NYT and DJT

July 19, 2017 the New York Times interviewed Donald J. Trump, also known as POTUS.  The following are excerpts and observations.

TRUMP: Look, [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions gets the job. Right after he gets the job, he recuses himself.

TRUMP: Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.

TRUMP: Zero. So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. I then have — which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, “Thanks, Jeff, but I can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you.” It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president. So he recuses himself. I then end up with a second man, who’s a deputy.

   

TRUMP: Who is he? And Jeff hardly knew. He’s from Baltimore.

TRUMP: Yeah, what Jeff Sessions did was he recused himself right after, right after he became attorney general. And I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I would have — then I said, “Who’s your deputy?” So his deputy he hardly knew, and that’s Rosenstein, Rod Rosenstein, who is from Baltimore. There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any. So, he’s from Baltimore. Now, he, we went through a lot of things. We were interviewing replacements at the F.B.I. Did you know [Robert] Mueller was one of the people that was being interviewed?

So, just a few questions.  Would you have preferred Sessions continue as Attorney General and investigate any Russian  connection to your campaign after it was determined he had lied to the Senate at confirmation hearings?  Until he was caught, he had not intended to recuse himself.  Sessions was confirmed on February 8, 2017 and recused himself from any Russian investigation on March 2, 2017.  So, the "right after he gets the job" statement is at best, misleading.  Had you vetted him properly this would not have been an issue.  Or, were you aware of his contact with Russians and expected him engage in in what WOULD have been a conflict of interest?

What's really amusing are Trump's comments about Rosenstein.  President Donald Trump nominated Rosenstein to serve as Deputy Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice on January 13, 2017.  Why would he have to ask “Who’s your deputy?”  Furthermore, Rosenstein is not from Maryland, he is from Philadelphia.  He has lived and worked in Maryland since 2005 when he was nominated as U.S. Attorney General by George W. Bush.  Oh, and he is a Republican.

TRUMP: So the bottom line is this. The country’s doing well. We are, we are moving forward with a lot of great things. The unemployment is the lowest it’s been in 16 years. The stock market is the highest it’s ever been. It’s up almost 20 percent since I took office. And we’re working hard on health care. Um, the Russian investigation — it’s not an investigation, it’s not on me — you know, they’re looking at a lot of things.

Congratulations on the unemployment figures.. You hold the office of the President so you get the credit.  However, with regard to the stock market, your figures are patently false.  According to www.dow-jones-djia.com the market is up 9.17% for the year.  I consider there figures to be authoritative.  Not to be disingenuous I ran the numbers from the date of your swearing in and stocks are up 9.61% so you are ahead of the year-to-date but not even 1/2 way to 20%.  You say working hard on health care.  I see failing to provide accessible and affordable health care options.

In  his first description of his dinnertime conversation with Mr. Putin at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, Mr. Trump downplayed its significance. He said his wife, Melania, was seated next to Mr.Putin at the other end of a table filled with world leaders.

“The meal was going toward dessert,’’ he said. “I went down just to say hello to Melania, and while I was there I said hello to Putin. Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, could be 15 minutes. Just talked about things. Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption.”

I added this just for an example of how to confound a listener.  He said hello apparently just coincidentally, mainly just pleasantries, a short conversation.  Wait, maybe we did talk about things, for 15 minutes, actually it was very interesting.  We talked about adoption.  Dude, pardon my French, but, WTF?

I read the entire interview multiple times.  It was painful.  I strongly recommend you do the same.

Whaduyathink?