Meghan McCain goes off on Comey on ‘The View’: ‘J. Edgar Hoover … rolling over in his grave’

Meghan McCain, Republican co-host on "The View," took on former FBI Director James Comey over his new book during Wednesday's show.

What happened?

Comey, who appeared on the daytime talk show to discuss his bombshell book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership," was taken to task by the show's co-hosts in varying degrees of inquisition.

McCain began by blasting the content of Comey's memoir, noting that former FBI Director "J. Edgar Hoover would be rolling over in his grave" if he were privy to the contents of the book.

"It doesn’t seem like something the director of the FBI — why are you laughing?" she went on, interrupting herself to ask co-host Whoopi Goldberg why she was laughing.

Goldberg joked, "[Hoover] is the wrong guy to bring up," to which McCain responded, "He didn't write a tell-all when he left."

"I don’t think of it as a tell-all," Comey interjected. "It’s a whole lot more than the stories that are in the last few chapters of the book. It’s about mistakes I have made, things I’m very much ashamed of I did when I was younger. It’s a story about portions of my life to try to tell a story."

He noted that the book has "no classified information or sensitive information," adding that the FBI reviewed the book.

"Hoover would probably say, 'You followed the rules,'" he added.

What did McCain say about Comey?

McCain later added that she has a problem with his public persona, in which she likened him to a "political commentator," and illustrated her point with several examples.

"I want to believe you’re not a political person," she said. "You’re the head of the FBI, but you write in your book how you went to President [Barack] Obama, and you were on the verge of tears, saying you were going to miss him. You also said were dreading the next four years with [President Donald] Trump."

She added, "You said very incendiary things about my party this morning. I'm a Republican who has many issues with Trump, that is not reflective of my party as a whole. The big issue I have is — I don’t want to know your politics, and a lot of the things you’re saying and doing are highly political, and I just don’t understand what you gain, trying to sort of clear the deck here by bringing things like this up."

Comey responded that he doesn't think of it "as my politics," but "as my values."

In response to McCain's comment that Comey sounds like a "political commentator" when he speaks, he said, "I don’t mean to be. I don’t care whether people support a Republican or a Democrat, because I’m not either. I don’t care who they support. I hope the conversation will start with values and come to policy second, because we’re always going to fight about guns and taxes and immigration, but all we are as this country is a collection of values and that’s what unites Republicans and Democrats."

Anything else?

Co-host Joy Behar weighed in at one point by criticizing Comey's investigation of former presidential candidate and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email.

"You said you re-opened the investigation into Hillary’s private email servers 11 days before the election because 'I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump,'" Behar said. "Now should the FBI have taken it upon themselves, yourself, to guess who was going to win? I mean, that seems out of your purview. … That doesn’t sound right to me."

Comey responded, "Great question, but not for a moment. Because down that path lies the death of the FBI as an independent force."

Co-host Sara Haines asked Comey about his decision to include petty jabs about President Donald Trump's appearance in his book.

"If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t put that paragraph in," he admitted.