People who know Trump say he won’t read anything that’s not about him – so it’s hopeless trying to get him to read, say, the Constitution, or intelligence briefings, or books about foreign policy or law or human rights or economics or history or anything else of that kind. But there are apparently a few exceptions, and one of them is InfoWars. That appears to be where he got his claim that news outlets are deliberately not reporting Islamist violence.

the kernel of the idea appears to have come from — or at least been propagated by — one of his favorite news sources: the conspiracy theory website InfoWars.

As @UrbanAchievr noted after Trump’s comments, InfoWars has been barking up

Now Trump is accusing the news media of concealing Islamist attacks.

Speaking to the U.S. Central Command on Monday, President Trump went off his prepared remarks to make a truly stunning claim: The media was intentionally covering up reports of terrorist attacks.

“You’ve seen what happened in Paris, and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening,” he said to the assembled military leaders. “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.”

What reasons? A secret hope to see Sharia become the law of the land?

It’s true, Philip Bump points out, that not ever terrorist … Read the rest

Even John Yoo, author of torture-approving memos in Bush’s Justice Department, thinks Trump is overstepping the limits on what presidents can do.

Article II of the Constitution vests the president with “the executive power,” but does not define it. Most of the Constitution instead limits that power, as with the president’s duty “to take care that the laws are faithfully executed,” or divides that power with Congress, as with making treaties or appointing Supreme Court justices.

Hamilton argued that good government and “energy in the executive” went hand in hand. In The Federalist No. 70, he wrote that the framers, to encourage “decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch,” entrusted the executive power in a unified branch headed by a single

More from that Times piece yesterday on Trump’s sad awakening.

Cloistered in the White House, he now has little access to his fans and supporters — an important source of feedback and validation — and feels increasingly pinched by the pressures of the job and the constant presence of protests, one of the reasons he was forced to scrap a planned trip to Milwaukee last week. For a sense of what is happening outside, he watches cable, both at night and during the day — too much in the eyes of some aides — often offering a bitter play-by-play of critics like CNN’s Don Lemon.

And, of course, it doesn’t help that he’s willfully stupid and incurious. He seems … Read the rest

The Speaker of the House of Commons has made a forthright statement on why in his view Donald Trump should not be invited to give a speech in said House. Spoiler: it’s because Trump is a bad man. Specifically, it’s because he’s racist and sexist.

“Before the imposition of the migrant ban I would myself have been strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall,” Mr Bercow told MPs.

“After the imposition of the migrant ban by President Trump I am even more strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall.”

Parts of the Commons erupted into rare spontaneous applause in support of Mr Bercow’s statement.

The intervention will cause headaches in Downing

Your morning TwitterTrump.

Last night he interrupted the flow of invective with a sportsball rejoicement. Rah.

Then today it was back to business.

Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2017

Perfect, isn’t it? Any poll he dislikes is “fake news.” Trumpian epistemology in a nutshell.

And what does he think he means by “people want”? Of course some people approve of his ban, but others don’t. He can’t tell how the numbers fall just by looking out the window.

Plus the usual thing – we already have border security and extensive vetting.

I call

TwitterTrump just in. I guess he slept late today.

Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2017

So the very first thing he says is that he cannot believe our system of government works the way it does work. That’s a pretty tragic admission for a head of state.

And then there’s the boneheaded error at the heart of all this, which is the fatuous belief that he has discovered the One Simple Way to prevent any and all Islamist outrages inside the US. The reality of course is that there is no One Simple Way. … Read the rest

Donnie from Queens hasn’t tweeted about this yet. That will be because it appears to be about someone else. The fact that that someone else reflects badly on him won’t cross his mind.

… Read the rest

Even some Republicans are a little bit skeeved by Trump’s flattery of Putin.

President Trump has long been effusive in his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike.

In an interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, which will air ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday, Trump doubled down on his “respect” for Putin — even in the face of accusations that Putin and his associates have murdered journalists and dissidents in Russia.

