Tag: Trump

Apparently some people made the mistake of thinking that when Trump made noises about homeless people he was actually worrying about the homeless people. Pause for raucous mirth. Come on now – we all know better than that.

Maybe he‘d even realized that his own actions, like making immigrants fearful of accessing federal assistance or aiming to slash health care for low-income Americans or pushing for cuts to public housing, had contributed to the problem.

Stop, stop, it’s too much.

Curious to know more, reporters asked the president about his sudden interest in addressing homelessness on Tuesday in California, where he told them that…yeah, he just doesn‘t like the sight of homeless people or what they’re doing to the values of real estate properties—especially those owned by foreign investors.

“We can’t let Los Angeles, San Francisco, and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what’s happening,” Trump said aboard Air Force One, adding that the homelessness crisis is causing residents of those cities to leave the country. “They can’t believe what’s happening. We have people living in our…best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings…where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige,” he said, probably internally shuddering at the idea of homeless people crowding the entrance of Trump Tower. “In many cases they came from other countries and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have tents. Hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And they want to leave. And the people of San Francisco are fed up, and the people of Los Angeles are fed up.”

Look. These are rich cities full of rich people and they’re not supposed to have to look at disgusting poor people. Their cleaners and gardeners are supposed to do their work out of sight of the rich people, and the peons who live in the city are supposed to live their nasty little lives out of sight. What good is it being rich if you have to look at dirty nasty poor people all day?

Speaking of John McWhorter, this is a good watch:

Daniel Dale fact-checks Trumps “we love our Hispanics” rally:

“We’re independent. We’re independent as we want. And we are now a net exporter of energy,” Trump says, none of which is true. (The Energy Information Administration predicts the US will become a net exporter next year.)

Trump repeats his usual highly inaccurate description of the Green New Deal, saying, among other baseless things, that people will be limited to one car and not allowed to drive more than 162 miles.

Sir Alert: Trump says foreign leaders always come in and say, “Sir, I’d like to congratulate you on what you’ve done with the economy…a model for the entire world. They all say it.”

The Sir thing makes me cringe every damn time. It’s SO infantile!

Trump says that he can’t say this under the Me Too movement, but everyone is looking much better than they did three years ago, “including the men.”

Trump, making a pitch to Hispanics, says that Hispanics “want the wall.” National polling of Hispanics shows strong-majority opposition to the wall.

Multi-Sir Sir Alert: Trump says his advisers told him not to help Dan Bishop, saying, “sir, don’t get involved in that race, sir. You can’t come back from 17 points, sir.” Bishop was not down 17.

There were at least six sirs in that story. Even one sir is a red flag. A multi-sir story has a negative-percent chance of being true.

A multi-sir story sucks truth out of adjacent stories.

Trump repeats his “$40 million” figure for the Mueller investigation. The final tab was $32 million, and the government is getting about $17 million from Paul Manafort as a result of his convictions.

“We got Choice for the vets. Choice. Everybody said it was impossible,” Trump says of the program created in a Bernie Sanders-John McCain bill signed into law by Barack Obama in 2014.

Trump is adding to his Sir story about Mattis, saying Mattis told him, “Sir, we have very little ammunition.” He says Mattis actually said it was “less” than “very little,” then claims that Mattis actually said “We have very little slash NO ammunition.”

Very little slash no, said no one EVER.

Trump on Steve Cortes: “He happens to be Hispanic, but I’ve never quite figured it out, because he looks more like a WASP than I do, so I haven’t figured that one out.”

Trump repeats his lie that China is having its worst economic year in 57 years, though he knows it’s 27 years. He has decided to keep adding additional years; he’s gone all the way up to 61 before pulling it back a bit.

“China is eating the tariffs…they’re eating the tariffs.” Americans are paying the tariffs.

Trump says he called Warren “Pocahontas” “too early,” but don’t worry, he’s bringing it back.

“Frankly, unions love it. Labor loves it,” Trump says of the USMCA, which is generally opposed by the labor movement in its current form.

“Frankly” is another tell. “Frankly, what I’m about to say is a lie.”

Trump tells his usual story about how “we” have better houses and make more money than the so-called Washington Elite. “Why are they elite,” he complains, saying “I’ve always taken offense…I’m more elite than them.” The crowd is pretty quiet for much of this.

