Tag: Michael Flynn

  • As The Donald Turns; The Interview

    As The Donald Turns; The Interview

    We have seen President Trump do so many one-on-one interviews over his two-plus years in the White House. Most of them have been with stenographers who pose as journalists at Fox. Others have been with regular network folks. Still, we are routinely perplexed at how challenging questions are left on the table. We get that it must be daunting to interview the president, any president. And no reporter wants to lose their White House access. So, the follow-ups are not asked and the answers are not challenged. That is where your valiant crew at As The Donald Turns comes in. We decided it was our turn to take a stab at the “interview” process with the president, (or at least as we envision it). This episode, “The Interview.”

    As The Donald Turns; The Interview

    ATDT: President Trump, we thank you for taking this time today.

    POTUS: I had a very busy executive time today. We are doing a very big amount of lots of things, and they are going to be beautiful, and special for the American people, and I wanted the chance to discuss them with you.

    ATDT: Before we get to all of those things you are working on, we’d like to ask about the Mueller probe.

    POTUS: That is an awful witch hunt! The worst in American history. It is presidential harassment, is what they call it. People say they have never seen anything like it. All because Hillary lost!

    As The Donald Turns; The Interview
    U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an interview in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    ATDT: Mr. President, we hate to interrupt, but it is a fact that many from your campaign staff and inner circle have either been indicted, charged, or pleaded guilty. Doesn’t that mean this was not a witch hunt?

    POTUS: The biggest witch hunt ever! There has been no collusion. Senator Burr, highly respected as a legal genius, said they found no collusion.

    ATDT: Excuse us sir, but that was just one senator, not his entire committee, and you didn’t really answer our question. Many in your inner circle have been caught. You promised America you always hired the best people. Were these the best people?

    POTUS: Yes, they were the best. Paul Manafort only worked for me for about 12 days….

    ATDT: Excuse us sir, but he ran your campaign for nearly six months….

    POTUS: Excuse me, excuse me….he had a minor role for a few weeks, but he was the best when he did it. Not so good before and not so good after but he was the best campaign chairman ever for those weeks. Everyone tells me they never saw anything like it.

    ATDT: And what about General Flynn ?

    POTUS: Who?

    ATDT: Mike Flynn? Worked on your campaign? Served as National Security Advisor? Turned out he was a foreign agent while he was sitting in on intel meetings for the US?

    POTUS: Never heard of him. Must have been a lower level guy. You know we get these people who wanted to hang around the campaign so they can write a book later.

    ATDT: What about Michael Cohen? He was part of your inner circle for decades, but committing numerous federal crimes in your name and on your behalf while he was part of that inner circle.

    As The Donald Turns; The Interview
    Fie photo. Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)

    POTUS: He was a low-level legal assistant, like a paralegal, they call them. He was a great legal guy and then I found out he recorded me. So, it turns out he really was not very important. I don’t know if he even had a law license. Other people told me I should hire him and I felt sorry for him because he worked for a cab company or something…..

    ATDT: Uh, sir, he borrowed money from the Russian mob to buy New York taxi franchises.

    POTUS: Exactly. He drove cabs or something and I took him off the streets, and then he recorded calls…very disloyal and a bad lawyer….so I think he is driving cabs again, I don’t know.

    ATDT: Ok, this is going nowhere. Let’s change subjects. Sir, when the attorney general gets the Mueller report, you likely will be in Vietnam meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. What are your goals for the second summit?

    POTUS: Well as you know, Barack Obama had nearly pushed the nuclear button on North Korea prior to leaving office. His finger was on the button at one point, but my button is bigger.

    ATDT: Uh, excuse us sir, but there is zero proof that is true.

    POTUS: Well many people have told me that I am completely responsible for ending North Korea’s nuclear program. Kim Jong Un says I am like a very tan uncle to him and he trusts me, and everything we have done has worked. North Korea can be a wealthy nation someday, and they have stopped launching missiles.

