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In a week dominated by the news of President Trump firing former FBI director James Comey late Tuesday, the narrative from the White House and its supporters has been inconsistent and unclear, ranging from contradictory and misleading to adversarial.
Since Comey’s dismissal, the explanation and reasoning from White House press staff has been constantly evolving. Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during Wednesday’s press briefing that the president fired the former FBI director after receiving such recommendation from the Department of Justice. This argument has also been aggressively stated by others in the White House, including Vice President Mike Pence and special advisor Kellyanne Conway.
President Trump contradicted his press team Thursday night during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt.
“I was going to fire Comey – my decision,” Trump said. “There is no good time to it, by the way. I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.”
Facing backlash on Thursday, Sanders stated she had answered questions based on facts as she had understood it at the time.
“I didn’t ask that question directly, ‘had you already made that decision.’ I went off of the information that I had when I answered your question,” Sanders stated during Thursday’s press briefing.
In response to the confusion and contradictory statements coming from White House staff and supporters, President Trump has suggested he may end all press briefings.
…Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future “press briefings” and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
In addition, the president hinted that there possibly could be recordings of conversations he held with Comey in the White House.
James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
The White House press office has not yet commented on the existence of recordings between the two individuals.