President Donald Trump lashed out at oil companies and his own US attorney in the gilded Oval Office on Monday as his spin ran into the real world.
It was more evidence that Trump 2.0 is losing some of its juice.
Oil executives are capitalizing on Trump’s war against Iran and “making too much money,” the president said. He singled out Chevron and warned it to make gasoline cheaper even though, he said, he’s a “big free enterprise guy — nobody bigger.”
Jeanine Pirro, his handpicked US attorney for Washington, DC, “choked,” Trump said, when she about-faced in court papers and admitted it was a botched rehab by the Interior Department and not vandalism that caused setbacks in the renovation of the Reflecting Pool, which Trump has taken on as a pet project. It was he, he said Monday, who had the idea of applying material meant for swimming pools to the 100-plus-year-old landmark.
“She folded like an umbrella,” Trump added of his longtime ally.
Pirro’s transgression, in Trump’s eyes, is that she was forced to admit that the narrative he’s pushed in public is not one that can be prosecuted in court.
Trump’s victory to open the week is winning enough support for Todd Blanche, his former personal attorney, to be confirmed as attorney general.
But there’s a loss in the fine print of that deal. Blanche, currently acting attorney general, had to officially and permanently squelch the $1.8 billion fund widely seen as a way to pay Trump’s political supporters.
