Trump is prepping for all-out political war
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As I sat a few feet from President Trump while he ripped special counsel Robert Mueller and warned Democrats he is preparing a devastating counterpunch, the phrase “The Gathering Storm” came to mind. That’s the title of Volume I of Winston Churchill’s masterful history of World War II.
It also describes the president’s mood and the vicious game of blood sport playing out in Washington. While our nation’s political battles are hardly as dramatic as the fight with Nazi Germany and Japan, a storm is gathering in America and 2019 is shaping up as an extremely turbulent year.
Trump is under siege and girding for a political, legal and public-relations war. Though the conflict began the day he took office, the last two years have been skirmishes compared to the climactic battles ahead.
That view was strengthened by the Oval Office interview last week where I, along with Post reporters Nikki Schwab and Marisa Schultz, spent nearly 40 minutes with the president and several aides.
Trump, sitting behind the grand Resolute Desk, made from the timbers of a 19th century British sailing ship, was genial and gracious. No questions were taboo, and he was in a sunny mood.
Yet his answers exposed a furious frustration over the Mueller probe and Dem plans to use control of the House to swamp his administration with subpoenas and investigations.
“Mueller would like it to go for the rest of his life,” Trump said when asked how he saw the probe ending. “It’s a witch hunt at the highest level, it’s McCarthyism.”
After he mentioned Paul Manafort, I asked whether a pardon for his former campaign manager was possible. “It was never discussed, but I wouldn’t take it off the table,” Trump said. “Why would I take it off the table?”
That answer quickly ricocheted around Washington and sharpened the battle lines, with Dems accusing the president of sending a signal to Manafort that he would be protected in exchange for loyalty.
Some 24 hours later, the drums of war were beating even louder as Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a possible Trump building project in Moscow.
The president, in public comments, offered a two-part response, saying Cohen was “weak” and looking to get reduced jail time. He also said that, even if the negotiations ran longer in 2016 than Cohen initially laimed, it didn’t matter because Trump was still a private citizen legally running his business.
Like everything else involving Mueller, the Cohen plea offers lots of smoke, but no sign of fire. It might be a piece of a larger puzzle, but more than two years after the FBI probe began, a clear picture remains maddeningly elusive.
And yet the probe, and the left’s exploitation of it, continue to inflict casualties. The most recent one is that any hopes that divided government might be productive are vanishing.
The day after the midterms, Trump tried to paint a rosy picture of the Dem majority in the House, saying he was eager to work with likely Speaker Nancy Pelosi and would sign key legislation even if most Republicans opposed it.
Now his message is far more stick than carrot. As he said in our interview, the new Dem leaders would be unleashing the furies from hell if they engage in “presidential harassment.”
“I will hit them so hard, they’ve never seen a hit like that,” he said, referring to his power to release secret documents, some of which, he hinted, will be deeply embarrassing to Barack Obama’s administration.
“If they want to play tough, I will do it,” he said. “And they will see how devastating those pages are.”
I believe the president should release any such documents now, regardless of their partisan impact. Excessive secrecy serves only to hide official wrongdoing and the lack of transparency fuels public mistrust.
In theory, Trump agrees. But he is fixated on the war, and understandably so because he is fighting for the survival of his presidency.
His theory on the origins of the war is familiar — and credible: The allegations of Russian collusion were a tissue of lies supported only by the discredited dossier secretly financed by Hillary Clinton. Those lies were given a sheen of credibility by a corrupted FBI investigation that lives on through Mueller.
“I’m sure [fired FBI Director James] Comey had someone above because you know there’s no question that [then CIA-boss] John Brennan was involved,” Trump said. “There’s no question that all of these people you see on television, all of these lightweights were involved, and it’s hard to believe that the president wasn’t involved.
“And the only reason they were doing it was just in case I won.”
As for the dossier, Trump asks: “So why isn’t Mueller looking at that? Russians were paid for the phony dossier. Now it’s been discredited, it’s total baloney, but a lot of money was passed.”
We had stayed long past our allotted time, and as we left, aides handed us six pages listing the administration’s accomplishments. They include the historic low unemployment among Latinos and black Americans, rising wages and the fact that 4.4 million people no longer need food stamps.
Consumer and business confidence are soaring and America is now the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. Kim Jong-un is sending flattering letters to Trump instead of firing off missiles, and a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada keeps faith with the vow to fix NAFTA.
Those are some of the highlights of a remarkable two years, but on most days, they are eclipsed by the political war. And the worst is yet to come.
