Firing Comey and Trump as Solipsism

In his letter firing James Comey, now former Director of the FBI, Trump once again displayed the completely self-centered world that he inhabits. The second paragraph in this thankfully short letter reads:

While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.

Meanwhile just last week Comey told a Congressional committee that in fact the FBI is investigating Trump’s campaign for possible connections to Russian hackers and social media thugs. But, for Trump, that has nothing to do with him. In his letter firing Comey Trump feels compelled to point out that he is not being investigated. Three times repeated even. The obvious conclusion that he wants drawn is that he is off the hook no matter what deeds were done by his staff to get him elected.

Sounds like Nixon in 1973. Others have drawn the obvious and valid connections to Nixon’s firing his Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General and then the Special Prosecutor (an incident known as the Saturday Night Massacre) in his defiance over a subpoena  to release tapes of his conversations. Later, these conversations, minus the Rose Mary Woods deletions, ((See here for the Rose Mary Stretch towards the bottom of the entry.)) demonstrated that he had been at the center of the whole campaign to disrupt the Democrat’s election campaign.

I recall this:

“I am not a crook”

In the midst of the Watergate debacle Nixon said:

I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service — I earned every cent. “And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got. ((https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/nov-17-1973-nixon-declares-i-am-not-a-crook/))

When the dust settled a year later Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment.  A number of Nixon’s aides, his Attorney General and others were forced out of their positions, some did jail time, because of the crimes they committed to keep Nixon in the White House.