Trump Demanded Nondisclosure Pacts So Staffers Can Never Spill

HuffPost

Report: Trump Demanded Nondisclosure Pacts So Staffers Can Never Spill

Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost March 19, 2018

President Donald Trump has pressured senior White House staff members to sign nondisclosure agreements that are more sweeping than ever demanded by a president, The Washington Post reported.

The agreements are applicable to staffers while they’re working in the White House and “at all times thereafter,” meaning they continue to apply even after Trump’s presidency, according to a draft agreement examined by Post deputy editorial page editor Ruth Marcus.

The draft agreement says staffers could be fined as much as $10 million for unauthorized release of confidential information. Marcus wrote in an op-ed on Sunday that she suspects the penalty is lower in signed agreements.

All of Trump’s senior staffers appear to have signed the agreements, with some believing it unenforceable, Marcus reported. Trump, enraged by leaks, pressed for compliance early last year.

Marcus called such agreements that gag White House staff members even after the president’s term “not only oppressive but constitutionally repugnant.”

The draft agreement defines “confidential” information as “all nonpublic information I learn of or gain access to in the course of my official duties,” including “communications [with] the press” and with “employees of federal, state, and local governments.” The information cannot be revealed, even in a “work of fiction.”

Trump’s zeal against leakers was reflected in threats his attorney made Friday against porn star Stormy Daniels, who has she had a nearly yearlong affair with Trump in 2006. Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen warned that Daniels could be sued for as much as $20 million if she violates a non-disclosure agreement.

“60 Minutes” is set to broadcast an interview with Daniels on Sunday.

Ex-CIA Boss John Brennan Tears Into Donald Trump Over Andrew McCabe Firing

The Telegraph

Donald Trump sacks ex FBI deputy Andrew McCabe days before retirement

Our Foreign Staff, The Telegraph March 17, 2018

Andrew McCabe said his dismissal was part of the Trump administration's

Donald Trump has expressed his delight at the sacking of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, calling it a “great day for democracy”.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he sacked Mr McCabe two days before his scheduled retirement date on the recommendation of FBI disciplinary officials.

But the career FBI official said his dismissal was part of the Trump administration’s “ongoing war on the FBI” and Mueller investigation.

It comes ahead of an inspector general report expected to conclude that Mr McCabe was not forthcoming with the watchdog office as it reviewed the bureau’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Though McCabe had spent more than 20 years at the FBI, Mr Trump repeatedly condemned him over the last year as emblematic of an FBI leadership he contends is biased against his administration.

Mr Sessions said in a statement that investigators “concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorised disclosure to the news media and lacked candor – including under oath – on multiple occasions.”

Mr McCabe immediately disputed the findings in his own statement, saying the firing was part of a Trump administration “war” on the FBI.

“I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey,” Mr McCabe said, referring to the former FBI director who was fired by Trump last May.

The White House had said the firing decision was up to the Justice Department but seemed to signal this week that it would welcome the move.

Mr Trump rejoiced at the news on Twitter and renewed his attack on the FBI.

The termination is symbolic to an extent since Mr McCabe had been on leave from the FBI since last January, when he abruptly left the deputy director position. But it comes just ahead of his planned retirement, on Sunday, and puts his ability to receive pension benefits into jeopardy.

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee, said the dismissal had an “odious taint”.

Mr McCabe came under scrutiny from the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office over an October 2016 news report that revealed differing approaches within the FBI and Justice Department over how aggressively the Clinton Foundation should be investigated.

The watchdog office had concluded that Mr McCabe had authorised FBI officials to speak to a Wall Street Journal reporter for that story and that he had not been forthcoming with investigators about that – something Mr McCabe denies, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Officials at the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility had recommended the firing, leaving Justice Department leaders in a difficult situation.

Youre fired: Who Donald Trump has sacked and who has resigned during his time as president

Mr Sessions, whose job status has for months appeared shaky under blistering criticism from Trump, risked inflaming the White House if Mr McCabe were to not be fired. But a decision to dismiss Mr McCabe two days before his firing carried the risk of angering his rank-and-file supporters at the FBI.

