;)
The Commentariat -- August 30, 2018
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Always Looking Out for the Little Guy. Gregory Korte of USA Today: "... Donald Trump said he would freeze the pay of federal workers next year, saying the nation can't afford the 2.1% raises that would have gone into effect without presidential action. In a notice to Congress Thursday, Trump cited 'serious economic conditions' in cutting pay to civilian workers. 'We must maintain efforts to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases,' Trump said.... Trump's pay freeze comes even as he touts a booming economy. 'The news from the Financial Markets is even better than anticipated,' Trump tweeted just hours before announcing the pay freeze. 'More good news is coming!' Under federal law, federal employees get cost-of-living raises every new year ... unless the president determines those raises would be 'inappropriate.'" Thanks to Akhilleus Bobby Lee for the heads-up. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is effectively a pay cut, since federal employees' paychecks next year won't go as far as they did this year. The whole idea of COL raises is to protect the federal workforce from diminishing purchase power. And why does Trump get to do this? Because, according to Korte, "Among the factors the president can consider: ... the budget deficit"; that is the ballooning deficit caused by Trump's tax cuts for rich people like himself.
Michael Tackett of the New York Times: "The Postal Service on Thursday said it 'deeply regrets our mistake in inappropriately releasing' the official personnel file of Abigail Spanberger, a former C.I.A. operative now running as a Democratic candidate for Congress, and requested that a Republican-aligned super PAC return the file.'We take full responsibility for this unfortunate error, and we have taken immediate steps to ensure this will not happen again,' David Partenheimer, a Postal Service spokesman, said in a statement.... The Postal Service also acknowledged the possibility of additional inappropriate disclosures.... America Rising, the Republican-aligned research group, had requested Ms. Spanberger's file under the Freedom of Information Act. After the Postal Service released the file, the group provided it to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Speaker Paul D. Ryan, which then used some of the information about Ms. Spanberger's employment history for political purposes.... The Republican research firm had obtained the file in an uncharacteristically rapid fashion under the federal records law." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow suggested that the Trump administration was releasing secret applications of former or current national security officers for political purposes. Maddow said that the Democratic party had sent out a warning to "all candidates who have security clearances that they should be prepared for the Trump administration to illegally leak their security clearances." Maddow repeated as fact, based partly on reporting by Spencer Ackerman of the Daily Beast, the charge that the Trump administration released Spanberger's file. We now know that is not true. USPS is an independent entity that is not part of the Trump administration. You might call Maddow's report "fake news." Of course the GOP political "research" group should never have filed a FOIA request, & Ryan's group should never have used the information when they obtained it. But Maddow also should never have accused the Trump administration of something it didn't do. After all, they do plenty of bad stuff that is worth reporting. She should issue a correction.
Uh-oh. Jim Rutenberg & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: Donald Trump "and his lawyer at the time, Michael D. Cohen, devised a plan to buy up all the dirt on Mr. Trump that the National Enquirer and its parent company had collected on him, dating back to the 1980s, according to several of Mr. Trump's associates. The existence of the plan, which was never finalized, has not been reported before. But it was strongly hinted at in a recording that Mr. Cohen's lawyer released last month of a conversation about payoffs that Mr. Cohen had with Mr. Trump.... The move by Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen indicated just how concerned they were about all the information amassed by the company, American Media, and its chairman, David Pecker, a loyal Trump ally of two decades who has cooperated with investigators.... It is not known how much of the material on Mr. Trump is still in American Media's possession or whether American Media destroyed any of it after the campaign.... In 2016, [Mr. Pecker] kept his staff from going back through the old Trump tip and story files that dated to before Mr. Pecker became company chairman in 1999, several former staff members said in interviews with The New York Times.... Shortly after American Media completed the arrangement with [Karen] McDougal at Mr. Trump's behest..., Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen..., [began to worry]: What would happen to America Media's sensitive Trump files if Mr. Pecker were to leave the company?"
And Away We Go! Are You Going to Believe Me or Your Lying Ears? Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "President Trump accused NBC News and its top anchor, Lester Holt, of 'fudging' elements of their interview last year in which Trump said he fired James B. Comey over his performance as FBI director, including his handling of an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump, who made the allegation on Twitter, didn't specify what he believed was improperly altered in NBC's broadcast of the interview. He also provided no evidence for his claim.... 'What's going on at @CNN is happening, to different degrees, at other networks - with @NBCNews being the worst. The good news is that Andy Lack(y) is about to be fired(?) for incompetence, and much worse. When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia, they were hurt badly!' It was the first time Trump has suggested any impropriety over his interview with Holt in the 15 months since it aired.... Trump's comment [to Holt] has raised questions about whether he sought to undercut and obstruct the investigation by removing the man in charge of it."
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "'I am very excited about the person who will be taking the place of Don McGahn as White House Councel!' Trump tweeted [Thursday morning]. 'I liked Don, but he was NOT responsible for me not firing Bob Mueller or Jeff Sessions. So much Fake Reporting and Fake News!'... What's ... potentially troublesome -- is the idea that he just admitted he tried to fire both men.... There have been reports that McGahn threatened to resign when Trump ordered Mueller's firing. But The Washington Post's report this week on Trump rekindling the idea of firing Sessions made no mention of McGahn.... In Thursday's tweet, it is noteworthy that Trump didn't quibble with the premise that he tried to fire either or both men.... [The tweet] suggests either someone else was responsible or that Trump came to the conclusion himself...." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Two things. (1) Trump is never going to learn how to spell "counsel." (He used to spell it "council," so he's one letter closer now. Good work, Donnie! No gold star but you get a blue one. (2) This is an actual double-negative problem. I don't take it as an admission that Trump tried to fire Mueller & Sessions.
Anna Beahm of al.com (the Alabama online news agency): "The president reportedly has told his aides [Jeff] Sessions is not capable of speaking on behalf of the president on television because he 'talks like he has marbles in his mouth, Politico reported. Trump also took issue with the fact that Sessions 'doesn't have the Ivy League pedigree the president prefers.' Sessions graduated from Huntingdon College in Montgomery and The University of Alabama School of Law." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Deep in a Politico report [linked below] about President Trump's attempt to build support for firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions ... is a striking artifact of Trumpism. The president's swelling complaints against Sessions include the fact that he 'doesn't have the Ivy League pedigree the president prefers' and that Trump 'can't stand his Southern accent.' Conservatives have spent decades depicting liberals as coastal snobs.... Trump has built a brand on attracting working-class strivers. But the relationship he cultivates is unidirectional admiration. Trump gives his supporters a lifestyle they can enjoy vicariously. He views them as suckers.... For all his vaunted populism, [Trump] is filled with contempt for average people in general and his own supporters in particular.... The most elemental feature of populist politics is to associate one's opponents with 'elite.' But Trump is unable to maintain the pose because he cannot stand the stink of the people upon him."
Josh Dawsey & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "A letter that Rudolph W. Giuliani ... sent to Romanian officials opposing a corruption crackdown in that country has drawn the attention of the State Department and renewed questions about his continued work for foreign clients while representing the president.... [The letter] put him in opposition with the State Department, which has supported efforts to prosecute corruption in Romania.... 'Rudy Giuliani does not speak for the U.S. government on foreign policy,' [a State Department] official [said]. Giuliani said he was hired to send the letter by a global consulting firm run by former FBI director Louis Freeh. He declined to say on whose behalf Freeh's firm was working or how much he was paid."
Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post: "If Democrats win control of the House in November they will finally have the votes to force an issue they've been hammering for nearly two years: Making ... Donald Trump disclose his tax returns. Since Trump took office, Democrats have forced 11 votes in the House of Representatives to require that the IRS hand over Trump's returns. These votes all failed because only one member of the Republican majority joined the Democrats in their request. If Democrats win 217 or more seats in the November election ― which they have a 74 percent chance to do, according to the polling aggregation site FiveThirtyEight ― they will have enough votes to get these documents."
Erica Green of the New York Times: "Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is preparing new policies on campus sexual misconduct that would bolster the rights of students accused of assault, harassment or rape, reduce liability for institutions of higher education and encourage schools to provide more support for victims. The proposed rules, obtained by The New York Times, narrow the definition of sexual harassment, holding schools accountable only for formal complaints filed through proper authorities and for conduct said to have occurred on their campuses. They would also establish a higher legal standard to determine whether schools improperly addressed complaints.... Tthe Trump administration's new rules will have the force of law and can go into force without an act of Congress, after a public comment period.... Advocates of victims rights condemned the proposals."
Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The Justice Department lent its support on Friday to students who are suing Harvard University over affirmative action policies that they claim discriminate against Asian-American applicants, in a case that could have far-reaching consequences for the use of affirmative action in college admissions. In a so-called statement of interest, the department supported the claims of the plaintiffs, a group of Asian-Americans rejected by Harvard. They contend that Harvard has systematically discriminated against them by artificially capping the number of qualified Asian-Americans from attending the school in order to advance less qualified students of other races."
Reuven Blau of the New York Daily News: "Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh wanted to cap the amount victims of 9/11 and their family members could receive from the federal government at $500,000, records obtained by the Daily News show. Kavanaugh, who served as associate White House Counsel during President George W. Bush's administration, sought to limit the federal government's liability following the terrorist attacks. Pushback from Sen. Chuck Schumer and other federal lawmakers squashed that proposal."
*****
"... We Did a Fantastic Job." David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Wednesday defended his administration's response to a devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico last year, despite a study released this week that said there was a spike in deaths on the island in the six months that followed. 'I think we did a fantastic job,' Trump said, responding to a question from a reporter at the White House. He called the emergency on the island 'by far the most difficult' of the areas of the United States and its territories ravaged by hurricanes.... The president's remarks came a day after a sweeping new report from George Washington University found that there were an estimated 2,975 excess deaths on the island after Maria made landfall in September 2017. The Puerto Rican government embraced the findings as the official death toll, ranking Maria among the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history. For much of the past year, the government had formally acknowledged just 64 deaths from the hurricane.... The spike in mortality came as the territory dealt with widespread and lengthy power outages, a lack of access to adequate health care, water insecurity and diseases related to the crisis." Mrs. McC: More on Your Racist Government at Work linked below. ...
... San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz responds to Trump's "fantastic" assessment:
This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.
Josh Marshall: "Don't forget the big picture.... Each action only has one purpose, one President Trump doesn't even really try to deny: ending the Russia probe.... No President -- I don't care how obsessed with his own power, how hyper-focused on deference and respect, how anything -- no President goes to these lengths unless he is guilty of something very bad and which he believes poses a mortal threat to his presidency, his wealth, his reputation.... But since ... no one with the power to do anything about it is doing anything..., we still collectively have a difficult time processing or accepting the truth of the situation." --safari
Eliana Johnson & Elana Schor of Politico: "The willingness of Republican senators to turn on Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the result of a furious lobbying campaign from ... Donald Trump, who for the past 10 days has been venting his anger at Sessions to 'any senator who will listen,' according to one GOP Senate aide. The president, who has spent a year and a half fulminating against his attorney general in public, finally got traction on Capitol Hill thanks to the growing frustration of a handful of GOP senators with their former colleague -- most importantly, Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, who have been irritated by Sessions' opposition to a criminal justice reform bill they support.... Trump hasn't been pushing his case just with Republican senators: He's worn down his lawyers, too...." Also, Trump can't stand Sessions' Alabama accent & thinks he's incompetent because he doesn't have Ivy League degrees. ...
... BUT. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: Trump's plan to fire Sessions & replace him with a lackey loyalist won't be easy. "... there is an open question as to whether the Federal Vacancies Reform Act allows a president to temporarily replace a Cabinet official he has fired -- as opposed to one who has resigned. If Sessions forces Trump to fire him, there could be a legal battle over Trump's authority to pick a temporary replacement who would outrank [Deputy AG Rod] Rosenstein. Otherwise, Rosenstein would effectively take over. So there's no guarantee of success for Trump there. If Trump was able to pick a temporary replacement, it ... would have to be someone who has already been confirmed by the Senate or (less likely) a Justice Department employee with a high enough rank.... And while Senate Republicans are warming to the idea of replacing Sessions, that doesn't mean they will give Trump carte blanche.... Ultimately, as with so many other things, this boils down to how much Republicans are willing to put up with from Trump -- and whether they feel they can stop him." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: If Sessions refuses to resign, Trump will fire him. By tweet. Or worse, like having security guards forcibly remove Sessions from the RFK building. Trump loves a drama, & the nastier he is, the more press he will get. He'll make sure an aide alerts news photographers to the impending defenestration.
Trump took a lot of executive time yesterday morning. Besides the early morning tweets about China's hacking Hillary Clinton's e-mail server (related stories linked below) & dissing Florida's Democratic nominee for governor Andrew Gillum (linked below), there was this stuff in Wednesday's Twitterstorm:
Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "The White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, will be leaving the administration this fall, President Trump tweeted Wednesday morning, leaving the president's side just as the sprawling investigation into Russian election interference could come to a conclusion. In addition to stripping the White House of another top official, Mr. McGahn's departure may fuel concerns about how the president has interacted with witnesses and potential witnesses in the Russia inquiry. Mr. McGahn is a key witness to whether the president tried to obstruct the investigation. The departure of the top lawyer in the White House has been rumored for months. In his tweet, Mr. Trump said that Mr. McGahn would leave after the Senate votes on the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court later this fall." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I wonder if McGahn had to check his Twitter feed to find out he'd been canned. ...
... Update: Sure 'nuf. McGahn found out the same way & at the same time all Trump's Twitterbirds found out. Mrs. McC: Melanie had better keep an eye on her husband's Twitter account. I wouldn't put it past Trump to announce his divorce on Twitter, without mentioning it to Melanie beforehand. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) If you misspell your spouse's name in the divorce papers, is the divorce legal?
... Jonathan Swan & Mike Allen of Axios: "This potentially puts a successor in charge of fielding a blizzard of requests or subpoenas for documents and testimony if Democrats win control of the House in the midterms. And if the White House winds up fighting special counsel Robert Mueller, an epic constitutional fight could lie ahead. We're told that Trump has not formalized a successor. But McGahn has told a confidant he would like his successor to be Emmet Flood, a Clinton administration alumnus who joined the White House in May to deal with the Russia probe. Flood also served for two years during George W. Bush/s second term as his top lawyer handling congressional investigators." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump's advisers and allies are increasingly worried that he has neither the staff nor the strategy to protect himself from a possible Democratic takeover of the House, which would empower the opposition party to shower the administration with subpoenas or even pursue impeachment charges. Within Trump's orbit, there is consensus that his current legal team is not equipped to effectively navigate an onslaught of congressional demands, and there has been broad discussion about bringing on new lawyers experienced in white-collar defense and political scandals.... Trump advisers also are discussing recruiting experienced legal firepower to the Office of White House Counsel, which is facing departures and has dwindled in size at a critical juncture. The office has about 25 lawyers now, down from roughly 35 earlier in the presidency.... Three of [Counsel Don] McGahn's deputies ... have departed, and a fourth ... will have his last day Friday. That leaves John Eisenberg, who handles national security, as the lone deputy counsel."
