On a day when Donald Trump gave his favorite news network an interview that was to facts what the Twilight Zone was to nonfiction, a federal judge ordered Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manfort to jail amid witness-tampering allegations — and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Guiliani said in effect: big deal on any of this, Trump can “clean up” the Mueller probe legal consequences with pardons.

Manafort’s jailing was the biggest news. Or was it?

A federal judge ordered Paul Manafort to jail Friday over charges he tampered with witnesses while out on bail — a major blow for President Trump’s former campaign chairman as he awaits trial on federal conspiracy and money-laundering charges next month.

“You have abused the trust placed in you six months ago,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told Manafort. “The government motion will be granted, and the defendant will be detained.”

The judge said sending Manafort to a cell was “an extraordinarily difficult decision” but said his conduct — allegedly contacting witnesses in the case in an effort to get them to lie to investigators — left her little choice.

“This is not middle school. I can’t take away his cellphone,” she said. “If I tell him not to call 56 witnesses, will he call the 57th?” She said she should not have to draft a court order spelling out the entire criminal code for him to avoid violations.

“This hearing is not about politics. It is not about the conduct of the office of special counsel. It is about the defendant’s conduct,” Jackson said. “I’m concerned you seem to treat these proceedings as another marketing exercise.”

Manafort was led out of the courtroom by security officers. He turned and gave a last look and wave to his wife, seated in the well of the court. She nodded back to him.

In reality, though, Giuliani’s latest verbal bombshell was bigger news. Some legal experts say it was sending a signal to those who were under pressure by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to hold firm since they won’t have to go jail. Some even suggested it was witness tampering in all but name. It came via this New York Daily News piece:

Rudy Giuliani wants to mop the floor with Robert Mueller.

In one of his most forceful attacks on the special counsel yet, Giuliani on Friday said the Russia investigation could get “cleaned up” with pardons from President Trump in light of Paul Manafort being sent to jail.

Giuliani’s stunning remark came hours after a Washington, D.C., judge revoked Manafort’s bail and ordered him to remain behind bars while awaiting his September trial on charges relating to his shady pro-Russian business dealings in Ukraine. The ruling came after Mueller’s investigators alleged the ex-Trump campaign chairman had attempted to secure false testimony from potential witnesses in the Russia probe.

Giuliani, who worked as a federal prosecutor for nearly a decade, claimed he had seen no evidence to warrant locking up Manafort.

“I don’t understand the justification for putting him in jail,” Giuliani, 74, said. “You put a guy in jail if he’s trying to kill witnesses, not just talking to witnesses.”

Giuliani, who serves as Trump’s personal lawyer, doubled down on his previous call to end the Mueller investigation immediately.

“That kind of investigation should not go forward,” Giuliani said. “It’s time for Justice to investigate the investigators.”

Echoing his boss’ factually dubious claims, Giuliani said a scathing report released by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Thursday shows the Mueller team is “tainted.”

One shift that is now occurring is that the news media that normally tries to avoid the word lie is starting to use it or, at the least edging closer to it.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote an article “The 49 wildest quotes from Donald Trump’s bananas interview with Fox News.” Again, Cillizza was being polite. In terms of accuracy, the interview seemed a bit more nuts than bananas. Here’s part of his column:

Just before 8 a.m. ET Friday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted this: “Wow, the highest rated (by far) morning show, @foxandfriends, is on the Front Lawn of the White House. Maybe I’ll have to take an unannounced trip down to see them?”
And take a trip down to see them he did! Trump strolled out of the White House and over to the North Lawn to chat with “Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy for the better part of 30 minutes.
The interview did not disappoint. Trump, egged on by the cooperative Doocy, sounded off on the inspector general’s report on the 2016 election, how attentive North Koreans are to Kim Jong Un and, well, lots and lots of other stuff.
Here are the 49 lines you need to see.
1. “I was mugged by the media.”
And away we go! (Trump is talking about reporters who tried to ask him questions as he walked to the Fox set on the North Lawn.)
2. “I would bet if you took a poll in the FBI I would win that poll by more than anybody’s won a poll.”
Speechless. And we’re only on Trump’s second quote!
3. “You look at what happened. They were plotting against my election.”
“They” were not. That’s according to the IG report released on Thursday afternoon that makes very clear that mistakes made by then-FBI Director Jim Comey and other within the bureau were not motivated by political bias. Even the texts by FBI agent Peter Strzok suggesting he would do something to ensure Trump lost appear to have been just words with no tangible actions behind them, according to the IG report.
4. “They were actually plotting against my election.”
Again, no.
5. “I’m actually proud because I beat [the] Clinton dynasty. I beat [the] Bush dynasty. Now I guess, hopefully I’m in the process of beating very dishonest intelligence because, what they did was incredible.”
A few things: 1) This is Trump’s intelligence community, right? He is the President. 2) Not everything is a battle for victory between two combatants 3) Equating campaign victories with battles against your own intelligence community is, um, odd.
6. “The end result was wrong. There was total bias.”
What’s remarkable about this quote — in which Trump dismisses the IG report’s finding that there was no political bias influencing the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton — is that he later insists that the same IG report totally exonerates him in the special counsel probe. But, how can it be totally wrong and totally right….[head explodes]
7. “It was interesting, it was a pretty good report.”
WAIT. You JUST said it was “wrong.” Also, relatedly: Chances Trump read the full 568-page report? Is 0% an option?
8. “You read so much about China, you read so much about other countries, we have the great brain power right in this country, I’m proud to say. You’re certainly a member of that group.”
Steve Doocy = “great brain power”
9. “There is no trade war. There is no trade war.”
When you say it twice, it makes it twice as true.
10. “We left. We hugged, we kissed.”
Donald Trump on his departure from the G7 conference. Totally normal description of a summit of world leaders. Nothing odd at all. Nope.

Go to the link and read it all.

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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