Tag: Donald Trump

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NY Times: Trump Asked Comey To “Put Out The Word” He Was Not Personally Under Investigation


 The New York Times has the story:

President Trump called the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, weeks after he took office and asked him when federal authorities were going to put out word that Mr. Trump was not personally under investigation, according to two people briefed on the call.

Mr. Comey told the president that if he wanted to know details about the bureau’s investigations, he should not contact him directly but instead follow the proper procedures and have the White House counsel send any inquiries to the Justice Department, according to those people.

After explaining to Mr. Trump how communications with the F.B.I. should work, Mr. Comey believed he had effectively drawn the line after a series of encounters he had with the president and other White House officials that he felt jeopardized the F.B.I.’s independence. At the time, Mr. Comey was overseeing the investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

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Trump Denies Collusion On His Part, More Nuanced Regarding His Campaign

Standing next to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón at a joint press conference today, President Donald Trump categorically denied there was any collusion between him and Russia during the 2016 election cycle.

Collusion between his campaign staff and Russia? He was a little more nuanced on that.

Additionally, when asked point-blank if he had ever requested former FBI Director Jim Comey to “close or back down” on the FBI investigation into former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, Trump abruptly declared, “No. No. Next question.”

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Trump: Special Counsel Investigating Russian Interference In Election “Hurts The Country”

President Trump

Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced he had appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel, taking over the investigation into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.

The White House issued this statement last night on the president’s behalf:

“As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know — there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly. In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country.”

Very adult sounding, no?

Well, in a lunch meeting with network news anchors and reporters today, President Trump struck a very different tone saying the special counsel investigation “hurts the country!”

Via CNBC:

“I believe it hurts our country terribly, because it shows we’re a divided, mixed-up, not-unified country,” Trump said. “And we have very important things to be doing right now, whether it’s trade deals, whether it’s military, whether it’s stopping nuclear — all of the things that we discussed today. And I think this shows a very divided country.”

“It also happens to be a pure excuse for the Democrats having lost an election that they should have easily won because of the Electoral College being slanted so much in their way. That’s all this is. I think it shows division, and it shows that we’re not together as a country. And I think it’s a very, very negative thing. And hopefully, this can go quickly, because we have to show unity if we’re going to do great things with respect to the rest of the world.”

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Trump Denounces “Single Greatest Witch Hunt Of A Politician In American History”

Even as more information emerges about Trump’s associates contacting Russian officials during the 2016 election, President Trump continues to rant on Twitter that he is the victim of “the single greatest witch hunt” ever.

This from the man who led a year’s-long campaign to prove that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

This morning via Trump Twitter:

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Jimmy Fallon Has “Regrets” About Donald Trump Interview

With The Late Show with Stephen Colbert often surpassing The Tonight Show in the late night ratings race, host Jimmy Fallon tells The New York Times his softball interview of Donald Trump during the 2016 election was a “setback.”

In the aftermath of the interview, many folks felt the segment helped to “humanize” Trump.

The resurgent interest in left-leaning programming hasn’t helped Mr. Fallon, a former star of “Saturday Night Live” who has built his brand on his all-around entertainer’s skills and down-the-middle tastes.

And as Mr. Fallon is well aware, viewers haven’t seen him in quite the same light since an interview he conducted with Mr. Trump in September, which was widely criticized for its fawning, forgiving tone. In a gesture that has come to haunt the host, he concluded the segment by playfully running his fingers through Mr. Trump’s hair.

Mr. Fallon acknowledges now that the Trump interview was a setback, if not quite a mistake, and he has absorbed at least a portion of the anger that was directed at him by critics and online detractors.

“They have a right to be mad,” a chastened Mr. Fallon said in an interview this month. “If I let anyone down, it hurt my feelings that they didn’t like it. I got it.”

Mr. Fallon’s questions, however, were mostly innocuous; he asked Mr. Trump why children should want to grow up to be president and if his business background had helped him in the campaign. Their conversation concluded with Mr. Fallon fulfilling his longstanding wish of ruffling Mr. Trump’s hair.

“I didn’t do it to humanize him,” Mr. Fallon said, explaining this moment to me. “I almost did it to minimize him. I didn’t think that would be a compliment: ‘He did the thing that we all wanted to do.’”

But when the backlash did not subside, even after a few days, Mr. Fallon never addressed the controversy on air. “I didn’t talk about it, and I should have talked about it,” he said. “I regret that.”

You can watch the now infamous moment below:

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House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Caught On Audio: Putin Pays Trump

Rep. Kevin McCarthy


The Washington Post is reporting the discovery of a recording from last year which apparently captures Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy claiming Donald Trump was receiving payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016 exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

[snip]

When initially asked to comment on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”

After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said: “This entire year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. No one believed the majority leader was seriously asserting that Donald Trump or any of our members were being paid by the Russians. What’s more, the speaker and leadership team have repeatedly spoken out against Russia’s interference in our election, and the House continues to investigate that activity.”

“This was a failed attempt at humor,” Sparks said.

Why would Brendan Buck initially respond “That never happened,” only to cop to the fact it did happen minutes later? Is lying his default?

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Congressional Committees Request Comey Memos And White House Recordings

Former FBI Director James Comey

From the AP:

Top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are asking the FBI to provide memos from former director James Comey and for the White House to turn over any audio recordings that might exist of conversations with the now-fired director.

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California sent the letter to the Justice Department and the White House on Wednesday. They called on the White House “to provide records of interactions with former Director Comey, including any audio recordings.”

The letter came after the Senate Intelligence Committee made a similar request for Comey’s memos. The Intelligence panel also sought his testimony in open or closed session.

Additionally, the House Oversight committee has requested the same documents.

Earlier today, Rep. Justin Amash became the first House Republican to say that impeachment would be appropriate if the allegations regarding Trump’s request that Comey end the Michael Flynn investigation were to be proven true.

Independent Sen. Angus King has told CNN that this latest debacle could bring Trump closer to impeachment proceedings.

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Officials Are “Strategically” Planting Trump’s Name In Reports To Keep Him Interested


 Reuters reports that Trump administration officials are slowly figuring out tricks to keep President Trump interested in reports long enough to read them.

Apparently, the Trumpster stays focused if he sees his own name mentioned often enough.

Conversations with some officials who have briefed Trump and others who are aware of how he absorbs information portray a president with a short attention span.

He likes single-page memos and visual aids like maps, charts, graphs and photos.

National Security Council officials have strategically included Trump’s name in “as many paragraphs as we can because he keeps reading if he’s mentioned,” according to one source, who relayed conversations he had with NSC officials.

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BREAKING: Trump Asked FBI Director Comey To End Flynn Investigation

Whoa.

From The New York Times:

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo that Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The existence of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence an ongoing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

The White House has denied the allegation.

I find it completely believable that Trump, operating like a CEO, not a president, might pull someone aside and ask a favor for a buddy. It’s more “corner office” than “Oval Office” thinking.

Sen. Angus King says things are inching closer and closer to impeachment.

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Six Fireflies Beeping Randomly In A Jar

When a conservative columnist compares the current president’s thinking to “six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.”

From David Brooks for The New York Times:

His inability to focus his attention makes it hard for him to learn and master facts. He is ill informed about his own policies and tramples his own talking points. It makes it hard to control his mouth. On an impulse, he will promise a tax reform when his staff has done little of the actual work.

“In a short period of time I understood everything there was to know about health care,” he told Time. “A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber,” he told The Associated Press, referring to his joint session speech.

By Trump’s own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase “priming the pump” (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself.

He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought he’d be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.

[snip]

We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.

I encourage you to read the full essay.