CBS This Morning co-host John Dickerson has been one of the few journalists calling for some calm in the hyping of James Comey and his new book. On Monday night, he seemed to shock Late Show host Stephen Colbert with tough skepticism. Colbert hailed the ex-FBI director as “setting up all this criteria for going after Donald Trump and talking about ethical leadership along the way.”
Dickerson deflated this balloon by responding: “The problem is there are bars that he fell short of that people criticize him about.... Having the press conference when he announced the Hillary Clinton news and then ten days before the election talking about that and influencing, possibly influencing the election. So he's not totally clean.”
Dickerson continued by asking, “So, the question is, now that he's got this book out there, will people hear that [the book is] a call the a higher standard?” The journalist concluded his monologue by wondering if Comey can “protect” his “standards from the launch of his own book”:
If those standards he’s making the case for get written down for as just more weaponry in a partisan fight, than he’s actually net reduced our belief in those standards that he said should be above politics. So, that's the fight for him. Can he protect the standards from the launch of his own book?
This wasn’t what Colbert expected. He paused for several seconds and exclaimed: “Wow.”
Last Friday, Dickerson began the assualt on this idea that Comey is above reproach by reminding: “Comey is trying to say there are standards and a certain ethical bar that the President is beneath. But, you know, he makes little digs about the size of the President's hands, talks about the color of his skin.”
As the MRC’s Geoff Dickens noted, Comey, over just five days, has already garnered two hours and 24 minutes of network coverage.
A transcript is below. Click "expand" to read more:
Late Show With Stephen Colbert
4/17/18 ET (4/16/18 central)
12:03am ET
STEPHEN COLBERT: Let’s talk about Comey’s book. I’ve got him on tomorrow night. Have you read any of that book yet?
JOHN DICKERSON: I’ve read it in that frantic way that you do when you first get it in your hands and you’re just jumping around. Now, I’ve read the transcript of the Stephanopoulos interview. So, it’s all a big jumble of what it’s in the book and what’s not.
COLBERT: What do you make of the author of that book? Does he seem like a slime ball to you?
DICKERSON: Well, you know, what he's trying to do, he's making the case for a moral standard at a time when all those standards are being thrown out by the President. And some people love the fact that some of those standards are being thrown out, so he's trying to make the case while he has fallen short of standards as well.
COLBERT: Right. He lays it out chapter by chapter. He lays out a prosecutor's case, and you know he's leading toward a prosecution of sorts of Donald Trump. But he talks about, like, “I broke up the mob, I charged Martha Stewart even though she was rich, I okayed going after Scooter Libby even though he was politically powerful.” So he's setting up all this criteria for going after Donald Trump and talking about ethical leadership along the way, so he's setting a bar for leadership.
DICKERSON: He is. Now, the problem is there are bars that he fell short of that people criticize him about. You know, in other words having the press conference when he announced the Hillary Clinton news and then ten days before the election talking about that and influencing, possibly influencing, the election. So he's not totally clean. So, the question is, now that he's got this book out there, will people hear that it's a call the a higher standard? Will they think this is just more weaponry in a partisan fight?
If those standards he’s making the case for get written down for as just more weaponry in a partisan fight, than he’s actually net reduced our belief in those standards that he said should be above politics. So, that's the fight for him. Can he protect the standards from the launch of his own book?
COLBERT: Wow. Well, I think one of the great challenges that he has, a friend of mine said to me today, is he has set a bar for himself and doesn't clear it, whereas Donald Trump has no bar or —
DICKERSON: Or he doesn't believe that the bar — that the bar is for suckers.
