The United States will survive the Presidency of Donald J. Trump and will come out stronger in the end, former FBI Director James B. Comey told a rapt audience at the BNY Mellon Pershing conference Wednesday.
Comey, who was the opening keynote speaker at Insite18 being held in Orlando, likened the present administration to a forest fire that does terrible damage but opens the way for new growth, and, in this case, a new generation of people who will work towards the American ideal.
“American history is a line with a positive slope,” Comey told the audience of 2,500 financial professionals. “There are little downturns along the way, but we are strong. We have a deep culture.
“President Trump lies so much that he risks [us losing] our touchstone of truth. That is so dangerous. What I hope to do is elevate the conversation,” he said, referring to his book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, and the speeches he is making around the country. He related stories about how his values and leadership skills were formed during his lifetime.
But Comey also remarked that it can only takes one lie, or serious factual falsehood, to undermine the American public's trust in a president. For President George W. Bush, that moment came with the U.S. military's failure to find weapons of mass destruction his administration claimed to justify the war in Iraq. For President Barack Obama, it was the remark that if you like your doctor you can keep it. Trump's lies, however, are far different and more numerous in their order of magnitude, he maintined.
However, good will come out of the current times, Comey said, as America has experienced many other divisive periods in its history. He noted that in the 1920s nearly one-third of Congress were members of the Ku Klux Klan at one point, and America overcame that.
“I feel it in the energy of young people. I realize how important it is to educate these kids” about what the United States is based on and stands for. The United States “is a set of ideas a diverse group of people build on.”
Comey said the hardest decision he ever made was to announce the FBI was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails right before the November 2016 election.
“Speaking up about the investigation would be bad, but staying quiet would have been a catastrophe.“ What if the investigation had revealed wrongdoing after we had said in the summer there was none? he asked. “You have to do what is best for the institution or the country in the long run.”
He said he is still not absolutely certain he made the right decision.