I’ll bet he is. He was reportedly ticked off at his own daughter for criticizing Roy Moore when she said a few weeks ago that there’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children. If you doubt Trump’s annoyance at that, note that Steve Bannon took a veiled shot at Ivanka during last night’s rally in Alabama, saying that there’s a special place in hell for Republicans who should know better than to support a Democrat. There’s no way Bannon swipes at the First Daughter unless he knows for a fact that Trump agrees with him that she shouldn’t have undermined Moore.
If POTUS is mad at Ivanka for blasting some other Republican, imagine the rage when his own UN ambassador doesn’t cover his back when the sexual-misconduct accusations from last fall spring up again.
“They should be heard, and they should be dealt with,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a CBS interview [when asked about Trump’s accusers]. “And I think we heard from them before the election. And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up.”
Haley’s comments infuriated the president, according to two people who are familiar with his views but who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. Trump has grown increasingly angry in recent days that the accusations against him have resurfaced, telling associates that the charges are false and drawing parallels to the accusations facing Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
That was published last night. This morning he confirmed that he is in fact increasingly angry about having to deal with the accusations again:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/940554567414091776
Tough spot for Haley, who clearly wants to run for president someday as the nominee of a disintegrating party. What’s she supposed to say when asked about Trump’s accusers? If she says they’re all liars she’ll be ripped apart by Democrats and feminists as a traitor to women, covering for a powerful man instead of encouraging his alleged victims to speak up. If she says that they should be heard and “dealt with,” which is the most anodyne thing she could say, she’ll be ripped apart by Republicans and populists as a traitor to the GOP. In the end she went with the second option, probably because she felt it was the right thing to do, possibly because she knows it’s unlikely that a young Rubio-esque moderate who supported removing the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina statehouse is ever going to be the presidential nominee of a Trumpifying GOP no matter what she says.
Besides, what does she have to lose by giving Trump’s accusers a boost? It sounds like Mike Pompeo has already been lined up to succeed Rex Tillerson at State. And Trump almost never fires deputies at whom he’s annoyed. He just makes their lives miserable for awhile in hopes that they’ll quit and spare him the ordeal of a termination. She’ll probably get the Jeff Sessions treatment — screamed at privately, sniped at publicly for a few weeks on the presidential Twitter account, and then he’ll get bored and move onto something else and it’ll all blow over. She’ll be fine.
Incidentally, another Trump accuser from last year landed on Megyn Kelly’s show this morning, the fourth in two days. Kelly’s apparently seen her ratings start to climb lately with all of her sexual harassment coverage. She has more than a dozen Trump accusers left to interview if they’re willing, which will keep the show humming along and getting under POTUS’s skin for the next few weeks, potentially. The Kelly/Trump feud will be in full bloom again soon. Here’s the fourth accuser, Melinda McGillivray, talking to Kelly. And below that it’s Steve Bannon jabbing at Ivanka last night.
Trump accuser Melinda McGillivray explains on @MegynTODAY that she thought alleged grab by Trump was her friend’s camera bag brushing against her but then realized it was Trump pic.twitter.com/X4tS4kgvmX
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 12, 2017
Steve Bannon: "There's a special place in hell for Republicans who" don't support Roy Moore. #alsen #alpolitics pic.twitter.com/p2NnbGSMh5
— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) December 12, 2017
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