Here’s a foundational question. From a piece by Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider that discusses Trump’s lawyer’s badgering of her over her reporting of That Letter:

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump’s legal team was trying to fend off an obstruction-of-justice charge from Mueller’s investigators by arguing that the president has the authority to fire whomever he wants, and that Comey is an unreliable witness.

My question is this: what’s their point? Or, what difference does that make? Or, what is the relevance? It can be the case that a president has the authority to fire anyone he wants and still also be the case that a particular firing is evidence of obstruction of justice.

Maybe it’s … Read the rest

Some wonky thinking here.

President Donald Trump met with leaders of the Christian community in the Oval Office and urged the nation to pray for the survivors of Hurricane Harvey and for the response and recovery efforts on Sunday. He also pledged $1 million of his personal money to help victims in Texas and Louisiana.

“From the beginning of our nation, Americans have joined together in prayer during times of great need to ask for God’s blessing and God’s guidance,” President Trump told the christian leaders Friday. “When we look across Texas and Louisiana, we see the American spirit of service embodied by countless men and women.”

But we also see a fuck-ton of water, and ruined houses, schools, … Read the rest

The imbecile president went back to Houston today. He says everything’s great, people there are blissed out.

President Trump toured part of a cavernous Houston convention center on Saturday that has provided refuge to thousands of families displaced by flooding since Hurricane Harvey roared into the city a week ago.

Trump said he saw happiness among the people crowded into the NRG Center. Many have lost their homes, cars and possessions in the epic flooding.

“We saw a lot of happiness,” Trump told reporters traveling with him. “It’s been really nice. It’s been a wonderful thing. As tough as this was, it’s been a wonderful thing, I think even for the country to watch it, for the world to

About that letter that’s today’s boom, the one that Trump and Miller cobbled together on a rainy day at Bedminster to explain why Trump hates Comey and was going to fire him, and that is now in Mueller’s hands – apparently it looks bad for Rosenstein. It means he knew all along that Trump wanted to fire Comey because of the Russia investigation, and sheds a harsh light on his failure to recuse himself. I gather this from reading Benjamin Wittes on Twitter.

The Times:

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has obtained a letter drafted by President Trump and a top political aide that offered an unvarnished view of Mr. Trump’s thinking in the days before

Trump says he’s going to donate a million dollars to the victims of Harvey. I’ll believe it when he actually does it. He has a history of saying he’s going to do things like that and then not doing them, and he does not have a history of doing things like that. Put the two together and you get a hard time believing he’ll actually do what he said he was going to do. He’s not a kind man, or a generous man, or a compassionate man. He’s a man who gets two scoops when everyone else gets one.

President Trump has pledged to donate $1 million from his personal fortune to storm victims in Texas and Louisiana.

“He would

That disgusting pig, that thieving racist billionaire, is slashing funding for the outreach that helps people sign up for health insurance. He’s deliberately causing poor people to fail to get health insurance out of spite and political revenge.

The Trump administration will significantly scale back Obamacare outreach efforts for the upcoming enrollment season, slashing spending on advertising and funding to community groups deployed to boost enrollment.

Senior HHS officials on Thursday afternoon said the federal government will cut the Obamacare advertising budget from $100 million to $10 million in the upcoming 2018 enrollment season. Funding for so-called navigator organizations that help people enroll will be cut from $63 million last year to roughly $37 million.

The announcement is the latest

Jennifer Rubin explains one line of argument against Trump’s pardon of Arpaio.

Meanwhile, Protect Democracy, an activist group seeking to thwart Trump’s violations of legal norms, and a group of lawyers have sent a letter to Raymond N. Hulser and John Dixon Keller of the Public Integrity Section, Criminal Division of the Justice Department, arguing that the pardon goes beyond constitutional limits. In their letter obtained by Right Turn, they argue:

While the Constitution’s pardon power is broad, it is not unlimited. Like all provisions of the original Constitution of 1787, it is limited by later-enacted amendments, starting with the Bill of Rights. For example, were a president to announce that he planned to pardon all white defendants convicted

Benjamin Wittes tweeted a new “BOOM” four minutes ago. NBC News:

Manafort Notes From Russian Meet Contain Cryptic Reference to ‘Donations’

Well that could certainly be interesting.

Paul Manafort’s notes from a controversial Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign included the word “donations,” near a reference to the Republican National Committee, two sources briefed on the evidence told NBC News.

The references, which have not been previously disclosed, elevated the significance of the June 2016 meeting for congressional investigators, who are focused on determining whether it included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.

It is illegal for foreigners to donate to American elections. The meeting happened

Rich Lowry at Politico nudges us to look at the implications of Trump’s apparent inability to fire his insubordinate subordinates.

First, it was chief economic adviser Cohn saying in an interview that the administration—i.e., Donald J. Trump—must do a better job denouncing hate groups. Then, it was Secretary of State Tillerson suggesting in a stunning interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that the rest of the government speaks for American values, but not necessarily the president. Finally, Secretary of Defense Mattis contradicted without a moment’s hesitation a Trump tweet saying we are done talking with North Korea.

In a more normal time, in a more normal administration, any of these would be a firing offense (although, in Mattis’

Mexico offered to help with the response to Harvey, and Trump’s administration responded with “We’ll call you if we need you.” Apparently that’s where it remains: Mexico offered help and the administration didn’t accept it.

They helped with Katrina, and Bush wasn’t such a shit that he said no thank you.

The U.S. government and Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Katrina was widely criticized, but Americans came together to offer housing, clothing, meals and monetary help to the affected. President George W. Bush even accepted a huge offer of aid from Mexico.

