Day 724: Trump gets lobbed Russian softball on Fox News and strikes out
Donald Trump, upset about the bombshell report that the FBI began investigating him for being a Russian asset after he fired former FBI director James Comey, called into Fox News to vent on Saturday night.
Interviewed by Jeanine Pirro, Trump was lobbed softball after softball. Perhaps the easiest question of the night, however, Trump horrendously whiffed on.
At the 8:09 mark of the clip below, after editorializing about The New York Times report, Pirro chuckled and mockingly asked, “Are you now or have you ever worked for Russia?”
And Trump never once, in his two minute diatribe, ever says the word “no.”
Trump said:
“I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked. I think it’s the most insulting article I’ve ever had written. And if you read the article, you’d see that they found absolutely nothing. But the headline of that article, it’s called “The failing New York Times” for a reason, they’ve gotten me wrong for three years. They’ve actually gotten me wrong for many years before that.
“But you look at what’s going on, you know, I fired James Comey. I call him Lying James Comey because he was a terrible liar, and he did a terrible job as the FBI director. Look at what happened with Hillary Clinton and the e-mails and the Hillary Clinton investigation, one of the biggest screw-ups that anybody’s ever seen as an investigation.
“And what happened after I fired him? Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, his lover, Lisa Page, they did it. And, you know, they’re all gone. Most of those people, many, many people from the top ranks of the FBI, they’ve all been fired or they had to leave are. And they’re all gone. This is what they were talking about. And, obviously, nothing was found.
“And I can tell you this, if you ask the folks in Russia, I’ve been tougher on Russia than anybody else, any other — probably any other president period, but certainly the last three or four presidents, modern day presidents. Nobody’s been as tough as I have from any standpoint, including the fact that we’ve done oil like we’ve never done it, we’re setting records in country with oil and exporting oil and many other things. So, which is, obviously, not great for them, because that’s what they — that’s where they get their money for the most part. But many other things.
“So I think it was a great insult. And “The New York Times” is a disaster as a paper. It’s a very horrible thing they said, and they’ve gone so far that people that weren’t necessarily believers are now big believers, because they said that was a step too far. They really are a disaster of a newspaper.”
Trump attacks the Times, mentions Hillary Clinton’s emails, says “we’ve done oil like we’ve never done it,” and mentions the perceived insult again. But he can’t offer a simple, “no, I do not work for Russia and I have never worked for Russia.”
The Trump-Russia connection questions have been amplified by a litany of suspicious activity. Hours before Trump’s Fox News interview, The Washington Post had their own massive report: Trump has hidden his private conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin even from his senior staff.
The Post detailed how Trump took his interpreter’s notes after a meeting with Putin at the 2017 Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Trump also instructed his interpreter to not discuss the meeting with anyone, including top aides.
Most alarmingly, no detailed records exist from any of Trump’s five meetings with Putin since taking office. That includes any sort of notes from a two-hour meeting in Helsinki, Finland in July 2018 after which Trump’s cowardice around Putin was on full display. During a joint press conference, Trump blamed the U.S. more than Russia for any 2016 election issues and didn’t see any reason or evidence why Russia would meddle.
Trump shouldn’t be insulted by questions about connections with Russia. He should be answering them.
724 days in, 738 to go
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