Politico: "... Donald Trump on Wednesday launched another pointed attack against Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official who has drawn intense scrutiny from Capitol Hill Republicans, asking on Twitter 'how the hell' he still has a job at the DOJ.... The message came one day after Ohr appeared behind closed doors with congressional investigators, who grilled him about the timing of his contacts with Fusion GPS, the firm that worked with former British spy Christopher Steele to create and distribute a salacious dossier about Trump's relationship with Russia." Related stories & video in yesterday's Commentariat. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Stephanie Murray: "... Donald Trump took aim Wednesday at CNN over information it reported last month that relied on anonymous sources, slamming all outlets that rely on such sources.... Trump made specific reference to a CNN story published last month with the headline 'Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of 2016 Trump Tower meeting.'... That report attributed its information to unnamed 'sources with knowledge.' Lanny Davis, an attorney for [Michael] Cohen..., has since told BuzzFeed that he was a source for the CNN article and has told The Washington Post that he is no longer sure about assertions he made to CNN and other outlets. 'The fact is that many anonymous sources don't even exist. They are fiction made up by the Fake News reporters,' the president wrote on Twitter. 'Look at the lie that Fake CNN is now in. They got caught red handed! Enemy of the People!' 'When you see 'anonymous source,' stop reading the story, it is fiction!' he added in a second post." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McC: Uh, I'm pretty sure Lanny Davis does "exist." For so many reasons, I hope Mueller's team produces strong evidence Trump knew about the Junior-Russia meeting before it took place.
Erica Orden & Evan Perez of CNN: "A second Trump Organization employee discussed a potential immunity deal with the federal prosecutors who charged Michael Cohen..., according to people familiar with the matter. That employee ultimately did not receive immunity.... The person was not called to testify before the grand jury.... The employee's identity couldn't be determined by CNN.... Court papers illustrate how Trump Organization executives were deeply enmeshed in efforts to reimburse Cohen for what prosecutors suggested the employees knew wasn't legitimate legal work."
Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "Paul Manafort has again asked to move an upcoming criminal trial to Roanoke, Virginia, as he prepares for a second trial before a jury in Washington, DC.... [Manafort] had once before asked to move his first trial in Northern Virginia to Roanoke. In both requests, he cited the politicized and media-saturated environment in the Washington region. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to all charges. The judge in Virginia refused to move the trial, and the court was able to find 12 jurors who said they could weigh the case without bias." Mrs. McC: Manafort just does not think black D.C. Democrats comprise "a jury of his peers." ...
... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Special counsel Robert Mueller has asked for more time to decide whether to retry former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort on 10 bank and tax fraud charges that an Alexandria, Virginia, jury failed to resolve earlier this month. In a filing to Judge T.S. Ellis III, Mueller's team noted that it is still waiting for Manafort's team to file post-trial motions and for those to be resolved.... Manafort's team had no objection to the delay." Ellis has not yet ruled on the motion.
NBC-TV New York City: "Police have released surveillance video of the bald, tattooed burglar who broke into the Manhattan penthouse of Paul Manafort's one-time banker and made off with over $2,000 worth of valuables on Tuesday morning." Do you know this young man?
Matthew Mosk & Lucien Bruggeman of ABC News: "George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to ... Donald Trump's campaign, has decided to stick with his plea agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller, his wife told ABC News on Wednesday. The decision puts to rest weeks of public hand-wringing by his wife, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos, who has been acting as an informal spokeswoman for her husband. She said in an interview with ABC News earlier this month that her husband was strongly considering backing away from the agreement he struck with Mueller that led him to plead guilty to lying to the FBI."
"Annals of Journalism, Ctd." Casey Michel of ThinkProgress: "For months, [Robert] Driscoll failed to disclose his ties to [Maria] Butina to Fox News' viewers -- and he's still never disclosed his former work on behalf of [sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg] Deripaska.... [But] Driscoll [has] made multiple appearances on both Fox News and Fox Business, condemning criticism Trump has faced for his campaign's interactions with Russian operatives -- always as a 'former DOJ official,' and never as someone with a personal, professional stake in the ongoing investigations." --safari: Fox is carrying water for the Kremlin here. The convergence of talking points between Fox and RT (Russia Today) should be concerning to those with a brain that functions.
Ken Dilanian of NBC News: "Sixteen hours after President Trump tweeted about a right-wing media story alleging that China hacked Hillary Clinton's private email server, an FBI official is refuting the report in a comment to NBC News. 'The FBI has not found any evidence the (Clinton) servers were compromised,' the official said. It's the latest example of the widening breach between a president who traffics in unverified news accounts and the law enforcement agencies he frequently maligns.... The FBI statement came after a right-wing media organization, the Daily Caller, published a story alleging that 'a Chinese-owned company operating in the Washington, D.C., area hacked Hillary Clinton's private server throughout her term as secretary of state and obtained nearly all her emails'" The story cited two sources briefed on the matter." ...
... AP: "The FBI said Wednesday that it has no evidence Hillary Clinton's private email server was compromised even though ... Donald Trump tweeted a news report that alleged the Chinese had hacked it.... Trump's tweet stated in part: 'What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!'" ...
... In yet another tweet on the supposed Chinese hack, Trump wrote, "Hillary Clinton's Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!" ...
... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "An FBI spokesman declined to comment on Trump's call for the bureau to make a 'next move.' A spokesman for the Justice Department also declined to comment."
... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's worth noting that on the same day the POTUS* tweeted, "When you see 'anonymous source,' stop reading the story, it is fiction!" he accused Chinese operatives of hacking Hillary Clinton's e-mail server, based on anonymous sources ... rather than on, you know, U.S. intelligence analyses. Remember all the hoo-hah that went down when Trump falsely claimed President Obama "tapped his wires"? Now the FBI just does an institutional eye-roll, puts out a "Trump Is an Idiot" rebuttal & moves on.
What If U.S. Foreign Policy Was Schizophrenic? Oh. It Is. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Trump on Wednesday tried to make China the scapegoat for his stalled diplomacy with North Korea, accusing it of undermining the American-led pressure campaign against Pyongyang because of an escalating trade dispute with the United States. In a series of late-afternoon tweets, issued under the headline 'Statement From the White House,' Mr. Trump said China was shipping 'money, fuel, fertilizer and various other commodities' to North Korea. 'This is not helpful!' he added, consistently referring to himself in the third person. Yet at the same time, Mr. Trump reaffirmed his decision in June to suspend joint military exercises with South Korea, saying they were costly and unnecessary, given his warm relationship with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un. While it was difficult to decipher the strategy behind the tweets, the president appeared in part to be trying to dial back remarks made by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who opened the door on Tuesday to resuming the exercises. A Defense Department official said news reports that interpreted Mr. Mattis's remarks as contradictory to the president's angered the White House. On Wednesday, Mr. Mattis issued a statement seeking to clarify his initial remarks, but both that and Mr. Trump's tweets caused just as much confusion, since Mr. Trump pointed out that he could restart the military exercises whenever he wanted." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: John McCain asked Mattis to be a pallbearer at his funeral. I suspect when Trump heard about that, he needed to find a way to undercut Mattis. So he did.
