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Trump Administration Hit With New Leak Of Transcripts Of Trump’s Call To the Mexican and Australian Leaders

donald_trump_president-elect_portrait_croppedToday Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to discuss a new leak crackdown, but he will have to deal with questions raised by one of the most massive leaks in recent memory. Someone has leaked the entire transcripts of two heated January phone calls  with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.  The conversations are deeply embarrassing for the Administration because they directly contradict statements made by Trump to the public.  These transcripts would also be likely classified, making their release a federal offense.

Presidente_Enrique_Peña_Nieto._Fotografía_oficialIn one conversation detailed by The Washington Post, Trump pressures Nieto to stop saying publicly that Mexico will not pay for the wall.  The President dismisses the issue (upon which he campaigned) as “the least important thing we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important.”  He simply did not want Nieto to state publicly what they both knew: “You cannot say that to the press.”

Trump assured Nieto that it would not be problem if he would just stop telling the public that Mexico would not pay. He insisted that the money issue “will work out in the formula somehow … it will come out in the wash, and that is okay.”   He then said that if the Mexican president told the truth to the public about his position “then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.”  It was an obviously heated and bizarre conversation.

SD and Australia's PM Malcolm Turnbull pose for a photo togetherThe conversation with Turnbull was even more bizarre.  Trump resisted taking 2000 refugees that we were obligated to accept under prior agreements.  He told Turnbull: “This is going to kill me. I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people.”  He described the agreement as a “horrible” deal and added that “I hate taking these people … I guarantee you they are bad.”  He insisted that the refugees could “become the Boston bomber in five years.”  He then added “I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.”  Trump then complained that the call with our close ally was “the most unpleasant call all day” and the call was then ended.

It was an embarrassing conversation and directly contradicted Trump’s earlier denial that he had a heated conversation with Turnbull.  At the time, he told the public:

“Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about. Very nice!”

The release of the transcript is a major breach of confidentiality for the President and undermines the ability of the President to assure other heads of state that there conversations are confidential and secure.  Thus, there is ample reason for Trump to be outraged. However, like the hacking of the Clinton emails, the leak also exposes glaring contradictions in what Trump said to the public and what actually transpired in these conversations.

202 thoughts on “Trump Administration Hit With New Leak Of Transcripts Of Trump’s Call To the Mexican and Australian Leaders”

  1. Trump should just declare that the leaks came from Russia. That way, the liberals will just ignore them as interference with the U.S. Government.

  2. If this type of leak happened during the Obama administration, Rachel Maddow’s head would explode.

    1. Actually, this sort of leak did happen all the time with Obama , and Maddow, to her complete shame, said nothing. But then, neither did Fox, nor any of the rests of the MSM Why? Because the leaks related to facts that neither Fox NOR Maddow nor any of them – and far more importantly the people behind them, wanted the public to know about. Proof? If the leaks had not happened, the toxic TPP trade deal and it’s evil siblings, would now be the law of the land – to mention just one instance.

      And both Maddow AND Fox news are still absolutely quiet about the toxic elements being put into the New NAFTA agreement currently being drafted. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/26/trumps-re-negotiation-proposal-will-make-nafta-worse/ It is leaking out, but Trump and/or the establishment, assumes, somewhat correctly, that the other FAKE scandals are covering it up from public awareness.

      The only difference is that now the MSM WANTS these particular leaks about phone conversations that reveal nothing other than Trump’s lies, to become public because 1) they don’t put corporate interests at risk, and 2) they feel Trump is “going it alone”, meaning he is not marching lock step with the establishment interests. Unfortunately, simply marching to his own tune, does not mean that everything President Trump does is for the good of the people.

      Some would have us believe our Constitution was drafted purely for the mega corporations that exist today, and that humans, if they exist at all, exist solely for the the benefit and at the pleasure of these corporations, including the military, but it should be obvious to anyone, to put it simply, that’s full ass-backwards.

      1. Great comment, BB, but unfortunately the military has been used as the enforcer arm of US businesses since the late 1800s (if not before). I see nothing on the horizon to convince me that will change.

