ANALYSIS — Faced with a burgeoning military scandal, President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned to his familiar strategy of trying to deflect and distract as he feels bipartisan heat from Congress.

His Defense secretary, meanwhile, opted to go full hawk.

“I ask questions from very intelligent lunatics, you people. I give the right answers. There’s never a scandal. There’s never a problem,” Trump told reporters, verbally papering over a number of controversies during his first 10 months back in office. “I give you answers and solve your little problems. You go back and you can’t find anything, but you do, you do stories.”

The commander in chief huddled with his Cabinet as Democrats and some Republicans demand clarity on a U.S. military operation against a vessel in the Caribbean that the

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