Congress, Criminal law, Lawyering, Politics

Trump Calls Comey “Cowardly” As Polls Show Public Believes Comey

440px-Comey-FBI-Portraitdonald_trump_president-elect_portrait_croppedPresident Donald Trump lashed out at James Comey on the weekend and called him “cowardly.”  It was the latest impolitic tweet and it does not appear to be working well for Trump.  A new poll shows that the public overwhelmingly believe Comey over Trump by a twenty percent margin.  In a truly sad state of affairs if accurate, only 26 percent on the You.Gov/Huff Post poll believes the President. For the moment, Trump may view Comey as “cowardly” but the public views him credible.  The poll tracks another poll by Gallup showing the President’s popularity at 38 percent — though, as I mentioned earlier, Trump has been slightly ahead of Bill Clinton at this point in this presidency.

The polls shows 46 percent of Americans say Comey is more honest and trustworthy than the president. Twenty-six percent found Trump more trustworthy than Comey.

The tweets are not helping on the Hill either.  Republican members have been relatively quiet in defense of the President and have been openly asking him to stop with the tweets.  The message does not appear to be getting through to the Oval Office.  Trump ramped up his tweets on the weekend:

“I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal? Very ‘cowardly!’”

I have been critical of both Trump and Comey.  I felt that the recent hearing both helped and hurt Comey.  I do not think that it materially made the President’s case stronger in terms of any obstruction prosecution.  However, these tweets are legally and politically damaging.

What do you think?

55 thoughts on “Trump Calls Comey “Cowardly” As Polls Show Public Believes Comey”

  2. “You.Gov/Huff Post poll ”

    JT. Just stop. You are embarrassing yourself.

  3. Perhaps the reason why most people believe Comey and not Trump is that Comey has laid himself bare, admitted to shortcomings, regrets, ‘leaks’, etc. Trump has been proven by his own words and actions to be the world’s consummate liar and oligarch. Trump is Trump through wealth, privilege, and connections to the mega wealthy, an oligarch of the most supreme and blatant sort, and he presents himself as the hero from outside who will fix all this, as only he can. Who would you believe? If it walks like scum, talks like scum, and acts like scum; it very well might just be scum.

  4. Kind of stupid to have a poll on, “Who do you believe?” It should be on the what not the who. In this case the what is a “hint” of obstruction of justice faintly suggested by Comey, which is not enough to make any judgement on. In other words this is a poll on nothing of substance, which may be expected from the Huff Post.

    Meanwhile the democrats have a dug a hole for themselves. They have whipped up their base into a crazed, drooling, blood thirsty mob for impeachment, when they know they have no basis or possible path for impeachment. No idea what the mob will do when it dawns on them their impeachment blood-lust is not to be satisfied. My guess they turn on their own, kind of like what happened at Evergreen university where maybe the most liberal University in the U.S. is accusing itself of being blatant racists.

  5. A “Polack” is a Pole or one of Polish descent. It is also a word used to belittle Poles. But nothing belittles a Polack more than calling them Polls. A pole is a pole.

  7. I am so tired of this Washington dog and pony show. No way Trump will be impeached given political make up of Congress. We do not even know the real reasons for the firing of Comey or his reasons of implicating Trump for obstruction. This is all DC political theatre. I suspect the real reasons are over money. What motivates DC scum to play games most of the time IMO. I suspect Comey’s firing was over his influence on the contract for the new FBI headquarters. I have read this is a 2 billion dollar contract that includes building a new campus and the sale of the old location in central DC across the street from the new Trump hotel. For some strange reason and the elimination of many potential bidders they are wrapping the two properties into one package deal. I am speculating that Trump is very interested in who is awarded this contract. His good friend Larry Silverstein is part of one of the parties bidding. Trump was reported interested in making a bid himself before obtaining the Presidency. This is just wild speculation on my part, but probably has a better chance of accuracy than what we will get from our mainstream news covering the DC political theater.

