Beyond the pee tape

Forget whether the salacious rumor in Comey's new book is true. How Trump reacted to it is what's important.

James Comey and President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images, AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The fabled "pee tape" is back. Reviews of former FBI Director James Comey's book, A Higher Loyalty, are already making the rounds and it's hard not to focus on his blow-by-blow account of the time he told then-President-elect Donald Trump about the possible existence of a Russian blackmail video that supposedly featured Trump hiring prostitutes to urinate on a bed that President Obama once slept on. According to Comey, Trump became obsessed with the rumor.

Yet as salacious as these details are, they make it very difficult to talk about what actually matters about this episode — and it's not the pee tape.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.