Donald Trump has a whole new problem
Donald J. Trump has a problem. Maybe many. But one that might be his undoing is his loose lips – he cannot seem to control what he says at any given time, and when he talks, he quotes the media he calls “fake,” or he resorts to his manic use of Twitter. At times, he does both. Now we wake up to his newest theory and attack, which stretches credulity to its breaking point. Trump is now accusing Lester Holt of doctoring the interview where Trump clearly says why he fired James Comey.
Trump tweeted this at 7:02 am eastern time: “What’s going on at @CNN is happening, to different degrees, at other networks – with @NBCNews being the worst. The good news is that Andy Lack(y) is about to be fired(?) for incompetence, and much worse. When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia, they were hurt badly!”
We all can remember Trump appearing on NBC with Lester Holt in May 2017, where he informed Holt that he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he fired Comey. Trump’s exact statement to Holt was: “And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won’.”
Earlier this year, Donald Trump tried to walk back his statements to Holt, and there is a very good reason: the walls are closing in on Trump and he knows that the jig is up. He must surely realize that his statements to Holt are admissions of his thinking at the time. He knows that White House Counsel Don McGahn spoke with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team for at least thirty hours, that Michael Cohen might be cooperating, and that his CFO Allen Weisselberg has immunity. So, Trump must find a way to try to distance himself from obstruction charges. We now have a president hitting bottom, denying reality, claiming that real news is doctored or fudged, when the only fake news is what comes out of his mouth and his sycophants’ mouths. We will likely see him continue to become much more desperate in the days and months ahead.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.