... Alex Ward of Vox: "... Donald Trump told North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their Singapore summit in June that he'd sign a declaration to end the Korean War soon after their meeting, according to multiple sources familiar with the negotiations. But since then, the Trump administration has repeatedly asked Pyongyang to dismantle most of its nuclear arsenal first, before signing such a document. That decision is likely what has led to the current stalemate in negotiations between the two countries -- and the increasingly hostile rhetoric from North Korea.... Kim in particular believes he needs the declaration first to avoid criticism from North Korea's military, a top South Korean official told the Atlantic on Wednesday."
Trump Unaware of What a State of the Union Address Is. Tom McKay of Gizmodo: "On Wednesday, Donald Trump escalated his war with major U.S. tech companies he and other prominent conservatives have been baselessly accusing of censoring right-wingers. In a video with an ominous soundtrack posted to his Twitter account, the president's team accused search giant Google of featuring links to live streams of former President Barack Obama's State of the Union addresses but not his.... Google says this is not true. According to a spokesperson for the company, they did not feature the link in 2017 for Trump's speech to Congress, but neither did they do so for Obama's first one in 2009. That's because while these first-year speeches are often referred to as State of the Union events in popular parlance, they're formally just addresses to Congress. In 2018, Google said the link was indeed present[.]" ...
... Kara Swisher of the New York Times: "Those who complain loudest about being silenced never ever shut up. Case in point are some tweets this week from President Trump, who wrote his umpteenth in a series of attacks on the big tech platforms.... The allegation is both wildly untrue and mostly easily proved false in all kinds of ways. (For example, I doubt that Mr. Trump has ever heard of page rank, since he recently showed he also cannot work a phone so well.)... It's hard to make tech giants sympathetic, but Mr. Trump has managed to pull it off with cloddish aplomb with nearly every accusation of their being unfair in this regard."
Ana Swanson & Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "The United States and Canada are moving closer to resolving their trade differences and could reach a deal by the end of the week that keeps the three-country North American Free Trade Agreement intact. Both countries are under pressure to find a way to keep Nafta intact and to avoid the United States and Mexico from moving ahead without Canada, as President Trump has threatened. Republican lawmakers are warning the White House that a bilateral agreement will not pass congressional muster, while industry groups said a Nafta without Canada would take a significant economic toll." ...
... Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "The International Trade Commission on Wednesday overturned a Trump administration decision to impose tariffs on Canadian newsprint, saying that American paper producers are not harmed by newsprint imports. The unanimous decision by the five-member body is a win for small- and medium-sized newspapers, which have struggled to absorb the cost of higher newsprint and engaged in cost-cutting, including layoffs and reduced pages, as a result. The Commerce Department imposed anti-dumping tariffs as high as 20 percent on newsprint from Canada after North Pacific Paper Company, a paper mill in Washington state, filed a complaint alleging that subsidies the Canadian government provides to its companies put American paper manufacturers at a disadvantage."
** Your Racist Government at Work. Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown on their citizenship.... A growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States ... are now being denied passports -- their citizenship suddenly thrown into question.... In a statement, the State Department said that it 'has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications.'... But cases identified by The Washington Post and interviews with immigration attorneys suggest a dramatic shift in both passport issuance and immigration enforcement. In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States." Read on. ...
... AND as a reminder, more than a month after a court-ordered deadline, there are still "nearly 500" children the federal government has not reunited with their parents. ...
... All the Handsome Young White Men. Emily Stewart of Vox: "Past group photos of White House interns under ... Donald Trump have drawn criticism for showing a group of overwhelmingly white young people. This summer, the White House didn't make much progress on diversity -- they just didn't release the photo. A group picture with ... Donald Trump showed the summer 2017 class was very white and very male. In the fall 2017 picture, observers pointed out one of the interns seemed to be making a white power gesture. (He denied it.)." ...
... David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "The main reason that Mollie Tibbetts's horrible killing has received so much attention is racism. Tibbetts's accused murderer is a Mexican immigrant, and large segments of the conservative media, including talk radio and Fox News, like to call attention to crimes committed by people with dark skin.... But I also think that David A. French's piece in National Review is worth reading, especially for progressives.... Imagine, for example, that you heard the killer in a mass shooting had been able to purchase a gun illegally, because of a failure in the background-check system. Wouldn't that heighten your sense of injustice about the crime? For most of us, the answer is yes. 'The official failure magnifies the personal injustice,' as French argues." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Leonhardt provides a link to the Facebook page that Tibbett's relative Sandi Tibbetts Murphy wrote. The essay, Leonardt says, is "a moving denunciation of racism." The page has been taken down. I don't know this for a fact, but I'm guessing Murphy took down the page because of racist comments. So here's a related essay, which Leonhardt also links:
... Amanda Marcotte in Salon: "There is one trait that [Tibbett's alleged murderer Cristhian] Rivera has in common with the vast majority of people who commit crimes like this, and it's not his skin color or the nation where he was born. It's his gender.... Maleness is far more strongly correlated with murder (and other violent crimes) than immigration status.... According to FBI crime statistics, nearly 90 percent of the known people who committed murder in 2015 were male. While most murder victims are also men, when a woman is murdered, her killer is far more likely to be male. Nine out of ten women murdered in 2015 were killed by a man.... , the murder of Mollie Tibbetts fits a well-known and well-documented pattern of men killing women because they can't control them. That anger and entitlement is not inevitable, no matter what right-wingers claim to believe. Another way of viewing manhood, one that's not about violence and control, is possible." ...
... AND, as Akhilleus pointed out the other day ...
... Ryan Foley of the AP (August 24): "A top Republican fundraiser whose firm works for several prominent immigration hardliners is the partial owner of the land where the Mexican man accused of killing Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts lived rent-free, a farm spokeswoman said Friday. Nicole Schlinger has long been a key fundraiser and campaign contractor for GOP politicians in Iowa and beyond, including this cycle for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Virginia Senate candidate Corey Stewart.... Schlinger is married to Eric Lang, the president of the family-owned dairy that has acknowledged providing employment and housing for the last four years to Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the man charged with murder in Tibbetts' death.... Dairy co-owner Craig Lang also was a Republican candidate for Iowa agriculture secretary, finishing third in a five-way race in the June primary." Read on. Mrs. McC: I just can't figure out why Trump & the Trumpistas aren't up-in-arms about the people who harbored Rivera, who investigators say is living & working in the U.S. illegally. ...
... Hamed Aleaziz of BuzzFeed News: "Immigration officials made the most arrests at a single worksite in more than a decade when they picked up 160 suspected undocumented employees at a trailer manufacturer in Texas earlier this week. Agents from ICE's Homeland Security Investigations division made the arrests Tuesday as they served search warrants at Load Trail, in the unincorporated community of Sumner in north Texas, not far from the border with Oklahoma. Authorities said they were acting on a tip that the company had knowingly hired workers with fake documents." ...
... Mark Smith & Jason Whitely of WFAA-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth: "Agents detained 160 undocumented workers as part of their investigation but did not make any criminal arrests, according to Katrina Berger, Homeland Security Special-Agent-in-Charge of Investigations." Mrs. McC: So evidently, the business's owners weren't arrested. ...
