CNN’s Jake Tapper was incredulous when he heard the news today that President Trump had augmented his legal team with a new attorney. After all, hadn’t the president sent out a series of tweets just over a week ago denouncing The New York Times for reporting that he was dissatisfied with his legal team and looking to add more firepower to his defense?
The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job and…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018
…have shown conclusively that there was no Collusion with Russia..just excuse for losing. The only Collusion was that done by the DNC, the Democrats and Crooked Hillary. The writer of the story, Maggie Haberman, a Hillary flunky, knows nothing about me and is not given access.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018
Tapper was incensed over Trump’s vicious attack on The Times’ White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, particularly when the essence of the story she reported was true. A week after Trump’s denial of his unhappiness with his defense team, Trump did exactly what he trounced Haberman for reporting, albeit with a different lawyer than the one that she recounted Trump’s meeting with.
The CNN anchor took to Twitter to express his disbelief at Trump’s audacity.
Wait you mean @maggieNYT was right and the president IS adding a new lawyer to his legal team????
It’s almost as if he regularly decries as “fake” or “false” stories that are 100% accurate that he just doesn’t like. https://t.co/2J4k6hV3Lh
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 19, 2018
The droll Tapper should have used an eye-roll emoji after his second sentence since the sarcasm in the statement “It’s almost as if he regularly decries as “fake” or “false” stories that are 100% accurate that he just doesn’t like” practically drips off the screen as one reads it.
Everyone knows that’s exactly how Trump’s cynical propaganda war works in a tactic straight out of the authoritarian playbook. His Orwellian undermining of truth and its replacement with self-serving lies demonstrates the depth of Trump’s manipulative attempts to deflect the public from the truth about all of his malfeasance and substitute the lies that better serve his own corrupt purposes.
Bravo, Mr. Tapper for calling out the president’s blatant lies and for defending your journalistic colleague. Trump will call you names and deny the truth at every opportunity, but keep on exposing the lies until we can rid the nation of the rot at the top.
