There are only two logical reasons why Trump would fire Jim Comey. One is easy and obvious. The other may be hidden and is politically very dangerous.
If Comey was moving forward with investigative lines supported by evidence that the President, or one of his closest advisors had been involved with the Russians in rigging the vote, then the President either had to resign or fire Comey. And this is whether or not the President personally was involved, or approved what happened or knew about illegal activities and simply did nothing. Musing on your public image while ignoring an apparent felony is no defense.
If on the other hand, there is even some small trace of evidence somewhere that Comey has a girlfriend or a boyfriend or ordered something illegal once, then the President has the right and perhaps obligation to sack him. Such, so far as we know, never happened. Of course, Comey could be a hidden pervert and this could all be a terrible political trick played upon the President’s enemies. I’m going to guess: no…here. So, we can speculate, but the obvious answer to Comey’s departure is very simply that the President became nervous about something…most obviously the upcoming Russian-U.S. political election investigation and panicked.
Now, the second reason that Trump might have fired Director Comey is, as I said, frought with far more serious implications. And those implications are what we shall discuss in this post.
The fact is that there is good reason to have an investigation. Four separate times prior to August 15, 2016, Russian cyber experts breached the electronic Email systems of the Democratic party and achieved a number of things that disrupted and perhaps seriously damaged the campaign of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Here is a list of people who have had recent…in the last couple of years…some in the last 12 months…connections with Russian authorities…who, remember, were the ones who caused these breaches. This was not Anyonymous or even a restoration of some kind of Nixonian “plumbers” unit. This was the intelligence arm of the USSR, in one form or another. Just think of it as the KGB.
And, yes, Trump does have major connections with Russian financiers. Here is Time Magazine on the subject: “…yes, it’s true that Trump has failed to land a business venture inside Russia. But the real truth is that, as major banks in America stopped lending him money following his many bankruptcies, the Trump organization was forced to seek financing from non-traditional institutions. Several had direct ties to Russian financial interests in ways that have raised eyebrows. What’s more, several of Trump’s senior advisors have business ties to Russia or its satellite politicians.”
Could businessmen, some of them pretty cutthroat, like Wilbur Ross, have begun to work out possible deals with Russia for favors or loans or mutually beneficial agreements later, not occurring to them that what they were doing might be a little…just a little…outside the realm of normal business/government relationships? And could they have, with the kind of autonomy Trump likes to hand out, and the blame, have tried to give their guy a little inside break when it came to the election? And why wouldn’t the Russians get involved if invited, or even if inviting themselves, or just doing it on their own?
In the meantime, our entire election system could have been breached. We still don’t understand why three small counties in Michigan, one county in Wisconsin and about 70,000 people in the wilds of Pennsylvania voted for Trump when the rest of the counties in those states were pretty evenly divided. It wouldn’t have been hard to point out to Russians where those localities are or where the electronic voting machines are. Pennsylvania is a place quite well known to Russian Intelligence.
Trump won Pennsylvania by seven-tenths of one percent. In other words, .7% x 6,000,000 voters. (42,000 to 44,000 votes) Two days earlier Secretary Clinton had a polling advantage of 8% in the polls. In other words, accurate statistical projections of more than one poll had her leading…two days earlier…by 480,000 votes, and a week earlier by 600,000 votes! Which is why she went to a close state like Arizona instead. Politicians lie, but numbers don’t. I used to work for an organization that had the best statisticians in or outside the government…A.C. Nielsen… so I know a little about how carefully polling samples are taken. I don’t know anyone who would say that these numbers add up. It seems almost impossible. But, to Trump, getting elected has nothing to do with what the People want. It has to do with getting what he wants. He says he cheated in military school. Maybe he never stopped.
Isn’t it curious that despite his 3 million deficit in the popular vote, the two other states that gave Trump his victory, Wisconsin and Michigan, were states controlled so completely by their Republican state party legislatures that in Wisconsin unions were drummed out of the Capitol even after the state rose up and tried to recall the governor? The Republicans were so powerful that they could elect a man three times despite the fact that he is so unpopular that, among national candidates for President and despite the backing of the two wealthiest political financiers in the country, he came up dead last and dropped out long before any others. He was recalled and defeated the recall with the votes of those same, very backward, rural areas that somehow were the only ones to go “strong” for Trump. This is big stuff. People don’t leave trails in conspiracies over the stealing of elections for world leaders. But it happened. This is the beginning of the age of electronic voting. And the Russians were involved with our election. Electronically.