... Update. Oh, But There's This. Chantal Da Silva of Newsweek: Berger "said the crackdown should serve as a warning to other employers hiring undocumented workers, adding: 'You may have gotten away with it, but we're watching and we're coming.'" Mrs. McC: So the "punishment" is a disruption of the workforce, but that's it.
Patrick Malone in The Daily Beast: "The Trump administration, acting in an open partnership with the profit-making contractors that control the industrial sites where U.S. nuclear bombs are made and stored, has enacted new rules that limit the authority and reach of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, created by Congress in 1988 amid broad public concerns over civil and military nuclear safety lapses.... The twin assaults on the operations and authority of the safety board come just as the Energy Department, acting at President Trump's direction, is embarking on the most aggressive era of nuclear weapons production since the Cold War." --safari
Megan Keller of the Hill: "The Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly investigating whether a fugitive Malaysian businessman paid a team of American lawyers, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and an attorney who represents President Trump, from tens of millions of dollars in laundered funds. The DOJ is pursuing a criminal investigation into Jho Low, who has U.S. assets, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.... According to the report, Low may have made payments with embezzled funds to Christie, who briefly headed Trump's transition team; Trump's longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz; a former outside ethics adviser for the Trump Organization, Bobby Burchfield; and a Washington lobbyist with close ties to the Republican Party, Ed Rogers." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Jho Low is the same guy whom Trump buddy Elliot Broidy was reportedly trying to get to enter into a $75-million-dollar agreement to pay Broidy for using his influence to get the DOJ to drop its criminal investigation of the embezzlement scheme. Everybody who knows anybody who knows Donald Trump is a criminal. This is how things work in a kleptocracy. Millions of dollars are passed around & the public be damned.
Simon Romero of the New York Times: "Military veterans lined both sides of the Capitol Plaza [in Phoenix, Arizona,] on Wednesday as a black hearse delivered the coffin carrying Senator John S. McCain to the rotunda, where constituents began saying farewell to the war veteran who became a towering political figure in this part of the West. As Mr. McCain was lying in state, his immediate family and Arizona political leaders paid tribute to the naval aviator, who endured torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. They remembered him as an example of a statesman striving to unite Americans regardless of their political beliefs." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Both CNN & MSNBC carried the ceremonial event for about an hour Wednesday. I sure hope that ruined Trump's lunchtime TV viewing.
... Michael Shear & Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "By the time he died on Saturday, Mr. McCain had carefully stage-managed a four-day celebration of his life -- but what was also an unmistakable rebuke to President Trump and his agenda." ...
... Noor al-Sibai of the Raw Story: "Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has reportedly not been invited to attend the memorial for her one-time running mate, the late John McCain."
Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Republicans say they would like Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to appoint a successor to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who, unlike McCain, would support GOP legislation to repeal ObamaCare. Republican lawmakers say they won't have time to hold another vote to repeal the law in 2018 but vow to try again next year if they manage to keep their Senate and House majorities." Mrs. McC: If Democrats have any sense (and a few do), they'll campaign on this. See Akhilleus's commentary on this below. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Congressional Races
West Virginia Senate. Michael Burke of the Hill: "Ex-coal CEO Don Blankenship's bid to appear on the November ballot in West Virginia's Senate race as a third-party candidate was denied Wednesday by the state's Supreme Court. 'The West Virginia Secretary of State is ordered to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that Donald L. Blankenship does not appear on the 2018 General Election Ballot for the Office of United States Senator for the State of West Virginia,' the court wrote in its order.... Blankenship lost the GOP primary in May to Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and has since sought to appear on the ballot as a third-party candidate." The state has a sore-loser law that bars primary-race losers from running in the general election.
Virginia. Voter Fraud! Matt Shuham of TPM: "Rep. Scott Taylor (R-VA), a well-known Republican congressman and former Navy SEAL, personally called a constituent who had accused his reelection campaign of forging voters' signatures and pressured her to withdraw the accusation [and threatened her with a lawasuit], four people with knowledge of the call described to TPM. It was an unusually personal intervention from a congressman whose campaign staffers have since been accused of 59 signature forgeries and counting, according to a recent Virginian-Pilot report, including from the families of four dead voters whose signatures nonetheless appear on petition sheets collected by Taylor's staffers.... The apparent aim of the forged signatures was to split the Democratic vote in two ... [by getting] to get an independent candidate, Shaun Brown, on the congressional ballot." --safari
Texas. Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "Texas Rep. John Culberson (R) has come up with a novel argument against complaints that he has used more than $50,000 in campaign funds to buy collectibles such as Civil War memorabilia and even fossils.... The Houston Chronicle reported Monday that 'Culberson's aides explained the purchase as research material on paleo-climatology, a subject that would help him understand climate science.'... This defense ... is particularly laughable when ... the purchases come from the Black Hills Institute of South Dakota.... The Institute is 'most famous for excavating and selling replicas of some of the most complete' T. rex specimans." --safari
Florida Gubernatorial Race
Julia Jacobs of the New York Times: "Representative Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee for governor in Florida, drew accusations of using a racist dog whistle on Wednesday after saying in a television interview that voters should not 'monkey this up' by electing his opponent, Andrew Gillum, who would be the state's first black governor.... In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday after the controversy over the remarks took off, Mr. Gillum said Mr. DeSantis was taking a page 'directly from the campaign manual' of Mr. Trump. 'In the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls,' Mr. Gillum said. 'They're now using full bull horns.' 'I'm not going to get down in the gutter with DeSantis and Trump,' he added. 'I'm going to try and stay high.' The anchor who conducted the interview with Mr. DeSantis, Sandra Smith, said on air later in the day that Fox 'does not condone' the language the Republican candidate used. Monkeys have long been used in racist insults against black people.... Critics online said that Mr. DeSantis's description of Mr. Gillum, 39, as an 'articulate spokesman' for liberal views was another veiled racist message. The word 'articulate' has a history of being used by white people to praise certain black people in a way that carries a troubling subtext of surprise at their intelligence."
Stephanie Murray of Politico: "Florida does not need a 'failed socialist mayor' as its next governor..., Donald Trump wrote online Wednesday, slamming the surprise winner of the state's Democratic primary. Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum secured an upset victory in the swing state primary on Tuesday and will face off against GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis, who was endorsed by Trump, in November. Gillum, a Bernie Sanders-backed progressive, supports sanctuary cities, 'Medicare-for-all' and raising the minimum wage.... In an appearance Wednesday on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe,' the Tallahassee mayor said he was able to win over voters by talking about issues like health care and employment, rather than bashing Trump." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Update. John Wagner of the Washington Post: "After Trump's tweet posted on Wednesday, Gillum responded to him on Twitter, writing: 'What our state and country needs is decency, hope, and leadership.'... 'Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are both scraping from the bottom of the barrel,' Gillum said on CNN. 'I actually believe that Florida and its rich diversity are going to be looking for a governor that's going to bring us together, not divide us, not misogynist, not racists, not bigots.'... During the interview, Gillum also said he 'absolutely' believes Trump should be impeached. 'He's already incriminated himself by interfering with the Department of Justice,' Gillum said."
Darren Sands of BuzzFeed News: "If Anyone Had Bothered Talking To Black Voters, They Would Have Known Andrew Gillum Was Going To Win.... Many in the Florida Democratic political ecosystem and media in Florida missed it. It could have been that pollsters, which had Gillum at third or even fourth for most of the campaign, weren't sampling enough black voters -- or that Gillum did in fact surge, as his campaign said to a disbelieving political press corps." Sands writes about Gillum's campaign techniques. Here's a good part: "Few reporters noticed when Gillum was the only candidate to show up to a candidate's forum of the Hillsborough County NAACP [Mrs. McC: that's Tampa], where he ended up winning a whopping 40% of the vote. 'It's so lonely over here! Where is everybody at?' he joked before asking the moderator how short he should keep his answers. '[I] wouldn't want to intrude on anyone else's time.' There were four empty chairs with the candidates' names beside him. ...
