We’re going full-schoolyard now, it seems.

Trump takes a shot at Pelosi's intelligence, saying of his new NAFTA, "I don't think Nancy Pelosi understands the deal. It's too complicated. But it's not a complicated deal."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 23, 2019

Trump then falsely claims Pelosi is holding up the new NAFTA even though "unions are in favour of it." He adds, "She's got to get up to snuff, learn the bill." Several big unions, and the AFL-CIO broadly, have been skeptical at best.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 23, 2019

Trump then says he doesn't think Pelosi even has the ability to understand the USMCA: "I don't think she's capable right now of understanding it. I think she's

Trump this morning.

Rex Tillerson, a man who is “dumb as a rock” and totally ill prepared and ill equipped to be Secretary of State, made up a story (he got fired) that I was out-prepared by Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Hamburg, Germany. I don’t think Putin would agree. Look how the U.S. is doing!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2019

Let’s pause to remember just one thing. The guy who composed that tweet is the guy who decided to make Rex Tillerson Secretary of State. If Tillerson was indeed totally ill-prepared and ill-equipped to be Secretary of State, then why did Trump decide to appoint him Secretary of State?

From that question, another follows. Clearly … Read the rest

How this morning went:

Reporters have been called to the Rose Garden just as Democratic leaders were arriving at the White House for an infrastructure meeting.

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) May 22, 2019

Interesting. Democrats arrive for a meeting so Trump’s people summon reporters to the Rose Garden. Is there a flower ceremony?

There's a sign in the Rose Garden that says "no collusion, no obstruction" on the podium plus some stats about the Mueller probe, per pool report. Trump has called an impromptu presser.

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) May 22, 2019

Trump has called an impromptu presser just as Democrats arrive for a meeting? And if it’s impromptu, how can there be signs ready?

Classic Infrastructure Week messaging. https://t.co/dTNK9KlzXh

If they’re just going to keep ignoring subpoenas…

The Washington Post’s Rachael Bade and Mike DeBonis report that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) argued to Pelosi Monday night that Congress should open an impeachment inquiry into Trump.

…

And it’s not just Nadler coming around to the idea that Congress may have no choice but to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump. On Monday, five members of Pelosi’s leadership team also urged her to consider impeachment proceedings.

There are pragmatic reasons for doing so, in addition to or instead of the obvious He’s A Criminal one.

Instead, these influential lawmakers see two more practical reasons to open impeachment inquiries: 1) saying the “i” word would help them make

It appears that Donnie Two-scoops is sweating.

It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge. It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2019

All of Twitter, with one voice:

YOU WERE TOLD

Sally Yates- Flynn is trouble. Don’t hire him.

Barack Obama- Flynn is trouble. Don’t hire him.

James Comey- Flynn is trouble. Don’t hire him.

The cashier at Target- Flynn is trouble. Don’t hire him.

Donald Trump- WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME ABOUT

More “I can do anything I want to” from President Crook:

President Donald Trump has granted a full pardon to Conrad Black, the former press baron and one-time society fixture who was found guilty of fraud and obstruction of justice in 2007.

…

…Black is a personal friend and the author of pro-Trump opinion pieces as well as a flattering book, Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.

Oh he’s like no other all right.

Sanders described Black, who also once owned the Chicago Sun-Times, The Jerusalem Post and The Telegraph in London, as “an entrepreneur and scholar” who “has made tremendous contributions to business, as well as to political and historical thought.”

She also cited support

Trump’s lawyers are claiming that Congress can’t investigate Trump’s corruption.

Lawyers for President Donald Trump and the House clashed Tuesday in federal court over the extent of Congress’ power to investigate him in the first legal test of Trump’s effort to block sprawling probes of his finances and private business.

Trump wants a judge to prevent a congressional committee from obtaining financial records from his longtime accountant, Mazars USA.

He’s the president, dammit! He’s busy! He has a lot of Fox to watch, a lot of golf to play, a lot of ice cream to gobble, a lot of insult-tweets to tweet. He can’t be worrying about Congress finding out exactly how crooked he is.

Trump and his namesake

Now it’s Wray’s turn.

Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday he “didn’t understand” FBI Director Christopher Wray’s “ridiculous” answer that the FBI didn’t spy when looking into then-candidate Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election.

“I didn’t understand [Wray’s] answer,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn. “I thought the attorney general answered it perfectly. So I certainly didn’t understand that answer. I thought it was a ridiculous answer.”

Trump has claimed the FBI “spied” on his campaign and that subsequent investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, including by special counsel Robert Mueller, were part of an “attempted coup” against him. Attorney General Bill Barr has also pushed that narrative, telling lawmakers last month that “spying

Barr is doing what Trump hired him to do.

Attorney General William P. Barr has tapped John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, to investigate the origins of the special counsel’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Barr picked Durham in recent weeks to work on the review, which is designed to ensure the U.S. government’s “intelligence collection activities” related to the Trump campaign were “lawful and appropriate,” a person familiar with the decision said.

That is, to search for some excuse to pretend that the U.S. government’s “intelligence collection activities” related to the Trump campaign were not “lawful and appropriate.”

In the weeks since the release of the report, Trump and his

For today’s adventure in trending authoritarian we have Trump snuggling up to Orbán.

Orban has said he he building “an alternative to liberal democracy."

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) May 13, 2019

The Guardian adds:

So what’s so special about that Orbán meeting? Well for one thing it fits into a pattern of Trump cosying up to authoritarian leaders – see Vladimir Putin, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, to name but three.

Orbán, the far-right Hungarian prime minister, has been accused of attacks on the media, minorities and the courts. He was snubbed by both Barack Obama and George W Bush, while last year the European parliament voted to bring disciplinary proceedings against Hungary for putting

David Frum writes that if Trump had been smart – gosh these wild hypotheticals, huh? – he would have embraced the Mueller report, apologized for mistakes, promised to learn from them, condemned Russian interference, moved on.

But that is not the Trump way. The Trump way is to escalate, always.

Over the four weeks between the Barr letter and the release of the redacted Mueller report, Trump kept insisting that the Mueller report said more than it did. It said, in effect: We didn’t find sufficient evidence to charge your campaign with conspiracy, and our internal Department of Justice policies forbid us from charging you with obstruction. He wanted it to say: You did nothing wrong. He wanted it

Whoops, it’s McGahn’s turn under the bus.

So I guess the witness prep did not go well https://t.co/ycIwAw4LHA

— David Frum (@davidfrum) May 11, 2019

He was though. He tried to fire Robert Mueller, and failed only because the people around him prevented him. One of those people was McGahn.

Also if Trump has never been a big fan, why did he make McGahn his White House counsel? Besides the fact that nobody any good would touch it with a bargepole?

Mcgahn finally gets the tweet many White House people thought he’d get for months. What Trump doesn’t mention is McGahn was instrumental in many of the accomplishments conservatives love and kept him from many of his worst instincts. https://t.co/a1DgIkVGWC

Jeffrey Toobin points out that our constitutional system wasn’t set up to deal with a Trump.

The Framers anticipated friction among the three branches of government, which has been a constant throughout our history, but the Trump White House has now established a complete blockade against the legislative branch, thwarting any meaningful oversight. The system, it appears, may simply be incapable of responding to this kind of challenge.

So the framers didn’t plan for assholes, aka malignant narcissists, aka psychopaths. Bit of a mistake, that.

Federal judges deal with disputes between Congress and the White House one case at a time, but that won’t do with this blockade.

But this approach by the courts—adjudicating one Administration claim of defiance

Paul Waldman on Rudy’s junket:

There are some news stories so jaw-dropping that you have to read them two or three times to make sure you’re not hallucinating. So it is with a story in the New York Times in which Rudolph W. Giuliani announces to the world that he is going to Ukraine to pressure that country’s government to use its official resources to assist in President Trump’s reelection effort — by mounting an investigation he hopes will produce dirt on Joe Biden.

Yes, Trump is trying to collude with a foreign government in an attempt to aid his campaign by creating negative stories about a potential opponent. Again.

Well, it worked the first time, so why wouldn’t… Read the rest