People do stupid stuff all the time. Maybe he didn't think about it and just didn't mention it. Maybe with the Russia stuff going on he got cold feet and tried to pretend he didn't talk to the guy when he did. Only way to find out for sure is to get him to talk.
If Trump confirms the authenticity of a leak, is he revealing classified information? And is this legal for POTUS to do?
As I understand it, it is legal. The president can declassify anything just by talking about it publicly.
The President is the authority for all classify/declassify decisions. I mean, he doesn't make them all himself, but the authority to do so derives from the office. So, in effect, the President can decide on the fly to declassify something. IIRC, Eisenhower did it with the SR-71.
Comey did a real time fact check of a tweet Trump sent during his questioning by the House Intelligence Committee.
Trump first. Unlike other proponents of waterboarding, he's not manned up and undergone it himself. He probably thinks its a water hazard at one of his golf courses.
You know being waterboarded where you know there are limits to the duration and severity is pretty pointless. It doesn't prove anything.
I'm fairly certain most users of waterboarding don't have any intention of killing the subject, since they wish to interrogate them. Yet that knowledge doesn't actually help the subject since the whole point of the technique is to trick your body's senses into thinking you are drowning. Rational thought doesn't come into it. Which probably renders you and Trump immune, come to think of it.
the key thing here is to what extent an illegal cover-up may have or may yet take place, and then whether or not Pence was part of it. Best case scenario is that enough pressure is applied for the tire-fire crew in the White House to make critical and illegal mistakes trying to cover shenanigans during the campaign. Then Dems take Congress in 2018 (not certain but the discussion is moot without it) and move to impeach basically tying up the admin for the whole next Congress. If the succeed at removing Trump, unless it is REALLY obvious that Pence is involved they will not try to remove him, but will leave him to be the 2020 candidate tied to Trump's disaster, or count on him not to run for election to the presidency. I, for one, see VERY little space between Pence and Ryan and I don't think the Dems care which of them ends up in the placeholder job so there would not be strong motivation to go after Pence. It's an interesting trival discussion to speculate who Pence might select for VP, but it would be someone with no future political ambition who's willing to be tainted by the second-hand Trump connection. Maybe some old-timer like Trent Lott or some such, although given the fact that he's one of the puppet-masters, he might as well go ahead and bring Tony Perkins in.