(FOREIGN) Trump Calls Wall Talks ‘Waste of Time’ and Dismisses Investigations

 

President Trump declared on Thursday that he has all but given up on negotiations with Congress over his border wall and will proceed without lawmakers even as he dismissed any suggestions of wrongdoing in the investigations that have ensnared his associates.

  In an interview in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump called the talks “a waste of time” and indicated he will most likely take action on his own when they officially end in two weeks. At the same time, he expressed optimism about reaching a trade deal with China and denied being at odds with his intelligence chiefs.

  “I think Nancy Pelosi is hurting our country very badly by doing what’s she doing and, ultimately, I think I’ve set the table very nicely,” Mr. Trump said. While he would not directly say that he plans to declare a national emergency to build the wall, he added: “I’ve set the table. I’ve set the stage for doing what I’m going to do.”
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Addressing a wide range of subjects, Mr. Trump brushed off the investigations that have consumed so much of his presidency, saying that his lawyers have been reassured by the outgoing deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, that the president himself was not a target. Mr. Trump said he never spoke with Roger J. Stone Jr., his longtime associate who was indicted last week, about WikiLeaks and the stolen Democratic emails it posted during the 2016 election, nor did he direct anyone to do so.


  “No, I didn’t. I never did,” he said of speaking with Mr. Stone on the subject. Did he ever direct anyone to get in touch with Mr. Stone about WikiLeaks? “Never did,” he repeated. The president dismissed the importance of the proposed Trump Tower his team was seeking to build in Moscow at the height of the election, and he denied his own lawyer’s account of how late in the campaign he was still discussing the project. He also denied that his Twitter messages about former associates who are cooperating with prosecutors amount to witness tampering.

  The interview came on a busy day at the White House as the president seeks to rebound from the 35-day partial government shutdown that failed to force Democrats to finance his wall. Fresh from a meeting with China’s vice premier, Mr. Trump seemed relaxed and confident as he sought to make his case, distributing handouts including, at one point, printed copies of two tweets sent out in his name even as he was speaking with his visitors.

   The interview was arranged after Mr. Trump reached out to A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, and invited him for an off-the-record dinner. Mr. Sulzberger declined, saying he would prefer an on-the-record interview that included two of his reporters. The president agreed.

   Mr. Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk, sipping periodically from a glass of Diet Coke with ice cubes floating in it and resting on a gold coaster. His acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney; his senior communications adviser, Bill Shine; and his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, sat in on the session with Mr. Sulzberger and the two Times reporters.

NEWYORK TIMES