Remember that tape of a conversation with the President of the United States over dinner that Lev Parnas released a few years ago?
Oh wait, it was just last week. It just feels like it was years ago.
Anyway, we all heard him saying “take her out” about Marie Yovanovich. But there was a lot more to the tape than that. Trump was having dinner with big donors to one of his Super Pacs and they were asking for favors. This used to be illegal until Trump proved that the law doesn’t apply to him and his cronies.
The NY Times listened to the whole thing and pulled up a few of the more interesting moments. Some excerpts of what they found:
Here we look at six revelatory moments from the recording, which was captured at the Trump International Hotel in Washington on April 30, 2018.
A location pitch for a summit in North Korea
Time stamp: 21 minutes
At one point, one of the guests asked Mr. Trump to hold his upcoming meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Songdo, a business district on the western coast of South Korea. A New York-based firm, Gale International, is helping develop the district there.
“My family, specifically, and the Gales, as well, would be honored if you would consider it,” the guest told the president. Mr. Trump responded, “We’re very far down the line, but I will,” and then quickly changed the subject.
“You know that Kim Jong-un is a great golfer. You know that, right?” Mr. Trump told the guests, who included Jack Nicklaus III, the grandson of the legendary golfer. As the dinner party erupted in laughter, one of the guests said to Mr. Trump of Mr. Kim, “His goal in life is to meet you! It’s true! His whole goal in life! He wants to meet the president! He wants to be you! He would like to be you!”
The excessive bootlicking throughout this dinner is so nauseating. That he welcomes it and needs it so much is pathetic.
Marijuana causes an ‘I.Q. problem,’ Trump suggests
Time stamp: 45 minutes
“Do you think the whole marijuana thing is a good thing?” Mr. Trump asked the guests. “No,” one woman responded.
Mr. Parnas said, “It’s something that is in the future, no matter how you look at it. I think it’s something that’s already so far out that you’re not going to stop it.” Mr. Trump indicated he was not impressed with the results of legalization in Colorado. “In Colorado, they have more accidents,” Mr. Trump said. “It does cause an I.Q. problem.”
Trump muses on if Hillary Clinton had picked Bernie Sanders as her running mate
Time stamp: 54 minutes
“If Bernie were Hillary’s vice president, it would have been tougher,” Mr. Trump said, “because all those people that hated her so much who voted for me.” Mr. Trump added, “You know I got 20 percent of Bernie vote. People don’t realize that, because of trade, because he’s a big trade guy, you know he basically says we’re getting screwed on trade, and he’s right, and I’m worse than he is, and we can do something about it, I don’t know if he could have.”
Trump’s dream of a concrete wall is scuttled by the potential dangers of drugs being thrown over it
Time stamp: 23 minutes
An unidentified guest said they shipped 125,000 tons of material for the wall at the border. Mr. Trump then said he wanted a “concrete wall, 30 feet high, very slick outside.”
Another individual can be heard saying that border agents have said that could be dangerous. “They actually said these drug dealers, it’s so dangerous to have a solid wall because they take the drugs, it weighs 100 pounds, approximately, you know a satchel, they call it a satchel, they throw it over the wall, it goes over the wall, and it will land on a guy’s head and it kills him,” Mr. Trump said.
That’s where he got that ridiculous talking point!
Mr. Trump clarifies that “our border guys” are the victims. “It can hit people,” Mr. Trump says. “Can you imagine, you get hit with a hundred pounds of drugs?”
Trump bashes the European Union
Time stamp: 16 minutes
“The European Union is a group of countries that got together to screw the United States,” Mr. Trump told his guests. “It’s as simple as that.” Mr. Trump continued: “And frankly, they’re probably worse than China in a sense, just smaller. They’re worse than China in the sense of barriers.”
“But the European Union is really bad,” he said. “You know it doesn’t sound like it. You know, the European Union, we’re all sort of from there, right? But the European Union is brutal. But we’re changing that rapidly, too. They can’t even believe it.”
Remember, he’s saying this to some very shady people from Ukraine …
A Canadian billionaire presses his case on steel tube imports
Time stamp: 1 hour, 7 minutes
Barry Zekelman, a Canadian citizen who owns a Chicago-based steel-tube manufacturing company that donated $1.75 million to a political action committee supporting Mr. Trump, urged the president to further limit steel imports to the United States, which he has said undermine sales for his American business.
Mr. Zekelman then questioned rules intended to prevent fatal truck accidents by using electronic monitoring systems to limit how many hours drivers can be on the road. The rules, he said, were having an impact on Mr. Zekelman’s ability to move the steel pipe he manufactures.
“Say someone is half an hour from home on their long haul truck — they literally have to pull over on the side of the road and stop,” Mr. Zekelman said. “They can’t go home. They don’t even want to do it anymore.” Mr. Zekelman said they cannot get enough drivers to haul his products.
Mr. Trump did not seem to be aware of the rules. “They have a method that you shut down a truck?” Mr. Trump said. Since the dinner, legislation has been introduced in the House with the cosponsorship of 12 Republicans to allow smaller trucking companies to get exemptions from the rule.
This is just one dinner with his big donors where Trump invites them to make their pitch. You know it’s far worse with the real VIPs.