Let’s hope this is spoiling Trump’s fun adventure in Chy-nah: voters said a big Nope.

Republicans awoke Wednesday to a series of aftershocks following Democratic victories across Virginia and other local elections that far exceeded either side’s expectations.

That performance, particularly in key suburban battlegrounds across the nation, validates a strategy that Democrats on Capitol Hill had embraced earlier this year: trying to win back the majority by riding a wave of liberal resentment toward President Trump while also promising rational governance to centrist swing voters.

The resounding victory by Gov.-elect Ralph Northam (D) tells only part of the story of Tuesday’s “old-fashioned thumping,” as former Virginia congressman Tom Davis called it. Beneath the top-of-the-ticket races, in many fundamental

Michael Lewis on Fresh Air yesterday on how Trump appointees in the departments of Energy and Agriculture are “ill-prepared for the jobs they have and uninterested in the work of the departments they’re running” and how bad and dangerous that is.

MICHAEL LEWIS: Well, my mind when Trump was elected was on the subject of risk because I just finished a book, “The Undoing Project,” about people’s – the difficulty people had processing risk, in evaluating risk. And I was wondering what risks Trump brought with him. I then saw that the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump administration basically didn’t happen, (laughter) that – what normally happens after a new president comes in is that the day

Greg Sargent at the Post on Trump’s nonsense about the Texas slaughter:

(I know, I’m harping on it, but Trump’s disgusting cynical frivolity about this cries out for obsessive finger-pointing.)

It has become an Internet meme that Donald Trump favors extreme vetting for arriving immigrants, but not for would-be gun buyers, and today in South Korea, Trump was confronted by a question about this contrast. It produced a useful answer — one that once again illustrated the deep rot of bad faith at the core of his approach to difficult policy questions.

You can see that bad faith when he closes his eyes. He’s taking a second to think up a way to sell the lies.

It’s being widely

Trump said if there had been “extreme vetting” of the guy who slaughtered all those people in Texas, “you would have had hundreds more dead.” You can watch him close his eyes while he pretends to think. You can see him end triumphantly with his cherished cliché “the great state of” Texas.

… Read the rest

Trump, today, at a press conference in South Korea:

Reporter: You’ve talked about wanting to put extreme vetting on people trying to come into the United States, but I wonder if you would consider extreme vetting for people trying to buy a gun.

Trump: Well…you know you’re bringing up a situation that probably shouldn’t be discussed too much right now, we could let a little time go by, but it’s ok if you feel that that’s an appropriate question.

Trump a week ago, immediately after a perp in a truck killed eight people and injured more in lower Manhattan:

In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT

Trump says it’s not a guns situation. Nope nope nope. Not at all. It’s a bats in the belfry situation. It’s a MenTal HeAlth SituAtion. That’s what it is. The guy was cray cray. Nothing to do with guns at all. Could just as well have been a poisoned amuse-bouche. Could have been flung rocks. Could have been a rabid dog smuggled in under his coat. It just happened to be a semi-automatic rifle. Totally random.

Asked at a press conference in Tokyo what policies he might support in response to the shooting, Mr Trump said preliminary reports suggested the gunman was “a very deranged individual, [with] a lot of problems.”

Actually he said “a lot of problems over … Read the rest

The sleaze rolls on.

Trump stopped in Hawaii on his way to Japan.

But on his way back to the airport, Trump made another stop — this time at the Trump Hotel in Waikiki.

According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump wanted to greet the employees and thank them for their hard work in making the Trump Hotel a “tremendously successful project.”

Oh did he. Is that what he wanted to do. But the trouble is, he’s the chief executive, and he’s supposed to be doing that job, not promoting his own business on our time and our money, and not using his public service job to make more money go into his bank account.

This

Trump gave a talk to American troops in Japan this morning, wearing a bomber jacket. Sure, Bone Spurs, that’s all it takes to look Military. His words at many points did not match his actions.

“No one — no dictator, no regime and no nation — should underestimate, ever, American resolve,” Mr. Trump said, having shed his suit jacket for a leather bomber jacket as he addressed hundreds of fatigues-clad women and men. “You are the greatest threat to tyrants and dictators who seek to prey on the innocent.”

But he is a tyrant and dictator. He bullies and lies to the press, he’s working to suppress voting, he demands loyalty to himself from people who are supposed to be … Read the rest