Trump continues to explain why he is more elite than the elite, saying: “If we go by the old standards: better houses, better schools, made MUCH more money, lived better…”

Lived better? I think not. He means played more golf and ate more ice cream, but that’s not everyone’s idea of living better. The “better houses” are partly ruined with all the trashy gold plating. The better schools – as John McWhorter put it crisply in a cable news conversation, “and learned nothing from them.” Money isn’t all there is to being “elite.”

Trump is wooing “the Hispanics.”

The president’s pitch to Hispanic voters seemed to silo them off from the rest of the electorate, including the rally crowd (“We love our Hispanics”).

Yes that’s clever. We – the normal people – love “our Hispanics” – those other weird people who are not part of the “we.” They’re ours, kind of like pets, or appliances.

It featured an assertion that they had a greater understanding of the source of the drug problem than other Americans. And it included a section in which Trump wondered how CNN contributor Steve Cortes could be Hispanic even though, the president said, he appeared to be of Northern European descent.

“He happens to be Hispanic, but I never quite figured it out because he looks more like a WASP than I do,” Trump said of Cortes, who was in the audience.

Who wouldn’t vote for a guy like that?

Trump later said Hispanics should support him and his efforts to build a border wall because they understand the roots of the drug problem better than other voters.

“And at the center of America’s drug crisis, this is where the Hispanics know it better than anybody, people said, ‘Oh, the Hispanics won’t like a wall.’ I said, ‘I think they are going to love it,’” Trump said. “You know why? Because you understand it better than other people, but at the whole center of this crisis is the drugs that are pouring in, and you understand that when other people don’t understand it.”

I wonder how much The Hispanics like listening to Trump calling them The Hispanics and telling them what they think.

Meanwhile Trump is handing out medals of freedom to sports stars, because they won’t go near him any other way.

The New England Patriots are reportedly too busy this fall for the Super Bowl champions’ traditional visit to the White House. The World Cup-winning U.S. women’s soccer team made clear this summer it was not interested in meeting President Trump.

But on Monday, Trump, whose tenure has marked a new high — or low — in the politicization of White House sports ceremonies, basked in the reflected glow of a sporting legend nonetheless. In a 20-minute ceremony in the East Room, Trump presented the presidential Medal of Freedom to Mariano Rivera, the Hall of Fame relief pitcher for Trump’s hometown team, the New York Yankees.

The medal is the highest civilian award — a companion to the better-known Medal of Honor for military valor — and Trump used the moment to lavish praise on Rivera, a Panamanian immigrant who rose to stardom in the Big Apple as, in the president’s words, “maybe the greatest pitcher of all time.”

In all, the ceremony was the kind of feel-good, controversy-free photo op that is rare in the Trump era, and it represented something of a new model for this president to deal with athletes at a time when many — especially those who are racial minorities — have publicly boycotted the Trump White House and denounced his policies and rhetoric.

Rivera was the third former professional athlete to be awarded the Medal of Freedom in the past month, joining former National Basketball Association stars Bob Cousy and Jerry West. In May, Trump bestowed the honor on golfer Tiger Woods, an occasional business partner of the president.

Since Trump awarded his first batch of civilian medals last November to a group that included former National Football League greats Roger Staubach and Alan Page, seven of the 12 people who have received the award under Trump have been athletic heroes.

It means he gets to hang out with them for a few minutes. He’s a needy guy.

Trump wants to be Saudi Arabia’s besty. Even some of his buddies aren’t especially happy about that.

In a series of tweets this weekend, Trump indicated that Iran is behind the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities and that the United States will respond after hearing from the Saudi government “under what terms we would proceed.”

Saudi Arabia is telling us what to do now? When did we sign up for that?

His implication — that the royal family in Riyadh will dictate U.S. actions — prompted fury in Washington, where the Saudis have faced an increasingly hostile climate in recent years, especially in Congress and even among some of Trump’s fellow Republicans.

…

Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican-turned-independent, noted that Congress is the body empowered to “commence war.” “We don’t take orders from foreign powers,” he tweeted.

We do if Trump says we do.

On Monday afternoon, Trump said that while it is “looking” like Iran was behind the attack, he noted that an investigation is ongoing. He also said he’d like to avoid war with Iran, but that the U.S. is ready for such a conflict.

Asked if he had pledged to protect the Saudis, Trump said: “No, I haven’t promised the Saudis that … We have to sit down with the Saudis and work something out.”

No we don’t. We don’t have to do that at all.

