There were some real bomblets unhidden by Trump’s ACA attacks and a pandering speech to a religious hate group on Friday.
First there was news of Manafort’s debt of $60 million to the Russians and some odd tweets related to profiting from Iran that comprised today’s Trump attempts to deflect from #TrumpRussia.
More specific was the news that Mueller was talking to Priebus which reminds us that Reince was one of the few who did not sign a non-disclosure agreement.
These developments render weak the attempt by Trump’s lawyers to get Mueller to interview Trump in order to get some leverage on the process.
All that activity generated even more vapid self-aggrandizement produced by Braggadocious D.J.T.
It’s interesting background that the Renoir hanging in Trump’s jet was a fake, as Trump’s biographer Tim O’Brien noticed, and it conforms what now is typical Trump stubbornness in doubling down on a falsehood.
Trump, of course, did not agree, but Tim O’Brien dropped the conversation topic and moved on with his interview. He thought that he had heard the last of the Renoir conversation. But the next day, when they boarded the plane to head back to New York City, Trump again pointed to the painting, and as if the conversation had never happened, he pointed to the fake and proclaimed, “You know, that’s an original Renoir.” O’Brien, chose not to engage, and dropped the conversation.
While this story is comical and sad and utterly bizarre on so many levels, it’s also emblematic of Trump’s very essence. “He believes his own lies in a way that lasts for decades,” O’Brien told me. “He’ll tell the same stories time and time again, regardless of whether or not facts are right in front of his face.”
And, as O’Brien points out, that’s what makes Trump so dangerous in his current war with the media around so-called fake news. “It’s foundation is that he’s the final arbiter of what is true and what isn’t,” O’Brien said, “and it’s one of the reasons that he’s so dangerous.”
www.vanityfair.com/…
Trump’s unilateral position on Iran seems more about the wishful thinking rather than the reality of what regime change would require in Iran, as though it somehow wasn’t about money, except that’s the key element of the Iran sanctions regime. Much like the Russian adoptions were about monetary sanctions. More Trumpian fakery, the most accomplished fakery.
#TrumpRussia moves forward regardless of the scorched earth retreat to Berlin.