Trump 43: King of Chaos

[fraurosena]

Somebody decided it was time to leak to the press. 

 

[fraurosena]

I used to look forward to these testimonies, but after the Lewandowski debacle on Tuesday, I’m not getting my hopes up.

 

[fraurosena]

She has a point.

 

[Dandruff]

Wonder if there were any witnesses other than the whistleblower...

[fraurosena]

Ooohhh.... interesting! 

Another thing to be added to the list. Pelosi may be purposely seeming reluctant to impeach because she’s  in line for the presidency (and when Trump falls, so will Pence, so she’s essentially next in line), but saving democracy is more important than keeping up the apperence of not being eager for the presidency. 

 

18 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

Wonder if there were any witnesses other than the whistleblower...

It’s a matter of course that there are corroborating witnesses. This is the IC, they don’t —can’t — work alone. Corroboration is always required to authenticate veracity.

And don’t forget, the IC IG investigated and found the report credible and urgent. S/he doesn’t say that because they feel that way, they say it because they know it. They’ve seen evidence, which was then backed up by corroboration.

[fraurosena]

Asha Rangappa has a good thread about the issue:

Sorry, no unroll available as yet.  

[fraurosena]

Good question!

 

So, what was Trump doing whilst the news of the security threat his promise to a foreign leader was released?

Why, attempt to give away something that should be kept secret, of course!

 

[fraurosena]

There won't ever be any talks between Trump and Iran then.

 

[fraurosena]

It looks like whatever was promised was not, as a lot of people are speculating, declassification.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[formergothardite]

1 minute ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

I'm pretty sure some variation of this will be the actual excuse for what he did. He could literally be selling America to his dictator friends and they would justify it. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump offers an explanation for the wad of cash seen in his back pocket"

Spoiler

As a windblown President Trump boarded Air Force One in Mountain View, Calif., earlier this week, a Reuters photographer captured a curious image that showed Trump’s tie over his shoulder and what appeared to be a wad of cash in his back suit pocket.

On Wednesday night, Trump offered an explanation to reporters traveling with him back to Washington: He doesn’t use a wallet because he no longer uses credit cards, but he likes to leave cash tips at hotels.

Amid a wide-ranging question-and-answer session, a reporter noted that Trump had been photographed with his jacket up in the wind and that $20 bills were visible — and asked if he regularly carries cash in his pocket.

“I do! I do!” Trump said, taking a wad of bills out of his pocket and holding it up for reporters to see.

“I don’t carry a wallet, because I haven’t had to use a credit card in a long time,” Trump said. “I do like leaving tips to the hotel. I like to carry a little something. I like to give tips to the hotel. I’m telling you, maybe a president’s not supposed to do it, but I like to leave a tip for the hotel, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Oh, that’s funny. So the jacket was blowing up?” he added, also observing that the press has “good cameras.”

I'm sorry, I can't see him being a frequent or generous tipper.

[GreyhoundFan]

"An unshackled Trump finally gets the presidency he always wanted"

Spoiler

The China trade war, talks with the Taliban, the response to Iran after Saudi attacks, gun control, new tax legislation and a long list of other policy issues are up in the air and awaiting decisions from President Donald Trump — and him alone — heading into the 2020 election season.

In many ways, it’s the presidency Trump has always wanted.

He’s at the center of the action. He’s fully in command. And he’s keeping world leaders on edge and unsure of his next moves, all without being hemmed in by aides or the traditional strictures of a White House.

After four national security advisers, three chiefs of staff, three directors of oval office operations and five communications directors, the president is now finding the White House finally functions in a way that fits his personality. Trump doubters have largely been ousted, leaving supporters to cheer him on and execute his directives with fewer constraints than ever before.

“It is a government of one in the same way in which the Trump Organization was a company of one,” said a former senior administration official.

“In the first year in office, President Trump was new to the job. He was more susceptible to advisers and advice. There were more people urging caution or trying to get him to adhere to processes,” the former senior official added. “Now, there are very few people in the White House who view that as their role, or as something they want to try to do, or who even have a relationship with him.”

This Presidency of One is now heading into an election year supported by campaign staffers and White House aides who are quick say Trump is the best political strategist as well as the most effective messenger, and they intend to follow his lead wherever 2020 goes.

