One of Donald Trump’s own top people just totally stabbed him in the back
If you watched Donald Trump’s stammering press conference today, it’s clear that he’s too far gone to be calling the shots when it comes to his administration’s response to impeachment. Someone else is running the show here. It’s not Rudy Giuliani; Trump listens to him, but Rudy is way too far gone to be pulling any puppet strings. Whoever it is, that person sure did stab Trump in the back today.
There’s no way possible that any of Donald Trump’s remaining top people – despite all being bunglers – could possibly be stupid enough to think that releasing that summary today was somehow going to help Trump. Despite only being an incomplete summary of the phone call, it directly incriminates Trump. The White House could have spent months dragging out the legal battle over this summary, and then several more months dragging out the fight over the whistleblower complaint itself. This was the dumbest move they could have made.
Whoever told Trump to do this is either the dumbest person in the history of politics, or is purposely trying to take Trump down. Like we said, at this point it can’t be Rudy. Nor can we imagine that Bill Barr is behind this, because this summary incriminates him too. If Barr were calling the shots, he’d have had that part removed from the summary before releasing it.
So who’s left? At one point during the day, we thought that perhaps Mike Pence was the one giving Donald Trump this advice. After all, if Trump gets ousted, and Pence somehow survives this, he gets to be president – at least for a little while. But when Trump held his press conference this afternoon, he made a point of trying to incriminate Pence. If Pence were pulling Trump’s puppet strings today, we wouldn’t have seen Trump go out there and throw Pence under the bus.
When Donald Trump held his press conference today, his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin were standing beside him. That might be the best clue yet about who’s been pulling Trump’s strings today. But while Pompeo is a lunkhead and Mnuchin is tone-deaf, neither is a complete idiot.
If Pompeo and Mnuchin told Trump to release this summary today, it’s because – for some reason – they’re trying to take him down sooner rather than later. Considering that Pompeo’s State Department is directly implicated in this scandal (but not in today’s summary), and that Mnuchin’s Treasury Department is caught up in the battle over Trump’s tax returns, perhaps these two guys have decided that their best hope of walking away unscathed is to steer Trump into the kind of dead-end where he has to cut a resignation plea deal.