Triumph of faith
After a teacher in New Jersey told first-graders there is no Santa Claus, elves, Easter Bunny or magic of any kind, the kids were heartbroken and their parents furious.
Fortunately, there is a timeless cure for unbelief.
An 1897 editorial in the New York Sun, written to 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, puts doubt in its place.
“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” writer Francis Church declared.
“Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus,” he writes in one magical passage. “The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor man can see.”
Who knows, Church’s ode to faith in all ages might even revive the spirit of the jaded teacher.
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“We had stayed long past our allotted time, and as we left, aides handed us six pages listing the administration’s accomplishments. They include the historic low unemployment among Latinos and black Americans, rising wages and the fact that 4.4 million people no longer need food stamps.
Consumer and business confidence are soaring and America is now the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. Kim Jong-un is sending flattering letters to Trump instead of firing off missiles, and a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada keeps faith with the vow to fix NAFTA.
Those are some of the highlights of a remarkable two years, but on most days, they are eclipsed by the political war. And the worst is yet to come.”
... and it looks like a few of his family members will be among the first casualties. sucks being a russian puppet.
Amazing isn't it?
All that confidence during a business bankruptcy rate higher than Obama's
the number of bankruptcies among family owned farms is spiking as well. how about them apples, heartland Americans?
Yeah...he's not prepping for war, he's looking for an escape route that won't cost him any money and doesn't put an appropriatly glaring spotlight on his incompetence.
Is the source of this propaganda the tooth fairy, Santa Claus or the Easter bunny? Trump couldn't handle the recent G8 summit but now you are claiming that he is supposedly ready to wage war political war.
It is obvious that Donald Trump cannot do the job of being president.
a popular final destination in the past for political leaders of trump's caliber
That is where Trump made that deal with China to hold off on tariff increases and have them buy more of our stuff during a cooling off period to complete negotiations on a better trade deal between us and them. The global markets sure like it.
In what world is the president imposing tariffs, then saying he will hold off on imposing more tariffs, a win?
I only see it as a win if it results in China reducing or eliminating their existing tariffs.
Beijing will "reduce and remove" the 40% tariffs it places on US cars imported into China, US President Donald Trump has said.
That’s right Trump isn’t interested in cars being made in China he wants them made here. His objection is to the Chinese tariffs imposed on cars built here and shipped to China. If he can get the Chinese to drop the 40% tariff on imports that would be a win for him.
China has agreed to reduce and remove tariffs on cars coming into China from the U.S. Currently the tariff is 40%,’ president says
That still does not stop GM, Ford and others from building the cars there.
They can drop the tariff to zero. If no cars are being exported, because they are still being made at the destination, it doesn't mean shit.
Plus it would still be cheaper and more economical for the companies to build in the country they are selling to.
That is of course unless one wants to build so cheaply here that we depress wages and regulations and turn ourselves into a third world country.
Also, nothing like republicans going against one of their supposed values, taking away freedom and making/forcing companies to build where the government wants.
Nothing more than kick the can down the road. This is the same thing that China offered six months ago. Wait....wait.....wait. In the meanwhile, there is no discussion of the theft of intellectual property. It amazes me that people think that Trump is a great negotiator. His greatness seems to always be capitulating to the other side. Maybe that explains all the business bankruptcies that Trump has gone through.
The G2 is a joke.
All you have is a bunch of Aristocrat types patting each other on the back after they make some ludicrous "Proclamations" that further humanity not one bit....and mean not one damn thing !
I agree with Trump.....get us the fuck outa there.
If that's what you think the G20 does you and Trump deserve each other.
We intend to keep Trump as our President for the next six years. That’s how much we think that.
Empty threats from an empty head, atop a soon to be empty suit in the white house. The past politics of revenge and retribution from the blowhard in chief beg a congressional response in kind. The express train of karma is headed towards him at full speed and Mueller has the trump crime family tied to the tracks. Due process will be his end process. Any future executive office attempts to stall and subvert the US Constitution will exact a horrific toll in the careers and lives of those judged by the voters to be complicit and to those that have averted their eyes to his criminal activities. The republican party is now the party of trump, and they have gone all in with a bluff hand held by a fool.
Trump is a great American President who has made America great again and we are going to Keep America Great by re electing him President for FOUR MORE YEARS in 2020.
Sounds like something a Russian bot on twitter would say.
Donald Trump is in the beginning stages of two years of hell, then he will be dumped on his ass in the 2020 election, taking dozens of GOP office holders to the bottom of the garbage pit with him.
