Conservative author Charles Krauthammer declared Thursday a bad day for both President Trump and fired FBI Director James Comey.
“It was not a good day for Donald Trump or for Jim Comey,” Krauthammer told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday evening, hours after Comey’s hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The right-leaning pundit said Trump’s reputation was “diminished” because Comey testified that some statements the president had made were untrue.
“These are small things, but nonetheless, being called a liar has an effect,” Krauthammer said. However, Comey also hurt himself by using the word “cowardly” to discuss how he handled Trump allegedly pressuring him to end a probe into former national security adviser Mike Flynn.
Krauthammer also knocked Comey for failing to act when Trump made statements that made him uncomfortable.
“If you are being pressured on the Flynn issue, and you felt improper pressure and what the Democrats would call obstruction of justice, why did you do nothing? Why did you not say to the president, ‘you’re not supposed to do this?’ Why didn’t you offer your resignation? Why did he not go to the attorney general? Why did you not go to Congress?” Krauthammer added.
Krauthammer said he was most troubled with Comey’s decision to leak information through a Columbia professor, which he revealed Thursday, but not any that showed Trump was not personally under FBI investigation.
“He said, because had I done that, I would have encountered the duty to change, the duty to revise what I had done the way I had with Hillary. Remember, he exonerated her at first, and then he had to come back on October 27th,” Krauthammer said. “But if you are acting as Comey is saying — that the rationale is because you are trying to protect Trump from a future event where Comey would have to contradict himself … why not offer him the damn choice?”
