Context is everything.
You get an email from a friend late on a Friday afternoon. In it, she says she hopes you can attend her son’s graduation party this weekend. You get an email from your boss the same day saying he hopes you’ll put in some extra hours this weekend so the presentation will be ready by Monday. These two situations may share the same polite phrase, they may both be after a few hours of your precious weekend. But they are not alike.
Now what if it’s not an email from your boss. it’s your boss’s boss. In fact, it’s the CEO of the whole darn company. Is “I hope” still a request?
In fact, take away the email and make it a face-to-face meeting. Make it a meeting in which the CEO sends the other executives, including your boss, out of the room before giving you the “I hope” line. And wait, we’re not done. As it happens, this same CEO pulled you in for a little one on one time shortly after he got the corner office. In that meeting, he let you know that keeping your job was definitely dependent on showing that you were a good team player who could follow instructions.
Now that “I hope” is almost as weighted with meaning as it was when Donald Trump said he hoped James Comey could see his way clear to dropping the investigation of Michael Flynn. Almost.
I’ve made few bones about it—I don’t like James Comey. I think Comey has a bad habit of looking in the mirror and seeing The Last Honest Man in Washington. And Comey takes that self-image as permission to blow past the rules set for mere mortals. It’s why I’ve written nine diaries in which I asked for Comey to be fired, both before and after the election.
But … that same self image is what makes Comey pretty much incapable of saying something he doesn’t believe to be true. It’s hard to believe that what Comey said on the stand wasn’t an all but word-for-word recounting of his meetings with Trump.
And no matter what Donald Trump thinks, that’s anything but good for Donald Trump.
Come on, let’s read pundits.
Robbie Gramer at Foreign Policy explains why Trump’s trip abroad was even worse than you think.
At long last, U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed NATO’s bedrock collective defense clause, Article 5, in a press conference Friday. ...
But it may not be enough to patch things over with his NATO allies after his visit last month to Brussels, where Trump gave a public tongue lashing that surprised NATO leaders and his national security team alike — because behind closed doors, things were even worse.
This would be at the meeting where he insulted everyone by hectoring them for money at a memorial service then shoved another NATO leader out of the way so he could be front and center in a photo op. And apparently that was the good stuff.
… leaders of the 29-member alliance retired to a closed-door dinner that multiple sources tell Foreign Policy left alliance leaders “appalled.”
Trump had two versions of prepared remarks for the dinner, one that took a traditional tack and one prepared by the more NATO-skeptic advisors, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. “He dumped both of them and improvised,” one source briefed on the dinner told FP.
Trump decided to improvise. That seems to be a reasonable nominee for Phrase Mostly Likely to be Carved Into Humanity’s Tombstone.
“Oh, it was like a total shitshow,” said one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to discuss the closed-door dinner.
Ah. No one can phrase things as delicately as a diplomat.
Karen Greenberg on what Comey’s testimony says about Trump.
From former FBI director James B. Comey’s account this past week of his conversations with President Trump, a very clear, if disturbing, picture emerged of what the president worries most about. It’s not broader questions of law, government or national security. He’s got one paramount thing on his mind: himself.
This may be the hardest thing for me to understand about Trump supporters — can’t they see that this guy is just out for himself? Trump is lacking in any core beliefs, except that if there’s a buck to be made, he wants it.
This preoccupation colored the much-discussed private dinner at the White House to which Trump invited Comey in January, a week after Inauguration Day. “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” Trump insisted, in Comey’s retelling. The president did not say “the country,” “this democracy” or even “this administration” needed the FBI chief’s loyalty. Similarly, in their third and final meeting, Comey said the president pushed him to close down the bureau’s investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The profound consequences of a foreign government tampering with our elections did not seem to come up — only the potential ramifications for a close ally of the president.
It may seem like someone who could go through those meetings with Comey and not ask anything about the Russian hacking would have to be complicit. But it seems all too believable that Trump simply didn’t care. What he hears from other people is like that old Gary Larson cartoon about what dogs hear when we talk to them. Only his own name penetrates the fog to reach Trump/
Ruth Marcus on why Trump should be hiding instead of taking victory laps.
In a swearing contest between Comey and Trump, Comey wins, hands down, against a man whose misstatements keep the fact-checkers working overtime. Every lawyer on the planet would want Comey testifying for their side over Trump. To disbelieve Comey is to imagine that he wrote a fictitious account of his interactions with the president before being fired but that his fabrication didn’t include a direct order from Trump.
