A Complete Breakdown Of Donald Trump’s 72nd Unpresidented Week As POTUS

President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit, Friday, July 7, 2017, in Hamburg. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

A Complete Breakdown Of Donald Trump’s 72nd Unpresidented Week As POTUS

This week started with Trump declaring himself above the law. It ended with Trump proving himself to be under Putin's heel.
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by: Ahmed Baba on June 10, 2018

The day was November 9th, 2016. The mood was joyous in the Kremlin as President Vladimir Putin, along with Russian officials, celebrated the election of Donald J. Trump as 45th President of the United States. Champagne was reportedly popped, and toasts were made, as this foreign adversary touted their interference in American democracy.

“It turns out that the United Russia has won the elections in the United States!” — then-Russian Governor, Viktor Nazarov

What we witnessed in 2016 was an orchestrated effort by Russia, a hostile foreign power, to undermine American democracy and help elect Donald Trump.

What we are witnessing today, is the return on their investment.

This week, we watched as the President of the United States appeared hell-bent on deteriorating the post-World War II order. Trump targeted America’s allies with self-destructive tariffs based on false data, refused to sign the G-7 statement of common values, and hurled insults at leaders who have been nothing but friendly to America.

We watched as the President of the United States called for Russia to be readmitted to the G-7 and chose to blame his predecessor President Obama for Russia’s annexation of Crimea, rather than utter a negative word about President Putin. This is one of many verbal attacks President Trump has leveled against his own country on the world stage.

We watched as the President of the United States used harsher language towards the leader of America’s longtime allied nation, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, than he’s ever used against Russian President Vladimir Putin, a hostile foreign leader who ordered cyber attacks, espionage, and coordinated propaganda campaigns targeting Americans. Perhaps it’s because President Putin helped Candidate Trump become President Trump.

Regardless of whether or not you believe the Trump campaign colluded with Russia (which there is evidence of), it’s indisputable that President Trump is executing on President Putin’s objectives.

Aside from the destruction of Western alliances (NATO, EU, NAFTA, etc.), the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) concluded that Russia’s longstanding objectives are the lifting of sanctions on Russia, undermining the US-led liberal democratic order, and eroding Americans’ faith in democratic institutions.

In Trump’s first days as President, his administration reportedly tried to lift sanctions on Russia.

Throughout his presidency, President Trump and House Republicans have repeatedly attacked the DOJ, FBI, and IC.

This week started with President Trump declaring himself above the law.

It ended with Trump proving himself to be under President Putin’s heel.

Let’s break it down.

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Day 501: Monday, June 4

The President Who Believes He’s A King
<strong>President Donald Trump poses for a portrait in the Oval Office in Washington after an interview with The Associated Press. April 21, 2017 (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)</strong>

President Donald Trump poses for a portrait in the Oval Office in Washington after an interview with The Associated Press. April 21, 2017 (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The President’s disinformation campaign alleging he is above the law has begun.

Over the weekend, a January 2018 memo from Trump’s legal team to Special Counsel Robert Mueller leaked. It made some troubling claims. Aside from claiming that the President of the United States cannot obstruct justice, Trump’s legal team admitted that Donald Trump Sr. personally dictated Trump Jr.’s initial misleading statement about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives. The admission contradicts months of denials from the White House and Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow. It also adds further evidence to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s obstruction case. The boldness of the admission makes sense given the assertion that the crime of obstruction of justice does not apply to the President.

Then came Trump Attorney Rudy Giuliani’s claim that President Trump could’ve shot Former FBI Director James Comey and he still wouldn’t be indicted, he’d have to be impeached. Although true that a sitting President can’t be indicted, it was a startling example and one that further bolsters the President’s new approach.

And today, President Trump openly declared himself above the law and questioned the constitutionality of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Both of these claims are, of course, lies.

