President Trump’s standalone press conference Thursday afternoon was a hell of a thing.
It featured all the usual drama one has come to expect from Trump’s face-to-face encounters with reporters. It also saw Trump dusting off one of his most popular 2016 punching bags: Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The president was asked by one reporter if he could reveal anything to disprove the narrative that the White House has deeply troubling connections Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump dismissed the question, calling the story a “ruse.” He then pivoted, telling reporters that he think it would be beneficial to make a deal with Russia, but that the press is undermining his ability to do so.
Trump pivoted once again, this time turning to Clinton’s own experience trying to deal with the Russians.
“We had Hillary Clinton trying to do a reset,” Trump said, referring to then-Secretary of State Clinton’s efforts to restart diplomatic ties between the White House and the Kremlin. “I didn’t do anything for Russia.”
“Hillary Clinton did a reset, remember? With the stupid plastic button that made us all look like a bunch of jerks?” the president asked reporters, “with that cheap, plastic button that was the reset, remember, it said, ‘RESET’?”
Though his response was a deflection, and he owes it to voters to answer the question more thoroughly, it’s hard not to laugh along with his mostly accurate summary of Clinton’s botched attempts at diplomacy.
In fact, the reported story is even more absurd than even Trump’s version.
First, when Clinton handed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov a big red button prop with the word “reset” written across it in Russian, her State Department flunkies didn’t even spell “reset” correctly. Secondly, Trump forgot to mention that the stupid button was reportedly ripped from a hotel jacuzzi.
Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes reported in their book, “HRC”:
[Hillary Clinton’s senior adviser] Philippe Reines, a lover of both gimmickry and iconic imagery, had come up with a plan to show the world a symbol of the “reset” mantra. Hillary would give [Russian foreign minister Sergei] Lavrov a gift-wrapped button emblazoned with the English and Russian words for “reset.” … But Reines had sidestepped traditional protocol by not asking State’s team of translators to help with the project from the start. He later said he was unaware such resources were available to him.
[…]
Reines tried to correct the error, asking Russia’s ambassador to Switzerland to give the gift back temporarily so that a new label – with the right word – could be printed and affixed to it. … Reines pleaded his case in good humor, even suggesting they bring a label-maker into the room so that the Russian ambassador didn’t have to let the gift – an emergency stop button that had been hastily pilfered from a swimming pool or Jacuzzi at the hotel – out of his sight. Nyet, the ambassador said.
Top. Men.
