Fox News confirms the Comey firing report Trump is trying to deny

On Thursday, Trump foolishly tried to deny he fired James Comey over the Russia investigation, but now even Fox News is confirming the reporting that led Trump to renew the issue.

Fox anchor Shep Smith could hardly keep a straight face as he tried to explain Trump’s Thursday morning tweet, which said “Not that it matters but I never fired James Comey because of Russia! The Corrupt Mainstream Media loves to keep pushing that narrative, but they know it is not true!”

“Well, the president apparently is referring to a New York Times report that Fox News and others have confirmed,” Smith said. “Fox News can now confirm that the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that the president wanted him to include the Russian investigation in his memo about James Comey.”

He added that Rosenstein refused the request, and pointed out that the reasons for Comey’s firing are central to Mueller’s obstruction investigation.

“He said ‘not that that matters,’ it actually matters a quite a lot, legally,” Smith said. “The president and his team have changed their story several times about the firing. This new version today. But remember, just days after all of this actually happened, it was the president himself that told us what we’re now reporting.”

Smith then played a clip of the now-infamous Lester Holt interview, during which Trump said that the Russia investigation was on his mind when he fired Comey.

The report that Fox News is now confirming says former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe wrote a memo about his conversation with Rosenstein, and that the memo has been turned over to special counsel Robert Mueller.

But as Smith pointed out, that memo is gravy on top of a mountain of evidence that Trump tried to obstruct the Russia investigation, including a smear campaign that was directed at McCabe himself.

And in addition to that Lester Holt interview, Trump has admitted to obstruction on multiple other occasions and has even tried to re-brand the crime as “fighting back.”

Trump is finding it more and more difficult to find a safe space for his lies. And Republicans who still defend him will have nowhere to hide in November.