In other news, former Trump adviser Carter Page says he won't speak to the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference. He's going to plead the Fifth, he says.
Meanwhile, Turkey has sentenced Wall Street Journal reporter Ayla Albayrak to prison for writing a report on Turkey's war with Kurdish separatists. The good news is Albayrak is currently in New York. She was convicted in absentia.
Finally, New York Magazine's Gabrielle Sherman, who broke the stories on Roger Ailes, reports that people close to Trump says he's "unstable" and "unraveling," among other things.
In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods. Trump’s ire is being fueled by his stalled legislative agenda and, to a surprising degree, by his decision last month to back the losing candidate Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary. “Alabama was a huge blow to his psyche,” a person close to Trump said. “He saw the cult of personality was broken.” [...]
According to two sources familiar with the conversation, Trump vented to his longtime security chief, Keith Schiller, “I hate everyone in the White House! There are a few exceptions, but I hate them!” (A White House official denies this.) Two senior Republican officials said Chief of Staff John Kelly is miserable in his job and is remaining out of a sense of duty to keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision.
One former official even speculated that Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. “Would they tackle him?” the person said.
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