melania thought it was true, means the allegations in the tape about the hotel in russia. he said to what kind of man does a spouse conclude there s only 99% chance that her husband didn t do that. that is really harsh. sure. the problem is this is the kind of marriage that the president has. to phil s point it s not the fbi s responsibility to lift the cloud with regard to these allegations, and to gloria s point, this book in large part is about him getting revenge. more than anything about him getting revenge against the president for firing him. while talk about the prostitutes and the hotel room and the dossier is going to make headlines and sell books and what people will talk about, the big picture, what this book is about is not about those details. in my view we haven t read the book, but this is more about comey s view about the toxic consequences of lying, and about the problems with loyalty to one person over the truth.
now this book is coming owl telling tales and i think it s got to make hem feel very defensive. he ll have some breathing room given he s get a lot of support from the members of the republican party. a lot of members of congress have the president s back. they say comey has a history of contradictory statements, and acted in voolgs of doj protocols, and many democrats asked for comey to resign when he brought up the hillary clinton investigation. so the republicans will push back for trump. i would like to think he can show restraint, because he s going to have a lot of cover. phil, what do you think is the objective again, we have not read the entire thing. but what do you think the objective for comey is in this book?
the 2016 election and the decisions that he made at every single turn. good honest people can disagree with what he did. that s fair. read the book, make up your own mind. the thing that s most troubling, we re seeing a character assassination by the rnc, by the white house, by this phony fake book cover that you showed which is kind of childish going after a person not because of the decisions he made, but because they re trying to discredit him because of the investigation and where it led. it s just troubling. the situation we re in now and the direction we re headed it s sad. laura, i want to get you in. i want to read a quote before you respond. there s also this comey excerpt where he recalls a meeting he had with president trump and then chief of staff reince priebus and in it, he made him think of the days when he was the federal prosecutor talking to the mob. here s what he says in the book. the silent circle of assent, the boss in complete control. the loyalty oaths. the us
to divert from the first book. how is this president as a national security leader? gloria, it does provide ammunition to those who, you know, obviously in the gop and el elsewhere who are going to want to come after comey hard, to phil s point. it s not, you know, sort of straight down the middle. even the idea of writing a book like this, so soon after serving in an administration, you know, revealing behind the scenes details and stuff, you know, rubbing people the wrong way. i agree with phil. i think you walk a fine line here, but i think that comey may appear more partisan than he should want to appear. because these are very serious issues he s dealing with, about separation of power, about the toxicity that he believes emanates from this white house, throughout the government, stemming directly from the president. and those are those are serious charges and serious issues. and then, when you talk about, well, i was kind of looking to see what size his hand was, you know
administration and he wants to sort of get that across. what we also know, and we have to read in this book, is comey s defense of himself and what he did during the election to hurt hillary clinton s chances for re-election, by releasing information about investigations into her e-mail, and i haven t read that yet, but i m very curious about what he s going to say about himself, because he has been criticized extremely by democrats on that. right. there s clearly a self-serving dimension to the book. we know that he says obama turned to him. he recounts obama turning to him and sort of saying, i know you tried your best. he recounts chuck schumer coming up to him with tears in his eyes, saying, you re in an impossible position. for sure, some of this book is going to be read as extremely self-regarding and maybe less credible for it, but from what we ve seen, it s this book equal parts cry from the heart and sort of extension shl sigh of