Trump's sixteenth week in office has been dominated by the news and the fallout regarding the his sudden decision to fire former FBI director James Comey on Tuesday. As Comey was in Los Angeles when the decision was delivered, he did not find out that he had been fired until he saw the news on television along with the general public. Many Democrats are now suggesting that Comey's removal is part of the administration's efforts to confound ongoing investigations into connections between Russia, Trump's campaign associates, and the outcome of the November 2016 election. However, if this is the case, then the strategy has backfired: public attention has been drawn more intensely to the allegations of Russian collusion than ever before, and the decision has raised an entirely new host of legal questions regarding presidential interference in the legal process. Yet despite all of the accusations of premeditation, the decision to fire Comey appears to have been a spur-of-the-moment decision, with little thought given to either its immediate or its long-term consequences.
Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of Comey's removal is that the White House, like Comey, did not know that it was happening. As a result, the initial reason that they gave for Comey's removal (that Trump had decided to remove Comey due to the latter's conduct in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server) was contradicted by the president only days later. In an interview with NBC's Lester Holt on Thursday, Trump stated, "I was going to fire Comey-my decision. There is no good time to do it, by the way. I was going to fire regardless of recommendation." Trump went to on to say, "this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should've won." He then went on to threaten Comey over Twitter on Friday, saying that he may have been taping his conversations in the White House, implied that is was unreasonable to expect his aides to tell the full truth every day, and suggested an end to the daily White House press briefing.
"It is bad if you are working in the White House and you have to watch TV to know what the president really thinks and really does," stated Joe Lockhart, former press secretary for President Clinton. Even a number of Trump's allies were shocked by the decision. Former New Hampshire Senator Republican Judd Gregg declared, "This was the worst-handled replacement of a public figure in my lifetime. There's a way you do things and this was not it. And the fact there's no one around Trump that had the gravitas to tell him is startling." The result of Comey's firing is that Trump has essentially squandered his presidential "honeymoon." Most presidents enjoy a maximum amount of influence in Congress during their post-inaugural months, when they have the highest approval ratings. If Trumps ratings (which are already low) continue to fall as a result of Comey's firing, he may lose the leverage that he needs in order to pass the legislation that he has promised his constituents.