Tag: Trump

  • He knows nothing

    https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/1116403028637245440

    https://youtu.be/s6EaoPMANQM

  • You’ve got to put your name on stuff

    So little Donald went to Mount Vernon one day with his friend Manny. Little Donald was bored, and he thought George Washington was stupid.

    During a guided tour of Mount Vernon last April with French president Emmanuel Macron, Trump learned that Washington was one of the major real-estate speculators of his era. So, he couldn’t understand why America’s first president didn’t name his historic Virginia compound or any of the other property he acquired after himself.

    “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said, according to three sources briefed on the exchange. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”

    Yeah. Just put your name on stuff, one way or another, and that way people will remember you. It could be on books you wrote or music you composed, or it could just be pasted on something to memorialize your vanity and presumption.

    The VIPs’ tour guide for the evening, Mount Vernon president and CEO Doug Bradburn, told the president that Washington did, after all, succeed in getting the nation’s capital named after him. Good point, Trump said with a laugh.

    America’s 45th president is open about the fact that he doesn’t read much history.

    Much? Make that any. He doesn’t read anything at all; not newspapers, not daily intelligence briefings, nothing. He sure as hell doesn’t read any history.

    The president’s disinterest in Washington made it tough for tour guide Bradburn to sustain Trump’s interest during a deluxe 45-minute tour of the property which he later described to associates as “truly bizarre.” The Macrons, Bradburn has told several people, were far more knowledgeable about the history of the property than the president.

    A former history professor with a PhD, Bradburn “was desperately trying to get [Trump] interested in” Washington’s house, said a source familiar with the visit, so he spoke in terms Trump understands best — telling the president that Washington was an 18th century real-estate titan who had acquired property throughout Virginia and what would come to be known as Washington, D.C.

  • He just wants to

    Well, you have to see it from Trump’s point of view. He’s never had any respect for the rule of law; it’s the way he was raised. His father was a crook, so that’s what he saw growing up.

    Jake Tapper tells us it’s been boiling over lately:

    Three Thursdays ago, in a meeting at the Oval Office with top officials — including Nielsen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, top aides Jared Kushner, Mercedes Schlapp and Dan Scavino, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and more — the President, according to one attendee, was “ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue.”

    Senior administration officials say that Trump then ordered Nielsen and Pompeo to shut down the port of El Paso the next day, Friday, March 22, at noon. The plan was that in subsequent days the Trump administration would shut down other ports.

    Nielsen explained why that would not be a good idea, and Trump said he didn’t care.

    Ultimately, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney seemed to have been able to talk the President out of closing the port of El Paso. Trump, however, was insistent that his administration begin taking another action — denying asylum seekers entry. Nielsen tried to explain to the President that the asylum laws allow migrants from Central America to come to the US and gain entry. She talked to the White House counsel to see if there were any exceptions, but he told her that her reading of the law was correct.

    But Trump doesn’t care about that, because he considers himself better than the law.

    Last Friday, the President visited Calexico, California, where he said, “We’re full, our system’s full, our country’s full — can’t come in! Our country is full, what can you do? We can’t handle any more, our country is full. Can’t come in, I’m sorry. It’s very simple.”

    Behind the scenes, two sources told CNN, the President told border agents to not let migrants in. Tell them we don’t have the capacity, he said. If judges give you trouble, say, “Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.”

    After the President left the room, agents sought further advice from their leaders, who told them they were not giving them that direction and if they did what the President said they would take on personal liability. You have to follow the law, they were told.

    So. The president told federal agents to break the law and to tell judges to take a hike. He thinks he is the boss of the law as well as all of us. We all have to do what he says, and he doesn’t have to do what anyone says.

    There’s also been an ongoing struggle over the past four months over Trump’s urgent desire to resume the practice of taking children away from their parents.

    According to multiple sources, the President wanted families separated even if they came in at a legal port of entry and were legal asylum seekers. The President wanted families separated even if they were apprehended within the US. He thinks the separations work to deter migrants from coming.

    Sources told CNN that Nielsen tried to explain they could not bring the policy back because of court challenges, and White House staffers tried to explain it would be an unmitigated PR disaster.

    “He just wants to separate families,” said a senior administration official.

