So Trump’s insatiable need for total, uncritical admiration, or worship, is messing up that “fine-tuned machine” in a very tangible sense: it’s making it impossible for them to fill their thousands of vacancies.

During President Trump’s transition to power, his team reached out to Elliott Abrams for help building a new administration. Mr. Abrams, a seasoned Republican foreign policy official, sent lists of possible candidates for national security jobs.

One by one, the answer from the Trump team came back no. The reason was consistent: This one had said disparaging things about Mr. Trump during the campaign; that one had signed a letter opposing him. Finally, the White House asked Mr. Abrams himself to meet with the president about

Life in the Trump administration – if they find out you wrote something critical of Trump in the past, they physically remove you from the premises.

A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser. He was preparing a cross-country tour for Mr. Carson, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate this

Today in TrumpOnTwitter.

Thank you for all of the nice statements on the Press Conference yesterday. Rush Limbaugh said one of greatest ever. Fake media not happy!

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

Oh well if Rush Limbaugh said so.

Since then he’s been busy with stuff like that Rally at the Orlando airport. But then a couple of hours ago he went Full Fascist.

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

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

The press is the enemy of the people, according to him. Once again he’s inciting hatred and, … Read the rest

Trump has gotten rid of that pesky rule that said coal companies couldn’t dump all their waste products into streams. Another victory for filthy water! The People, in all their glorious peoplehood, love filthy water; they thrive on it. It’s only coastal elites who look down on it from their spotless mansions in the sky.

President Donald Trump signed legislation repealing a regulation meant to protect streams from the effects of coal mining.

The congressional resolution killing the so-called Stream Protection Rule, which was issued in the waning days of the Obama administration, follows similar action by Trump overturning an anti-corruption rule that would have required oil companies to disclose payments to foreign governments.

We must protect corporations’ rights to … Read the rest

One of the worst bits of that “press conference” that was really just a therapy session for Donnie was when April Ryan asked him if he planned to collaborate with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Ryan asked Trump if he would include the CBC in discussions about his agenda for addressing urban policy. The CBC, for those unaware, is the Congressional Black Caucus, a group of African American legislators that is often a leading voice on the Hill for issues dealing with the black community. Trump appeared briefly to be unaware of what the initials stood for, and so Ryan asked more pointedly.

I didn’t recognize the initials either, partly because “the CBC” is also short for the Canadian Broadcasting … Read the rest

Trump’s eagerness to get away from the White House is going to cost us all hundreds of millions of dollars – hundreds of millions that could have gone to more urgent things than Trump’s ability to spend a lot of time at his Florida golf club.

On Friday, President Trump and his entourage will jet for the third straight weekend to a working getaway at his oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.

On Saturday, Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr., with their Secret Service details in tow, will be nearly 8,000 miles away in the United Arab Emirates, attending the grand opening of a Trump-brand golf resort in the “Beverly Hills of Dubai.”

Meanwhile, New York police will keep

A Trump goon bullshits Evan Davis on Newsnight.

“I’m sad to say that you and your colleagues have fallen into this trap of fake news,” the goon says.

Sebastian Gorka, his name is. He’s been news himself lately.

Donald Trump’s Deputy Assistant has angrily denied being anti-Semitic after he was spotted wearing a military medal associated with Hungarian Nazi sympathisers.

Sebastian Gorka, who is of Hungarian descent but was born and raised in the UK, was pictured wearing the controversial badge at an inaugural ball for Mr Trump and several other events.

According to the LobeLog blog, the medal was given to Mr Gorka’s father by the group Vitezi Rend – meaning Order of Heroes – that consisted

One thing that stood out in that horrifying “press conference” was his whines about the “hatred” at CNN.

From the Times transcript:

It’s very important to me and especially in this position. It’s very important. I don’t mind bad stories. I can handle a bad story better than anybody as long as it’s true and, you know, over a course of time, I’ll make mistakes and you’ll write badly and I’m OK with that. But I’m not OK when it is fake. I mean, I watch CNN, it’s so much anger and hatred and just the hatred.

…

And I’ll tell you what else I see. I see tone. You know the word “tone.” The tone is such

CNN found the press conference startling – which is perhaps to be expected, given how much of it was about or rather aimed at CNN.

President Donald Trump launched an extraordinary denunciation Thursday of his critics and media reports that his White House is in chaos, complaining he inherited a “mess” and slamming stories that his campaign was constantly in contact with Russia as “fake news.”

It will immediately go down as a stunning moment in modern American political history, as presidents have rarely betrayed such a sense of anger and grievance so graphically or so early in their administrations.

And they have never done it in such a flailing, barking, self-interrupting way. They have never looked like such redfaced … Read the rest

I just watched the last 40 minutes or so of Trump’s press conference. It was unbelievable. He’s always worse than it’s possible to imagine ahead of time. He’s incoherent – spasmodic – irascible – ignorant – boastful – truculent – prickly – vain – hyperbolic – absurd – mendacious of course – unctuous – clueless – childish –

I don’t see how anyone can watch him in action without wondering how in hell he managed to get the job he has and why we can’t kick him out right this second.

The Post has a transcript with annotations by Aaron Blake.

We have had great conversations with the United Kingdom, and meetings. Israel, Mexico, Japan, China and Canada, really,

Today in Donnie Disgusting:

Venezuela should allow Leopoldo Lopez, a political prisoner & husband of @liliantintori (just met w/ @marcorubio) out of prison immediately. pic.twitter.com/bt8Xhdo7al

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017

So now we do diplomacy on Twitter, is that it? And what’s with the thumb? And why is he telling us this? And does he think he can do the whole thing one person at a time? Is this really what he thinks the job is – dispensing miraculous interventions to individual people by broadcasting their cases on Twitter?

Stock market hits new high with longest winning streak in decades. Great level of confidence and optimism – even before tax plan rollout!

— Donald J.