Boom, as Benjamin Wittes says when one of these appears. Trump tried to order Sessions not to recuse himself.

President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election.

Public pressure was building for Mr. Sessions, who had been a senior member of the Trump campaign, to step aside. But the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.

Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. Mr. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama.

He thought the head of the Justice Department was supposed to be his personal consigliere. (Mind you, this mess does highlight what a terrible move it was for Kennedy to give his brother the job. Trump has been teaching us about how particularly independent the DOJ is supposed to be.)

The lobbying of Mr. Sessions is one of several previously unreported episodes that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has learned about as he investigates whether Mr. Trump obstructed the F.B.I.’s Russia inquiry.

Is this the first leak from the Mueller investigation? Reporters are always underlining how under wraps it all is.

The events occurred during a two-month period — from when Mr. Sessions recused himself in March until the appointment of Mr. Mueller in May — when Mr. Trump believed he was losing control over the investigation.

Among the other episodes, Mr. Trump described the Russia investigation as “fabricated and politically motivated” in a letter that he intended to send to the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, but that White House aides stopped him from sending. Mr. Mueller has also substantiated claims that Mr. Comey made in a series of memos describing troubling interactions with the president before he was fired in May.

Oh he has! That’s interesting. Hardly surprising, but interesting.

The special counsel has received handwritten notes from Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, showing that Mr. Trump talked to Mr. Priebus about how he had called Mr. Comey to urge him to say publicly that he was not under investigation.

Ah. There you go then. It’s no longer just Comey’s memos.

The New York Times has also learned that four days before Mr. Comey was fired, one of Mr. Sessions’s aides asked a congressional staff member whether he had damaging information about Mr. Comey, part of an apparent effort to undermine the F.B.I. director. It was not clear whether Mr. Mueller’s investigators knew about this incident.

Mr. Mueller has also been examining a false statement that the president dictated on Air Force One in July in response to an article in The Times about a meeting that Trump campaign officials had with Russians in 2016. A new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff, says that the president’s lawyers believed that the statement was “an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation’s gears,” and that it led one of Mr. Trump’s spokesmen to quit because he believed it was obstruction of justice.

Is cognitive decline a valid defense?

Trump is of course firing off threats of lawsuits right and left.

He’s threatening the publisher and the author.

The legal notice, which has been published by the Washington Post, demands that author Michael Wolff and the book’s publisher “immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination of the book”.

It accuses Wolff of making “numerous false and/or baseless statements” about Mr Trump and says lawyers are considering pursuing libel charges.

Considering it. They just might do it! I’m tellin ya, they’ll do it! They will! You better shut up or they will!

He’s threatening Bannon.

A private lawyer representing Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon, arguing he violated an employment agreement with the Trump Organization when he spoke to author Michael Wolff for a new scathing book about the presidency.

With the Trump Organization? Huh, there we were thinking he was working for the government, aka us. Not to mention, can a president really sue people into not saying he’s incompetent and a bozo?

Trump is a public figure. So suing for defamation, as the letter threatens, could require Trump to prove that a statement made by Bannon was false, damaging and delivered with actual malice, meaning that Bannon knew his comments were false and made them anyway.

Suing Bannon for breaking an employment contract would be even more difficult, said Lobel, who described the move as a “desperate” attempt by Trump to silence his former confidant.

…

In the cease-and-desist letter, Trump’s lawyer wrote that Bannon breached three sections of his employment agreement with the Trump Organization by communicating with Wolff, disclosing confidential information and making disparaging statements and in some cases outright defamatory statements about Trump, his family and the campaign.

Bannon has not revealed the exact terms of the contract he signed. But according to Trump’s lawyer, Bannon promised in his employment agreement not to disclose confidential information, not to demean or publicly disparage Trump, his family, or the campaign, and not to communicate with any member of the news media on behalf of, or about the campaign, without express written authorization from the campaign or Trump.

That’s such classic Trump – nobody may disparage Trump but Trump may disparage everyone else in the most vulgar and dishonest terms. One rule for Donald and another rule for every other human being on the planet.

