Bozo took another restorative trip to The Heartland last night, to puff up his deflated ego again.

“This place is packed,” he exulted. “We’re in the heartland of America, and there is no place I would rather be.”

In the packed stands of Freedom Hall in Louisville, the swirl of questions back in Washington — about the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia or the president’s debunked assertions that he had been wiretapped by his predecessor — seemed a million miles away.

That was exactly the point. Mr. Trump’s aides have used these campaign-style events to buoy their boss and provide a respite from the pileup of pressures in Washington. Mr. Trump recycled many of his favorite lines from the

Robert Reich last night:

Let me get this straight: Ivanka Trump — who has myriad business interests that overlap with her father’s – is now moving into the West Wing as a top White House advisor, getting a security clearance and government-issued communications devices. But she’s not being sworn in, will hold no official position, and so will not be a government employee who must by law adhere to official ethics rules.

Doesn’t the Trump administration have enough ethics problems? Aren’t there already enough conflicts of interest to sink a ship?

Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, is now an official senior adviser in the White House – but at least his status is an official government employee, he was

David Leonhardt spells it out, starting with the stipulation that not all untruths are lies.

But the current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about — among many other things — Obama’s birthplace, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud and his groping of women.

He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate —

The disintegration proceeds.

The testimony of Mr. Comey and that of Adm. Michael S. Rogers, his National Security Agency counterpart, will most likely enervate and distract Mr. Trump’s administration for weeks, if not longer, overshadowing good news, like the impressive debut of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, his Supreme Court nominee, on the first day of his confirmation hearings Monday.

But it’s the obsessiveness and ferocity of Mr. Trump’s pushback against the Russian allegations, often untethered from fact or tact, that is making an uncertain situation worse.

Mr. Trump’s allies have begun to wonder if his need for self-expression, often on social media, will exceed his instinct for self-preservation, with disastrous results both for the president and for a party

Meanwhile, on a day when Trump’s lies have been discussed in Congress and all over the press, he’s off for yet another “rally” – to drink in the adoring cheers of the 27 people who still think he’s awesome.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/843961248811225089

Trump was resuming his campaign-style events at the start of a consequential week for his young presidency. Confirmation hearings for his nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, opened Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The House was expected to vote Thursday on the GOP-backed healthcare bill.

Trump’s Louisville rally, his third since his inauguration, followed a daylong congressional hearing in which FBI Director James B. Comey acknowledged for the first time that the agency was investigating whether Trump’s

The Post’s fact-checker reports on Trump’s long day of telling lie after lie.

With the House Intelligence Committee on Monday prepared to hold hearings on Russian influence in the 2016 election, the president issued tweets that did not hold up well as the testimony unfolded.

The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign. Big advantage in Electoral College & lost!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017

James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. This story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017

But in his opening testimony, FBI Director James Comey announced that

Brad Jaffy on Trump’s expensive golf weekends and his past rages at Obama for taking fewer shorter cheaper golf breaks.

Trump today made his 10th trip a Trump-owned golf course in 8 weeks as president.

Here are his previous tweets about presidents and golf: pic.twitter.com/VTV5hAVx20

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 18, 2017

… Read the rest

In case you missed Trump’s budget director saying the thing about coal miners and PBS, here’s CNN reporting it – starting with the fact that Mike Pence actually supported public tv not long ago:

But in 2014, Vice President Mike Pence, then Indiana’s governor also known for frugal budgets, made a passionate defense for the role of public television.

“I believe the state has the primary responsibility for educating our children and I will say from my heart through all of my life, one thing has been clear: Public television plays a vital role in educating all of the public, but most especially, our children,” he said during an acceptance speech at that year’s Public Media Summit.

Including, thank you … Read the rest

One of those items going the rounds on Facebook, original source unknown:

“Why should coal miners pay for PBS”? This was an actual question asked by the Trump administration yesterday. Obviously a blatantly stupid question. We have questions too. Why should a poor black family in Detroit pay for the President to go golfing? Why should a single mother of 3 who’s working 2 jobs in Louisiana be denied health-care so that the CEO of Etna can get a tax-break? Why is the guy washing dishes in Baton Rouge paying for the President’s wife’s secret service protection so she can live comfortably in NYC? We could do this all day. But here’s the real question the Trump administration and

Comey has said what everyone outside of Trump’s pocket expected he would say.

FBI Director James B. Comey on Monday said there is “no information” that supports President Trump’s claims that his predecessor ordered surveillance of Trump Tower during the election campaign.

“I have no information that supports those tweets,’’ said Comey, testifying at the House Intelligence Committee’s first public hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. “We have looked carefully inside the FBI,’’ and agents found nothing to support those claims, he said.

Spicey is currently busy composing variations on the theme “But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” but everyone outside of Trump’s pocket knows that if there had been such evidence for Trump’s libelous … Read the rest