    As The Donald Turns; The Interview
    HANOI, VIETNAM – FEBRUARY 20: Barber Tuan Duong performs a Kim Jong Un haircut on his customer on February 20, 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam. In honor of an upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Feb. 27-28, Tuan Duong Beauty Academy is offering free haircuts to anyone wanting to copy their distinctive locks. (Photo by Linh Pham/Getty Images)

    ATDT: Sir, we have this list; the US, India, China, France, Russia, Great Britain, Israel and Pakistan. They also are not launching missiles, because they have completed nuclear programs. They have no need to launch test missiles. Doesn’t it seem likely that North Korea now belongs on that list.

    POTUS: Yes! Exactly, no country is ever testing missiles since I took over as president. I have changed all of it. The world trusts the United States again for the first time since Andrew Jackson was president. He was a great president, you know. He helped the Indians move to new lands, and only in places like Texas and Kansas do the textbooks give him credit for it. And now, no one is firing nuclear missiles, and everyone is saying they have never seen anything like it because of me.

    ATDT: Ok, sir. They have not been firing the missiles, because they have full nuclear capability and so now does North Korea, but we will move on. Sir, this is a difficult subject to discuss. There seems to be a gap between many of your statements, and the truth. You said you ordered FEMA to withhold aid to California disaster victims unless the state changed its forest practices. FEMA acknowledged today that it never got any order. You have said here are at least 25 million undocumented immigrants in the country, but your own Department of Homeland Security says it is closer to 11 million. You have not told the truth about illegal votes, crime in El Paso, and certainly not the border wall. In your campaign, you kept saying Mexico would pay for it, and now you are holding the American taxpayer hostage. Have you betrayed your supporters?

    POTUS: My supporters are the greatest! We have rallies and they are the biggest crowds ever in those arenas. You saw that we had 30,000 people inside and out in El Paso.

    ATDT: Sir, according to the local authorities you had 10,000, inside and out.

    POTUS: No, they were trying to keep the number low, because they support that Beto guy, but my crowds are the biggest and they support me no matter what I say. They buy MAGA hats and chant about the wall. It’s going to be built and it doesn’t matter who pays for it because my supporters only care about what I tell them is important because they know that people say I am the most successful president ever.

    I have given them a chance to shout out loud about what is on their mind and believe they are right and no other president has ever done that and they turn into the biggest crowds any president has ever had. Tomorrow I will be giving a speech about the fake news…the fake news is what I call it except great journalists like Lou Dobbs, and Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity, and those people that sit on the couch in the morning. They are all the real media. But my supporters that know I am the one source to believe.

    As The Donald Turns; The Interview
    File photo.  Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)

    ATDT: Mr. President, this interview has been equal parts frightening and enlightening. We now understand the danger of follow-up questions and will just quit while we are behind. Thank you for your time.

    POTUS: I will review your work tomorrow on Twitter.

     

     

  • As The Donald Turns; We Told You So

    As The Donald Turns; We Told You So

    If only the staff at As The Donald Turns was the type to say “We told you so.” If we were the type to say we told you so, we would certainly be sitting right here, right now, saying “we told you so.” We are a little slow with production tonight because we found that All The President’s Men was on. For the staff at As The Donald Turns, that is a world stopping event. We told you so…..

    As The Donald Turns; We Told You So

    • We told you so. Some seven months ago, the staff told you to keep your eyes and ears open for Michael Flynn. We told you that media stories claiming he was not getting any immunity because he had nothing to offer were wrong. It was true and we told you so. We told you Flynn was going to prison and for how long was a matter to be determined by how much he rolled over on the Trump administration. The story went that he was upset with the way he was dismissed, and he has a well-known reputation for being vengeful.

    As The Donald Turns
    Michael Flynn, former U.S. national security advisor, left, arrives at the U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Dec. 1, 2017. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    By credible sources, special investigator Robert Mueller had many things to hang over Flynn. Conspiracy to commit a kidnapping. Flynn was set to receive $15 million for the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Michigan and returning him to the president of Turkey for execution. The cleric’s alleged crime was voicing support for a coup in Turkey during the Summer. Flynn could have been charged with money laundering. Flynn could have been charged with failing to register as an agent of a foreign government.