During the presidential campaign, other staffers described how Trump forced their silence through such restrictive agreements, which are highly unusual in political campaigns. One such document, obtained by The Washington Post, includes a “no-disparagement” clause that requires staffers to promise “during the term of your service and at all time thereafter” not to “demean or disparage publicly” Trump, his business ventures or any of his family members or their business ventures “and to prevent your employees from doing so.”

Essentially, he approached his campaign staff much as he did the employees of his business ventures — demanding control over what they can and can’t say. As he transitioned to the White House, some wondered if he would enforce a similar silence from his administration — raising concerns about government transparency.

He’s got the world’s most ravenous ego.

John Cassidy at the New Yorker does some more gleaning from Wolff’s book and tosses us the bits of chocolate and almond.

[T]he over-all portrait that Wolff draws of a dysfunctional, bitterly divided White House in the first six months of Trump’s Presidency, before the appointment of John Kelly as chief of staff and the subsequent firing of Bannon, has the whiff of authenticity about it—and it echoes news coverage at the time. Other details are impossible to confirm but damning if true. Such was the animosity between Bannon and “Jarvanka”—Bannon’s dismissive term for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner—Wolff reports, that, during one Oval Office meeting, Bannon called Ivanka “a fucking liar,” to which Trump responded,“I told you this is a tough town, baby.” Wolff also quotes Bannon commenting gleefully after Trump decided to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, a decision that Ivanka opposed: “Score. The bitch is dead.”

Worst clubhouse ever.

Equally plausible is Wolff’s portrait of Trump as a one-dimensional figure who had no conception that he could win the 2016 election; little clue what to do after he did emerge victorious from the campaign trail; and virtually no interest in, or aptitude for, acquiring the skills and information needed to fulfill the role of President. “Here was, arguably, the central issue of the Trump presidency,” Wolff writes. The Commander-in-Chief “didn’t process information in any conventional sense—or, in a way, he didn’t process it at all.” He continues,

Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate  . . . . Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he didn’t have to, and that in fact this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was postliterate—total television.

But not only didn’t he read, he didn’t listen. He preferred to be the person talking. And he trusted his own expertise—no matter how paltry or irrelevant—more than anyone else’s. What’s more, he had an extremely short attention span, even when he thought you were worthy of attention.

“He preferred to be the person talking” – yes of course he did. He appears to be profoundly bored by pretty much everything that isn’t himself. His is a narcissism that crowds out everything else.

There are revealing, unconfirmed new anecdotes, too, about Trump’s sexism and narcissism. In one meeting, Wolff says, the President referred to Hope Hicks, his communications director, as “a piece of tail.” In another meeting, he described Sally Yates, the former acting Attorney General, whom he fired early in his term, after she refused to defend his original travel ban, as “such a cunt.”

Tell us again that that word has nothing to do with misogyny.

Michael Wolff has a summary of his Trump book at the Hollywood Reporter (a fitting place for it).

Most of it is what we’ve already seen via the news: shock-horror, chaos, incompetence, mass departures, how did we get here, what does this even. But toward the end there are some…let’s say noteworthy details.

There was, after the abrupt Scaramucci meltdown, hardly any effort inside the West Wing to disguise the sense of ludicrousness and anger felt by every member of the senior staff toward Trump’s family and Trump himself. It became almost a kind of competition to demystify Trump. For Rex Tillerson, he was a moron. For Gary Cohn, he was dumb as shit. For H.R. McMaster, he was a hopeless idiot. For Steve Bannon, he had lost his mind.

Most succinctly, no one expected him to survive Mueller. Whatever the substance of the Russia “collusion,” Trump, in the estimation of his senior staff, did not have the discipline to navigate a tough investigation, nor the credibility to attract the caliber of lawyers he would need to help him. (At least nine major law firms had turned down an invitation to represent the president.)

There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he’d repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn’t stop saying something.

That. That’s very Alzheimersy, very dementia-indicative.

