Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency in 2017.

I'm Freddie Gray and I'm Deputy Editor of The Spectator.

I'm joined today by Paul Wood of the BBC, who is also a fellow of the New America Foundation, and we're going to be

talking about the explosive news that President Trump has fired the FBI director James Comey.

Paul, we learned last night that President Trump has sacked or fired the FBI director James Comey.

This was a surprising move for quite a few people, or at least an abrupt one.

And the Democrats are saying it's Nixonian, as in it's a bit like the Watergate scandal.

The president is trying to block people who are investigating him.

What do you make of it?

First of all, to say this is unexpected is the understatement of the year. This was utterly shocking. It took the FBI by surprise. I gather that James Comey himself was talking to agents in Los Angeles

and literally on the television screens behind him, the ticker tape started saying FBI director sacked. He thought it was some kind of

elaborate joke. Official Washington is utterly shocked by this. Even if we believe the leaks from the

White House, a lot of White House staffers didn't see this coming and were unsure about how to react

to it. As ever with President Trump, you don't know whether he's tearing up the

rulebook and showing everybody else how it's done or if he's just plain dumb. I have to say,

my view is that it's the latter on this occasion. Even if we believe the White House's threadbare

explanations for this, and I personally don't, everybody is going to be saying this was all about stopping

an investigation into the Trump campaign's links with Russia. President Trump has fired

the man who was investigating him, or at least investigating his associates. You have to wonder

sometimes if the president still thinks he is running a reality TV show because this is just great for ratings.

You know, table news went into overdrive last night. People look slightly punched drunk with it all still.

And I think where this is going is to end up with a special prosecutor.

...