Did James Comey’s testimony hurt Trump — or help him?

In normal times, former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to a Senate committee would have been an earth-shaking event. Comey said that, after his firing last month, the White House told “lies, plain and simple” about him and the FBI. Comey said that, in ways he didn’t with other presidents, he immediately wrote memos detailing his conversations with President Donald Trump because he worried Trump would later lie about them. Comey said that he took Trump’s comment about the FBI’s investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn — “I hope you can let this go” — as a direction, not a request, implying Trump sought to obstruct justice. And Comey said that he believed he was fired by Trump to impede the FBI’s overall investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections — “the way the Russian investigation was being conducted” — not just the FBI probe of Flynn.

These are remarkably harsh allegations by an ex-FBI chief against a sitting president. The echoes of the Watergate scandal and cover-up that brought down President Richard Nixon are unmistakable.

But these are not normal times — and there is a chance that Comey’s testimony in some ways could help the president. Comey explicitly said he had told Trump that the president was not under investigation in the FBI’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election — contrary to a Tuesday CNN report and just as Trump has repeatedly claimed. Comey also refused to characterize anything the president had done as being against the law. And Comey largely discredited a Feb. 14 New York Times story that alleged Trump’s campaign aides “had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence.”

Trump and his supporters have other reasons to be relieved. Most of Comey’s toughest comments had already been on America’s front pages because of a leak that Comey acknowledged Thursday he had orchestrated. And if Comey left uncertainty by declining to answer some questions, his remarks can be seen as shoring up Trump’s contention that Democrats and the media haven’t made a case for the claim that he and/or his campaign colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the White House. MSNBC host Chris Matthews, for one, said the idea Trump colluded with Russia “came apart” Thursday.

Comey’s testimony can also be seen as more evidence for the theory that the president has spent all this time grousing about the Russia investigation not because he has something to hide but because of his belief and outrage that his enemies are trying to taint his victory and his presidency. Finally, Comey’s testimony can also be seen as more evidence for the theory that Trump’s highly questionable uses of his executive authority stem not from a Machiavellian attempt to manipulate American democracy but from his obtuseness and naivete about how presidents are supposed to act.

None of these observations about how the president might benefit from Thursday’s events should be interpreted as a defense of his behavior. As Bloomberg View columnist Jonathan Bernstein noted, Comey’s testimony illustrated the self-defeating incompetence with which Trump has governed. Yet impeachment talk still seems premature.

Perhaps some bombshell will emerge from the independent investigation mounted by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, the former FBI director whom Comey praised Thursday. But if that doesn’t happen, Americans will have to keep muddling through the Trump era — hoping the president at some point displays a learning curve and realizes that the temperament and traits that brought him success in business, on television and on the campaign trail are bringing him nothing but grief and dysfunction in the Oval Office.

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