https://nyti.

ms/2q4ZKEy

POLITICS

For Trump Supporters, the Real Outrage

Is the Lefts Uproar Over Comey
By JEREMY W. PETERS MAY 11, 2017

WASHINGTON The script should be familiar by now. President Trump takes

action that stuns the country, eliciting indignation and disbelief from Democrats and
leading them to conclude that the vitality of American democracy is under assault.

Yet among those who are sympathetic to the president a minority, to be sure,
but somewhere around 40 percent of the country, according to recent polls the
outrage is that Mr. Trump is again being held to an unfair standard set by the very
people and institutions that tried to stop his election in the first place: Democrats,
resentful Republicans and, perhaps most of all, the news media.

That has certainly been the divide as the country absorbed the news that Mr.
Trump had fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director. The move was widely hailed by
conservatives online, on talk radio, on Fox News and among the presidents allies in
Washington: the universe in which views of Mr. Trump quickly harden in the rights
collective consciousness.
 More clearly than other recent Trump-induced uproars, the reaction to the
Comey firing illustrated how many conservatives now justify their defense of the
president as part of a fight against a rising tide of overreaction and manufactured
hysteria by the left. Mr. Trump, who has long understood the political power of
demonizing his opponents as crazed and irrational, has helped stoke those
resentments.

In a word, they see him as their voice, said Frank Luntz, the Republican consultant
and pollster. And when their voice is shouted down, disrespected or simply ignored,
that is an attack on them, not just an attack on Trump.

Many conservatives see not just a reactionary left, but menacing forces in the
form of an anti-Trump movement that uses hype as a pretense to undermine their
political power. Such a visceral reaction from the right, analysts said, is something
unique to Mr. Trumps appeal. And the more conservatives perceive the president as
under siege from his political enemies enemies they also see as their own the
more willing they seem to accept his version of events.

In this version of events, the alternate facts emanate not from the mouths of
Mr. Trump or his aides but from the fake news mainstream media.

The way the Comey story played out in the conservative news media was a
telling illustration of this divide.

The Conservative Review, an online journal, mocked the same fretting screeds
that have accompanied nearly every move and measure conducted by this
administration, regardless of severity. With each one, the website said, the
presidents opponents are whipping themselves up into full Constitutional Crisis
mode.

On Facebook, Republicans shared the 1993 C-Span footage of Bill Clintons

announcement that he had fired William S. Sessions, the only other F.B.I. director to
be dismissed, while the bureau was investigating why employees in the White House
Travel Office had been involved in an episode that became known as Travelgate.
(The conditions of Mr. Sessionss firing were much different, however, as he had
abused his federally funded travel privileges.)
 Even conservatives who have repeatedly criticized Mr. Trump leapt to his
defense. Erick Erickson, the writer and radio host who has called for an independent
investigation into Russian ties to the Trump campaign, also called the cries of
constitutional crisis hysterics.

The left will never believe President Trump nor believe anything other than the
worst possible conspiracies about him, he wrote.

Russiaism is the new Birtherism, he added, an ironic comparison given that

Mr. Trump was a primary promoter of the false claim that President Barack Obama
was born in Kenya.

National Review, which has repeatedly sided against Mr. Trump, nevertheless
backed his decision to fire Mr. Comey. The Bureaus reputation is at a low ebb
because of Comeys decisions, the magazine said in an editorial. One way or the
other, he needed to go.

Ever since he began his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump has portrayed his
political opponents as unhinged, radical and sometimes as paid professionals of the
left. And while that may have been true in some instances, Mr. Trump often makes
the case that these represent the bulk of the people working against him.

They dont represent the center of gravity in the resistance movement, but he
tries to suggest that they do, said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster.

Many conservatives, even those who are not necessarily fans of the president,
are willing to see his detractors in this light. And Mr. Trump understands that better
than most, Mr. Garin added. Trump artfully uses protest movements to drive
wedges between people, he said.

Much as Republicans did when they painted Al Gore supporters as sore losers
after the disputed 2000 election waving signs that read Sore Loserman,
wordplay on the Gore-Lieberman ticket the party is again creating a sense among
its supporters that the left is bitter about its loss and resorting to histrionics as a
result.
 When Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, was asked on Fox News
about comparisons that liberals and others have made between the firing of Mr.
Comey and the Saturday Night Massacre the ouster of Justice Department
officials who refused to carry out President Richard M. Nixons order to fire the
special prosecutor leading the Watergate investigation he snapped, Suck it up
and move on.

Democrats should recognize that reaction. For years, they accused Republicans
of resisting Mr. Obamas agenda at every turn, of being spiteful and even hateful as
they refused to accept the results of the presidential election. And now, Republicans
seem to relish the opportunity to turn the tables.

Rush Limbaugh told his listeners on Wednesday, This kind of irrational hate
this all-consuming hate and derangement, delusion it isnt healthy.

Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and in the Morning
Briefing newsletter.

2017 The New York Times Company