Mr McCabe, a lawyer by training, enjoyed a rapid career ascent in the bureau after joining in 1996. He was the FBI’s top counter-terrorism official during the Boston Marathon bombing and later the FBI’s national security branch and its Washington field office, one of the bureau’s largest, before being named to the deputy director position.

But he became entangled in presidential politics in 2016 when it was revealed that his wife during an unsuccessful bid for the Virginia state Senate had received campaign contributions from the political action committee of then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally. The FBI has said Mr McCabe received the necessary ethics approval about his wife’s candidacy and was not supervising the Clinton investigation at the time the contributions were made.

Timeline Donald Trump and James Comey

He became acting director following the firing last May of Mr Comey, and immediately assumed direct oversight of the FBI’s investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. As a congressional hearing two days after Comey’s dismissal, Mr McCabe contradicted White House assertions that the Trump campaign investigation was one of the “smallest things” on the FBI’s plate and also strongly disputed the administration’s suggestion that Mr Comey had lost the respect of the bureau’s workforce.

“I can tell you that the majority, the vast majority of FBI employees, enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey,” Mr McCabe said.

Mr McCabe was among the officials interviewed to replace Comey as director. That position ultimately went to Christopher Wray.

On Thursday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the decision was up to the Justice Department but said “we do think that it is well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor and should have some cause for concern.”

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Is Fired 2 Days Before Retirement

Huff Post

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Is Fired 2 Days Before Retirement

Carla Herreria March 16, 2018

Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI and a frequent target of President Donald Trump, was fired Friday, days before his formal retirement. The firing of McCabe, a civil servant who has been at the bureau for more than two decades, could significantly affect his pension.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the decision to oust McCabe after the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended he be fired for his alleged lack of candor during an internal review of how the FBI and Justice Department handled an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. McCabe and his attorney met Thursday with Scott Schools, the highest-ranking career employee of the Justice Department, in an attempt to prevent the firing or at least save his ability to begin collecting a pension estimated at $60,000 a year.

McCabe, a lifelong Republican, had officially stepped down from his post in late January but was using accrued leave to stay on the FBI’s payroll until his retirement date on Sunday, his 50th birthday. Being fired before his birthday means he’d have to wait several more years before he can draw a pension.

Sessions said late Friday in a statement:

“After an extensive and fair investigation and according to Department of Justice procedure, the Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) provided its report on allegations of misconduct by Andrew McCabe to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).

“The FBI’s OPR then reviewed the report and underlying documents and issued a disciplinary proposal recommending the dismissal of Mr. McCabe. Both the OIG and FBI OPR reports concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor ― including under oath ― on multiple occasions.

The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and accountability. As the OPR proposal stated, “all FBI employees know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity is our brand.”

Pursuant to Department Order 1202, and based on the report of the Inspector General, the findings of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility, and the recommendation of the Department’s senior career official, I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately.

McCabe responded to the firing in a lengthy statement.

“The investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has to be understood in the context of the attacks on my credibility,” McCabe wrote.

He continued:

The investigation flows from my attempt to explain the FBI’s involvement and my supervision of investigations involving Hillary Clinton. I was being portrayed in the media over and over as a political partisan, accused of closing down investigations under political pressure. The FBI was portrayed as caving under that pressure, and making decisions for political rather than law enforcement purposes. Nothing was further from the truth. In fact, this entire investigation stems from my efforts, fully authorized under FBI rules, to set the record straight on behalf of the Bureau, and to make clear that we were continuing an investigation that people in DOJ opposed.

McCabe had been with the bureau since 1996 and served a short stint as the acting FBI director after President Donald Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey last May. After the U.S. Senate confirmed Christopher Wray as the bureau chief, McCabe returned to his original role as deputy director.

McCabe abruptly announced he was leaving the bureau at the end of January while tangled in an internal investigation of his handling of the FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton. The Justice Department’s inspector general has been investigating how officials handled the Clinton investigation since just before Trump took office.

While Trump has accused McCabe of having a political bias in favor of Clinton, the Justice Department’s forthcoming internal review suggests he may have actually authorized the disclosure of information that was damaging to the Clinton campaign.

