This week Trump told some reporter he had invented the expression “priming the pump” a few days earlier. Fact checkers found out that not only had the expression been around for more than 80 years, from since before Trump was born, but that Trump himself had used it at least six months before he claimed he had invented it. He essentially called himself a liar six months ago to his now face.
Which is sort of what he managed to do by firing FBI Director James Comey, isn’t it? Comey, who did such a good job investigating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has been such a terrible showboat and a bad FBI director, roughly since the instant Trump found out Comey lied in saying that Trump wasn’t under investigation.
Trump met Comey at a dinner party. In the course of small talk, Trump asked if he’s under investigation by the FBI. And Comey said Trump wasn’t, even though he’s not supposed to say things like that. I supposed that was technically an error. He should have said, “I cannot confirm or deny whether you or anyone else is currently under investigation by the FBI at this present time. Please pass the plate of meatloaf and the gravy boat.”
So at that past dinner party, Comey was calling last week’s James Comey a liar to his face. That gave Trump the excuse of saying he was firing Comey for being a lying showboater. As opposed to saying what most people in this country think: that Trump did it because he found out that Comey was in fact directing an investigation of him.
I say most people because I am possibly the one person who believes Comey’s fate was sealed at the time of the election itself.
If you go back to the records you’ll see that Trump expressed approval of Comey’s late October announcement regarding further investigations into Clinton’s emails. But Trump gave Comey no credit for swinging the election. That’s because Trump is a huge narcissist who can’t stand the thought that he needed the assist.
But most people know that without Comey’s announcement, Trump would probably not have been elected. So, since that is what everyone knows, they have to stop knowing it. That means Comey needs to go away and he needs to be forgotten as quickly as possible.
To help Comey be forgotten, Trump has just tweeted a warning to Comey telling him essentially to zip it. He says Comey had “better hope” there aren’t any records of words said between them. Meaning what? That he should consider his family, what it would be like for them to lose him?
Meanwhile, every act of the mobster in chief gets mirrored in local events daily. This week we learned a King County sheriff’s deputy has been pepper-spraying the water bottles of homeless people to “show them they aren’t welcome.” He was reported to higher-ups by his partner, and while the partner wasn’t exactly told he’d better hope there were no records of their conversations, he was told something incorporating a couple of bad F-words.
The sheriff’s deputy has at least been fired. Why is Trump still president? Just that one tweet alone constitutes obstruction of justice. What is the House waiting for? A bloody candelabra? Proof that Colonel Mustard couldn’t have done it?
Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor and three times homeless. He has been involved with Real Change since he supplied the art for the first cover in November of 1994. This is his regular humor column, Adventures in Irony.
Read the full May 17 issue.