John Dickerson lays out the big, big risk in James Comey's book tour


"Hi, it's only Monday," CBS This Morning cohost John Dickerson reminded Stephen Colbert on Monday's Late Show. "I'm sweating from the news," Colbert said. He asked if Dickerson has read former FBI Director James Comey's new book, A Higher Loyalty, and Dickerson said he'd skimmed it and read the transcript of Comey's interview on ABC News. But he had some well-thought-out ideas about the risks and rewards of Comey's project.
What Comey is "trying to do is he's making the case for a moral standard at a time when all of those standards are being thrown out by the president — and some people love the fact that those standards are being thrown out — and so he's trying to make this case while he has fallen short of standards as well," Dickerson said. "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 to a higher standard? Will they think this is just more weaponry in a partisan fight? If those standards he's making a case for get written down as just more weaponry in a partisan fight, then he's actually net-reduced our belief in those standards that he says should be above politics. So that's the fight for him: Can he protect those standards from the launch of his own book?"
"Wow," Colbert said. They talked more about Comey and Trump, the increasingly impossible job of the presidency, Jimmy Carter getting so into the minutiae that he took over the scheduling of the White House tennis courts, and what it's like to float in a sensory deprivation tank. Watch below. Peter Weber
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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