Hope Hicks, Trump’s 29-year-old personal aide and confidant, became, practically speaking, his most powerful White House advisor. (With Melania a nonpresence, the staff referred to Ivanka as the “real wife” and Hicks as the “real daughter.”) Hicks’ primary function was to tend to the Trump ego, to reassure him, to protect him, to buffer him, to soothe him. It was Hicks who, attentive to his lapses and repetitions, urged him to forgo an interview that was set to open the 60 Minutes fall season.

Ah. In other words she realized that an interview would expose how far gone in dementia he is.

That, by the way, is a reason to invoke the 25th Amendment, not to protect him.

Donald Trump’s small staff of factotums, advisors and family began, on Jan. 20, 2017, an experience that none of them, by any right or logic, thought they would — or, in many cases, should — have, being part of a Trump presidency. Hoping for the best, with their personal futures as well as the country’s future depending on it, my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.

At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.

Oh.

The Times on Trump’s witty and tactful overture to North Korea yesterday:

President Trump again raised the prospect of nuclear war with North Korea, boasting in strikingly playground terms on Tuesday night that he commands a “much bigger” and “more powerful” arsenal of devastating weapons than the outlier government in Asia.

CNN last night was doing a lot of underlining of the dick-waving aspect – which was triple, let’s not forget, bigger and more powerful AND IT WORKS.

This of course was just as South Korea was suggesting talks with the North, so there’s that punch the ally aspect as well.

The president’s tone also generated a mix of scorn and alarm among lawmakers, diplomats and national security experts who called it juvenile and frightening for a president handling a foreign policy challenge with world-wrecking consequences. The language was reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s boast during the 2016 presidential campaign that his hands, and by extension his genitals, were in fact big enough.

Dick-waving. That’s our head of state.

It came on a day when Mr. Trump, back in Washington from his Florida holiday break, effectively opened his new year with a barrage of provocative tweets on a host of issues. He called for an aide to Hillary Clinton to be thrown in jail, threatened to cut off aid to Pakistan and the Palestinians, assailed Democrats over immigration, claimed credit for the fact that no one died in a jet plane crash last year and announced that he would announce his own award next Monday for the most dishonest and corrupt news media.

Holiday over; work resumed.

Mr. Trump’s supporters brushed off the criticism, calling the president’s words a bracing stand that would force North Korea to confront the potential repercussions of its efforts to develop nuclear weapons that could reach the continental United States.

Oh please. Do they think North Korea doesn’t know we have more nukes than they do?

Many security experts have said there is no reasonable military option for restraining North Korea that would not involve unacceptable loss of life, which is one reason South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, is more eager for dialogue. But Mr. Trump and his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, have argued that there is a viable military alternative.

Welll that’s putting it euphemistically. What they really mean is that Trump doesn’t think there is such a thing as unacceptable loss of life, as long as the lives lost are far away and foreign.

Reality as seen from the Wall Street Journal editorial board: fine, everything is fine, don’t worry about it, the very fact that so many people are so disgusted by Trump shows that he’s not a problem.

As Donald Trump heads into his second year as President, we’re pleased to report that there hasn’t been a fascist coup in Washington. This must be terribly disappointing to the progressive elites who a year ago predicted an authoritarian America because Mr. Trump posed a unique threat to democratic norms. But it looks like the U.S. will have to settle for James Madison’s boring checks and balances.

The ones that prevent an incompetent ignorant corrupt malevolent bully from attaining executive power and access to nuclear weapons? Those boring checks and balances?

Mr. Trump’s rhetorical attacks on the media are excessive. But for all of his bluster, we haven’t seen a single case of Trump prosecutors seeking warrants to eavesdrop on journalists to discover their sources.

But Trump’s “excessive” and also relentless and non-stop attacks on the news media are not inert; they have an effect; they coach we don’t know how many millions of people to distrust the Times and the Post and trust Fox News.

Mr. Trump is also facing a special counsel investigation with essentially unchecked power to investigate him and his family.

As that family infiltrates the federal government in defiance of an anti-nepotism law and enriches itself in defiance of several anti-corruption laws.