        1. Great comment, BB, but unfortunately the military has been used as the enforcer arm of US businesses since the late 1800s (if not before). I

          Where?

                1. I still haven’t got an answer from either one of you. The menu of places where U.S. troops have been during the ante-bellum period is not that long. You got some place in mind?

                    1. You’ve forgotten his initial thesis, that the US Armed Forces is ‘the enforcer arm for U.S Businesses”. No, the Spanish-American War is not an example of that. As for Smedley Butler, he was a after his retirement a man who trafficked in political fantasy. (Notably that some random bond salesman was plotting to overthrow Pres. Roosevelt). No clue why you’d cite him as an authority on political matters.

          2. DSS is such a stalwart of imperial innocence; it’s would be endearing if not being so obtuse.

            1. Paul, you don’t understand. The United Fruit Company was strictly business. The martyrdom of Sandino was strictly politics. Butler undermined the Chinese fire wall betwixt the twain and therefore exceeded his authority. Why can’t you see this, Paul.

      2. Big difference here: The leaks concerning TPP did not involve classified information. Leaks revealing the content of encrypted Russian communications are classified at the highest levels.

        1. The leaks being discussed in this post are Trump’s conversation between Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Given that, it seems fair to assume that RSA was referring to those leaks, i.e. the leaks discussed in the post, rather than some vague unidentified encrypted Russian information.

          More importantly, on security classifications, I fail to see how screening the public from awareness that their President or some other higher up is lying through his or her teeth to them is a matter of great national security, nor how spending the public’s tax dollars for the express purpose of keeping them ignorant of such scurrilous activity is in any way protecting the people. If this is the purpose of National Security, it is a corrupt system designed to protect corrupt people and corrupt institutions, certainly not the people. It may and probably does protect giant corporations and our kleptocratic political class even if only in the short term (As Mark Twain said, lies are so damn hard to maintain).

          That we are protecting foreign powers and any assumed right they may have to privacy when they are speaking to our public figures strike me as equally ludicrous when the real purpose is so frequently and so obviously to protect our leaders or our corporate robber barrons from embarrassment or scandal. Political discussions in any real democracy should be exemplars of openness and the sham of “national security” should not be used to protect anyone’s lies or other malfeasance. Foreign leaders should be aware of that before they engage.

          Finally, and related only to such leaks as reveal corruption (and I include lying in that), I am very disappointed in those of both political extremes and their descent into the worst kinds of hypocrisy for they clearly fail to condemn such patently non security related breeches of information when it’s not “their” guy in power, or when the leaks do indeed threaten national security but also shed a favorable light upon such and such a politician from “their” tribe. Such is tribal security, not national security. In such an environment, the proclaimed virtues of the “rule of law” (for me but not for thee) ring hollow.

    2. “this type of leak” would never have come from the Obama administration, because President Obama didn’t bully people, especially the heads of foreign governments.

      2. “this type of leak” would never have come from the Obama administration, because President Obama didn’t bully people, especially the heads of foreign governments.

        LOL! It would be difficult to do while kneeling.

        2. Paul, you made Olly’s kneeling comment read more smartly than Olly had intended.

      3. President Obama didn’t bully people,

        No, he relied on Lois Lerner to do that.

        1. What did Lois Lerner have to do with making Olly’s comment read more smartly than Olly had intended?

  3. Just as I found the content of the Clinton emails important, no matter the legality of their being leaked, so I find the Trump conversations – in so far as they point out a total disregard, almost a sneer, for what is “fed” to the public, deplorable.

    As to the leaks being Federal crimes; whether it be Clinton or Trump, If our laws are used to protect our political elites from their own wrong doing, as if conning the public for political gain is some sort of legal right of the POTUS or other high political figures, then they are poor laws indeed.

      1. Ugg! Here it comes. Note, I just went over and looked, the same article is posted on NC links today.

        Great catch Jill, depressing as it is.

        1. Yes, and Jeff has vowed to go after the leakers (except for those the IC and Trump approved)!

          I saw the chip article also. CREEEEPPPPYYY!

