Perche' non passa giorno in cui qualche suo twitter non rimbalzi migliaia di volte su tutti i media (che Lei odia e sputtana in ogni occasione),i quali sono costretti, piaccia o non piaccia a commentare le sue esternazioni.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday warned James B. Comey, the former F.B.I.
director he fired this week, against leaking anything negative about
the president and warned the news media that he may cancel all future
White House briefings.
In
a series of early-morning Twitter posts, Mr. Trump even seemed to
suggest that there may be secret tapes of his conversations with Mr.
Comey that could be used to counter the former F.B.I. director if
necessary. It was not immediately clear whether he meant that literally
or simply hoped to intimidate Mr. Comey into silence.
“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.
Mr.
Trump appeared agitated over news reports on Friday that focused on
contradictory accounts of his decision to fire Mr. Comey at the same
time the F.B.I. is investigating ties between Mr. Trump’s associates and
Russia.
The New York Times reported that,
in a dinner shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey
to pledge loyalty to him, which the F.B.I. director refused to do. The
story cited two people who heard Mr. Comey describe the dinner but the
White House rebutted the account.
The
president also expressed pique at attention on the shifting versions of
how he came to decide to fire Mr. Comey. In his first extended comments
on the firing on Thursday, Mr. Trump contradicted statements made by
his White House spokeswoman as well as comments made to reporters by
Vice President Mike Pence and even the letter the president himself
signed and sent to Mr. Comey informing him of his dismissal.
The
original White House version of the firing was that the president acted
on the recommendation of the attorney general and deputy attorney
general because of Mr. Comey’s handling of last year’s investigation
into Hillary Clinton’s email. But in an interview with NBC News on
Thursday, Mr. Trump said he had already decided to fire Mr. Comey and
would have done so regardless of any recommendation. And he indicated
that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he made the
decision.
Mr. Trump said on Friday morning that no one should expect his White House to give completely accurate information.
“As
a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not
possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” he
wrote on Twitter.
“Maybe,” he added
a few moments later, “the best thing to do would be to cancel all
future ‘press briefings’ and hand out written responses for the sake of
accuracy???”
The
threat may have been just a rhetorical point, but Mr. Trump by his own
description likes to be unpredictable and does not feel obligated to
follow longstanding White House conventions simply because that is the
way they have been done for years. Every president in modern times has
been frustrated with the news media at points, but they all preserved
the tradition of the daily briefing.
Mr.
Trump’s mention of tapes did nothing to dispel the echoes of Watergate
heard in Washington this week. His dismissal of Mr. Comey in the midst
of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s associates struck many as similar
to President Richard M. Nixon’s decision in October 1973 to fire
Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor, in an incident that
came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre.
In
that case, Nixon was mad at Mr. Cox for seeking access to secret White
House tapes of the president’s conversations. Ultimately, the Supreme
Court forced Nixon to turn over the tapes, which contained evidence
pointing to his involvement in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary
and led to his resignation in August 1974.
Mr.
Trump’s defenders have said Watergate comparisons are overwrought and
that there is no evidence of collusion between Mr. Trump’s campaign and
Russia during last year’s election. American intelligence agencies have
concluded that Russia tried to meddle in the campaign with the aim of
tilting the election to Mr. Trump.
The
president has said any suspicions of collusion are “fake news” and that
the Russia investigation is the product of Democrats who are sore
losers looking to explain away an election defeat and undermine his
legitimacy.
“Again,
the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump
campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election,”
he wrote on Twitter on Friday morning.
