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Former FBI Director James Comey says Donald Trump is ‘morally unfit to be president’

In a televised interview, Comey called the President of the United States a serial liar.

Credit: Screenshot/ABC News
Credit: Screenshot/ABC News

On Sunday night, ABC News aired a highly anticipated interview with former FBI Director James Comey, detailing his experience in the Trump Administration and his interactions with Donald Trump himself — before and during his presidency.

Comey, who led the FBI’s still-ongoing investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 election, declined to take a definitive stance on many subjects when pressed by host George Stephanopoulos, save for one: When asked whether he believed Trump was a liar, Comey didn’t skip a beat. “Yes.”

Throughout the full five-hour interview — the transcript of which ABC News published to run alongside a condensed version for air — Comey returned to his assertion that Trump is untethered to reality.

Comey cited two examples from the first hours of the Trump presidency, one in which Trump lied about whether or not former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was aware of a meeting, the other being Trump’s preposterous insistence that his inauguration crowd was larger than President Barack Obama’s.

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“That’s just not true. That’s not a perspective, that’s not a view, that’s just a lie,” said Comey. “And yet he would say it and, “Everyone agrees, everyone says, everyone believes…’.”

“There’s something more important than that that should unite all of us, and that is our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth,” he added. “This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.”

Comey was also forceful in his condemnation of Trump’s treatment of women and his embrace of white supremacists in the aftermath of last summer’s neo-Nazi rally in Virginia.

“A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds,” Comey said.