Comey’s Firing Is the Moment of Truth for the GOP

Yascha Mounk wrote for Slate about the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

There are enough ironies in the story of James Brien Comey Jr. to fill multiple biographies: He has long enjoyed a reputation as a consummate professional, and yet he has behaved in a blatantly unprofessional manner in the moments that will forever define his career. He is an admirer of Reinhold Niebuhr, the great liberal theologian, and yet he bears a lot of responsibility for placing Donald Trump in the White House.

But here, for all of those ironies, is the stark bottom line: The president of the United States just fired the director of the FBI in the midst of an ongoing investigation into his campaign’s possible collusion with a hostile, authoritarian power. And that is a very scary sign of what he may have in store for the American republic over the next four years.