As we already discussed here, Mr. "Art of the Deal" continued to prove that he's all bark and no bite after he caved on his latest threats to implement tariffs against Mexico. Now we learn from The New York Times that not only did Trump backtrack on the tariff threats, but the actions that Mexico agreed to, which Trump is touting as new, were already largely agreed to months ago during "secret talks in Miami between Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, and Olga Sanchez, the Mexican secretary of the interior."
Washington, D.C., bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks April Ryan explained the history behind this latest lie to CNN's Martin Savidge this Sunday:
RYAN: Yeah Martin. It's like what's old is new. Right? So basically, when this deal was done before, it was done with the then Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen, and you know the president has a problem with Kirstjen Nielsen.
She is no longer in the White House. So he wanted to make it look like he had a fresh face, it was new. But it’s nothing new here. Nothing new.
He wanted to repackage to make it look like he is doing it. This is the kind of thing that they do. It’s a lot of smoke in mirrors around the White House to repackage or rebrand, what have you. But it was already on the table.
And the bottom line, it’s about the fact it was done by Kirstjen Nielsen. Anything she did, or even the person that she was close to, even General John Kelly. Anything both of them did, it’s kind of along the wayside they are making it new. If they like the idea they going to try to rebrand it like it was theirs.
So this is all about disdain for people and trying to say this is mine versus theirs. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is.
h/t Raw Story