  4. It doesn’t seem to occur to Turley that Trump might have a different conception of what amounts to a ‘heated conversation’ than does a Professor at GW. The moderator cannot help himself: about every third time he posts, the contours of the bubble he lives in are revealed.

    1. I agree DSS. A great many people, including our blog host are still trying to measure President Trump by a standard that he clearly doesn’t fit. It makes me laugh in the way Glover and Pesci laughed at the guy in the S.A. consulate. Trump has shifted the political paradigm and his opponents clearly won’t accept it.

      https://youtu.be/2y5g_pNl8bc

      1. I don’t like dictatorships, so that is a political paradigm that I, and millions others, refuse to accept.

        2. I don’t like dictatorships, so that is a political paradigm that I, and millions others, refuse to accept.

          LOL! That’s What Happened. Hillary. 😉

  5. Maybe I missed it, but how do we know the leaks did not come from the Mexican and Australian ends of the conversations? Also, are these supposed transcripts supported by audio? If not, the transcripts could have been edited for maximum effect. Then the Trump administration would have to release the audio to refute this or just leave it out there blowing in the wind.

    I couldn’t care less about the conversation, but the leakers, fry them.

    1. Olly,

      Why don’t you care about the content? Trump lied to you as his supporter. He told you the wall was a really big deal, that he would get right on it, etc. Now you hear his private, truthful position–it’s not that big of a deal. Like Clinton, Trump has a public position to fool his voters and a private position which is the opposite of his public position.

      Didn’t you see what happened when all the Obama supporters excused his every betrayal? Why be so supine in the face of being lied to and manipulated? I just don’t get this.

      1. Why don’t you care about the content?

        Because I’m not stupid enough to believe what they say in the first place. You assume I was or am a Trump supporter. I was not a Clinton supporter, nor would I support any candidate that had proven by their actions not to honor their oath of office.

        My take on candidate Trump is he personally believes in border security and an immigration policy that puts the United States and our citizens first. So far that assessment has proven to hold true. Winning an election begins and ends with what sells. And Trump is a salesman. He sold people on this issue and he used the Mexico is going to pay to build the wall to seal the deal. Anyone stupid enough to think that meant the contractors are going to invoice the Mexican government and they pay up, deserve whatever government they get.

        I almost voted for Obama in ’08 until I could not get an answer to what he wanted the US to look like when he finished fundamentally transforming it. I really don’t put a lot of stock into what politicians say. I do however concern myself with what they do. What bills they support, what policies they put in place.

        1. Olly: if Chump really wanted to round up and deport illegals, all he’d need to do is go to every landscaping, grass mowing company, every pallet factory, non-union construction jobs, every hotel housekeeping, laundry and groundskeeping service, roofing contractors, restaurant kitchens and other low-skill service providers. That’s where they work. It’s already illegal hire undocumented workers, so they could fine the businesses, too and recoup some of the deportation costs. Why doesn’t Chump do this? Because the wealthy business people who pay less than minimum wage, don’t pay benefits or workers comp don’t want to lose their pool of low-skill, low-paid workers, that’s why. So, I fail to see how you can defend Chump’s alleged immigration policy. He already has the tools to do something about it, but he puts on a big show about a wall. How pathetic.

        2. Olly,

          You are conflating two things, building the wall and having Mexico pay for it. Trump said he would build the wall to keep out all the supposed bad people coming to the US from Mexico. His supporters loved this idea and voted for him on the basis of that statement/sentiment/promise. They fully expected him to build the wall. Here he is clearly stating (privately) that building the wall is not a priority for him– the exact opposite of what he told his voters. He willfully deceived his voters. That’s not salesmanship, that’s lying. Lying is an action. The more people excuse lying by politicians, the more harm will come to our nation.

          Trump’s immigration policies do not protect American citizens. For example, you may notice that most of the nations involved in the 9/11 attacks are not on the list of automatic bans. That is an action and I would pay attention to it if I were one of his true believers!

