A president who demands loyalty finds it fleeting in DC

2018-08-24 13:03 Last Updated At：14:30

Et tu, Michael Cohen?

Loyalty has long been a core value for President Donald Trump. But he's learning the hard way that in politics, it doesn't always last.

Cohen, the president's former personal attorney, this week implicated the president in a stunning plea deal. Days later, word surfaced that David Pecker, a longtime Trump friend and media boss, also was cooperating with prosecutors.

Taking the Cohen news as a personal betrayal, Trump criticized his longtime fixer for "flipping," saying on "Fox and Friends" that such double-crossers "make up things" to get reduced prison time and become "a national hero."

The defection of Cohen, who had once grandly declared he would "take a bullet" for the president, was deeply troubling to Trump. And the lawyer is just one in a series of former Trump loyalists who have distanced themselves from the president, intent on saving themselves in a series of nasty legal and political battles. The growing list includes Pecker, former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Pecker, a Trump confidant and chief executive of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors in exchange for providing information in the criminal investigation into hush payments made by Cohen on Trump's behalf before the 2016 election, media outlets reported Thursday.

A senior White House official said the president was undoubtedly frustrated and surprised by the latest developments, particularly campaign finance-related charges against Cohen, as evidenced by Trump's tweets and public statements. But the official disputed the notion that the president was visibly upset over the news. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, said Trump carried out his normal complement of meetings Thursday and bantered as usual with staff and lawmakers who were at the White House.

The official said Trump and his aides have grown accustomed to being smacked with bad news when they look up at the television — and their reactions are more muted than when Trump first took office.

But Manigault Newman, a former contestant on "The Apprentice," outraged the president last week with the release of a tell-all book and series of secretly recorded audiotapes, as she accused Trump of being racist and suffering from a mental decline.

Trump is still stung by the decision of Flynn, his first national security adviser, to plead guilty to lying to the FBI last year about his contacts with a Russian official in exchange for cooperating with authorities in the probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

And he was irate when former strategist Steve Bannon was quoted in Michael Wolff's book, "Fire and Fury," as saying it was "treasonous" for Donald Trump Jr. and others to meet during the 2016 campaign with a Russian attorney who claimed to have incriminating information about Hillary Clinton.

Yet no other administration figure has caused Trump more agitation than Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who infuriated the president by recusing himself from the Mueller investigation. Trump re-ignited his feud with the former Alabama senator Thursday by complaining in the Fox interview that Sessions "never took control of the Justice Department."

"He took the job and then he said I'm going to recuse myself. I said, 'What kind of a man is this?' And by the way, he was on the campaign. You know the only reason I gave him the job because I felt loyalty, he was an original supporter," Trump said.

Sessions responded that he and his department "will not be improperly influenced by political considerations," adding to tension over his decision to recuse himself. People close to the president said they were not aware of any immediate plans to dismiss Sessions, at least before the midterm elections.

Throughout his time in office, Trump has demanded dramatic shows of fealty.

When then-FBI Director James Comey met with Trump early in the administration, he said the president asked him if he wanted to stay in his role and declared: "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty." Trump fired Comey months later.

During an early Cabinet meeting, Trump's team appeared to compete to praise the president the most. Then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus stated, "We thank you for the opportunity and blessing to serve your agenda."

Before entering politics, Trump ran his business with a close circle of advisers, including his children, and during his campaign he leaned heavily on a handful of aides. He has long viewed loyalty as paramount.

Trump has openly mused about the need for another Roy Cohn, the larger-than-life New York attorney who guided the future president in New York's media and real estate landscape during the 1970s. But for someone who insisted on ironclad loyalty, those types of friendships have only gone so far in Washington.

Trump has groused privately that his top attorney in the Mueller probe, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, was in Scotland for a golf vacation when the Cohen and Manafort news broke.

Trump told "Fox and Friends" that for "30, 40 years I've been watching flippers. Everything's wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they — they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go."

The president said the decision by those under legal scrutiny to cooperate with prosecutors "almost ought to be illegal."

"They go from 10 years to they're a national hero," he said. "They have a statue erected in their honor. It's not a fair thing."

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

Trump says he's 'not satisfied' with Iran's proposal to end the war

ISLAMABAD (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he was “not satisfied” with Iran’s latest proposal in negotiations to end the war between the countries, rejecting the plan almost as soon as it was delivered.

Iran handed over its latest proposal for negotiations to mediators in Pakistan on Thursday night, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported.

“They want to make a deal, I’m not satisfied with it, so we’ll see what happen,” Trump told reporters Friday at the White House.

The shaky three-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran appears to still be holding though both countries have traded accusations of violations.

Trump did not elaborate on what he saw as the latest proposal’s shortcomings. “They’re asking for things I can’t agree to,” he said.

Negotiations have continued by phone after Trump called off his envoys’ trip to Pakistan last week, the president said. He expressed frustration with Iran’s leadership, describing it as fractured.

“It’s a very disjointed leadership,” he said. “They all want to make a deal, but they’re all messed up.”

While the ceasefire has largely halted fighting in Iran, the U.S. and Iran are locked in a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passes in peacetime. A U.S. Navy blockade stopping Iran's tankers from getting out to sea has Iran’s economy reeling. The world economy is also under pressure as Iran maintains its chokehold on the strait.

Trump this week floated a new plan to reopen the critical passageway used by America's Gulf allies to export their oil and gas.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held a flurry of calls on Friday with many of his regional counterparts, including from Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Azerbaijan, to brief them on his country’s latest initiatives to end the war, according to his social media.

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas also spoke over phone Friday with Araghchi. They discussed ongoing diplomatic efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and long-term security arrangements, Kallas’ office said in a statement. Kallas also has been in contact with the EU's Gulf partners.

Pakistan officials have said efforts were continuing to ease tensions between Iran and the U.S. Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that a response from Iran was still awaited.

Meanwhile, Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has been urgently transferred from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran after a “catastrophic deterioration” of her health, her foundation said Friday.

The Narges Mohammadi Foundation said the Nobel Prize laureate had two episodes of complete loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis. She was believed to have suffered a heart attack in late March, according to her lawyers who visited her a few days after the incident.

The hospital transfer comes “after 140 days of systematic medical neglect,” since her arrest on Dec. 12, the foundation said.

Earlier this week, Trump told Axios that he had rejected Iran’s proposal to reopen the strait in exchange for the U.S. Navy lifting its blockade of Iranian ports.

The Iranian proposal would have pushed negotiations on the country’s nuclear program to a later date, two regional officials said earlier this week. The officials with knowledge of the proposal spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door negotiations between Iranian and Pakistani officials.

One of the major reasons Trump has said he went to war was to deny Iran the ability to develop nuclear weapons.

An explosion of leftover bombs from strikes during the war against Iran killed 14 members of the Revolutionary Guard, IRNA and other Iranian media reported Friday.

A report by the Nournews website, believed to be close to Iran’s security, said the explosion happened near the northern city of Zanjan, which is northwest of Tehran.

It was the largest number of Revolutionary Guard members reported to be killed since the ceasefire began on April 7. The report said the ammunition included cluster bombs and air mines dropped during the fighting.

Since the war began on Feb. 28, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, and more than 2,600 people in Lebanon, where new fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah broke out two days after the war started, according to authorities.

Additionally, 24 people have died in Israel and more than 20 in Gulf Arab states. Seventeen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.

Ezzidin reported from Cairo and Binkley from Washington. Associated Press writers Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.