James Comey openly shifted the legal goalposts to exonerate Hillary Clinton prematurely for endangering national security. He then turned around and arguably destroyed her chances by announcing in October that her classified emails were found during a search into pervert Anthony Weiner’s computer.
There ought to be no man more loathed by both sides of the political aisle than James Comey. And for a time, before President Trump fired him, that’s exactly how it was.
This is what makes the preening and grandstanding and freakishly too-tall standing former FBI director look ridiculous with his self-indulgent hand-wringing over integrity and election-defining decisions. The exposure of the FBI’s politicization through Operation Crossfire Hurricane only makes matters worse. It has diminished public trust in the nation’s most important institutions.
Even so, Showtime apparently has a soft spot for the since-ousted intelligence boss. The premium cable network gave Comey a lofty adaptation of his memoir, A Higher Loyalty. The two-part miniseries The Comey Rule portrays Jeff Daniels as an even more self-aggrandizing and delusional Comey than the actual former FBI boss, if that’s even possible. Trump is almost exclusively put on screen in the second half, portrayed by a hamfisted Brendan Gleeson.
The first half of the series documents Comey’s initial meeting with Barack Obama, whom he reminds he (heroically?) did not vote for yet still wants to serve, to the loss of Clinton in 2016. The second half covers Comey’s tenure during the early days of Trump’s presidency and the immediate fallout of his firing. Cast as a secondary villain and sometime narrator is Comey’s former deputy Rod Rosenstein, who is portrayed as a conniving caricature of the menacing Jew manipulating all of the noble gentiles. If the show itself weren’t so insufferably stupid, this obviously racist trope would seem a lot more malicious.
Over on the news side, our Justice Department reporter Jerry Dunleavy has already broken down the show’s lies. For example, it contains an entirely fabricated meeting between Mike Flynn and Vladimir Putin in December 2015. But the worst part of The Comey Rule is the protagonist himself — the smug pseudo-hero of the imperiled republic. The show attempts to exonerate Comey of any charges of politicizing either the investigation into Clinton’s use of her private email server or the Trump campaign’s contacts with the Russian Federation. The adulterous aspect of the relationship between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok has been erased and remade into some sort of sexy side quest consisting of a feminist hero whom Comey must take seriously. There is no mention of the text messages that arguably destroyed the integrity of the investigation.
The show correctly blames Attorney General Loretta Lynch for taking a tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton as Comey’s team was wrapping up their investigation but then acts as though it is a sign of Comey’s integrity, not of his idiocy, that he reacted to this by prematurely announcing Hillary’s innocence.
By Election Day, the Comey clan is decidedly pro-Hillary, though the patriarch decides to fall on his sword and not personally vote for president, even though he had previously voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney.
“Tracy, go on to stop the bad guys,” Comey says with an insufferable smirk as he beckons his wife to follow their daughter and vote for Hillary. And about the Comey family: They are, incredibly, almost more irritating than Comey himself. His wife implausibly begs Comey not to do his job and investigate Hillary because they have daughters, and just “think about what it would mean for them to see a woman president! Think about what it would mean to see her lose!”
Ultimately, the show is swallowed by Gleeson’s clumsy performance and a cringeworthy script, both of which make SNL’s painful sequences of Alec Baldwin as Trump look funny. As Ben Sixsmith wrote of Sarah Cooper’s pathetic attempt to lampoon the president, such pantomimes “cannot improve on the pure comic ecstasy of the real thing. It is the combination of Trump’s nonsensical speeches, his matchless confidence, plus the fact he is president, that makes him so hilarious.”
The same is true of every single attempt to mock the president who created the joke of his own mythos.
Democrats have every reason to disdain Comey. Despite choosing the most unlikable and, yes, shrill person in American politics to run against Trump, by all available polling data, Hillary would have eked out a win had Comey not made himself a martyr to exonerate her in July 2016 and then reverse his decision with days to go to the election. And Trump fans will always hate Comey because, well, Comey is Comey. Yet somehow, Hollywood found it in its heart to try and rehabilitate the dude we all see lunching around Washington, D.C., for plaudits from the feckless #Resistance. Only Hollywood is capable of missing the reasons such efforts will fail.
