Donald Trump Rants and Raves on Fox News This Morning After Ronny Jackson Withdraws Nomination

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | April 26, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | April 26, 2018 |

Donald Trump spoke with Fox and Friends this morning in a telephone interview. Here are the highlights:

— Trump decided to give Fox and Friends an interview this morning because it is Melania’s birthday. What did he get her? “Maybe I didn’t get her so much. I got her a beautiful card.” He got her flowers, he said, but not another gift, because he’s too busy being President. That is 😍.

— He said that James Comey should be charged, and would be if the Justice Department was doing its job. “But it’s YOUR Justice Department,” Fox and Friends told him, to which Trump replied, “I’ve decided I will not be involved in the Justice Department” because of the “witch hunt.” He also says, again, that he “did a great thing for the country by firing James Comey.” (In that it led to the appointment of Bob Mueller, I guess Trump is not wrong.)

Trump ended the interview by reiterating, “Our Justice Department, which I try to stay away from, but at some point, I won’t.”

— Trump denies telling James Comey that he didn’t stay overnight in Russia in 2013. “I went to Russia for a day or so. A day or two … Of course I stayed there. I stayed there a very short period of time, but of course I stayed…I never said I left immediately.”

— Even Fox & Friends dismissed Trump when he brought up, again, the question that Donna Brazille gave to Hillary Clinton during a debate. “Yeah. don’t worry about that,” one of the hosts said.

— “Nobody’s been even close to as tough as me” on Russia. “You can ask President Putin about that.”

— Trump defends Ronny Jackson, who dropped out of the confirmation process for Head of Veterans Affairs this morning, saying he has an “unblemished” record. “These are false accusations. These are false. They’re trying to destroy a man.”

Trump blames Senator Tester and says that Tester is going to have “a lot of problems” in Montana for going after Jackson. He said that he saw where this was going a couple of days ago. He also repeats that Jackson’s lack of experience wouldn’t have mattered because no one is qualified to run a department that large. “You could take the head of the biggest hospital corporation of the world, and it’s peanuts compared to the VA. So nobody has experience. You know it’s a big monster.”(Interestingly, Trump is defending Jackson more after he dropped out than he did before).

— Trump claims that Kanye likes him because black unemployment is down.

— Trump, once again, credits Republicans for ending slavery. “People don’t realize, if you go back to the Civil War, Republicans really did the thing.”

President Trump on Republican treatment of black people: "If you go back to the Civil War, it was the Republicans that really did the thing." pic.twitter.com/glQxczSfH2

— Axios (@axios) April 26, 2018

He also said that Shania Twain shouldn’t have apologized for saying that she supported him.

— Trump continued to insist that the Electoral College favors the Democrats, who have won the popular vote and lost the electoral college twice this century.

— Trump claims that if he “ever called for a rally in Washington DC, we’d have millions of people.” Six hundred thousand people showed up for his inauguration.

— Finally, Trump said that Michael Cohen did represent him “with this crazy Stormy Daniels thing,” but that Cohen is primarily a businessman and “I have nothing to do with his business.” Cohen represented him on a “tiny” bit of legal issues. “I’m not involved with his business,” he said, “and I’ve been told that I’m not involved.” (Does he need to be told what he already knows?)

In other words, Trump continues to distance himself from Cohen, while also conceding that Cohen managed the Stormy Daniels affair, despite Trump and the White House’s repeated assertions that Trump did not have an affair with Daniels and that Trump knew nothing about Cohen’s NDA with Daniels.

President Trump says Michael Cohen only handed a "tiny, tiny little fraction," of his legal deals.

"He represents me like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, and .. from what I see, he did absolutely nothing wrong." pic.twitter.com/BRAqc0Aszo

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 26, 2018

Meanwhile, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer on Trump’s admission: “Another gift from the heavens in this case… It’s a hugely damaging admission by the president.”