What do you know about that?
Democrats and Republicans in Congress are starting to sing in unison on something. It regards a threat that Donald John Trump made toward the former director of the FBI, James Comey.
The president fired Comey a few days ago for reasons that still seem a bit muddled. But as the hubbub began to build, Trump fired off a tweet that said Comey had better hope no tapes exist that recorded the conversations the two men had prior to Comey’s dismissal.
“If there are any tapes of this conversation, they need to be turned over,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C., told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Now we have Democrats and Republicans saying that if Trump has tapes, he needs to produce them. He needs to validate the threat he leveled against the FBI director.
If the president has no such tape recordings — and few observers really doubt that he does — then we well might be talking about something else altogether. There might be a case built that suggests the president was using a blind threat to intimidate the former FBI director who — as it happens — was in the midst of an investigation of allegations that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russian hackers seeking to influence the 2016 election outcome.
Do you follow me?
My line of thinking suggests that the absence of any recordings exposes Trump to potential obstruction of justice accusations. Was the tweet he sent out warning Comey meant to coerce the lawman? Might a coercion attempt ripple its way to others within the FBI who are up to their armpits in this investigation.
The president’s obsession with Twitter as a form of “communication” well might swallow him whole. I say it might because no one has any proof — at least not yet — of his intentions while he continues to fire off these petulant messages.
Polls show Trump support falling in the wake of the Comey dismissal. Indeed, given the president’s obsession with polls — especially when they’re favorable — is going to continue to hound him perhaps for his entire presidency. Americans don’t like the way he handled the Comey firing.
They would like it even less if Trump were to destroy any recorded evidence rather than surrendering it to Congress.
What, though, happens if he didn’t record those conversations? What happens if it turns out he is just making empty — but still dangerous — threats against a law enforcement official and the agency he once led?
Now are you frightened?
Trump promised to “unify” the country. It just occurs to me that he well might have brought warring political parties together in Congress, thus unifying the country’s representatives in our government.