Trump "Unhinged" At Arizona Rally
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1708/23/nday.05.html
CNN New Day
Allison Camerotta : Up first, President Trump fiery and described by many as unhinged. The president accusing the media of distorting his words on Charlottesville and violence, except the president conveniently omitted his own blame of, quote, "many sides." Last night he also omitted that he had said that very fine people marched with white supremacists.
Chris CUOMO: Be clear, this was a new low. He played his supporters for fools. We all know what he did and did not say and he will be called out for it, period, because what you ignore, you empower.
There are also political attacks last night. His party had to hear him attack the two GOP senators from Arizona. That's where the Trump rally was held. The bigger concern is that CNN has learned that president and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not spoken in weeks.
Joining us now are CNN political analyst David Gregory, senior White House correspondent from "Bloomberg News" Margaret Talev, and executive editor from "Bloomberg View" Timothy O'Brien, the author of "Trump Nation, The Art of Being the Donald." David Gregory, we have said it before but it has never been more true than it was last night, which was this was him at his worst.
DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right, at his most destructive, at his most self-destructive, the president willfully lying to a narrow band of his supporters, and as you said trying to play them for fools, trying to turn Americans against the news media, doing so deliberately, cynically in an effort to try to lessen the impact of what he has done to himself as president.
When you hear the majority leader Mitch McConnell saying privately that he wonders whether Trump can salvage his presidency, these are self-inflicted wounds. President Trump made the decision to say that there was blame on many sides and that there were many good people among the neo-Nazis and the racists and the anti-Semites that were in Charlottesville. That's his doing. And the fact that on his watch he's got chaos within the West Wing, this self-described great businessman can't run his staff. That's all his doing. It's not the media's fault. You may have a problem with the news media. That's not the media's fault. And that's where the media will play a role to point that out and judge him guest his own promises and hold him accountable.
CAMEROTA: OK, so let's do that. Let's play his original words about Charlottesville and then how he tried to amend them last night. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Here's what I said on Saturday. We're closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia. This is me speaking. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. That's me speaking on Saturday.
We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and Violence on many sides, on many sides. It's been going on for a long time in our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: So, Tim O'Brien, why de omit the "on many sides, on many sides" last night, which was the very part that had so much human --
CUOMO: And the good people were there on both sides as well.
TIMOTHY O'BRIEN, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "BLOOMBERG VIEW": Because he's been getting away with this for decades. This is not a new Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been a race-baiter for decades going back to the Central Park jogger case in the late 1980s. This is a man who inserted himself into a racially and politically charged event to get publicity, by taking ads out accusing the alleged assailants of crimes they hadn't yet been proven to have committing.
He comes from a family business that the Justice Department investigated for racial discrimination. He was part of the birther movement against Obama. Trump's positioning on race and social issues attendant to race is not a new phenomenon.
[08:05:15] And then secondarily he spent a long business career and public career getting away with flagrant boasts, exaggerations, lies, flat-out lies. He's used to it. So it's not new. I think what's new is he's in a forum where large institutions have to decide what they're going to stand up for, whether it's the judiciary, the media, or in this case the GOP.
CUOMO: Margaret, where are we on that? We keep calling out leaders, when are you going to lead? What are you going to do? Paul Ryan was on the town hall. He said after the president' speech about Afghanistan what he should have said last week. Now they're dealing with another opportunity. The president materially misrepresented what he said. He doubled down once again on a negative message. How is it playing within his own ranks, how is it playing in and D.C.?
MARGARET TALEV, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "BLOOMBERG NEWS": Well, Chris, it's become much more complicated by the president's apparent willingness to take on Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, some of these long standing Republican incumbents who face primary challenges.
And what we saw last night of course was messaging to the base between the wink-wink, nod-nod on former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's likelihood of a pardon by the president, in terms of his willingness to shut down the government over the border wall issue, in terms of many of these issues.
The problem of course is that when you're the president, just because you have a rally at 10:00 p.m. east coast time to talk to your base, it doesn't mean you can only talk to your base. Of course you're talking to all of the United States. And so the question increasingly is was what the Republican leadership is willing to do. Until now the calculation has been that President Trump's success is their success, and their success is President Trump's success and that they're tied together. If it you see Republican leadership begin to calculate that may no longer be the case you could potentially see a change. I think we need to see what happens when everyone comes back from the August recess, though.
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The former Director of National Intelligence blasted President Trump's speech during an Arizona rally late Tuesday and raised questions about Trump's fitness for office.
"I don't know when I've listened and watched something like this from a president that I found more disturbing," James Clapper said during a interview on CNN.
"Having some understanding of the levers of power that are available to a president if he chooses to exercise them, I found this downright scary and disturbing."
Clapper was pressed on whether he questions Trump's fitness for office.
"I really question ... his fitness to be in this office," Clapper said.
"I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it, maybe he is looking for a way out."
Clapper said Trump should have "quit while he was ahead" after his Afghanistan speech on Monday.
"But again, I think the real Trump came through," he said.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/clapper-questions-trump’s-fitness-for-office-after-‘downright-scary-and-disturbing’-speech/ar-AAqA5SZ?OCID=ansmsnnews11
This article could be written as a form letter, with fill in the blanks for date, time of day, and topic. In fact, the most repeated article headline that I have ever seen is this one:
Poll: Trump job approval hits new low