Trump only cares about himself
It was the ultimate head-scratcher.
Donald Trump’s decision to jettison FBI Director James Comey launched a political firestorm that was nearly without precedent.
Oh, there’s that “Saturday Night Massacre,” that led to the downfall of Richard Nixon.
Otherwise, historians have been unable to find anything that can compare to a U.S. President firing an investigator who could be hot on his trail.
Within minutes of the announcement that Trump had removed Comey, there materialized a steady stream of Republicans, Democrats and pundits – elbowing each other out of the way for airtime.
You’d think that Republicans would all be in support Comey’s demise.
Not all were.
“I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey’s termination,” said Richard Burr, who is the Republican Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“The president does have that constitutional authority. But I can’t help but think that this is not a good thing for America,” said Sen. John McCain.
It would be very difficult to find one Democrat who agrees with President Trump on anything, and certainly not about this.
Yet, with all the earth-shattering news about Comey, one news story – one that might be even more important in the long run – was overlooked last Tuesday.
There were various media reports that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexander, Virginia, has, for weeks, been issuing grand jury subpoenas to associates of ex-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, with an eye on Flynn’s business dealings, before he joined the Trump campaign.
It’s been reported that Flynn received money from Russia and Turkey, without acknowledging it, and that he might not have been forthcoming when he was asked about it during an FBI interview back in January.
If so, while Trump and his mouthpieces have repeatedly declared that as far as Russian meddling, and Trump’s campaign collusion, there is no “there there,” an empaneled grand jury involving one of Trump’s closest associates during the run-up to the election, and then head of his National Security team, could certainly indicate otherwise.
All of this may seem to be very complicated.
It is.
But not so complicated that you can’t draw a line between the disclosure that the Flynn grand jury had been formed, and only a few hours later Comey was fired.
And besides, there’s also that nasty bit of business about Flynn having made contacts with a Russian intelligence operative while he was part of Trump’s transition team last year.
Why wouldn’t Trump try to inhibit further investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia’s election meddling?
Yet, no matter how cheesy his firing of Comey might appear to be, Trump did it anyway.
That’s because the optics have never mattered to Donald Trump.
He’s proven that over and over since he started his run for the presidency.
If there are questions about his continuing business dealings, and the possibility there will be serious conflicts of interest, he boosts his business fortunes by spending as much time at Mar-a-Lago as he can.
If he knows that he’ll be called out for his frequent trips to play golf, when he made such a big issue out of Barack Obama’s relatively infrequent trips to golf courses, he doesn’t care.
The optics simply don’t matter to him.
Nor, does it matter to Trump that there are some reports, and some that have been confirmed, that days before his firing, Comey requested more money to broaden the Russian investigation.
So, on the very day that word gets out that the FBI is widening its investigation with a grand jury in Virginia, he didn’t care about the optics of firing the man who heads the FBI.
He doesn’t care that even some members of his own party are confused about the “timing and reasoning” of that firing.
The optics just don’t matter.
But somebody should offer a word of caution to the president.
The FBI’s investigation is one of a number of investigations.
While he can fire his FBI director, regardless of how it looks, he can’t fire the folks running investigations in Congress.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net