    What Flynn was charged with was lying to the FBI. He was asked about his communications with Russian operatives and he lied to the FBI. Here is a clue for any of you who potentially get interrogated by the FBI. If they are asking you specific questions, they probably already know the answers.
    So, the lying charge is worth five years in the federal hoosgow. He continues to cooperate with the investigation. We say continues, because we told you months ago that he would be cooperating, and he has been. The other charges have not been dropped. They continue to hang over him like an anvil in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

    As The Donald Turns

    If Flynn continues to sing like a canary, he gets the one charge. If something goes awry, he faces decades in prison. Some other charges, like money laundering can also be adapted to state charges so that no pardon from Donald will get him out of it.

    • Donald sent out a tweet on Saturday backing his former National Security Advisor:

    Donald J. Trump‏Verified account Dec 2
    “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”

    Donald admitted he knew that Flynn lied to the FBI. Yet, when he fired him he said he did so because he lied to the vice president. Ooooppps.

    Not to worry, Donald’s attorney John Dowd stepped in and said he wrote the tweet, and someone else posted it for Donald. Hold on to your autographed Pete Rose betting slips here people. (We will take moment while you Google John Dowd, so as to understand the reference). The White House, particularly Sparkle Pony Spicer and Sarah Sanders, has always maintained that the tweets are official communication from Donald. Are we to believe that Donald’s personal attorney is issuing official statements from the office of the president?

    As The Donald Turns
    John Dowd, part of President Donald Trump’s personal legal team. Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    If it is true, then, Mr. Dowd, the Emory University School of Law is on line three for you. They would like their law degree back because you used the word “pled” instead of “pleaded.” They prefer to not have legal illiteracy attached to their fine institution. If it is not true than the Donald’s personal attorney just fell on the sword for something best left to the White House Counsel.

    • As we have told you before, when it is time to zig, Donald likes to zag. Monday brought a series of misdirection plays. Dowd issued a statement saying all this should end because the president cannot obstruct justice. He did not mean he is not capable of doing it. Clearly, Donald is capable and has done it with a high degree of success to this point. No, Dowd meant that if the president does it, it is not illegal. Where have we heard that before? Sounds familiar.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiHN3IJ_j8A

    Reality is here. No president has ever been trotted before a court for criminal filings on obstruction of justice charges. They were however, the first issue in the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. It is clear he has done that. When James Comey refused to halt the investigation he was fired. What is not clear is if Paul Ryan wants to be president bad enough to go after Donald and the Vice President because they both knew about the lies well in advance of any firing, and allowed the infected Flynn to continue to negotiate with foreign countries on behalf of the US.

    • Donald also became your personal TV guide Monday:

    Donald J. Trump‏Verified account 13h13 hours ago
    “A must watch: Legal Scholar Alan Dershowitz was just on @foxandfriends talking of what is going on with respect to the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history. Enjoy!”

    Donald continuing to promote his favorite TV show that he watches for three hours a day while saying he has no time for TV. The former great legal mind, Dershowitz, pushed the Donald’s agenda; why is Hillary not being investigated for lying to the FBI, even while he admitted she was never asked to give sworn testimony, so lying is not really an issue.

    But the other reality is this. The GOP owns the House committees. They own the Senate committees. You want to investigate a private citizen under those terms, have at it. Haul her in front of a Senate Select Committee. Start there. But you won’t because the House and Senate spent millions on 13 Benghazi hearings and you got “nuttin’” out of them. Not a thing. Have the guts or shut up already.

    • We told you so about KT McFarland. She has virtually been sent to the other side of the globe, because no head of the NSA wanted to work with her. So now the ambassador to Singapore is under scrutiny because it turns out she saw emails about Flynn and Russia that were also forwarded to Don Jr., Jared Kushner and the vice president’s office. She also lied about her level of knowledge of the issue when she went through her Senate confirmation hearings for the ambassador seat. You know, but Hillary, though……

    As The Donald Turns
    File photo. KT McFarland, former Deputy National Security Adviser. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    • Donald also said the FBI is awful:

    Donald J. Trump‏Verified account Dec 3
    “After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.”

