There are two opposing narratives concerning the firing of Comey. The Democrats claim that he fired him because he was worried that the investigation would find evidence of his collusion with Russia. The Republicans claim that he fired Comey because of various and changing reasons concerning Comey’s job performance.
I don’t find either narrative to be convincing, for several reasons.
With regards to the Democratic narrative, Trump seems all too calm (for someone who is usually animated) to be fearful of impeachment. His interviews show a man as casual with the truth as he ever was on the campaign trail, a man who should surely be more guarded in his answers if he thought that he was guilty. His tweet, that Comey should be fearful of ‘tapes’ existing of their meetings in the White House, would be childish and thuggish intimidation if it was meant in all seriousness. However, Trump may be continuing some form of personal joke in the vein of Obama wiretapping Trump Tower. In other words, ‘you’d better hope that Obama didn’t wiretap us both, or your previous boss may be in a lot of trouble’ (JEDIT: What Catbus said). This seems like the type of moronic trolling that Trump is accustomed to, and the fact that he doesn’t spell this out is potential evidence that he is slyly pushing the Democrats’ buttons at the same time as he is speaking to Comey and his base.
With regards to the Republican narrative, this was too abrupt a firing to be merely a further ‘draining of the swamp’. His attempts to spin this as such are transparent. He is clearly acting to put the chill on the Russia investigation, and he is genuinely surprised that the Democratic establishment would be angry at this, since he so blindly assumes that he is innocent. How could it be problematic to fire the man in charge of the Russia investigation if he isn’t under suspicion? He wants Russia as a friend and so he doesn’t consider that this investigation is relevant to his administration at all. This is why he abruptly fired Comey. He’s the decider, and to have an independent lawman who won’t kiss his ring is beyond offensive. I believe that Trump was acting very much as his role on The Apprentice in firing Comey, and didn’t care that it may be seen as improper.
This is an unprecedented event in our nation’s history, and a foreboding one. Trump clearly doesn’t care about democratic norms or even pretending to act like anything other than a glorified mob-boss. He thinks that he’s fabulously smart and politically savvy, and though he is neither of these things, he does have the lizardlike sense of how to manipulate large groups of people. Case in point, he did little to erode his previous support (the polls are basically unchanged in this regard), and he also made the Democratic establishment and media overreact by acting in ways that looked from their perspective like he was guilty as sin. Taking the cynical approach - and I hope I’m wrong about this - this looks like a win for him. Of course, it’s devastating for norms, democracy, bipartisanship, and anything other than Donald J Trump.