Donald Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey has sent shock waves through the nation this week. And as I’ve observed the different reactions, I’ve seen two broad perspectives among Trump opponents, one more optimistic and one more pessimistic.
The optimists say this is the beginning of the end for Trump. The growing evidence of his campaign’s collusion with Russia plus his ham-fisted Nixonian attempt to thwart the investigation into that collusion are going to force him out one way or another. As progressive commentator Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks gleefully said, “He’s done.” The pessimists say that this move by Trump, this “little whiff of fascism” as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews put it, has brought us to a constitutional crisis that puts us in real danger of descending into authoritarian rule. As Jeffrey Toobin put it on CNN, “This is the kind of thing that goes on in non-democracies….This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is something that is completely outside how American law is supposed to work.” Or as Bill Moyers and Michael Winship said in an article published yesterday, “With each day [Trump] edges us closer to autocracy….He’s attempting a coup. No joke.” Continue reading “A hopeful realism”