CNN’s senior White House correspondent John Harwood said Monday on “Newsroom” that President Donald Trump was a “kook” while discussing a New York Times report by Maggie Haberman claiming at President Donald Trump’s meeting with attorney Sidney Powell and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn it was suggested to declare martial law.
Anchor Poppy Harlow said, “This morning, growing desperation inside the White House as the end of President Trump’s presidency nears. Outrage over an idea apparently brought up in a meeting on Friday to try to overflow the election results including by potentially invoking martial law. That idea reportedly leading to a screaming match in the Oval Office. John Harwood joins me now. You cannot make this stuff up. What happened?”
Harwood said, “The president is surrounding himself with 30 days left in his presidency, having been defeated by Joe Biden, being psychologically unable to accept that defeat, to accept the brand of a loser. He is holed up in the White House, not doing his job, spinning out lies about how he won the election and it was stolen from him. And bringing crazy people in to talk about crazy ideas like declaring martial law, something that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, a felon who was pardoned by the president for lying to the FBI, talked about on television. Talked about making Sidney Powell, a crazy lawyer who is so crazy that she was renounced by others in the Trump legal orbit for the nutty things she was saying about post-election conspiracies, seizing voting machines from states.”
He added, “All this stuff is absolutely lunatic stuff. It is sad to say but the reason that is talked about in the White House is that the president himself is a kook and he cannot handle his situation. We’re all going to have to live with it for 30 days, while he either simply fulminates about this stuff and does nothing about it or tries to do something, in which case he’ll be stopped but nevertheless it’s continued trauma for the country.”
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