By Judith Miller, February 06, 2017

President Trump on Saturday denounced the leaks of transcripts of his telephone conversations with leaders of Australia and Mexico as “disgraceful” and said his administration was searching “very, very hard” for the leakers.

Trump, speaking to Fox News, accused “Obama people” of giving news organizations embarrassing details of his recent tense phone conversations with his Australian and Mexican counterparts, and said that the holdovers from the Obama administration still serving on his White House and National Security Council staff were being replaced.

“It’s a disgrace that they leaked because it’s very much against our country,” Trump said, without stating why he believed that career civil servants who work in Democratic and Republican administrations were the source of the leaks. “It’s a very dangerous thing for this country,” he said.

Trump said that media reports of what appeared to be angry exchanges between him and the two foreign leaders had been mischaracterized, and insisted that he had “positive” relations with both countries and their leaders.

Meanwhile, hours before a federal judge in San Francisco turned down the Trump administration’s request to reinstate travel restrictions on refugees and foreign travelers, President Trump defended his administration’s travel ban, saying the temporary halt was needed while the administration reviewed vetting procedures to prevent “people with bad intentions” from entering the country.

“I just want a safe country, and you can’t have a safe country with open and weak borders…you can’t,” he said.

Trump said that the FBI had informed him that the bureau had “1,000 investigations” ongoing into potential terrorist threats and lacked sufficient manpower to pursue them all.

Finally, he disputed press reports which characterized the sanctions he imposed last week on Iran as weak and ineffective. He said that punishing Tehran for violating United Nations Security Council restrictions on ballistic missile testing was “the right thing to do,” and argued that the sanctions were already beginning to constrain Iranian aggression. Iran, he said, was trying to undermine and destabilize U.S. allies by exporting sensitive technology to countries “around the world” and that such aggressive conduct had to be countered. The sanctions were already working, he asserted. “Have you noticed they’ve been very quiet in the last two days?”

Trump made these and other comments in a conversation with three journalists whom he had invited to join him after the 60th annual International Red Cross ball, a fundraiser for the charity that was held this year at his club, Mar-a-Lago.

snip

Trump, speaking to Fox News, accused “Obama people” of giving news organizations embarrassing details of his recent tense phone conversations with his Australian and Mexican counterparts, and said that the holdovers from the Obama administration still serving on his White House and National Security Council staff were being replaced.

“It’s a disgrace that they leaked because it’s very much against our country,” Trump said, without stating why he believed that career civil servants who work in Democratic and Republican administrations were the source of the leaks. “It’s a very dangerous thing for this country,” he said.

Trump said that media reports of what appeared to be angry exchanges between him and the two foreign leaders had been mischaracterized, and insisted that he had “positive” relations with both countries and their leaders.

Meanwhile, hours before a federal judge in San Francisco turned down the Trump administration’s request to reinstate travel restrictions on refugees and foreign travelers, President Trump defended his administration’s travel ban, saying the temporary halt was needed while the administration reviewed vetting procedures to prevent “people with bad intentions” from entering the country.

snip

In an earlier call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Trump apparently threatened to send the U.S. military to Mexico to stop drug cartels -- according to a transcript published by a Mexican news organization and the Associated Press. The White House later said the comments were intended to be “lighthearted.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/...isgraceful.html