The 11 most eye-opening lines in James Comey's 'A Higher Loyalty,' ranked

There's a lot of pieces of the Comey book -- "A Higher Loyalty" -- kicking around the media world at the moment. Some are salacious, others are stunning and some are just plain surreal.

I scanned through all of the available excerpts and plucked out the lines that are most devastating for Trump. Then I ranked them by level of damage they are likely to cause. Here they are, ranked from least to most problematic for the President of the United States.

11. "His face appeared slightly orange with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles, and impressively coifed, bright blond hair, which upon close inspection looked to be all his.....As he extended his hand, I made a mental note to check its size. It was smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so."

This is, in a word, dumb. Or, in another word, petty. If Comey wanted to build the narrative with this book that he is truly committed to the good of the country rather than in selling books or scoring partisan points, he'd have been better served to leave this stuff out. Noting the size of Trump's hands or the fact that he tans feels beneath the broader stated mission of the book: To reveal why Trump is simply not fit for the office he currently holds. Comey also mentions that Trump was shorter than he looked on TV. First off, everyone is short to the 6'8" Comey. Second, who cares?

10. "I stared at the soft white pouches under his expressionless blue eyes. I remember thinking in that moment that the president doesn't understand the FBI's role in American life."

Again, the fact that Trump has "soft white pouches" under his "expressionless blue eyes" feels more like an unnecessary jab than an essential insight. BUT, Comey's next sentence is important -- because he's right. Trump has demonstrated time and time again that he simply doesn't understand -- or doesn't care about -- the unique role the Justice Department plays within the federal government. Yes, they work under him. But they don't exactly work for him. He's never seemed to get that.

9. "I had often wondered why, when given numerous opportunities to condemn the Russian government's invasions of its neighbors and repression — even murder — of its own citizens, Trump refused to just state the plain facts...Maybe it was a contrarian streak or maybe it was something more complicated that explained his constant equivocation and apologies for Vladimir Putin."

There's no question that prior to the last week or so, Trump has been largely unwilling to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country as a whole. (The Syrian chemical attack and Russia's continued support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appears to have changed how Trump thinks about Putin.)

But, we already knew that. And everything else in this excerpt is pure speculation. "Maybe it was something more complicated" isn't exactly hard and fast evidence.

8. "Another reason you know this isn't true: I'm a germaphobe. There's no way I would let people pee on each other around me, no way."

This one is more salacious than anything else. But, that Trump feels the need to convince Comey that he never watched two prostitutes pee on one another is, um, something else.

7. "He brought up what he called the 'golden showers thing' . . . adding that it bothered him if there was 'even a 1 percent chance' his wife, Melania, thought it was true....In what kind of marriage, to what kind of man, does a spouse conclude there is only a 99 percent chance her husband didn't do that?"

Don't be too quick to dismiss this as simply salacious. Yes, there is that. But it is absolutely telling about the state of Trump's marriage that he was asking the FBI director to prove the falsehood of the "pee tape" to his wife -- almost certainly because she wouldn't believe him.

Then there's the fact that Trump seems to believe that proving the tape doesn't exist to Melania Trump is a worthy use of the FBI's time. Which is, um, something.

6. "It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check."

Comey here is echoing people like Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake who have castigated their fellow Republicans for refusing to condemn Trump when he attacks the Justice Department or the Intelligence Community. The argument is that silence is essentially assent. Only by saying, "No, what Trump is doing is wrong and should stop immediately" can Republicans hope to have a party in the post-Trump era.

Amid Trump's ramped-up rhetoric on deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and special counsel Robert Mueller, it will be interesting to see what Republican reaction will be if the president decides to fire either (or both) of those men. Will Republicans speak out?

5. "Asking — rhetorically, I assumed — whether he seemed like a guy who needed the service of prostitutes. He then began discussing cases where women had accused him of sexual assault, a subject I had not raised. He mentioned a number of women, and seemed to have memorized their allegations."

Two things are at work here -- one not terribly problematic for Trump, the other potential more so. The first is that he demonstrates he has a massive ego and believes that he is so appealing to women that any story about him frequenting prostitutes simply can't be believed.

The second is that he is intimately familiar with the details of the bevy of accusations made against him by a number of women during the 2016 campaign. That level of interest/obsession belies the public face of dismissal and unconcern Trump and his people have presented when confronted with the allegations.

4. "Now it was pretty clear to me what was happening. The setup of the dinner, both the physical layout of a private meal and Trump's pretense that he had not already asked me to stay on multiple occasions, convinced me this was an effort to establish a patronage relationship."

This is very important. What Comey is alleging here is that Trump, from the start, saw his relationship with Comey as entirely transactional. I'll let you stay in your job as FBI director but I want something for it. That something, as we now now, was a loyalty pledge that Comey refused to give.

Trump's approach to every encounter appears to be similar to what Comey describes here. Let's make a deal where you get something but, far more importantly, I get something.

3. "[Kelly] said he was sick about my firing and that he intended to quit in protest. He said he didn't want to work for dishonorable people who would treat someone like me in such a manner. I urged Kelly not to do that, arguing that the country needed principled people around this president. Especially this president."

This anecdote is going to make chief of staff John Kelly's life even harder than it already is. Rumors of him clashing with Trump and/or being on the way out are everywhere. Now, he'll have to face a barrage of questions over whether Comey's recounting of the moments right after Trump fired him are accurate. And if Kelly says they are, how can he stay in his job? If he says Comey got it wrong, will Trump even believe him?

2. "The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth."

In this excerpt, Comey is comparing Trump to a mob boss. Which is a tough comparison to make when you are dealing with the President of the United States. But, Comey is right in the main when it comes to how Trump sees himself and how he leads his team. Trump must always be the strongest and toughest one in any room. He expects total loyalty from those who work for him -- and works to rid his inner circle of those he believes have shown even a speck of disloyalty to him. He doesn't tell the truth about things that are easily and provably false -- largest inauguration crowd ever, millions of illegal votes cast -- and then dares those around him to question him.

I don't know any mob bosses personally but there's not question that Comey nails Trump here.

1. "This President is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty."

These two sentences are the most damaging thing to Trump so far in the Copmey excerpts because they speak to a number of demonstrated truths. We know that Trump said more than 2,000 things in his first year in office that were either partially or entirely untrue. We know he looks at every situation as a chance to extract something for himself. That he is immensely self focused to the point of a blindness as to how his actions might be perceived by people who aren't him. We know that he either misunderstands or chooses ton ignore traditional norms for how a president acts, what he says and how he treats those who work for him.