“Morally unfit.” Former FBI director James Comey recently sat down with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos for his first TV interview since he was fired by President Donald Trump in May 2017.
From giving his take on Trump’s “business with the prostitutes” to comparing the president to a mob boss, here are the five most shocking quotes from Comey’s Sunday, April 15, interview:
He Shouldn’t Be President
“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,” Comey, 57, explained to Stephanopoulos. “I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.”
“Business With the Prostitutes”
Comey broke down his January 2017 conversation with Trump after BuzFeed published an opposition research dossier, which included reports that Russian intelligence filmed Trump participating in “perverted sexual acts.”
”I didn’t ask about the business with the prostitutes, but he launched into an explanation as to how I should know that wasn’t true and that he remembered now, from talking to friends who had been with him, that he’d never stayed overnight at the hotel, he’d just changed clothes there and went to the Miss Universe pageant,” the A Higher Loyalty author explained.
He added: ”I don’t know whether any of this true, but this is what he said. And then went right back without staying overnight. And then he said, ‘Another reason you know it’s not true is I’m a germaphobe. There’s no way I’d let people pee on each other around me.’ And that caught me so much by surprise I actually let out an audible laugh and — ’cause it was just one of those — I was startled by it.”
Mob Boss Comparions
“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,” Comey said about comparing Trump to a mob boss. “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?'”
Donald Trump’s Hands
Comey described his first impression of Trump — down to the size of his hands — in his book, and Stephanopoulos asked him to expand on his observations.
“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,” the former intelligence official explained. “But as I shook his hand I made a note to check the size and it seemed like he had average-sized hands.”
Do the Russians Have Dirt on Trump?
“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,” Comey replied when Stephanopoulos asked if he thought the Russians had damaging information on Trump.
