Trump just can’t stop stepping in it.
If there were signs all over the White House pointing out where not to step, Trump would still step in it.
If “it” were lying on a rug with a flashing, neon, talking billboard that played on repeat for Trump not to step here, Trump would lace up his golf cleats and promptly go step in it.
During an interview with ABC News that aired Wednesday, Trump was asked if he dated teens, to which he answered, “How young are we talking?” he would listen to a foreign government that claimed to have damaging info on a political rival.
The short (and correct) answer here is “No.”
Here’s what Trump said: “I think you might want to listen. There isn’t anything wrong with listening.”
For those not keeping score, let’s remember that Trump’s campaign and entire presidency has been plagued with allegations of Russian interference. Let’s not forget that Donald Trump Jr. just “spent about three hours with the [Senate Intelligence Committee] Wednesday as part of its ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the Washington Post reports.
That three-hour meeting was about whether or not Lil’ Trump mischaracterized the “June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising incriminating information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” the Post reports.
Basically, Lil’ Trump is in hot water for what he told his father concerning that meeting with an agent of a foreign country and why he had the meeting in the first damn place, and Big Trump with the lil’ hands would still do the same shit.
Oh, and for good measure, Big Trump also noted that he wasn’t sure if he’d report said hypothetical meeting to the FBI.
“It’s not an interference, they have information—I think I’d take it,” Trump said. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI—if I thought there was something wrong.”
Needless to say, Democrats hopped all over it.
“It is shocking to hear the President say outright that he is willing to put himself indebt [sic] to a foreign power...not to mention the foreign interference in an American election part,” House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) tweeted Wednesday night, CNN reports.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) found Trump’s comment “stunning on the one hand and not at all surprising on the other.”
“Donald Trump has made it clear that he will engage in any action, no matter how unethical or unpatriotic, that he will go right up to the line of what’s legal and indeed it looks like he crossed that line many times,” Schiff told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
CNN notes that Trump made a bunch of wildly bogus claims from the Oval Office early Wednesday, noting that his campaign rejected Russian advances with dirt on his opponent in 2016. He also lied and claimed that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report acknowledged this, claiming the report “said we actually rebuffed your friends from Russia; that we actually pushed them back—we rebuffed them.”
This is not true.
Trump then set out to clean up his word vomit on Thursday by conflating normal visits with foreign leaders down to the level of skullduggery between foreign parties with an agenda.
“I meet and talk to ‘foreign governments’ every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Wales [originally spelled “the Prince of Whales,” as Yahoo pointed out], the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about “Everything!” he tweeted.
“Should I immediately...call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters,” Trump added.
Then Trump did his mafia tough-guy thing that he does when he acts like he doesn’t need no stinking FBI.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI,” he said. “You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do.”
“Life doesn’t work that way,” Trump said.
The FBI director would rather Trump called him, I’m sure, but Trump doesn’t call no stinking FBI.