Saudi Arabia’s reputation in Washington is arguably worse now than it has been in nearly two decades — almost as politically charged as in the years immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when it was revealed that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.

Under the de facto leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, Riyadh has pressed ahead with a four-year-old war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, which has had catastrophic humanitarian consequences that have been sharply criticized on Capitol Hill. U.S. lawmakers backed a measure that would have ended U.S. support for that war, but Trump vetoed it.

The killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national who had been living in the U.S., also fueled a massive backlash against Riyadh, which was blamed for the murder by the U.S. intelligence community. Many U.S. lawmakers in both parties hold Bin Salman responsible for what happened to Khashoggi, who was assassinated inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Trump has effectively said he doesn’t care if the Saudi crown prince played a role because Saudi Arabia is an important ally, one that buys a lot of U.S. weapons and is a key global oil producer. “It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said in one lengthy statement on the matter.

Spoken like a true professional.

Despite Iran’s hostility, critics argue that Iran’s latest alleged misbehavior is partly Trump’s fault because he quit the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed economic sanctions on Tehran.

“The administration’s response to a crisis it caused by walking away from the [Iran deal] has been completely incompetent,” Ilan Goldenberg, who served in the Obama administration, tweeted. “It has failed to build an [international] coalition, failed to make a credible public case, given Iran more flexibility to hit our partners & increased the risk of war.”

Other than that…

Simon Tisdall at the Guardian starts off analyzing Trump’s current frolics as if they were a product of thought and planning.

The US president is now saying he is also open to a repeat meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to reboot stalled nuclear disarmament talks. On another front, he has offered an olive branch to China, delaying a planned tariff increase on $250bn of Chinese goods pending renewed trade negotiations next month. Meanwhile, he says, new tariffs on European car imports could be dropped, too.

Is a genuine dove-ish shift under way? It seems improbable. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has not merely broken with diplomatic and geopolitical convention. He has taken a wrecking ball to venerated alliances, multilateral cooperation and the postwar international rules-based order. He has cosied up to autocrats, attacked old friends and blundered into sensitive conflicts he does not fully comprehend.

That puts it too politely, not to say feebly. It’s not that Trump is trying to do the job but not entirely succeeding. It’s that Trump is not trying to do anything other than Indulge Whatever Impulse Arises. He doesn’t have a plan, he doesn’t make “shifts,” he doesn’t “not fully comprehend” – he knows absolutely nothing and his only motivation is his own mood. That’s it. There’s no more to him. It’s pointless to analyze him as if he were a grownup, however flawed – he’s not any kind of grownup at all, he’s a monster of greed and ego and sadism. There’s nothing else there. Nothing.

We have a hard time believing it, and we keep trying to translate it into more normal terms. Journalists probably have even more of an urge to do this, because of the conventions of journalism. It looks amateurish to just exclaim that he’s a reckless moron with no clue – but all the same that’s the truth of it.

The suggestion that Trump will make nice and back off as election time nears thus elicits considerable scepticism. US analysts and commentators say the president’s erratic, impulsive and egotistic personality means any shift towards conciliation may be short-lived and could quickly be reversed, Bolton or no Bolton.

That’s closer, but it’s still politely hedged.

Trump is notorious for blowing hot and cold, performing policy zigzags and suddenly changing his mind. “Regardless of who has advised Mr Trump on foreign affairs … all have proved powerless before [his] zest for chaos,” the New York Times noted last week.

There you go. That’s better. Think “monstrous blown-up tantruming toddler” and you’ve got it.

Lacking experienced diplomatic and military advisers (he has sacked most of the good ones), surrounded by an inner circle of cynical sycophants such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and driven by a chronic desire for re-election, Trump’s behaviour could become more, not less, confrontational during his remaining time in office, suggested Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins university.

All that plus being ravenous for constant adulation and enraged by its opposite.

“The president has proved himself to be what many critics have long accused him of being: belligerent, bullying, impatient, irresponsible, intellectually lazy, short-tempered and self-obsessed,” Cohen wrote in Foreign Affairs journal. “Remarkably, however, those shortcomings have not yet translated into obvious disaster. But [that] … should not distract from a building crisis of US foreign policy.”

And it shouldn’t encourage us to forget that he could destroy everything at any moment.

Don TinyShoes is mad at Bolton. Of course he is – whose idea was it to hire him anyway?!

