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[Neonivek]

It appears that some of his base might be leaving him

That would be stunning if true. His voter base seems impossibly loyal.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

He deserved to be fired. Democrats have wanted his head since before the election. Now suddenly he's a martyr if you each the news...

It would have been fine if Trump had never taken him on, or had fired him another time. But a week after asking for funding for the investigation? Whether he deserved to be fired isn't really relevant, it's the clear motive Trump suddenly has to be rid of him.

[Reelya]

Yeah not sure the media can be called whining. When people of the level of Trump (e.g. presidential candiates or the president) do or say things equally notable as Trump they always get coverage. Trump just does it more.

Basically saying people should damp down on the Trump reporting would need a whole new approach to reporting than the traditional one. It's sort of a stretch to say that Trump says so many terrible things that we should raise the bar, but only for Trump, in terms of how terrible something needs to be to be newsworthy.

The problem is that that sort of "dynamic reporting" of terribleness would in fact hide how much more terrible Trump is than his opponents. e.g. if Trump said 400 terrible things per year and Jeb bush said 15 terrible things per year, then objectively Jeb Bush says less terrible things. But if we started to have a "quota" of how many terrible things we tell you about each candidate, then average joe is going to believe that both candidates are equally terrible, because the media self-censored coverage of most terrible Trump things.

And then we'd probably have the same people who are now complaining that Trump gets too much coverage, making the media complicit in his rise, but instead they'd be complaining that most of the terrible things Trump says and do get ignored by the media, making the media complicit in whitewashing exactly how bad Trump is.

[origamiscienceguy]

So, someone deserving to be fired means they shouldn't be fired as long as they are possibly a threat to their boss?

[misko27]

I understand (and appreciate) the need to keep calm with Trump, but it's a fine line to walk (which is something I don't think people respect currently). You can't allow him to normalize his behavior, otherwise, he'll just endlessly push the envelope and legitimize his actions by further acting outside of ethical norms. And at the same time, freaking out makes people sound shrill, and when Trump really does have the big criminal scandal we're all waiting to drop, people won't be able to tell the difference between one apocalyptic sounding message from another.

All I've heard about criticizing Trump comes down to "We need to be quiet" and "We need to be loud." Not much acknowledgment of the difficulties of "Can't let him do what he wants, but have to save some outrage for later."

Sort of like how the criticism of Comey. Yes Comey made a lot of mistakes, but I don't really know if Comey needed to be fired. Only one FBI director has ever been fired before; they have 10 year terms and that's it. Since Comey helped Trump, it does mean that people are going to look for different explanations than "I really don't like how Comey treated Hillary Clinton." And if there were none, maybe people would think "Ok, maybe Trump is doing the right thing." But Trump's not doing it for the reasons he said he was.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

So, someone deserving to be fired means they shouldn't be fired as long as they are possibly a threat to their boss?

You know that's not how it is. Trump had plenty of opportunity to fire him for what he says he fired him for. He didn't. Obama basically told him "yo, this dude is a malignant element", Trump didn't care. Comey served at the pleasure of the President, for months, in praise and without complaint until the very moment he made a move signifying the investigation was legitimate.

Then Trump drops him and replaces him with a relative greenhorn. Do you not see the corruption in that, even if Trump and his campaign are totally innocent? It 100% signifies the need for an independent prosecutor, at the very least.

[hector13]

So, someone deserving to be fired means they shouldn't be fired as long as they are possibly a threat to their boss?

It's like mafia... it's all well and good someone helped to lynch scum, but they're not much help to the town of they're the serial killer.

It's telling that Trump fired someone who deserved to be fired six months ago and didn't cite what they should've been fired for as a reason for firing them. Especially when he's being investigated by said person's agency, and said person allegedly asked for more resources for the investigation shortly before getting the boot.

[Neonivek]

Basically if Trump fired him shortly after being elected for... well... pulling what he did. Few would have questioned it. In fact it would have put a LOT of suspicion off of Trump since some people believed he colluded with the FBI at that time since it basically played right into the hands of the paranoia he was trying to instill at the time.

The fact that Trump does it months later after harassing the FBI for information about a supposed investigation into Trump (Something Trump isn't supposed to ask about), and then just happens to fire the Chief of the FBI during an investigation...

Or lets put it another way.

