Donald Trump’s name-calling is getting so tired that his insults are already being recycled. So “Lying James Comey” for his ousted FBI director doesn’t quite cut it, a disappointed Jake Tapper quipped Thursday on CNN.
“I think there’s a consensus on the panel that ‘Lyin’ Comey’ isn’t really up to snuff. People are not impressed with that nickname, Mr. President,” Tapper said on “The Lead,” “so you might want to get back to the drawing board on that.”
The Republican National Committee has launched the website lyincomey.com to attack the former FBI director amid startling revelations from his memoir, A Higher Calling: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, about Trump. The Washington Post has already reported that Trump was obsessed with the “golden showers” allegation in Christopher’s Steele’s dossier about him and was ready to use FBI resources to disprove it for the sake of first lady Melania Trump, according to Comey.
The president is actually “pretty good” at coining negative sobriquets, conceded Tapper, who cited “Little Marco,” “Low-Energy Jeb” and “Crooked Hillary.” But Trump has already used “Lyin’ Ted” for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and “Lyin’ Hillary” for his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton. Trump and his backers need to “come up with something else” for Comey, Tapper suggested, tongue in cheek.
Trump has also disarmed the sting of calling someone a liar, Tapper noted. By The Washington Post’s count, as of March 1, Trump has made 2,436 false or misleading statements, said the CNN host. So for him to call Comey a liar has about as much punch as “insulting Comey for having an unusual hairstyle,” said Tapper.
Tapper’s panelist Nia Malika Henderson, CNN’s senior political reporter, predicted a White House meltdown over Comey’s book. She said it could be another “Fire and Fury fury,” referring to journalist Michael’s Wolff’s book revealing the chaos of the Trump administration earlier this year. The White House was then “caught flat-footed,” without a “coordinated response” to the book, she said. But Trump was quickly back to name-calling, referring to his former chief strategist and a source for the book, Steve Bannon, as “Sloppy Steve.”
Check out the rest of what Tapper had to say about Trump’s latest troubles in the video above.