President Trump addressed the reasons behind John Bolton’s removal as national security adviser on Wednesday, telling reporters that Bolton “made some very big mistakes” and was “not getting along with people in the administration.”

…

“He sat right in that chair and I told him, ‘John … you’re not getting along with people and a lot of us, including me, disagree with some of your tactics and some of your ideas and I wish you well but I want you to submit your resignation.’ And he did that.”

— Trump today in the Oval Office

What he’s saying: Trump repeatedly condemned Bolton’s suggestion (more than a year ago) that the U.S. pursue the “Libya model” for the denuclearization of North Korea.

• North Korea reacted furiously at the time. That’s unsurprising, given Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was killed in an uprising a decade after ending his nuclear program.
• “What a disaster using that to make a deal with North Korea,” Trump said. “I don’t blame Kim Jong-un. … He wanted nothing to do with John Bolton.”

People don’t want to work for Trump – now there’s a surprise.

He says they do though.

“There is a very small recruiting pool of people that are acceptable to President Trump and individuals who have had requisite experience that would want these jobs,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a researcher who specializes in White House staff turnover at the Brookings Institution. “That, in combination with his impulsive nature and his tendency to fire people more than any other president that I’ve studied, means that there’s going to be vacancies for a long period of time.”

On multiple occasions, Trump has said people are clamoring to work in his administration.

“I have five people that want it very much. I mean, a lot more than that would like to have it,” Trump said Wednesday of possible replacements for Bolton. “We’ll be announcing somebody next week, but we have some highly qualified people.”

He doesn’t though. He’s lying.

He made a similar claim last December about replacing John Kelly as chief of staff. “We have a lot of people that want the job chief of staff,” Trump said. “Over a period of a week or two or maybe less, we’ll announce who it’s going to be.”

Instead, a few days later, he announced that Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, would serve as acting chief of staff.

More than 270 days later, Mulvaney is still “acting” as is Russell Vought, who is the acting budget director.

On Aug. 8, Trump said a new director of national intelligence would “be named shortly” after Dan Coats left the post and Trump’s initial pick ran into vetting problems and withdrew from consideration. “That’s a job that everybody wants,” Trump boasted.

But, more than a month later, there’s an acting director and no indication that Trump will name a permanent pick anytime soon.

“As far as I’m concerned, acting is good,” Trump recently said when asked about the high number of people in seemingly unending acting roles. “Acting gives you great flexibility that you don’t have with permanent, so I’m OK with the word ‘acting.’ But when I like people, I make them permanent. But I can leave acting for a long period of time.”

Note that he’s telling all his “acting” people that he doesn’t like them.

For those who answer the call to serve in the Trump administration, the jobs are more ephemeral than in past administrations and there’s a decent chance of leaving with a dash of reputational damage.

“I can’t say that anybody’s reputation has been enhanced, and I can point out a number of people who look a lot worse after having worked for President Trump,” said Tenpas of the Brookings Institution.

As Tenpas has tracked firings and transitions in the Trump administration, she has run out of superlatives and space in her chart on staff turnover in past administrations. She created a new chart just to track “serial turnover,” when a senior position has been held by three or more individuals.

“This is a new chart because it’s never happened before. I had no reason to make this chart,” Tenpas said.

No worries. It’s not an administration, it’s a re-run of The Apprentice.

Trump has a habit of standing as if he’s auditioning for the part of the front of a pantomime horse.

Is weird. Hands dangle at our sides, not out in front of us like that. It’s as if his legs and bum are in one plane and his trunk and hair are in another.

Some people say it’s because he wears lifts in his shoes so that he’ll look Awesomely Tall…which is hilarious because dude, there’s so much that’s more urgent to fix than the height. The hair. Ditch the pretend-hair and get a buzz cut; it would slash the ridiculous buffoon score in half. Then, quit scowling. Scrape off the makeup. Get suits in different colors, that fit. Throw out all the red neckties and get ones with patterns. Do more walking. Eat fewer scoops.

Tilt!

Yes, that came out very well.

(That’s the one where he was trying to do the pull & jerk to Trudeau but Trudeau was ready for it and blocked him with that hand on the arm.)

Again the hands are dangling way out in front of the body.

Whoopsie. Bolton out.

I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore……..I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.

Courteous, professional, and adult, as always.

Great. Wilbur Ross threatened to fire NOAA people if they didn’t lie for Trump.