The transformation of the Trump White House, from its early attempts at a traditional structure to its current freewheeling style, has exacted a heavy toll his staff. But a steady stream of departures — the highest senior staff turnover of any recent president by far — has also left fewer forces trying to bend the president to the usual process of the top ranks of government.

“It’s very easy, actually, to work with me. You know why it’s easy? Because I make all the decisions. They don’t have to work,” Trump told reporters last Friday as he explained why being his national security adviser, in his mind, is now a low-key post. Trump fired his third such adviser, John Bolton, last week, and he named a new national security adviser on Wednesday morning by tweet.

Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney gives the president free rein to “Let Trump Be Trump,” as Mulvaney has said, having seen the fate of his two predecessors, Reince Priebus and John Kelly.

The dwindling of top senior staff has left the president in the company of his family members, Mulvaney, Kellyanne Conway, Larry Kudlow, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the omnipresent Stephen Miller, who mostly focuses on immigration, current and former senior administration officials say.

In the past three years, Trump also lost several trusted aides, most of whom played no role in major policy decisions but were frequent presences. Trump trusted them. They could read his moods, and their loss has been felt throughout the building, say current and former White House aides. This includes his former bodyguard Keith Schiller, former body man John McEntee, former communications director Hope Hicks and former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who left the administration in June after morphing into more of a top adviser than a top communications aide.

To outsiders, it’s felt like watching an increasingly unbound, or unleashed version of the Trump presidency.

But to many Trump allies, aides, and longtime observers, the president is showing the world the way he’s always operated. Only now it has become clearer because he is receiving less pushback from staff and advisers — and has very few effective checks on his administration from Congress, the national security community or fellow Republicans.

“The Trump I’m seeing now, to me, is the same Donald Trump who has existed for the 50 of his last 73 years. This is very much in keeping with how he rolled in the business world. The only difference is now he is doing it on the global stage,” said Timothy O’Brien, author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald“ and executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion.

There is little policy process left as the White House faces consequential decisions on Iran, North Korea, China, trade and the economy, even as the president intends to use the last-named as a major selling point for his reelection bid.

“You can’t just turn the economy on and off. These are big, slow-moving machines. And he’s operating under this major fallacy that he can keep telling the market things, and they will keep believing him on China or whatever else,” said one adviser close to the White House. “And that he can just all of a sudden turn things around with a China deal or whatever it is and it doesn’t work that way.”

One of Trump’s top White House aides disputed the notion of a fractured policy process. “With every decision he makes, there is a deliberative, coordinated policy process and ultimately the president makes the best decision in the interest of the American people,” said Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary. “No president has had more success in his first 2½ years than President Donald J. Trump. In spite of 93 percent negative news coverage, this president has built a safer, stronger, and more secure America, including record job gains, economic growth, fair and reciprocal trade, criminal justice reform, energy independence, combatting the opioid epidemic, lowering prescription drug prices, and restoring our standing in the world.”

In the past few weeks, Trump has publicly announced that the U.S. is “locked and loaded” in case Iran turns out to be the culprit behind last weekend’s missile strikes on Saudi Arabian oil facilities. He laid out on Twitter since-scrapped plans to invite the Taliban to Camp David for negotiations days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

And he introduced the idea of additional tariffs on China one Friday, setting off a scramble inside the West Wing that forced his top economic officials to abandon top-level meetings, rush to the Oval Office and make policy in the wake of his tweet.

“The downward momentum in Trump’s approval rating scares me a bit from a foreign policy perspective because he is a win-at-all-costs type of a person. I worry he could get us into an ill-advised military conflict in an attempt to regain support,” said Anthony Scaramucci, the New York financier and short-lived White House communications director. “From an economic perspective, he’s going to reach into his bag of tricks to try to stimulate growth. I think he’ll end up cutting a trade deal with China to remove that cloud of uncertainty from markets, but I think due to his increasing desperation it will end up being a bad deal for the United States.”

In addition to the president’s relative isolation, he and the administration face several challenges this fall over which Trump does not have total control, including foreign policy challenges such as Iran, China or North Korea, ongoing risks to the economy, passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement or potential congressional action on gun control.

