Hey Donald Trump, is that all you’ve got?

| 1:10 pm EDT April 16, 2018
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For the past week, as the hype has been building for former FBI Director James Comey’s new book, we’ve seen Donald Trump go to increasingly frantic and vicious lengths to try to smear Comey. Trump has called Comey a “slimeball” and a “slime ball” on different days, unsure of whether it’s supposed to be one word or two. Trump has knocked Comey’s intelligence, integrity, and twice called for him to go to prison this week. So now that Comey’s book has arrived, what’s Trump got to say?

Last night Comey did a television interview that was so widely viewed, the hashtag #ComeyInterview was still a top trending topic on Twitter by sunrise. And today was of course the official release date of the book, which reveals one unflattering thing about Trump after another. So what did Trump do this morning for his big finale against Comey?

It turns out Trump went in a surprisingly weak and tepid direction. He tweeted “Comey drafted the Crooked Hillary exoneration long before he talked to her (lied in Congress to Senator G), then based his decisions on her poll numbers. Disgruntled, he, McCabe, and the others, committed many crimes!” We’re not even convinced he wrote this. It would be difficult for him to spell “exoneration” correctly, and the “Disgruntled, he, McCabe, and the others” phrasing doesn’t sound even close to his writing style. Did a staffer have to tweet this? Is Trump refusing to even tweet?

Even if Donald Trump did pen this tweet, it’s remarkably weak in comparison to the chest pounding he’d been doing leading up to the James Comey book. Trump will probably return to his usual aggro-tweeting later today or tomorrow, because he’s a creature of habit. But it’s notable that in what should have been his biggest swing at Comey, this was all he had to say.