After a week’s worth of hype, former FBI Director James Comey’s epic hour-long interview with George Stephanopoulos finally aired in full Sunday night and the result was mostly the reiteration of statements Comey made in his new tell-all book that he was there to promote. As expected, the fired FBI director spent a lot of time trashing the man who axed him, addressing both important concerns and petty issues. At one point, prodded on by Stephanopoulos, Comey strayed from his “gravitas” script and went there: Trump’s hand size, orange skin, and perfectly coiffed hair.
The less than dignified exchange began with Comey, who is a towering 6’8″, telling Stephanopoulos that Trump is shorter than he thought he’d be.
“My impression was he looked exactly like he did on television, except he looked shorter to me than he did on television, but otherwise exactly the same,” said Comey. “And the reason I say that is most people look slightly different in person. I don’t know whether that’s bad or good, but he looked the way I’d seen him look on television.”
Stephanopoulos wanted to know more about Trump’s appearance. “Which was?” he asked.
“He had — impressively coiffed hair, it looks to be all his,” said Comey. “I confess, I stared at it pretty closely and my reaction was, ‘It must take a heck of a lot of time in the morning, but it’s impressively coifed.’ … His tie was too long, as it always is. He looked slightly orange up close with small white, half moons under his eyes, which I assume are from tanning goggles. And otherwise looked … as I thought he looked on television.”
Stephanopoulos then asked the question that his audience was certainly dying to know, and Stormy Daniels says she ‘s experienced up close and personal: “You even clocked the size of his hands?”
Comey said yes, but stressed that he only gives these kinds of details because he’s just “trying to be honest.”
“Yeah. I– I say that in my book ’cause I’m trying to be honest, ’cause that’s the truth there had been all this controversy and mocking about hand size, I can’t remember the details,” he said. “But as I shook his hand I made a note to check the size and it seemed like he had average-sized hands.”
As for the actual newsworthy moments, Comey disappointed Trump critics by saying that he doesn’t like the idea of impeaching him because it would “let the American people off the hook,” and declaring Trump unfit for the presidency not because of mental unfitness but moral unfitness. “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,” said Comey. “I think he’s morally unfit to be president.”
Comey also said that he suspects that part of the reason he reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton was actually to legitimize her presidency. “I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump,” he said. “And so I’m sure that it was a factor. 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.”
H/T Ed Morissey