Trump doesn't believe for a second that Hillary Clinton wasn't horribly corrupt and the FBI was doing their job at the time and that Hillary "got away with it" in spite of the FBI's actions. Why would he fire the director for rightfully warning people about Hillary?

[smjjames]

So, someone deserving to be fired means they shouldn't be fired as long as they are possibly a threat to their boss?

You know that's not how it is. Trump had plenty of opportunity to fire him for what he says he fired him for. He didn't. Obama basically told him "yo, this dude is a malignant element", Trump didn't care. Comey served at the pleasure of the President, for months, in praise and without complaint until the very moment he made a move signifying the investigation was legitimate.

Then Trump drops him and replaces him with a relative greenhorn. Do you not see the corruption in that, even if Trump and his campaign are totally innocent? It 100% signifies the need for an independent prosecutor, at the very least.

He didn't replace Comey with a relative greenhorn, the new guy is just the acting director, which is how it's supposed to work. And the guy isn't new to the FBI, he's been there for like 20 years, he's only relatively new to the deputy position. Trump hasn't even chosen who is going to be the next director.

@Neonivek: Yeah, if he had done it shortly after the election, when the investigation hadn't yet risen to the tempo that it's at now, it likely wouldn't be quite such a big deal.

[muldrake]

I understand (and appreciate) the need to keep calm with Trump, but it's a fine line to walk (which is something I don't think people respect currently). You can't allow him to normalize his behavior, otherwise, he'll just endlessly push the envelope and legitimize his actions by further acting outside of ethical norms. And at the same time, freaking out makes people sound shrill, and when Trump really does have the big criminal scandal we're all waiting to drop, people won't be able to tell the difference between one apocalyptic sounding message from another.

My message on this isn't don't "be quiet."  It's keep your powder dry.  Let the outrage simmer, quietly.  Wait until you see the whites of their eyes.  Then fire.

Flipping shit about Trump doing something most of the people bitching about it have been demanding he do for months really blows some powder for no good reason, because even I can't take this seriously and I detest this guy.

[smjjames]

I understand (and appreciate) the need to keep calm with Trump, but it's a fine line to walk (which is something I don't think people respect currently). You can't allow him to normalize his behavior, otherwise, he'll just endlessly push the envelope and legitimize his actions by further acting outside of ethical norms. And at the same time, freaking out makes people sound shrill, and when Trump really does have the big criminal scandal we're all waiting to drop, people won't be able to tell the difference between one apocalyptic sounding message from another.

My message on this isn't don't "be quiet."  It's keep your powder dry.  Let the outrage simmer, quietly.  Wait until you see the whites of their eyes.  Then fire.

Flipping shit about Trump doing something most of the people bitching about it have been demanding he do for months really blows some powder for no good reason, because even I can't take this seriously and I detest this guy.

Kind of hard to keep the powder dry when there are so many targets and so often. I get the whole hypocrisy with Democrats crying foul over it, but the main thing that they are crying foul over isn't the firing, but the whole timing of it.

Can you think of a way for Trump to look good by firing Comey now? I seriously doubt it.

[muldrake]

Kind of hard to keep the powder dry when there are so many targets and so often.

Maybe, yeah.  But do it anyway.

Keep your powder dry doesn't mean never shoot.  It means choose the most effective time.

And throwing a gigantic tantrum when Trump does exactly what Democrats have been demanding for months is not an effective time.

It's just an invitation to outrage fatigue so that when the best moment arrives, all the ammo is spent.

He's not done yet.  He's going to do something unequivocally outrageous within a couple years, maybe a couple months, maybe tomorrow.  Wait until he does!

[Rusty Shackleford]

Trumps base never got tired of hearing about Clinton's or Obama's screw ups and spinning everything they did into conspiracy theories. Same thing happening now, just happens that the mainstream media is skewed left.

Only their style is less conspiracy theories and more feigned outrage at every dumb comment he says.

[origamiscienceguy]

If he did it right after the inaguration, literally everybody and their mother would cry foul. There is no time up to this point where him firing Comey would not have garnered this responce.

[sluissa]

To be fair, the non-fox news aligned media has kind of made a huge deal out of almost everything Trump's done since the election, starting with the fact that he took his family out for dinner after winning. Yes... they literally made a big deal out of him eating dinner with his family at a restaurant.

That said, Trump has done more than a few things which are news worthy... so it's not ALL ridiculous.