LEGAL/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WOMEN: “President Donald Trump and his aides moved quickly Wednesday [8-22-18] to insulate themselves from the legal firestorm encircling the White House by writing their own version of reality and attacking anybody who contests it. In the president’s alternate universe, the campaign violations his former attorney pleaded guilty to are ‘not a crime’; the hush payments meant to quiet two women’s affair allegations came to his attention only ‘later on’; and a jury’s guilty verdicts against his former campaign manager were the latest evidence of a rigged witch hunt. A day after two of his former advisers were hit in the criminal proceedings, Trump is circling the wagons, showing no signs of ceding ground and relying on his favorite outlets — Twitter and Fox News — to launch a counterattack. And all the while, White House aides insist, against all odds, that everything is just fine. Two senior administration officials tried to make the case that it was ‘business as usual’ at the White House on Wednesday. The president ‘is in a great mood,’ said one of the officials, shortly after Trump sat down for an interview with Fox News. In public, Trump allies, surrogates, and current and former White House aides dodged questions about the president’s future, while also casting the latest developments as part of the ongoing roller coaster of Trump’s White House. Downplaying the blockbuster legal developments, they argued that Tuesday [8-21-18] was just the latest in a series of crises that all eventually blow over and never seem to hurt the president’s standing with his base.”
–Andrew Restuccia and Nancy Cook, “Trump paints his own reality amid legal fallout,” Politico, August 22, 2018 10:54 pm