President Donald Trump slammed CNN and Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday while speaking to reporters on the White House lawn before boarding Marine One and suggested that the administration would be releasing information showing that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — who claims that he was disturbed by Trump’s phone call with Ukraine — is a “Never Trumper.”
The first reporter that Trump called on asked, “What would you like to know about the whistleblower?”
“Well, the whistleblower gave a very inaccurate report. And, as you know, certain of the media released information about a man that they said was the whistleblower; I don’t know if that’s true or not,” Trump responded. “But what they said is he’s an Obama person. It was involved with Brennan; Susan Rice, which means Obama. But he was like a big — a big anti-Trump person. Hated Trump. And they — they said terrible things.”
Trump continued by taunting CNN for allegedly knowing the identity of the whistleblower and not releasing the name, an idea that Trump most likely got from the RealClearInvestigations report that identified the alleged whistleblower.
“Now, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but that was reported by some of the media, so you’ll have to find out,” Trump continued. “They think they know — they know who it is. You know who it is. You just don’t want to report it. CNN knows who it is, but you don’t want to report it and, you know, you’d be doing the public a service if you did.”
In the RealClearInvestigations report, Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and national security adviser to Trump, said: “Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is.”
A couple of minutes later a different reporter pressed Trump about his claim that Colonel Vindman was anti-Trump.
“Sir, what evidence do you have that Colonel Vindman is a Never Trumper?” the reporter asked.
Trump responded, “We’ll be showing that to you real soon. Okay?”
Several minutes later, Trump took a shot at Pelosi over the partisan impeachment vote last week where no Republicans and two Democrats in the House voted against the Democrats’ impeachment measure.
“I think Nancy Pelosi has lost her mind. And I think, frankly, that she should go back home to San Francisco,” Trump said. “If you look at what’s happening to her district — her district is going to hell, with homeless, with — that they’re not taking care of; with needles all over the street; with tents; with people; with sanitation; with horrible things being washed into the ocean, into the Pacific Ocean.”
“I think Nancy Pelosi — her district has probably gone down more than any district, proportionately, in the United States,” Trump continued. “And what she’s done — and what she’s done for that district — and then, on top of it, you’ve got fires eating away at California every year because management is so bad. The governor doesn’t know — he’s like a child. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. And I’ve been telling this for two years: They’ve got to take care of it.”
“Every year, it’s always California. Never — it’s rarely somebody else or someplace else,” Trump added. “But Nancy Pelosi ought to go back to her district and take care of it, because her district has become a mess — number one in the country for going down.”
“All she thinks about is impeachment. But she doesn’t want to impeach,” Trump concluded. “You know who wants to impeach? The people that run the party: the radical left.”