... MEANWHILE. Chad Smith of the American Ledger*: "Ron DeSantis, the Trump-endorsed congressman who won Tuesday's GOP primary for Florida governor, is an administrator on an active Facebook group where conservatives share racist, conspiratorial and incendiary posts about a litany of targets, including black Americans and South Africans, the 'deep state,' survivors of February's massacre at a Florida high school, immigrants, Muslims and, in recent days, John McCain. DeSantis was listed as one of the group's 52 administrators and moderators as of Wednesday. His involvement in the group was first noted by a researcher for Media Matters for America on Tuesday."
... *Mrs. McCrabbie: The American Ledger is an arm of American Bridge, a progressive PAC.
Apropos of a comment Akhilleus made yesterday, Irin Carmon of New York runs down the code words, phrases & Supreme Court opinions Brett Kavanaugh will likely invoke in his confirmation hearings to pretend he would not strike down Roe v. Wade. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Beyond the Beltway
** State Races. Oklahoma. Eric Levitz: "Between 2008 and 2015, Oklahoma's slashed its per-student education spending by 23.6 percent, more than any other state in the country.... Polls showed overwhelming public support for raising taxes on the wealthy and oil companies to increase investment in education.... With no organized opposition to counter the deep pockets of extractive industry, Republican officials could reasonably conclude that working-class Sooners had no material interests that their party was bound to respect.... Last night, Oklahoma's GOP primary season came to an end — and the teachers beat the billionaires in a rout. Nineteen Republicans voted against raising taxes to increase teacher pay last spring; only four will be on the ballot this November." --safari
Don't Drink the Water. Annalise Frank of Crain's [Detroit]: "Detroit Public Schools Community District will shut off drinking water at all of its 106 schools after the most recent round of testing found 16 out of 24 schools had elevated levels of lead and/or copper, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in an email to staff Tuesday afternoon. Vitti ordered testing of all schools this spring, after tests in 2016 found elevated levels of the metals.... The 2016 testing came as a response to the Flint water crisis, in which more than 100,000 residents were exposed to lead-tainted water. The largest school district in Michigan faces water safety concerns as it deals with deteriorating school buildings that require nearly $530 million in capital improvements." --safari
Madeleine Aggeler of New York: "Earlier this month, Rachel Hundley, a 35-year-old woman who serves on city council in Sonoma, California, and is currently running for reelection, received an anonymous email calling for her to drop out of the race. The sender called her 'immoral and unethical,' and included a link to a now-defunct website called 'Rachel Hundley Exposed,' which featured pictures culled from Hundley's social-media profiles of her at Burning Man in her bra and underwear.... Hundley chose to respond publicly, posting a four-and-a-half minute YouTube video in which she says she will not be 'slut-shamed' into quitting." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
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Reader Comments (22)
Maybe the Pretender's latest chicken-tweet will send McGahn scurrying back for another session with Mueller.
Rude...ruder...rudest.
The Pretender does have his strengths. Courage not among them.
I love reading Mrs. McC. but you keep misspelling PO(tu)S ;))
@Maxwell's Demon: Point well-taken. Trump is indeed a POS. I'll try to correct my error in future remarks.
Last week, Akhilleus questioned the idiom "rats fleeing a sinking ship," what with there being a question about rat's swimming skills. I wondered about that, too, and Merriam-Webster explores the history of the idiom, which is more than 400 years old. "The original setting for the fleeing rats was a decrepit house, one that was on the verge of falling down. Both rats and mice, in the 16th century, were said to have the ability to know when a structure was on the verge of collapse, and would accordingly decamp some time before this happened."
BookBrowse takes the saying back much further: "Early records of this expression go back all the way to Pliny The Elder's Natural History (77 AD): 'When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it'."
And, yes, they are great swimmers, tho they wouldn't fare well if their sinking ship was more than 1/2 a mile off shore.
When I had a second-storey apartment in New York City, I heard a splashing noise in a toilet that had been acting up. I went into the bathroom to see if the toilet needed flushing or something, only to find a rat doing the rat-paddle 'round & 'round in the bowl. I slammed the bathroom door shut & went running for the super. He brought a crew to dispose of my new roommate. They all thought I was a very funny, squeamish girly-girl. That remembrance of a thing past still creeps me out.
Ahhh...but Marie, the image of rats swimming in a toilet bowl awaiting the imminent flush (or de-bowl-estration) calls to mind the fervently hoped for fate of the fat rat and all the other little rats surrounding him in the White House. Give Superintendent Mueller a call. We might not be able to drain the entire Trump Swamp, but we can certainly drain the fecal hole he inhabits.
Earlier this morning I read about Trump’s latest racist scheme, to deny that citizens are citizens purely because of their skin color and surnames, a sleazy move he first tried out on the last real president, claiming with no evidence (a Trump speciality) that his birth certificate was fake and therefore invalid, that he was actually born somewhere else and therefore not an American.
He couldn’t get away with it then, but this is another example of dangerous winger viruses mutating and popping up elsewhere to attack the body politic, in areas and with citizens with weaker immune systems.
The fact is that nearly all claims made by president* lying sack of shit can be described perfectly with the construction “Trump, today, claimed blah, blah, blah, without evidence or proof”.
It’s just another sign, as I was mentioning yesterday, of our slide into a virulently anti-democratic, totalitarian state where truth is whatever the Leader says it is and where rule of law is replaced by rule of whim and convenience.
I also have no doubt that the racist Trumpies in Congress will obsequiously stand by as natural born American citizens are stripped of their birthright and deported illegally. They do so for two reasons. One, they are cowards, fearful of another coward, the bully in the White House. Second, and more ominously, they have decided, as David Frum pointed out recently, that they are unable to retain power in fair, open, and free elections (without election fraud and voting rights infractions and illegal schemes such as this) and so they are effectively done with democracy.
As Mitch McConnell demonstrates with every fetid breath, it’s all about power and control now. Democracy be damned. Constitution along with it, and rule of law right behind them.
The signs are everywhere, every day.
The Confederate-Trump Totalitarian state is not coming. It’s here.
In "Homeland" there is an early scene in Carrie's apartment where on a wall she has hundreds of photos of male/female suspects all connecting to one another. Today the connections the DOJ is making re: that Malaysian creep with Christi and Bobby Buchfield, of all people, coupled of course with all the other nefarious doings that have been or will be unleashed is mind blowing. If Carrie was on the job today she'd have to get another wall.
DeSantis didn't just use "Monkey" and "articulate" he also described Gillum's speeches as "performances" which suggests they aren't genuine. Gillum, on the other hand ,was operating just like Beto O'Rourke who went into small towns where people said they had never once had a candidate visit them. Gillum going to that Candidate Forum in Tampa where he was the only one that showed, was spot on.
Chris Murphy is on a walk--about––he's just ambling from town to town here in Ct. where people can engage him in conversation. Another smart move.
