Neil Gorsuch is not impressed by Trump’s repeated attacks on the judiciary over the past week. He had a meeting with Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Dem, today.

Trump on Wednesday morning declared that an appeals court’s hearing Tuesday night regarding his controversial immigration executive order was “disgraceful,” and that judges were more concerned about politics than following the law.

The remarks followed earlier tweets from Trump disparaging “the so-called judge” who issued a nationwide stop to his plan and saying the ruling “put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system.”

Blumenthal said Gorsuch, whom Trump nominated to the Supreme Court just over a week ago, agreed with him that the president’s language was out

Another Donnie tweet, from later today. He seems to have…ah…missed the implications of the photo that goes with his link. He also left off a crucial word in the NBC headline.

'Majority in Leading EU Nations Support Trump-Style Travel Ban'
Poll of more than 10,000 people in 10 countries…https://t.co/KWsIWhtC9o

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

… Read the rest

It appears that Trump really can’t read – not just that he doesn’t like to, but that he can’t.

It’s a pity he didn’t realize that makes him unable to do the job properly.

… Read the rest

Donnie from Queens tweeted four hours ago (so late morning in DC):

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

Yeah that’s a good look – the president of the US attacking a private company for not marketing his daughter’s merch to his liking.

But wait, there’s more. There’s worse.

The POTUS account retweeted it.

So it’s not just Donnie from Queens saying it, it’s the president of the US saying it, in his official role as president of the US.

Josh Voorhees at Slate says Trump may have just provided Nordstrom with the … Read the rest

The Times editorialists are blunt about the disgustingly sleazy plans of Melania Trump to use Donnie’s presidency as a money-attracting tool.

[A]ny veneer of plausible deniability about the Trump family’s greed and their transactional view of the most powerful job in the world was shattered this week by a defamation lawsuit the first lady, Melania Trump, filed…

…As a result of the report published in August, Mrs. Trump contends in the suit, her “brand has lost significant value, and major business opportunities that were otherwise available to her have been lost and/or substantially impacted.” The suit offers no specific examples of lost business opportunities.

The timing of the story was particularly injurious, according to the lawsuit, considering that Mrs. Trump

People who know Trump say he won’t read anything that’s not about him – so it’s hopeless trying to get him to read, say, the Constitution, or intelligence briefings, or books about foreign policy or law or human rights or economics or history or anything else of that kind. But there are apparently a few exceptions, and one of them is InfoWars. That appears to be where he got his claim that news outlets are deliberately not reporting Islamist violence.

the kernel of the idea appears to have come from — or at least been propagated by — one of his favorite news sources: the conspiracy theory website InfoWars.

As @UrbanAchievr noted after Trump’s comments, InfoWars has been barking up

Now Trump is accusing the news media of concealing Islamist attacks.

Speaking to the U.S. Central Command on Monday, President Trump went off his prepared remarks to make a truly stunning claim: The media was intentionally covering up reports of terrorist attacks.

“You’ve seen what happened in Paris, and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening,” he said to the assembled military leaders. “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.”

What reasons? A secret hope to see Sharia become the law of the land?

It’s true, Philip Bump points out, that not ever terrorist … Read the rest

Even John Yoo, author of torture-approving memos in Bush’s Justice Department, thinks Trump is overstepping the limits on what presidents can do.

Article II of the Constitution vests the president with “the executive power,” but does not define it. Most of the Constitution instead limits that power, as with the president’s duty “to take care that the laws are faithfully executed,” or divides that power with Congress, as with making treaties or appointing Supreme Court justices.

Hamilton argued that good government and “energy in the executive” went hand in hand. In The Federalist No. 70, he wrote that the framers, to encourage “decision, activity, secrecy and dispatch,” entrusted the executive power in a unified branch headed by a single

More from that Times piece yesterday on Trump’s sad awakening.

Cloistered in the White House, he now has little access to his fans and supporters — an important source of feedback and validation — and feels increasingly pinched by the pressures of the job and the constant presence of protests, one of the reasons he was forced to scrap a planned trip to Milwaukee last week. For a sense of what is happening outside, he watches cable, both at night and during the day — too much in the eyes of some aides — often offering a bitter play-by-play of critics like CNN’s Don Lemon.

And, of course, it doesn’t help that he’s willfully stupid and incurious. He seems … Read the rest

The Speaker of the House of Commons has made a forthright statement on why in his view Donald Trump should not be invited to give a speech in said House. Spoiler: it’s because Trump is a bad man. Specifically, it’s because he’s racist and sexist.

“Before the imposition of the migrant ban I would myself have been strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall,” Mr Bercow told MPs.

“After the imposition of the migrant ban by President Trump I am even more strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall.”

Parts of the Commons erupted into rare spontaneous applause in support of Mr Bercow’s statement.

The intervention will cause headaches in Downing

Your morning TwitterTrump.

Last night he interrupted the flow of invective with a sportsball rejoicement. Rah.

Then today it was back to business.

Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2017

Perfect, isn’t it? Any poll he dislikes is “fake news.” Trumpian epistemology in a nutshell.

And what does he think he means by “people want”? Of course some people approve of his ban, but others don’t. He can’t tell how the numbers fall just by looking out the window.

Plus the usual thing – we already have border security and extensive vetting.

I call