Conservative media reacts to the firing of James Comey.

Today in Conservative Media: Three Takes on the Firing of James Comey

Today in Conservative Media: Three Takes on the Firing of James Comey

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May 10 2017 5:55 PM

Today in Conservative Media: Three Takes on the Firing of James Comey

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James Comey testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee during an oversight hearing on the FBI on Capitol Hill on May 3 in Washington.

Eric Thayer/Getty Images

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A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

After news broke on Tuesday that President Donald Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey, conservative media concluded almost in unison that Comey deserved to be fired. Some, however, questioned the handling of his ouster. Here are the three most prominent strains of reaction:

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1. It’s About Time

Many conservative pundits embraced the idea that Comey should have been fired long ago. In his opening monologue, Sean Hannity called Comey a “national embarrassment” and said he was “very lucky that President Trump kept him around this long.” Key among the former director’s offenses was his failure to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her email server (even though the White House’s ostensible explanation for Comey’s firing was that he was too hard on Clinton) and the supposed misdeeds of her foundation:

Appearing on Hannity’s show later, Laura Ingraham wondered why Trump hadn’t fired Comey from the get-go. “By the end, no one trusted him. So, it was about time that the Justice Department recommended his removal,” she said.

This attitude was widespread on Fox News on Tuesday evening, but it also made an appearance in other conservative publications. In the Federalist, Ben Domenech wrote, “He should’ve been fired months ago,” while conceding that Trump may have been right to wait, since he’s currently in a stronger political position than he was at the height of his transition.

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2. The Timing Is a Little Odd

Agreeing with their right-wing peers, National Review’s editors argued that there were plenty of reasons to fire Comey: “One way or the other, he needed to go.” Nevertheless, they acknowledged that there might be reason to question the Trump administration’s handling of the firing, given the FBI’s ongoing investigation of ties between the president’s campaign and Russia:

Press reports suggests that Trump was angry about the Russian probe, Comey’s ubiquity in the media, and the FBI director’s refusal to make a statement exonerating him. If true, none of this speaks well of Trump. Politically, the firing obviously isn’t going to tamp down the Russian controversy, but intensify it. As will the White House’s typically shambolic handling of the dismissal.

Also in National Review, David French took an even stronger stance with his article “Donald Trump Was Wrong to Fire James Comey.” Though he disagreed with those who hold that we are now in a constitutional crisis, French wrote that the firing “compounds Trump’s pre-existing trust problem.” By firing Comey, the president had, French concluded, “made the decisive case for a truly independent investigation [of the possible Russia connection]. May it commence with all deliberate speed.”

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In an opinion piece for the Daily Caller, former New Hampshire Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Horn similarly proposed that Trump should have announced an independent investigation before firing Comey to “show he is not a creature of Washington.” Though she admitted the president was “unlikely” to do so now, she proposed that it would be a powerful opportunity to substantiate “the perception among his supporters that, whatever his weaknesses, he is his own man, uncorrupted by outside influence.”

3. Trump Just Did What the Democrats Wanted

Many conservative outlets scolded Democrats for expressing anger and shock at the firing, since they had supposedly longed for the same thing over much of the last year. “President Trump did exactly what Democratic party leaders wanted,” the Daily Caller wrote before rounding up statements from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and others. (Though some of those politicians called for the then FBI director to resign or recuse himself, none of the quotations in the post used the word “fire.”)

In “James Comey’s Democrat Critics Now See Russian Conspiracy in Trump’s Firing,” Breitbart called attention to other criticisms of Comey from the left, especially from figures attached to the Clinton campaign. The Federalist also took this angle in “6 Quick Takeaways From Trump’s Firing Of FBI Director Comey.” It wrote, “For months, then, Democrats have been saying they lost confidence in Comey, felt he had violated the Hatch Act, and should be fired.”

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Others, including Heat Street, suggested that Trump was just acting on a playbook established by former President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Posts alleging Democratic hypocrisy also performed well on Facebook: