Tag: President Dictator

CNN says much the same thing.

Eric Brewer, a former NSC official who focused on Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues in both the Trump and Obama administrations, suggested that he is among those who believe the imagery was a product of the intelligence community.

“In a normal world, we would assume the IC approved the public release of this image,” Brewer tweeted. “Yes, the President has the magic wand of declassification authority, but that is rarely (ever?) exercised without consultations with the IC to understand the risks and benefits of doing so. To do otherwise might be legal, but it is grossly irresponsible.”

What I say. Legal authority, maybe, but absolute right, hell no.

It’s a really terrible thing to say to us. It amounts to saying he doesn’t give a shit if it’s reckless or not, if it harms us or not – all he cares about is his personal power. He can’t get his head out of his own fucking vanity for one second, ever, no matter what.

The Times reports Trump is drunk on his North Korea ??success?? and lashing out at everyone in sight.

President Trump went on offense on Friday with a withering series of attacks on the F.B.I., congressional Democrats, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Canada’s prime minister, football players, the media, the special counsel and other favorite targets even as he hailed his relations with the leaders of North Korea, China and Russia.

Let’s not forget the children of immigrants when we compile our list of people to attack. He must have gotten out of breath.

In his first extended comments on his meeting with Mr. Kim since returning to the United States, Mr. Trump hailed their agreement, enshrined in a vague 391-word statement that committed North Korea to “complete denuclearization.”

“I signed an agreement where we get everything, everything,” he said.

Although there is no concrete arrangement for how that would happen, when it would happen or who would verify that it happen, Mr. Trump dismissed such questions as details that will be worked out.

“I have solved that problem,” he told reporters. “Now, we’re getting it memorialized and all. But that problem is largely solved.”

That’s all it takes. You meet Kim, you unleash the power of the Miraculous Charisma, you exchange a few words, and that’s all there is to it. Magic! Problem solved.

He praised Mr. Kim, brushing aside questions about the repressive regime and gulags in North Korea. “Hey, he is the head of a country, and I mean he is the strong head,” Mr. Trump said. “Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

His people sit up at attention because of the gulags and the poison in airports and all that there. Trump wishes he could do the same.

Mr. Trump confirmed that he wants to meet President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this summer. Asked about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which has been condemned by the rest of the world as an illegal aggression, Mr. Trump blamed not Mr. Putin for ordering it but Mr. Obama for letting it happen.

“President Obama lost Crimea,” Mr. Trump said. “Because Putin didn’t respect President Obama. President Obama lost Crimea because President Putin didn’t respect President Obama. Didn’t respect our country and didn’t respect Ukraine. President Obama, not Trump — when it’s my fault, I’ll tell you.”

Oh yes? The other day in Singapore he admitted if it turns out he’s wrong he’ll make an excuse.

Likewise, he faulted Democrats in Congress for the federal authorities’ separating children from parents trying to cross the border from Mexico.

“I hate the children being taken away,” he said. “The Democrats have to change their law. That’s their law.”

Both houses of Congress are run by Republicans, who control whether legislation comes to the floor, but Mr. Trump said they could not act because it would require at least nine Democratic votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. There seems no reason to assume, however, that Democrats would filibuster a bill barring the separation of families at the border, since they have already introduced such legislation with more than 30 Democratic co-sponsors.

Indeed, Mr. Trump made clear later in the day with a Twitter message that he would not support legislation on family separation unless it includes provisions that Democrats oppose, including full financing for his proposed border wall and a complete overhaul of the system of legal immigration to end policies allowing immigrants to sponsor relatives to come into the country.

Well right, so that proves Democrats are the problem. Heads he wins tails everyone else loses.

Over the course of the Fox interview and the subsequent conversation with White House reporters, Mr. Trump also returned to other frequent topics. He mocked National Football League players for protesting racism whey they are “making $15 million a year.”

He again assailed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada for rejecting new American tariffs after a summit meeting. “We’re all happy, and then he got up and started saying that he doesn’t want to be pushed around by the United States,” Mr. Trump said.

And he dismissed the importance of a misleading statement he dictated last year about a Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the 2016 campaign, a statement that his lawyer and spokeswoman at first denied he had dictated even though his legal team later admitted that he had. “It’s irrelevant,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s not a statement to a high tribunal of judges. That’s a statement to the phony New York Times.”

Yeah. This isn’t an incipient dictatorship, it’s just a dictatorship.

He’s musing aloud about suppressing the news media again.

The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 9, 2018

The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

Says the most corrupt president in living memory (and probably in dead memory too – Teapot Dome wishes it had been that corrupt.)

In his tweet, Trump referred to a study that found 91 percent of network news stories about him are negative.

Shortly before, the anchors on “Fox & Friends” on Fox News discussed a study by the Media Research Center study citing that figure after evaluating the nightly newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC between January and April.

Fox News of course is not corrupt at all, it’s only the ones that don’t kiss his ring that are corrupt. 91% of the total, apparently.

It seems Trump did a chat with Fox News this morning.

