Trump Puts Impeachment Hoax in Its Place, and Then Carries on with Business in Davos

Jan. 22, 2020 (EIRNS)—“Our country has to get back to business,” President Donald Trump told reporters trying their damnedest to make the Senate impeachment trial the center of his final press conference in Davos this morning. He said he was not fighting because he enjoys all this, but for the sake of the country, he said. “This was a takedown attempt at a sitting President of the United States, and we caught them.” The impeachment is a hoax by a bunch of corrupt people, a continuation of the Russia hoax which started on Day One—a Russia hoax in which even Jill Stein and Tulsi Gabbard were called “Russian agents” by Hillary Clinton, he said.

He dismissed reporters’ efforts to get into details of what the Senate should do or not do. Read the transcript of the call with the head of state of Ukraine, he insisted: “Everybody’s going to say, ‘You mean that’s an impeachable event?’  If that were impeachable, Lyndon Johnson would have had to leave office in his first day.  Kennedy would have had to leave office his first day. It’s a hoax!” he told them.

The impeachment of Bill Clinton was also “terrible,” he pointed out. That came up when he was asked why Ken Starr is now on his legal team, when he had called Starr “a disaster” in the past. He said he didn’t know Starr when he prosecuted Clinton, but “I did make that statement, because, frankly, I didn’t think that Bill Clinton should have been impeached.... And I was pretty vocal about that”—and I still feel that way, he added.

No reporter had the sense to ask Trump to expand on the vision of a new Renaissance which he presented in his speech at Davos, but he did raise other matters. Trump announced that he had spoken with World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Roberto Azevedo, and they agreed to work on a “dramatic” reform of the WTO in upcoming weeks, about which he had Azevedo say a few words. No details of those reforms were given, other than Trump objecting that if China and India are going to continue to received special treatment as “developing countries,” then the U.S. should be a developing country, too.

President Trump was also emphatic on the importance of U.S. relations with China, as well as of his personal friendship with President Xi Jinping. He told CNBC in an earlier interview that “the best thing” about the Phase One trade deal with China is that “we have two countries that like each other again, because it was getting pretty nasty.” In the press conference, he spoke in stronger terms about “some testy moments... Beyond testy. Worse than a lot of people would understand.” But, he emphasized, “we have a great relationship with China now.”

Relations with Europe look to become “very testy” soon, because Trump said that he had informed European leaders in Davos that he wants a revamped trade deal with Europe, soon, or he will “take action,” such as slapping high tariffs on their autos.

President Trump’s worst Achilles’ heel was also on display: his idea that the about-to-explode stock market bubble will secure the increased jobs, higher wages, and reduction in poverty he wants to provide the American people. Economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in Trump’s press conference, that because more than half of American households own stocks through their 401Ks, brokerage accounts and IRAs, the bottom 50% have seen a 47% increase in their “net wealth” from the increase in stock market and home values, creating great consumer spending power.