This uncertainty might not sit well with a president who has said he likes to make all the decisions, says O’Brien, the author of “TrumpNation.“

Whatever actions he does take now will also become part of his record heading into the election. “He will have to answer specific questions about that report card, and he will be frustrated by those,” O’Brien added.

If the president seems liberated, it’s been an evolution to reach that point.

In the early days, Trump felt out of his depth on national security and foreign policy or what he legally could do through executive action, said three former senior administration officials. He knew, for instance, he wanted to roll back the Obama legacy on regulations or environmental rules, but he did not initially grasp the mechanics of doing so.

Nor did he understand the breadth of the federal government — like the huge number of people it employed, or the usual checks on presidential power like Congress or the courts, said one of the officials. Trump is the first president elected who did not first hold political office or serve in the military. While this outsider status helped propel his political rise and underscored his populist message, it also left his government far behind operationally and organizationally as it took over the White House.

In the ensuing three years, Trump has grown more comfortable with the trappings of the office and has formed his own relationships with world leaders, say current and former administration officials, even as he’s upended traditional global alliances. He’s earned a greater understanding of his executive authority and has developed relationships with many members of Congress whom he calls directly.

Now the White House runs as he prefers, with him at the center of the action — speaking directly to reporters from the Oval Office, breaking his own news and laying out policy decisions by tweet.

“This is now more of a government built on the basis of Trump’s reactions to things,” said one of the former senior administration officials. “The president has learned as much as he cares to know about the mechanics of government. He’s figured out, on most things, he can continue to play a public relations battle.”

 

[Howl]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

I love Jeff T.  I joked one time about one of his especially virulent (!) tweets that he was depleting the national strategic bile supply. 

Moving right along, timelines are being worked up leading up to the blocked whistle-blower announcement. 

 Emptywheel.net is crowdsourcing a timeline, but @jedshug is after it.  Link to unroll for this multi-post tweet is posted below  for non-twitterati

Unroll here: Is it just a coincidence that Trump forced out DNI Dan Coats 5 weeks ago and replaced him with Acting DNI Joseph Maguire, roughly when a whistleblower sent "urgent" information about Trump's "promise" to a foreign leader?

I keep thinking this is it, the deal breaker, the "turn everything around" moment, the actual shit hits the fan, no amount of "what aboutism" will work;  I've been there so many times over the last 3  years. 

But thinking that this may actually be the "it" moment for this admin.  The moment pure treason is exposed for the American people.  No amount of Barr, Fox, obstruction, can erase the stain.  BUT, I've been wrong before. 

The current acting DNI, Joseph Maguire, is retired Vice Admiral.  I'm assuming he was carefully vetted to make certain he is a hard-core Trump loyalist, and took the whistleblower info directly to the White House and Barr.  These days, the first thing I Google is to see if the person in question is Evangelical (The Family) or Catholic (Opus Dei). I've not found anything on Maguire. 

The WIKI for Director of National Intelligence is worth a read, because this is the first paragraph: 

Quote

The United States Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is the United States government Cabinet-level official—subject to the authority, direction, and control of the president of the United States...

 

Edited September 19, 2019 by Howl

[formergothardite]

17 minutes ago, Howl said:

The moment pure treason is exposed for the American people. 

But Trumpsters and the GOP won't care. They literally won't care one bit. They will shrug and keep stacking the court system with corrupt judges who will do their bidding. I am not sure there is actually anything that will take Trump down short of massive amounts of Americans voting. 

[fraurosena]

21 minutes ago, Howl said:

I keep thinking this is it, the deal breaker, the "turn everything around" moment, the actual shit hits the fan, no amount of "what aboutism" can turn it around, I've been there so many times over the last 3  years.  But thinking that this may actually be the "it" moment for this admin.  The moment pure treason is exposed for the American people.  No amount of Barr, Fox, obstruction, can erase the stain.  BUT, I've been wrong before.

Well, @Howl and @formergothardite, here's the way they are going to spin it. It's eye-roll inducing!

And it's sooo frustrating that Mudd isn't corrected by the interviewer on the atrocious lies he's attempting to spin about what the IC is and isn't allowed to do. 

As Seth Abramson points out, this MaddowBlog article implies that there are actually two whistleblowers: the original IC member who filed the complaint, and the IC IG, who reported the complaint to Congress because the DNI didn't.

