May 11, 2017: Standing by Trump | Comey Replacement | Omaha Ha Ha
1. Comey Confusion
Ok. Let’s get the big reaction out of the way quickly. The Red Media that has (mostly) supported Trump all along, like Breitbart, Fox News, the radio host Mark Levin, etc., backed the president bigly on his decision to fire the F.B.I. director, James Comey, in dramatic fashion on Tuesday. As Fox News’s Sean Hannity put it: "James Comey ... is a national embarrassment. It's that plain, it's that simple…..And frankly, he's very lucky President Trump kept him around this long."
This part of the Red Press also seconded Trump’s complaint that the Democrats were hypocritical for complaining about Comey’s sudden dismissal. After all, the Democrats wanted him fired for releasing that pre-election statement about re-opening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, no?
Jonah Goldberg, senior editor at National Review, @JonahNRO, with 236k followers, tweeted:
If hypocrisy were helium, Washington would be in low earth orbit this morning.
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) May 10, 2017
On Reddit, it was more of the same … but on steroids:
Said Bashatthebeach96 in the Conservative subreddit, which has 84,923 subscribers:
“The hypocrisy here is astounding. Here are a couple of examples:
Look at this CNN commenter who is essentially calling for Trump's impeachment.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/09/opinions/trump-comey-huge-trouble-opinion-callan/
The same analyst called for Comey's resignation months earlier. He said Comey was "Trashing the Justice and FBI rule books"
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/opinions/fbi-director-comey-should-resign-opinion-callan/index.html
And CNN expects us to believe they are unbiased.
Also take a look at the Hillary camp. Pretty much every one of Hillary's campaign staffers retweeted this from John Podesta yesterday morning.
https://twitter.com/johnpodesta/status/861961688240750592
In his next Tweet 7 hours later Podesta did a flip flop and compared Trump to Nixon.
There was plenty more where that came from, but the more interesting part of the conservative media reaction was the concern about their commander in chief’s leadership style and its implications for the party. Away from the television airwaves, for example, The Fox News daily newsletter The Halftime Report argued that “The White House and the president managed to perform a face-plant of historic proportions.”
“One thing that is not in doubt is that the managerial and leadership efforts on display in the past day were dreadful:
- The letter Trump sent undercutting his own rationale for firing Comey by mentioning the Russia probe.
- The comically bad timing of firing Comey the evening before Trump was to meet with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador to the U.S.
- The lack of coherent message or available messengers after the news broke.
- The failure to adequately brief senior Republicans and members of key committees about the move.
- And, maybe most of all, the petty, vengeful-seeming way in which Comey was notified.”
What We’re Watching
The editor of the neo-con bible Commentary, John Podhoretz @jpodhoretz, with 87.6 k followers, reported on Twitter that“Trumpians in my Facebook feed are talking about how a new FBI director will reopen Hillary email case, thus revealing that I want my mommy.” We expect wishful thinking about the re-opening of the Hillary Case to be in the next wave of Red Media coverage.
And Also…
We are sure to learn a lot more about the deputy attorney general who wrote the critique of Comey that preceded his ouster, but, for now, the Red Media is saying Rod Rosenstein is a man of honor. According to The Daily Caller:
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was considered honorable, fair and non-partisan by virtually everyone in Washington D.C. until he wrote a letter calling for President Donald Trump to fire FBI Director James Comey.
Rosenstein has held his position under Attorney General Jeff Sessions for two weeks after being confirmed by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority vote of 96-4 in the Senate April 25. He served as the U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland from 2005 to 2017, gaining the respect of Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
However The Washington Post noted this morning that Rosenstein threatened to resign because the White House cited him as the reason Trump fired Comey.
One Last Thing…
As soon as Comey was fired, Democrats (and let’s admit it, this includes us) began screaming for the appointment of a special prosecutor. Needless to say, the Red Media opposes such a move. As Rush Limbaugh told a caller: “Why? Why do we need a special prosecutor? Just because they’re asking for one? Screw them! Why do they get one just ’cause they’re asking for it?”
2. Comey’s Replacement Speculation
Naturally, the news cycle of shock over Comey’s firing was barely into its first hours before the news cycle of speculation on a replacement would be began. The Daily Caller acknowledged that the appointment would be a difficult needle to thread:
“Choosing a loyalist — someone like former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani — would fuel allegations of a cover up of the Russia probe. An apolitical pick, on the other hand, would tamp down on those claims.”
But Fox News went with a pretty straight-up list of Trump supporters, including the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, and Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who led the House’s Benghazi investigation. One surprise on that list was Ray Kelly, the former New York -police commissioner.
Meanwhile, in another Fox segment, Charles Krauthammer chose former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
Now I know that’s out-of-the-box, you could say I’m out of my mind, but I don’t think you need a history in law enforcement. The one thing you’ve got to have here is a sense of integrity. Unimpeachable integrity. She is obviously very skilled at many things. She goes all the way back, to Scowcroft and national-security agencies. She also happens to know a lot about the Russians. She could read the alleged collusion documents in the original Russian if necessary. But you want somebody from the outside who will simply stand for probity. I think she does. Now, I don’t think she wants the job. I wouldn’t really want to blame her for that. I think one thing you could do is have her stay a year or two or until the Russian mess is cleared up, until they’ve come to a conclusion, and then she’d go on to be the commissioner of the NFL.
3. Omaha Ha Ha
On Tuesday, Omaha reelected Republican Jean Stothert as mayor. As we reported earlier, her opponent, Heath Mello, got caught in Democratic crossfire on abortion purity after it was revealed that he had supported a half-dozen restrictions on the right to abort.
The Republican take, gleeful to be sure, was that the loss was a Democratic self-inflicted wound. As The Washington Examiner explained:
Democrats could have won big in the Omaha mayoral race. Instead, they offered their candidate as a sort of living sacrifice to the abortion lobby, sealing a blood oath to never again compromise their ideological purity no matter the political cost.
After being cast aside by his party for his anti-abortion views, Democrat Heath Mello fell short by six points to incumbent Republican Mayor Jean Stothert. It was the cost of fealty and, of course, it wasn't necessary.
Wrote The Gateway Pundit:
“Omaha voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 – But Democrat was rejected on Tuesday night. It was another brutal loss for Democrats – who couldn’t even win in a big Midwestern city.”
John Podhoretz@jpodhoretz concurred and joined in the gloating:
Congratulations are due Tom Perez for a Democrat losing a race! https://t.co/LLU0Zd6lqD
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) May 10, 2017