Continuing to be played by what seems to be all parties, Trump calls Moon to DC to assure what issues in the North Korea - US summit?
Trump was surprised and angered by a recent announcement from North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator that North Korea would be unwilling to trade its nuclear weapons for economic aid, administration officials told the Times.
On Saturday night, Trump called South Korean President Moon Jae-in to ask why North Korea’s public statements didn’t match the private assurances Kim had given Moon, the Times reported. The call took place three days before Moon and Trump are set to meet in Washington, D.C.
Until recently, administration officials had said they expected Kim to agree to denuclearization and a fast timetable for winding down the nuclear program.
thehill.com/...
On Thursday and Friday, Mr. Trump peppered aides with questions about the wisdom of proceeding, and on Saturday night he called President Moon Jae-in of South Korea to ask why the North’s public statement seemed to contradict the private assurances that Mr. Moon had conveyed after he met Kim Jong-un, the 35-year-old dictator of the North, at the Demilitarized Zone in late April.
The president’s conversation with Mr. Moon, which was first reported by The Washington Post, came just three days before the South Korean leader was scheduled to arrive in Washington to meet with Mr. Trump on Tuesday. It was a sign of Mr. Trump’s discomfort, some officials speculated, that he could not wait to discuss the issue until Mr. Moon arrived for his meetings here, though there is no indication that the president is considering pulling out of the North Korea talks.
Mr. Trump’s aides have grown concerned that the president — who has said that “everyone thinks” he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts — has signaled that he wants the summit meeting too much.
The aides also worry that Mr. Kim, sensing the president’s eagerness, is prepared to offer assurances that will fade over time.
The counterbalance to Trumpian desperation in Korea will be how the WH burned an informant because they’re carrying on a cover-up.
Desperation everywhere in the WH.
The President in this tweet announces that he will tomorrow formally demand of the Justice Department a specific investigation—to wit, one about whether the DOJ and FBI spied on the Trump campaign and if the Obama administration demanded such action of them. /2/
There is no doubt that he has the constitutional authority to make this demand. /3/
There is also no doubt in my mind that neither the attorney general (who is recused anyway) nor the deputy attorney general nor the FBI director can in good conscience comply with such an order. And I don’t believe they will. /4/
This is a nakedly corrupt attempt on the part of the President to derail an investigation of himself at the expense of a human source to whose protection the FBI and DOJ are committed.
See @qjurecic and my piece on this from yesterday. /5/
So if the President really gives Rod Rosenstein or Chris Wray an order (as opposed to Twitter bluster) demanding a particular investigation not properly predicated under FBI/DOJ guidelines for this overtly political purpose, I believe both men will resign rather than comply. /6/
In other words, this tweet is different from other Trump craziness tweets. It’s one that promises a specific action on a specific date (tomorrow) with respect to a specific agency that will, if it takes place, precipitate a showdown. /7/
Trump is a wuss, so he may well back down. He was going to fire Rosenstein, and he wussed out. He was going to fire Mueller and he wussed out. So I don’t want to overstate this. There’s lots of ways this could peter out. But this tweet is no joke. /8/
As Quinta and I wrote yesterday, “Don’t underestimate this episode. It will have a long tail and big consequences—all of them terrible.” Those consequences, if you believe the President, may start tomorrow. /9/
So the RWNJs outed the so-called informant (he served as a White House official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations ) and the interwebz are now expending many CT tweets trying to make the guy something he truly isn’t. Just wait for the 4Chan doxxing.
Devin Nunes could be this administration’s Scooter Libby.
As a conservative lawyer, who at one point considered taking a job in the administration and still has close ties to it said to one of us last night:
“All this man [the source] wanted to do was to help our country. And this was a legitimate counterintelligence inquiry with more than an adequate foundation and a perfectly appropriate method. Trump and Nunes have defiled the oaths they took. It’s just obscene.”
While we were preparing to publish this piece, the president dug in further, tweeting:
Don’t underestimate this episode. It will have a long tail and big consequences—all of them terrible.