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White House Watch: Trump vs. the Wall Street Journal

By Michael Warren

President Trump’s administration made a significant policy move on Friday—extending the Iran deal by waiving nuclear sanctions, while simultaneously issuing new, non-nuclear sanctions against Iran in light of the recent protests there. But you’d be forgiven for forgetting all about that, because a number of less substantive mini-issues have plagued the White House this weekend.

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There was the Wall Street Journal’s wide-ranging interview with the president, conducted Thursday morning in the Oval Office. There were quite a few interesting and remarkable tidbits from that interview, but by the weekend the White House (and Trump himself) was claiming the Journal had misquoted the president. “I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un of North Korea,” the paper quoted Trump saying. The White House claimed the president had said “I’d”—meaning that he would have a good relationship with the dictatorial ruler of North Korea.

Both the Journal and the White House released audio of the exchange, and the truth of what Trump said seems ambiguous. But the White House press office spent Saturday and Sunday in a full-court press decrying the Journal as fake news. This, an organization whose editor and editorial page (though not its news staff) have been perhaps the friendliest major newspaper in the country to Trump.

(I have, by the way, asked the White House to explain what, exactly, the president meant under their interpretation of his comments: Under what circumstances would he think he and Kim would have a “very good relationship?” I’ve received no answer.)

What had the Wall Street Journal done that could have drawn such critical scrutiny from the White House? Perhaps the Journal’s Friday afternoon bombshell story reporting, well, this:

A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said. Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, has privately alleged the encounter with Mr. Trump took place after they met at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament on the shore of Lake Tahoe, these people said. Mr. Trump married Melania Trump in 2005.

One More Thing—Meanwhile, the controversy of Trump’s alleged “shithole” comments rages on, three days after President Trump reportedly derailed a White House meeting on immigration by making derogatory comments about migrants from Central America and Africa. Over the weekend, the meeting’s participants were still squabbling over what exactly Trump had said.

Confirming the initial Washington Post story, Democratic senator Dick Durbin said that Trump had spoken of African immigrants as coming from “shithole countries,” while Republican Lindsey Graham, who was also in attendance, released a statement supporting Durbin’s account. On Sunday, Senators David Perdue and Tom Cotton, both Republicans and Trump allies on immigration, denied that Trump had said anything demeaning and suggested that Durbin was an unreliable source.

“I’m telling you he did not use that word, George, and I’m telling you it’s a gross misrepresentation,” Perdue said on ABC’s This Week.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Cotton was less unequivocal, though he said he didn’t hear Trump make such a remark, “and I was sitting no further away from Donald Trump than Dick Durbin was.”

“Senator Durbin has misrepresented what happened in White House meetings before,” Cotton continued.

Durbin’s communications director took a shot at Cotton and Perdue on Twitter after their interviews, saying they had a “credibility problem.”

Meanwhile, Trump dismissed the controversy with typical brusqueness Sunday night.

“No, I am not a racist,” he told reporters. “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed. That I can tell you.”

On the President’s Schedule—Trump has spent the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, and he will return to the White House Monday evening. He has no scheduled events on Monday, when the nation observers Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.

Must-Read of the Day—In the latest magazine, Matthew Continetti has a fine tribute to Charles Murray, the great social scientist, on the occasion of Murray’s retirement from the American Enterprise Institute. Here’s an excerpt:

As it turned out, Murray would spend much of his time working from home. His initial plan had been to spend a full day per week in the office. But soon he discovered that the collegial atmosphere of the building cut into his work. “The day I spent at AEI was the least productive day of my week,” he told me. Trips into D.C. became less frequent. Eventually, he didn’t require an office at AEI at all. The fallout from the publication of The Bell Curve in 1994 strengthened Murray’s regard for his employer. He previewed the book’s contents for AEI scholars and brass. At the end of the presentation, Murray recalled, Kristol leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, Charles, we’ll defend you—up to a point.” “We knew there would be a reaction because IQ raises so many hackles,” Murray told me. “But I thought we had handled it so well that we’d be praised for taking these difficult topics and making it possible for people to talk about them.” Suffice it to say, that didn’t happen.

You’ve got to see this incredible game-winning reception in Sunday’s Vikings-Saints playoff matchup:


Song of the Day—“I Don’t Care Anymore” by Phil Collins

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