    He just wants to. He really really wants to. He wants to the way normal people want to go to the beach or eat ice cream or see a movie. He wants to for the pleasure of it. He likes doing it because it’s fun for him. That’s what he is.

  • Purge

    The Times has more on the purge (which they call a purge right up front):

    President Trump moved to sweep out the top ranks of the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, a day after pushing out its secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, accelerating a purge of the nation’s immigration and security leadership.

    Government officials said three more top department leaders were expected to leave soon: L. Francis Cissna, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Randolph D. Alles, the Secret Service director; and John Mitnik, the agency’s general counsel.

    …

    All were viewed as allies of John F. Kelly, the president’s former chief of staff and his first Homeland Security secretary, who left late last year after months of tension with Mr. Trump.

    In other words they were horrible, as Kelly was horrible, but they weren’t horrible enough. Horrible enough is an elusive prize for Trump.

    The departures appeared to be part of a housecleaning of officials involved in the Trump administration’s immigration agenda as the president demands a harder line on border security. Mr. Trump on Friday said Mr. Vitiello would be replaced with someone who would move ICE in a “tougher” direction. All of the departing officials were appointed by Mr. Trump.

    More grabbing children away from their parents, never to see them again; more talk of “shithole countries” and “not people, animals.”

    We’re in a bad place.

  • The meeting didn’t go well

    Kirsten Nielsen has quit (“resigned”). Jake Tapper was watching.

    He’s frustrated with the laws, and he wants people who work for him to break them.

    So, she quit or Trump told her to “resign.”

    So that’s where we are.

  • Mulvaney to the laws: No

    They just openly tell us the law can’t touch them.

    Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said on Fox News Sunday that Democrats will never get their hands on President Trump’s tax returns, adding that the request is “a political stunt” that the IRS will not comply with.

    How is it a stunt? There is a massive amount of evidence-based reporting on Trump’s many cheats and crimes over the decades, and there is precedent that presidential candidates are transparent about their tax returns so that we the voters and citizens can have confidence that they’re not corrupt or thieves or both. Also there is a legal basis for the request that the IRS hand over Trump’s returns, so Mulvaney is saying “fuck the law.”

  • Eight goats in a pen

    More on Trump and golf and what it says about Trump, from the guy who wrote the book.

    More than to any wife, more than to any party, more than to any opinion, President Donald Trump has remained fiercely loyal to golf. But I’ve played golf my entire life. Years ago, I even played with Trump once. Whatever sport he’s playing, it isn’t golf.

    He cheats. He lies. He kicks. And not just his ball — yours, too. He props up a 2.8 handicap that’s faker than WrestleMania 35. He wins tournaments he never even played in. He wins tournaments that weren’t even held.

    …

    And it’s not just the cheating. It’s the way he plays the game—with all the golf etiquette of an elephant on Red Bull. Trump promised to Make America Great Again. He’s definitely Made Golf Gross Again.

    He drives his golf cart on greens. He drives it on tee boxes. He never, ever walks, even on the courses he owns that have banned carts (Trump Turnberry.)

    He always hits first, never mind who won the last hole, and then jumps in his Super Mario Kart with his caddy and peels off before you’ve even hit, the better to be 150 yards ahead of you so the two of them can foozle, fudge, and foot-wedge in private.

    He plays only at clubs with his name on them and only with caddies who love his $200-a-round tips.

    He plays only with rich people.

    My book is called Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump. So how does golf explain Trump’s presidency? Well …

    If Trump will cheat to win $20 from his friends, is it that much further to believe he’d cheat to lower his taxes, win an election, sway an investigation?

    If Trump will lie and say one of his courses is worth $50 million while at the same time suing the local tax board for valuing it at more than $2 million—we feel you, Ossining, New York—is it that much further to think he might lie about his taxes, his fixer, his affairs?

    …

    Trump says he’s won 20 club championships. (He hasn’t.) The truth is, he played a lot of those “championships” by himself, the first day his latest course opened, and declared himself the champ. How do I know? He told me the day we played together in the early 2000s.

    …

    Politics: Trump won’t release his taxes.

