These are disquieting times. Donald Trump has been attacking the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ). The House Republicans on the Intelligence Committee have been breaking all the rules in order to prop up the president. Trump keeps slicing at America’s important governmental institutions, and people are worried.
Moderate Republicans have been announcing their retirement and falling like dominoes on a table. Then, the second in command at the FBI, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, stepped down in a surprise move.
It started after Trump fired then FBI director, James Comey, who was in Los Angeles speaking at a field office. The director found out when the announcement scrolled across the television behind him. At first, Comey thought it was a joke, but the president was dead serious.
As Trump watched TV, he saw Comey board the FBI plane and went into a rage, reported NBC News. He called up McCabe and demanded to know why the newly fired director was taking the government’s jet back to D.C. The FBI, like the military, does not abandon members in the field, but always get them back home.
McCabe told the president he was not asked to authorize the flight, but he would have approved it, had that happened. Trump went silent, then he told McCabe to ask his wife how it feels to be a loser. This was a cruel reference to her failed bid for a Virginia state office in 2015.
McCabe answered:
‘OK, sir’
Trump hung up on him.
MSNBC security analyst and former FBI special agent, Clint Watts, was incensed about how Trump fired former FBI director, James Comey, and he said:
‘A real man would fire him to his face….it’s cowardice.’
With things in such turmoil, it is important to have a steadying hand. Former acting attorney general, Sally Yates, was that much-needed hand. She tweeted:
‘Despite relentless attacks on our democratic institutions and norms, our resilience has kept our country strong. But we will remain so only if we strive to live up to the American values that make us who we are. We’re better than this.’
Trump fired Yates after she warned him that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
Thank you, Sally Yates.
Featured Image via Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla.