While many reporters have described President Trump’s aggrieved psychology, his phone call this morning on Fox & Friends gave outsiders unfiltered access to the sorts of rants he routinely imposes upon his staff. In the interview, Trump’s sense of persecution was so acute he was barely able to concentrate on an open invitation to tout his own success, the thing he does best.

Depending on how you define “best.” He does it volubly and at speed and often, but the outcomes aren’t always the ones he intends. It didn’t go over well with Comey at that small table in the blue room, for instance.

“A horrible group of deep-seated people,” he insisted, “are coming up with all sorts of phony charges against me and they’re not bringing up real charges against the other side.” Trump’s belief that his enemies, not he himself, should be the subject of legal investigation overwhelmed even his ability to boast about his great success.

What other side? The other president? There is no other president. There is no “other side.”

But the most disturbing moment came at the very end, when Trump threatened to force the Department of Justice to adopt his own chosen priorities, ignoring the “phony” charges against him, and prosecuting the “real” ones against his opponents:

You look at the corruption at the top of the FBI, it’s a disgrace. And our Justice Department – which I try and stay away from, but at some point I won’t – our Justice Department should be looking at that kind of stuff, not the nonsense of collusion with Russia. There is no collusion with me and everyone knows it.

At this point, astonishingly, the embarrassed hosts ushered Trump off the phone, insisting he must be busy — likely the only time in memory a “journalist” has cut short an interview with the president of the United States. Trump is making his intentions perfectly clear. He wants the Department of Justice to lock up his political opponents and witnesses to his misbehavior. And he wants it to stop investigating his own misdeeds. The Department of Justice is constructed around restraints designed to prevent any such interference, because the power to use federal law enforcement as a weapon to protect the president and his party, and to harass the opposition, is so terrifying it has to be prevented at all costs. Trump is, on national television, making existential threats to the rule of law.

So the question becomes: what will happen when he does it?

It makes sense that Trump’s friendship with Arpaio goes back to their days as Birther Buddies. Of course it does. They bonded over malevolent destructive racism, Arpaio got busted for malevolent destructive racism, Trump pardoned him because he’s a fan of malevolent destructive racism.

They’re also both sadists who go out of their way to humiliate and harm people they dislike. Naturally they’re besties.

As Joseph Arpaio’s federal case headed toward trial this past spring, President Trump wanted to act to help the former Arizona county sheriff who had become a campaign-trail companion and a partner in their crusade against illegal immigration.

The president asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether it would be possible for the government to drop the criminal case against Arpaio, but was advised that would be inappropriate, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation.

“Oh, gee, no, Mr President, we can’t actually drop criminal cases just because the defendant is our beloved racist buddy. There are some rules and even you have to obey them. I know that seems kind of weird but it’s true.”

So the president waited, all the while planning to issue a pardon if Arpaio was found in contempt of court for defying a federal judge’s order to stop detaining people merely because he suspected them of being undocumented immigrants. Trump was, in the words of one associate, “gung-ho about it.”

“We knew the president wanted to do this for some time now and had worked to prepare for whenever the moment may come,” said one White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the action.

Because Arpaio is such an awesome guy, making prisoners wear pink jump suits and live in uninsulated tents in the Arizona desert in summer. What president wouldn’t want to pardon a standup guy like that?

Trump’s decision to issue his first pardon Friday evening for Arpaio was the culmination of a five-year political friendship with roots in the “birther” movement to undermine President Barack Obama.

That’s putting it a tad politely. Their friendship’s roots were in the movement to peddle gross lies about Obama in order to do him harm because he’s not white enough for their taste. This toad squatting in the Oval Office got his start in politics telling racist lies and he’s been doing it ever since. The head of state in this country is a lying sadistic racist monster who just spat on the rule of law for the sake of another lying sadistic racist monster. We’re all living in a reeking sewer.

Trump’s pardon, issued without consulting the Justice Department, raised a storm of protest over the weekend, including from some fellow Republicans, and threatens to become a stain on this president’s legacy. His effort to see if the case could be dropped showed a troubling disregard for the traditional wall between the White House and the Justice Department, and taken together with similar actions could undermine respect for the rule of law, experts said.

He’s been disrespecting the law since the day he was inaugurated.

Trump’s spring inquiry about intervening in Arpaio’s case is consistent with his attempt to interfere with the federal investigation of Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser. Trump also made separate appeals in March to Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency Director Michael S. Rogers to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

Trump’s pardon of Arpaio “was his backhand way of doing what he wanted to do at the front end,” said Robert Bauer, a former White House counsel in the Obama administration. “He just wanted to kill the prosecution off. He couldn’t do it the one way, so he ended up doing it the other way. This is just another vivid demonstration of how far removed from an appropriate exercise of the pardon power this was.”

Presidents can set law enforcement priorities, but they are expected to steer clear of involvement in specific cases to avoid the perception of politicizing the impartial administration of justice.

