Depends on the meaning of permanent

Depends on the meaning of permanent

by digby




I thought I should memorialize a few of the highlights of last week's batshit crazy interview with the Wall St Journal:

“I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un. I have relationships with people. I think you people are surprised.”

WSJ reporters asked if that meant he talks directly to Kim, which would be a major departure from US policy over the past decade. Trump replied: “I don’t want to comment on it. I’m not saying I have or haven’t. I just don’t want to comment.”

On the border wall, he explained, “[Mexico] can pay for it indirectly through NAFTA. We make a good deal on NAFTA, and, say, I’m going to take a small percentage of that money and it’s going toward the wall. Guess what? Mexico’s paying.”

“I don’t know what the word permanent means,” Trump said when asked if his relationship with Bannon was permanently ruptured because of Bannon’s cooperation with Michael Wolff’s book about the Trump administration, Fire and Fury.

“[Trump] claimed that firing former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey should have elicited grateful applause from across Washington.”

“Mr. Trump also said that messages traded between a pair of FBI employees who had been involved in the Mueller investigation amounted to treason.”

“Mr. Trump offered an unsolicited rebuttal to Fire and Fury, saying it showed the need for new libel laws. But he acknowledged that was unlikely to happen, saying that the Republican-controlled Congress doesn’t have the ‘guts’ for that debate.”

This one is the real doozy:
Trump “acknowledged that Pyongyang may be trying to separate Washington and Seoul. ‘If I were them, I would try,’ he said. ‘The difference is I’m president, other people aren’t,’ he said. ‘And I know more about wedges than any human being that’s lived.’”

He was probably attempting to tell a monumentally stupid, incoherent joke about golf, but the truth is that he does deploy wedge issues more openly and crudely than any president who's ever lived. (He doesn't know that term, of course, so he's not making that point.)

His interviews have always been this incoherent. I think that the difference is that we are only reading them now instead of seeing them and for a lot of people his confident delivery of gibberish obscures the nonsense he's actually saying. When you read it, there's no avoiding the fact that his mind is seriously disordered.


Update: The White House is disputing that he said "I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un" insisting that he actually said "I'd." You can judge for yourself but I can't imagine what difference it makes. He went on to say that “I don’t want to comment on it, I’m not saying I have or haven’t, I just don’t want to comment” when asked if he had been speaking directly with him so he was being vague, at best, but more likely just lying reflexively since he is a pathological liar and says such things for no good reason at all.


We have reviewed the audio from our interview with President Trump, as well as the transcript provided by an external service, and stand by what we reported. Here is audio of the portion the White House disputes. https://t.co/eWcmiHrXJg pic.twitter.com/bx9fGFWaPw

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 14, 2018



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