          1. Here he is clearly stating (privately) that building the wall is not a priority for him– the exact opposite of what he told his voters. He willfully deceived his voters. That’s not salesmanship, that’s lying. Lying is an action.

            Nice try. The opposite of building the wall is I am not going to build a wall. But read into his statement whatever gives you the most comfort.

    2. Aye. Some heads need to start rolling in the intelligence services.

      Reuel Marc Gerecht has contended that the CIA (i.e. the agency which hired Aldrich Ames and promoted him several times) has a dysfunctional system for awarding promotions and this accounts for the agency’s ineffectuality. He also contends we had, in the late Cold War period, very few agents of much value in the Kremlin. See Mark Steyn’s observation on the smog coming out of the Agency in 2001: they were telling us that al Qaeda could not be infiltrated, and then we find out that John Walker Lindh walked through the front door.

      If we have a human intelligence agency which cannot recruit agents who know anything or infiltrate any organization, maybe we should just dissolve the agency. Send troops to CIA headquarters to put the place on lockdown and escort the staff out the door. Next thing we could do is separate the cybersecurity component of the NSA from the rest of the organization and play the two off against each other.

    3. Olly, Do you really want to fry the Mexican and Australian heads of state–ad hypothesi? If so, then how will you prove that they colluded with one another to leak in simultaneity information that you couldn’t care less about being damaging to Trump?

  7. Scaramucci’s revenge?? This is Obama/Hillary Chicago politics Deep State revenge.

    1. Who hired Chicago Deep State Politics to work in the Trump administration? Who has failed to fire the same?

    1. In the restroom? because that’s not ‘leaking’…..that’s a ‘discharge’ 😉

    2. Because to them the public is the restroom. That’s why it’s called a Public Restroom.

  10. Clearly Obama is still President. We don’t live in a democracy (democracy never really exists anyway); we live in an Oligarchy of Progressives/Social Justice Warriors/Socialists/Communists/Freemasons who DO CONTROL all aspects of this government. Their loyalty is to their Progressive Communist Agenda—NOT to America. Obama is still President. There is a Coup going on against the Trump. Our vote is being nullified.

    The Swamp Exists. America is a Failed State. We are in a cold civil war–that needs to turn hot.

      1. Still, 3 million more people voted for the other candidate. 64% disapprove of Chump’s job performance and think he isn’t trustworthy, so what’s your point?

        1. Point is that Trump won an electoral landslide over epic loser Hillary Clinton. Point is that we decide elections in this country by electoral college, not popular vote so that talking point is meaningless –except to point out that the Democrat party is now the party of “coastal elites” and totally out of touch with the vast majority of the working class and middle class American people who did not vote for Hillary Clinton. Point is that Democrats under Obama were decimated at every level including the state and local level. Point is that more blue collar Obama Democrats voted for Trump than Hillary Clinton. Point is that polls were dead wrong all during the 2016 campaign and they are wrong now.

          1. The super duper coastal elite T rump family sure sold the country a bill of goods. Did you read what he said about the wall?

            1. Yeah. That we’re gonna built a big beautiful wall and Mexico is gonna pay for it. 🙂

          2. You watch way too much Fox News. There was no “landslide”, except in the mind of the childish egomaniac who occupies the White House. The Electoral College is outdated and not only serves no valid purpose–it undermines the democratic principles upon which this country was founded. “Coastal elites”? You mean people with moral principles, who are educated, and who are offended by a fat bully who brags about sexually assaulting women, who abhor racism, misogyny, making fun of disabled people, chronic lying, and who find the fat, orange blob repulsive? If this is your definition of a “coastal elite”, then count me in, even though I live in a landlocked, solid red state.

