President Trump on Saturday denounced the leaks of transcripts of his
telephone conversations with leaders of Australia and Mexico as
“disgraceful” and said his administration was searching “very, very
hard” for the leakers.
Trump, speaking exclusively to Fox News, accused
“Obama people” of giving news organizations embarrassing details of his
recent tense phone conversations with his Australian and Mexican
counterparts, and said that the holdovers from the Obama administration
still serving on his White House and National Security Council staff
were being replaced.
“It’s a disgrace that they leaked because it’s very
much against our country,” Trump said, without stating why he believed
that career civil servants who work in Democratic and Republican
administrations were the source of the leaks. “It’s a very dangerous
thing for this country,” he said.
Trump said that media reports of what appeared to be
angry exchanges between him and the two foreign leaders had been
mischaracterized, and insisted that he had “positive” relations with
both countries and their leaders.
Meanwhile, hours before a federal judge in San
Francisco turned down the Trump administration’s request to reinstate
travel restrictions on refugees and foreign travelers, President Trump
defended his administration’s travel ban, saying the temporary halt was
needed while the administration reviewed vetting procedures to prevent
“people with bad intentions” from entering the country.
“I just want a safe country, and you can’t have a safe country with open and weak borders…you can’t,” he said.
Trump said that the FBI had informed him that the
bureau had “1,000 investigations” ongoing into potential terrorist
threats and lacked sufficient manpower to pursue them all.
Finally, he disputed press reports which
characterized the sanctions he imposed last week on Iran as weak and
ineffective. He said that punishing Tehran for violating United Nations
Security Council restrictions on ballistic missile testing was “the
right thing to do,” and argued that the sanctions were already beginning
to constrain Iranian aggression. Iran, he said, was trying to undermine
and destabilize U.S. allies by exporting sensitive technology to
countries “around the world” and that such aggressive conduct had to be
countered. The sanctions were already working, he asserted. “Have you
noticed they’ve been very quiet in the last two days?”
Trump made these and other comments in a conversation
with three journalists whom he had invited to join him after the 60th
annual International Red Cross ball, a fundraiser for the charity that
was held this year at his club, Mar-a-Lago.
In his first trip back to his home in Palm Beach
since becoming president, Trump answered several questions on
wide-ranging topics from this reporter, Christopher Ruddy, founder and
chief of Newsmax Media, and Melanie Dickinson, president and publisher
of the South Florida Business Journal, an online and print business
publication. Trump and his wife Melania lingered on after the ball to
mix with admirers and some of the estimated 800 Red Cross supporters
attending the black-tie event at Mar-a-lago, which has become known as
“The Winter White House.”
While wealthy supporters of the charity rubbed
shoulders with one another and clustered around the table occupied by
Trump and his wife, eager to congratulate him and take photos with First
Couple, some 4,000 people turned out for an anti-Trump march in West
Palm Beach. Hundreds of protesters made their way from Trump Tower in
West Palm Beach to a staging area near Palm Beach on Bingham Island, and
then to the entrance of the exclusive club, where they shouted
anti-Trump slogans and yelled chants against the new administration’s
policies. Many of the protesters, most of whom were peaceful, carried
placards criticizing Trump, his immigration and other policies, and
several of his wealthy Cabinet nominees. The protest was among the
largest, if not the largest, in recent Palm Beach county history.
Inside the huge ornate ballroom, Trump seemed
particularly insistent on disputing the notion that his travel
restrictions now being challenged by several courts were unpopular.
“They’re very popular,” he insisted. But, he added, he would have
imposed them whether or not Americans approved of them. “I’m not doing
it for popularity. I’m doing it because our country is like a sieve for
people coming in,” he said.
He said that he had learned in his meetings with FBI
officials that the bureau was having a difficult time staffing the more
than 1,000 investigations it was conducting into potential threats to
the country. “There’s no manpower to do them.”
Calls to FBI headquarters regarding the number of
ongoing terror investigations were not returned on this Super Bowl
Sunday. But last summer, James Comey, the FBI director, testified that
the bureau had about 1,000 open terror-related investigations in 2016
and at least one in all of the 50 states. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who
follows counter-terrorism efforts closely, confirmed that senior FBI
officials have spoken of nearly 1,000 ongoing investigations. John
Pistole, the former FBI deputy director, told Fox News last summer that
the FBI lacked the resources and legal authority to maintain
investigations “on everybody they talk to,” he said. The FBI had
perpetrators of the terror attacks carried out in Orlando, San
Bernardino, and Boston under surveillance for a time, but closed out
their inquiries before the attacks.
Trump said Saturday night that many Americans did not
realize the danger posed by America’s “open” borders and insufficient
vetting. “You don’t realize it,” he said.
However, groups helping asylum seekers, refugees, and
other civil and human rights groups point out that no Americans have
been killed in domestic terror attacks by asylum seekers and refugees
from the seven Middle Eastern countries with majority Muslim populations
who would be barred from entering the U.S. for 120 days while the
administration reviews its immigration and vetting policies.
Under Trump’s executive order, refugees from Syria
would be permanently barred, exclusions whose legality several civil
rights and civil liberties experts and groups have challenged. They also
argue that political refugees are already among the most heavily vetted
of all immigrants.
“I’m doing this because our country is like a sieve for people coming in,” Trump said.
One former CIA official said that while the
administration’s implementation of its executive order was “clumsy, the
concerns behind it are real.” But the constitutionality of the executive
order seems headed for a Supreme Court challenge.
The FBI also did not return calls for comment Sunday
on whether it was conducting an investigation into the leaking of
transcripts of the president's telephone calls with foreign leaders.
While White House press spokesman Sean Spicer recently said that the
president had asked his team to “to look into this because those are
very serious implications," Trump had not previously discussed his own
view of the embarrassing leaks. His comments Saturday underscored his
concern about what has become widespread early on in his administration —
the unauthorized distribution of material highlighting numerous
exaggerations and false statements by him and senior members of his
White House and other incidents that seem to reflect incompetence or
inexperience.
Trump seemed particularly anxious to reinforce his
spokesman’s descriptions of his conversations with the leaders of
Australia and Mexico as “candid," but respectful. Spicer noted that both
leaders have disputed some of the details as reported.
Based on the transcripts, the Washington Post and
several media outlets, for instance, reported that Trump hung up on
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after an angry discussion of a
refugee swap negotiated by former President Obama. In a recent
interview, Turnbull called his discussion with Trump “frank” but said
that Trump had agreed to abide by the refugee swap negotiated by former
President Barack Obama. In one interview, he said it had been a "good
week" for Australia.
In an earlier call with Mexican President Enrique
Pena Nieto, Trump apparently threatened to send the U.S. military to
Mexico to stop drug cartels -- according to a transcript published by a
Mexican news organization and the Associated Press. The White House
later said the comments were intended to be “lighthearted.”
