(February 16th, 2017)
Trump held an impromptu Press Conference this morning. It was a shitshow:
He claimed that he had the “biggest electoral victory” of any President since Regan. A reporter called him out and said that wasn’t true. Trump kept trying to deflect, but the amount that his statement is Not True is honestly astounding.
A black reporter named April Ryan asked Trump about urban development in cities and why he had not met with the Congressional Black Caucus. Trump deflected, saying it was the fault of the members of the CBC, and then asked Ryan, “Do you know them? Can you set up a meeting for me?”
He berated different members of the press in that room and kept telling them they were “fake news” and “being mean” and would ask for “nice, simple questions” and get very angry when a question was not what he wanted.
Along those lines, he also claimed that he “handles bad news better than anybody”.
And he says that he’s the “least racist and least anti-semitic person ever”.
He claims that his administration is “running like a fine-tuned machine” and that the travel ban was “a great success until the bad courts intervened”.
When asked about the Russian connection, Trump claims that the report is “fake news” and that he has “no knowledge” of anyone in his campaign talking with Russia but that, because of “the media”, it would be “very difficult” to have a friendly relationship with Russia which, in his words, is a “shame”.
And that’s just the highlights. From an hour and a half press conference. That was, by every account (including Fox News) just fucking bizarre. The link up there is the full video + transcript so you can see it for yourself if you’d like.
By the way, after all of this, Trump’s pick as replacement for the National Security Advisor, the job that Flynn resigned from, turned it down because of the current chaos.