|
Joey
|
 https://nypost.com/2019/10/02/goodwin-trump-talks-impeachment-dems-and-de-blasio-in-interview/ " Goodwin: Trump talks impeachment, Dems and de Blasio in interview . " " His enemies are divided only in the sense that some want to lock him up now while others want a trial first. So why is President Trump so cheerful?
“We just got great news from California, a judge ruled for us,” he said, referring to a decision blocking a state law that aimed at keeping Trump off the ballot unless he made his tax returns public.
The president said a “breaking news” alert had “me holding my breath because I know it’s going to be about me. They’re always about me.” We both laughed.
That was the start of my Tuesday night phone interview. It was 10 p.m. and the president, who sees sleep as a waste of time, seemed very energized despite the relentless onslaught and long days. He admitted he was feeling good, joking that “it must be a personality defect.”
“It sounds strange to say I’m energized, but I love it, I love it,” he said of the daily combat with Democrats and the media. “These people are so corrupt. They’re cons, all they want to do is win the election.”
I had called him because I wanted to know whether he and his team were prepared for the daily barrage of accusations coming from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Adam Schiff and others. I pointed out that whatever Pelosi’s initial hesitancy, she is now all-in on impeachment and attacks are also aimed at Attorney General Bill Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Is the president setting up a war room to defend himself and his aides for the hot battles ahead?
“No, no war room,” Trump said quickly. “I’ve got very good people, good lawyers, good White House counsel.”
He said the issue first came up “when the idiot governor from California, you can quote me, sued me over the tax returns, and people asked about a war room then. We didn’t need one.”
He also compared the current situation to the Russia collusion drama.
“Russia was much more complicated and after two and a half years and after they spent $42 million, there was no collusion, no obstruction, they got nothing, so I think we’re going to keep doing it the way we’re doing it.”
To be clear, this was no Alfred E. Neuman “What, me worry?” nonchalance. To judge from his Twitter account alone, Trump recognizes the stakes, as he fires off tweetstorms almost daily.
Yet his energy isn’t all anger. Over the course of 20 minutes or so, he talked about three big reasons why he’s actually optimistic about his situation. If he has any fear of being impeached and removed from office, I didn’t hear it.
The first thing he’s banking on is the economy. “The country is doing very well,” he said, a reference to record-low unemployment and the high stock market, which has been wobbly lately.
Second, he believes Dems are deluding themselves in trying to impeach him on the basis of his phone call with the president of Ukraine.
“It’s not a crime, nothing I said was wrong,” Trump insisted. “The whistleblower was totally inaccurate about the call, and it’s all second- and third-hand. It’s a fraud, a hoax, it’s a witch hunt.”
He was just getting warmed up.
“These people are trying to destroy our country, they’re sick, there’s something wrong with them,” Trump said. He repeated his complaint about Schiff making up his own dialogue when supposedly quoting from the transcript of the phone call at last week’s hearing.
“He quoted the president of the United States in a fraudulent manner, he made the entire thing up,” Trump said. “He couldn’t quote me because there was nothing to quote … he just made the whole thing up, he’s sick.”
Schiff, who defended his fictional rendition as “parody,” is, ironically, part of the third reason for Trump’s optimism. He cites the “tremendous response” among his supporters, saying they are motivated by the attacks coming from Democrats and the media.
“I see the fundraising, it’s the biggest ever,” Trump said, mentioning the record $125 million take for his campaign and the Republican National Committee.
Politico reports that the re-election effort raised $8.5 million online in just the first two days after Pelosi announced the impeachment push, and got 50,000 new small donors. It says the GOP now has $156 million on hand, more than double what President Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee had at the same point before the 2012 election.
Trump was especially proud of the surge of small donors, noting that Republicans never had much success among that group.
He also is optimistic because he got a call from a group of evangelical pastors who told him their flocks, a bedrock of his support, are more united and determined than ever to give him four more years.
Finally, I asked whether it was still possible for him to work with Pelosi on legislation of any kind.
“It’s always hard to work with somebody that’s fraudulently doing things,” he said. “The whole thing is a fraud.”
He again mentioned the transcript of the Ukraine call, saying the speaker “never saw it” until after making her impeachment decision. “She had read only the fake whistleblower complaint, which I think she got in advance because it’s collusion.”
On that, I am in total agreement. Dems, I believe, not only had the complaint, they probably helped to prepare it. The legal citations are a giveaway, as are the many leaks to the anti-Trump media in the days before the complaint became public.
Indeed, in shades of the 2016 FBI-CIA spying on Trump, the inspector general said the CIA agent making the complaint shows “arguable political bias.” What a shock.
With that, the interview was over, but the president had a final thought. “How is my New York?” he asked, then quickly caught himself to add, “Oh, you got a crummy mayor.”
He mocked Bill de Blasio, noting he had dropped out of the presidential race after registering zero in most polls.
“How do you get zero,” Trump chuckled. “I mean, can’t you at least one or two points? But he got zero!”
|
Pages: 
The nonsense thread - Enter at your own risk! Warning… 100% off topic and full of nonsense inside (Read 894,349 times)
