Trump to Mexican President: Stop Telling Media You Won’t Pay for Wall
Washington Post publishes transcript as Justice Department gears up for crackdown on leaks
Brian Flood | August 3, 2017 @ 7:24 AM
Last Updated: August 3, 2017 @ 7:40 AM
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The leaks continue to roll out of the White House.
On Thursday, the Washington Post obtained a transcript of classified conversations between President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, in which Trump urges Nieto to stop saying Mexico won’t pay for the border wall.
“You cannot say that to the press,” Trump said repeatedly throughout the Jan. 27 call.
Trump told Mexico’s leader that the funding “will work out in the formula somehow,” but said he needs to stop publicly saying Mexico won’t cover the costs.
“If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that,” Trump said.
A wall on the southern border was one of the major promises that Trump made throughout his campaign; he regularly said Mexico would pay for the wall. Trump also told Nieto that the wall is “the least important thing we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important.”
A transcript of the conversation was obtained by the Post and published one day before Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ scheduled event to discuss the ongoing problem of leaks within the administration. The Justice Department plans to crack down on leaks and Trump has repeatedly blasted leakers on Twitter and during speaking engagements.
In total, the Post obtained 52 pages of transcripts of calls Trump held with Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. They were presumably leaked by someone close to the president, as White House staffers produced the transcript. Similar documents are commonly circulated to White House staff and senior policymakers, according to the Post.
16 'Morning Joe' Trump Insults That Got Personal, From 'Schmuck' to 'Jackass' (Photos)
President Trump recently received a ton of criticism for sending out a pair of tweets about MSNBC's "Morning Joe" hosts “Psycho” Joe Scarborough and “low I.Q. Crazy” Mika Brzezinski.
“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift,” he wrote of an encounter with Brzezinski he claims he had in Florida weeks before his inauguration.
TheWrap
While nothing can justify the president mocking a woman's appearance, the "Morning Joe" duo have been attacking Trump for months.
Check out 16 recent times the MSNBC stars said something that Trump could have taken personally.
MSNBC
They compared him to Kim Jong-un
“This is unprecedented, to have a president who behaves this way,” Brzezinski said on June 23. “It does feel like a developing dictatorship."
Guest Donny Deutsch unloaded on Trump's appearance
Deutsch defended Brzezinski on June 30 following Donald Trump’s attacks on her, calling the president “physically disgusting to look at.”
Deutsch continued: “Enough is enough with this disgusting vulgar man and to talk about women that way, and the irony is you physically look like you do, beyond the stupidity of it. You are a pig."
Brzezinski said what Bill Clinton was to sex, Trump is to "decency"
"What Bill Clinton did to the issue of sex to an entire generation, I believe this president is doing on issues of decency, on issues of conspiracy theories, on issues of fake news," Brzezinski said in June 15. "I think it's that simple and we're desensitized if we even argue it."
"If the president seems delusional about his accomplishments, you can point no further than that room," Brzezinski said in June 14. "There are no real men in the inner circle of the White House... none at all."
After Trump staffers praised the president during a cabinet meeting, Scarborough said on June 13 it “was the most sick, shameful, pathetic, un-American, autocratic display.”
He continued: “I will tell you if I were ever in meeting and people did that to me, I would say shut up and I would fire you.”
Brzezinski called President Trump a “narcissist” and said it’s possible that he’s “mentally ill in a way” on June 8.
She continued: “I said it months ago… he’s not well. At the very least he’s not well and he’s so narcissistic that he does not believe the rules apply to him."
“Donald Trump, again, being a schmuck, thinking he can buy people’s integrity by inviting them over to the White House and wowing them,” Scarborough said on June 7 when discussing a dinner party at the White House. “That’s how he thinks. I know that first hand.”
Scarborough said Trump “is not a sane, rational human being”
“If any CEO, in a Fortune 500 company, was behaving this way, he or she would be removed immediately… they would take him out, he would have psychiatric evaluation and he would no longer be the CEO,” Scarborough said on June 6.
Scarborough blasted “President Bannon” on June 2 for the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord on climate change — using the trolling phrase seven times in half a minute.
“Time magazine was right: Steve Bannon is the president of the United States,” the MSNBC host said, before launching into a 30-second monologue referencing “President Bannon” repeatedly.
The morning show played audio of Press Secretary Sean Spicer telling reporters during an off-camera gaggle that Trump’s “covfefe” tweet wasn’t a typo and Americans shouldn’t be concerned.
Brzezinski set up her fiancé, “You said… it’s like a kid pooping their pants and then saying, ‘I meant to do that.”
“Well yes. It would be like somebody pooping their pants and then people looking at it and saying ‘oh that’s modern art don’t you understand,'” Scarborough said on June 1.
Scarborough called Trump a “bumbling dope” on May 11 because of the way a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister was handled.
“Looking at the front pages of the newspapers here… The Wall Street Journal also, you look, of course, at pictures. The shameful picture where the United States press corps was kept out but the Russians were allowed in,” Scarborough said while holding up the paper.
Scarborough slammed Trump on March 31, saying that Russians are lucky that POTUS is “stupid enough” to pick up their fake news.
“We’re obsessed on how the Russians have hacked, how the Russians have tried to impact this, how the Russians have tried to impact the White House,” Scarborough said. “We’re really just playing into their hands.”
MSNBC stars Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski attack the president on a daily basis
President Trump recently received a ton of criticism for sending out a pair of tweets about MSNBC's "Morning Joe" hosts “Psycho” Joe Scarborough and “low I.Q. Crazy” Mika Brzezinski.
“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift,” he wrote of an encounter with Brzezinski he claims he had in Florida weeks before his inauguration.