I believe with a near certainty that James Comey's terrible and unprofessional decision to insert himself into the presidential race in late October is why we currently have a kleptocratic narcissist in the White House. The race was too close and the math is too sound to suggest anything different. Maybe it shouldn't have been close enough for it to matter, but Clinton had close to a 6 point lead before the letter, she finished with just under a 3 point win in the popular vote and lost three critical states by a combined vote total of less that 100,000 votes.
Comey gave us Trump.
However, his firing means that the last marginally independent investigation - outside of the press - into Trump's Russian connections and the various venal and self-serving enterprises of the gang of grifters currently running this country is now kaput.
Republicans have repeated time and time again that when faced with a choice between party loyalty or the good of the country, they will choose party loyalty. Unless John Cassidy, Susan Murkowski and Susan Collins can hang tough, the Senate will pass the American Shitburger Act of 2017 and strip health insurance from 24,000,000+ Americans. And now, the last best defender of any investigation into Trump's web of lies and nefarious connections to Russia is gone. Trump will appoint some clownishly evil mandarin - my money's on Rudy Giuliani - to run the FBI and shield Trump from further scrutiny. As Charlie Pierce notes, it's not even subtle what they are doing here.
In a functioning America, Comey should have been fired months ago. For those who hate him for saddling us with Trump, I fear we are going to miss him in a few months, when the FBI and DOJ decides to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her emails, while the Washington Post's reports of graft and foreign influence go Scot free.
Sorry, this really has me freaked out a little. This is clumsy tinpot dictator territory.
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