Trump backed off the Arpaio case after being advised it would be inappropriate, but that he even tried is “beyond the pale,” said Chiraag Bains, a former senior counsel in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Bains said he believes Trump “has a sense that the chief executive controls everything in the executive branch, including the exercise of criminal power. And that is just not the way the system is set up.”​

He thinks he’s a dictator, and no one is preventing him from acting like one.

But hey, Rosenstein may have to recuse himself anyway.

ABC News is reporting that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “has privately acknowledged to colleagues that he may have to recuse himself from” his role as Acting Attorney General for the Department’s Russia Investigation. (Recall that Rosenstein assumed that role when Attorney General Sessions recused himself earlier.)  Rosenstein’s involvement in the case has grown untenable for many reasons. Most importantly, the substance of the investigation has apparently developed to include a potential obstruction of justice focus on the President in connection with (among other things) the President’s discussions with and firing of James Comey. In that matter, Rosenstein may be a witness because of his role in the firing, and thus he cannot at the same time be the supervisor of the investigation. (Noah Feldman makes a similar argument in BloombergView.) In addition, the President and his surrogates have viciouslyattacked Rosenstein’s choice of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller. This morning, the President also seemed to say that Rosenstein himself is responsible for what the President sees as a witch hunt against him…

So all in all: awkward.

Rosenstein’s potential recusal raises a number of important questions. First, how much longer can he stay on as Deputy Attorney General? He first seemed to compromise himself when, under apparent pressure from the President and the Attorney General, he wrote a pretextual memorandum for James Comey’s firing as FBI Director, only to see the President toss him under the bus and reveal how he was used. Rosenstein is Exhibit A for how working for Donald Trump in a legal capacity can tarnish one’s reputation. The President, who appears to lack respect for law and legal process, has now used Rosenstein for overtly political ends and both undermined his integrity by announcing the pretextual nature of his memorandum and attacked his integrity directly in the tweet this morning.

Americans should exercise caution before consenting to work for Donald Trump.

Martin Wolf on democrats, demagogues and despots:

There exists no such thing as “the people”; this is an imaginary entity. There are merely citizens whose choices not only may, but surely will, change. While a way must be found to aggregate those views, it will always be defective. Ultimately, democracy, or a democratic republic, provides a way for people with different views and even cultures to live side by side in reasonable harmony.

Yet institutions matter, too, because they set the rules of the game. Institutions may also fail. The US electoral college has failed doubly. Its selection of Mr Trump neither accords with the votes cast in the election nor reflects judgment of the candidate’s merits, as desired by Alexander Hamilton. This founding father argued that the college would both guard against “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils” and ensure “the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications”. The charges of Russian hacking and Mr Trump’s evident defects of experience, judgment and character show that the college has not proved the bulwark Mr Hamilton hoped for. It is up to other institutions — notably, Congress, courts and media — and the citizens at large now to do so.

It’s the “in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications” part that keeps surprising me afresh every morning. It surprised me when Reagan was elected and when Bush was – and the surprise now is so profound that it just never goes away. How was this possible?

Demagogues are the Achilles heel of democracy. There is even is a standard demagogic playbook. Demagogues, whether of left or right, present themselves as representatives of the common people against elites and unworthy outsiders; make a visceral connection with followers as charismatic leaders; manipulate that connection for their own advancement, frequently by lying egregiously; and threaten established rules of conduct and constraining institutions as enemies of the popular will that they embody. Mr Trump is almost a textbook demagogue.

Well, he grew up with the example of Hitler to study and absorb.

Might this be the path some of the most important western democracies are now on — above all the US, standard bearer of democracy in the 20th century? The answer is yes. It could happen even there. The core institutions of democracy do not protect themselves. They are protected by people who understand and cherish the values they embody.

And here, right now, those people are outnumbered by the other kind. I have no optimistic remarks to offer.

The General Services Administration has in fact told Trump that he has to sell that hotel in the Old GPO, blocks from the White House. Not hand the running of it over to his kids, but get rid of it altogether.

The G.S.A., which controls federal acquisition policy, has informed the president-elect that he must sell the Trump International Hotel he recently opened just blocks from the White House or be in breach of his lease with the government the moment he is sworn into office, senior House Democrats said Wednesday.

In a letter to the G.S.A., four ranking Democrats on the committees or subcommittee that oversee federal contracting and ethics rules said the agency was clear.

“G.S.A. assesses that Mr. Trump will be in breach of the lease agreement the moment he takes office on Jan. 20, 2017, unless he fully divests himself of all financial interests in the lease for the Washington, D.C., hotel. The deputy commissioner made clear that Mr. Trump must divest himself not only of managerial control, but of all ownership interest as well.”

There’s a reason for that.

Mr. Trump will soon be in charge of the agency that issued the lease for the Old Post Office Building, which the president-elect transformed unto a luxury hotel. He will also appoint the head of the G.S.A. To avoid such an obvious conflict, the lease that Mr. Trump signed states: “No … elected official of the government of the United States … shall be admitted to any share or part of this lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom[.]”

But Trump is just blowing them off. He thinks he was elected dictator and can do whatever he wants.