Comey’s Firing and the Delicate Sensibilities of Senator Schumer
Comey Fired! The Left positively livid! Especially that smooth-talking hypocrite, Senator Chuck Schumer. Trump should have fired Comey sooner, he avers. Maybe the day Schumer called for Comey to be fired? We know Schumer would have still found fault.
The talking heads tell us how in the past the White House had an orderly process for handling things like this; only that dastardly Nixon ever did something so outrageous as fire someone with so little warning. But do you really think Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor hired to investigate the Watergate Scandal, was shocked that Richard Nixon went after his job? When people say “Nixonian” they forget what Nixon did wrong in the Watergate Scandal – he wasn’t covering up anything he did, he was trying to cover up the misdeeds of his friends.
Who in DC today defends their friends? Wait, I know the answer: Democrats. They defend every job, every person, no matter what they have done because they are a team. Republicans belong to a society of individualists, a nice way of saying our side is filled with people too conservative to take any risks for anybody. To be fair to my fellow Republicans, we have proper concerns about defending those who are actually guilty; however, the guys in the beltway rarely take the time to find out who is and who isn’t guilty. Fire first, find out later. Trump took his time firing Comey.
But if the Nixon White House wasn’t perfect, let me tell you about the Clinton White House. After Whitewater, Travelgate and Vince Foster, but before Monica, a midterm election occurred putting the Republicans back in charge of the House of Representatives for the first time in almost 50 years. The shock was much like the one we saw last November 8th. The Democrats expected to win and were furious that they lost. The new Speaker of the House was destined to be Newt Gingrich - much loved by conservative Republicans; despised by Democrats. Gingrich appointed me House Historian.
I was hired by that new Speaker, who just happened to be my congressman, and I had no reason to think he would fire me from the rather obscure, but important job of House Historian. How could I have anticipated that I would be fired after less than a week, and in the late hours of the night -- an hour or so after Schumer had demanded it.
Piecing together what happened, with the help of friendly reporters (the Speaker had a lot of enemies), someone (maybe in his inner circle) informed the White House that Newt Gingrich had hired a professor (me) who had once criticized a grant proposal for Holocaust education in middle schools. Since she was from the South, and she’d been hired by him, her reason for criticizing the proposal had to be because she was an anti-Semite. Some New York papers called me “Newt’s Nazi historian.”
On the Monday after the new Congress was sworn in, George Stephanopoulos informed Jewish, black, and female Democrat members of Congress that the Gingrich appointee to the House Historian job was an anti-Semite. There were one-minute speeches before the opening of the Congress; Schumer and Barney Frank had a rally on the House steps that night to demand my firing. Schumer yelled that hiring me was an insult to tens of thousands of his constituents who were Holocaust survivors.
About 9:00 p.m., Newt talked with the press – I don’t think he knew what to say; he told half of them I’d been fired and the other half that I had resigned. Asked by Atlanta Journal and Constitution reporter Jeanne Cummings exactly how he had informed me, she was told I was fired on my answering machine. The truth was this: I was not fired and I did not resign – instead I tried to persuade Newt that letting the Left bully him was a bad way to start his Speakership. He never said to me that I was fired, but dozens of reporters had heard him say it. My husband flew to Georgia, to talk to him privately in his Marietta Office. He should have listened to us.
This all happened only days after Newt Gingrich had praised my qualifications on National Television; the day after he fired me he said, “I hold her in high esteem.”
I was utterly caught by surprise and Mr. Schumer can take a lot of the credit, and in fact, he did. He was not fair; he didn’t make sure the timing was right or that I was informed about what was coming. No one, except a couple of reporters, who could hardly be heard above the pack on my front lawn, thought to find out the truth.
But the Beltway Left didn’t bother to investigate the charges, it was enough that I’d been hired by their nemesis, Newt Gingrich. As his first hire, I was fair game even if I was so far from being an anti-Semite that I was eventually defended by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
Later, Newt’s press secretary would brag that mine was the fastest firing in history. My picture was on CNN every 15 minutes all night long, and my name was in every newspaper in the country Tuesday morning, January 10th.
This all happened only days after Newt Gingrich had praised my qualifications on National Television; the day after he fired me he said, “I hold her in high esteem.”
Mr. Comey reportedly has a net worth in excess of 11 million dollars – $10,894,000 more than I had when I was fired. I sure wish Chuck Schumer and the other breathless defenders of James Comey, who are complaining about the timing, the means, the lack of notice, etc., had cared about the way I was treated. But no.
This is what Schumer said to me, in front of his entire staff, including his Chief of staff, Anthony Wiener: “We knew you weren’t anti-Semitic, but hey, your people did not defend you.”
Unfortunately, the Right usually bows to the bullying; but not Donald J. Trump. Many Republicans accuse him of not being conservative, but he sure is courageous. Anyone who fights back against the bullies is going to offend the Left. The Schumers and their ilk have been bullying the Right for so long, they both think it’s natural.
When a leader stands up to bullies, you know what happens? Others find their courage as well. The District of Columbia is going to be a better place for conservatives, whether they like Trump or not, whether Trump is a conservative or not. But if conservatives don’t start to warm to him, then we really are as stupid as the Left says we are.
Three cheers for Donald J. Trump, draining the swamp to make America great again.