Trump Today: President scraps Pompeo’s North Korea trip and ramps up feud with Sessions

President Donald Trump said he’d asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go on a planned trip to North Korea next week, as he ramped up his feud with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and urged him to investigate what he said was corruption on the “other side.”

POMPEO TRIP OFF

Trump cited a lack of progress in denuclearizing North Korea in calling off Pompeo’s trip, which was announced only a day before.

“I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Trump said on Twitter. He also expressed displeasure with China, saying Beijing isn’t helping like they once were. Trump said he believed it was “because of our much tougher Trading stance with China,” and tied a future Pompeo visit to North Korea to resolving the U.S.’s trade issues with Beijing. On Thursday, U.S. and Chinese negotiators wrapped up trade talks with no deal.

‘JEFF, THIS IS GREAT’

Trump tweeted, “Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!” Trump urged Sessions to look into what he called former FBI Director James Comey’s “lies & leaks,” the Clinton Foundation, surveillance of the Trump campaign and other things. He quoted Sessions’s statement Thursday that the department “will not be improperly influenced by political considerations” and wrote, “Jeff this is GREAT.”

Earlier this week, Trump said in a Fox News interview that Sessions “never took control” of the DOJ, prompting Sessions’s statement. The president has blasted Sessions for recusing himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

LEAKER’S SENTENCE ‘UNFAIR’

In another slap at Sessions, Trump also said the five-year prison sentence for National Security Agency whistleblower Reality Winner over leaking a classified document was “unfair.”

“Gee, this is ‘small potatoes’ compared to what Hillary Clinton did!” Trump wrote in reference to Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. “So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.” In 2016, Comey said Clinton was “extremely careless” in handling classified data, but that charges were not appropriate.

The president also repeated criticism of social-media companies, without naming any, for what he described as “silencing millions of people.” Earlier this month he attacked companies for what he called “totally discriminating” against conservatives. Twitter TWTR, +1.12% has been criticized for what’s known as “shadow banning,” or limiting the visibility of online posts by some users, and conservatives say they’ve been targeted. The company says it doesn’t filter content based on politics.

Trump is flying to Ohio Friday for a visit to a children’s hospital and a roundtable with supporters.

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