The aid Mexico sent was no small thing — it was an extraordinary gesture, and it may have saved many lives. Marking the first time that

PBS has a useful compilation of Trump on race. There are a few wild cards but mostly it’s what you’d expect…and there’s a lot of it.

To understand this side of the president, especially after his remarks about the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, we combed the archives (and Internet) for more of Trump’s words and actions on race. We found nearly 100 critical moments.

1973

Discrimination charge. Donald and Fred Trump are accused of violating the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against potential minority renters. They insist they are innocent and fight the sweeping charges.

1975

DOJ settlement. The Trumps settle with the Department of Justice over housing discrimination charges, agreeing to meet certain standards while

Trump this morning.

After reading the false reporting and even ferocious anger in some dying magazines, it makes me wonder, WHY? All I want to do is #MAGA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017

Oh please.

The life history of cheating and exploitation? The 1973 lawsuit for systematically discriminating against black people in housing rentals? Tricking people out of large sums of money for “tuition” at Trump “University”?

The Central Park 5? The birtherism?

The filth of the campaign – including a great deal of “ferocious anger”? Mexicans are rapists?

The constant name-calling? The bullying? The insults? The lies?

The conceit, the vanity, the self-importance, the self-obsession? The grotesque hubris of feeling qualified to be president?

“You … Read the rest

Jane Chong and Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare say it’s time.

The evidence of criminality on Trump’s part is little clearer today than it was a day, a week, or a month ago. But no conscientious member of the House of Representatives can at this stage fail to share McConnell’s doubts about Trump’s fundamental fitness for office. As the Trump presidency enters its eighth month, those members of Congress who are serious about their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution” must confront a question. It’s not, in the first instance, whether the President should be removed from office, or even whether he should be impeached. It is merely this: whether given everything Trump has done, said, tweeted and indeed

Jennifer Rubin argues that it’s time to impeach Trump.

President Richard Nixon faced impeachment not for any crime but, under the first article of impeachment, because, “in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice.”

Trump’s been doing that from the beginning. That first surprise dinner with Comey? That was a week after the inauguration.

Now The Post reports:

A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate

Speaking of Ivanka Trump’s pretensions to being a supporter of women’s “empowerment” and a legitimate senior adviser to a head of state – she endorses Trump’s intervention on the equal pay front.

The Trump administration, with the backing of first daughter Ivanka, has suspended a policy proposed by President Obama that would have made it easier for women and people of color to identify whether they were being paid less than white male counterparts at work.

Under the scheme, private employers with over 100 workers would have had to disclose pay data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on top of information on gender, race, and ethnicity already provided to the agency.

The policy was intended to help close

Even going to the scene of the disaster can’t take Trump’s mind off Trump.

As rescuers continued their exhausting and heartbreaking work in southeastern Texas on Tuesday afternoon, as the rain continued to fall and a reservoir near Houston spilled over, President Trump grabbed a microphone to address hundreds of supporters who had gathered outside a firehouse near Corpus Christi and were chanting: “USA! USA! USA!”

‘Thank you, everybody,” the president said, sporting one of the white “USA” caps that are being sold on his campaign website for $40. “I just want to say: We love you. You are special. . . . What a crowd. What a turnout.”

Yet again, Trump managed to turn attention on himself. His

CNN offers a little vignette illustrating how routinely horrible Trump is to everyone around him.

President Donald Trump was fuming as he sat in his Phoenix hotel watching news coverage ahead of his rally.

The venue for his first rally in nearly three weeks looked empty.

That’s when George Gigicos, Trump’s longtime advance man, got a call from Keith Schiller, the director of Oval Office operations who is almost always at Trump’s side, asking Gigicos why the crowds were scarce. Gigicos explained that while TV correspondents were live early from the venue, the rally wouldn’t start for several more hours and crowds had just begun to trickle in.

Oddly enough people don’t want to arrive at events hours early so … Read the rest

I thought I remembered seeing a 60 Minutes about Arpaio long ago. Sure enough – in 2001.

While Arpaio has received nationwide attention in the last few years for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration — and for promoting the lie that President Obama was born outside the U.S. — he made a name for himself in Arizona years ago.

60 Minutes profiled Arpaio in 2001, when he was eight years into his tenure as sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. At the time, correspondent Morley Safer called him a “big-time publicity hound” who had “become famous ’round the world as just about the meanest man in the West.”

His reputation in 2001 was that of a tough-as-nails jailer who

The Independent:

Eight of Donald Trump’s cyber-security advisers have resigned, warning the President had “given insufficient attention to the growing threats” facing the US.

A quarter of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council’s 28 members quit with a joint letter in which they claimed Mr Trump “threatened the security of the homeland”.

They cited his response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the vulnerability of the US election process.

Well hey, it’s only 8 out of 28. That’s not so bad.

The eight departing members accused Trump’s administration of failing to be “adequately attentive to the pressing national security matters” or “responsive to sound advice received from experts”.

Yet another cringe-inducing Trump press conference with a fellow head of state, in which we’re forced to compare the grown-up on the left with the flailing grimacing aphasic toddler on the right.

A very rough and incomplete transcription of his response to the question about Arpaio – whom he insists on calling “Sheriff Joe” over and over and over and over…

“Well a lot of people think it was the right thing to do, and during a hurricane I thought the ratings would be a lot higher…[he thought it was very very unfair what they did to him] When I mentioned him the other night, you saw what a big crowd we had, the people went crazy…the place went absolutely