Speaking of beautiful statues that are causing Donald Trump to mourn and pine when they are moved from one spot to another, a couple of Facebook friends have been reminding us of some that were demolished altogether decades ago. They adorned what was then Bonwit Teller at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in Manhattan.

At the very top of the facade were limestone relief panels of two nearly naked women brandishing large scarves, as if dancing. The architects were Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore, super-traditional Beaux-Arts designers of mansions and clubs — a puzzling choice for a such an outré building. In time the reliefs would become a Bonwit Teller signature.

Beginning in the 1960s, a series of corporate

Ok, here’s a new low. Trump has tweeted that we should commit a war crime to stop terrorism. (Joke’s on him: war crimes are terrorism.)

President Donald Trump appeared to cite an apocryphal story about an American general executing dozens of Muslim prisoners in the Philippines and defiling their bodies with pig blood in the wake of a deadly terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday.

After first condemning the attack and offering the United States’ support, the president said to “study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught,” an apparent reference to a debunked legend about World War I-era General John J. Pershing that Trump repeatedly recounted in his speeches on the campaign trail.

The Times reported on the bleak mood among Trump’s people yesterday. (Sometimes urls are oddly…striking. “trump-charlottesville-military-jews-ceos.html” hmmmm yeah.) There’s a good deal of interesting information.

President Trump found himself increasingly isolated in a racial crisis of his own making on Wednesday, abandoned by the nation’s top business executives, contradicted by military leaders and shunned by Republicans outraged by his defense of white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville, Va.

The breach with the business community was the most striking. Titans of American industry and finance revolted against a man they had seen as one of their own, concluding Wednesday morning they could no longer serve on two of Mr. Trump’s advisory panels.

They’re good with the wholly “business can do no … Read the rest

Eileen Sullivan at the Times analyzes Trump’s latest white supremacist rant.

Officials in several states have called for the removal of public monuments that have become symbols of the Confederacy.

The Twitter posts were the latest in his escalating remarks that critics contend validate white supremacist groups who led a bloody rally over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va. The proposed removal of a statute of the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a public park in Charlottesville spurred the demonstrations.

Mr. Trump’s tweets came the morning after his personal lawyer forwarded an email to conservative journalists, government officials and friends that painted Lee in glowing terms and echoed secessionist sentiment from the Civil War era.

WHAT??

Oh, god, … Read the rest

Trump has been outdoing himself this morning.

Join me at 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, August 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona at the Phoenix Convention Center! Tickets at: https://t.co/2kUQfKqbsx pic.twitter.com/5ua74dlVtq

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017

Yet another fascist rally, because we haven’t had enough fascist rallies yet. Yet another opportunity to worship the dear führer, because he can never have enough worship because he is so revoltingly narcissistic and needy.

Publicity seeking Lindsey Graham falsely stated that I said there is moral equivalency between the KKK, neo-Nazis & white supremacists……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017

…and people like Ms. Heyer. Such a disgusting lie. He just can't forget his election trouncing.The people of South Carolina will

CNBC tells the story of how the CEOs decided to say bye-bye to Trump.

After President Donald Trump’s incendiary comments last weekend about the violence in Charlottesville, the three female CEOs on his Strategic and Policy Forum helped get the ball rolling about appropriate responses.

The question, as they saw it, was whether it was better to remain on the Trump forum, with the ability to influence the White House? Or did it make more sense to back away to show disdain for the president’s seeming support of white nationalists?

It would be several days before the full forum ultimately made a decision. But by Monday the CEOs of Pepsi, IBM and GM – Indra Nooyi, Ginni Rometty

Yesterday evening the White House sent out its usual daily notes.

Every day, the White House communications office sends official talking points to Republican members of Congress. These communiqués help the GOP stay on the same page (and, in the Trump era, help the embattled president’s allies come up with arguments in his defense).

On Tuesday evening, a few hours after the president’s inflammatory press conference defending white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville, the office issued an “evening communications briefing,” which was passed along to me by a Republican congressional aide. It encourages members to echo the president’s line, contending that “both sides … acted inappropriately, and bear some responsibility.”

Oh yes. Driving a car at speed into a crowd … Read the rest

I posted that collection of statements by departing CEOs just a little late: Trump has dissolved the councils.

President Donald Trump dissolved two of his economic advisory councils Wednesday after a rash of CEOs resigned in the wake of his response to a white nationalist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, that occurred Saturday.

“Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both,” Trump tweeted. “Thank you all!”

He must be seething.