So why is the President doing this? As I mentioned in last week’s Unpresidented, this isn’t a legal strategy. It’s a PR play to convince his base that he is above the law. The strategy could be in an effort to protect the President in case Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report shows conclusive evidence that President Trump is guilty of obstruction of obstruction of justice. This way, even if Democrats win the House and Senate, and the House files articles of impeachment, they won’t be able to flip enough Republican Senators’ votes to successfully remove Trump from office because of the base’s blind support of him.

And, looks like his propaganda arm over at Fox News is already hard at work helping him sell this false narrative.

President Donald Trump is conducting himself like the wannabe-king the Founding Fathers designed the U.S. Constitution to protect us from.

We – average Americans, members of the media, and Congressional leaders – must push back on this authoritarian rhetoric before it’s too late.

Meanwhile…

  • Special Counsel Robert Mueller turned up the heat on Trump’s former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort.

We dive into the details of this later in the week…

As President Donald Trump huddled in the Oval Office on Friday with Kim Jong Un’s right-hand man, he was accompanied by only one other US official: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Absent was the administration’s most vocal North Korea hawk, national security adviser John Bolton.

The White House insists the meeting was always intended to remain small. But the tableau reflected deeper rifts among Trump’s national security team and a new reality as the President prepares for his historic meeting with Kim next week in Singapore: the voices advocating most forcefully to tighten the noose on Pyongyang have been sidelined as Trump seeks out a history-making handshake.

  • Today’s Supreme Court ruling stirred up some confusion. A great thread on it:

  • The Parkland survivors gave us a reason to hope.

Day 502: Tuesday, June 5

Where Are The Children? In Overcrowded Holding Cells
A group of children hold up signs during a demonstration in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices, Friday, June 1, 2018, in Miramar, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

A group of children hold up signs during a demonstration in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices, Friday, June 1, 2018, in Miramar, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Before we dive into what we’ve learned about the detention centers immigrant children are being held in, let’s make one thing clear: The inhumane policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the border (who are systematically prosecuted) is a Trump administration policy, not Democratic legislation. The President could end this right now, but instead, he is lying about who is responsible for it.

Now, let’s begin. NBC News reported that the U.S. is running out of room to house the children who are being separated from their parents at the border, and they are being placed into holding cells that don’t have adequate medical resources:

Border agents and child welfare workers are running out of space to shelter children who have been separated from their parents at the U.S. border as part of the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy, according to two U.S. officials and a document obtained by NBC News.

As of Sunday, nearly 300 of the 550 children currently in custody at U.S. border stations had spent more than 72 hours there, the time limit for immigrants of any age to be held in the government’s temporary facilities. Almost half of those 300 children are younger than 12, according to the document, meaning they are classified by the Department of Homeland Security as “tender age children.”

The report goes on to say:

The overstays at border stations are a result of a backlog at U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency responsible for sheltering migrant children longer term and matching them with relatives or foster parents in the U.S. The agency’s Administration for Children and Families has 11,200 unaccompanied children in its care and takes 45 days on average to place a child with a sponsor, according to a spokesperson.

There are reports of children as young as 53 weeks old being taken. Once the kids are placed with sponsors, they are sometimes moved to different states, leaving the parents in the dark about their whereabouts.

The administration implemented this policy as a deterrent. On May 7, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued an order, which DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen implemented, that requires all undocumented immigrants crossing the border be referred for criminal prosecution…including migrants seeking asylum from violence.

The move would also mean that even if immigrants caught at the border illegally have valid asylum claims, they could still end up with federal criminal convictions on their record regardless of whether a judge eventually finds they have a right to live and stay in the US.

Many of these migrants are asylum seekers, fleeing violence and cruelty from Central America only to be welcomed by more cruelty from the country that has “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” enshrined on its Statue of Liberty. NBC News reported:

From October 2017 to mid-April, before the new prosecution strategy officially went into effect, more than 700 children were reportedly separated from their parents at the border.

In spite of the fact this is his administration’s policy, President Trump continues to falsely blame Democrats.

While Trump tries to cast blame on them, Democrats are trying to expose this horrific policy. Senator Merkley (D-OR), who wasn’t allowed to enter a Texas detention facility and had the police called on him, spoke about what he witnessed.