In Michigan, Rick Snyder is considered a dictator because one of the first laws he insisted on and got very welcome support from his GOP lackey legislature was one that enabled him to simply fire the locally elected official in any community that he felt was being financially mismanaged. He did it in Benton Harbor-St. Joseph. Subsequently, his new manager allowed a state park along Lake Michigan to be diverted from public land and turned over to a private luxury condominium development led by the local member of the House of Representatives, Congressman and Whirlpool heir, Fred Upton. He was, by the way, one of the two Congressmen during the Republican Health Care vote who was about to cry crocodile tears over supposedly not wanting to vote for it but voting for it anyway. The other place that Snyder got involved was when he appointed his own guy to replace the mayor in Flint and his guy poisoned the water. Remember that? Snyder graciously admitted to the citizens of Flint that governments fail “at all levels” and failed the people from Flint. Yeah, right, Rick. All levels.
This isn’t just a problem involving the election of the stumblebum and inheritance-baby turned orange-haired genius in his own mind. This is a serious problem involving the future of this country. If a candidate can receive 3 million more votes than the other candidate and loses because of a rigged election in several states we have a serious problem with democracy. We have already seen what happened in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004. Unless we get his situation under control….Wisconsin knocked an estimated 200,000 people off the voting rolls…students, the poor, minorities among others will continue to lose their vote. We need to make voting easier, not harder. We need to see all votes counted with certainty, not this endless wondering who really won, and then having some tin-horn, two-bit, hotel-chain flack challenge the validity of the elections on his own whim? Our elections have gone completely out of hand and we need much greater openness and bi-partisan control from Washington.
We have, right now, sitting in prison in Alabama, a man of great integrity, of honor and great service to his state. Robert Siegelman was convicted with false testimony, and despite a recantation of that testimony, and the pleas of 49 of the fifty U.S. State Attorney Generals who reviewed the case, still sits in prison. He was convicted in Alabama, a state controlled by bigots and white racists, totally committed to the political party, the Republicans, who decided to pander to the worst elements of the Southern Confederate legacy. With huge political financial interests from places like New York and Atlanta and Washington, D. C, and Colorado and all over the south, they have been able to beat back coalitions of strong progressive Democrats composed of dedicated, patriotic whites and almost survivalist blacks.
The gentle but firm and dedicated Segregationist attitudes of the Republican Party in the South, those 26 states that have never forgotten their loss of slavery and their devastating defeat in the Civil War. They are the poorest and least educated, the least healthy and the most backward states both scientifically and medically in the country. And now other states like Indiana and Missouri and Wisconsin and Michigan are infected with this same virus, this idea that all roads should lead to the bottom. The rust belt states were the next targets of the corporate political raiders after the South followed Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms and Jeff Sessions to the Republican Party. And now we have Trump, the complete fabrication of a television-age President. Trump reminds me somewhat of the brilliant old Andy Griffith movie, “A Face in the Crowd” by Budd Schulburg and Elia Kazan, where a television personality creates a man-of-the-people image, only to discover that in reality he is self-indulgent, callous and cruel. This is nothing new in our politicians. But it is not normally typical of the character of our Presidents.
So the investigation must go on, must accelerate, before we go too far into this Presidency. We have men and women of dubious character and motives in almost every position. And it is ironic for Liberals, except those who have held serious positions in the military, that it is only the Generals who seem to have the character and focus and strength to engender their confidence. (Excluding General Flynn, of course, who was apparently, an exemplary officer but like some generals…not suited to either politics or diplomacy.)
If there should be a political upheaval, we must insure that those individuals who may lack character can be withdrawn quickly when their patron is suddenly om office. These are very powerful positions occupied by men accustomed to power in their private lives who could do unimaginable damage to the country should they suddenly be allowed to act independently without any supervision at all.
Step one is to elect an entirely new Congress in 2018. After that, we can either negotiate good, new laws with a new President, who may or may not decide to cooperate with the People rather than corporations and billionaires. Or we can prepare for the election of 2020, which, even some temporary Republicans Neo-Fascist President will realize must be made as reflective as possible of every voter’s interests.
Because they are going to need every single vote they can get.
