Deutsche Welle on the meeting of Merkel and Trump.

Superficially it went pretty well.

The obvious exception was Trump’s joking comparison of Merkel’s surveillance experience, which was real, with his, for which no evidence is known to exist.

“Joking about the US surveillance of Merkel is probably the most tone deaf moment so far of Trump’s time on the international stage,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a scholar of the presidency and the media at Mary Washington University. “Trump needs to remember that he doesn’t need to crack jokes like he is still on reality television’s ‘The Apprentice.'”

Farnsworth pointed out that the two leaders didn’t even engage in the traditional handshake during an Oval Office photo opportunity earlier in the

More from the Annals of Nonstop Shame and Embarrassment: Trump still refuses to withdraw or apologize for Spicer’s claim that British spies secretly monitored him during last year’s campaign at the behest of Obama.

Although his aides in private conversations since Thursday night had tried to calm British officials who were livid over the claim, Mr. Trump made clear that he felt the White House had nothing to retract or apologize for. He said his spokesman was simply repeating an assertion made by a Fox News commentator.

“We said nothing,” Mr. Trump told a German reporter who asked about the matter at a joint White House news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel. “All we did was quote a certain very

I’ve been meaning to share passages from the ruling on the travel ban.

It is undisputed that the Executive Order does not facially discriminate for or
against any particular religion, or for or against religion versus non-religion. There
is no express reference, for instance, to any religion nor does the Executive
Order—unlike its predecessor—contain any term or phrase that can be reasonably
characterized as having a religious origin or connotation.
Indeed, the Government defends the Executive Order principally because of
its religiously neutral text —“[i]t applies to six countries that Congress and the prior
Administration determined posed special risks of terrorism. [The Executive Order]
applies to all individuals in those countries, regardless of their religion.” Gov’t.
Mem. in Opp’n

The Guardian’s take on Trump’s adventure in libeling a former president and pissing off a current ally.

The extraordinary public rebuke by the United States’ closest surveillance partner has revealed an emerging characteristic of Donald Trump’s White House: a willingness to antagonize even its allies instead of admitting error.

…

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, credulously repeated on Thursday an account by a Fox News pundit, Andrew Napolitano, that GCHQ laundered surveillance on Trump at the behest of Barack Obama. Napolitano, who is in no position to actually know, made the allegation apparently to explain away the mounting evidence, even from senior Republicans on the intelligence committees, that there is no basis to Trump’s claim that Obama

They did what now?

The White House has tried to soothe an angry Britain after suggesting that President Barack Obama used London’s spy agency to conduct secret surveillance on President Trump while he was a candidate last year but offered no public apology on Friday.

They WHAT?

The reassurances came after British officials complained to Trump administration officials. Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to Washington, spoke with Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, at a St. Patrick’s Day reception in Washington on Thursday night just hours after Mr. Spicer aired the assertion at his daily briefing. Mark Lyall Grant, the prime minister’s national security adviser, spoke separately with his American counterpart, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

“Ambassador Kim Darroch and

Science. Trump don’t want no stinkin science. Trump wants JOBS, not science. Science never created any jobs for anybody. Hell no, it’s selling overpriced condos that creates jobs. Somebody has to paint all those faucets gold-color.

The scientists of course are having a big hissy fit. They’re such prima donnas.

[T]he extent of the cuts in the proposed budget unveiled early Thursday shocked scientists, researchers and program administrators. The reductions include $5.8 billion, or 18 percent, from the National Institutes of Health, which funds thousands of researchers working on cancer and other diseases, and $900 million, or a little less than 20 percent, from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds the national laboratories, considered among the

Trump’s budget proposals are what you’d expect from a loathsome human being like him.

If Americans were taken aback by the restrained, highly scripted President Trump that addressed Congress last month, they should recognize a lot more of the blustery, law-and-order candidate they elected in the budget blueprint the White House released on Thursday.

“If he said it on the campaign, it’s in the budget,” the president’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, told reporters in a Wednesday briefing previewing the proposal’s release.

That means more money—some $54 billion in extra defense spending—for the military generals Trump loves to quote so much, and a lot less for the diplomatic niceties and programs combatting climate change that he so often dismissed. The State

Congressional intelligence people to Trump: we don’t believe you.

