Trump Feels ‘Cornered With No Way Out,’ Spent Weekend ‘Calling People And Screaming,’ ‘Vanity Fair’ Reports
Following a week in which his former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies and implicated Donald Trump in two of those crimes, as the Inquisitr reported, and his 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted on eight tax and fraud counts — only to be followed by his longtime accountant and Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Alan Weisselberg “flipping,” as the Inquisitr also reported, Trump feels “cornered with no clear way out.”
That revelation comes from a blockbuster new report Monday published online by Vanity Fair magazine, a report revealing that an angry and frustrated Trump “spent the weekend calling people and screaming,” according to a former White House official quoted by Vanity Fair correspondent Gabriel Sherman.
“Trump is nuts,” a former White House official told Sherman. “This time really feels different.”
Also last week, longtime Trump friend and confidant David Pecker, CEO of National Enquirer parent company American Media Inc., had joined Weisselberg in becoming a government informant against Trump. According to a report by New York Magazine, Pecker provided information that helped lead to Cohen’s guilty plea over a $150,000 “hush money” payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who says she had a long-term sexual relationship with Trump.
And in an interview with Fox News last Thursday, Trump made the admission, as the Inquisitr noted, that the money to pay McDougal as well as a separate $130,000 to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels — who also says she had a sexual encounter with Trump — “came from me.” The admission would appear to put him directly in the middle of the crimes admitted under oath by Cohen.
According to the Vanity Fair report, even Trump’s own daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, are “unsettled” by the way Trump has been “gleefully acting on his most self-destructive impulses as his legal peril grows.” Kushner confided in a friend that Trump “got joy” from revoking former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance last week.
As the bad news for Trump rolled in, he initially appeared “bummed” and “down and out,” according to the sources close to Trump who spoke with Sherman. But when the weekend came around, Trump became extremely angry and refused to listen to his advisers about how to handle the burgeoning scandals and investigations that appear to be accelerating rapidly.
“It’s a return to the abyss,” one source in contact with the White House told the Vanity Fair reporter. “This is back to being a one-man show, and everyone is on the outside looking in.”
Sherman also said that sources confirmed a New York Times report from last week that Trump continues to raise the possibility of a pardon for Manafort. As far back as January of this year, according to NBC News, Trump expressed concern that a “flip” by Manafort could incriminate him. But at that time, Trump remained confident that Manafort would not become a government witness.
