“Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me. As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t.
“Well, with Milley – uh, let me see that, I’ll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t that amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this – this is off the record, but – they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn’t done by me, this was him.
“All sorts of stuff – pages long, look. Wait a minute, let’s see here. I just found, isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.”
Maggie has had the transcript read to her and picks up on other details. She is eager to credit CNN:
Mr. Trump then said the document was “classified,” and a woman in the room replied, “Now we have a problem,” according to the person familiar with the recording.
He described something in front of him as “like, highly confidential,”
Many details of what is said on the recording were reported earlier by CNN, which also first reported on the existence of the recording.
He then reiterated something was “classified” as he and one of the women in the room talked over each other, according to the person familiar with its contents.
“Isn’t that interesting? It’s so cool,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “You probably almost didn’t believe me, but now you believe me.”
