The mainstream media has billed former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee as the political equivalent of the Superbowl.
With millions of American and international viewers expected to tune in, Bloomberg reports that Trump will be monitoring Comey’s testimony from a White House dining room with his legal team and his closest advisers by his side.
According to the report, which cited two White House aides, it’s unclear whether the president will offer his trademark commentary on Twitter – or instead leave the rebuttal to a rapid-response team the White House assembled to blast out push-back to Comey’s assertions.
However, the president’s friends and advisers stand firm in their conviction that Trump has done nothing wrong with regard to Russia, that the investigation and surrounding theater has been a witch hunt and that he should defend himself as aggressively as he sees fit, Bloomberg reported.
“He’s been under siege from almost Day One and he wants to respond,” said Chris Ruddy, a close friend and chief executive of Newsmax.com.
Over the last week, the mainstream media has published a stream of anonymously sourced leaks of questionable veracity purporting to reveal the details of Comey’s testimony – including one “scoop” where CNN reported that Comey was preparing to contradict the president’s claim that the former FBI director repeatedly told him that he was not under investigation. CNN was forced to issue a correction after Comey’s opening remarks, released on Wednesday, directly contradicted its reporting.
This isn’t the first report that the MSM has been forced to walk back. The CNN-Washington Post-New York Times media cabal also reported that Comey was planning to testify that the president obstructed justice, before switching gears and reporting that the FBI director’s testimony will stop short of issuing such a declaration, which would’ve contradicted testimony he gave earlier this year.
The White House has sought to keep Trump occupied and focused on his domestic agenda leading up to Comey’s testimony. His aides dubbed this week “Infrastructure Week” and rolled out more details of his long-promised $1 trillion plan to rebuild roads, waterways and airports. He flew to Cincinnati on Wednesday for a speech about the plan before a friendly audience in a state that strongly supported his election.
He’ll speak at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in the afternoon on Thursday, a gathering of evangelicals that Trump’s allies regard as a serendipitous bit of planning, Bloomberg reported. The event should offer the beleaguered president a friendly audience, and his aides said they expect zero mention of Comey in his remarks.
Comey’s opening remarks, while laced with jarring details of his encounters with Trump, provided no new information about the Russia or Flynn investigations.
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