Donald Trump is a corrupt force that corrupts everything and everyone around him.
So opines former FBI Director James Comey in an op-ed Wednesday in the New York Times.
And Trump’s corrosive nature is so potent, Comey writes, it can eat away at the most “accomplished people,” referencing current Attorney General William “Bill” Barr and outgoing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Trump, Comey writes, “eats your soul in small bites.”
Comey’s comments come as Barr is being grilled by congressional lawmakers as to how he came to the conclusion that Trump did no wrong after reading the special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Comey of late has taken his own licks, as it were, from the left for the part he played in getting Trump elected to the Oval Office, and from the right as a continued foil for Trump and the president’s take that federal law enforcement set out to stage a “coup.”
But in his op-ed for The Times, Comey said it was Trump loyalists like Barr and, in the end, Rosenstein, who were lacking “inner strength.” Comey praised folks like former Trump Defense Secretary James Mattis, who, as Comey put it, “resigned over principle” rather than stay under Trump’s spell.
Comey said that is the only explanation for how Barr could have explained away clear evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Trump after the release of the Mueller report. He said it was the only way Rosenstein could have written those words of praise for Trump he included in his resignation letter despite how deplorably Trump had treated him and the dedicated agents of the Justice Department Rosenstein led.
Saying of Trump that, “Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them,” Comey added:
Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.
Comey writes that every decision among Trump’s circle to stay silent in the face of Trump’s “lies” is to be complicit, adding:
“Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts, or delusions.”
And over time, Comey says, even people with the best intentions become “lost” as Donald Trump “has eaten your soul.”
No matter how one may view Comey and his actions during and following the 2016 election, given the numerous whoppers Trump has told over the two years he’s presided over the nation, where’s the lie?