The United Nations has condemned this as an illegal human rights violation.

This policy doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it comes from a President who has made the dehumanization of Latino immigrants central to his political platform. Last month, President Trump said of unaccompanied minors who are crossing the border: “They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.” Trump said this in spite of the fact that only 56 out of 250,000 unaccompanied minors apprehended by border patrol were suspected or confirmed to have gang ties.

Also last month, President Trump once again conflated MS-13 with Latino immigrants, calling them “animals.” This fear-mongering rhetoric goes back years. But as we can see, this dehumanization has moved far beyond rhetoric and has gone even further than the inhumane ICE raids we’ve seen.

Imagine for a moment you are a young immigrant mother fleeing Guatemala. As you join a caravan of asylum seekers heading towards the United States, you begin to hear about the President of the United States tweeting negative things about your initiative. You keep marching onward. You then hear the President call you an animal. You keep marching onward because you and your child’s safety are too important. You finally arrive at the border, and rather than being welcomed and treated with dignity, your child is ripped from your arms without explanation and you are put in shackles.

And if you put yourself in the child’s shoes, you are put into a detention facility and then flown to a different state, still with no explanation as to what is happening to your parent.

This is not America.

America has done unconscionable things in the past from slavery to Japanese internment camps to unjustified wars, but we must learn from that historical indecency, not embrace it.

As I’ve said before, the beauty of America is that despite who we were in the past or who we are today, we as a people have the power to choose who we will be tomorrow.

We will not stop reporting on this story until this inhumane policy ends.

Meanwhile…

  • President Vladimir Putin bragged about his close relationship with President Trump and said: “we regularly talk over the phone.” Important to note, Putin just made his first big trip abroad since “winning” re-election and has been trying to assure Russians that he and Trump do in fact have a good relationship in spite of Trump sending weapons to Ukraine and the new sanctions.
  • As we know, President Trump blames much of his Russia investigation woes not on the fact his campaign had contacts with Russians, but on Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal. He criticized him again on Twitter.

Now, let’s put Trump’s above statement in context.

Jeff Sessions was nominated for Attorney General in November 2016…that was before the public was aware the Russia investigation even existed and before FBI Director James Comey revealed the Trump campaign was a subject of the investigation.

So, what President Trump is essentially saying is that he wouldn’t have nominated Sessions for Attorney General if he knew he wouldn’t protect him from an investigation the public didn’t know existed yet?

If President Trump’s claim is true, it appears that Trump was aware there was underlying wrongdoing in his campaign that he expected Sessions to cover up. Otherwise, his claim wouldn’t make sense.

Read our rundown of the Sessions-Trump feud here.

Mitch McConnell is canceling all but a week of the Senate’s traditional August recess, hoping to keep vulnerable Democrats off the campaign trail and confirm as many of President Donald Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees as possible.

All parties involved in Summer Zervos’s defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump — including the president himself — should be deposed by Jan. 31, 2019, a New York judge said Tuesday.

Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice who had made public accusations against Trump during the campaign about “unwanted sexual misconduct,” sued him after he said “these allegations are 100% false” and began calling her and others “phony people coming up with phony allegations,” among other statements.

Historical Context: It was the Paula Jones sexual harassment case that garnered Bill Clinton’s deposition, which ended in a perjury/obstruction of justice impeachment referral from Independent Counsel Ken Starr.

President Trump canceled the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles White House visit after he realized there were only a few players that agreed to attend. He falsely blamed it on the national anthem protests. The problem is, the Eagles never protested the anthem.

This didn’t stop the Trump propaganda network Fox News from using photos of players praying and conflating them with the protests. They later apologized.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made a ridiculous claim that they are not looking at the #1 cause of school deaths when it comes to school safety.

Day 503: Wednesday, June 6

The Swamp Thing
President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt, center, in the Roosevelt Room in the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt, center, in the Roosevelt Room in the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is the personification of the swamp Donald Trump falsely claimed he was headed to Washington to drain. Every week, multiple reports reveal new examples of the stunning corruption of Scott Pruitt. As the White House continues to stand by Pruitt, pressure mounts for him to resign. And resign, he should.

As Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt repeatedly sued the EPA in an attempt to block environmental regulations. He has run the EPA as you’d expect someone with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry would. Not only has Pruitt been very effective in his rollback of meaningful environmental regulations, he’s been very effective in his ability to create such a mountain of ethical scandals it’s seemingly impossible to keep up with them.

Here are a few:

  • Renting a $50 a night luxury condo linked to fossil fuel industry lobbying firm Williams & Jensen, who won approval for a project while Pruitt was staying there.
  • A six-figure trip to Morroco which involved Pruitt reportedly promoting issues that benefit his past donors and Williams & Jensen.
  • Unauthorized raises for his favorite staffers.
  • Ordering an EPA aide to make calls to get his wife a Chick-fil-A franchise.

  • More wastes of taxpayer money.

There are many more, but we won’t get into the details here.

Pruitt has been grilled on Capitol Hill by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Appropriations Committee about these issues and faces at least a dozen federal inquiries.

Just today, it was reported two of his top aides have resigned. It’s clear what Pruitt’s next move should be.

Meanwhile…

  • Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said there is “no evidence” to support President Trump’s lie that there was improper spying on his campaign. When asked about whether President Trump should pardon himself, Ryan said he shouldn’t and: “No one is above the law.”
  • Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels) is mounting yet another lawsuit. NBC News reported:

Stormy Daniels says in a new lawsuit that her former attorney betrayed her and became a “puppet” for President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer while still representing her.

The filing Wednesday alleges that Trump attorney Michael Cohen “hatched a plan” and “colluded” with the adult film actress’ lawyer, Keith Davidson, in an attempt to get her to go on Fox News in January and falsely deny she had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago.

  • News of Ivanka Trump’s involvement in the pursuit of the Trump Tower Moscow deal during the campaign broke.

  • Special Counsel Robert Mueller is requesting that witnesses turn over their personal devices. CNBC reported:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is requesting that witnesses turn in their personal phones to inspect their encrypted messaging programs and potentially view conversations between associates linked to President Donald Trump, sources told CNBC.

Since as early as April, Mueller’s team has been asking witnesses in the Russia probe to turn over phones for agents to examine private conversations on WhatsApp, Confide, Signal and Dust, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Fearing a subpoena, the witnesses have complied with the request and have given over their phones, the sources said.

Sean Hannity (Fox News anchor, Trump ally, and previous client of Michael Cohen) responded.

  • As Mexico hit the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs, news of a contentious call between President Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke.

  • The Justice Department’s IG report claims inappropriate behavior on the part of Former FBI Director James Comey.

  • President Trump commuted the sentence of Alice Johnson and is considering dozens more. CNN reported:

The White House has assembled the paperwork to pardon dozens of people, two sources with knowledge of the developments tell CNN, signaling that President Donald Trump is poised to exert his constitutional power and intervene, in some instances, where he believes the Justice Department has overstepped.

The administration has prepared the pardoning paperwork for at least 30 people, the sources tell CNN. The President signed paperwork for one of those individuals on Wednesday: 63-year-old Alice Marie Johnson, whose life sentence was commuted by the President, according to two sources. Johnson was sentenced in 1996 on charges related to cocaine possession and money laundering.

Facebook has data-sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese electronics companies, including a manufacturing giant that has a close relationship with China’s government, the social media company said on Tuesday.

The agreements, which date to at least 2010, gave private access to some user data to Huawei, a telecommunications equipment company that has been flagged by American intelligence officials as a national security threat, as well as to Lenovo, Oppo and TCL.

  • The primary elections on Tuesday signaled the blue wave is very, very real.

Day 504: Thursday, June 7

Fractured Western Alliances
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Last week, President Trump announced unjustified tariffs on steel and aluminum against America’s allies. Mexico, Canada, and the European Union (EU) threatened counter-measures.

This week, he ratcheted up the rhetoric ahead of the G-7 summit.