The report evidently says that McCabe authorized a discussion involving one of his top aides, the FBI’s chief spokesman and a Wall Street Journal reporter for a story, published Oct. 30, 2016, that included details of McCabe pushing back on Obama appointees in the Justice Department to continue an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

FBI officials are barred from disclosing information about ongoing criminal investigations. The Justice Department’s inspector general recommended that Sessions fire McCabe as a result of the internal review, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

McCabe has been at odds with Trump in recent months, with the president apparently trying to undermine McCabe and the FBI’s credibility.

In December, Trump publicly complained about McCabe’s wife’s political affiliations (Jill McCabe unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for a Virginia state Senate seat in 2015), criticized his oversight of the FBI investigations into Clinton and even mocked his retirement plans.

In one of his tweets, Trump claimed that McCabe received a campaign donation of $700,000 from “Clinton Puppets,” apparently referencing a donation to Jill McCabe’s campaign totaling up to $675,000 from former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee.

The donation was made before Andrew McCabe was promoted to deputy director and headed the FBI’s Clinton investigation. McAuliffe is an ally to both Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Trump also reportedly called McCabe into his office for a meeting, then asked him which candidate he voted for in the 2016 presidential election, The Washington Post reported in January.

David Bowdich, the FBI’s associate deputy director, is expected to replace McCabe as deputy director, according to The Washington Post. Bowdich has been with the FBI since 1995.

Trump White House Worked with Newt Gingrich on Political Purge at State Department

Mother Jones

Trump White House Worked with Newt Gingrich on Political Purge at State Department, Lawmakers Say

Trump officials called civil servants “turncoat” and “Obama/Clinton loyalists.”

Dan Friedman March 15, 2018

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich on March 16, 2017. Melanie Rogers/Cox/Planet Pix via Zuma Wire

White House and State Department officials conspired with prominent conservatives, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to purge the State Department of staffers they viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump, two top House Democrats allege in a letter released Thursday.

The letter states that an unidentified whistleblower shared documents with Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees showing that a group of White House officials pressed political appointees at the State Department to oust career civil service employees they described with terms like “Turncoat,” “leaker and a troublemaker,” and “Obama/Clinton loyalists not at all supportive of President Trump’s foreign policy agenda.”

As described in the letter, those actions would likely violate federal laws protecting federal civil servants from undue political influence.

In the letter to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and State Department Deputy Secretary John Sullivan, Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, cite an email forwarded by Gingrich to Trump appointees in the State Department (the Democrats released a summary of the leaked documents, rather than the original emails). In an undated email, David Wurmser, who advised former Vice President Dick Cheney and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, wrote, “Newt: I think a cleaning is in order here. I hear [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson has actually been reasonably good on stuff like this and cleaning house, but there are so many that it boggles the mind.” (Trump fired Tillerson earlier this week.)

Cummings and Engel say they are “particularly concerned” about documents showing an effort to drive out Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career civil servant at the State Department assigned to the policy planning staff. The letter notes that Brian Hook, the director of that division, forwarded an email from Nowrouzzadeh in which she defended herself against an attack that had been published in a conservative publication. The officials then discussed whether she was too supportive of the nuclear deal with Iran negotiated by President Barack Obama. Several of the officials discussed ousting Nowrouzzadeh. Julia Haller, a White House liaison to the State Department, wrote that Nowrouzzadeh “was born in Iran and upon my understanding cried when the President won.” Nowrouzzadeh was born in Connecticut. Haller did not cite the basis of her claim about Nowrouzzadeh’s election reaction.

Nowrouzadeh was removed from her post on the Policy Planning Staff three months earlier than scheduled in a manner she said violated a memorandum of understanding governing her assignment.

FACT:

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March 19th Town Hall Meeting on Income Inequality

IBEW shared a U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders video

March 16, 2018

Whether or not it’s talked about on the major networks, income and wealth inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. Please join me, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Moore, Darrick Hamilton and o

Tune in March 19th for the Inequality Town Hall

Whether or not it's talked about on the major networks, income and wealth inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. Please join me, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Moore, Darrick Hamilton and others on Facebook Monday, March 19 for an incredibly important discussion.

