President Donald Trump launched Friday the 13th with an attack on former FBI Director James Comey, calling the ex-director “a proven LEAKER & LIAR…and untruthful slime ball” in a pair of tweets before sunrise as the media is loaded with preview details about Comey’s new book and an upcoming interview with ABC News.
The “quick on the Twitter” president accused Comey of lying to Congress under oath and leaking classified information “for which he should be prosecuted.” Fox News was reporting the story since early Friday morning.
According to ABC News, Comey’s new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” is the former FBI chief’s “first extensive public accounting of his handling of investigations affecting Trump and Hillary Clinton.” With the weekend looming, Sunday morning’s network news and commentary programs could become a “he said, he said” bash fest.
Comey reportedly likens the president to mob boss Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano for allegedly telling him over dinner one evening, “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.” Comey, according to an ABC preview, writes that this was like a “Cosa Nostra induction ceremony.”
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ABC’s exclusive interview with Comey will air Sunday evening during a primetime “20/20” special.
According to a New York Times review, Comey’s new 290-page book is “absorbing.” In it, he describes Trump’s presidency as a “forest fire,” and calls the president’s leadership “transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.”
If anything can be drawn from the contrasting descriptions now streaking across the Internet at warp speed, Trump and Comey do not like each other at all. One Comey quote mentioned in the Times’ review may best depict how the former FBI director looks at the nation under Trump:
“We are experiencing a dangerous time in our country with a political environment where basic facts are disputed, fundamental truth is questioned, lying is normalized and unethical behavior is ignored, excused or rewarded.”—James Comey
Trump supporters could easily say that description applies equally to the “resistance” movement on the political left, not to mention Capitol Hill. It’s the Wild West on steroids, although the only shootouts are verbal.
According to ABC, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows more people think Comey is more believable than Trump by a 48-32 margin.
Is it the president’s “shoot from the lip” manner, his vocabulary, body language, a combination of those or the successful portrayal of Trump by the mainstream media that many conservatives believe is biased against the man who defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016?
Comey’s “A Higher Loyalty – Truth, Lies, and Leadership” is published by Flatiron Books. It will retail for $29.99, according to the New York Times review.
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