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Trump equates what is good with what is good for him. He praised Comey when the FBI director’s election-year statements helped him — and they helped him quite a bit near the end. So when Trump called Comey a “grandstander” and a “showboat” shortly after firing him, the president was almost certainly thinking of something other than the Clinton email episode.

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In the same interview in which he criticized Comey’s attention-seeking, Trump admitted that he had the Russia investigation on his mind when he fired him. According to the Times, when Trump called Comey a nut job, the president also said that firing the FBI director had relieved the “great pressure” he faced “because of Russia.”

So what was nuts about Comey’s handling of the Russia inquiry?

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Was it that Comey declined to pledge his loyalty to Trump at a strange one-on-one dinner, according to people the FBI director told about it at the time? Was it that he apparently refused to bend the knee even after several requests from the president, making clear how strongly Trump wanted him to?

Was it when Comey reportedly told the president that the FBI should be an independent law enforcement agency, not his plaything to order about? Was it the concept that an FBI director could best serve his president by being honest, rather than becoming another Trump toady?

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Was it when Trump improperly asked Comey to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to a memo the FBI director wrote at the time?

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Was it when Comey would not back up Trump’s baseless claims that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign? Was it that Comey declined to do so in widely watched congressional testimony?

Was it that Trump cannot abide someone who will not lie for him?

The most charitable interpretation of the reported record is that Trump authentically believes there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia, and he is frustrated that the fact of a federal investigation is harming his administration. This suggests he does not understand the FBI, or law enforcement in general. The FBI cannot just take the president’s word that nothing untoward happened. The agency cannot simply drop a major investigation as a favor to the president.

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