Posted by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Thursday, March 15, 2018

Britain had a school shooting that changed the country’s gun laws

NowThis

March 13, 2018

22 years ago today, Britain had a school shooting that changed the country’s gun laws—this year, the families affected have a message of hope and solidarity for Parkland

Dunblane Tragedy Survivors Send Message to Parkland Community

22 years ago today, Britain had a school shooting that changed the country's gun laws—this year, the families affected have a message of hope and solidarity for Parkland

Posted by NowThis on Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Girl With Muscular Dystrophy Makes Amazing Paintings

Power of Positivity

March 14, 2018

This girl is a shining star!

Girl With Muscular Dystrophy Makes Amazing Paintings

This girl is a shining star!

Posted by Power of Positivity on Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Top bottled water brands contaminated with plastic particles: report

AFP

Kerry Sheridan, AFP March 14, 2018

Miami (AFP) – The world’s leading brands of bottled water are contaminated with tiny plastic particles that are likely seeping in during the packaging process, according to a major study across nine countries published Wednesday.

“Widespread contamination” with plastic was found in the study, led by microplastic researcher Sherri Mason of the State University of New York at Fredonia, according to a summary released by Orb Media, a US-based non-profit media collective.

Researchers tested 250 bottles of water in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Thailand and the United States.

Plastic was identified in 93 percent of the samples, which included major name brands such as Aqua, Aquafina, Dasani, Evian, Nestle Pure Life and San Pellegrino.

The plastic debris included nylon, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene, which is used to make bottle caps.

“In this study, 65 percent of the particles we found were actually fragments and not fibers,” Mason told AFP.

“I think that most of the plastic that we are seeing is coming from the bottle itself. It is coming from the cap. It is coming from the industrial process of bottling the water.”

Particle concentration ranged from “zero to more than 10,000 likely plastic particles in a single bottle,” said the report.

On average, plastic particles in the 100 micron (0.10 millimeter) size range — considered “microplastics” — were found at an average rate of 10.4 plastic particles per liter.

Even smaller particles were more common — averaging about 325 per liter.

Other brands that were found to contain plastic contaminated included Bisleri, Epura, Gerolsteiner, Minalba and Wahaha.

Experts cautioned that the extent of the risk to human health posed by such contamination remains unclear.

“There are connections to increases in certain kinds of cancer to lower sperm count to increases in conditions like ADHD and autism,” said Mason.

“We know that they are connected to these synthetic chemicals in the environment and we know that plastics are providing kind of a means to get those chemicals into our bodies.”

– Time to ditch plastic? –

Previous research by Orb Media has found plastic particles in tap water, too, but on a smaller scale.

“Tap water, by and large, is much safer than bottled water,” said Mason.

The three-month study used a technique developed by the University of East Anglia’s School of Chemistry to “see” microplastic particles by staining them using fluorescent Nile Red dye, which makes plastic fluorescent when irradiated with blue light.

“We have been involved with independently reviewing the findings and methodology to ensure the study is robust and credible,” said lead researcher Andrew Mayes, from UEA’s School of Chemistry.

“The results stack up.”

However, representatives from the bottled water industry took issue with the findings, saying they were not peer-reviewed and “not based on sound science,” according to a statement from the International Bottled Water Association.

“A recent scientific study published in the peer-reviewed journal Water Research in February 2018 concluded that no statistically relevant amount of microplastic can be found in water in single-use plastic bottles,” it added.

“There is no scientific consensus on the potential health impacts of microplastic particles. The data on the topic is limited and conclusions differ dramatically from one study to another.”

Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer for North America at Oceana, a marine advocacy group that was not involved in the research, said the study provides more evidence that society must abandon the ubiquitous use of plastic water bottles.

“We know plastics are building up in marine animals, and this means we too are being exposed, some of us every day,” she said.

“It’s more urgent now than ever before to make plastic water bottles a thing of the past.”

The Artifice of the Deal

Yahoo News

Matt Bai’s Political World

The Artifice of the Deal

Matt Bai, National Political Columnist March 15, 2018

President Trump at a rally in support of Republican congressional candidate Rick Saccone, in Moon Township, Pa. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters.

