But who asked for the dinner? From the transcript:
Trump, with his typical elusiveness, begins with the statement that Comey asked for the dinner, but when forced to confront whether or not that is true, Trump backpeddles to "a dinner was arranged". Typical Trump pivot to the passive voice.
Trump follow the typical patterns followed by inveterate liars and this is one example.
Start with a deliberate patent lie, but bury it in a statement about something else- why Trump made the statement in Comey's dismissal that Comey told him three times he is not under investigation. (Three times? There is that Trump pattern of repetition for emphasis. In Trump's case, lying all the time, how do you make yourself convincing? It happened not once, not twice, but three times ladies and gentlemen!".
Trump: Uh. I had a dinner with him. He wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on. We had a very nice dinner at the White House.
Holt: He asked for the dinner?
Trump: A dinner was arranged. I think he asked for the dinner. And he wanted to stay on as the FBI head. And I said I'll you know consider and we'll see what happens. But we had a very nice dinner. And at the time he told me you are not under investigation.
Now the timeline and commentary from TPM:
January 20th: Trump inaugurated as the 45th President.
January 24th: Michael Flynn interviewed by the FBI at the White House, reportedly with no lawyer present.
January 25th: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates briefed by the FBI on interview with Michael Flynn.
January 26th: Yates visits the White House to give White House Counsel Donald McGahn a ‘heads up’ about concerns that Flynn had been compromised by his dealings with and deceptions about contacts with Russian government officials.
January 27th: Yates returns to the White House for further discussions with McGahn.
January 27th: Trump has private dinner with James Comey at the White House.
An additional detail is that various published reports, in addition to statements by Sean Spicer, say that McGann briefed Trump about the Yates’ discussion shortly after he met with her. That would appear to be on January 26th, though I’m not sure we know for a certainty that it was within hours of the first meeting rather than the second.
We need a lot more information. The most immediate question is: what had the President been told when he sat down with Comey for the loyalty dinner? Assuming Comey’s version is accurate and Trump requested the dinner, when did the request come? Did he contact Comey on the 26th or 27th or earlier?
It seems highly probable that Trump went into the dinner with Comey having just learned about the DOJ warnings about Flynn, indeed that the FBI was investigating Flynn. We can’t know for sure. But it seems possible that the dinner request came after Trump learned of these things and may indeed have been triggered by that new information.
There are many questions.
Following this TPM post, Comey associates came forward to say that the dinner was a "last minute thing." We can assume the dinner was all about the loyalty question. Some commentators have tried to distinguish between small lies and big lies recently because there are some big damaging lies and some lies seem small. But with this administration, we have the big liar at the top and the enablers within the White House advisers who join in by lying on behalf of the president and thus become a part of the conspiracy of lying. In this environment and with this crew holding power, there is no such thing as a small lie.
The press had a responsibility during the 2016 campaign to be much tougher on Trump's constant lying and fell short, partly due to their understanding of "fair and balanced" reporting, but also because they had no rule book that covers this situation. They are great when bombs are falling all around them in a war zone, but when one side in a political campaign is dropping lies all around them, they don't know what to do.
Shouldn't a member of the White House pool of correspondents be willing to take the hit by asking Spicer or Huckabee Saunders the question: "The president has been caught in many lies that have been well documented. Does the president believe he can continue to lie constantly throughout his term? Or would that just fall flat?
Unfortunately, history tells a sad story. In 2008, AP reporter Glen Johnson challenged candidate Mitt Romney on the campaign trail in the middle of a lie. The contentious (though not all that heated) exchange was the big campaign news of the day. Columbia Journalism Review found that there was No Need to Apologize.
Unlike Trump, Romney mixed lies into his campaign narrative the way a mother mixes bitter medicine into apple sauce for her toddler. The apple sauce is awful, but it still tastes like apple sauce and you can legitimately call it apple sauce. In other words, Romney was not all about the lies the way Trump is all about the lies. But, as I argued throughout 2016, the Trump phenomenon is a logical result of Republican presidential campaign tactics and strategy.
In that 2008 exchange Romney is interrupted before he can finish his statement, but he is saying "I don’t have lobbyists running my campaign. I don’t have lobbyists that are tied to my- " when AP writer Glen Johnson interrupted. Romney pivots during the argument with Johnson to back away from the unfinished "I don't have lobbyists tied to my [campaign]" to the firmer, but still shaky ground "I don't have lobbyists running my campaign" for which he had at least plausible, though not necessarily credible argument.
The point is that Trump was able to emerge from the field of 17 Republicans because he was the most able and willing to take underhanded, but not unheard of Republican tactics to the extreme. Today our democracy suffers as a result.
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