Oh gawd. Trump went to Yad Vashem today. He wrote an entry for the guest book, in all caps:

IT IS A GREAT HONOR TO BE HERE WITH ALL OF MY FRIENDS — SO AMAZING & WILL NEVER FORGET!

"So amazing," Trump describes Yad Vashem visit as only he canhttps://t.co/qezNcuuIcM pic.twitter.com/qGo7ZielBA

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) May 23, 2017

The guest book entry provides an opportunity to contrast Trump’s style with that of his predecessor, Barack Obama, who spent an hour at Yad Vashem and gave an emotional speech in 2013. Obama had already visited once, in 2008, when he was an Illinois senator running for president. On that trip, he left this note in the guest book:

“I am

I guess the principle of Trumpism and most of the contemporary Republican party in the US is: destroy everything good. Trump’s budget slashes not only Medicaid and anti-poverty programs, but also scientific and medical research. Booya.

President Trump’s 2018 budget request, delivered to Congress on Tuesday with the title “A New Foundation for American Greatness,” has roiled the medical and science community with a call for massive cuts in spending on scientific research, medical research, disease prevention programs and health insurance for children of the working poor.

The National Cancer Institute would be hit with a $1 billion cut compared to its 2017 budget. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute would see a $575 million cut,

The Manchester bomb is of course a gift to Trump: now he can yell that he was right right right about keeping out all the Mooslims except the ones from Saudi Arabia and other not at all Islamist places like that.

“This is what I’ve spent these last few days talking about in our trip overseas,” Mr. Trump said after a meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. “Our society can have no tolerance for this continuation of bloodshed. We cannot stand a moment longer for the slaughter of innocent people.”

As if everyone else were standing for it, and only Trump thinks we should make it stop. The problem is that it’s not easy to … Read the rest

It wasn’t just Comey that Trump tried to strongarm into squashing the investigation, the Post reports.

President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.

Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.

Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who

Now the Trump admin is trying to cut the Office of Government Ethics off at the knees.

The Trump administration, in a significant escalation of its clash with the government’s top ethics watchdog, has moved to block an effort to disclose any ethics waivers granted to former lobbyists who now work in the White House or federal agencies.

The latest conflict came in recent days when the White House, in a highly unusual move, sent a letter to Walter M. Shaub Jr., the head of the Office of Government Ethics, asking him to withdraw a request he had sent to every federal agency for copies of the waivers. In the letter, the administration challenged his legal authority to demand

He put his tiny hands on it. He is their captive now.

"Surrender, Superman or all of Metropolis will be destroyed" pic.twitter.com/g8Gqh3rAm9

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 21, 2017

… Read the rest

Hooray for “populism.”

President Trump’s first major budget proposal on Tuesday will include massive cuts to Medicaid and call for changes to anti-poverty programs that would give states new power to limit a range of benefits, people familiar with the planning said, despite growing unease in Congress about cutting the safety net.

Fewer protections for the poor, more money for the rich – that’s populism? What’s pop about it?

After The Washington Post reported some of the cuts Sunday evening, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump was pulling “the rug out from so many who need help.”

“This budget continues to reveal President Trump’s true colors: His populist campaign rhetoric was just a Trojan horse to execute

Trump gave his Talk to The Mooslims today, telling them he’s fine with the oppression of women as long as they don’t set off the odd bomb in places we Americans like to hang out.

President Trump sought to rally leaders from around the Muslim world on Sunday in a renewed campaign against extremism, rejecting the idea that the fight is a battle between religions even as he promised not to chastise them about human rights violations in their own countries.

“Go ahead! Violate all the human rights you want to at home! Just don’t do bad things to us. Do it to her, not to me.” Such a noble sentiment.

While Mr. Obama and President George W.