James Comey’s Testimony Will Allow Everyone to Declare Victory and Change Almost Nothing
It is perfectly emblematic of this era of ridiculously short attention spans that, by the time former FBI Director James Comey testifies to the Senate Intelligence Committee, what he will say will mostly be “old news.” Thanks to previous leaks of key tidbits of information and today’s release of his opening statement, the news media has already gone through exhaustive analysis of what will happen on Thursday and there is a very strong likelihood that there will be no new bombshell revelations.
It seems to me that we also already know what the immediate outcome of Comey’s testimony will be: everyone will declare victory, everyone will feel justified in their previously held beliefs on this matter, and nothing will fundamentally change. The only real winners will be the cable news networks which will get a big audience for an entire day without even having to do any real work.
Make no mistake, in a sane world, what we already know about what Comey will say should be devastating news to a sitting President of the United States. There is just simply no getting around the reality that the evidence overwhelmingly points to President Trump trying to inappropriately influence the FBI Director regarding a very serious investigation which directly involved him, and then suddenly firing him when he didn’t get the type of “loyalty” from Comey which he apparently demanded.
Interestingly, I actually agree with those who say that each Trump action alleged by Comey could be legitimately interpreted as being the somewhat benign exploits of a clueless bull in a china shop, to which he was brand new and unfamiliar. Or, as Chris Christie might refer to it, “New York City talk.”
But here’s the key fact that Trump’s defenders are rather hilariously forgetting: yes, you can see Trump’s interaction with Comey as being in artful but harmless… UNTIL TRUMP FIRED COMEY!
This brazen and pretty much unprecedented act forces a rational person (those in the Trump Cult need not apply) to reinterpret everything Trump did here through a MUCH more cynical lens. This, of course, includes Comey himself who, very likely only fully realized how to construe Trump’s many attempts to pressure him, AFTER he got fired (which is why it is silly to claim that Comey is discredited for not coming forward with information BEFORE he was fired).
Now, it is certainly possible that in response to a question that Comey unleashes an extremely memorable and compelling indictment of Trump which really cuts through the media clutter and makes it clear to the tiny portion of open-minded people what is really going on here. However, I think that outcome is rather unlikely.
Barring an “Ah Ha!” moment like that, I now believe that, while Comey’s testimony is extremely important for the factual and legal record, but it will be largely irrelevant from a political perspective. We are simply living in an age when no one ever changes there mind about anything unless they are almost literally forced to do so, and it is hard to anticipate that actually happening here.
I fail to see how what Comey is likely to say can shatter the partisan concrete in which opinions on this matter are currently encased. Trump is already telling those close to him that he is vindicated by Comey’s testimony and the Republican Party laughably tweeted that there is nothing of substance to see here (it’s so good to know that there is now literally nothing short of murder on which they can credibly attack a top Democrat in the future).
Fox New and talk radio will inevitably focus on the fact that Trump was correct when he said that Comey told him that he was not personally under investigation (which, bizarrely, may have been the primary reason he fired Comey because it allowed him to get that information in the public domain) and that the probe was not, at least originally, criminal in nature. They will also seek to discredit Comey (the guy they recently praised for bringing down Hillary) as a “disgruntled former employee” who is rehashing “old news.”
I see Comey’s testimony as kind of like a movie which will suffer from having been proceeded by some really tremendous trailers which the media then over-hyped. By the time the movie finally comes out, there is nothing really good remaining that isn’t “old news” and it can never live up to the unrealistic expectations.
We now live in a political world so divided and a media universe so fragmented that, if an event isn’t “new” or shocking, it almost never moves the political needle. Even though Comey will have extremely rare unfiltered access to a huge audience, my guess is that nothing will force Trump’s adopted political party to abandon him, and therefore the immediate impact will be minimal, at best/worst.
At least for now.
John Ziegler hosts a weekly podcast focusing on news media issues and is documentary filmmaker. You can follow him on Twitter at @ZigManFreud or email him at johnz@mediaite.com
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