As usual, President Trump appears to exist in an alternate reality. The trade environment he is describing simply does not exist.

This trade war serves no purpose other than to weaken western alliances and feed the feeble egos of insecure old men.

It gets worse at the G-7 summit. More on that later.

Meanwhile…

  • Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani made a truly misogynistic statement about Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels). NBC News reported:

Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump, slammed Stormy Daniels on Wednesday as someone he doesn’t respect because of her career as an adult film star.

“I respect all human beings. I even have to respect criminals. But I’m sorry, I don’t respect a porn star the way I respect a career women or a women of substance or a woman who has great respect for herself as a women and as a person and isn’t going to sell her body for sexual exploitation,” Giuliani said at an event in Tel Aviv.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan insisted on Thursday that there was “no evidence of collusion” between the president or his campaign and Russia, as Justice Department officials sought to placate Republicans challenging the credibility of their investigation.

This came as Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff (CA) called for his committee to release the transcripts of their interviews with witnesses in their Russia investigation.

Day 505: Friday, June 8

The Walls Are Closing On Paul Manafort
Paul Manafort, former campaign Chairman for Donald Trump. (Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Paul Manafort, former campaign Chairman for Donald Trump. (Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

One of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s objectives in his investigation has long been to flip Trump’s former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort into a cooperating witness. Today, he could be one step closer.

Mueller has issued his second superseding indictment for Manafort, now placing his total felony charges at 24. It also targets Manafort’s longtime Russian-Ukrainian aide (from his Ukraine lobbying days) Konstantin Kilimnik. The charges in the superseding indictment include obstruction of justice, citing Manafort and Kilimnik’s witness tampering when trying to influence the testimony of two public-relations executives connected to their lobbying work.

Kilimnik worked for Manafort for a decade and served as his right-hand man, helping Manafort run his operation in Ukraine. Kilimnik is of interest due to his ties to Russian intelligence, 2016 contacts with Manafort, and his role in pushing pro-Russia policies onto the Republican platform. As The Atlantic put it in their excellent profile of Kilimnik: “Donald Trump’s campaign chairman had a pawn of Russian intelligence as his indispensable alter ego.”

So, what does this indictment mean? Why is Mueller trying to flip Manafort?

Here’s a quick primer:

Paul Manafort was originally forced out of the Trump campaign after reports of his foreign ties began to overwhelm Trump in late 2016. He worked on the campaign as an unregistered foreign agent. He finally registered in June 2017, but it was too late.

In November 2017, Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates were slapped with a 31-page, 12-count indictment. Those counts included laundering $18 million of the 75 million dollars they made acting as unregistered foreign agents while lobbying on behalf of the Government of Ukraine between 2006–2016 and making false statements to the Justice Department. Both Manafort and Gates pleaded “Not Guilty” at the time. Gates later pleaded guilty and began cooperating with Mueller. Even after his subsequent superseding indictment, a Manafort plea deal remained elusive.

So what does Manafort know? We’ve since learned that Paul Manafort was wiretapped via FISA surveillance in 2014 as part of an investigation into Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych. It was discontinued and then reinstated in 2016 after investigators caught a series of odd connections between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. The surveillance reportedly continued into early 2017 and involved conversations with Donald Trump. Intelligence gathered reportedly “includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign.”

It’s been reported that two weeks before Trump accepted the GOP nomination, Paul Manafort offered “private briefings” on the state of the 2016 election to Russian Oligarch, and close Putin ally, Oleg Deripaska (who also has ties to Kilimnik). Manafort reportedly met twice with Kilimnik during the 2016 campaign. A Kiev operative suggested that Kilimnik may have played a role in the Trump campaign’s gutting of anti-Russian stances from the Republican Party platform. Kilimnik also sent emails regarding Deripaska, and they met in August to speak on it.

Manafort reportedly began his work as a lobbyist and political consultant for Yanukovych in 2004 upon the advice of Deripaska. Manafort also reportedly had a $10 million a year contract with Oleg Deripaska. The contract was part of a plan to assert pro-Russia influence in U.S. politics and lasted from 2006–2009. Paul Manafort moved into Trump Tower in 2006.

