Comey blitzes the media on book tour
James Comey’s book tour began in earnest on Tuesday with the former FBI director scheduled for no less than eight high-profile interviews to promote his much-anticipated memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” over the next three days.
Comey appeared live Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” where he sat down with George Stephanapoulos for the second time in less than a week. (Stephanapoulos interviewed Comey last week at the former FBI director’s home in Virginia for a primetime special that aired Sunday night.) Comey appeared on “GMA” for a town-hall style forum in front of a live studio audience in Times Square.
The former FBI director also gave an interview that aired on NPR’s “Morning Edition” on Tuesday. He will appear later on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”
Fox News, whose leading personalities have savaged Comey and his book, will have him on next week.
The latest interviews produced no new revelations about Comey’s interactions with President Trump before his firing, but they gave Comey a chance to respond to Trump’s flurry of combative tweets about him — including the president’s suggestion that Comey ought to be jailed.
“That is not normal,” Comey said on “GMA.” “That is not OK. First of all, he’s just making stuff up. But, most importantly, the president of the United States is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen, as he’s done for a whole lot of people who criticize him. That is not acceptable in this country.”
“I hope people read the book and see why the rule of law is such an important value in this country,” Comey continued. “And key to that is that the president doesn’t get to decide who goes to jail.”
Comey said Trump’s early-morning tweetstorms pose a danger to the American public.
“We’re numb to it,” he said. “We wake up in the morning and see the president of the United States is accusing people of crimes without evidence and pronouncing them guilty and saying they should be in jail. That should wake all of us up with a start, but there’s been so much of it that we’re a little bit numb, and that’s dangerous.”
On Tuesday night, Comey will appear on CBS’s “Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” On Wednesday morning, he’ll be on ABC’s “The View.” On Thursday, he’ll appear on CNN’s “The Lead With Jake Tapper” and MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show.” Between the cable news hits, Comey will sit down with David Remnick for a taping of “The New Yorker Radio Hour” before a live audience at Town Hall in Manhattan.
Comey will also take part in a CNN town hall on April 25, followed by an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier the next day.
Related: Why Comey doesn’t want Trump impeached
Perhaps anticipating an onset of Comey fatigue, CNN promoted Tapper’s interview to viewers this way: “You have heard from James Comey, but you haven’t heard him answer Jake Tapper’s questions.”
Trump, who castigated Comey on Twitter ahead of the book tour, has not tweeted about his former FBI director since Sunday.
On “Fox & Friends” — the president’s favorite morning show — co-host Steve Doocy mocked ABC’s “breathless” promotion of its Sunday night Comey special, gleefully noting that it drew fewer viewers than the Country Music Awards telecast on CBS and ABC’s reboot of “Roseanne.”
Comey’s book, though, is already at the top of Amazon’s bestseller list. And its publisher, Macmillan, said earlier this week that it was printing 850,000 copies of “A Higher Loyalty” to meet the expected demand.
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