The Republican and Democrat leading the Senate investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election appeared on Thursday to counter White House claims that there may have been surveillance of some sort on Trump Tower around the campaign, even if there was not specific wiretapping as President Trump said in a tweet nearly two weeks ago.

“Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016,” Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said in a joint statement on Thursday.

Spicey is trying … Read the rest

Chris Cillizza at the Post has the whole transcript of PP’s conversation with Tucker Carlson yesterday.

The Twitter section is worth reading carefully.

CARLSON: So on March 4, 6:35 in the morning, you’re down in Florida, and you tweet, the former administration wiretapped me, surveilled me, at Trump Tower during the last election. How did you find out? You said, I just found out. How did you learn that?

TRUMP: Well, I’ve been reading about things. I read in, I think it was January 20 a “New York Times” article where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article, I think they used that exact term. I read other things. I watched your friend Bret Baier the day previous

Even Republicans in Congress, even Devin Nunes, don’t like it when Trump tells libelous lies on Twitter and then puts it all on Congress to deal with.

Late Monday, a spokesman for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) threatened to subpoena the Trump administration to produce evidence of Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign. The White House has declined to produce this evidence publicly, offering various excuses, including the Constitution’s separation of powers and — most recently on Monday — arguing that Trump wasn’t speaking literally when he made the claim.

The Justice Department missed Nunes’s deadline to provide evidence Monday, which drew Nunes’s subpoena threat.

“If the committee does not receive

Poor Donnie. His malevolent racist hatemongering is what got him elected, but now it’s what’s preventing him from keeping the brown people out.

Rarely do a presidential candidate’s own words so dramatically haunt his presidency.

For the second time in two months, a federal judge on Wednesday refused to allow President Trump to impose a travel ban, citing his campaign rhetoric as evidence of an improper desire to prevent Muslims from entering the United States.

The judge’s stunning rebuke was a vivid example of how Mr. Trump’s angry, often xenophobic rallying cries during the 2016 campaign — which were so effective in helping to get him elected — have become legal and political liabilities now that he is

I think he might be getting even worse.

He was babbling on Fox News yesterday and it seems more empty and fatuous than ever. The Post has the few threadbare words:

“I’ve been reading about things,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Channel. Trump said that after noticing an article in the New York Times and commentary by Fox anchor Bret Baier, Trump said he told himself, “Wait a minute, there’s a lot of wiretapping being talked about.’”

“I’ve been reading about things.” That was in response to Tucker Carlson’s question about where he was getting his fixed idea that Obama wiretapped him. “I’ve been reading about things.”

In the interview Wednesday with Fox host Tucker Carlson,

Trump’s rally in Nashville tonight – how I hope it’s ruined for him by the ruling on his travel ban – is a chance for him to learn a little about Andrew Jackson. One could wish he’d done some of that learning before he decided to run for president.

Trump is coming to town to celebrate the 250th birthday of Andrew Jackson, the controversial seventh president who embraced populism and has been compared to the current president.

The Hermitage — as Jackson’s mansion is called — has shut down for the day and canceled plans for an event that was expected to attract thousands of visitors. Trump plans to visit late in the afternoon, lay a wreath on Jackson’s

Meanwhile, Trump is busy being his usual vomitous racist self.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/842154802058543105

Speak for yourself, Trump. We don’t thank Jackson for his service. We don’t honor his memory. We don’t build on his legacy. And we do not thank god for the US.… Read the rest

Breaking:

A federal judge in Hawaii issued a nationwide order Wednesday evening blocking President Trump’s ban on travel from parts of the Muslim world, dealing a political blow to the White House and signaling that proponents of the ban face a long and risky legal battle ahead.

The ruling was the second frustrating defeat for Mr. Trump’s travel ban, after a federal court in Seattle halted an earlier version of the executive order last month. Mr. Trump responded to that setback with fury, lashing out at the judiciary before ultimately abandoning the order.

Well, frustrating for Trump and his poisonous cronies, but not for anyone else.

The new improved ban was supposed to avoid legal challenges, but oops no … Read the rest