Names and faces
Former FBI Director James Comey apparently isn’t too impressed with the mental prowess of President Donald Trump’s acting attorney general. Matthew Whitaker “may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer,” Comey said during a radio interview on Monday night in which he sized up the man Trump installed this month to replace ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Comey was asked by WGBH News in Boston if he thinks Whitaker could derail the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Whitaker has spoken critically of the probe, and Trump — as recently as Tuesday — continues to call it a “witch hunt.” “I think it’s a worry, but to my mind not a serious worry,” Comey said. “The institution is too strong, and [Whitaker], frankly, is not strong enough to have that kind of impact.” Comey went on to say that Whitaker “may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer, but he can see his future and knows that if he acted in an extralegal way, he would go down in history for the wrong reasons, and I’m sure he doesn’t want that.” Comey was fired by Trump last year and later wrote a book that portrays the president as an ego-driven liar. Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney in Iowa, was Sessions’ chief of staff before being picked by Trump to lead the Justice Department. Trump has called Whitaker “a very smart man.” Earlier this year, Trump called Comey “an untruthful slime ball.”
Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern is apologizing for his comments about Chinese restaurants after he was criticized as culturally insensitive. Zimmern just opened his own Chinese restaurant, Lucky Cricket, in Minnesota. Last week, Fast Company posted an interview from the summer in which Zimmern says he was saving the souls of people who dine at “(expletive) restaurants masquerading as Chinese food” in the Midwest. The Eater website said his remarks represented cultural elitism. An op-ed in The Washington Post called them insulting. In a statement to the Star Tribune, Zimmern admitted his comments sounded arrogant. He took responsibility and attempted to clarify, saying many diners in the Twin Cities area eat Chinese food in malls, and he hopes to expose them to the “greatness of Chinese and Chinese-American cuisines.”