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Wednesday, Jun 7, 2017 10:01 AM EDT

Trump plans to fight back against Comey’s testimony with a Twitter assault

Donald Trump and allies are fending off Comey's testimony by trying to discredit him in advance

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Trump plans to fight back against Comey's testimony with a Twitter assault(Credit: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)

With an empty war room and an incompetent communications team, President Donald Trump has determined that he alone will be able to challenge former FBI Director James Comey’s upcoming testimony before the Senate intelligence committee — with the help of nonprofit pro-Trump groups, of course.

On Tuesday the president acknowledged in a tweet that critics have called on him to put down his phone and step away from social media.

But Trump does not see Twitter as a self-destructive tool. He sees it as a platform to get his “unfiltered message out.” Two senior White House officials confirmed to The Washington Post that Trump will possibly provide commentary on the hearing on Twitter.

“He’s infuriated at a deep-gut, personal level that the elite media has tolerated [the Russia story] and praised Comey,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich explained to The Post. “He’s not going to let some guy like that smear him without punching him as hard as he can.”

Fortunately for the president, Trump will not have to go toe-to-toe with Comey after all. As anticipation grows for Comey’s testimony, pro-Trump nonprofit groups have come out of the woodwork to debase the former FBI director’s credibility and reputation.

The Great America Alliance, for example, a 501c4 issue advocacy group dedicated to fulfilling Trump’s agenda, has paid for an ad that will run Wednesday on CNN and Fox News.

In the 30-second spot, titled “Showboat,” a narrator says that Comey “put politics over protecting America.” The ad then claims that Comey was “consumed with election meddling” even though “terror attacks were on the rise.”

Taylor Link is an assistant editor at Salon. You can find him on Twitter at @taylorlink_ More Taylor Link.

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