Donald Trump has been besieged by reporters this week, and he decided to gaslight a couple of them, both women, interestingly. We’ll start with a sneak peek which Politico picked up on the “60 Minutes” interview by Lesley Stahl airing Sunday night. Stahl asks about the reputation of the White House as “being in chaos” although Trump describes it as a “smooth running machine.” She also addressed the rumor of James Mattis leaving his post as Secretary of Defense. According to Bob Woodward’s book “Fear” Mattis was the man who politely explained to Trump that we had a physical presence on the Korean peninsula in order to prevent WWIII, because Trump didn’t know even that much about foreign policy or defense. Evidently, knowing the rudiments of reality marks one as a Democrat. Okey doke.
The video is only one minute long, and Trump is defensive as hell, starting with his go-to excuse about everything “fake news,” and then he assures Stahl that he has people on standby that will be “phenomenal.”
The other general that Trump has a love hate relationship with is John Kelly. New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi was at the White House Tuesday, to get information on the same topic as Lesley Stahl, chaos in the White House. To her amazement, as she was leaving, she got a call from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who took her into the Oval Office for an exclusive interview with Trump, who regaled the reporter with his usual line of disinformation and drivel.
“General Kelly’s doing a very good job,” Trump told me. “We have a very good relationship. The White House is running very, very smoothly. We’ve had a big week. We just got a Supreme Court justice on the bench. We have the USMCA, meaning the NAFTA replacement, and many other things. We had a great meeting with North Korea. It was a great meeting. The secretary of State’s coming just in ten minutes.”
He went on, “But I want to tell you a couple of things: the chief is doing a very good job. I’m very happy with him, we have a very good relationship, number one. Number two, I didn’t offer anybody else the job. I didn’t talk to anybody about the job. And I’m not, I’m not looking. Now, look, with time, do people leave? As an example, Nikki Haley told me six months ago, even a year ago — but six months ago, that, you know, she’s been governor, she’s done this, she’s helped us with the campaign, a lot of good things, and you probably saw the conference. It was a very, very positive thing. We have a very positive story going on at the White House. We have a very positive story for the country. We’re doing a great job. We have the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have among the greatest job numbers. Among many groups, we have the greatest job numbers. We have things going on that are phenomenal on trade. China wants to make a deal — I said, you’re not ready yet. But they wanna make a deal, and at some point we might. Iran wants to make a deal. They all wanna make a deal. We have great things going. We have a very smooth-running organization even though it’s never reported that way. So the real story is that. It’s really the real story. When you walk in here, you don’t see chaos. There is no chaos. The media likes to portray chaos. There’s no chaos. I’m leaving for Iowa in a little while. We’re doing something that’s going to be very exciting tonight in Iowa. A big, a big announcement, actually. Doing four rallies this week. I think the rallies have, frankly, built up our poll numbers very greatly. What am I now in Rasmussen? 52?”
Trump loves everybody, everything’s fine, just fine, the White House is running like a Swiss watch, the country has never had it so good — and you’ve heard it all before. Read the New York Magazine article in it’s entirety, it’s a good investment of ten minutes, to get the full scope on how Trump is apparently depending on mass hypnosis to stay in power.
