Like Brutus, James Comey is an honorable man. And so he (or his ghostwriter) decided to honorably mock President Trump is his honorable book about his own honorableness.
The 6-foot-8 Comey describes Trump as shorter than he expected with a “too long” tie and “bright white half-moons” under his eyes that he suggests came from tanning goggles. He also says he made a conscious effort to check the president’s hand size, saying it was “smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so.”
But now Comey wants to explain.
The former FBI chief told NPR that his remarks about the size of Trump's hands were meant to paint a picture for the reader, not as a slight.
"I'm not making fun of the president. I'm trying to be an author, which I've never been before in my life," Comey says. "While I'm typing, I can hear my editor's voice ringing in my head, 'bring the reader with you. Show them inside your head. Bring them with you.'"
"'Describe the president's hands?'" NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep responded. "Can you hear the editor saying that?"
"No, but that was on my mind," Comey says. "And by the way, not that this matters, but I found his hands to be above average in size, and so I'm not making fun of the man, I'm trying to tell the reader what's in my head."
Why did Comey think readers wanted to be in his head? As I argued earlier today, that's the main problem with his book. And with him.
Comey just isn't all that interesting. His market consisted of Trump-haters. And lines like this were meant to pander to them. But, in typical Comey style, he's trying to have it both ways. He wants to have laugh lines for Trump-hater and he wants to be seen as an honorable and principled man.
His FBI career floundered when he attempted to pull off that same balancing act. Now his book is floundering for the same reason.