Manafort’s involvement in the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Natalia Veselnitskaya (a Russian lawyer and self-described informant), and Russian operatives is also of interest to Mueller. We now know the meeting was in an effort to obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. Investigators are reportedly reviewing Manafort’s notes of the meeting which “contained the words ‘donations,’ and ‘RNC’ in close proximity.” According to NBC News, congressional investigators who are examining the meeting are “focused on determining whether it included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.”

Federal law, Section 30121 of Title 52, states that it is a crime for a foreign national to contribute money or other items of value to an American election, as well as making it illegal for an American to solicit such a contribution.

Clearly, if Manafort flipped, it would be of great benefit to Robert Mueller’s investigation and great detriment to Donald Trump.

Unless President Trump pardons Manafort, his choice appears to be, cooperate or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Meanwhile…

  • President Trump continued his erosion of Western alliances as he headed to the G-7 summit.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who is battling brain cancer, slammed President Trump:

“The President has inexplicably shown our adversaries the deference and esteem that should be reserved for our closest allies”

A former Senate Intelligence Committee aide was arrested on Thursday in an investigation of classified information leaks where prosecutors also secretly seized years’ worth of a New York Times reporter’s phone and email records.

The former aide, James A. Wolfe, 57, was charged with lying repeatedly to investigators about his contacts with three reporters. According to the authorities, Mr. Wolfe made false statements to the F.B.I. about providing two of them with sensitive information related to the committee’s work. He denied to investigators that he ever gave classified material to journalists, the indictment said.

The Trump administration said Thursday night that it will not defend the Affordable Care Act against the latest legal challenge to its constitutionality — a dramatic break from the executive branch’s tradition of arguing to uphold existing statutes and a land mine for health insurance changes the ACA brought about.

  • In honor of former FBI Director James Comey’s historical testimony last year, a look down obstruction of justice memory lane.

  • Give Rantt’s newest podcast a listen!

Over the weekend…

One image that embodied the G-7 summit and new international order went viral.

After the summit, President Trump took to Twitter and announced the U.S. would not sign onto the statement of common values and continued attacking our allies. He reserved the harshest words for Justin Trudeau.

This was triggered by a press conference Trudeau held after Trump left Canada.

The Washington Post reported:

President Trump left America’s closest allies in a state of shock and outrage Sunday after a verbal barrage against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had just hosted Trump and other leaders from the Group of Seven industrial nations. Trump’s rhetorical assault on Trudeau, characteristically delivered on Twitter, was echoed by two top White House advisers who took to the Sunday talk shows to go after the leader of the United States’ neighbor to the north.

The bizarre aftermath of the G-7 summit in Quebec was a political calculation, meant to show muscularity in advance of the historic summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, one of those advisers acknowledged Sunday. There has rarely been such a coordinated and acerbic series of attacks by White House advisers aimed at a U.S. ally, revealing the extent to which Trump possibly felt slighted by Trudeau as he left for his North Korea talks.

On top of President Trump’s attacks, his economic advisers Larry Kudlow and Peter Navarro chimed in. Kudlow said that Trudeau “stabbed us in the back” and Navarro said that there’s “a special place in hell” for Trudeau…

People on the left, right, and middle condemned Trump’s baseless attacks on American allies…

Including Republican Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Now, President Trump is in Singapore ahead of his June 12th summit with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un.

<

We have quite the week ahead of us.

Buckle up.

Unpresidented // Donald Trump / Government / Jouarnalism / North Korea / Russia / Trade / World
profile avatar

by: Ahmed Baba

Ahmed Baba is the Co-Founder and President of Rantt. Writer of Unpresidented, Ahmed documented and analyzed every day of the Trump presidency. He's also a columnist at The Independent and his work has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, The New York Post, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Blavity, Newsweek, The Telegraph, and more. He can be reached at [email protected] or found on Twitter @AhmedBaba_.

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