    Golf: If the House ever gets his returns, they should start with his golf write-offs. For instance, did you know Trump keeps eight goats in a pen on his Trump Bedminster course to get an $80,000 farm tax credit?

    I did not know that.

    While writing my new book about Trump’s cheating, I left calls, emails and even FedEx letters for him and his people and got no replies. Meanwhile, he’s still telling America he’s this champion golfer, and he isn’t. How do I know? Whenever he’s played in front of cameras (Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Tahoe Celebrity), he’s not once made a cut or finished in the top half among the celebs.

    Fake news?

  • “These aren’t people. These are animals.”

    As we saw before, Trump visited “the border” today, where he took credit for a section of wall that was actually started by Obama. But he wasn’t finished.

    President Donald Trump at a Border Patrol station in Calexico, California, on Friday railed against what is commonly known as the “Flores decision” — a landmark federal immigration case — calling it a “disaster for our country” and publicly calling out “Judge Flores” for making the bad decision. The problem with that sentiment: The Flores in that case’s title was not a judge, but a teenage girl named Jenny Lisette Flores.

    “Some very bad court decisions. The Flores decision is a disaster. I have to tell you, Judge Flores, whoever you may be, that decision was a disaster for our country,” Trump said to the panel. “A disaster and we’re working on that.”

    Yes, he really did say “disaster” three times, in his pre-dementia way, along with thinking the plaintiff was the judge.

    The 1997 agreement in Reno v. Flores requires the U.S. government to release migrant children from detention without unnecessary delay to their parents, adult relatives or programs licensed to care for them. The settlement also requires immigration officials to provide the detained migrant children with food, drinking water, toilets, emergency medical assistance and other basic needs.

    Basic rights, just imagine.

    Also he again spoke the language of genocide.

    https://twitter.com/JeremyLittau/status/1114301804760711174

    https://twitter.com/KatzOnEarth/status/1114298867393032192

    https://twitter.com/andrewkimmel/status/1114301905142829056

    It’s a nightmare and we can’t wake up.

  • Theft not limited to material objects

    Taking credit for other people’s work? Don’s your man for that.

    When President Donald Trump visits this border city Friday, he plans to tour a recently installed section of border fence. It’s the first replacement project completed under his presidency, and a plaque welded to the bollards marked the occasion.

    The plaque, installed more than six months ago when the work was completed, refers to the 2.25-mile-long barrier as the “the first section of President Trump’s border wall.”

    Border officials in Calexico have noted that the project had been planned for years before Trump took office.

    It’s a section of border fence; it’s not part of “his” border wall. Donnie Tw0-scoops didn’t invent the border.

    A fence had existed at the spot for decades. The replacement project substituted Vietnam War-era, landing-mat fencing with newer bollards.

    David Kim, the assistant chief patrol agent for Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, told the Desert Sun in February 2018 — as the project was starting — that the Border Patrol had identified this section as a priority for replacement in 2009, during President Barack Obama’s administration.

    A mere ten years ago, at the start of someone else’s presidency.

  • Rrrrrrr, Rrrrrrrr

    Windmills, I tell you, windmills.

    Trump, National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual spring dinner, Tuesday. He informed the enthralled audience that windmills give ya cancer. The noise from them. He imitated the noise for them.

    But on Tuesday night during his most recent round of attacks against windmills, Trump cited what appeared to be a brand-new reason people should avoid the turbines.

    “They say the noise causes cancer,” he told the crowd at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual spring dinner, punctuating his impassioned rhetoric with hand gestures and an exaggerated imitation of the sound of windmill blades rotating.

    As presidents so routinely do.

  • Teapot Dome legislation

    Throwdown:

    The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, using a little-known provision in the federal tax code, formally requested on Wednesday that the I.R.S. hand over six years of President Trump’s personal and business tax returns, starting what is likely to be a momentous fight with his administration.

    Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts, hand-delivered a two-page letter laying out the request to Charles P. Rettig, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, ending months of speculation about when he would do so and almost certainly prompting a legal challenge from the Trump administration.

    Reporters asked Trump about it during the few minutes he spent in the office and he said he’d love to but he’s being audited that day.

    “I guess when you have a name, you are audited, but until such time as I’m not under audit I would not be inclined to do that,” he said.

