'This isn't just talk, he's got the goods here.'
Trump spent the week desperately pushing back on Bob Woodward's meticulously reported, bombshell book that lays out just how dysfunctional Trump's presidency really is.
But Fox News host Chris Wallace isn't buying the spin — and he told Trump's number two right to his face that Woodward has clearly "got the goods" on Trump.
On this week's edition of "Fox News Sunday," Wallace asked Vice President Mike Pence if he believed the story, reported in Woodward's book, that then-senior economic adviser Gary Cohn had stolen a document from Trump's desk in order to prevent him from pulling out of a trade deal with South Korea.
"I have every doubt that that happened," Pence replied.
Wallace then produced a copy of the letter that Woodward wrote about, and which CNN has released.
"This isn't just talk, he's got the goods here," Wallace said.
Pence launched into some lengthy spin about how Trump's advisers "bring him all of the options" — as if this fully drafted document, ready to be signed, was just one possible "option" rather than the official policy Trump clearly intended to pursue.
Pence added that the "narrative" of Trump's dangerous incompetence "is totally foreign to me."
"But it did happen, sir!" Wallace interrupted.
Excerpts from Woodward's book, "Fear: Trump in the White House," paint a devastating portrait of senior advisers who think Trump is an "idiot" whose worst impulses they must subvert.
The Woodward book features stories of senior Trump aides ignoring or subverting Trump's orders to, among other things, assassinate Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Cohn is said to have twice stolen documents to prevent Trump from making disastrous trade moves.
A similar dynamic was described in an explosive New York Times op-ed piece, authored by an anonymous senior Trump administration official who claims to be "part of the resistance" inside the administration.
The op-ed writer reveals that "many of the senior officials in [Trump's] own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations."
Wallace's confrontation of Pence shows that the time to look the other way on Trump's obvious incompetence is long past.
Elected Republicans may still be in denial about the disaster that Trump's administration has become — but the American people can see with their own eyes that all of these things really did happen.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
