Perhaps it’s no longer shocking or surprising when Donald Trump is “unleashed” as he was over the weekend—but it’s still notable, and may tell us something about his state of mind at a difficult moment for his White House. Key staffers have left in recent weeks, including communications director Hope Hicks and chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, while unwelcome distractions in the forms of Stormy Daniels and Sam Nunberg have popped up.
Start with the president’s rally near Pittsburgh on Saturday, a political event ostensibly meant to boost Republican House candidate Rick Saccone ahead of Tuesday’s special election. Trump was light on words of support for Saccone, who is fighting to hang on to a GOP-held seat against a credible Democratic challenger. Instead, he used the opportunity to engage in a discursive speech that touched on three of Trump’s favorite topics: the unfair media, his own successes, and his presidential campaign.
At one point he praised his new steel tariffs as the cause for “a lot of steel mills” now opening up. At another he claimed the South Korean president gave credit to Trump for the successful PyeongChang Olympics. Trump targeted potential Democratic challengers, including Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren and Oprah Winfrey, “I would love to beat Oprah,” Trump said. “I know her weakness.” He announced his reelection slogan (“Keep America great, exclamation point.”) And he called NBC host Chuck Todd a “sleeping son of a bitch.”
Trump continued his stream-of-consciousness airing of grievances on Twitter this weekend, both before and after his Pennsylvania rally. He castigated the European Union for complaining about the tariffs, declared the news media “FAKE” for reporting he was walking back the initial claim he would meet with the North Koreans without preconditions, and complained Democrats in the Senate were slow-walking his nominations for “hundreds of good and talented people who are needed to run our government.” He also took aim at the New York Times Sunday morning:
The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job and…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018
…have shown conclusively that there was no Collusion with Russia..just excuse for losing. The only Collusion was that done by the DNC, the Democrats and Crooked Hillary. The writer of the story, Maggie Haberman, a Hillary flunky, knows nothing about me and is not given access.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018
That story that has exercised Trump comes from Maggie Haberman and her colleague Michael Schmidt, who reported that the president had been discussing bringing on a new, Washington veteran lawyer to his legal team.
In the past, Trump outbursts have often presaged new developments in the special counsel investigation or revealed the divisions between the president and Republicans on Capitol Hill. With past aides (including Hicks and Nunberg) meeting with Robert Mueller in recent days and GOP leadership frustrated with the president’s embrace of protectionism, Trump may feel under a particular degree of pressure. So, at least for this weekend, he returned to places of comfort and security: a rally for thousands of adoring fans and the free-wheeling platform of Twitter.
President Trump on Saturday offered his most enthusiastic support yet for sentencing drug dealers to death, pointing to no-tolerance policies in China and Singapore as an example of how to curb America’s opioid problem.
“He said, ‘We have a zero-tolerance policy. That means if we catch a drug dealer, death penalty, that’s it,’” Trump said of a conversation he had with the president of Singapore. “I think it’s a discussion we have to start thinking about. I don’t know if we’re ready—I don’t know if this country’s ready for it.”
“But these people are killing our kids and they’re killing our families, and we have to do something,” Trump continued.
Must-Read of the Day—“A Crisis of Liberalism?” by Eric Cohen. Here’s an excerpt from Cohen’s review of Patrick Deneen’s new critique of small-l liberalism, Why Liberalism Failed:
Photo of the Day
Donald Trump greets supporters at the Make America Great Again Rally on March 10, 2018 in Moon Township, Pennsylvania.
(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
Sunday Show Highlight—Mike Pompeo, the Trump-appointed director of the CIA, appeared this weekend on Fox News Sunday and was asked about Vladimir Putin’s dismissal of allegations of Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential election.
“President Vladimir Putin did an interview with NBC in the last few days in which he says he could not care less if Russians try to hack the U.S. election because the people who were doing the hacking were not connected to the Kremlin,” said guest host John Roberts. “No connection to the Kremlin? What does the CIA know about that?”
“That’s false,” Pompeo replied. “The Russians attempted to interfere in the United States election in 2016. They also did so before that. There’s a long history of Russian efforts to influence the United States and conduct influence operations against the United States. And it was Russians who actually engaged in this, not somebody from outside of the country or disconnected from Russia.”
Pressed by Roberts about whether or not those Russians who interfered had ties to the Kremlin and to Putin’s regime, Pompeo was unequivocal: “Yes.”
Travel Watch—A New York Times editor took his family on a Disney cruise. Read the hilarious review here.
Song of the Day—“Let It Be Me” by Ray LaMontagne