    So Donald has now torn apart the CIA, the DNI, the entire intelligence community, and now the FBI. Someone on staff here at As The Donald Turns, has family in college studying criminology; someone who could possibly work for the FBI someday.

    As The Donald Turns

    So, to Donald, the staff here says, these are hard working people who go from one administration to the next, doing their jobs as the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. Be careful because there is a future college graduate who could be putting you behind bars someday.

    Don’t say we didn’t tell you so…..

  • As The Donald Turns; “Out”

    As The Donald Turns; “Out”

    There are a lot of things that are out in Washington DC right now. Some folks are out of a job, another is out of the bushes. There are some that are out of their minds because there is so much work in trying to make sense of the current circus. And there is a guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who is running out of time. As The Donald Turns present “Out.”

    • The White House is “out” of answers when it comes to why FBI director James Comey was fired. Today, it was said that the president had lost faith in him, and Trump himself said he was not doing a good job. Ironically, at the press briefing seven days ago, Sparkle Pony Spicer said the President has “Great confidence in Director Comey.” Oooops. That went “out” the window quickly.

     

    • Today, White House backup catcher Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Donald had considered firing Comey from the beginning of his administration on January 20th. Wait…which is it? He was going to be fired four months ago? Or we had faith in him last Wednesday? Sanders said Comey “committed atrocities” as FBI Director. Atrocities? We bomb people for atrocities. Is Comey in trouble now that he is “out” of the administration?

     

    • Kellyanne Conway, (yes they dragged her “out” from hiding for press purposes, and because her absence was mocked on Saturday Night Live last weekend), said it goes back to last year. In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo Wednesday, Conway said Comey stepped “out of line” when he went around the chain of command with his public statements about the Hillary/email investigation. Yet it was Donald’s people that hated then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and applauded Comey for being strong. Of course CNN had tape ready, showing Donald on the campaign trail, applauding the efforts to squash Hillary. Conway concluded by saying Donald was doing his job and if more people, like the media, did their jobs instead of complaining, the country would be better off. Conway was close to “out of her mind,” so the interview ended.

     

    • So where was Sparkle Pony? Fortunately for him, he was “out” on military reserve duty today. Last night he was “outside.” A lot. The White House, in its complete bungling of the Comey firing, had no statement ready to go to the media. Spicer cobbled one together, but the emails were not working, so he ended up standing in the doorway of the press office around 5:40 p.m. and shouting a statement to reporters who happened to be nearby. He then vanished, with his staff locking the door leading to his office. Spicer went out on the grounds to make a statement to Fox Business. He soon realized that to get back to his office he would have to go through a swarm of reporters. So he went IN…to the bushes….to hide between two larges shrubs. After he spent several minutes hiding in the bushes, an executive assistant in the press office, emerged and told reporters that Spicer would answer some questions, as long as he was not filmed doing so. Spicer then emerged. ‘Just turn the lights off. Turn the lights off,’ he ordered. … Spicer got his wish and was soon standing in near darkness between two tall hedges, with more than a dozen reporters closely gathered around him. Military reserve duty must be such a welcomed relief.

     

    • So the president, a Russian and Henry Kissinger walk into a room. There is no punchline. This was today’s one scheduled activity for the administration. A meeting between Donald and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was scheduled long before Tuesday night’s debacle. Still, the optics could not be worse. You fire the guy who is leading the investigation into your ties with Russia, and then you meet with their foreign minister the next day. What could be worse? Seriously? This is the Trump Administration. The door is wide open for them to be “out of their league.”. Into the meeting walked Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak…the very one who is suspected of being a Russian spy and is at the center of the Michael Flynn and Carter Page investigations. So in the midst of having the media compare Trump to Richard Nixon, for firing the lead investigator, what else could happen? Funny you should ask…the White House doorbell rings (in theory), and in comes Nixon’s former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger!!! The staff at As The Donald Turns is creative, but man we could not make this stuff up. The US media was “shut out” of the meeting with the Russians but the Russian media was allowed in.

