[ad_1]
As President Donald Trump wrapped up Thursday in New York, he went to the luxury Cipriani restaurant to speak at a fundraiser for a sensational breakfast.
After meetings at the United Nations, the president clearly could not forget his mind of an anonymous whistleblower whose newly declassified complaint threatened to blow up his administration. According to a breakfast participant, Trump waved a hard copy of the memo of his now infamous phone call to Ukraine, billing it as a blame for Democratic lawmakers for being mean to him. After waving the document and receiving encouragement from the gathering of Republican supporters and supporters, the president praised the amount of money – $ 13 million in 24 hours – that he had collected for his re-election effort, noted the participant.
That was another illustration of how Trump's big New York week had been overshadowed and overshadowed by revelations that his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had urged the Ukrainian authorities to investigate Joe Biden's son. , former vice president, who will likely remain the president of Trump. 2020 opponent of the elections.
Over the past few days, the president has helped raise millions of dollars for the 2020 fight and has been praised by world leaders. And yet, he remained obsessed with all this by the scandal that was unfolding in Washington, while the Democratic members of Congress were getting closer to the impeachment process. According to three people familiar with the situation, Trump compulsively monitored the television and cable coverage of the scandal related to Ukraine and repeatedly questioned his entourage about the whistleblower and rumors that the complainant would be hostile or biased from his view.
Throughout this time, the president's behavior and approach to the scandal that is unfolding quickly oscillated between spoiling a battle and hoping for a break. It often depended on the person he was talking to or the context in which he was. According to those present at the fundraiser for his breakfast on Thursday, the president was optimistic and fired, telling donors that he and his political team were ready to respond. hard. In private, however, there was real consternation about how a brutal impeachment process would affect his legacy and the White House, with much of his staff sharing similar concerns. Trump's relatives said the president had never expected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to support the main indictments, at least until the end of the day. at this week.
Although one of the White House 's senior aides said that the state of mind "was satisfactory," others said Trump had taken over last week personally, as if the Democrats and what his allies call "the deep state" had just dismantled his party.
On Tuesday, the president went on Twitter to accuse the Liberals of deliberately ruining and degrading his "important day" in the United States. Los Angeles Times Trump also used his time at a private event held Thursday morning at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York to rage about the whistleblower and the person who had provided information to this person.
"I want to know who the person is – who is the person who gave the information to the whistleblower? Because it's close to a spy, "Trump said. "Do you know what we did in the past when we were smart? Right? Spies and betrayal – we used to handle it a little differently than we do now. "
In a Bloomberg video of the same speech, Trump said, "We are at war" before adding that "these people are sick. They are sick. "
He went on to shout out those who had expressed concerns about the whistleblower's complaint, mocking the neck of Speaker of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA), calling Mr. Biden " dumb as a rock "and dismissing the media coverage of his call. with the Ukrainian president as "very partisan."
The sanctions provided by the president for people who, according to him, gave information to the whistleblower are unclear, and the White House has not clarified the problem when asked. A few hours before Trump speaks, the whistleblower's complaint details allegations that the president has lobbied the Ukrainian government for his immisce in the 2020 elections and that White House officials attempted to conceal the recordings of this appeal had been made public. And shortly thereafter, Joseph Maguire, Trump's acting director of national intelligence, began his testimony in Congress, during which he said the complaint was credible.
Already published the day before the publication of a partial publication of the proceedings describing in detail the pressures he had exerted on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his investigation of Biden, Trump was now watching the moment when Maguire rejected accusations that the White House had illegally attempted to hold the registration of this appeal. the complaint too.
And yet, although he compared the whistleblower and his sources to spies who had committed treason, Trump returned to the White House on Thursday – said the White House senior official – and told his lieutenants that it was no longer necessary to start. "War room" or any special initiative to fight against the dismissal fever.
A report that Trump would bring his former 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to the forefront of such an effort, was an attempt at "self-expansion" by his outside officials, he added. the manager. And subsequently, the White House subsequently denied this information. In the president's inner circle, some have continued to believe that the rush of Democratic leaders to adopt the impeachment amounted to a politically stained bluff.
"It's all theater," said Wednesday at the Daily Beast Jay Sekulow, one of Trump's lawyers who had worked with Giuliani to defend the president during the investigation led by Mueller. "Nancy Pelosi did not say anything about what's going on," he said, referring to how Democrats in the House said a few weeks ago that they were just starting procedures just to decide they had to attack Trump.
While the White House was trying to project calm behavior, outside groups were preparing for war. According to a senior Republican National Committee official, the RNC's internal research team has begun gathering materials to counter-attack House Democrats and a "war center" to deal with Trump's removal from office.
As Trumpworld's strategy of handling escalating indictment issues materializes, the president and his staff will have to adjust to a reality in which the progress of his agenda is even less advanced than before.
Earlier in the week, a senior administration official lamented the importance of a huge procedure for indicting pain for White House staff. The official said it was partly because his dismissal would inevitably devastate Trump's attention, mood, actions and program for the remainder of his tenure. And the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said that "House Democrats have destroyed any chance of legislative progress for the people of this country by continuing to focus on" dismissal.
[ad_2]
Source link