To add to Akhilleus' posting yesterday:
For every philanthropic foundation that existed in 1930 there are now five hundred. According to Rob Reich, who wrote a book on this subject, tells us that the growth in foundation assets in that time has been even more staggering from less than a billion dollars to more than eight hundred billion. The whole point here is the question: are the new donor classes solving our problems or posing new ones.
It's amusing to me to listen to Trump sing the praises of "his people" and certain foreign leaders, using the same adjectives to describe how great they are until they aren't. He's all mushy and gushy –-plays at being this loyal, steadfast friend until WHAM! –––the verbal door hits you where it hurts and you are slammed and shamed and sent to Trump's broken down Outhouse where the stink clings even after a good washing.
And watching the video (on sidebar) of Obama I once again was reminded of how fortunate that for eight years we had him as our president––one of those "for one brief shining moment" thing without for one moment being sappy or sentimental. He was the real deal.
@PD Pepe: Now that you mention it, I wonder if the Mueller team has a giant board like Carrie's.
When Racist Fat Boy visited Puerto Rico weeks after a terrible natural disaster, he claimed (without evidence, natch) that everything was fine, recovery was going superbly (it had barely begun); he insulted elected officials there, and passed out paper towels. No, wait. He didn’t pass them out, he tossed them into the crowd, the way you’d throw bread crumbs to birds in your yard. Residents of Puerto Rico are not even people to him, and they’re certainly not ‘Merican citizens, deserving of the support from the federal government just like, oh, say...the good ol’ boys in Texas.
When he was there (for about half an hour) he patted himself on the back because “only” 16 people had died. That number rose to 64. And now it’s almost 3,000. The enormous jump in deaths is entirely the result of indolence and indifference on the part of Trump and his racist government. Had this been Wall Street that was devestated, no extreme measures would have been considered too much or too costly.
But it’s not Wall Street, it’s dirty brown people who don’t vote for Trump, so fuck ‘em.
I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to call Trump’s “relief plan” genocide by inaction. And now he’s congratulating himself on the “wonderful job” he did. I have to wonder if he means how many fewer dirty brown people are in the world today.
Maybe he’s not Hitler, but the difference is one of degree, not kind. He truly is a despicable human being.
PD and Marie,
And don’t forget. Even though people called her crazy and tried to stop her, Carrie was 100% right.
@Akhilleus: Just from the news of today, you can extrapolate that a list of the racist things Trump & his administration have done & said since January 20, 2017, would paper over that entire board PD Pepe & I just placed in Bob Mueller's conference room.
I'd guess Trump categorizes people like this:
(1) Rich people. Yes, he notices their ethnicity (like that comment he made to Jewish Republicans during the campaign: "I'm a negotiator like you folks"), but if there's something in it for him, he doesn't care what race or religion the rich people are.
(2) Poor people. This group is divided into two group: (a) white people. (b) everybody else.
There is a third group of people Trump categorizes, but this group spans Groups 1 & 2a & maybe even 2b: hot women.
I guess there's another categorization he makes, but membership in these two groups is often in flux: (1) people who like Trump (good) and (2) people who don't (bad). One wrong remark & a (1) person lands in the (2) group.
As for the group he cares about, that would be none of the above. I don't think he even cares about his family, except to the extent he thinks they represent his "legacy."
As more and more scandals pour out of the White House and Republicans willfully ignore each and every one, I'm increasingly convinced that there is a mutual GOP mass grave somewhere where bodies have been frantically strewn about, and the Trump Org got ahold of the location.
Blackmail is absolutely a card this POS would play, relish even, and his obsession with the media would scare any GOP empty suit straight stiff. There is no doubt in my mind if Drumpf's trolls caught wind of some nefarious evidence that could bring down major GOP players, he would dangle existential threats with glee, via a lackey foot soldier of course. With the dirty tricksters and Russian hackers on his team, who know what info. they might have to share.
No Republicans ever developed proper spinal cords so their appeasements aren't surprising. But particularly Lindsay Graham's complete about-face as a supposed independent GOP voice, going from humiliating mockery to subdued indifference and even enthusiastic support makes me think Donald has key Republican members by their ball sacks and they've been told to bend of his will, or else.
The case of Lindsay Graham:
Maybe, Safari. Maybe.
But I think it as likely that Graham's geography has as much to do with his apparent about face as any dirt the Pretender might have on him.
If you get past the capitalist blinders of folks like McConnell, who never met a dollar he didn't like, and much of the Republican Party's corn pone evangelical base, you're left with the race issue, which while it exists everywhere, is more prominent in the South.
Graham might not like the Pretender personally (there's so much for anyone who pretends to himself he's still some kind of gentleman, southern or not, not to like) but the Pretender's political posture on most fronts is congruent with that of what I assume Graham's own political base to be. I'm guessing they particularly like the tax and race parts.
And Graham may be a hypocrite (it comes with his party membership badge) but he's not stupid.
He kinda reminds me of his good buddy, McCain. Has a reputation for being outspoken, sometimes donning the same maverick persona, but when you get down to it, tho his salute may be sloppy, he toes the Repugnant line nine times out of ten.
The little dictator's newfound problem with an interview he did with Lester Holt over a year ago is indicative of a couple of things.
First, he's trying to nail down all the loose ends. Anything that makes him look bad is all of a sudden on the Whack-a-Mole board and needs whacking. But that elevates something else needing whacking. There are so many bad acts and stoopid statements in the Trump archive that he'll never get them all under lock and key (or under suspicion of being "fudged"--and who among his horde of knuckledraggers would go along with a black guy from NBC (on tape!) over the Glorious Leader's word?).
A corollary to the first problem is that he's getting increasingly desperate.
Second, he has grown, almost by the day, steadily more arrogant in believing that he can change reality by issuing a tweet. I'm not sure whether this is simple arrogance or arrogance with a side of delusion.
I think he's coming apart at the seams so the delusional aspect of his public discourse might be growing more prominent. Then again, delusion seems to have been a component of his personality for many years. At some point, he knows what a swindling crook he is, but he also, I'm guessing, believes that it's okay because he is The Donald and it's his right to con and chisel and swindle. Who's to say different? No one has ever called him on it before, or if they did, they were paid off and told to get the fuck out of his office.
That ploy isn't working anymore, but he's still unable to learn a new paradigm where he can't just say shit WITHOUT EVIDENCE and be believed by all the lackeys (who at least SAY they believe him).
Had he never run for president, the little dictator would have lived out his misbegotten life as the hero he always pictured himself. But that wasn't good enough. He was ready for one last con to bolster the brand and fill up the coffers. Somehow (Thanks, Uncle Vlad!), he squirmed his way into the White House. Now he's regularly got people holding up a mirror to his life rather than buying the invented persona of the perfect genius who never makes a mistake and is the best at everything.
Instead, he sees a figure he doesn't recognize, a sad liar, a hapless, racist con man, an addled douche whom more than half of America and most of world is laughing at.
But he doesn't know any other way to be in the world, so he'll continue on with his constant stream of attacks and lies in order to find some way to maintain the facade. "I said what? I never said that. Someone's lying! Investigate them! What do you mean they have a tape? There's no tape. No. They "fudged" that."
Sad.
Bob Mueller, whatever you got, dude, we're gonna need it soon.
@ Ken "tho his salute may be sloppy, he toes the Repugnant line nine times out of ten."
Touché, and well-versed.
I do my best to avoid any occasion to witness Agent Orange actually speaking on television, but I happened to catch a glimpse of him lying about something yesterday and Wow! he is not looking good these days. The bulging bags under his eyes were bigger than his actual eye sockets, and puffed out to the verge of producing stretch marks. A truly wretched face.
