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  • 2020-02-11 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Richard Branson Say Trump Spent a 2-Hour Lunch Speaking of Revenge? (en)
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  • In February 2020, shortly after Senate Republicans voted to acquit U.S. President Donald Trump of impeachment charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, Trump fired National Security Council official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and removed Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, from his post. Both Vindman and Sondland had offered testimony unfavorable to Trump during the House's impeachment investigation, and Trump's sudden dismissal of them brought additional criticism that the president was engaging in improper retaliation against government personnel. That controversy prompted the recirculation of a meme which originally appeared during the 2016 presidential election — a meme that quoted British business magnate and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson as having said he once had a two-hour lunch with Trump, during which the latter spoke of nothing but gaining revenge on certain people who had declined to help him: It is true that, a few weeks before the 2016 U.S. presidential election (which Trump won), Branson published a blog entry describing a two-hour, one-on-one lunch meeting with Trump that had taken place — at Trump's invitation — in the 1990s. According to Branson, during those two hours Trump spoke of nothing else but his plans to destroy five people who had been unwilling to help him: Branson has also spoken of that lunch with Trump in the course of several television interviews: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/10/18/richard-branson-trump-was-fixated-on-mission-to-destroy-people-who-refused-him-a-loan.html Given that Branson's lunch meeting with Trump was one-on-one, and Trump himself has never confirmed it, we can't independently verify how much of the former's description of that meeting is accurate. However, Branson's account is congruent with a television interview Trump gave to PBS host Charlie Rose in 1992, in which Trump proclaimed that he loves getting even with people who have been disloyal to him: (en)
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