OPINION:
The media went a little bonkers Thursday with James Comey’s revelation that President Donald Trump wanted him to get to the bottom of the so-called “Pee Tape” to comfort First Lady Melania Trump:
“He brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’ . . . adding that it bothered him if there was ‘even a 1 percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true,” Comey writes in “A Higher Loyalty.”
“He just rolled on, unprompted, explaining why it couldn’t possibly be true, ending by saying he was thinking of asking me to investigate the allegation to prove it was a lie. I said it was up to him.”
Comey says the conversation took place at a private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, days after the publication of an intelligence dossier alleging the Kremlin had a tape of Trump in 2013 paying prostitutes to perform the dirty deed on a bed in a Moscow Ritz-Carlton suite once occupied by President Barack Obama.
Lost in the breathless reporting over the former FBI Director’s assertion that Trump asked him to investigate the most salacious items in the political propaganda package known as the “Russian Dossier” is a basic logical question: Why would Trump unleash the full police power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the golden shower story if there was even the slightest chance it was true?
It makes no logical sense. One keeps hearing from the smart-set in The Swamp that the president doesn’t behave like an innocent man. That he protests too much. That if he were not guilty, he should start behaving like it.
Isn’t this one of the clearest demonstrations of Trump’s innocence? Here he is talking to the Director of the FBI and he implores him to investigate an allegation so that it can be proved to be a lie. Obviously, if Trump knew the story was legitimate, the last thing he would want is for the FBI to start investigating it.
Even Comey doesn’t seem able to connect these basic dots. In his much-hyped interview with former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos on ABC News, Comey openly speculates on the veracity of the golden shower episode:
“I said … ‘I’m not saying that I believe the allegations, I’m not saying that I credit it,’” Comey said he told Trump. “I never said, ‘I don’t believe it,’ because I couldn’t say one way or another.”
But when asked if he believed Trump’s denials, Comey remembered being mostly stunned.
“I honestly never thought this words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” he said. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.”
One wonders why none of the pundits and legal experts pulling down 6-figure salaries on CNN and MSNBC to lend their law expertise to the daily discussion of the Trump presidency couldn’t at one moment raise this fundamental, logical observation.
In a climate where any speculation over the most heinous crimes alleged against President Trump is not only tacitly accepted in the media, but is eagerly encouraged, perhaps someone should point out that Trump would never ask Comey to investigate this matter if it were true. But, I suspect we won’t hear that analysis. After all, it’s exculpatory to the president. And that’s just not part of the gig for journalists these days.
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