The [so-called] president said something he wasn't supposed to say out loud:
President Trump said on Wednesday that there would be nothing wrong with accepting incriminating information about an election opponent from Russia or other foreign governments and that he saw no reason to call the F.B.I. if it were to happen again.
“It’s not an interference,” he said in an interview with ABC News, describing it as “opposition research.” “They have information — I think I’d take it.” He would call the F.B.I. only “if I thought there was something wrong.”
Laura Ingraham is upset:
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham tonight brought up President Donald Trump‘s ABC News interview in which he talked about being open to receiving foreign dirt, asking why he would be speaking with George Stephanopoulos in the first place....
Ingraham tonight said, “Setting aside the question of why you would have George Stephanopoulos standing over the president in the Oval Office––I don’t know who approved that––what about this notion of accepting foreign Intel about an opponent? Is that a risk for President Trump, getting pulled back into Mueller? Again, why he was put in that situation is beyond me.”
So why was Trump talking to Stephanopoulos anyway? Why this?
With his re-election bid set to officially kick off next week, President Donald Trump granted ABC News an exclusive, wide-ranging interview over the course of two days, offering an unprecedented behind-the-scenes lens into the life of the 45th President of the United States.
ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos joined President Trump on Tuesday aboard Air Force One for his campaign visit to Iowa, where the president sought to reassure farmers as his prospective 2020 challengers – including former Vice President Joe Biden – canvassed the critical first-in-the-nation caucus state.
On Wednesday, back in Washington, Stephanopoulos greeted President Trump at his West Wing residence before embedding in the White House for a day of meetings with staff, cabinet members, the Polish president, and, of course, first lady Melania Trump.
At the conclusion of their time together, Stephanopoulos sat down with President Trump for a one-on-one interview in the White House for a wide-ranging discussion.
Trump gets himself in trouble when he does on-camera interviews outside the protective cocoon of Fox News. It was in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt that Trump acknowledged firing James Comey because of the Russia investigation.
The invitation to Stephanopoulos was extended because Democrats are campaigning for president now. Trump can't stand it -- he wants all the attention, just as he has throughout his life. And when it's not Democratic presidential hopefuls talking smack about Trump, it's Democrats in Congress. Trump needs to seize control of the narrative. He needs to be on television. If the narrative is bad, he alone can fix it. That's what he believes.
The Mueller report tells us that Trump did the interview with Lester Holt in 2017 because he thought his staff was doing a bad job of handling the Comey firing:
... on May 11, 2017, the President participated in an interview with Lester Holt. The President told White House Counsel's Office attorneys in advance of the interview that the communications team could not get the story right, so he was going on Lester Holt to say what really happened.
In all likelihood, Trump will now retreat to the Fox bubble for the foreseeable future. Or maybe he'll start a war or impose some tariffs. He's desperate to regain control of the narrative. But this didn't work.
Republished with permission from No More Mister Nice Blog
