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Since President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI director James Comey on Tuesday evening, the White House and its defenders have been claimingthat Trump was merely heeding the call of many Democratic politicians who had previously called for Comeys dismissal

The White Houses line of reasoning goes like this: Canning Comey was actually an instance of Trump trying to sing Kumbaya with the opposition. Thisclaim has been repeated by the president and his staff, as well as many rightleaning publications.

The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad! Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning.

Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders echoed the talking point later that same day during a news briefing.

Frankly, I think its startling that Democrats arent celebrating this since theyve been calling for it for so long, she said.

But this spin is false on two different levels.

First, Trump himself has statedthat he had decided to fire Comey on his owneven before he received a memorandum from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein citingComeys conduct during the FBIs investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons unauthorized private email server. The Kumbaya claims are completely false on that score alone.

Secondly, Democrats, by and large, did not callfor Comey to be fired before his termination.

In December 2016, in his final weeks before retirement, former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reidhastily agreed to the propositionthat Comey should resign. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., appears to be the only currently serving Democratic legislator who had called for Comey to resign before Trump fired him, which he did in a November 2016 op-ed.

Other than those two exceptions, elected Democrats have not called for Comeys resignation, though a number said they hadlost trust in him after the former directordrew attention to himself in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. As nearly everyone remembers, less than two weeks before the election, Comey told members of Congress that the FBI was reviewing newly-discovered emails from Clintons server. His announcement was a false alarm those emails turned out to be duplicates of messages the agency had already reviewed.

I do not have confidence in him any longer, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., now the leader of the upper chambers Democrats,said last year. The FBI director has no credibility, said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., this past January.

Whether or not they were sincere in those expressions, the reality is that congressional Democratsdidnot ask for Trump to fire Comey. They might not have liked him, but plenty of them appeared to be willing to give him a chance to prove his nonpartisanship by spearheading the agencys criminal and counterespionage probes of Russian government involvement in computer hacking efforts against the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.

But even if Democrats had called for Comeys head, such hypothetical demands would still haveno bearing on the appropriateness of President Trump deciding to fire the FBI director while his agency was in the middle of overseeing the potentially explosive Russia investigation.

One would expect Republicans to jump to defendtheir partys president like this, but even some members of the mainstream press have bought intothe Trump administrations superficial reasoning.

NBC reporter Peter Alexander, for instance, appeared to have swallowed the White House spin during a Wednesday interview with Rep. Waters.

So she [Clinton] should have fired him, but he [Trump] shouldnt fire him, Alexanderasked the congresswoman, in a highly contentious discussion during which he seemed unable to see the simple distinction.

This is why Im confused, Alexander said to Waters.

No, no, youre not confused, Waters responded, dropping a subtle hint that she believed the NBC reporter was being deliberately obtuse.

The California congresswoman then explained it as simply as possible:

The president of the United States who has a history of firing people who get close to him and his allies like [Michael] Flynn, and like Miss [Sally] Yates he will fire them if he believes somehow theyre getting too close to him in these investigations. I believe that the president of the United States should not have done this in the middle of an investigation. Thats it.

That is indeed it.

Being able to distinguish relatively simple nuance is not hypocrisy. News reporters shouldnt allow such facile spin to go unchecked.

Continue reading here:
Democrats aren't hypocrites on Comey: Trump's firing of the FBI director is cause for outrage - Salon