Trump furious over Comey’s criticism, calls him ‘slime ball’

WASHINGTON — James Comey’s searing tell-all book touched off a forceful attack on the former FBI director’s character by President Trump and his allies Friday, even as many Democrats struggled with conflicted feelings about the man they blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 election.

Pointed and salacious details from Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” leaked out Thursday night before the book’s official release Tuesday. In it, Comey denounces the president as “unethical, and untethered to truth,” and describes an unproved scene of Trump with prostitutes.

The response from the president was blunt, even by Trump’s aggressive Twitter standards. In two tweets, the president called his former FBI director an “untruthful slime ball” and a “proven LEAKER & LIAR.” Trump said that it was “my great honor to fire” Comey.

That response came as the Republican National Committee orchestrated an all-hands effort to discredit Comey by distributing lengthy talking points to conservative pundits, sympathetic media hosts and Republican lawmakers.

The talking points describe Comey as a “disgraced former official” and a “consummate Washington insider who knows how to work the media to protect his flanks.” It says Comey was “strongly criticized by members of both parties for his history of bizarre decisions, contradictory statements and acting against Department of Justice and FBI protocol.”

Comey will have an opportunity to respond during what is expected to be a long book tour in which he will do many interviews.

In the meantime, Comey is likely to receive a somewhat muted defense from some Democrats, who are still angry about the way he handled the investigation into Clinton’s email server. While they cheer on his fight with Trump, they argue Comey should not have made public the email probe the way he did.

“He let his own ego get in the way, and it put him in charge of fate that was not his decision to act on,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a senior adviser to Clinton’s campaign. “I don’t think he had partisan motivations. But there’s a lot of people I know who don’t agree with me on that.”

Anger toward Comey from Democrats cascaded across social media sites Friday. Palmieri said she would urge Democrats not to join Trump in piling on Comey, even though she admitted there is “a lot of resentment” toward him.

“I don’t agree that he’s an untruthful slimeball,” she said, adding that Democrats should not help the president undermine Comey’s credibility. “That’s not responsible or productive.”

Trump fired Comey in May, a decision that eventually led to the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s 2016 election meddling and whether Trump has deliberately tried to obstruct the investigation.