With a single word -- 'lover' -- Trump employs familiar playbook in tweaking his investigators
During years of scrutiny from prosecutors, Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to deflect attention from himself by making the personal lives of investigators ripe for derision and ridicule
WASHINGTON (AP) — Each time Donald Trump refers to a Georgia prosecutor 's colleague as her “lover,” he's invoking a strikingly familiar turn of phrase.
After all, Trump as president repeatedly used the same word to mock two FBI officials, including an agent who helped lead the Russia election interference probe, after revelations that the pair had an extramarital relationship and had traded pejorative text messages about him.
Throughout years of scrutiny from prosecutors, culminating in 91 felony counts, Trump has repeatedly sought to deflect attention from himself by making the personal lives of investigators ripe for derision and ridicule. He's jumped on allegations of affairs and leveled claims of bias against agents, prosecutors and judges. He's also been quick to exploit the sometimes questionable decision-making, or occasional outright protocol breaches, by officials investigating him as a means to try to discredit entire inquiries.
The strategy underscores the extent to which Trump views his four criminal cases as battles to be won not just in a courtroom but in the court of public opinion, where attacks on officials — both for groundless reasons but also for actual judgment lapses and unforced errors — are capable of shaping perception of investigations and distracting from the underlying allegations of the probes.