Trump’s tweet came just moments after two more executives announced their resignations from his Manufacturing Council Wednesday. Leaders of another council, called the Strategic and Policy Forum, said they were disbanding the body because the Charlottesville debate

Business Insider provides a rundown of all the CEOs on Trump’s manufacturing council and their statements [if given] on resigning or not resigning. Seven have resigned at this point. Several who are still on the council didn’t give statements.

I’ll share the leavers’ statements.

• Ken Frazier, Merck,  left the council. “As CEO of Merck, and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism,” he said in a statement.
• Brian Krzanich, Intel, announced Monday night he would step down from the council: “I am not a politician,” Krzanich said in a statement. “I am an engineer who has spent most of his career working in factories that manufacture the

His staff is “stunned,” we’re told. Really? Why? Did they think he was a decent or thoughtful or humane guy?

Of course they didn’t, but I suppose they must have thought he had enough self-control to hide quite what a foul mindless sadistic demon he is. I suppose they’re stunned that he blew the thing so wide open.

Multiple sources inside and close to the White House described the president’s senior staff as confused and frustrated, caught off guard by Trump’s decision to defend his initial response to the violence in Virginia.

He “went rogue,” one senior White House official told NBC News.

The president’s team had choreographed a plan: he would descend the golden elevators of Trump Tower and

David Rothkopf in the Post:

Donald Trump on Tuesday afternoon gave the most disgusting public performance in the history of the American presidency. Framed by the vulgar excess of the lobby of Trump Tower, the president of the United States shook loose the constraints of his more decent-minded advisers and, speaking from his heart, defended white supremacists and by extension, their credos of hatred. He equated with those thugs the courageous Americans who had gathered to stand up to the racism, anti-Semitism and doctrine of violence that won the cheers and Nazi salutes of the alt-right hordes to whom Trump felt such loyalty.

He made it crystal clear, in case anyone hadn’t caught on yet, that the reason it … Read the rest

The Nazi in chief gave a ragey press conference (or q&a session or whatever) this afternoon, by way of making sure we understood that he’s just as disgusting as we thought.

President Trump angrily defended himself on Tuesday against criticism that he did not specifically condemn Nazi and white supremacist groups following the weekend’s deadly racial unrest in Virginia, and at one point questioned whether the movement to pull down statues of Confederate leaders would escalate to the desecration of George Washington.

In a long, combative exchange with reporters at Trump Tower in Manhattan, the president repeatedly rejected a torrent of bipartisan criticism for waiting two days before naming the right-wing groups and placing blame on “many sides” for the 

Chris Cillizza explains Trump’s thinking on the whole fascism is bad-I love fascism thing.

On Monday night, just hours after he had, finally, condemned in harsh terms the neo-Nazis and white supremacists involved in violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Donald Trump took to Twitter. And he retweeted thisfrom a man named Jack Posobiec:

“Meanwhile: 39 shootings in Chicago this weekend, 9 deaths. No national media outrage. Why is that?”

It’s true, there were many shootings in Chicago over the weekend. It was 30, not 39, according to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times. Nine people died. But this is more about who Trump chose to retweet.

Posobiec is a well-known figure on Twitter — he has

Trump. This morning. He retweeted a cartoon of a train killing a reporter. Haha. It’s one of his funny jokes, you see. Haha. If only all the reporters were dead, so that all we knew about Trump would come from his own PR team. Haha. So funny.

President Trump has retweeted a cartoon of a train bearing the Trump logo killing a CNN reporter, just days after a protester at a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was fatally run down by a driver who participated in that rally. The cartoon reads “Fake news can’t stop the Trump train.” In July, Trump shared a GIF of himself beating the CNN logo to a pulp. Thirty minutes after promoting the cartoon

Jennifer Rubin on Trump’s too little too late:

He had to begin with some self-congratulations on the economy — because his accomplishments are what he really cares about. He told the country, “To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend’s racist violence, you will be held fully accountable. Justice will be delivered.” He finally spit it out by calling racism “evil” and condemning the “KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups.”

He read from a teleprompter. Speaking from his heart would have been impossible, given his obvious lack of passion and willful blindness over the past couple of days. He did not mention the “alt-right,” nor did he announce he is firing Stephen K. Bannon, who once bragged

Trump finally, and one imagines with about 10 people pushing him just out of sight, sullenly said the thing he refused to say on Saturday. Too late, boyo.

President Donald Trump bowed to overwhelming pressure that he personally condemn white supremacists who incited bloody demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend — labeling their racist views “evil” after two days of equivocal statements.

“Racism is evil,” Mr. Trump said. “And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

It’s a pity that by now we all know he doesn’t believe a word of that and didn’t … Read the rest