Trump reportedly implicated in intel whistleblower scandal

Quote

The basic elements of the story looked quite serious, despite its many gaps. On Friday night, we learned that someone within the U.S. intelligence community sent a complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general, and though we knew effectively nothing about the nature of the complaint, the IG reviewed it and found it credible.

Just as importantly, the issue was considered a matter of “urgent concern.”

The matter was brought to the attention of acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who, by law, was supposed to alert the congressional Intelligence committees. Instead, Maguire contacted the Justice Department, at which point Trump administration officials decided to withhold the information from lawmakers, legal disclosure requirements notwithstanding.

As you probably saw Rachel explain on last night’s show, the Washington Post has advanced our understanding of the burgeoning scandal in critically important ways.

The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Core elements of the Post’s reporting have been corroborated by other news organizations, including NBC News.

At this point, let’s take stock of what we know and what we don’t.

If the latest reporting is accurate, we know that Donald Trump had a phone call with a foreign leader, during which he made a provocative “promise.” We know a U.S. intelligence official considered the presidential vow alarming and filed a complaint on Aug. 12. We know the intelligence community’s inspector general considered the whistleblower’s complaint credible and urgent.

We know the Trump-appointed acting DNI ignored legal requirements related to congressional disclosure. We know the intelligence community’s inspector general was uncomfortable with the DNI’s decision to ignore the law, and the IG, Michael Atkinson, made the relevant congressional committees aware of the existence of the complaint earlier this month.

We don’t know what, specifically, the president promised one of his foreign counterparts or to whom he was speaking. There is, however, a limited number of foreign leaders Trump spoke to around the relevant dates, and the Post’s article noted a July 31 phone conversation the Republican had with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

We also don’t know the identity of the whistleblower, though there’s a limited number of intelligence community officials who’d know the relevant details of a presidential conversation with a foreign leader. Let’s also highlight the fact that this whistleblower took a big professional risk by taking his or her concerns to the inspector general’s office, but this person did the right thing anyway. It is, by all appearances, an unprecedented dynamic.

We also don’t know why the acting DNI ignored his legal disclosure requirements, or who (if anyone) may have directed him to do so.

Unfortunately for the White House, this new scandal is just getting started, as is the search for the truth. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) announced yesterday afternoon that his panel will today hear closed-door testimony from Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general. Acting DNI Joseph Maguire, meanwhile, is now scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee a week from today, and as things stand, that hearing will be open to the public.

Donald Trump really didn’t need another presidency-rocking scandal. He appears to be at the center of a new one anyway.

I wonder if the public will get to hear (some of) what Micheal Atkinson (the IC IG) testified to HIC behind closed doors today. I really, really, really hope for transcripts being released.

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus Reindeer.

White House Asks for List of Top Spies During Intelligence Shakeup

This article is from August 2. It speculates the reason for the request could be to find a replacement for Coats. But... what if this list is what the whistleblower complaint is about? Did Trump promise to give it to a foreign adversary?

Quote

The Trump administration is taking inventory of many of America’s top spies, The Daily Beast has learned. The White House recently asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for a list of all its employees at the federal government’s top pay scale who have worked there for 90 days or more, according to two sources familiar with the request. 

The request appears to be part of the White House’s search for a temporary director of national intelligence—a prospect that raises concerns in some quarters about political influence over the intelligence community.

The request, which specifically asks for people in ODNI at the GS-15 level (the pay grade for most top government employees, including supervisors) or higher, comes as ODNI’s leadership faces turmoil. Earlier this week, President Trump tweeted that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats will step down on Aug. 15, and that he plans to nominate Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe for the post. But Ratcliffe faces a contentious confirmation process that’s all but certain to stretch past the 15th, and the White House needs someone to take the DNI role in the meantime. 

According to federal law, ODNI’s Senate-confirmed second-in-command—the principal deputy director of national intelligence, currently Sue Gordon—steps in if the DNI departs. Gordon, who has spent decades in the intelligence community, is revered there and on Capitol Hill. But as a career intelligence official, she isn’t viewed as Team MAGA. And the White House is reportedly eyeing ways to put someone they trust in the top role after Coats departs. (The New York Times reported Friday afternoon that the White House was planning to block Gordon’s elevation.)