Remember that time, way back about two weeks ago, when President Trump berated leaders of his own party, in front of a room full of cameras, for being afraid of the NRA, and he vowed to pass a bipartisan bill that would make it harder for kids to get assault rifles?

Yeah, well, in case you missed the latest — which wouldn’t have been hard, since the one-day story was instantly eclipsed by a Cabinet shakeup and a special election — that whole thing went away Monday with a mumbled “never mind” from the White House.

Apparently gun control is really hard, and you actually have to focus on it and change some minds and anger some of your friends, and why go through all that when you’ve already gotten the headline you were after. Kind of like the time in January when Trump did the same thing on immigration, summoning lawmakers from both parties to the White House and declaring his full support for a bipartisan compromise. That lasted until breakfast the next day.

And you can already see where this alleged breakthrough summit with the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, is probably headed. The shocking announcement last Thursday played on TV like the dramatic opening of a thriller. It’s been a silent movie ever since.

We’ve been covering this presidency for more than a year now, and we’ve seen enough to know that it really isn’t the wild, unpredictable ride we keep saying it is, which is also what Trump would like you to believe. In fact, there’s a highly predictable pattern here, and it all adds up to a breathtaking hypocrisy.

The president who ran an entire campaign against the phoniness and timidity of conventional politics turns out to be phonier and more timid than any of those who came before.

This was Trump’s big appeal to a lot of moderate and independent voters who were understandably disgusted by the state of Washington — the ones who didn’t find his neo-nativism all that inspiring. Trump was supposed to be a man of action and deal-making.

Whatever came of it, good or ugly, this wasn’t a guy who would settle for a presidency built on empty slogans and Rose Garden photo-ops.

Trump’s pitch was that candidates were always talking about challenging the norms of Washington, but once they got elected, all they ever did was mouth platitudes from a teleprompter. That’s what Trump meant when he told an Ohio audience last year: “It’s so easy to act presidential, but that’s not going to get it done.”

He was back on this theme even last week, at a rally in Pennsylvania, when he comically mimicked the way a typical president is supposed to endorse candidates, shuffling around the stage and mumbling like a zombie.

Well, all right. But can you imagine, for a moment, what would have happened if President Obama had announced to the world a plan to remake the health care system, and then decided never to bring it up again?

Can you picture a world in which George W. Bush would have gone before Congress vowing to drive the Taliban from Afghanistan, and then issued a terse statement a few days later saying it was too hard so never mind?

This is exactly what Trump does, again and again. Forget the standard photo ops; his entire presidency, save for a giveaway-laden tax bill that actually originated in Congress, is a string of dramatic flourishes, without even the aspiration to translate them into something like actual governance.

Even this big tariff program he announced, which instantly sent world markets into a spiral, turns out to be mostly bravado. The administration is exempting our biggest source of steel imports, Canada, along with Mexico, and it’s already hinting at a deal with the Europeans. In the end, for all the big (and, I think, misguided) talk of protectionism, a fraction of imports will be affected.

And then there was Trump, just this week, visiting the prototype for his long-promised wall in San Diego. You know, the one the Mexicans were supposed to be paying for.

Theatrics, nothing more.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention, too, another idea Trump floated the other day, bringing a thousand sleepy headline writers to life: a new space force for the military. (“That could be the big, breaking story,” Trump said helpfully, in case the assembled reporters didn’t know an entertaining nugget when they heard one.)

Never mind that this idea, as the Atlantic wisely noted, has already been out there a while, and Trump’s administration is on record opposing it. Trump was just looking for an attention-getter. He’ll have Mattis training junior Jedis in Disneyland before he ever gets around to following up on that one.

None of this should surprise us. As I’ve written many times, Trump personifies the entangling of politics and entertainment.

He comes from the world of “unscripted television,” which is only unscripted in the sense that the actual words aren’t written down for the actor to recite. The plot lines are pre-ordained and calibrated to explode in primetime, the overarching directive being to never bore an audience.

Before that, in the 1980’s, Trump honed his celebrity as New York’s serial self-promoter, gaming the gossip columnists the way J. Edgar Hoover once played Walter Winchell. Trump the socialite developer learned at least as much about building brands and expectations as he did about building gaudy towers.

