Republicans may have avoided going on television news shows to address James Comey’s written account of Donald Trump asking him to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s Russia ties, but many of them couldn’t entirely avoid the subject. And while a few common themes appear, you know Republicans are rattled because they aren’t all sticking to one clear set of talking points.
A few have said they’d seek real information, including House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz, who’s asked the FBI for the memo and others like it, and several have said they want Comey to testify. Some found ways to blame Comey or basically said that Trump doesn't know what he's doing and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Speaker Paul Ryan is trying to have it both ways: he said the word “oversight,” but in the context of not “rushing to judgment,” plus he has confidence in Trump and worries that Trump’s enemies are out to get him.
While Republicans aren’t blowing this off quite as aggressively as they have most other Trump scandals, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) is a major outlier:
More typical are the total rejections of responsibility or consequences. Darrell Issa may have been the only one to respond with a middle finger, but plenty of other Republicans might as well have gone that route, considering how useful their responses were.
Follow-up questions it would be nice to see: Is it that Loudermilk doesn’t believe the account of what Trump said to Comey, or is it that he doesn’t believe that pressuring the FBI director to drop an investigation for political reasons would be wrong?
That’s the Republican way: it’s always someone else’s fault, it’s never time to look for more facts. But Trump is making it harder for all but the bitterest dead-enders—the Joe “You lie” Wilson types—to be honest about their total refusal to hold Trump accountable. How long can Republicans hold out as the next shoe drops, and the one after that, and the one after that? Too long, but maybe not forever.