DAVE ROSS

Would Donald Trump really start a war with North Korea?

Nov 17, 2017, 11:10 AM | Updated: 12:18 pm

Donald Trump's taxes...

According to a new book by reporter David Cay Johnston, Donald Trump has likely not paid income taxes since 1978, and if he has, it has been very little. (File, Associated Press)

(File, Associated Press)

President Trump arrived back from his 12-day tour of Asia Tuesday night, after meeting with the leaders of South Korea, China, and the Philippines.

Ross: Is there a deeper problem here?

We’re now hearing that China, for the first time in years, is sending a high-level negotiator to North Korea — which appears to be a result of the president’s visit. That would be a big deal.

One of the president’s biggest critics is his most relentless biographer, David Cay Johnston. Johnston is the author of “The Making of Donald Trump.”

I asked Johnston if he really thinks the president would start a war with North Korea.

“He said he intends there will be wars and he’s talked loosely of nuking the entire country. I think he’s trying to find an excuse to use nuclear weapons because Donald believes that would make him important and powerful.”

Johnston points out that President Trump has no training in foreign affairs. He’s praised dictators known for “murderous” decisions, Johnston said.

Meanwhile, during his testimony Tuesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions frustrated Congressman Jim Jordan, who wants a special counsel appointed to look into the infamous anti-Trump dossier about Donald Trump that emerged during the campaign.

“What’s it going to take to actually get a special counsel?”

“It would take a factual basis that meets standards of a special counsel,” Sessions said.

“And is that analysis going on right now?”

Sessions skirted the question.

The dossier alleges ties between Russia and Trump during the presidential election.

I asked Johnston what he thinks of the dossier.

“No one has shown anything in the dossier yet to be false,” he told me. “There are some things that have not been verified, but nothing has been shown to be false. And the guy who wrote it is apparently a highly-regarded intelligence agent.

“We know that an unregistered agent of two foreign governments hostile to the United States … were spending tens of millions of dollars on Paul Manafort who was with the Trump campaign, three of them as the manager of the campaign. We know Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, was an unregistered foreign agent and the people in Turkey he was representing are Russian oligarchs, not Turks, and he was paid $40,000 by the Kremlin.

“We know Donald has a long, deep involvement with an international drug trafficker that makes no sense whatsoever what he did, unless he was either signaling the guy that he didn’t have to worry that Donald would ever testify against him, or, and this would be consistent with that, he was actually financing the drug trafficker.”

I get the sense there’s a clock ticking

So has anyone from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office called him?

“No. And I wouldn’t expect them to. I don’t have any subpoena power. I just have the determination to read through lots of boring government record to find the ones that are important.”

Listen to the entire conversation here.

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Would Donald Trump really start a war with North Korea?