On Thursday, Donald Trump sat down with New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman—who is totally a third rate reporter he does not speak to—for an extended interview that also included reporter Peter Baker. During that interview Trump declared everything being negotiated in Congress that is not his wall “a waste of time,” claimed that Nancy Pelosi “is hurting our country very badly” and expressed his belief that everything is going according to his plan.
Trump: I’ve set the table. I’ve set the stage for doing what I’m going to do.
That table is set for carving up democracy by declaring a national emergency so he can appropriate money to get his wall directly over the will of Congress. It’s an outcome that Trump believes he has rallied the people behind through his thrilling Oval Office and Rose Garden appearances.
Trump: They didn’t know what was going on with the southern border. Now they know. They had no idea the amount of crime, the amount of drugs, the amount of human trafficking, which can be stopped with a proper system —
Trump repeatedly called the negotiations going on by the bipartisan conference committee pointless, but said he would deign to wait until Feb. 15 before he would “do what I’m going to do.”
In the same interview, Trump also let it be known that the Moscow Project was “a very unimportant deal” about which someone had made a mistake.
Trump: The only thing you heard is through Rudy. Is that what you heard? Through Rudy? … Rudy was incorrect. No. 1, he was incorrect, and we’ve explained that, he was wrong. Rudy has been wrong. A little bit. But what has happened is this. I didn’t care. That deal was not important.
Because Trump would never care about a deal he’d been trying to make for decades that would net him hundreds of millions and which would put his name on the tallest building in Europe.
Trump also denied that he spoke with the just arrested Roger Stone about WikiLeaks,
Trump: No, I didn’t. I never did.
Reporter: Did you ever tell him to — or other people to get in touch with them?
Trump: Never did.
Attempts to engage with Trump over the Russia investigation mostly ran smack into a statement that Rod Rosenstein once told him that he was “not a target,” a phrase which Trump repeated over and over in response to multiple questions. During this segment, Trump also denied that threatening Michael Cohen’s father-in-law to get him to shut up was witness tampering.
Trump: It’s not witness tampering. It’s not witness tampering at all. It’s not witness tampering.
Reporter: What’s your purpose, then? Help us understand that.
Trump: I did have to read what I said. What did I say? I don’t know. What did I say?
Reporter: Just that people ought to be taking a look at Michael Cohen’s father-in-law. And House Democrats have said they thought that —
Trump: Well, I will say this: I think people have the right to speak their mind. You know, speaking your mind. I’ve heard that for a period of time. But other people have said it, too. I mean, many people have said it.
So if other people throw Michael Cohen’s family off a bridge, Trump is totally okay in doing the same.
Haberman asked one question whose response could have all of America crossing its fingers …
Haberman: You’ve talked about the sacrifice that this has presented for yourself, for your family, being president. For your business. Could you ever see a point in the next year where you say, “You know what, I don’t need to do this again, I don’t need to run for re-election”?
And … no. He says he’s running.