THE PRESIDENT IS OBVIOUSLY FEELING THE PRESSURE OF 20 INVESTIGATIONS

…These are the president’s “Sharpie” notes for his Rose Garden diatribe.

Trump’s banks and the New York State are responding with subpoenaed documents and state tax returns.

It appears that this week there was an “i” day at the White House.  But what was supposed to be “Infrastructure Day”, became “Impeachment Day” at the White House.

That occurred when the president personally blew up the White House meeting with the Democratic leaders well before the first handshake, and that immediately ended “Infrastructure Day”.

The president then strode to the Rose Garden Podium and had a quickly arranged quasi-news conference saying that as long as the Democrats were investigating him, there would be “no legislation discussion or anything else”….period.

This all came about when Trump had heard that in a special Democratic meeting that Trump said the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi had called, just to discuss the possible impeachment of the president and where she had said that Trump had engaged in a cover-up in the Robert Mueller Russia investigation.

Of course, the president said “I don’t do cover-ups”, and he said as usual, I am “the most transparent president, probably, in the history of this country.”  Both of which were false statements, among other false Trump statements.

Trump went on to say that the two parties could not “go down two tracks:” one in doing their agreeing to do  “political business”, and a second track of “investigating the president”.

Therefore, there would be no business in doing the “people’s business”, until all of the Trump investigations are stopped.

Okay, here’s the real truth.

First, the Speaker of the House did not call a special meeting for the House Democrats to discuss the impeachment of the president.  It was a regularly scheduled Democratic caucus meeting where the speaker had said that “House Democrats believe no one is above the law, including the president of the United States.”  She had added that Trump had engaged in a cover-up of actions regarding the Mueller investigation.  The fact that Trump’s former “Fixer” lawyer, Michael Cohen, is serving 3 years in a federal prison, and part of that prison term is due to the president directing Cohen to pay cover-up payments to two women with which Trump had sexual affairs.  And that's just one of the cover ups that Pelosi was referring to.

And just as other authoritarian dictators would do, Trump later had the other administration members that had attended the White House meeting, stand in a line for the cameras for them to say that Trump did not make a scene and storm out of the meeting as the Democrats had said.  It did sound like they were just repeating what the president had told them to say, as they all used the same words that Trump was “totally calm throughout the event”.  (That's exactly what Trump had told the press on camera.)

Trump and his allies are currently, actively working to block more than 20 separate investigations by the Democrats.  This was when he again called himself, “the most transparent president, probably, in the history of this country,” and said he had been ready to discuss infrastructure and other priorities before he learned about Pelosi’s remark.

The mounting inquiries of these investigations have angered the president for weeks, but those investigations had not stopped the White House from scheduling Wednesday’s “Infrastructure” meeting. The meeting was still on, with the original agenda, as of midmorning, the White House officials said.

But that was before the news coverage of Pelosi’s meeting with other Democrats on the previous morning.  Pelosi had said Trump had “engaged in a coverup,” which was harsh criticism that came moments after she had tamped down any talk of impeachment in her caucus in a closed-door meeting.  But Trump was so “livid,” said one person familiar with his mood.  However, some of his White House aides have actually argued that an unsuccessful Democratic impeachment effort would be politically helpful to the president, since it would further his reelection narrative that, “That Democrats are out to get him at any cost”.

“Whether or not they carry the big i-word out, I can’t imagine that, but they probably would because they will do whatever they have to do,” a still-seething Trump has told reporters.

Here is what some of those that were not White House aides said had happened in the White House meeting:

Trump walked into the meeting and told his guests, “You know what? You can’t do it under these circumstances. So, get these phony investigations over with” and then we’ll talk.

Then Trump went directly to the hastily installed presidential lectern nicknamed the “Blue Goose,” to which aides had affixed placards labeled “Mueller Investigation By the Numbers.” The cards had been printed weeks ago for other uses, White House officials said.

The Rose Garden is always camera-ready, and it’s right outside Trump’s office door.

He stayed about 10 minutes, almost all of it a monologue. He took two brief questions and turned to go, ignoring others.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure meeting went on without him. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, among others, remained in the room as Pelosi did some venting of her own.  This part was according to three people familiar with the session, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for sharing these details of the meeting.

Pelosi, looking across the table at Mnuchin, described how presidents such as Thomas Jefferson and FDR brought people to the White House to solve infrastructure problems.  But Trump had chosen to walk out, these anonymous people said.  Pelosi had added that she had thought Trump was “looking for a way out.”

Then, Conway asked Pelosi whether she had a response for the president.

Pelosi replied that she would reply to the president, “not the staff,” the people familiar with the meeting said.

As people got up to leave, Conway said to Pelosi, “That’s really pro-woman of you,” they said. By that time, Trump had given his own blow-by-blow version of events in the Rose Garden and had blunted the shock value of Pelosi’s accusation.

Pelosi and the others left the White House without talking to reporters.

It is appearing that with all the banks and individuals responding to the subpoenas for documents and information, the walls of Trump’s many falsehoods are closing in on Trump and his family.

Copyright G. Ater 2019