The results of the midterms showed Trump losing strength in areas , like the Great Lakes states, where he has to win in order to get re-elected. He lost strength with women, and even with white voters.
How in hell is he going to get that support back , when he acts crazier and crazier, and more guilty, all the time? He can't get those people back and he can't win without them. Once you decide that someone is unfit for office, as many of those voters now have about him, they are not going to change back and vote for him again. In fact, he's going to lose more support and more votes all the time as the next two years unfold.
As if only Russian bots support the re election of our all Anerican President. The democrats were the only ones colluding with the Russians.
What a load of shit. I have not read that much baloney in one piece in a long time.
“And yet the probe, and the left’s exploitation of it, continue to inflict casualties. The most recent one is that any hopes that divided government might be productive are vanishing.
The day after the midterms, Trump tried to paint a rosy picture of the Dem majority in the House, saying he was eager to work with likely Speaker Nancy Pelosi and would sign key legislation even if most Republicans opposed it.
Now his message is far more stick than carrot. As he said in our interview, the new Dem leaders would be unleashing the furies from hell if they engage in “presidential harassment.”
“I will hit them so hard, they’ve never seen a hit like that,” he said, referring to his power to release secret documents, some of which, he hinted, will be deeply embarrassing to Barack Obama’s administration.
“If they want to play tough, I will do it,” he said. “And they will see how devastating those pages are.”
I believe the president should release any such documents now, regardless of their partisan impact. Excessive secrecy serves only to hide official wrongdoing and the lack of transparency fuels public mistrust.
In theory, Trump agrees. But he is fixated on the war, and understandably so because he is fighting for the survival of his presidency.
His theory on the origins of the war is familiar — and credible: The allegations of Russian collusion were a tissue of lies supported only by the discredited dossier secretly financed by Hillary Clinton. Those lies were given a sheen of credibility by a corrupted FBI investigation that lives on through Mueller.
“I’m sure [fired FBI Director James] Comey had someone above because you know there’s no question that [then CIA-boss] John Brennan was involved,” Trump said. “There’s no question that all of these people you see on television, all of these lightweights were involved, and it’s hard to believe that the president wasn’t involved.
“And the only reason they were doing it was just in case I won.””
Repeating what was said does not change my mind, nor does it make this piece any more truthful.
LOL
trump, like any other spoiled mental 6-yr-old is gonna "get them" and they're sure gonna be really, really sorry! It's usually followed by tears and heavy sobs and holding their breath.
Wasn't there something about his Hawaiian detectives had really found some big dirt that was going to fix him once and for all on President Obama, but he was saving it for a surprise. Still waiting.
Well no shit!
He just got his ass kicked.
You think he's going to repeat all the lies he said about Democrats on the speach stumps?
Do you think his rhetoric would be as conveniently forgotten as the right have? Do you think threatening blackmail on the Dems is "working with them?
He already knows he went too far to suddenly be cozy with the Democrats
Has it ever occurred to you that you are taking the word of a pathological liar ? Probably not, lol.
Perspective | It’s easy to fact check Trump’s lies. He tells the same ones all the time.
I’ve made it my mission to fact-check every word Donald Trump utters as president. That means trying to watch every speech, read every transcript, decipher every tweet. I’ve accidentally established a reputation for using Twitter to point out that he’s lying within seconds of him telling a lie.
People sometimes ask in response how I can blast out these corrections so quickly. But I have no special talent. My secret is that Trump tells the same lies over and over.
On his fifth day in office, Trump baselessly alleged widespread voter fraud. He did the same thing this past week . In his third month in office, Trump falsely claimed that the United States has a $500 billion trade deficit with China. He has said the same thing more than 80 times since.
Listen to this president long enough, and you can almost sense when a lie is coming. If Trump tells a story in which an unnamed person calls him “sir,” it’s probably invented. If Trump claims he has set a record, he probably hasn’t. If Trump cites any number at all, the real number is usually smaller.
Fact-checking Trump is kind of like fact-checking one of those talking dolls programmed to say the same phrases for eternity, except if none of those phrases were true. As any parent who owns a squealing Elmo can tell you, the phrases can get tiresome. I’m sure my Twitter followers get bored when I remind them that Trump wasn’t the president who got the Veterans Choice health-care program passed (Barack Obama signed it into law in 2014 ), that U.S. Steel is not building six, seven, eight or nine new plants (it has recently invested in two existing plants) and that foreign governments don’t force their unsavory citizens into the lottery for U.S. green cards (would-be immigrants enter of their own free will).
