Trump Called Comey An "Untruthful Slime Ball" & Twitter Realized We Can Still Be Surprised
On Friday, April 13, President Donald Trump let fly some choice words about former FBI Director James Comey. Not surprisingly, Twitter had some feelings about the insult. The tweets about Trump calling Comey an "untruthful slime ball" show that after a years-long fued with the former director, people were still surprised by the president's comments.
"James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH," wrote Trump in a pair of tweets on Friday. "He is a weak and ... untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst 'botch jobs' of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!"
It's been just shy of a year since Trump fired Comey, who was then overseeing the agency's investigation into possible meddling by Russia in the 2016 U.S. election, back in May 2017. Comey had also been investigating Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server in 2016. Trump dismissed Comey via a letter; Comey found out about his ouster via news reports while away on business.
It was certainly not the first time since the president fired him that he's launched a verbal attack against the former director so publicly. In March 2018, Trump also called him "lying James Comey" in a tweet, one of several name-calling tweets against him. And notably, a few days after he fired Comey, Trump sent the infamous "tapes" tweet. In fact, he's been at Comey since before he won the election. Still, Trump's latest tirade seemed to catch some people by surprise.
In reply, Walter Shaub, former Office of Government Ethics director, wrote, "Are you a president or a third grader?"
Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said that after Trump's comment, she'd rather be anywhere else but in the capital. She tweeted, "I'll take Minnesota April snow over this any day (as in it's a good day not to be in Washington)."
Former Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Bromwich had a sarcastic comment or two of his own for the president. "Exactly the kind of measured, mature, thoughtful, and restrained response we have come to expect. And good to see the pioneering use of 'slime ball' coming from the Oval Office. To Comey's point, that's long been a favorite of OC figures."
Comedian Nick Pappas cited the president's penchant for stretching (or disregarding) the truth. "Let's give Trump the benefit of the doubt when he says James Comey is an untruthful slime ball," Pappas tweeted. "It's entirely possible that this isn't one of of the 5.6 false statements Trump averages every day." A report by the Washington Post earlier this year that found that in under a year in office, the president had made a total of over 2,000 false or misleading statements, or about 5.6 average daily.
Blue Wave organizer Holly Figueroa O'Reilly called Trump's "slime ball" insult "the greatest piece of psychological projection uttered by any President in the history of the union."
Washington Post reporter Mark Berman also laid out some facts in response. Citing the president's comment, Berman tweeted, "A new Washington Post/ABC poll shows that more Americans think Comey is believable (48%) than Trump (32%)."
Per The New York Times, Friday's comments come as excerpts of Comey's memoir, which will presumably cover his interactions with Trump, were made public prior to the release of the 300-plus-page book next week.
