The New York Times is really making it their life’s mission to dig up absolutely all of Donald Trump’s skeletons. Them and the Washington Post are dropping bombshell after bombshell, and this last week, it was attacking Trump where it might just hurt the most: his money. You see, the New York Times did a deep, deep dive into the origins of Donald Trump’s wealth. As it turns out, his story that he’s a self-made man minus a small loan from his father (that he paid back with interest), ISN’T actually accurate. At all apparently. Based on mountains of unearthed documents, both public record and not, Trump’s money is the result of creatively helping his dad defraud the government and the gifts he got as a result of that and his inheritance. As a result, adjusted for inflation, a great deal of his fortune, to the tune of half a billion smackeroos, was a result of Fred Trump looking out for him. Which makes a lot of sense. Despite what he wants his supporters to believe, Trump knows a thing or two about failing in business. His business history is one of failure, bailouts, and self aggrandizement. Learning that a good portion of his wealth was essentially a handout comes as no surprise, but at the same time, betrays the image he hopes to project. Because as it turns out, he’s not the shrewd business man, making money with his wits and cleverness. He’s a nitwit who fails upward.
Rumors out of the West Wing, is that Trump has gone full paranoid in the wake of Bob Woodward’s new book and the New York Times Op-Ed piece. Anonymous sources, the ones that Trump seems paranoid about, say that he’s growing more and more unhinged about it. He has apparently disrupted meetings about it, and if someone looks at him in a way he finds out of place, he immediately suspects them of being the author of the Op-Ed. Don Jr. says his dad isn’t sleeping, and Trump has mandated that staff are to call the anonymous author a coward in public to maybe shame them? I guess? And apparently the West Wing is bracing themselves for the climate to get even worse come the mid-terms. So what comes next? I don’t know for sure, but I’m placing bets on Trump going full “the Shining” on everyone. Any takers?
That New York Times Op-Ed from an unnamed staffer from inside the White House undoubtedly riled up everyone across the administration. We all saw Donald Trump publicly melt down over the piece within minutes of it’s debut. But I would imagine it wasn’t smooth sailing in the West Wing for anyone. With the anonymous source in the wind, trust was likely shaken between co-workers, and with an already notoriously catty, chaotic West Wing. A weird amount of speculation has fallen on Mike Pence and his office as the source of the Op-Ed, based on some word choices in the article. Of course Mike Pence vehemently denies involvement, and for what it’s worth, I don’t believe he was. But identifying the “traitor” (or patriot, depending on your personal context) is clearly a high priority for Trump. He’s pushed his Attorney General to open investigation, and rumor came out that lie detector tests were perhaps on the table. Mike Pence, the stalwart tall drink of water of course jumped at the chance to prove his innocence. Take a polygraph test? No problem! Of course, when I watch Pence offer to take a polygraph, I have no doubt he’d pass it even if he WAS responsible for the article. I don’t know that has emotional reactions, feels fear or…you know…has a pulse.
Donald Trump is so dedicated to exposing the media as shifty liars, that he’s started attacking his own sources to discredit them. When the White House released information from an anonymous source regarding the now cancelled summit with Kim Jon Un in Singapore, the New York Time reported it. Donald Trump then decided to call out the New York Times for using a fake source…even though it was provided by his people OFFICIALLY. It’s bizarre, and goes to show that Trump isn’t even bothering to understand the context of the words he’s saying before he evens says them. He’s just lying to lie.
So the New York Time released a possible list of questions that Mueller reportedly gave Trump’s legal team. Now of course, that situation has created a firestorm of stories and questions. Who leaked the list? Why? Who aims to benefit? How many tweets was Trump going to devote to it? How many times would he say “Collusion” or “Witch Hunt”? But what has been noted is the phrasing behind the question. Their design seem intended to appeal to Trump’s love of explaining things as opposed to short, succinct, yes or no answers. Now, critics of the investigation say that the point of these questions is to catch Trump in a lie. I say any question, no matter how it’s phrased, is likely to have that happen, because the man publicly lies, on average, 5 times a day, and that’s not hyperbole. The funny thing is, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump went and answered these questions anyway, because all the people around him are almost certainly telling him not to, and Trump a) doesn’t like being told what to do, and b) thinks he’s too intelligent to be tricked. Gotta love his confidence, right?
I don’t know how true this claim is, but that new book by Ronald Kessler is allegedly claiming that Trump is once again posing as an anonymous source within the White House to leak favorable information. It’s one of those insane things where I can totally imagine it being true, but it would still be totally flabbergasting. He’s the President of the United States. He can organize legit, clandestine information campaigns without having to call Maggie Haberman of the New York Times by himself. It’s just bizarre.
Mind the Exit 