  8. I don’t have any issues with Comey leaking the memo to the NY Times. Trump fired him and he wanted revenge. It’s a perfectly normal reaction, and Trump should have expected it.

  9. Polls? It’s funny or intentional that anyone would base their view on the same polls which placed Hillary as the overwhelming winner of the Presidential election. It’s a joke. Comey is a joke, a criminal, a perjurer and a coward. His non-existent memos were the prelude to his 10 million dollar book deal. They also reflect verbatim what he wrote in regards to President Bush. The polls are wrong, Comey was wrong and you Sir, are wrong.

    1. They claimed Hillary was the overwhelming winner before Comey ran his mouth.

  10. I don’t think the Tweets hurt. I would have worded them differently, to wit:

    The Head of the FBI admits leaking documents! Mindblowing, and completely unprofessional!

    or,

    Comey admits abetting Democratic Attorney General help Hillary, the Democratic Party candidate??? I thought the FBI was “above politics”???

    or

    Sooo, Comey wrote some memos, and now he doesn’t have them??? What, did the Russians eat them???

    Sarcastic and snarky stuff like that.

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

    1. Squeeky,,,,
      -I think that Trump’s tweets have caused him problems.
      For example, if Trump had fired Comey in the first weeks of his presidency, and for the reasons given in the Rod Rosenstein letter, I don’t think we’d have seen the appointment of a special counsel.
      By waiting for 4 months, then tweeting and commenting “I was going to fire Comey anyway” because of the “Trump Russia made-up story”, he undercut the reasons for termination that Rosenstein has just laid out.
      I think Rosenstein decided at that point ( of the Trump tweets and comments) to appoint a special counsel, and that he would have done so whether Comey had leaked the memos or not.

  11. Comey is a classic example of the corruption that pervades Washington. I hear he got a $10,000,000 book deal offer to tell all. The Washington swamp is deep and full of corrupt creatures. Case closed!

  12. Both the North Poll and the South Poll have cars with flat tires, due to the Poll Tacks. Santa will have to retire.

  14. On Nov. 7, 2016, Huffington Post reported that Hillary Clinton had “a 98.2%” probability of winning the Nov. 8 election.
    It saw “no path” for an electoral college victory by Trump, and opined that the Democrats had a very good chance of retaking the Senate.
    I don’t know if HuffPuff drew these conclusions based on polling, guesses, or advice from the Physics’ Hotline.
    But HuffPuff’s election predictions give an indication of how accurate and objection their version of “journalism” is.

    2. tnash

      Regardless of all that and everything else that comes from the side one happens to be on, Comey laid all his cards out, face up, on the table, for all to see. Trump is still in hiding, primarily behind the chaos that his pervasive lying has created. It is what it is, not how it’s spun. Trump has lied openly and with proof, hundreds of times.

      1. Lie of omission? Comey knew Hillary WAS under criminal investigation and ‘queasily’ agreed to call it a ‘matter’ to mislead people and help Hillary. Lynch asked him to lie and he did so. Comey knew Trump was NOT under criminal investigation and allowed the lying media to keep misleading people into believing Trump WAS under criminal investigation when he was not. Trump asked him to tell the truth and he refused and went on to leak to the press. Comey testified that he didn’t remember getting any guidance about Sessions’ recusal when in fact he received a memo, that he read, but forgot about during his testimony? That’s called lying by omission. That’s called having a selective memory. That’s called being slimy.

      2. Isaac,…
        – Regardless of all that, your “lesser of two evils” liar lost.
        Even with Hillary’s “98.2% probability of winning”, as published by the Huffington Post the day before the election.
        And Comey “laid all his cards out” 12 days before the election in announcing the reopening of the the Hillary email “matter”.
        That actually wasn’t viewed as a positive step by most Democrats, but his popularity among Democrats has skyrocketed since he got fired.

  15. “26 percent found Trump more trustworthy than Comey.”

    “just fifteen percent of those polled believed Trump’s account of events.”

