Ivanka and Jared each asked me yesterday, separately, if they could read what I’ve written so far.
“Not until I’m all done,” I said. “Nobody but me reads it until the fall. I told your stepmother the same thing. And her ‘advisers.’”
Actually, when I told the First Lady she couldn’t read it, she thought I was saying she wouldn’t be able to understand it, because of her English. Which made me chuckle, which made her say that not letting her read my book is like how I don’t take my clothes off in front of her. It was just regular husband and wife stuff, and I forgave her before she returned to New York at the end of the weekend. (By the way, getting ready for bed in private is much, much more romantic in my opinion. The dark is romantic. I once asked Hugh Hefner about this, and he totally agrees—Hugh Hefner!)
“With the book,” Jared said, “I just think you need to be especially careful concerning Russia.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” I told him. “I had a chat about it with McGahn [my White House lawyer]. I totally get that as president, regardless of any information I may transmit orally or in written form, I am not thereby waiving my executive privilege from disclosing to Congress or any court or tribunal information or records that may someday be requested or subpoenaed. I get that, Jared.”
“Good,” he replied.
“I’m almost not even mentioning Russia in the book. Except if I make peace with them.”
“Great,” Jared said. “That’s terrific. I’m pleased. Ivanka will be, too. Everyone will be. Because for posterity, you know, as we’ve discussed, if you don’t mention the untrue allegations, then when people read your book in ten years or twenty years, they’ll think it was nothing. Because it is nothing.”
“Right. I get that. Hardly any Russia in the book at all. Maybe one tiny chapter. Maybe not. I haven’t decided. We’ll see.”
But he brought up the “posterity.” This is history. This is history. I can’t ignore it. If I left Russia and Putin out completely, the media and the historians would say, “Oh, look—Trump was hiding something, he was a puppet, he was scared.” I’m not, I’m so not. In fact, it’s the opposite: Other people are hiding so many things, other people are puppets, other people are scared.
So let me use this opportunity to lay out all the facts and come clean, once and for all. Not in a tweet. Not in an off-the-cuff answer at a press conference with the fake media, who are like assassins always trying to take shots at me. Here in a book.
Yes, the president of Russia, incredibly popular with his people and very tough with his enemies, said a few times that “Trump is a genius.” Which gave the pathetic Democrats and the disgusting fake media an opening to start all the Russia talk after they blew the election, even though I don’t know Putin at all. Until I was president, I hadn’t even talked to Putin; I still haven’t met him. I have no deals in Russia, zero investments, I’ve only been to the country for a couple of days for the great 2013 Miss Universe pageant that was held there. All the stories are based on zero proof, nothing but made-up facts by sleazy political operatives, all of them unverified and unverifiable. It’s all a total ruse, a giant hoax, completely phony, 100 percent fake. Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn, who I guess had business dealings in that part of the world, worked for the campaign and, in Flynn’s case for the Administration, very, very briefly, ridiculously briefly—because I fired both of them, and I’m almost certain I never even met that dopey Carter Page, the weak one who smiles all the time like the worst liar ever. I agree that all the prominent Russians who’ve been dying this year, like one a week, including the businessman I mentioned earlier, my personal lawyer’s relative Alex (or Ivan or whatever)—Ukrainian, not Russian, but still—is weird. (My Secret Service guy Anthony says not to worry, but he’ll ask about Geiger counters in the White House and Mar-a-Lago kitchens.) What is definitely horrible are the disgusting leaks by the “intelligence community,” who are acting like the secret police in Russia when it was really bad, or Nazi Germany, and need to be prosecuted and locked up.
By the way, even if I’d wanted to have super top-secret private chats with Putin every couple of days on the famous “red phone,” the hotline between the Oval Office and the Kremlin, which could be great, it turns out I can’t. There is no red phone! Very disappointing. I wondered if maybe the “intelligence” guys were just keeping it from me because of the fake Russia stories, the way my dad used to lock up his secret stuff—which, just to keep me on the ball, he always claimed were my “adoption papers” and “IQ scores.” But Ivanka and Jared confirmed it’s true—no red phone at all, just an e-mail hookup, what the military calls the MOLINK. I thought they were making some kind of army joke, that Russians or presidents who use the system are gay, but it’s short for Moscow Link. When I asked if it was used often, the colonel giving me the tour told me no, hadn’t been used for years until last Halloween— when Obama sent Putin a message warning him that if they messed with the presidential election, America would consider it an act of war. Then I was sure he was joking, yanking my chain, hazing me. (But Ivanka looked it up on her Wikipedia—it’s true! Isn’t it amazing how scared the Democrats were of me winning? And setting up in advance their fake “Russia” excuse for losing?) My end of the MOLINK isn’t even in the Oval Office—it’s downstairs in the Situation Room, and runs from there over to the Pentagon and then to Russia. Which means it really is like how my dad used to lock things away and always kept the car keys in his pocket.
So that’s what I have to say about Russia. The bottom line is, I don’t really pay much attention to the so-called Russia stories about me and my campaign, because I’ve got so many, many more important things to deal with as president.