     

    • To add to what is now one of the top sitcoms on TV, we’ll need to hear from someone else tangled in this web. So the media found Vladimir Putin, minutes before he was to take the ice in a hockey match. I swear, we are serious. Putin was asked for his take on the chaos of the last 24 hours. “Your question looks very funny for me,” Putin said through his interpreter. “You see I am going to play hockey, with the hockey fans, and I invite you to do the same.” He then went and played hockey and everyone avoided hitting him so as not to be executed later.

     

    • We leave this episode with a story not about being “out and about” with Russians, but one of being “out of touch.” Back in February, Donald held a ceremony with the heads of many black colleges. He pledged his support for the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, (HBCU’s). They all posed in the Oval Office and there were lots of smiles. Friday, Donald commented in a press gaggle that continued funding support for HBCU’s may be unconstitutional. Wow! Talk about being blindsided. The school presidents did not see that coming, since the government helps fund public universities throughout the country. To make the news more outrageous, Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss was the commencement speaker at Bethune- Cookman University today. She was hastily scheduled in last week. Her reception was about what you would expect given Friday’s news. She was booed and many graduates stood and turned their backs on her as she spoke. At one point, university President Edison Jackson interrupted DeVoss to warn students, “If this behavior continues, we can mail the degrees to you.” After the event, the media was held in the gym for more than an hour by Secret Service and the school, so as not to be able to speak to departing graduates and protestors.

    It is a hard lesson for these school presidents, but one many of us have learned already. Do not pay so much attention to what Donald says, for it is often “out and out” balderdash. Pay attention only to what he does, because that is the true sign of the “outward randomness” of this administration…for however much longer it lasts.

     

  • As The Donald Turns; Who They Are

    As The Donald Turns; Who They Are

    The staff had a theme for this episode of As The Donald Turns, but could not decide to whom we should dedicate it. There is the late Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green with his media tirade about the Chicago Bears, “They are who we thought they were!” Or there is my wife’s favorite, poet laureate Maya Angelou and her quote, “When someone shows who they are, believe them the first time.” We never thought Dennis Green and Maya Angelou would be in the same blog and it is giving us a collective headache, so let’s move forward with “Who They Are.”

    • Tuesday the United States started a trade war with another country. We know who Donald is and so we knew this would happen. Candidate Donald spent a year telling us China and Mexico and India were ripping us off. So Tuesday his Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced trade tariffs with….Canada. Last week in Wisconsin, Donald decried that Canada was making life hard for American dairy farmers. He reiterated that via twitter Tuesday.

    @realDonaldTrump  6h6 hours ago

    “Canada has made business for our dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other border states very difficult. We will not stand for this. Watch!”

    So, we watched and Trump hit back at five Canadian lumber companies with tariffs between 3% and 20% on their imports. To be fair, American lumber companies have regularly complained that their Canadian counterparts get government subsidies and thus it is harder to compete. To be fair, only about 10% of Wisconsin dairy farmers are actually being hurt by Canadian trade policies. To be clear on facts, the US does $400 million a year in agriculture business with Canada, so a fight over milk and toothpicks may not be the best way to make your point. Oh and there is this that we know….Canada is the largest trading partner for 22 different states in the US. Well, at least they were….

