A clusterfuck we didn’t hear about at the time:

Early on in the Donald Trump administration, the president vested many of his nearest and dearest with tasks they were woefully unprepared for—and Apprentice superstar Omarosa Manigault-Newman was no exception.

Long before she was his chief antagonist, Manigault-Newman was tapped by President Trump to handle veterans’ issues for the White House—causing immediate backlash from vets organizations who read this as a slap in the face and a betrayal of his campaign rhetoric about “taking care of our veterans.”

What, just because she had no relevant experience or expertise and was appointed as an act of grotesque frivolity by her reality TV buddy? Picky picky picky.

So they all had a meeting … Read the rest

Fred Kaplan at Slate says yesterday’s op-ed by retired admiral William McRaven is a big deal.

One former senior intelligence official who read the op-ed sent me an email: “Takes my breath away. This is BIG!!!” Another wrote, again on background, that fellow officers—retired and active-duty—will take this as a sign of a major rupture in civil-military relations, brought on by Trump’s blatant disrespect for national security officials and the entire security system.

Which has to be alarming for people in the military. The guy at the top who can unilaterally make things happen is a flaming lunatic and egomaniac – yes that’s pretty scary.

Then, late on Thursday night, 12 former CIA directors and deputy directors released a similar

Trump has canceled his fascist parade and blamed the DC government for making it too expensive.

President Trump on Friday canceled plans for a military parade this fall in Washington, blaming local officials for inflating the costs and saying they “know a windfall when they see it.”

Washington’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, pushed back on Twitter, saying that she had “finally got thru” to the president to convey the “realities” of what it costs to stage events like military parades in the city.

She put the number at $21.6 million, though the city’s costs are just a fraction of the total, with federal agencies also kicking in millions of dollars. A day earlier, the Pentagon said Mr. Trump’s parade to celebrate

David Ignatius asks:

What was so threatening about the former CIA chief? Beyond Brennan’s sheer cussedness, I’d guess that Trump was frightened — and remains so to this day — about just how much Brennan knows about his secrets. And by that, I don’t just mean his dealings with Russian oligarchs and presidents but the way he moved through a world of fixers, flatterers and money launderers.

Hmm, yes, Brennan probably does know a lot about Trump’s secrets. So…it wasn’t particularly clever to piss him off further, was it.

Brennan, like Comey, was there at the beginning of this investigation. Trump must have asked himself: What does Brennan know? What did he learn from the CIA’s deep assets in

The retired admiral who oversaw the raid that killed bin Laden tells Trump to take away his security clearance too.

Dear Mr. President:

Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.

Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.

He says he … Read the rest

Trump has always called women dogs, so lighten up already. Gail Collins is one of those women:

Hey, it was long ago, but it still comes up. Particularly now that we’re making lists of all the women our president has ever compared to a canine. Back when I worked for New York Newsday, he sent me a copy of a column I’d written, scrawled with objections, along with an announcement that I was “a dog and a liar” and that my picture was “the face of a pig.” At the time, he was only a flailing real estate developer trying to make a deal with the city, yet it still seemed so weird that at first I wondered if

Trump is triggered. His people have been telling him to ignore Omarosa and her book, which tells us that they’ve confused him with someone else.

Now advisers fear his rage at Manigault Newman is fueling irrational outbursts that bolster the claim in her book that Trump said the “n-word” during an Apprenticeouttake.

Irrational outbursts? Trump?? Surely not. It’s people like Brennan and Comey who go in for that kind of thing; Trump says so himself.

In recent days, Trump has called Manigault Newman “crazed,” a “lowlife,” and a “dog” on Twitter. His campaign filed an arbitration suit against her seeking “millions.” And Trump told advisers that he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to have Manigault

Vox gives us Sarah Sanders’s disgusting performance “explaining” Trump’s attack on Brennan.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, reading a statement from the president during the daily press briefing on Wednesday, cited Trump’s “constitutional responsibility to protect the nation’s classified information” as justification for his decision to revoke Brennan’s clearance.

“Mr. Brennan has recently leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations — wild outbursts on the internet and television — about this administration,” Sanders said, reading the president’s statement.

“I’m not a reckless lunatic, you’re a reckless lunatic!” Trump is the guy who goes in for wild outbursts on Twitter and at … Read the rest