The Director Speaks: In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last night, former FBI Director James Comey compared the Trump presidency to a forest fire, assailed his penchant for lying, and said Trump is “morally unfit” to be president.

It was Comey’s first major interview on his tour selling his new book.

Comey said, “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.”

Trump fired Comey last year and has since said it’s one of the best things he’s done.

Much of the conversation was about major cases in Comey’s career, including the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. Then it got into Trump’s request for the FBI to go easy on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and the request over dinner for Comey’s personal loyalty to Trump. Comey told Stephanopoulos about trying to protect the integrity of the FBI while thinking, “Everything’s gone mad.”

He said, “The foundation of this country is in jeopardy when we stop measuring our leaders against that central value of the truth.”

Comey said he has no idea whether Trump or his people conspired with Russians. “I didn’t stay long enough to know.”

Returning to the forest fire metaphor he said, “I think this forest fire will leave us better and stronger, as did the last forest fire. Watergate was a forest fire. It re-balanced power among the branches of government. I think we’re going to see that. And I think we’re going to be better for it.”

Hours before the interview aired, Trump fired a preemptive twitter barrage, raging about Comey, the Syria raid, “Fake News,” and attorney-client privilege after the search of his lawyer’s records.

“Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!” the President wrote.

The President said,  “I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies.”

On lawyers: “I have many (too many!) lawyers and they are probably wondering when their offices, and even homes, are going to be raided with everything, including their phones and computers, taken.”

Syria: “The Syrian raid was so perfectly carried out, with such precision, that the only way the Fake News Media could demean was by my use of the term ‘Mission Accomplished.’”

That’s not everything, but you get the idea.

Black Lives: Starbucks has apologized to two black men who were arrested after they were asked to leave a Philadelphia store because they had not ordered anything and refused to go. The two were first refused use of the bathroom. They sat and said they were waiting for a friend. A Starbucks employee called the cops.

On a video taken by a customer, a white friend asked the police as they were cuffing the two, “What did they get called for, because there are two black guys there meeting me?”

The two men were at first charged with trespassing, but the charges were dropped.

Hard Time: Seven inmates are dead and 17 injured after hours of fighting in a South Carolina prison. Authorities said there were several fights among inmates. The maximum-security prison in Bishopville has 1,500 inmates, some of South Carolina’s most violent and longest-serving offenders.

Class: Former First Lady Barbara Bush is in failing health and has decided to receive no more medical attention. She’s 92. A statement released by the office of her husband, President George HW Bush, said, “It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health worrying not for herself — thanks to her abiding faith —but for others.”

Barbara Bush brought both class and a motherly earthiness to a life in politics. She was blunt in defense of her two presidents, husband and son, but also kind and open.

It’s Political: A Washington Post poll says the Democratic advantage in the mid-term elections is slipping. The poll finds the gap in support for Democratic vs. Republican House candidates dropped by more than half since the beginning of the year. At the same time, President Trump’s popularity is creeping upwards.

The Obit Page: Actor R. Lee Ermey, the military veteran who played the foul-mouthed drill sergeant in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” died yesterday of pneumonia. He was 74. Nobody could deliver the line “Suzy rotten-crotch” like he did.

Word Trophy: A couple of days ago former CIA Director John Brennan tweeted to President Trump that, “Your kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey.”  There’s no such thing as Kakistan so we went to the dictionary.

“Kakistocracy” is a Greek word first used in the 1600s describing government by the worst and most unscrupulous elements of society.

It’s new to us, but evidently “kakistocracy” makes a comeback every once in a while. It was revived a bit during the presidencies of both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. This time, it could be the word of the century.

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