The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew criticism from the scientific community that NOAA, a division of the Commerce Department, had been bent to political purposes.

“Bent to political purposes” is putting it politely. “I’ll fire you if you don’t lie to protect Trump from the consequences of his scribbling on a NOAA hurricane map to pretend his mistake was not a mistake.” That’s not even political, it’s just pretending the burger-stuffed dummy playing president doesn’t have play-doh where his brain should be.

Mr. Ross, the commerce secretary, intervened two days later, early last Friday, according to the three people familiar with his actions. Mr. Ross phoned Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency’s perceived contradiction of the president.

That is completely outrageous. These people should be out of office and facing prosecution.

Dr. Jacobs objected to the demand and was told that the political staff at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed, according to the three individuals, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode. Unlike career government employees, political staff are appointed by the administration. They usually include a handful of top officials, such as Dr. Jacobs, and their aides.

So there’s one Trump employee with some shred of integrity.

However, a senior administration official who asked not to be identified when discussing internal deliberations said that the Birmingham office had been wrong and that NOAA had simply done the responsible thing and corrected the record.

That official suggested the Twitter post by the Birmingham forecasters had been motivated by a desire to embarrass the president more than concern for the safety of people in Alabama. The official provided no evidence to support that conclusion.

That official has no shred of integrity. Not one, not even a tiny one.

On Monday, Craig N. McLean, NOAA’s acting chief scientist, sent an email to staff members notifying the agency that he was looking into “potential violations” in the agency’s decision to ultimately back Mr. Trump’s statements rather than those of its own scientists. He called the agency’s action “a danger to public health and safety.”

Dr. Jacobs is scheduled to speak Tuesday at a weather industry conference in Huntsville, Ala.

On Monday, the National Weather Service director, Louis W. Uccellini, got a standing ovation from conference attendees when he praised the work of the Birmingham office and said staff members there had acted “with one thing in mind, public safety” when they contradicted Mr. Trump’s claim that Alabama was at risk.

Not embarrassing Trump, but preventing people from panicking about a hurricane that wasn’t heading their way. That’s the job.

Trump is very chatty today. I guess he doesn’t have any work to do, so he can talk at us on Twitter all day.

When all of the people pushing so hard for Criminal Justice Reform were unable to come even close to getting it done, they came to me as a group and asked for my help. I got it done with a group of Senators & others who would never have gone for it. Obama couldn’t come close……..A man named @VanJones68, and many others, were profusely grateful (at that time!). I SIGNED IT INTO LAW, no one else did, & Republicans deserve much credit. But now that it is passed, people that had virtually nothing to do with it are taking the praise. Guys like boring………musician @johnlegend, and his filthy mouthed wife, are talking now about how great it is – but I didn’t see them around when we needed help getting it passed. “Anchor” @LesterHoltNBC doesn’t even bring up the subject of President Trump or the Republicans when talking about………the importance or passage of Criminal Justice Reform. They only talk about the minor players, or people that had nothing to do with it…And the people that so desperately sought my help when everyone else had failed, all they talk about now is Impeaching President Trump!

Um…what? Did you get all that? No, neither did I. But at least while he was typing all that he wasn’t telling Putin where the spies are, so whatever.

Lots of random retweets, then back to The Man Himself:

North Carolina, vote for Dan Bishop tomorrow. We need him badly in Washington! His opponent is a far left Sanctuary Cities supporter.

When the former Governor of the Great State of South Carolina, @MarkSanford, was reported missing, only to then say he was away hiking on the Appalachian Trail, then was found in Argentina with his Flaming Dancer friend, it sounded like his political career was over. It was,…….but then he ran for Congress and won, only to lose his re-elect after I Tweeted my endorsement, on Election Day, for his opponent. But now take heart, he is back, and running for President of the United States. The Three Stooges, all badly failed candidates, will give it a go!

Flaming Dancer?

House Republicans should allow Chairs of Committees to remain for longer than 6 years. It forces great people, and real leaders, to leave after serving. The Dems have unlimited terms. While that has its own problems, it is a better way to go. Fewer people, in the end, will leave!

94% Approval Rating in the Republican Party, a record. Thank you!

