A new tale of the tape

And in the latest segment of “As the White House Turns,” the president of the United States has just used the power of that mighty office to (1) threaten the former director of the FBI, (2) hint at canceling the White House daily press briefings, (3) once again deny any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians and (4) poke Rosie O’Donnell. Yes, just another day in the Oval Office.

After vastly underestimating the impact of firing FBI Director James Comey, President Trump once again took to Twitter on Friday morning to say, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘ tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

That was presumably a reference to a dinner Trump had with Comey at which he insists Comey assured him he was not under investigation. An account of that dinner seven days after Trump’s inauguration as related by Comey associates to The New York Times offers a considerably different take — one in which the president repeatedly asked for Comey’s “loyalty.” Comey instead pledged he would always be honest with the president.

Trump’s tweet, of course, raised the issue of whether the president was in the habit of taping conversations, including the one with Comey (as if there weren’t enough comparisons to Nixon already).

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer would say only, “The president has nothing further to add on that” and the now routine, “the tweet speaks for itself.”

Which bring us to Tweet No. 2: “As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!”

“Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future ‘press briefings’ and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”

So lies happen. Yep, we knew that.