Here are some excerpts courtesy of the
NYT.
Comparisons to a mob boss:
STEPHANOPOULOS: How strange is it for you to sit here and compare the president to a mob boss?
COMEY: Very strange. And I don’t do it lightly. I — and I’m not trying to, by the way, suggest that President Trump is out breaking legs and — you know, shaking down shopkeepers. But instead, what I’m talking about is that leadership culture constantly comes back to me when I think about my experience with the Trump administration. The — the loyalty oaths, the boss as the dominant center of everything, it’s all about how do you serve the boss, what’s in the boss’s interests. It’s the family, the family, the family, the family. That’s why it reminds me so much and not, “So what’s the right thing for the country and what are the values of the institutions that we’re dealing with?”
Trump's impact on those around him:
The challenge of this president is that he will stain everyone around him. And the question is, how much stain is too much stain and how much stain eventually makes you unable to accomplish your goal of protecting the country and serving the country? So I don’t know.
Trump's bizarre response to news that Russia had interfered in the election:
No one, to my recollection, asked, “So what — what’s coming next from the Russians?” You’re about to lead a country that has an adversary attacking it and I don’t remember any questions about, “So what are they going to do next? How might we stop it? What’s the future look like? Because we’ll be custodians of the security of this country.” There was none of that. It was all, “What can we say about what they did and how it affects the election that we just had.”
Are the Russians blackmailing Trump?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think the Russians have something on Donald Trump?
COMEY: I think it’s possible. I don’t know. These are more words I never thought I’d utter about a president of the United States, but it’s possible.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s stunning. You can’t say for certain that the president of the United States is not compromised by the Russians?
COMEY: It is stunning and I wish I wasn’t saying it, but it’s just — it’s the truth. I cannot say that. It always struck me and still strikes me as unlikely, and I would have been able to say with high confidence about any other president I dealt with, but I can’t. It’s possible.
How Clinton's inevitability convinced Comey that revealing the newly discovered emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop would not hurt her campaign:
STEPHANOPOULOS: At some level, wasn’t the decision to reveal influenced by your assumption that Hillary Clinton was going to win? And your concern that she wins, this comes out several weeks later, and then that’s taken by her opponent as a sign that she’s an illegitimate president?
COMEY: It must have been. I don’t remember consciously thinking about that, but it must have been. Because I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump. And so I’m sure that it — that it was a factor. Like I said, I don’t remember spelling it out, but it had to have been. That — that she’s going to be elected president, and if I hide this from the American people, she’ll be illegitimate the moment she’s elected, the moment this comes out.
Concerning his possible impact on the outcome of the election:
But a whole lot of me was thinking, “Oh my God, did we have some role in this? Did we have some impact on the election?” And it’s an incredibly painful juxtaposition, but also thinking, “I really wouldn’t have done it any differently.”
God, I hope we had no impact. I hope we had no impact. But it — I know — I worry it sounds arrogant to say, but it — it wouldn’t change the result.
Comey also revealed that though he did not vote in the election, that his wife and essentially entire family were Hillary supporters, which must have made the days immediately after the election especially fun for him.
And finally on Trump's stunning lack of morality:
I don’t buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia. He strikes me as a person of above average intelligence who’s tracking conversations and knows what’s going on. I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.
A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it — that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds. And that’s not a policy statement. Again, I don’t care what your views are on guns or immigration or taxes.
There’s something more important than that that should unite all of us, and that is our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.
I left out the more salacious information about hand size, Russian hookers, and the pee pee tape, because I think that has already been covered in previous posts.
My take away from this interview is that Comey is essentially reporting what most of us already know about Trump's unfitness to lead this country, but he is also demonstrating his own inability to admit his mistakes, and to recognize that he could indeed have made better choices.
At one point Stephanopoulos asks him if he thinks Trump should be impeached, and Comey say he does not because it lets the American people off the hook, and instead believes Trump should be voted out in the next election cycle.
I completely disagree with that because it would allow Trump several more years to damage the country, and also fail to send a message to future corrupt politicians that there are consequences for that corruption.
The articles of impeachment exist for a reason, and if this ain't it, then I don't know what would be.