He's been rage tweetering and trying to alter realities day and night for a while now, probably having nightmares of Mueller probes (!) His aides need to drug his diet coke and get Diaper Donny to bed ASAP.
Samantha Bee had it right...
Among the many tweetie things sent out into the ether very early this morning by president* tighty-whitie twitter bird, is yet another booooring, scream-fest about how delightful a place is the White House and how there are no blood feuds, no backstabbing, and NO FUCKING PROBLEM WITH MY DAUGHTER AND HER DOUCHEBAG HUSBAND TRYING TO GET THAT TRAITOR DON McGAHN FIRED!!!!!!
Oh. Okay. Glad you cleared that up. The White House is a smoothly running operation. Got it. And the Subprime Mortgage Crisis was just business as usual.
Also, little Ivankie is just the sweetest thing! She'd never get involved in trying to shiv Don McGahn.
Question. If Ivanka Trump was Ms. Goody Two Shoes perfect Queen of the May, why is she married to a sniveling, snooty, fuckwad crook like Jared Kushner? Huh?
The Trump Blight House is a warren of evil hornets and vipers, all vying for the seat of power next to Fat Boy. He likes it that way. That's how all his organizational structures have operated. Backstabbing assholes with their hands around each other's throats.
And here's Ivanka, frighteningly inexperienced, wholly unsuitable, incredibly incompetent for the jobs she's been given, with a West Wing office, a huge staff, and, for most of the time her family has been biting off chunks of America while in office, making money hand over fist.
Daddy tears babies away from their mothers. What does little Ivanka do? Posts a picture of her, Perfect Mom, cuddling her babies. Awwww...so sweet. When someone asks her how she feels about her dad's pussy grabbing exploits, she, who fancies herself an Uber Feminist, whines that it's disrespectful to ask a daughter such things. Oh, wait. I thought you were a presidential adviser, in which case such a question is entirely appropriate.
She loves her some gay people but, OOPS, she just had to have seventy five selfies taken with the cream of Gay Haters of 'Merica at their White House shindig. If I were not in league with such assholes I'd have found something else to do that night.
These people are all fucking pirates and crooks and liars. Ivanka just cleans up better than most.
Did she try to get Don McGahn fired? Who knows? But would you be at all surprised? Especially if she thought McGahn might be throwing a monkey wrench into all their beautiful wickedness and grandiose grifting. She loves her role as the First Daughter who can lord it over the underlings. She and her husband are a veritable Mr. And Mrs. Macbeth who see enemies all around and are in a position to do something about it.
But Trump is incensed that anyone would see cute little Ivanka ("Hey, I'd bang her...") as anything other than sweet and perfect.
Samantha Bee was right.
Safari,
And besides getting him to bed, they should see about taking his Twitter Toy away for a while. My wife and I have found that our 7 year old does not do well if he's on a device for over an hour so we took it away altogether and, when he gets it back, will only have it for short periods every day.
Little donnie does not do well when he can spout and shout over the interwebs. He doesn't play well with others to begin with, no sense letting him push his delicate little system to the brink every day and night.
More seriously, his Twitter habit is a terrible thing. If he were like a real president, he would give press conferences or issue carefully written policy papers that the media would have to pore over and break down. It's so much easier (and far more dangerous) to repeat, word for word, Trumpy's unhinged and uniformed Twitter tantrums. And because he jets these things out so quickly, so many every day, there is a constant barrage of mental dross and illiterate garbage spewing out across the media landscape, unfiltered lies and attacks and entirely fabricated bullshit which grinds on the nation's nerves.
He doesn't know any other way to communicate, but just think of the great sigh of relief the country could breathe if Fat Boy would just STFU for a week or two.
Once again the little guys take a bullet for the country. Trump is cancelling the 2.1% pay raise for federal civilian workers to help bring down our federal deficit.
Hmmm....
Any of youse guys think it seemed funny that Manafort's "banker", David Fallarino, had his apartment invaded and stuff stolen, a laptop, iPad, and (weirdly) sneakers? (Who breaks in to a swanky mid-town condo and takes sneakers?)
My question is what was on that laptop? Were any other things stolen? Stuff that might have an impact on the Manafort proceedings? I dunno about you, but when I lived in NY, I didn't just "forget" to close and lock a door opening onto the street. Who does that? And not just any who, but a banker, a guy who worked with Paul Manafort.
It all seems just too weird. Sometimes "coincidences" are too much to ignore.
But anyway, it says Fallarino lives on W 58th. A nice neighborhood. In fact, when I google-mapped 100 W 58th, guess what I saw?
Another Trump hotel.
Okay, so maybe we can chalk that up to coincidence, but there was something special about this particular hotel, now called Trump Parc (the fucking guy can't spell for shit). Back when he bought it, when it was 100 Central Park South, there were plenty of tenants who had rent-controlled apartments. Trump wasn't going to stand for that shit. He tried everything he could to get rid of those tenants. He refused to fix broken plumbing, electrical systems, he let everything go, including security systems. He then threatened violence, saying he would let street people squat in the building.
The tenants fought back.
And won.
Fat Boy tried to sue the tenants, claiming they were violating RICO act provisions(!), calling them gangsters, attacking poor Donald. A judge told him to tell his story walking and dismissed his ridiculous suit with prejudice. He finally had to drop his eviction threats, especially after renowned journalist Sydney Schanberg wrote an editorial in the Times calling him a "slumlord". Trump responded with his usual "I know you are, but what am I?" type of fourth grade comeback, but he still lost.
He's still a cheap, no-good, lying loser.
Can't wait for voters to dismiss him with prejudice in the midterms. Then we can evict his fat ass in 2020, or sooner if Mueller gets the goods on him.
Okay, one more then I'm out...
Here's a little statistic you might find interesting and not the least bit surprising:
"In 2016, firearms killed approximately 251,000 people worldwide. More than half of those deaths occurred in just six countries, all of which are in the Americas. Perhaps more stunningly, about a third of them occurred in two countries: Brazil and the United States."
Yay! We're number one, we're number one!
The study goes on to indicate that there are clear solutions to gun deaths, none of which the US Confederate led government wants to hear about however.
"It’s difficult to know precisely what will and won’t work—or even what contributes to gun violence in the first place—because the U.S. federal government won’t fund research on it. Even though gun violence is a public health issue, a 1996 amendment forbids Congress from funding research on gun control. That makes it difficult for researchers who are interested in the topic to get money to investigate. One leading firearms expert estimated that 'no more than a dozen active, experienced investigators in the United States have focused their careers primarily on firearm violence.'"
A couple of things. First, a government forbidding any funding of one of the biggest public health crises in the world? This still blows my mind. Second, largely because of this (because who can afford to do this work with no money coming in?) only twelve people in the entire country studying gun deaths. This is like twelve guys studying oil extraction problems in the entire middle east. Oh, wait. I'm guessing there are more like twelve thousand.
Read the whole thing. It's not long. Some very revealing graphics.
@Akhilleus
Wonder why I had the same suspicion about that Fallario theft...
@Bobby Lee
Imagine some of those approximately 2 million federal workers voted for the doofus in 2016. Think they will vote for any Repugs in November?
Oops. The story about the little dictator screwing federal workers was tipped by Bobby Lee. But it's a good story so I'd be happy to take credit for it, but taking credit where it's not due is too....Trumpian, so fuggedaboutit.