White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and CNN’s “New Day” co-anchor Chris Cuomo sparred Wednesday over the motivation behind President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director Jim Comey.
“President Trump wants an FBI director who is impartial, who’s not politicized and who has the confidence and trust of people in the bureau, of Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, of the attorney general, of the deputy attorney general who oversees the FBI director and of the President of the United States,” Conway said. “And (Comey) had lost that.”
Democratic senators sharply criticized Trump’s decision to fire Comey on Tuesday, with some calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Russian meddling into the 2016 US election and any connection to Trump’s aides.
But Conway repeatedly pushed back on the argument that Trump’s decision “was about Russia,” reiterating a point she made Tuesday night on “Anderson Cooper 360.”
“The idea that you think that this was about Russia and not about a FBI director who just yesterday forced his bureau to correct sworn testimony to the Senate Judicial Committee, where he said Huma Abedin had this practice, she had forwarded quote ‘hundreds of thousands of emails,'” she said.
Cuomo pushed back on the implication that Trump let Comey go because he falsely testified about one of Hillary Clinton’s top aides.
“So President Trump was so upset that he fired him,” Cuomo replied incredulously.