What did Trump talk about during his meeting with CIA staff?
Via TPM:
“We had a massive field of people. You saw them. Packed. I get up this morning and I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field. I said wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out. The field was … it looked like a million, a million and a half people. They showed a field where there were practical nobody standing there.”
More (much, much more) comments on crowd size to come.
And there are more quotes:
“I am so behind you and I know maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted and you’re going to get so much backing,” Trump told the intel community with whom he has feuded. “Maybe you’ll say, ‘don’t give us so much backing. Mr. President, please, we don’t need that much backing,’ But you’re going to have that, and I think everybody in this room knows it.”
And…
It seemed at every turn, Trump would pivot to himself. As he talked about his choice to lead the CIA Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), Trump noted that he himself was smart.
“I met him and I said, he is so good. Number one in his class at West Point. I know a lot about West Point, and I’m a person that very strongly believes in academics. In fact, every time I say I had an uncle who was a great professor at M.I.T. for 35 years, who did a fantastic job in so many ways,” Trump said. “He was an academic genius, and then they say, there’s Donald Trump, an intellectual, trust me, I’m like a smart person.”
If a member of my family spoke like this I would get them psychological help.
This is my favorite part of that CIA appearance — he closes with this (sorry for all caps, I am copying and pasting from the C-SPAN transcription):
I JUST WANTED TO REALLY SAY, I LOVE YOU, I RESPECT YOU, THERE IS NO ONE I RESPECT MORE. YOU’RE GOING TO DO A FANTASTIC JOB, AND WE’RE GOING TO START WINNING AGAIN AND YOU’RE GOING TO BE LEADING THE CHARGE. SO THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH. THANK YOU, BEAUTIFUL. THANK YOU. I’LL BE BACK.
[Hitches up his pants, zips his fly and saunters out of the room. CIA lies there, stunned.]
Video and transcript at C-SPAN, my new favorite cable station: https://www.c-span.org/video/?422418-1/president-trump-tells-cia-get-rid-isis