    • So Mike Flynn is back in the news. We know him well and he continues to be who we thought he was. As a matter of fact, we have said in this space that we have not heard the end of him. According to folks on the House Oversight Committee, Flynn, the former national security adviser, appears to have violated the law when he took payments from groups associated with foreign governments and never reported them.  OOOPS! This just getting started sports fans….Carter Page, Michael Flynn…we have a hunch it does not end with those two.
    • At his press briefing Tuesday, Sparkle Pony Spicer said the White House did not have the paperwork the House committee was seeking on Flynn, “because the paperwork was done before we took office on January 20th.” Wait, what? That means you have nothing on any of your nominees for any position until after January 20th? Is it because you knew who they were?
    • Hey did you hear the one about the government shutting down Friday? So a president walks into a bar and tells the bartender he’ll have a great, big, beautiful wall….ok….we don’t really have a punch line. It just felt natural to go there. The government officially runs out of operating money Friday night. The normal course, assuming there is no new budget to vote on, is to pass a “continuing resolution,” or CR, for an agreed upon amount of time, (usually at least a couple of weeks), in which Congress agrees to continue to fund all government operations, so people get their social security checks, tax refunds, and parks stay open and government employees continue to come to work. But a rumor broke out early in the week that Donald was going to demand that the first one-billion dollars in funding for his wall along the Mexico border was going to be attached to the CR. That means a vote to continue to operate the federal government was going to include money for the wall. No one really thinks the wall is ever actually going to be built, so this was problematic for lawmakers as they prepared to vote by Friday’s deadline. But we know Donald and we knew the guy who wrote some book about business deals would fold like some well-worn origami. All of a sudden, after phone calls from House and Senate Republicans, the one-billion dollars for the wall is no longer an issue this week. Financing for the wall will not be needed until Fall according to Donald. You know, because Mexico is going to pay for it.
    • Speaking of not knowing how to manage the art of the deal, Donald also promised a big tax cut proposal this week. Said it will probably be the largest tax cut in US History. We are talking bigly stuff here. It is supposed to be announced Wednesday, but it leaked out that he plans to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%. We knew he would. He said as much on the campaign trail and we knew who he was then just as we know now. In other words, the tax cut ain’t happening. At least not to the level Donald thinks it is. See, one of the things he has missed is that the US Government is not run like one of his hotels. He doesn’t just say it, and thus it happens. Budget hawks in Congress have already made it clear that anything that adds to the national deficit will not pass. Sorry, Donald. If it makes you feel any better, your tired old bromide about the exorbitant corporate tax rate in the US turns out to be garbage anyway. With all of the tax loopholes, most corporations are paying around 15% in tax, not 35% as you claim.  You can announce your “plan,” as long as you know what it is…just a plan.
    • Most of you saw the dreadful display Monday, when a web site run by the state department had a fluff piece promoting life at Mar a Lago, Donald’s weekend getaway in West Palm Beach. It even went so far as to call it the “Winter White House.” Uh…no…The White House, in any form, does not charge people $200k per year to belong like Mar a Lago does. Fortunately someone realized that the government promoting the private business enterprises of the president was exceptionally illegal. If there is one thing this administration knows, it is what is illegal.
    • They are who we thought they were when it came to writing emergency measures also. First it was getting smacked down twice by federal judges when it came to the immigration ban, then on Tuesday a federal judge beat down their initiative to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities. Donald is who we thought he was….someone who believed he could govern by executive fiat. A Republican House, a Republican Senate, A Republican president and he can’t get anything of any significance passed to this point.
    • Secretary of State Rex Tillerson knows who he is….the cabinet member who hates talking to the press, ditches them on foreign trips and says he feels no need to have his name in the papers. So he finally hired a spokesperson for the department, Heather Nauert. She used to read three minute news briefs on the Fox morning coffee clatch show, so these press conferences ought to be fun.
    • So a functional illiterate, a self-acknowledged racist and a has-been rocker walk into a room together and it happens to be the Oval Office. Yes, most of you have now seen the people who are who we thought they were. Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent and Kid Rock had dinner with Donald over the weekend. Nugent once called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel who should be hung.” Ok, I was referring to Palin as the illiterate but let’s throw Ted in there as well, because juries are hung, people are hanged and Ted failed basic grammar. None the less being a treasonous threat to the nation’s first black president is good enough to get you a dinner invitation with Donald these days.

    For some, Donald is who we thought he was. For others, he showed who he was last year. They just did not believe him.