And yes, Comey orchestrated the leak of his memo. If that makes you think less of him, fine, but keep a few things in mind: Comey was by then a private citizen, reporting on an unclassified conversation with the president. In any event, branding Comey a “leaker” doesn’t undermine the significance of the underlying information. Deep Throat was a leaker, too.
Deep throat was a leaker. Comey provided his own words. That also called testimony. It Comey is a leaker, every person who testifies in court is a leaker.
Kathleen Parker is the first of several pundits out to show I should always read the pundits first, come up with something fresh for my opening later.
As it turns out, Donald Trump is the hope-and-change president.
According to James B. Comey, Trump hoped that the then-FBI director would find a way to drop his investigation of ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn and help blow away “the cloud” concerning the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia. When Comey didn’t, Trump changed Comey — right out of a job.
Somehow this makes me wonder what Sarah Palin is doing. Is she reading all the newspapers? Is she wondering just how many people need to be impeached before losing vice-presidential candidate 2008 is next in line for the presidency?
Was Trump’s “hope” a “direction,” as Comey testified Thursday that he took it to mean? As in, The Don hopes ol’ Jimmy does the “right” thing? Or was it simply hope? As in, good golly, I hope it doesn’t rain this weekend?
If one were a young child, one might go for the weather-forecast interpretation — because what child wants it to rain on his or her parade? If one were an adult with full knowledge of the president’s pre-political history and the common sense of an investigator, one might reasonably conclude that the hoper in chief was making a strong suggestion, the ignoring of which could have dead-horse-in-your-bed consequences.
Comey, obviously, smelled a dead horse.
Dana Milbank points up the one thing that Comey said that everyone can agree with: the creep factor.
… the line that chilled me more than any other was Comey’s account of why he wrote extensive, real-time notes of his conversations with Trump. “The nature of the person,” Comey explained in part. “I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, and so I thought it really important to document.”
The nature of the person.
One meeting with Donald Trump, and Comey began to take copious notes on their discussions. It would be interesting to see if those notes include mentions of upcoming meetings, as in “I’m supposed to meet with Trump tomorrow. If I don’t come back ...”
This was the essence of Comey’s testimony: that the president of the United States is at his core a dishonest and untrustworthy man. It was judgment on character, not a legal opinion, and even Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee made no real attempt to dispel it.
But Trump counted to three! One-two-three times Comey said he wasn’t investigating Trump, and Trump counted. So total vindication … he can add.
Christine Emba draws the strong connection between the type of pressure Comey was under,and a different type of personal attack.
Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing was riveting in its own right. But at times, James B. Comey’s grilling on the stand recalled nothing so much as a sexual misconduct trial, with the former FBI director playing the role of barely believed plaintiff. The proceedings brought to mind the patronizing, painful back-and-forth that victims have been conditioned to expect should they dare lodge a complaint about harassment or assault. From the exhaustive rehashing of every encounter between the president and the former FBI director to the performative disbelief of many of the questioning senators, the uncomfortable parallels were hard to ignore.
And hard to miss. Even during the testimony it was clear that Comey’s discomfort in being alone with Trump we way beyond just the inappropriateness of a investigator talking directly to a possible person of interest.
Asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), perhaps trying to be understanding: “You’re big. You’re strong. . . . Why didn’t you stop and say, ‘Mr. President, this is wrong?’ ”...
There was Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.): “You said . . . ‘I don’t want to be in the room with him alone again,’ but you continued to talk to him on the phone. . . . Why didn’t you say, ‘I’m not taking that call’?” ...
The only thing missing was a question about what the FBI director had been wearing at the time.
Laid out one after another, the questions are remarkable in their similarity to the ugly questions women get asked in harassment cases. Go read the whole list and see just how well Emba characterizes the hearing.
Britt Peterson points, again, at a problem that is not unrelated to the problems Comey raised in his testimony.
Donald Trump should be on a major hiring binge right now. His government is uniquely underpopulated, with only 123 out of 558 key positions requiring Senate confirmation either nominated or confirmed. Some departments are almost entirely vacant of political appointees below the cabinet-level positions. ...
Wait. Trump tweeted about this. He blamed it all on Democratic delays. So you know it must be … anything else.
