Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Trump's Big CON: LOCK HIM UP!!, CONt.

More on the attempt to obstruct justice.

"On the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany last month, President Trump’s advisers discussed how to respond to a new revelation that Trump’s oldest son had met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign — a disclosure the advisers knew carried political and potentially legal peril.

The strategy, the advisers agreed, should be for Donald Trump Jr. to release a statement to get ahead of the story. They wanted to be truthful, so their account couldn’t be repudiated later if the full details emerged.

But within hours, at the president’s direction, the plan changed.

Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.”

The claims were later shown to be misleading. . .

Trump has already come under criticism for steps he has taken to challenge and undercut the Russia investigation.

He fired FBI Director James B. Comey on May 9 after a private meeting in which Comey said the president asked him if he could end the investigation of ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats told associates that Trump asked him in March if he could intervene with Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on Flynn. In addition, Trump has repeatedly criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from overseeing the FBI’s Russian investigation — a decision that was one factor leading to the appointment of Mueller. And he has privately discussed his power to issue pardons, including for himself, and explored potential avenues for undercutting Mueller’s work.

Read the Washington Post, Trump dictated son’s misleading statement on meeting with Russian lawyer.

And read the Washington Post, President Trump is now directly implicated in trying to cover up the Russia scandal, which notes:

"If the Russia scandal is nothing but a witch hunt, as President Trump so often says, it’s awfully strange that he’s going to so much trouble to cover it up. . .

So, to put this together: The president of the United States personally wrote a statement about this meeting with the Russians, a statement that everyone involved knew to be false. Going further, he then either lied to his own lawyer about his involvement so that the lawyer would repeat that lie publicly (highly likely) or was candid with his lawyer and persuaded him to lie to the media on his behalf (much less likely). . .

It has been entertaining to watch the ongoing soap opera of this White House — the infighting, the backstabbing, the firings, the general air of chaos — but it’s important to remember that the biggest problem it has is the man who sits in the Oval Office. The fact that Trump assumed that he could engineer this mini-coverup and the truth would never get out, both about the meeting itself and about his role in misleading the public about it, shows just how deluded he is about how his own White House works.

Let’s return to that scene on Air Force One. A damaging story is breaking, and Trump’s advisers are facing the dilemma many administrations have faced before: How do we deal with it? How much information should we voluntarily reveal? Is there a way to make the story go away that won’t set us up for even more trouble down the road? While they were debating those questions, the one person to whom no one could say no told them how it was going to be: They were going to lie. And as is so often the case with Trump, the lie was quickly revealed for what it was. . .

Something tells me there’s more to come." [Emphasis added.]

What goes around comes around

Read also the Daily Mail, President Trump pressured Fox News to release fake story about death of DNC staffer Seth Rich and Wikileaks to divert attention from Russia, claims explosive lawsuit.

And read also Trump's Big CON: LOCK HIM UP!!

Trump's Big CON: Broken Campaign Promises, Trade Edition

"President Trump said Tuesday that his administration is delaying a long-awaited verdict on whether to restrict imports of foreign steel, again punting on a decision that has divided U.S. industries and his own administration, as well as strained ties with some of the country's closest allies and trading partners. . .

Trump told the Journal that the administration would be addressing steel dumping, which he described as 'a very unfair situation.' But he added that 'we don’t want to do it at this moment.'

The decision is being closely watched as an indicator of whether Trump will deliver on his trade promises. The tariffs or quotas the administration was considering would have been the president’s first major move to fulfill the protectionist, America-first trade policy that was one of the pillars of his candidacy.

For months, the administration kept industry guessing about whether these ideas were mostly campaign rhetoric or the basis for an ambitious repositioning of U.S. trade policy. . .

On multiple occasions, Trump expressed his support for restricting steel imports.

'Wait till you see what I’m going to do for steel and your steel companies,' he said in a speech in Cincinnati on June 7. 'We’re going to stop the dumping and stop all of these wonderful other countries from coming in and killing our companies and our workers. We’ll be seeing that very soon. The steel folks are going to be very happy.'"

Read the Washington Post, Amid resistance, Trump backs away from controversial trade plan.