“I do respect him. Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get along with them,” Trump told O’Reilly.

O’Reilly pressed on, declaring to the president that “Putin is a killer.”

Unfazed, Trump didn’t back

From Nick Cohen’s extended piece on Trump and lies and the people who believe his lies:

No one in the west has seen Trump’s kind of triumph in politics since the age of the dictators. But look around your workplace and perhaps you won’t be so surprised by their victories. If you are unlucky, you will see an authoritarian standing over you. The radical economist Chris Dillow once wrote that, while the fall of communism discredited the centrally planned economy, the centrally planned corporation, with the autocratic leader who tolerated no dissent, not only survived 1989, but blossomed.

Dillow is not alone in worrying about the harm the little Hitlers of the corporation might bring. Since the crash, economists have

Why is Ivanka Trump present at official meetings? She was present at a meeting of business honchos on Friday. Why? Presidents don’t just routinely have random family members joining the gang at official meetings. Why are the rules different for Trump?

President Donald Trump convened with the heads of some of America’s largest corporations on Friday at the White House for a meeting intended to make good on the administration’s pledge to reduce regulation, promote women in the workplace, and cut taxes.

…

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, told CNBC it had been a “fabulous meeting” and said the president “engaged forcefully” on every topic.

Steve Schwarzman, CEO of private equity firm Blackstone and chairman of the council

So Pence is willing to lie for Trump, and he’s willing to excuse Trump’s infantile and reckless personal attack on a federal judge. I guess we knew that, since he was willing to be his VP.

Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday defended President Trump’s personal attack on the federal judge who blocked his travel ban on seven predominately Muslim countries, saying that the president’s remarks did not risk undermining the bedrock principle of the separation of powers.

Asked about Mr. Trump’s reference on Twitter to the “so-called judge” who ordered a stay of the president’s executive order, Mr. Pence said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “Well, look, the president of the United States has every right to

H/t Dave R… Read the rest

And they’ve filed an appeal.

On another day of chaotic developments over the week-old order, the State Department reversed its cancellation of visas for people from the seven affected countries and restarted efforts to admit refugees. Aid groups scrambled to take advantage of what they acknowledged might be a brief opportunity for refugees to enter the United States, and small numbers of travelers from the previously banned countries began their journeys, knowing that the judge’s ruling could be reversed at any time.

The developments led Mr. Trump to lash out throughout the day on Saturday, prompting criticism that he failed to respect the judicial branch and its power to exert a check on his authority.

He certainly does – … Read the rest

Jim Wright on Facebook on Trump’s demented idea that judges can’t overrule his decisions:

That moment as President when you discover that part about Checks and Balances most of us learned in 8th Grade.

Leaving aside the part where the President of the United States, the actual goddamned PRESIDENT, is sitting on the shitter at 5 in the morning petulantly complaining to the internet about the New York Times and people being mean to him and the fact that the job is WAY more complicated than he imagined (so tough in fact that he needed a vacation less than two weeks into it), leaving all that aside, there’s this:

“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement

He’s terrifying. He apparently has no idea that judges can overrule him and that that’s just a normal part of how our government works. He thinks it’s lèse majesté. He has no clue how the state he’s head of which actually works.

What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come into U.S.?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2017

What’s our country coming to, he asks, when a judge can put limits on what a president does. What our country is coming to when that happens is an example of what is often called “checks and balances,” and it is what is … Read the rest

Today in Trump on Twitter.

We must keep "evil" out of our country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017

Oh. Ok – I’ll get right on that.

But why the scare quotes? Or are they not scare quotes but actual quotes? But in that case who is the source? Lots of people have used the word “evil,” in lots of contexts – he needs to be more specific. Or maybe they are scare quotes, but then it’s hard to tell what he means. Also – if you’re looking for evil, to be frank, I can’t think of anyone in government in the US as thoroughly and conspicuously evil as he is. If he genuinely wants to keep … Read the rest