‘It works out actually better’: When Trump loses, he’s quick to tout Plan B as the real victory

Washington Post logoAfter fighting for months in court to try to get a citizenship question on the 2020 Census — and briefly overruling his own Justice Department’s legal surrender — Trump abandoned the effort in a manner that had a familiar plot twist: A surprise backup plan that, in Trump’s view, is actually better than the original plan.

“It’s deeply regrettable, but it will not stop us from collecting the needed information — and I think even in greater detail and more accurately,” Trump said during a Rose Garden news conference Thursday. “Ultimately, this will allow us to have an even more complete count of citizens than through asking the single question alone. It will be, we think, far more accurate.”

It’s part of a pattern that Trump has developed during a presidency in which many of his most hard-fought battles have ended in defeat or awkward pivots to secondary options.

View the complete July 13 article by Toluse Olorunnipa on The Washington Post website here.

What’s the evidence for ‘spying’ on Trump’s campaign? Here’s your guide.

Attorney General William P. Barr has indicated that he is troubled by the possibility that the FBI conducted surveillance on the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. The president has regularly tweeted that he was a victim of spying. Trump’s allies in Congress have reiterated that claim.

There are two main threads to the accusations of spying: contacts by FBI-linked operatives with George Papadopoulos, a young Trump foreign policy aide, and federal court surveillance of Carter Page after he was ousted by the campaign. For instance, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted:

“Now we know they spied on at least two American citizens associated with the Trump campaign 1) Carter Page — using the false Dossier as the basis for a secret warrant 2) George Papadopolous — set up by an FBI agent posing as a Cambridge professor’s assistant.”

View the complete May 6 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.