That may not be as easy as it sounds. As Bobby Chesney of the University of Texas School of Law detailed at Lawfare, the law indicates that if both the DNI post and the post Gordon currently holds are vacant, then the president could choose from a fairly wide pool of people to take Gordon’s post and, therefore, become acting DNI. That includes any Senate-confirmed officials in the Executive Branch, and any senior employee who’s been at ODNI for 90 days or more—in other words, anyone on the list the White House just requested from ODNI. 

It’s unclear why the White House asked ODNI for that list, but a search to replace Gordon appears to be the most likely explanation. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But while questions swirl about her future, Gordon hasn’t stepped down. 

This disquiet is the latest episode of the president’s long-simmering feud with the intelligence community. During Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, he often fumed on Twitter about the “deep state.” And he even singled out his own officials. On Jan. 29, Coats and CIA Director Gina Haspel told Congress in an open hearing that Iran was complying with the nuclear deal and that North Korea was still running its nuclear program—two statements that contradicted the president’s rhetoric on those countries. The morning after the hearing, the White House abruptly canceled the president’s daily intelligence briefing with Haspel and Coats, a move that raised eyebrows. 

The hearing incensed the president, and he took to Twitter to lambaste them. 

“Perhaps intelligence should go back to school!” he wrote. 

 

[fraurosena]

Ah.. he's awake and tweeting. It was no biggie. Nothing the matter. Calls like this happen all the time. The Fake News is at fault here!

It's funny though (not really) that he tries to blame the media and doesn't actually address the real issue: the IC whistleblower, the actual complaint. And the fact that the IC IG fount it urgent and compelling.

As to the question: Yes. Yes, there are many people who believe you are dumb enough to say something inappropriate. Like yesterday, remember, when you almost gave away security secrets about the wall? And that wasn't a 'heavily populated' phone call, that was on national television with millions of viewers. 

[fraurosena]

Dammit.

Watchdog Refuses to Detail Whistle-Blower Complaint About Trump

Quote

The internal watchdog for American spy agencies declined repeatedly in a briefing on Thursday to disclose to lawmakers the content of a potentially explosive whistle-blower complaint that is said to involve a discussion between President Trump and a foreign leader, according to two people familiar with the briefing.

During a private session on Capitol Hill, Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, told lawmakers he was unable to confirm or deny anything about the substance of the complaint, including whether it involved the president, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the closed-door conversation. The meeting was still underway.

The complaint, which prompted a standoff between Congress and Mr. Trump’s top intelligence official, involves a commitment that Mr. Trump made in a communication with another world leader, according to a person familiar with the complaint. The Washington Post first reported the nature of the discussion. The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to give the complaint to Congress, as is generally required by law, the latest in a series of fights over information between the Democratic-led House and the White House.

Few details of the whistle-blower complaint are known, including the identity of the world leader. And it is not obvious how a communication between Mr. Trump and a foreign leader could meet the legal standards for a whistle-blower complaint that the inspector general would deem an “urgent concern.”

Under the law, the complaint has to concern the existence of an intelligence activity that violates the law, rules or regulations, or otherwise amounts to mismanagement, waste, abuse, or a danger to public safety. But a conversation between two foreign leaders is not itself an intelligence activity.

And while Mr. Trump may have discussed intelligence activities with the foreign leader, he enjoys broad power as president to declassify intelligence secrets, order the intelligence community to act and otherwise direct the conduct of foreign policy as he sees fit, legal experts said.

Mr. Trump regularly speaks with foreign leaders and often takes a freewheeling approach. Some current and former officials said that what an intelligence official took to be a troubling commitment could have been an innocuous comment. But there has long been concern among some in the intelligence agencies that the information they share with the president is being politicized.

Andrew P. Bakaj, a former C.I.A. and Pentagon official whose legal practice specializes in whistle-blower and security clearance issues, confirmed that he is representing the official who filed the complaint. Mr. Bakaj declined to identify his client or to comment.

Mr. Trump denied wrongdoing on Thursday, explaining that he would not “say something inappropriate” on calls where aides and intelligence officials from both sides routinely listen in.

