Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Donald Trump gave a solid reason why the author of the New York Times anonymous op-ed could not be a cabinet level official.
Trump: It doesn’t seem to be anybody very high up because everybody very high up has already said it wasn’t me.
Well, okay then. And since forcing half of Washington to line up and bringing a written mea non-culpa to Trump’s desk hasn’t outed the rat fink who dared admit that people inside the White House are at least as aware of Trump’s batshittery as the rest of America, he turned to the next obvious step.
Reporter: Should Jeff Sessions investigate?
Trump: I think so. It’s national security. I would say Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was because I really believe it’s national security.
It certainly is a national security issue, because anyone inside the White House who has information on Trump’s dangerous incompetence and how his erratic actions brought on discussions of invoking the 25th Amendment, should be speaking out publicly and helping to ensure that Trump’s hands are firmly off the controls.
Trump also said that he was “looking at” taking action against the New York Times, that publishing an anonymous op-ed was “a disgrace,” accused the Times of using phony sources “all the time” and said that “Eventually the name of this sick person will come out.” And Trump says he’s “going to take a look at what he had, what he gave, what he’s talking about, also where he is right now.”
Which is … wait. What?
Trump seemed particularly concerned that “anonymous” might let slip information about his conversations with his dictator friends, expressing concern that the author might have high level clearance and might “go into a high level meeting concerning China or Russia or North Korea or something.” Presumably this means that Trump is doing a mental replay of everything he said to Putin, or Xi, or Kim where anyone else on his team could listen. Because, despite the neat stack of notes on Trump’s desk, he knows they’re all still suspects.
Trump repeated a claim that he made at Thursday night’s rally, concerning how the press did not cover a widely covered statement from Kim Jong Un expressing “faith” in Trump. Because there is no such thing is enough coverage of someone saying good things about Trump.
Trump. That was a very positive statement, what he said about me. There’s never been a more positive statement. Honestly I didn’t see it on the front page of your papers.
Perhaps that’s because statements from foreign dictators that don’t include military threats rarely make the front page of US papers.
On the Russia front, Trump bemoaned the sad fate of George Papadopoulos, who Trump says he didn’t know, but admitted “They got him, on I guess, on a couple of lies.” He was even more sympathetic to Michael Flynn, claiming that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had snared the former National Security Advisor in a “a perjury trap.” Trump went on to make his standard statements calling the investigation a “witch hunt” staffed by “17 angry Democrats” and claiming that everyone has “given up on that collusion stuff.”
Trump also claimed that members of Mueller’s team were at Hillary Clinton’s post-election concession speech “I call it Hillary Clinton’s funeral... It was a funeral, it was a wake” and that members of the investigation were “there crying, they were crying.” He did not provide names.
In his lengthy conversation, Trump also claimed that Gary Cohn never took a letter off his desk—even though Bob Woodward has produced the letter. Said that a handwritten mash-note is on the way to his desk from Kim Jong Un which is so much better than an email “It’s an elegant way, the way it used to be many years ago before we had all the of new contraptions that we all use.”
Reporter: Do you trust the people around you?
Trump: I do. … Everyone who is at the major meetings with me are on the front page of the newspapers today with beautiful notes that I did not ask them for. We have a really well run, smooth running White House. It’s a well oiled machine. It is running beautifully.
Nothing to see here. Move along.