Thursday, May 11, 2017

Trump, Comey and Loyalty to Our Dear Leader


This NYT article about an alleged January dinner appointment between James Comey and Trump is a nuanced and elegant example of the horror that the Trump administration is.  Examples:

As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.
Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not “reliable” in the conventional political sense.

And

By Mr. Comey’s account, his answer to Mr. Trump’s initial question apparently did not satisfy the president, the associates said. Later in the dinner, Mr. Trump again said to Mr. Comey that he needed his loyalty.

And

As described by the two people, the dinner offers a window into Mr. Trump’s approach to the presidency, through Mr. Comey’s eyes. A businessman and reality television star who never served in public office, Mr. Trump may not have understood that by tradition, F.B.I. directors are not supposed to be political loyalists, which is why Congress in the 1970s passed a law giving them 10-year terms to make them independent of the president.

Read it and weep.  Then get up to go back to the most important work of resisting the attempts to kill any democracy dead* in this country.  This example shows what game Trump plays.

But that term "by tradition" in the last quote caught me  like a dart, because Trump doesn't care about any governmental traditions.  Just as he doesn't understand how the government works, neither does he understand what the unwritten rules, norms and behavioral rules of democracy are.  He grew up in his gilded cage, believing himself to be the largest of all silver-back gorillas in the jungles, and that is how he operates:  As the supposed Lord of the Jungle.

The situation is only partly Trump's fault.  He bears the responsibility for his giant ego and his miniscule competence, but it is those who voted for Trump, for a giant ego and for a miniscule competence,  who really should be held responsible for the crisis this country finds itself in.

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 *  My previous post talks about the Republican plans to strangle democracy by taking away people's ability to vote.