Trump isn’t really a man of action. He’s a man of artifice. He talks and he talks and he talks, the world’s foremost expert on dominating a news cycle, knowing all along that by the time we realize none of it’s real, he’ll have ushered us along to whatever’s next.

And this is the point – that, as an industry, we who chronicle this president and his novel brand of politics seem always to be a step behind the game. During the primaries in 2016, the ratings-obsessed cable channels let Trump call in to shows and carried his rallies live and unedited. (They still do, apparently.)

Only when Trump was well on his way to the nomination did they realize that they’d been played for free advertising. By then, though, Trump had figured out that he could manipulate campaign coverage just by tweeting something outrageous whenever he wanted to change the subject.

Now that Trump is president, we’ve done what we must, which is to cover his various pronouncements with at least some of the solemnity the office demands. When the president of the United States says he’s warming to the idea of a new fleet of space soldiers, because maybe he caught the last half hour of “Contact” on Starz last weekend, we are duty bound to note it.

Generally, I think the media have done a pretty good job of injecting both fact-checking and skepticism into our coverage of Trump, in a way we would have resisted a generation ago.

But we’re still letting this president perform for the cameras as if he were actually planning to govern, without giving nearly as much attention to what happens on the issue once the cameras are gone. We’re still allowing ourselves to be carried along by one dramatic turn after another, because Trump knows instinctively that if he keeps us moving today, we won’t have time to dwell on whatever he promised yesterday.

Trump was dead right about our politics over the years — too much of it became a tired kind of stagecraft. But that kind of stagecraft was almost always designed to sell an agenda.

And that’s the distinction between a serious politician and a con artist. The latter only sells himself.

Read more from Yahoo News:

Papadopoulos says that Trump personally encouraged him to arrange meeting with Putin, new book reports

Red tape traps teenagers seeking refuge in U.S.

As Trump visits border, Latino voters are watching and biding their time

Will Kim Jong Un give Trump a mulligan?

Photos: Kids unite for National School Walkout calling for tighter gun control

Trump’s Batshit Conversation with Trudeau Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Esquire

Trump’s Batshit Conversation with Trudeau Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

The line between facts and reality has vanished.

By Jack Holmes March 15, 2018

Getty Images

It’s fun to have a Normal Adult President who engages in petty feuds with the United States’ closest allies to make himself feel strong. To “win” the feud, President Trump makes things up and insists they are true, over and over. To feel even stronger, he brags about this in front of large groups of people—and likely piles more lies on top in the process.

In a fundraising speech Wednesday evening reported on by The Washington Post, Donald Trump, the nominal leader of the free world, told a story about hosting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office recently. Trudeau suggested to Trump that the U.S. does not actually have a trade deficit with Canada—the basis Trump claimed for his new steel and aluminum tariffs. Trump reacted as any Adult President would:

“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’ ” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio of the private event in Missouri obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in — ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed.”

Getty Images

“ … So, he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. … I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. … And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong, Justin.’ He said, ‘Nope, we have no trade deficit.’ I said, ‘Well, in that case, I feel differently,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe it.’ I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, ‘Check, because I can’t believe it.’

This is already sufficiently batshit. The president is admittedly just making things up in meetings with world leaders to mess with them and feel a rush of power. At one point, he says he responded to a factual claim from Trudeau—”we have no trade deficit”—by saying he “feels differently.” About objective facts. This is Truthiness Unchained, running riot at the highest levels of international politics.

(We’ve heard tales of Trump’s interactions with other leaders before, most prominently those train wreck phone calls when he first took office. He told the president of Mexico, whom he called “Enrique” 14 times to show Tremendous Respect, “You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with, and we are willing to help you with that big-league.” Trump told Australian President Malcolm Turnbull that he, Trump, is “the world’s greatest person,” and that refugees “are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.” Turnbull was later caught on tape mocking Trump, but many heads of state simply ridicule the president in public.)

Getty Images

This is more evidence that Trump’s disregard for truth is not always simply a man wandering in the dark. He knows what he’s doing at least some of the time, just as he did when he piled on more lies while telling the story last night:

‘Well, sir, you’re actually right. We have no deficit, but that doesn’t include energy and timber. … And when you do, we lose $17 billion a year.’ It’s incredible.”