    Being audited of course has nothing to do with it. It’s been his excuse all along, and it’s worthless. (Also it’s probably not true.)

    Mr. Neal is not relying on a subpoena or standard congressional processes. Instead, he is invoking an authority enshrined in the tax code granted only to the tax-writing committees in Congress that gives the chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee the power to request tax information on any filer.

    Mr. Neal gave the agency until April 10 to comply with the request, and if he receives the information, he will then confidentially review it with his committee staff.

    The provision, which dates in some form to the Teapot Dome scandal of Warren G. Harding’s administration, at least on its face gives the Trump administration little room to decline a request like Mr. Neal’s. It only says that the Treasury secretary “shall” furnish the information.

    Almost as if the president isn’t supposed to be an absolute ruler.

  • We had an incredible thing

    Again. People continue to notice that Donald Trump’s brain appears to be crumbling to bits.

    President Donald Trump’s recent confusion with words and facts, including about his own father, could be signs of pre-dementia and deteriorating cognitive skills, mental health experts warn.

    “The ‘Tim Apple’ episode a few weeks ago, his calling Venezuela a company, and then yesterday, confusing his grandfather’s birthplace with his father’s, mispronouncing ‘oranges’ for ‘origins,’ and stating out of the blue, ‘I’m very normal,’” recited Bandy Lee, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University who has been waving red flags about Trump’s mental state for years. “There is no question he needs an examination.”

    “I think he’s suffering from pre-dementia. And it’s only getting worse,” said John Gartner, a clinical psychologist with practices in New York City and Baltimore.

    What is “pre-dementia”? It looks more like a euphemism than a medical term. Dementia is progressive anyway, so why isn’t it all just dementia?

    Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump said that his father was “born in a very wonderful place in Germany.” In fact, his father was born in the Bronx. It was his paternal grandfather who emigrated from Germany. The president also said repeatedly that he wanted to take a look at the “oranges” of the special counsel investigation against him, when he clearly meant “origins.”

    Last month, Trump called Apple CEO Tim Cook “Tim Apple” ― but later claimed that he had, in fact, said “Tim Cook Apple,” but people missed “Cook” because he’d said it very rapidly, and finally claimed that he was trying to save time by skipping some words.

    Doesn’t sound very “pre.”

    This is true even when he doesn’t make specific flubs, too. We’ve all seen it. He just comes across as profoundly dumb, especially when there are cognitively-intact people also in the room.

    The White House this year did not make available the doctor who performed Trump’s annual physical exam and released scant information about its results.

    In contrast, last year Trump authorized physician Ronny Jackson to field questions about his health for nearly a full hour. The president himself bragged about his performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a screening tool for Alzheimer’s disease that asks the patient, for instance, to identify a camel and to draw a clock.

    “There aren’t a lot of people that can do that,” Trump said days later, boasting of his 30-out-of-30 score to a Republican National Committee audience.

    Identify a camel and draw a clock? Err, I think you’ll find there are.

    That test, though, was never designed to be an in-depth analysis of cognitive function, Lee and other experts said. “Ronny Jackson declared his boss and commander-in-chief ‘fit for duty’ based on a 10-minute cognitive screen on which full-blown Alzheimer patients and hospitalized schizophrenia patients are known to score in the normal range,” she said.

    Large numbers of Americans who are not mental health professionals have also started to question Trump’s mental condition, including prominent critics like George Conway, the husband of top White House aide Kellyanne Conway. They’ve noted both the president’s actions and his televised speeches and public remarks, in which he is frequently incoherent and goes off on long, unrelated tangents.

    Those tangents? Very Alzheimer’s-like.

