Here is some of that absolutely incredible interview that the New York Times conducted with Donald Trump. (Including audio.)

Here are some excerpts courtesy of the New York Times:

President Trump said on Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Mr. Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision “very unfair to the president.”

In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.


“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” he added. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”


Why is he talking about himself in the third person?

It should be noted here that Sessions recused himself only after it was revealed that he lied about meeting with Russians during his confirmation hearing.

The real question for Trump should be why did he choose an Attorney General with ties to Russia, and then extrapolate that out further to ask why virtually EVERYBODY working on his campaign and now within his administration have ties to Russia?

Speaking of Russia this is how Trump characterized his meeting with Putin during the G20 Summit: 

Describing a newly disclosed informal conversation he had with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia during a dinner of world leaders in Germany this month, Mr. Trump said they talked for about 15 minutes, mostly about “pleasantries.” But Mr. Trump did say that they talked “about adoption.” Mr. Putin banned American adoptions of Russian children in 2012 after the United States enacted sanctions on Russians accused of human rights abuses, an issue that remains a sore point in relations with Moscow.

Mr. Trump acknowledged that it was “interesting” that adoptions came up since his son, Donald Trump Jr., said that was the topic of a meeting he had with several Russians with ties to the Kremlin during last year’s campaign. Even though emails show that the session had been set up to pass along incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, the president said he did not need such material from Russia about Mrs. Clinton last year because he already had more than enough.

Of course as we know "adoptions" is code for "sanctions," and I am amazed that Trump is actually using Russian talking points so blatantly since everybody knows for a fact what that meeting between Junior and the Russians was all about.

It is almost as if he assumes that nobody reads.

Then the subject turned to James Comey:  

Mr. Trump recalled that a little more than two weeks before his inauguration, Mr. Comey and other intelligence officials briefed him at Trump Tower on Russian meddling. Mr. Comey afterward pulled Mr. Trump aside and told him about a dossier that had been assembled by a former British spy filled with salacious allegations against the incoming president, including supposed sexual escapades in Moscow. The F.B.I. has not corroborated the most sensational assertions in the dossier. 

In the interview, Mr. Trump said he believed Mr. Comey told him about the dossier to implicitly make clear he had something to hold over the president. “In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there,” Mr. Trump said. As leverage? “Yeah, I think so,” Mr. Trump said. “In retrospect.” 

The president dismissed the assertions in the dossier: “When he brought it to me, I said this is really made-up junk. I didn’t think about any of it. I just thought about, man, this is such a phony deal.”

Wait, did Trump just accuse the former head of the FBI with threatening to blackmail him?

He does realize that President Obama was also told about that dossier as well, right?

Trump also disputed Comey's testimony under oath that he asked people to leave the room so that they could talk in private about ending the investigation into Michael Flynn:

“I don’t remember even talking to him about any of this stuff,” Mr. Trump said. “He said I asked people to go. Look, you look at his testimony. His testimony is loaded up with lies, O.K.?” 

He expressed no second thoughts about firing Mr. Comey, saying, “I did a great thing for the American people.”

Oh, well you just know the Senate Intelligence agency is going to want to talk to about that.

Trump also went after Special Counsel Robert Mueller: 

Mr. Trump was also critical of Mr. Mueller, a former F.B.I. director, reprising some of his past complaints that lawyers in his office contributed money to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. He noted that he actually interviewed Mr. Mueller to replace Mr. Comey just before his appointment as special counsel.

“He was up here and he wanted the job,” Mr. Trump said. After he was named special counsel, “I said, ‘What the hell is this all about?’ Talk about conflicts. But he was interviewing for the job. There were many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point.”

And then there was this thinly veiled threat:

Asked if Mr. Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes.” He would not say what he would do about it. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”

Holy shit!

So to be clear in this one interview Trump has admitted that he would not have hired Jeff Sessions if he knew he would not protect him from these Russian investigations, suggested that the former FBI chief was threatening to blackmail him, and insinuated that the Special Counsel might lose his job if he investigates the Trump family finances.

That is in only ONE interview.

Damn, no wonder Trump hates the media.

They keep reporting on the things that he says and does, so that people know about them.

Must be so frustrating.