When President Trump decided to fire James Comey, he didn't share his plan with his vice president or press secretary
Neither Vice President Mike Pence nor White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer were accurately informed in advance about President Trump's plan to fire FBI Director James Comey, weekend reports from The Washington Post and The New York Times reveal.
Pence was apparently tasked with sharing the official White House account of Comey's ouster, a story Trump himself would thouroughly undercut:
"Pence has prided himself on being a truth-teller," the Post story notes, a difficult reputation to maintain when the president publicly repudiates his remarks.
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Spicer's situation was different. Citing "a half-dozen West Wing officials," the Times reports he was deliberately kept in the dark in advance of the firing because the president did not trust the discretion of the White House communications staff:
As the Post comments, this week demonstrates that "Trump established a White House with few clear lines of authority, competing power centers and, as it turned out, fighting factions" plagued by poor communications. Read more of that analysis here.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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