The Week in Washington: “What I Say to Him Is None of Your Business”
“After some very important meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I will be leaving Japan for South Korea (with President Moon),” President Trump tweeted yesterday morning from the G20 in Japan. “While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!” And indeed, today Trump and Kim said Hello (?)! at the DMZ. Trump set his foot in North Korea, the two chatted for almost an hour in private, the way both of them like it—and afterwards the American president had this to say: “Nobody knows how things turn out, but certainly this was a great day, this was a very legendary, very historic day. …It’ll be even more historic if something comes up, something very important. Very big stuff, pretty complicated, but not as complicated as people think.”
Before leaving for the G20 Summit in Japan, Trump was in no mood to discuss other very big, pretty complicated stuff with journalists on the White House lawn. When he was asked, “Mr. President, will you speak to Russian president Vladimir Putin on not interfering in our elections?” he responded testily, “… What I say to him is none of your business.” He was in a better mood when he hit Osaka, joking with his pal Putin about Russia and the upcoming 2020 election. “Don’t meddle in the election,” he said in a teasing tone to the Russian strongman, who responded with his trademark fishy smirk. Trump also brought up his favorite subject, the media, which he insists on the calling the enemy of the people and/or fake news. “You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do,” he said, to which Putin responded, in English: “We also have. It’s the same.” According to the Committee to Protect Journalist, 26 journalists have been murdered in Russia since Putin became president.
Personnel changes! On Tuesday, Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders announced his resignation, amid the fierce backlash over conditions in the facilities holding incarcerated migrant children. And just before the president left for Osaka, high-ranking State Department official Sean Lawler, formerly responsible for handling this sort of trip, was suspended indefinitely, pending reports that he liked to carry a whip around the office in an attempt to intimidate co-workers. And there is a new, and, we assume, whip-less White House press secretary: First Lady Melania Trump’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, will replace the departing Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Maybe Grisham will actually deign to meet reporters and hold actual press conferences, unlike her much-reviled predecessor?
In other news, there were two big decisions from the Supreme Court this week—in the first, the court ruled daintily that it just wouldn’t, couldn’t, mustn’t, weigh in on extreme gerrymandering—a big win for Republicans, who have been shamelessly contorting voting districts all over the country. The second ruling gave at least a temporary win to Democrats, by delaying the Trump administration’s attempts to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census. The White House’s explanation—that they needed the question to better enforce the Voting Rights Act (like we don’t know that they hate the Voting Rights Act!)—was so ludicrous that Chief Justice John Roberts was moved to say, “The evidence tells a story that does not match the . . . explanation.”
On Thursday, despite an uproar from the Democrats’s left flank, the house passed a $4.6 billion Senate bill to send emergency funding to the southern border, a legislation that will now sail over to the White House for Trump’s expected signature. Progressive members of Congress were furious that the bill does not adequately protect children or hold the administration accountable for the horror show at the border. Will Pelosi, who shoved the legislation through, pay a price? As CNN put it, “By pushing the legislation across the finish line, Pelosi demonstrated a willingness to defy the progressive wing of her party, but the debate proved to be one of the most significant tests of her ability to keep control of the House Democratic caucus.”
Lastly, on Monday, confronted directly with the accusation that he had raped writer E. Jean Carroll, the president did not claim that he had never committed sexual assault. Instead, he offered the following: “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type.”
Originally Appeared on Vogue