The real story of the past year is that, despite the daily Trumpian melodrama, the U.S. political system is working more or less as usual. Mr. Trump has sometimes broken with familiar presidential decorum, especially in his public statements and attacks on individuals. But he is paying a considerable political price for that excess with an approval rating below 40% less than a year into his term.

But he’s still doing it. It’s not some minor little side issue.

But hey, stocks are up, so go buy a golf course or something.

Jeffrey Goldberg (at the Atlantic) talked to Jonah Goldberg (of National Review). They are not the same person. Indeed the fact that they are not the same person of part of Jeffrey G’s motivation for talking to Jonah G.

I wanted to interview Jonah because I find him provocative and sharp, but also because I have as a goal the disaggregation of all media Goldbergs. I am frequently confused for Jonah, and sometimes I’m blamed for the things he writes. He is blamed for the things I write, of course, and we sometimes get each other’s mail. This interview was a chance to convince podcast listeners that we are, indeed, two separate people.

Or one person doing two voices!

Just kidding.

Anyway. Jeffrey G starts by asking Jonah G to tell us about his life as a “homeless conservative” – i.e. one who sees Trump as Trump and not our lord and savior.

Jonah Goldberg: I’m not ideologically homeless. The problem is I’m politically homeless. What we’ve seen in the last couple of years is the Republican Party get either dragged along or leap ahead into essentially a cult of personality. A cult of personality is somewhat misleading because it’s only a handful of people who really think that Comrade Trump will deliver the greatest wheat harvest the Urals have ever seen. But for most of them, it’s more like—and I don’t mean to be glib about this. My brother was an addict. He died a few years ago. And I watched how my parents would try to rationalize his behavior. Every time my brother had a good day, it was the first day of the rest of his life.

Jeffrey: “This is the day he became president.”

Jonah: Yeah. This is the thing with Trump. It’s constantly, “This is the day he became president. This is the pivot. He’s off on the right foot. He can change.”

Jeffrey: So there are two camps. There’s a camp of actual true believers. And then there’s a larger camp to say, “No, it’s not as bad as you think.”

Jonah: I mean, so, it’s funny. A year and a half ago, at Fox and other places on the right, I remember being so unbelievably disheartened by how many pundits and commentators—not just at Fox, but talk radio, all over the place—lied. They would say, “Trump is fantastic. Trump is awesome. Trump is a genius. He’s a businessman.” All this stuff. And then the camera goes off, and the microphone goes off, and then they would say, “I can’t believe I have to defend this guy.”

They don’t “have to” of course. It may be that they “have to” if they want to keep their jobs, but that doesn’t count as genuine necessity. The genuineness of the necessity diminishes as the horror of the person being defended expands. Trump is off the charts horrific, so you do the math.

Jeffrey: That’s terrible.

Jonah: It’s horrible.

Jeffrey: By the way, that’s the swamp.

Jonah: It’s totally the swamp. And what I’ve found though, a year later, you now find people who aren’t lying. Now, you don’t find a lot of people saying, when the camera goes off, “I can’t believe I have to defend this guy.” They believe their own bullshit.

Which is also terrible and horrible and swampy…especially since his being president makes it so easy to observe for oneself exactly how disgusting he is.

Jonah: I’ve lost some friends for sure, and I’ve lost a lot of fans. On the right, Trump is still sort of controversial. Just talking about him is divisive. Some people are all-in and some people are against him. And if you get asked the question, and you take a strong stand against him, and you don’t speak in these silly euphemisms, like “Maybe he should tweet less,” you piss people off.

Jeffrey: His tweeting does cause a disproportionate amount of the destabilization that we are experiencing. Are you saying that telling him not to tweet is akin to putting Bacitracin on a tumor? Because it seems like that’s a stand-in for a whole set of impulsive behaviors that if they did not exist might bring us to a saner place.

Jonah: The tweeting is a symptom. People tweet. Barack Obama tweeted.

Jeffrey: No one would confuse their two Twitter feeds.

Jonah: No. And the problem with Trump’s Twitter feed is that it is like the Narnian wardrobe to his lizard brain. It just vomits out whatever his raging sphincterless id has got going at the given moment. It gets him into an enormous amount of trouble.