"Weak-Ass Thinking"

К фотографиям Трампа с Лавровым и Кисляком, предыдущая запись.

Оказывается (via rsokolov) Белый Дом понимал, что фотографии будут выглядеть плохо, не настолько они идиоты. И именно поэтому они не пустили на встречу американских журналистов.

Однако, они, Белый Дом, оказались не настолько не идиотами, чтобы не пустить туда также "официального фотографа Лаврова". Каким-то образом, они думали, что фотографии не будут опубликованы.

Но, what a surprise (!), русские их обманули.

Отсюда:

The administration official also said the White House had been misled about the role of the Russian photographer. Russian officials had described the individual as Lavrov’s official photographer without disclosing that he also worked for Tass.

“We were not informed by the Russians that their official photographer was dual-hatted and would be releasing the photographs on the state news agency,” the administration official said.

As a result, White House officials said they were surprised to see photos posted online showing Trump not only with Lavrov but also smiling and shaking hands with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

И Отсюда:

The White House did not anticipate that the Russian government would allow its state news agency to post photographs of an Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russia's ambassador to the US, a White House official said. [...]

"They tricked us," an angry White House official said.

"That's the problem with the Russians -- they lie," the official added.

Ну, что тут сказать...

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Trump finally to launch voter fraud panel

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Трамп продолжает давать свои безумные интервью.

Сегодня он дал интервью NBC, где сказал, что уволил бы Коми в любом случае. Что, конечно, прямо противоречит изначально выдвинутой Белым Домом версии о том, что инициатива исходила от DOJ.

Кроме того, Трамп сообщил, что сам спросил Коми находится ли он, Трамп, под следствием.

Также сегодня вышло интервью Трампа в The Economist. Этого интервью не читал, но не могу не процитировать приведенный rsokolov отрывок из этого интервью.

-- ...Now at the same time I have a very good relationship with Justin [Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister] and a very good relationship with the president of Mexico. And I was going to terminate NAFTA last week, I was all set, meaning the six-month termination. I was going to send them a letter, then after six months, it’s gone. But the word got out[^], they called and they said [...] “We would like to know if it would be possible to negotiate as opposed to a termination.” And I said, “Yes, it is. Absolutely.” So, so we did that and we’ll start.

-- It sounds like you’re imagining a pretty big renegotiation of NAFTA. What would a fair NAFTA look like?

-- Big isn’t a good enough word. Massive.

-- Huge?

-- It’s got to be. It’s got to be.

-- What would it look like? What would a fair NAFTA look like?

-- No, it’s gotta be. Otherwise we're terminating NAFTA.

-- What would a fair NAFTA look like?

-- I was all set to terminate, you know? And this wasn’t like… this wasn’t a game I was playing. I’m not playing… you know, I wasn’t playing chess or poker or anything else. This was, I was, I’d never even thought about… it’s always the best when you really feel this way. But I was… I had no thought of anything else, and these two guys will tell you, I had no thought of anything else but termination. But because of my relationship with both of them, I said, I would like to give that a try too, that’s fine. I mean, out of respect for them. It would’ve been very disrespectful to Mexico and Canada had I said, “I will not.”