Great news that an activist investor is now involved with AT&T. As the owner of VERY LOW RATINGS @CNN, perhaps they will now put a stop to all of the Fake News emanating from its non-credible “anchors.” Also, I hear that, because of its bad ratings, it is losing a fortune……..But most importantly, @CNN is bad for the USA. Their International Division spews bad information & Fake News all over the globe. This is why foreign leaders are always asking me, “Why does the Media hate the U.S. sooo much?” It is a fraudulent shame, & all comes from the top! As bad as @CNN is, Comcast MSNBC is worse. Their ratings are also way down because they have lost all credibility. I believe their stories about me are not 93% negative, but actually 100% negative. They are incapable of saying anything positive, despite all of the great things…..that this Administration has done. They don’t talk about the great economy, the big tax and regulation cuts, the rebuilding of the Military, “Choice” at our VA, our Vets, Judges and Supreme Court Justices, the Border Wall going up, lowest crime numbers, 2nd A, and so much more!

I know nothing about an Air Force plane landing at an airport (which I do not own and have nothing to do with) near Turnberry Resort (which I do own) in Scotland, and filling up with fuel, with the crew staying overnight at Turnberry (they have good taste!). NOTHING TO DO WITH ME I had nothing to do with the decision of our great @VP Mike Pence to stay overnight at one of the Trump owned resorts in Doonbeg, Ireland. Mike’s family has lived in Doonbeg for many years, and he thought that during his very busy European visit, he would stop and see his family!

The Trump Administration has achieved more in the first 2 1/2 years of its existence than perhaps any administration in the history of our Country. We get ZERO media credit for what we have done, and are doing, but the people know, and that’s all that is important!

And there are even more, but my strength has given out. Dude can talk!

Making America Great Again…

In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.

A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.

The disclosure to the Russians by the President, though not about the Russian spy specifically, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure, according to the source directly involved in the matter.

So, that’s breathtaking, if it’s true.

Pompeo was still the CIA director then, and he told other Trump admin people that too much information was coming out about the spy.

A spokesman for Pompeo declined to comment. The White House press secretary lied.

The removal happened at a time of wide concern in the intelligence community about mishandling of intelligence by Trump and his administration. Those concerns were described to CNN by five sources who served in the Trump administration, intelligence agencies and Congress.

Those concerns continued to grow in the period after Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov. Weeks after the decision to extract the spy, in July 2017, Trump met privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg and took the unusual step of confiscating the interpreter’s notes.

I remember that. Why was nothing done about it? It’s insane.

Afterward, intelligence officials again expressed concern that the President may have improperly discussed classified intelligence with Russia, according to an intelligence source with knowledge of the intelligence community’s response to the Trump-Putin meeting.

Of course they did, because how could they possibly be confident that he hadn’t? When he talked to Putin alone and made sure no written record survived?

Knowledge of the Russian covert source’s existence was highly restricted within the US government and intelligence agencies. According to one source, there was “no equal alternative” inside the Russian government, providing both insight and information on Putin.

So, first of all, we have a president who can’t be trusted not to share intel with Putin, and then, we’re deprived of a top value source of intel on Putin because that same president can’t be trusted not to burn said source.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

Trump is the one who tried to fake the weather map, according to the Post.

President Donald Trump, a fan of Sharpies, used one to edit an official map of Hurricane Dorian’s projected path sometime before displaying it to the public on Wednesday at the White House, according to The Washington Post, which cited a White House official.

“No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie,” the anonymous official told The Post.

If someone else did it it was at his direction, but it seems more likely that he did it himself when no one was watching. He has just barely enough brain cells to grasp that doing it covertly was essential to his goal of convincing everyone that he’d been right all along, but not nearly enough to grasp that no one would believe his Sharpied loop.

People on the internet seized on the incident and submitted their own memes of images doctored with a black marker. But editing a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map is something that could bear serious consequences, as some legal experts pointed out it could have violated federal guidelines.

According to 18 US Code § 2074, which is filed under “False Weather Reports,” “whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather conditions falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.”

I would love to see Trump locked up for 90 days, starting tomorrow.

On Thursday, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. Peter Brown, a homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, appeared to take some of the blame for the confusion from the map.

In a statement presented by the White House, Brown said Trump’s comments regarding Hurricane Dorian’s chances of hitting Alabama were based on a briefing.

“The president’s comments were based on that morning’s Hurricane Dorian briefing, which included the possibility of tropical-storm-force winds in southeastern Alabama,” Brown said.

A White House source familiar with the matter said Trump personally directed Brown to give the statement, according to CNN.

Of course he did.