But whatever Mr. Trump said was startling enough to prompt the intelligence official to file a formal whistle-blower complaint on Aug. 12 to the inspector general for the intelligence agencies. Such a complaint is lodged through a formal process intended to protect the whistle-blower from retaliation.

Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been locked in the standoff with Mr. Maguire over the complaint for nearly a week. He said Mr. Maguire told him that he had been instructed not to give the complaint to Congress, and that the complaint addressed privileged information — meaning the president or people close to him were involved.

Mr. Schiff said none of the previous directors of national intelligence, a position created in 2004, had ever refused to provide a whistle-blower complaint to Congress. The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena last week to compel Mr. Maguire to appear before the panel. He briefly refused but relented on Wednesday and is now scheduled to appear before the committee in an open hearing next week.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, said on Thursday that he and the committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, also expected both the inspector general and acting director to brief them early next week and “clear this issue up.”

Mr. Maguire and Mr. Atkinson are at odds over how the complaint should be handled. Mr. Atkinson has indicated the matter should be investigated, and alerted the House and Senate Intelligence committees, while Mr. Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, says the complaint does not fall within the agencies’ purview because it does not involve a member of the intelligence community — a network of 17 agencies that does not include the White House.

The inspector general of the intelligence community “determined that this complaint is both credible and urgent, and that it should be transmitted to Congress under the clear letter of the law,” Mr. Schiff, Democrat of California, said in a statement on Wednesday evening.

Mr. Maguire was named the acting director in August, after the president had announced that the previous director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, would be stepping down. Mr. Trump had planned to nominate Representative John Ratcliffe, Republican of Texas, a Trump loyalist without an extensive background in intelligence. But the president dropped the plan after lawmakers from both parties raised concerns about Mr. Ratcliffe’s qualifications and possible exaggerations on his resume.

The reports about the whistle-blower complaint touched off speculation about what Mr. Trump said and to whom.

In the weeks before the complaint was filed, Mr. Trump spoke with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan and the prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte.

And current and former intelligence officials have expressed surprise that during his first few months as president, Mr. Trump shared classified information provided by an ally, Israel, with the Russian foreign minister.

Such disclosures are not illegal, but Mr. Trump flouted intelligence-sharing decorum by sharing an ally’s intelligence without express permission.

I really don't get it. In the hearing Atkinson says he can neither confirm nor deny anything about the substance of the complaint and whether it involves Trump. But earlier in the week Atkinson stated that the matter is credible and urgent and believes the matter should be investigated, and that it should be transmitted to Congress. But how can it be investigated if he won't confirm or deny, or tell Congress anything about the complaint? 

Something's up. What happened between then and now for him to suddenly clam up?

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

As to the question: Yes. Yes, there are many people who believe you are dumb enough to say something inappropriate. Like yesterday, remember, when you almost gave away security secrets about the wall? And that wasn't a 'heavily populated' phone call, that was on national television with millions of viewers. 

Actually, any person with at least two functioning brain cells would be more surprised if he DIDN'T say something inappropriate.

[fraurosena]

At first glance, this seems like a plausible cause for the whistleblower complaint. 

Except... we know this already. We heard about this last week. TRMS had a segment on it. If this were the cause of the complaint, why would they now be doing their damnedest to keep it under wraps? 

Edited September 19, 2019 by fraurosena

[Dandruff]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I'd believe he didn't plan to say something inappropriate to a foreign leader with others nearby.  My guess is that the leader said something triggering, and he reacted as he does - fast and loose.

[fraurosena]

7 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

I'd believe he didn't plan to say something inappropriate to a foreign leader with others nearby.  My guess is that the leader said something triggering, and he reacted as he does - fast and loose.

Yeah, you're right. Planning doesn't come into it. I believe he simply verbalizes every brain fart that happens to swirl around in his head. His mouth vomits words faster than his chaotic brain can produce coherent thoughts. Sometimes he notices that he's said something not quite right, and tries to rectify (like when he said that Melania "...has a son ... together") but mostly he doesn't even know and is completely taken aback by the backlash.

[GreyhoundFan]

22 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

I'd believe he didn't plan to say something inappropriate to a foreign leader with others nearby.  My guess is that the leader said something triggering, and he reacted as he does - fast and loose.

Or he was trying to look like a big boy who has lots of information to impress a world leader.