Former FBI director James Comey sat down on Stephen Colbert’s couch Tuesday night and mocked President Donald Trump, describing his leadership style as “strikingly similar” to that of a mob boss.
“The leadership style is actually strikingly similar,” Comey said. “I don’t mean it in the sense that Donald Trump is out breaking legs or shaking down shopkeepers. I mean it in the sense that he leads, it’s all about the boss. What will serve the boss best? How are you helping the boss? It’s all about that person and nothing external to that.”
President Trump fired Comey nearly a year ago, while Comey was leading an investigation into the Trump campaign’s involvement with Russia’s election meddling.
“I actually was quite surprised, because I thought, ‘I’m leading the Russia investigation.’ Even though our relationship was becoming strained, there’s no way I’m going to get fired or whacked,” Comey told Colbert of his ousting last May.
Comey has since become a celebrated media darling. His new memoir, A Higher Loyalty, has sparked a media feeding frenzy and spurred a series of searing tweets from the president — Trump called Comey a “weak and untruthful slime ball” and a “proven leaker and liar.”
James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2018
….untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst “botch jobs” of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2018
“He’s tweeted at me probably 50 times,” Comey told Colbert. “I’ve been gone for a year, I’m like the breakup he can’t get over. He wakes up in the morning … I’m out there living my best life, he wakes up in the morning and tweets at me.”
“My first reaction to those kinds of tweets is a shrug — like, ‘Oh, there he goes again.’ But actually then I caught myself and I said, ‘Wait a minute. If I’m shrugging, are the rest of the country shrugging? And does that mean we’ve become numb to this?’” Comey continued during the 30-minute confab.
“It’s not O.K. for the president of the United States to say a private citizen should be in jail. It’s not normal, it’s not acceptable, it’s not O.K. But it’s happened so much, there’s a danger we’re now numb to it, and the norm has been destroyed,” Comey said. “And I feel that norm destroying in my own shrug. So we can’t allow that to happen. We have to talk about it and call it out. It’s not O.K.”
While Comey continues his book tour, the disgraced former FBI director’s image among the America people has soured.
According to the latest polls, just 14% of likely U.S. voters believe that Comey was a better FBI director than his predecessors, while 29 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of Independents agree, and 65 percent of Republicans want to see him prosecuted for leaking information damaging to the president to the media.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
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