WILLINGBORO, N.J. — President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey is emerging as a new flashpoint for liberal activism that could fuel Democratic turnout in 2018.
Energized progressives packed a town hall meeting here Wednesday evening to give Rep. Tom MacArthur an angry earful for supporting the Republican healthcare proposal to partially repeal Obamacare that he played a key role in pushing through the House.
They ended up spending half the evening fixating on Trump’s removal of Comey from atop the FBI, and Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Sometimes heckling MacArthur, they demanded the congressman take action to prevent Trump from quashing an FBI investigation into Russian meddling that could implicate the president and his campaign.
“On Russia,” said Kimberly Stewart, a town hall-goer from Willingboro. “We seem to have a pattern that people who are investigating it seem to be getting fired.” She went on to ask MacArthur if he supports the appointment of an independent prosecutor to take over the inquiry.
MacArthur said he doesn’t and is satisfied that the House and Senate intelligence committees can conduct a proper investigation. His Southern New Jersey 3rd District leans Republican, but he chose to hold his town hall in a Democratic stronghold.
“These people, I think, hate the president, and there’s a deep, deep distrust of everything that comes out of this administration,” MacArthur said in an interview Thursday, of his liberal constituents.
Washington has been obsessed with Trump’s decision, executed Tuesday, to remove Comey as FBI director. The White House has helped fuel this obsession, partly because it keeps shifting its explanation and justification for the move.
On Thursday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders insisted the contradictions were media-generated fiction. Then she fed the controversy by pointedly disputing Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s claim that Comey had broad support inside the FBI; Sanders said he did not.
Voters often care a lot less about Beltway controversies than do the media and political figures in the Acela corridor. But this issue appears to be resonating on the Left.
Registered Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton said in interviews as they exited MacArthur’s town hall that Trump’s firing of Comey mattered to them. Indeed, they said it now rivals their opposition to the American Health Care Act as a political priority that is motivating them to get active.
“I understand that the meeting today — that there’s still a lot of frustration on healthcare. Certainly, I am frustrated,” said Lin Hamilton, 72, of Marlton, N.J. “But I think in terms of the long-term survival of the country, the Russian influence is more important.”
The midterm elections are still a year and a half away.
But there are signs opposition to Trump is energizing Democrats. Fundraising is brisk, and candidate recruitment is going well. Political forecasters rate the special election runoff for a vacant, GOP-leaning Georgia House seat a toss-up.
Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic strategist, sees Comey as all upside for Democrats. It’s not just that it raises the specter of corruption, he said. The chaotic way Trump handled the firing will help Democrats make a case against the president on the grounds of incompetence.
“This is kind of thing that turns independents off and motivates Democrats,” Mollineau said. “His base is going to stay with him, but you don’t’ grow your base with actions like this.”
Daily Kos, the premier online community for liberal activists, hasn’t run a program to raise money off of Comey’s firing. But the website confirmed that it raised $37,000 in small-dollar email donations on Wednesday, the day after Comey was let go. That’s nearly five times Daily Kos’ average daily take since Trump was elected when the organization is not running a fundraising program, such as last week’s to raise money off of the GOP healthcare bill that brought in nearly $2 million.
The Justice Department, in detailing the justification to dismiss Comey in a memo for Trump, cited his mishandling of the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
Comey overstepped, the memo said, when he held a news conference last July criticizing Clinton’s use of a private server, even as he announced it wasn’t criminal. Comey additionally erred when he told Congress just before Election Day that the FBI was re-examining the case.
Democrats have previously said that Comey’s actions unfairly prejudiced the voters against Clinton, and many have called for his firing. Republicans have responded to Democratic protests over Comey’s firing with charges of hypocrisy.
But Democrats here said there’s nothing hypocritical, or illogical, about criticizing Trump for firing Comey even though they believed that he earned his pink slip for his role in the Clinton investigation.
“I think Jim Comey deserved to be fired over that incident because he didn’t handle it properly. I don’t believe for one second that Donald Trump fired him for that reason,” Janis Hines, another town hall attendee, said. “He fired him because, I think, he was getting close to the truth. There’s something rotten in that whole White House.”
