Donald Trump is a dumb guy. He’s not the dumbest guy — you’ve got to have some kind of intelligence (a ruthless one?) if you’re going to make as many millions of dollars as he has — but to fire James Comey like that, right now, with the Russian heat as hot as it’s been, is there any other word for it except dumb?
I guess we could call it bad strategy. I’ve been reading a lot about war and politics lately, as well as playing a lot of Madden football, so strategy is something that’s been on my mind, and thinking about Donald Trump, I have to ask: What kind of game is he playing?
He’s not playing politics. If you’re playing the game of politics, you do not fire the official who is in charge of investigating your administration the day after the other justice official you fired testifies in front of Congress about that investigation, a testimony that includes the coincidence that just as she increased the heat on the investigation of your administration, you found another cause to fire her. That would just be dumb. It arouses more suspicion, which craters your approval ratings, which decreases your influence among those whose votes you’ll need to get your policies passed. It’s just bad politics.
But what if he’s playing war? If this is a war between Donald Trump and the rest of the world (as a narcissist like Donald Trump could only imagine it to be), would firing Comey still be such a dumb idea? I’m not so sure.
Comey was obviously a liability to the White House. The man was actively investigating the administration’s ties to a foreign power where the suspicion was not simply money laundering, but also straight-up treason. If your only public goal is to survive until the next election, then it might make a lot of sense to cut your losses and simply get rid of the guy. As the head of the executive branch, you’re responsible for appointing the man’s successor, so why not get rid of him now and install someone you know you can trust? Yes, you’ll take shit for it in the short term, but in the long term, you might be able to sleep better at night.
Trump has to be wondering what his opposition’s counter move is going to be. Yes, the Congressional investigations will get more intense, and yes the heat from the media will increase, but ultimately, what does that matter? If the Republicans keep control of the Congress, there’s no way he gets impeached, and if you’d just won a Presidential election against all the odds that the bookmakers could quote you, you’d probably believe it doesn’t matter what the odds are going to be in 2018, because you’ll still end up on the lucky side of the coin.
In that case, firing Comey right now, regardless of what it looks like, makes perfect sense. You know the battle’s lost on the investigation front, so cut your losses, appoint someone loyal to defend the front, and move on to the next problem. The Congress and the media can do whatever they want, as long as you’re ultimately protected by those whom you know are loyal.
It’s a bunker mentality, and the Trump White House is currently under siege.
And in that kind of reality, it’s actually a reasonable move.
So now you have to ask, as the opposition, what should we do to counter it?
We could intensify the investigation, of course; that’s where the White House is feeling the most pressure, so we should just keep pushing until it breaks. Already, the quantity and quality of the leaks have expanded, so appointing someone loyal might be the equivalent of Trump trying to stick his thumb in the dyke.
But to use a war analogy, that would be like we were sticking with the infantry instead of overwhelming our opponent through a combination of Air Force, Army, and Navy.
We ought to, of course, intensify the investigations (which the Senate Intelligence Committee seems highly committed to doing, thank goodness), but we’ve got to account for the possibility that the person Trump appoints might actually be up to the job of derailing the investigation long enough for the Republican House to get re-elected (which, again, would eliminate the risk of impeachment), which means that the investigation can’t be the only front in our war.
The other front is obvious: taking control of the House in 2018. I live in Vermont, where the House & the Senate are a lock, so there’s only so much good I can do (and all of it will have to be at a distance). Thankfully, Bernie’s movement is actively channeling itself into local and state elections, which means there’s already an army on the ground. Now we just need to give them some air support.