As stories leak out about the president’s erratic and abusive behavior toward his staff, as his legal issues intensify, as the number of cautionary tales mounts (Comey, Sean Spicer, H. R. McMaster, Jeff Sessions), a new wariness has become apparent. Many candidates have refused to be considered for positions that would at any other time be highly coveted, including at least four candidates for Mr. Comey’s job before Christopher Wray was announced as the pick for F.B.I. director Wednesday; four law firms asked to represent the president in the investigation in Russia’s influence over last year’s elections; and the husband of Mr. Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway, who recently pulled himself off the shortlist to head the Justice Department’s civil division, responsible for defending the government.
Of course, everyone who works for Trump will be willing to tell you that he’s a great boss. Or else.
The New York Times and the newest, but also largest, Republican caucus.
“He’s just new to this,” offered Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, by way of explanation for President Trump’s oafish efforts to get James Comey, then the F.B.I. director, to drop the bureau’s investigation of Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser. Mr. Trump stumbled, Mr. Ryan went on, because he is “learning as he goes,” and because “he wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between D.O.J., F.B.I. and White Houses.”
With these impressive bits of casuistry, Mr. Ryan became the unofficial leader of the Trump Excuses Caucus. This caucus is composed exclusively of Republicans. Some of its members remain staunch supporters of Mr. Trump, while others are doubtless panicked about their political futures with Mr. Trump strutting about at the head of the party, insulting everyone and everything in sight: staff members, allies, laws, diplomatic decorum and common sense.
Please refer again to the What Dogs Hear cartoon. Only with Republicans, everything but the phrase “tax cuts” is just a Peanuts teacher-style wah wa wah wa.
Leonard Pitts has Trump’s report card.
The Republican Party wants us to grade Donald Trump on a curve.
No other conclusion is possible after a week of high drama and reality avoidance that would have wrecked the president’s good name — if he had one. …
The day before Comey’s appearance, for instance, national security chiefs Mike Rogers and Dan Coats, testifying before the same committee, refused to answer directly when asked whether Trump ever asked them to intervene in an FBI investigation. Two days before that, Trump surrogates Sebastian Gorka and Kellyanne Conway insisted with straight faces that Trump’s often-damning tweets — statements by the president in his own words — were not to be taken seriously.
Remember that? It was BC — Before Comey — but their refusal to speak up was one of the most interesting and significant events of the week.
Next to them, Comey was some combination of Captain America and Pope Francis for plain moral rectitude — sometimes even at his own expense, as when he admitted failing to push back forcefully enough against the president’s misbehavior. But it was Trump’s character and actions that were squarely in the bull’s-eye.
Peter Bergen says the thing that Trump always seems to ignore.
Shortly after news broke last week about a possible terrorist attack in London, President Trump tweeted: “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!” Afterward, he was mocked for having exposed the seeming unconstitutionality of his ban, which the Supreme Court has been asked to review and which his lawyers have claimed is not a ban.
But as the London attacks made clear: The ban would do little to protect Americans from the kind of terrorism we mostly witness now, because it targets the wrong people. If Trump is concerned with jihadist terrorism, the threat doesn’t come from outsiders but from people who are already rightfully among us.
In fact, Trump’s Muslim ban would have stopped none of the people involved in the London bombing.
Over the past several years, deadly jihadist attacks in the West have been more commonly carried out by citizens and children of immigrants than by visitors or immigrants themselves. Three of the four suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaeda who carried out the most lethal terrorist attack in British history, killing 52 people on the London transportation system on July 7, 2005, were British citizens. So, too, was the suicide bomber who struck an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last month, killing 22 people; indeed, he was born in Manchester . And the terrorist who fatally rammed or stabbed five people in March on London’s Westminster Bridge was also a British citizen, born in the very English county of Kent.
Even if a ban were effective, it would still be wrong. But would not be effective. It couldn’t be.
Matthew d’Ancona and the price of Theresa May’s little stunt.
Like a stumbling figure from “The Walking Dead,” Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, has yet to realize that she is a political zombie. For all her poise as she spoke on Downing Street on Friday, the day after Britain’s general election, when she declared her intention to continue in office, she is roaming the land of the undead. Sooner or later, reality is going to bite — hard.
Can we replace all instances of lame duck with Walking Dead metaphors?
As the extent of the upset became clear on Thursday night, it was assumed — even by many of Mrs. May’s most ardent supporters — that she would be gone by Friday morning. There was talk of a “dignified exit,” a timetable for departure and then, unavoidably, another general election. Instead, Mrs. May has formed a pact with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, an alliance that will give her an aggregate number of members of Parliament that passes, just, the 326-seat threshold required for a governing majority.
If Brexit foreshadowed Trump, let’s hope that the Tories collapse in the election is mirrored by the Republicans next year.