            1. Don’t have cable, but if I had to guess I’d say you watch way too much BSNBC. Yes it was an electoral landslide. If you look at all the red on the map you can see that popular support for Hillary was not distributed throughout the country as it was for Trump, so the electoral college did its job -as it has for 200 years. I live in a deep blue coastal state and by ‘coastal elites’ I mean liberal progressives who believe they are morally and intellectually superior to those who do not share their opinion. If Hillary won, we would not only have a corrupt, incompetent, congenital liar in the White House, but also her disgraced, philandering pervert of a husband who didn’t just brag about assaulting women – he actually did it. So spare us your hypocrisy. Bubba has multiple women accusing him of rape and actually settled a sexual assault lawsuit and then was impeached because he lied about using a young intern for oral sex in the Oval Office and then destroyed her life. Yeah, let’s talk about misogyny. Like most of the country, I abhor the Clinton’s and everything they represent. And I don’t have much respect for people who think clever name-calling and petty put downs are useful or effective ways to present your viewpoint.

    2. Wheeler, On the odd chance that, for you, democracy is just another word for Northern Aggression, you really ought not declare war on it and deny its existence with one and the same breath.

  11. I have a leaked transcript of Lincoln skyping Lee at Gettysburg and daring him to charge Cemetery Ridge. No video. Any buyers?

    2. High-water mark of the Confederacy. Armistead’s boys almost accomplished the impossible…almost.

        1. Confederate pre-assault artillery barrage was shooting long; Yankee guns were relatively unscathed when Longstreet’s Corps stepped off for that long walk…Grapeshot does nasty things to infantry formations at point-blank range…

            1. I grew up as a Gettysburg nerd. There are so many what-ifs; and for all three days! From Jeb Stuart not being with the army out on his cavalier raiding, to Heth not pushing against Devin’s cavalry on day one; the nick of time arrival of the Iron Brigade at the railroad cut; A.P. Hill and Jubal Early failing to press to claim a wide-open Cemetery Hill; Joshua Chamberlain’s Maine volunteers barely getting in position to hold the round tops against the best infantry in the Army of Northern Virginia; etc…Basically, the Yankees, for once, lucked into a good tactical position, and their generals didn’t mess it up. On the flip side, Confederate generals didn’t shine as they usually had previously. I’ve made the walk of Pickett’s Charge. It’s lunacy to send such spectacular infantry across that ground straight into the teeth of a dug in, well-armed, artillery-heavy defensive position. Some of the Brigadiers said that before they stepped off; but they still went. Those Americans were seemingly a different breed of cat, until you realize that Americans have fought like that in every war.

          2. I’m embarrassed to report that a good friend and Gettysburg expert corrects me to report that the Union brigade that filled the breach at the Angle was not the 69th New York (Irish Brigade) but the 42nd New York ( Tammany Brigade). Mea culpa but it was a fun narrative. The Irish fought bravely in The Wheat Field.

            1. I think the Yankee unit which most impresses me is the Iron Brigade. They fought–and took casualties–like a Confederate unit and never broke.

                1. Part of the 11th Mississippi in Kemper’s Brigade. They were at hottest part of hell, right next to General Armistead.

                  1. Took musket fire from the left flank of the union army down their lines and eventually just caved in toward the center. Enfilade!

    3. All this Gettysburg talk coupled with radio host Michael Savage opining that we are more divided at this time than at any other time since the Civil War got me thinking. So much so, in fact, that I re-read Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech delivered in 1858 just three years before the unpleasantness at Ft. Sumter. Here’s a chilling passage:

      “In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

      ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’

      I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

      I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

      It will become all one thing or all the other.”

      The chance we might devolve into a n identity politics society is as distressing as it is unacceptable.

      http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/house.htm

      1. Old “Crazy Abe” Lincoln was perceptive and, as evidenced by the Lincoln Memorial, believed by many to have been correct.

        To wit,

        “If all earthly power were given me,” said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, “I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” “…he asked whether freed blacks should be made “politically and socially our equals?” “My own feelings will not admit of this,” he said, “and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not … We can not, then, make them equals.”