[ Trump lied to me about his wealth to get onto the Forbes 400. Here are the tapes. ]
I keep saying that foreign governments don’t do this, though, because Trump keeps saying they do. I believe that journalists need to be just as tireless in combating the president’s lying as the president is in telling the lies, no matter how repetitive or pedantic it can sometimes make us seem.
I’m a Canadian reporter, the Washington bureau chief for the Toronto Star. I wasn’t sent here to cover the honesty beat. I do most of the fact-checking on my own time, spending weekday nights and painful Sundays staring at rally transcripts in my pajamas.
My American colleagues have done wonderful investigative and explanatory journalism on Trump. But with some notable exceptions, like The Washington Post’s terrific fact-checking team led by Glenn Kessler, I don’t think U.S. media outlets have been persistent enough in fighting a daily battle for truth itself.
I began making a comprehensive list of Trump’s false claims in September 2016, two years after a wild four years covering infamous Toronto Mayor Rob Ford . Having spent so much time contemplating a homegrown liar, it fast became clear to me that Trump’s serial dishonesty was a central feature of his campaign. But his avalanche of deception was being treated as a sideshow to the real news rather than as the news itself — relegated to reporters’ Twitter feeds rather than featured in the headlines where it belonged.
There has been some incremental improvement in the coverage. But I still see the same troubling failures two years later. Even the best of Trump’s interviewers seldom challenge him when he lies to their faces — despite the fact that almost all of the lies have been fact-checked before.
Trump regularly makes 20 to 30 false claims in his rally speeches. But if you watched a network news segment, read an Associated Press article or glanced at the front page of the newspaper in the city that hosted him , you’d typically have no idea that he was so wholly inaccurate.
If a car salesman told you 36 untrue things in 75 minutes, that would probably be the first thing you told your friends about your trip to the dealership. It should have been the first thing we all told our readers about Trump’s August rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
This issue is so urgent because Trump is getting worse and worse . In 2017, he averaged three false claims per day. In 2018, it is about nine per day. In the month leading up to the midterms: a staggering 26 per day. By my count , he’s now at 3,749 false claims since his inauguration. The Post, which tracks both false and misleading claims, has tallied up to 6,420 .
Meanwhile, the press continues to blast out the lies unnoted. Two weeks ago, Axios and the AP uncritically tweeted his nonsense about the United States being the only nation to grant birthright citizenship. (They updated after they were criticized.) It happened again Monday, when Trump earned credulous tweets and headlines from ABC, NBC and others for his groundless assertion about “massively infected” ballots in Florida.
[ Donald Trump’s fast and furious campaign lies ]
There’s nothing especially strategic about much of Trump’s lying; he does it because that is what he has always done. But the president also knows the lies will be broadcast unfiltered to tens of millions of people — by some of the very outlets he disparages as “fake news.”
Many of Trump’s false claims are so transparently wrong that I can fact-check them with a Google search. It’s the comically trivial ones that stand out. I’ll never forget when the Boy Scouts of America got back to me to say that the president of the United States had made up a nonexistent phone call in which the Scouts’ chief executive supposedly told him he had given “the greatest speech that was ever made” to a Scout Jamboree.
For reporting such things, I receive vitriolic emails from some of Trump’s fervent supporters. More interesting to me are the messages from well-meaning skeptics. Why waste your time, people ask, when facts obviously don’t matter anymore?
I disagree. There is a substantial constituency for accurate information about the claims of a president who is, polls suggest, seen as untrustworthy by two-thirds of voters . Even people who generally know that Trump isn’t honest might not know how he is misleading them, and they might want to. The media shouldn’t treat Trump’s devotees as America’s only relevant people.
We also shouldn’t write off every devotee. I’ve met Trump voters who insist that he’s honest, even Trump voters who say they like his lying because it bothers “elites” like me. But I’ve also spoken to Trump voters like Bruce Brown of rural Pennsylvania , who gets much of his information from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Soon after I interviewed Brown about last year’s Obamacare debate, he messaged to tell me he’d discovered my list of Trump’s false claims.
I braced for him to say I’d tricked him by sounding friendly, that I, too, was fake news. Instead, he wrote: “Wow . . . I kind of knew he wasn’t truthful much of the time, but not to the degree of hundreds of lies in such a short period of time. Thanks for opening my eyes.”
Nope. We aren’t talking about Obama here. He is a pathological liar 🤥. We are talking here about a great American President who will serve us as our President for the next 6 years. Keep America Great!
It is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
You must never read liberals seeds because they are full of it.
Yes, be an Ostrich.
