The Post reports that Trump is in a bad mood. You don’t say.
With less than seven days remaining in his presidency, Trump’s inner circle is shrinking, offices in his White House are emptying, and the president is lashing out at some of those who remain. He is angry that his allies have not mounted a more forceful defense of his incitement of the mob that stormed the Capitol last week, advisers and associates said.
Really. All he wanted to do was slaughter all the Democrats in Congress and install himself as dictator. What’s the big deal?
He’s in a rage at Pence, and souring on Giuliani.
Trump has instructed aides not to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, two officials said, and has demanded that he personally approve any reimbursements for the expenses Giuliani incurred while traveling on the president’s behalf to challenge election results in key states. They said Trump has privately expressed concern with some of Giuliani’s moves and did not appreciate a demand from Giuliani for $20,000 a day in fees for his work attempting to overturn the election.
It’s outrageous; only Trump is allowed to rip people off like that.
He’s mad that no one is defending him – not even McEnany! Not even Prince Jared! The Post doesn’t say what Princess Ivanka is doing.
Lindsey Graham is one of the last remaining ass-kissers.
Graham traveled to Texas on Tuesday in what was Trump’s last scheduled presidential trip, spending hours with Trump aboard Air Force One talking about impeachment and planning how Trump should spend his final days in office.
Trump told Graham to lobby senators to acquit him in the future trial and Graham of course obliged.
During the flight home, Graham said, he tried to calm Trump after Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the No. 3 House GOP leader, announced she would vote to impeach.
“I just told him, ‘Listen, Mr. President, there are some people out there who were upset before and are upset now, but I assure you, most Republicans believe impeachment is bad for the country and not necessary and it would do damage to the institution of the presidency itself,” Graham recalled.
Cynical enough yet? Not a word about “Don’t worry, you’re innocent,” much less about the good of the country, about treason and attempted mass murder, about democracy and human rights, about how it’s not entirely admirable to try to overthrow the government by sending fascists to kill off half of Congress – just self-interested reason Republicans think impeachment would be inconvenient.
The Post points out that it’s striking that no White House people were out there defending him yesterday during the impeachment.
The president’s aides did not blast out talking points to allies. His press secretary did not hold a briefing with reporters. His advisers did not do television interviews from the White House’s North Lawn. His lawyers and legislative affairs staffers did not whip votes or seek to persuade lawmakers to vote against impeachment.
This is both because there was no organized campaign to block impeachment and because many of his aides believe Trump’s incitement of the riot was too odious to defend.
So even they have a Too Odious marker – it’s just that it’s a lot harder to reach than most people’s.
“I just think this is the logical conclusion of someone who will only accept people in his inner orbit if they are willing to completely set themselves on fire on his behalf, and you’ve just reached a point to where everyone is burned out,” a senior administration official said. “Everyone is thinking, ‘I’ll set myself on fire for the president of the United States for this, for this and for this — but I’m not doing it for that.’ ”
It took him until two weeks before the end to reach that point – and it took all of them that long too.
One of Trump’s only White House defenses came from Jason Miller, a senior political adviser. He did not defend the president’s conduct but rather argued that those who voted to impeach him would pay a political price.
There it is again, just like Graham – ignore the substance, just talk about the savvy politics. Tell us again exactly how hollow you are.
Comments
17 responses to “Too odious to defend”
You really can’t blame him for wanting to get away with not paying people. He’s gotten away with it for decades and he’s hardly the only one in that position. The system makes sure that he doesn’t have to pay people or taxes and other more and actually wealthy people do the same thing and get away with it.
It’s striking that it wasn’t too odious to defend when he was having children caged.
It’s annoying and horrible that I had forgotten about the caged children in the pile of shitty odious things that he has done.
There was a time when even repulsive Republicans were patriotic and had a sense of duty.
“Kennedy defeated Nixon when votes were finally counted in the Electoral College, by a margin of 303 to 219. But in the popular vote, Kennedy won by just 112,000 votes out of 68 million cast, or a margin on 0.2 percent.
So arguments persist to this day about vote-counting in two states, specifically Illinois (where Kennedy won by 9,000 votes) and Texas (where Kennedy won by 46,000 votes). If Nixon had won those two states, he would have defeated Kennedy by two votes in the Electoral College.
That fact wasn’t lost on Nixon’s supporters, who urged the candidate to contest the results. At the time, Kennedy was also leading in the critical state of California, which was Nixon’s home state. But a count of absentee ballots gave Nixon the state several weeks later, after he conceded it to Kennedy.
In Illinois, there were rampant rumors that Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley used his political machine to stuff the ballot box in Cook County. Democrats charged the GOP with similar tactics in southern Illinois. Down in Texas, there were similar claims about the influence of Kennedy’s running mate, Lyndon B. Johnson, over that state’s election.
On Wednesday afternoon, November 9, 1960, Nixon officially conceded the election to Kennedy. He told his friend, journalist Earl Mazo, that “our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.” (Mazo had written a series of articles about voter fraud after the 1960 election, which he stopped at Nixon’s request.)”
Also, the thought of Trump being deserted by more and more people is wonderfully cinematic. The offices empty, the phones aren’t answered, the mobiles block his number, and when he calls for a hamburger and coke, no-one comes. Melania and Barron are at the airport waiting for the flight to Llubljana. Ivanka and Jared have a new flat in Dubai.
Last I heard, he had sacked Guiliani over the fees demanded. Guiliani’s bill might have taken account of his knowledge of where all the bodies are buried, and maybe also the cost of Guiliani relocating to the Barbados, Tangier or El Salvador; not to mention Antarctica.
I vote for Antarctica.
What have you got against penguins? They don’t deserve Guiliani.
Ghouliani actually LOOKS a bit like a penguin?
Defamatory to penguins.
I’m sure Guiliani would assure them that they have an excellent case, and that he will be happy to represent them pro bono; all the way to the Hague if necessary. (I would be happy to offer my services as translator, as I have a Penguin dictionary in my library, and on a shelf at about penguin height.)
Odiousity is so much easier to recognize when there are so many people pointing it out to you. There’s a point where ignoring it just looks really, really bad. There may be a lot of people leaving the years 2016-2021 blank in their resumes. Or they could just lie. They’ve already had plenty of practice, especially to themselves.
Not Bruce, I am very tempted to leave the years 2016-2021 blank in my mind.
Ophelia, you do not get to dump toxic waste in my hemisphere!
Oh, please. Too odious to defend? They’d be setting everything around them on fire (NOT themselves) if we were only two years into the Trump presidency. There’s nothing in it for them now.
So, they’re comparing impeachment to the firefighters trying to put out a fire, because the water would damage the house.
Here’s an answer Nate White gave on Quora to the question “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Quora deleted this for some reason.