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| Trump said if he wanted to, he could do the investigation into his own campaign's ties with Russian government. He tweeted: “I can go in, and I could do whatever — I could run it if I want.. But I decided to stay out.”. Special Counsel Robert Mueller laughed at him! |
VietPress USA (Aug. 24, 2018): On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd asked Giuliani why the president didn’t simply meet with Mueller and tell the truth. Giuliani said that “Truth isn’t truth!” It is the same what President Trump himself declared in a July speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Trump also stepped up his attacks on Mueller, likening the special counsel’s investigation to “McCarthyism at its worst!” In addition to the McGahn revelations, the backdrop to the increased volume of the president’s tweets was the imminent conclusion of the trial of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort. The White House braced for the possibility that Mueller’s team might secure its fifth conviction, not a bad tally for what Trump has frequently labeled a “WITCH HUNT!”
In an interview with Reuters on Monday, President Trump was worried about how the prosecution could use his own words against him. Trump tweeted: “So if I say something and [Comey] says something, and it’s my word against his, and he’s best friends with Mueller, so Mueller might say: ‘Well, I believe Comey,’ and even if I’m telling the truth, that makes me a liar,” Trump said. “That’s no good.”
The week Trump's own words caught up with him
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| President Trump at a rally in support of the Senate candidacy of West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, Aug. 21, 2018. (Photo: Craig Hudson/Charleston Gazette-Mail/AP) |
Since before he was elected president, Donald Trump has operated in the belief that he can control his narrative through sheer force of will — and words. Day after day, he floods the airwaves with messages — ad-libbed speeches, off the cuff remarks and incendiary tweets — whose effect is to keep the world’s attention squarely on him.
As he explained at a July rally in Granite City, Ill., the advantage of never relinquishing the spotlight is “it’s covered live, much of it, and when I say it they can’t do anything about it.”
But this week, Trump’s relentless stream of words seems to have come back to haunt him, and may yet make the president want to reconsider his “it’s all about me” communications strategy. Trump’s problems largely grew out of things that he himself is alleged to have said.
It began on Sunday, when he issued a flurry of tweets blasting the New York Times for its report that White House counsel Don McGahn has been cooperating extensively with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
McGahn has so far sat for 30 hours of questioning from Mueller’s team, detailing Trump’s private statements about the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the president’s anger at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself in the Russia investigation. Unlike Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani (more on him in a moment), McGahn represents the office of the presidency, and, according to the Times, felt compelled to testify to Mueller out of fears that the president was setting him up to take the fall on possible obstruction charges.
The Times story clearly irritated the president, who claimed he had “nothing to hide.”
The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel, he must be a John Dean type “RAT.” But I allowed him and all others to testify - I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide......
It isn’t known what McGahn told investigators. But it’s safe to assume he shared what he knew about Trump’s outbursts against Comey, Sessions, disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and others.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd asked Giuliani why the president didn’t simply meet with Mueller and tell the truth about what had transpired, which led the former New York mayor into the realm of postmodern philosophy, raising the novel defense that “Truth isn’t truth!” That Orwellian turn of phrase brought to mind what Trump himself declared in a July speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Trump also stepped up his attacks on Mueller, likening the special counsel’s investigation to “McCarthyism at its worst!” In addition to the McGahn revelations, the backdrop to the increased volume of the president’s tweets was the imminent conclusion of the trial of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort. The White House braced for the possibility that Mueller’s team might secure its fifth conviction, not a bad tally for what Trump has frequently labeled a “WITCH HUNT!”
As a Monday interview with Reuters showed, the president was worried about how the prosecution could use his own words against him.
“So if I say something and [Comey] says something, and it’s my word against his, and he’s best friends with Mueller, so Mueller might say: ‘Well, I believe Comey,’ and even if I’m telling the truth, that makes me a liar,” Trump said. “That’s no good.”
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