Will he, won’t he? Nobody knows for sure. Don really really wants to get rid of Sessions, but how to do it without getting into another mess that could turn out to be just as bad or even worse? It’s keeping him awake on the job.

President Trump has discussed with confidants and advisers in recent days the possibility of installing a new attorney general through a recess appointment if Jeff Sessions leaves the job, but he has been warned not to move to push him out because of the political and legal ramifications, according to people briefed on the conversations.

Still raging over Sessions’s recusal from the Justice Department’s escalating Russia investigation, Trump has been talking privately about

Nothing at all sleazy about this, oh no, perfectly normal and appropriate.

President Trump dined at the White House on Wednesday night with Fox News Channel star Sean Hannity, former Fox executive Bill Shine and newly installed White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci to discuss overhauling the West Wing staff and his political strategy, a senior White House official said.

The private dinner comes as Trump is contemplating major changes inside his White House, empowering Scaramucci to reimagine his communications strategy.

The president and his new aide solicited advice from Hannity and Shine over a meal in the Blue Room that was described by the senior White House official as social.

Hannity has his head so far up Trump’s … Read the rest

Trump is taking revenge on the people of Alaska for Murkowski’s refusal to vote the way he wants. Yes really. He’s telling her that’s what he’s doing, too.

The Alaska Dispatch News reported Wednesday night that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called Murkowski and fellow Alaskan Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) after Tuesday’s health care vote to let them know her position had put some of their state-specific projects in jeopardy ― particularly those pertaining to energy.

Sullivan told the outlet that Zinke’s phone call carried a “troubling message,” and the interior secretary made it clear to him that the call was in response to Murkowski voting no on the motion to proceed on Tuesday.

Nice little state ya got here; too … Read the rest

So the question of the hour is: does a Twitter blurt from the Toddler President equal a direct order to the military if it announces a new policy on who can join that military?

It seems to be blindingly obvious that it doesn’t, but not everyone agrees. Some say it’s a direct order and the military is disobeying a direct order by saying they’re not doing anything until they hear from the White House.

I just don’t see how it can be a genuine order to the military. It’s not addressed to them. It’s much closer to a “who will rid me of this meddling priest?” than it is to a direct explicit do it now order. Telling the world … Read the rest

Subtext: Yet again Trump shot off his mouth on Twitter as if he were three years old and having a meltdown at the supermarket checkout because he wants the candy bar HE WANTS IT WAAAAAAAH. Literal text: no change unless and until the White House talks to the Defense Department by a more reliable and discreet channel than fucking Twitter.

The nation’s highest-ranking military officer said Thursday that the Defense Department was making “no modifications” to current policy regarding transgender service members until President Trump gives more direction.

“I know there are questions about yesterday’s announcement on the transgender policy by the President,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said in a statement. “There will be no modifications

More from the latest fascist uprising speech:

So we’re going to start enriching our country. We’re going to start bringing back our jobs, and we will be fools no longer, folks. We’ll be fools no longer. Every single President on Mt. Rushmore — now here’s what I do. I’d ask whether or not you think I will some day be on Mt. Rushmore, but, but here’s the problem. If I did it joking, totally joking, having fun, the fake news media will say, “he believes he should be on Mt. Rushmore.” So I won’t say it, okay? I won’t say it. But every president — they’ll say it anyway tomorrow. “Trump thinks he should be on Mt. Rushmore.” Isn’t

Some horrors from Trump’s speech in Youngstown, Ohio yesterday.

Then yesterday I was in West Virginia with almost 50,000 of our most impressive young Americans. They are young men who learned to cherish words like duty, honor, god, and country, the Boy Scouts. Then only a few hours ago the senate approved a vote to begin debating the repealing and replacing the Obamacare disaster. [ cheers and applause ] Finally. You think that’s easy? That’s not easy. We’re now one step closer to liberating our citizens from this Obamacare nightmare, and delivering great health care for the American people.

…

I’m here this evening to cut through the fake news filter and to speak straight to the American people. Fake

The American Prospect tells us about Trump’s latest crowd-incitement, yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio.

On Tuesday evening, at a campaign-style rally in Youngstown, Ohio, President Donald Trump treated his audience to a bit of snuff porn involving high-school age girls and some bad hombres.

After painting all the people currently under deportation orders as drug-importing gang members, the president described their purported crimes. “So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15—and others—and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before any die,” Trump said. “And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long.”

A more perfect encapsulation of the proclivities of the president’s poisonous psyche

Don is still making an exhibition of himself on Twitter, asking the world why Sessions does what he does when he’s the one who appointed him and we’re not. Dude why are you asking us?

But, you know, it’s all part of his cunning plan to bully Sessions into quitting, or inspiring Rod Rosenstein to jump up in the middle of the night and fire Mueller, or something. It looks like crazy but it’s actually fiendishly clever manipulation.

Or is it. The Post talked to people who say it’s just Trump being Trump.

President Trump renewed his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions Wednesday, questioning on Twitter why the top U.S. law enforcement official had not replaced the acting FBI

Benjamin Wittes has thoughts on the effects of the current situation on people at the Department of Justice and on the rest of us.

The trouble is that remaining in office does not merely demean the individual dignity of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general when the President whines about the attorney general’s compliance with Justice Department recusal rules; when he attacks the attorney general for not investigating a political opponent; when he openly suggests that the Justice Department’s leadership should act in his personal interests; or when he suggests that the deputy attorney general is biased against him as a result of previous service as U.S. attorney in a Democratic-majority city. These are also degradations of the