    Looks like a fairly big chunk of Trump supporters have an impressive ability to hold two completely contradictory thoughts in their heads at the same time, and believe both of them.

  16. I don’t even understand the relevance of polls to this topic… comey in my world is such a low life form that I find it amazing that a college professor will write this heading of a blog . No wonder university students these days need safe spaces

  17. Absolutely BS. Anyone that believes Comey is either ignorant or living under a rock. Comey should go to jail. But the deep state will not allow that. If it was me lying, I would be gone !! Sad for my Country.

    1. Absolutely BS. Anyone that believes Trump is either ignorant or living under a rock. Trump should go to jail. But the Republicans will not allow that. If it was me lying, I would be gone !! Sad for my Country.

  18. Trump has a bad habit of knee-jerk reactions. Perhaps it’s a good lesson for us all to follow: Don’t tweet when you’re angry.

    That said, Comey has no credibility:

    1/ He’s a long-standing Clinton acolyte;
    2/ He obstructed justice by aiding-and-abetting Hillary who should have been indicted in EmailGate;
    3/ He put his career ahead of duty by failing (so we’re led to believe) to go to Obama and report AG Loretta Lynch’s obstruction of justice in her protecting Hillary from indictment, because allegedly Bill Clinton promised her that Hillary would recommend her for a position on the US Supreme Court.

    The Deep State oligarchy has been pushing Comey’s narrative as though USIntel should be treated like a religious experience. We’re supposed to Worship At The Altar of Comey/Mueller, although US History & Recent History shows that we should be very wary of what our US Intel “leaks” to a gullible public via a corrupt MSM propaganda-machine.

    Recall that during Vietnam, Iran-Contra, the Iraq War debacle using the WMDs which was mass deception. Now RussiaGate is regurgitated over and over and over again, so that we don’t ask unpleasant questions regarding why Obama & Hillary aren’t held accountable for: 1/ illegal drone assassinations of civilians; 2/ Pay 2 Play deals for donations with foreign regimes that would make Caligula drool; 3/ illegal spy spying by the NSA on American citizens–and that’s just the tip-of-the-iceberg. Obama turned a blind-eye while Hillary & the Democratic National Committee carried out a massive election-rigging scam in which election fraud undermined our democracy. Bernie would have won.

    Comey is hiding a lot. For the FBI/CIA Deep State knew about all of the corruption. He knew & did nothing about all of the corruption. He wanted to keep his job. As bumbling, vulgar & crude as he is, Trump has found that the D.C. snake-pit makes the brutish dog-eat-dog work of Business pales by comparison. I’m not suggesting that Trump had any noble intentions–I oppose his destructive policies on Health Care, Tax Cuts for the Rich, Repeal of the Estate Tax benefiting the Top 1%; pulling us out of the Paris Agreement, etc.–but I do not believe that he is a Russia agent.

    RussiaGate was devised to: 1/ avenge Hillary’s loss: the Deep State Oligarchy who serves the Military Industrial Complex wanted her; 2/ avenge Hillary’s crimes: there is much in her deleted emails that would sink a lot of little boats in D.C. along with the Clinton’s yacht; 3/ to cover-up the Clintons’ crimes: the Clinton Foundation was an extortion-racket by which money was laundered to pay-off D.C. & foreign acolytes in return for favours. I suspect that some of them are still wandering around the Pentagon & Langley.

    We’re in a mess. Pity that Trump lacks the wit to see what he’s up against– not for his sake– but for ours. We the People have a serious problem–and it’s not Trump– it’s what the Bush & Clinton mafias and later Obama have done to our government.

    2. Gadfly re: “We’re in a mess. Pity that Trump lacks the wit to see what he’s up against– not for his sake– but for ours. We the People have a serious problem–and it’s not Trump– it’s what the Bush & Clinton mafias and later Obama have done to our government.”

      Amen!!

  19. “What do you think?”

    I view the objectivity of polls sponsored by The Huffington Post with skepticism.

    1. YouGov is the pollster that just nailed the UK election results.

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