On Wednesday evening, Donald Trump did a phone interview with fellow Michael Cohen client Sean Hannity. Trump and Hannity engaged in the expected rounds of mutual backslapping, and Trump basked in the warm glow of the Barr letter’s “total exoneration,” and also extended that warmth to the attorney general. Trump described Barr as “a great gentleman,” then followed up by saying, “I’ve heard about him for years. He’s a great man. Had he been there initially, this all would not have happened because what has gone on there is just a disgrace to our country.” So Trump is obviously thrilled that Barr has blocked the special counsel investigation at its end, and only regrets that he wasn’t there to stop it at the beginning.
Not everything was warmth. Hannity was certainly ready to prompt Trump with “fake news” sites to attack, providing Trump with a series of names from CNN and MSNBC for individual attacks—which Trump followed up on in morning tweets that focused on what Trump considers the nation’s most important statistic: Nielsen ratings.
But the biggest vat of Trumpian ire was emptied over Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff. Trump insisted, without providing a single example, that the House Intelligence chair had both “lied” and “leaked.” And then Trump produced a terrific case for his own resignation.
Complaining about Schiff and other politicians that he claimed had lied, Trump said their statements were a disgrace. Then he went further when discussing Schiff: “He knew it was a lie, and therefore in one way you can say it was a crime, what he did. Because he was giving … I mean, making horrible, horrible statements that he knew were false. And frankly, I heard they should force him off the committee or off the committee chair, he should be forced out of office.”
So Trump apparently believes that Schiff should be forced to resign for “lying,” though he didn’t cite a single lie. However, if Trump believes that politicians who knowingly lie need to be gone, there is someone who has absolutely done so, over 8,700 times. The idea of making a politician resign if caught in a knowing lie seems like a good one.
But just to be clear, almost everything Trump said in that interview was a lie.
According to the Washington Post, Trump’s full “victory lap” on Hannity lasted over 45 minutes. In the same interview, Trump kept open the option of pardoning Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and others convicted of crimes during the special counsel investigation.
As has become too, too usual, Trump’s morning tweets reflected a stream of unconsciousness going from (in order): a rally Trump is doing Thursday evening in Michigan, how the “fake news” is “going crazy,” to a complaint that Mexico and other countries aren’t doing enough to help our immigration issues, to a promise that the DOJ is going to review “the outrageous Jussie Smollett case” (maybe Barr can write a summary), to a repeat of his claim that Adam Schiff should be forced to resign, to gloating about low ratings for Morning Joe, to an appeal to OPEC to pump more oil.
Nothing about his plans to turn himself in for a lifetime of telling nothing but lies. But of course, when Trump said politicians should be charged with a crime if they lie to the public … he was lying.
