The Atlantic

There's No Such Thing as 'Honest Loyalty'

Fueling the clash between Comey and Trump was this simple fact—they inhabit incompatible moral universes.
Source: Joshua Roberts / Reuters

The way James Comey describes it in his to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, you can easily imagine the movie. On January 27, Donald Trump invites Comey over for dinner. Expecting there will be others, Comey is unnerved when he realizes that he and the new president are dining alone. Worried that Trump is trying to “create some sort of patronage relationship,” Comey makes a point of saying that he will not be politically “reliable” but will always tell Trump the truth. Trump is not mollified. “I need loyalty. I

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