t you say?
But I think one of the most telling and damaging points Comey made was that even after being informed there was absolutely no doubt Russia had mounted a huge effort to interfere with and undermine the credibility of the US election process, Donald Trump never even asked what was being done to prevent further interference by Russia. He was completely incurious about how to stop this from happening again.
Was this because Trump’s enormous ego simply doesn’t let him care about much else but constantly feeding it? Or is there a deeper, more sinister reason why Trump had no interest in this vitally important subject?