Comey: Trump has ‘an emptiness inside of him and a hunger for affirmation’

Former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday night accused President Trump of having “an emptiness inside of him and a hunger for affirmation.”

“I think he has an emptiness inside of him, and a hunger for affirmation, that I’ve never seen in an adult,” Comey told The New Yorker Editor David Remnick on stage at The Town Hall theater in Manhattan. “It’s all, ‘What will fill this hole?’”

Comey’s media tour to promote his new memoir “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership” has included stops at ABC’s “20/20” and “The View,” NBC’s “Today” show, CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” and CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” among other outlets.

Comey continued his media blitz to promote his new book on Thursday at a town hall hosted by The New Yorker, where he told Remnick that he doesn’t “crave to be known.”

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Remnick also pressed Comey on a New York Times story that ran eight days before the 2016 election with the headline, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.”

“Why would the FBI push that story on The New York Times a week before the election?” asked Remnick.

“Yeah, that’s a hard one to answer. I don’t know who the FBI is in this context,” Comey replied.

“You’re saying that the Times’s FBI sources on that story were wrong?” Remnick pressed.

Comey, a likely witness for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling, including possible collusion between Russian officials and Trump campaign associates, issued a disclaimer about what he was legally able to answer before replying.

“At least with respect to what the goals of the Russian effort were, it’s just wrong,” Comey said.

Regarding the closing and reopening of the FBI investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information before the 2016 election that at the time angered both sides of the political aisle, Comey said he felt “tremendous pain over the prospect that we played any role” in the election.

But he added that he didn’t think he made any mistakes in handling the situation.

Democrats in particular seethed when Comey reopened the case against Clinton on Oct. 28, 2016, and some have stated in several interviews this week that Comey should be investigated for his actions.

“The inspector general should investigate James Comey for violating the rules of the Justice Department,” close Clinton ally and The Hill contributor Lanny Davis told Fox News on Wednesday.

Fox News’s Bret Baier and PBS’s Judy Woodruff will also interview Comey on April 26 and April 30, respectively.

CNN will also host a town hall at Comey’s alma mater, William & Mary, on April 25.

A Sunday night interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos was Comey’s first interview since being fired by Trump last May.

–Updated at 8:53 a.m.