The Office of the United States Trade Representative says the United States has a trade surplus with Canada.

The president made up some nonsense and was embarrassed when his own staff presented him with the facts, so while recounting the story publicly—which, to repeat, he in no way had to do—he lied about what his staff told him. The Washington Post, in a subtle bit of (dark) comedy, simply called the same staffers, who will probably be fired by lunch.

But he wasn’t done there. Oh, no.

Getty Images

Trump seemed to threaten to pull U.S. troops stationed in South Korea if he didn’t get what he wanted on trade with Seoul, an ally. He said the country had gotten rich but that U.S. politicians never negotiated better deals. “We have a very big trade deficit with them, and we protect them,” Trump said. “We lose money on trade, and we lose money on the military. We have right now 32,000 soldiers on the border between North and South Korea. Let’s see what happens.”

“Our allies care about themselves,” he said. “They don’t care about us.”

The president has never understood that the United States maintains alliances for a number of reasons, but almost never just to make some money. Geopolitical strategy is obviously beyond a man of even Trump’s formidable intellect, but you’d think he might at least grasp that we have troops in South Korea to deter North Korean aggression—something he was focused on, like, three days ago—and that might be more valuable than forcing a trade surplus with the South. Then again, the president discussed his 2016 election win last night, so we know where his head’s at.

And then there was this:

He accused Japan of using gimmicks to deny U.S. auto companies access to its consumers, said South Korea was taking advantage of outdated trade rules even though its economy was strong and said China had single-handedly rebuilt itself on the back of its trade surplus with the United States.

“It’s the bowling ball test. They take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and drop it on the hood of the car,” Trump said of Japan. “If the hood dents, the car doesn’t qualify. It’s horrible,” he said. It was unclear what he was talking about.

It was unclear what he was talking about. The phrase heard ’round the world. Just put that on repeat—and not just for this speech. This, as a reminder, is the man we’re all supposed to believe is going to march into a meeting with Kim Jong-un and solve the North Korean nuclear crisis. Donald Trump will succeed where a Rhodes Scholar and an editor of the Harvard Law Review failed before him—something Trump also boasted to the crowd last night:

Trump also described for donors his decision to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the coming months through the prism of making history and besting his predecessors while lamenting his media coverage, questioning U.S. allies and labeling his presidency as “virgin territory.”

Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright meets with Kim Jong-il.

Getty Images

“They couldn’t have met” with Kim, he said, after mocking former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. “Nobody would have done what I did.”

“It’s called appeasement: Please don’t do anything,” he said of other presidents.

“They say, ‘Maybe he’s not the one to negotiate,’ ” he said, mocking the voice of a news anchor. “He’s got very little knowledge of the Korean Peninsula. Maybe he’s not the one. … Maybe we should send in the people that have been playing games and didn’t know what the hell they’ve been doing for 25 years.”

The through lines of Trump’s meandering speech were simple: Trump was tougher than all the rest, and the United States was not going to be laughed at or taken advantage of.

One thing’s for sure: “He’s got very little knowledge of the Korean Peninsula.” Trump seems to think previous presidents did not meet with North Korean leaders because they were weak or afraid. The idea that maybe the decision was strategic, and that the Kims’ longtime goal was to get the visual of them meeting an American president as equals, thereby establishing them on the world stage, never occurs to him. But no one ever said the president was a foreign policy expert. He’s a Branding Guy—just ask him.

“I actually said, ‘Let’s call it the Tax Cut Cut Cut plan,’ ” Trump said. “I actually did.”

He actually did. There’s a lot to fear in this report, not least that the guy ranting about Japanese bowling balls intends to get in a room with Kim Jong-un and hash out this whole nuclear thing. But perhaps the most frightening thing is that it’s genuinely unclear when the president is dismissing facts for his own gain or self-aggrandizement, and when he genuinely cannot tell the difference between reality and the inside-out Truman Show he is constantly constructing around himself. At one point, the WaPo headline read, “Trump says he made up facts.” A line for our times, if ever there was one.