My irony meter just exploded. Your seeds are some of the most hateful and divisive toward anyone who isn't a Trump diehard. Stop trying to blame everyone else for your divisive threads.
You alls liberal seeds and posts about Trump, conservatives, the GOP, evangelicals, certain bakers, photographers, and florists as well as creation science are every bit as divisive the other way. The difference being we don’t care or whine about it or try to engage in content control like y’all do.
Every time you're told creation is mythology and not science, you whine that you're being censored.
I havn't seeded anything for months so don't blame me or anyone else for the division and hate that are created by your two far-right seeds per day. It is you that created the current seed about refusing to serve LGBT because of religious animus. There is no such thing as creation science despite your illogical claims. Genesis as the explanation of creation is a religious myth and there is nothing that you can say to prove otherwise because it flies in the face of logic, geology, and biology.
Is he going to war after his nap?
I'm going to love watching the squirming of these excuse bearing defenders when this psycho resigns in disgrace.
Now that he has friendly eyes and ears in charge of the DOJ, he'll be forewarned of Mueller's impending actions. Unfortunately for his legal team, he won't be able to contain his twitter rage, which will further complicate their efforts to defend him. As soon as the attorneys involved with Manafort's deception are indicted the pool of qualified lawyers willing to risk prison time, in addition to doing their work on an involuntary pro bono basis, will quickly evaporate. Cohen had a habit of taping his phone calls, and trump's immediate crime family were directly involved in the advance work of expanding the trump empire. It's only a matter of time before Mueller has crossed all the T's and dotted all the I's. The 2 major issues now are to make sure that VP Pence as been ensnared and making sure the judicial hammer drops at the most opportune time.
Trump screwed himself thinking he could outsmart Mueller.
This is going to be fun watching this unfold. Nobody knows exactly how much Mueller has, but everyone knows (even the right that won't admit it) he has enough and that's what makes it fun to watch the locals turn themselves inside out in denial.
You'll see the flurry of articles and seeds that will be rattled through with lies until a lefty comes with proof to debunk and they lock the seed/article.
Won't be hard the fake boy scout is in this up to his knees....
Now close your eyes.....and just think of the explosion that will happen the first time "President Pelosi" is joined on the stage with VP Elizabeth "I got your Pocahontas right here" Warren
There will be no disgrace and no resignation.
He's already disgraced.
The resignation will be coming soon.
Or do you think he's going to let his sperm catchers go to prison?
See the Trump foundation has to disolve? See the comment?
"Shocking illegality" of self dealing and the whole family is involved. Which means they can't indict Trump yet but his catchers are fair game.
He'll cut a deal to resign and escape charges for himself and the brats.
In disgrace.
Have fun awesome one.
He called Sean Hannity and the Fox News bimbos about strategy.
He will probably react to war like he did the last time. Develop bone spurs then hide out and make derogatory comments about those that actually fought in a war....
it wouldn't surprise me if trump resigns due to some mysterious medical problem 1 day before all the shit hits the fan.
Wouldn't surprise me either...and pardoning his kids on the way out....
They'll believe that....look how many time Glenn Beck told them he had some disease and they fell for it.
Well...they believe Trump, believed Palin, The Tea Party, Corsi, Limbaugh, Sanders, Huckabee...remember the fake story about the "mob" following Sarahmoo to the other restaurant when she actually went home?
bwah ha ha. traitor trump is threatening to torch the US government if Mueller gets too close.
Is it not time a delegation of senior members of Congress, the Joint Chiefs and Supremes explained how the cow ate the cabbage to Donald Trump? Call it a "Sit Down". Trump understands a good deal when it is explained to him. It is a shame Trump and Co will have to be let off and pardoned for their profligate crimes to cut the deal but that is the price we pay for the national hubris which resulted in the travesty that will forevermore be known as Trumpism. Trump and his broods will make gazillions post Presidency if they are not held accountable so let's move things along now. It is time. Marine One is ready and waiting. Fuel is burning. So, let's go...
You are going to have to wait until Jan. 20, 2025 to see Donald and Melania Trump board a helicopter to leave the White House and fly off into retirement. We will enjoy the next 6+ years of the Trump Presidency.
Really? The Magic Eight Ball says, "Highly Unlikely"...
No, he will resign as worse than Nixon, stupid as Palin.
Mueller isn't going to get him...NYS will.
And Melania? Deported back to the shithole country. Coming in on a tourist visa and working is a crime. The chain migration parents will get the boot too.
It's like the fan fiction some people write about Harry Potter...
It's just fantasy wish projection for those detached from real life.
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