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By Philip Bump, The Washington Post
Former FBI director James Comey’s book tour began in earnest on Sunday night in a pre-taped inteview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. Details from the book had been reported previously — and President Trump had made his feelings known repeatedly on Twitter — but the ABC interview marked the start of a new phase of promotion for “A Higher Loyalty,” which is officially released on Tuesday.
For those who’ve been tracking the often-tense interactions between Trump and Comey over the past year, there’s a question that’s hard to avoid: Who, exactly, is Comey going to convince? Most things in American politics are, by now, largely set in stone, with members of one party strongly opposed and the other strongly supportive and independents landing somewhere in the middle. Won’t Comey’s book just land on that spectrum, evoking the same responses we’ve come to expect?
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To some extent, sure. But a surprisingly large number of Americans still haven’t been exposed to Comey enough to have an opinion of him, and those Americans may find something in the new public relations push to convince them.
The Post and our polling partners at ABC News released the results of a new poll on Friday that looked at views of Comey. His favorability rating was about even, with 32 percent of Americans viewing him unfavorably and 30 percent viewing him favorably. But a plurality of 38 percent said that they had no opinion of the former FBI director.
Nonetheless, nearly half of the country found Comey more believable than Trump (with only 1-in-10 having no opinion on that question).
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