        There may have been a couple of Lincoln oversights however, proving that every last thing Lincoln did subsequently was unconstitutional and wrong, the Confederate States of America possessed the same natural, god-given right to secede as Britain in its Brexit, Catalonia, Scotland, Pakistan, Bangladesh, West Virginia and every nation in the former Soviet Union, and the day the unconstitutional Emancipation Proclamation was issued, the legal status of slaves changed from that of “property” to “illegal alien” as the Naturalization Act of 1802 was in effect requiring citizens to be “…free white person(s)…” leaving the consequent deportation as an unresolved “cold case” in dire need of attention to this day.

        The extant unnatural, extinguishable tension 154 years later, offers irrefutable empirical evidence that Lincoln was correct regarding incongruity and compassionate repatriation, which he knew to have been primarily for the benefit of the slaves, providing them with a sense of nationhood and self-esteem which has been absent and deleterious since “Crazy Abe’s” mind was changed on the whole subject.

        1. George, you can’t deport people who were born of fathers who were born of fathers who were of fathers who were born right here in The United States of America.

      2. I’m glad that Mespo rejects an identity politics society. But I have to wonder whether the birthplace of Obama’s father ever really mattered much to George; who, evidently, still dreams of deporting all descendants of former slaves back to Africa despite his previous ‘born of a father who is a citizen’ position.

  12. Here is a thought, destroy from within. This has much bigger long term implications for the future of our country than people seem to realize, so it seems.

    1. It either kills you or makes you stronger…..I am betting on the later…..unfortunately same future.

  13. As MA illustrates, Trump’s followers hate the progressive side and their assortment of scumbags so much that they will maintain that the ship is not sinking, as it is sinking, glub glub.

    1. Or is it the other way around…..Progressives, the Deep State imbeds, and the MSM hate Trump and his supporters in fly-over country so much that they will do everything imaginable to facilitate the sinking of the Good Ship Trump without regard for the harm they are doing to the country by their treasonous actions?

      1. T rump’s ship was about to capsize but was rescued by a a globalist Irishman from Boston named John Kelly.

        1. You could also say that cable news networks like CNN and MSNBC were tanking and their ratings and bottom line were rescued by Trump. Now they are all making money, so do you really believe any of them want to see Trump gone? They have every reason to keep the drama going as long as they can.

  14. I wonder if Trump smokes pot.

    If I was a foreign leader I would never talk to Trump on the phone. Maybe no one should.

    People on the blog here call Trump a “clown”. Ringling Brothers just went out of business. Clowns are odd. They are humans who dress in odd outfits and dork around. Big fake smiles. We do not need clowns in the government. Our Commander in Chief is dangerous. He is about to nuke the midget in N. Korea. If he does the radiation will spread. But the midget deserves it. He and Trump are kinda similar.

    For those of you who voted for Trump : re-think. For those who did not: get some Trump toilet paper and start wiping.

  16. Only transcripts no verifiable sources, no tapes and even so those can be doctored easily. I have ficiton books that cover that procedure. So looks to me …..so far…..much to do about the same old nothing.

  17. Were there tapes or only tanscripts? Any sources by names? Reputable sources? Just wondering.

    However I see we need a fresh cash transfusion ceilinig by Sep 29th? Or all sorts of dire things will happen. Seems remarkably easy to get to Oct. 1st. Just two days later.

    Lay off all the political appointees starting with the last administration so it’s a slow down not a shutdown – by the way the government has never shut down – and then go one step further. Balance the next years budget. Don’t call them back.

  18. I am conflicted. Although I commend the leaker for recognizing the absolute and world-endangering peril this clown creates with his every waking moment as President of the Unites States, the negatives pointed out by JT are problems for the entire United States government and are not limited to just the clown. With the White House operating like a colander, it will be very difficult for any of the very necessary communications with our allies to take place with any degree of frankness.

    1. This is the problem with law. It’s made and implemented by humans for humans. In times of extreme corruption, it becomes abused by those who are put in charge of it, at one and the same time as being deeply honored by some exceptionally honest people.

  20. What happened here is like having sex in a public elevator: it is wrong on many different levels.

    Trump should not have lied. The leaker should not have leaked. It will be interesting to see who the leaker was.

    3. These transcripts were months old, so the leaker probably leaked them months ago and may have already been fired for all we know.

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