Thread by @AlexandraErin

I don't care to try to parse out what the worst is, but him firing Comey and bragging about why he did it should have been enough for the country and for Congress.

https://twitter.com/epicciuto/status/1349764629199790085

And you know, just yesterday I told Comey to shut up forever and I meant it. I don't say this because I'm a fan of Comey. Comey *should* have faced more consequences than he did.

The right loves to play the game of "Oh you all hated Comey until Trump fired him and now you think he's an angel who could do no wrong." Nah. Fire Comey and Trump both.

But if two crooks meet up back at the hideout and one puts a knife in the other's back, that doesn't mean the other crook is no longer innocent. It means they're both crooks and one is also a murderer.

Both Comey and Trump are responsible for egregious misconduct relating to the 2016 election. Trump is also responsible for firing Comey in order to protect his ill-gained political power from perceived disloyalty.

And it wasn't even that Comey had crossed him or threatened him! His disloyalty was indicating that he intended to keep doing his job without pledging personal loyalty. That should have been a warning to other Trump loyalists.

Lindsey Graham, Mike Pence, Brian Kemp, and Rudy Giuliani are all learning the limits of the strategy of kissing up to Trump. You literally can't keep him happy, and if he's unhappy, it has to be someone else's fault. Sooner or later it's going to be you.

If you don't have the power to make his every wish a reality, Trump will perceive you as a traitor. And if you do have that power... sooner or later he'd wish for something and not like how it turned out, and that's your fault.

Trump is several brands of classic Bad Boss wrapped up in one, and this was known before the 2016 election. When people talked about "Oh, loyalty comes first with Trump," all the stories were about one-way street loyalty to him.

And the thing about Comey is, I think he probably would've bent over backwards to carry water for Trump because he'll bend over backwards to acknowledge the magnitude of what he did in 2016.

He just didn't want to have to give up his personal illusions.

He would have been happy as a clam to pretend that Trump was a normal president doing normal things, maybe even good things, and not a disaster for the country at all, as long as he was allowed to say "I'm an FBI man, I work for the FBI on behalf of the people."

But Donald Trump needed to hear Comey say "I belong to you. I work for you. I'm loyal to you.", because he needs that from everyone and because Comey in particular had helped put him in office, which implied he had power over Trump.

...I never made this explicit connection in my head, but it just hit me that the reason Donald Trump has been casting around to find the person or entity who could decide he's going to be the next president is that he had a guy like that in 2016.

Granted that Comey's interference happened *before* election day and it was no more determinative than Los Angele and NYC's votes are determinative of the popular vote winner. It took a *lot* of interference to put him into the White House.

But Trump had definitely heard both parties' conclusions that the Comey letter put him over the top, which meant that Comey was the one who decided he was going to be president, which meant he needed to be controlled or removed.

And since his 2016 campaign was saved at the last possible moment by One Weird Trick involving someone using his personal discretion to tip it, he's kept looking for that person and that trick long past the last possible moment this year.