    On Tuesday night, during his speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee spring dinner, Trump, who was then in the middle of 90 minutes of rambling remarks, veered off on a two-minute, 22-second detour that touched on how wind turbines kill bald eagles and other birds, moved on to how North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was not ready for a deal, came back to how people who use wind power can’t watch television if the wind doesn’t blow, and finished with former President Barack Obama playing golf in Hawaii:

    Hillary wanted to put up wind. Wind. If you ― if you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations: Your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, OK? “Rrrrr, rrrrr” ― you know the thing that makes the ― it’s so noisy. And of course it’s like a graveyard for birds. If you love birds, you’d never want to walk under a windmill because it’s a very sad, sad sight. It’s like a cemetery. We put a little, we put a little statute for the poor birds. It’s true. You know in California, if you shoot a bald eagle, they put you in jail for five years. And yet the windmills wipe ’em all out. It’s true. They wipe ’em out. It’s terrible. And I told the other day at CPAC. Great people at CPAC. We had an incredible thing. I had nothing to do. It was early on a Saturday morning. I had just gotten back from dealing with Kim Jong Un. We had a walk. He wasn’t ready for a deal but that’s OK because we get along great. He wasn’t ready. I told him, you’re not ready for a deal. That’s the first time anybody has ever told him that and left. It never happened to him before. Nobody’s ever left. But I said you’re not ready for a deal, but we’ll make a deal. We have a good relationship. We have a good relationship. But I told a story about, at CPAC. The woman, she wants to watch television. And she says to her husband, “Is the wind blowing? I’d love to watch a show tonight, darling. The wind hasn’t blown for three days. I can’t watch television, darling. Darling, please tell the wind to blow.” No, wind’s not so good. And you know, you have no idea how expensive it is to make those things. They’re all made in China and Germany, but the way, just in case you’re ― we don’t make ’em here, essentially. We don’t make ’em here. And by the way, the carbon, and all those things flying up in the air, you know the carbon footprint? President Obama used to talk about the carbon footprint, and then he’d hop on Air Force One, a big 747 with very old engines, and he’d fly to Hawaii to play a round of golf. You tell me, the carbon footprint.

    Mens sana? I think not.

  • Born in a very wonderful place

    Boy, Trump really can’t get the whole “where you born” thing right. He can’t even remember where his own father was born. I don’t mean the room or the town or even the state, I mean the country.

    Donald Trump has wrongly claimed his father was born in Germany, again, during a press conference with the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg.

    Trump made the claim while criticizing Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose country, the president said, “was not paying their fair share” toward the military alliance.

    He does pronounce “Angela” correctly though. I was wondering about that the other day, so it’s good to know. Mind you, he makes a show of it – pausing first and then using a Special Voice, so that nobody will think he actually speaks any horrible NotAmerican languages – but at least he manages to do it.

    “I have great respect for Angela and I have great respect for the country,” said Trump. “My father is German, was German, born in a very wonderful place in Germany so I have a very great feeling for Germany.”

    Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was born in New York. Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, was born in the German village of Kallstadt.

    A very wonderful place.

    Trump has falsely claimed his father was born in Germany before. In July 2018, as he criticized EU nations for doing business with Iran after Trump broke a nuclear agreement with the country, Trump also claimed his father was born abroad. He was not. Trump’s mother was Scottish.

    For years before he became president, Trump falsely claimed former president Barack Obama was born in Kenya, a conspiracy theory he repeated even after it was disproved.

    Just cannot get a grip on the whole place of origin thing.

  • He sometimes sent them official-looking documents

    David Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell at the Post have the deets on how Trump faked his net worth to scam people. (I believe that’s a crime, by the way – the scamming, not the reporting.)

    When Donald Trump wanted to make a good impression — on a lender, a business partner, or a journalist — he sometimes sent them official-looking documents called “Statements of Financial Condition.”

    These documents sometimes ran up to 20 pages. They were full of numbers, laying out Trump’s properties, debts and multibillion-dollar net worth.

    But, for someone trying to get a true picture of Trump’s net worth, the documents were deeply flawed. Some simply omitted properties that carried big debts. Some assets were overvalued. And some key numbers were wrong.

    In other words he did his best to defraud lenders and business partners…and when it came time to run for president, us.

    For instance, Trump’s financial statement for 2011 said he had 55 home lots to sell at his golf course in Southern California. Those lots would sell for $3 million or more, the statement said.

    But Trump had only 31 lots zoned and ready for sale at the course, according to city records. He claimed credit for 24 lots — and at least $72 million in future revenue — he didn’t have.

    He also claimed his Virginia vineyard had 2,000 acres, when it really has about 1,200. He said Trump Tower has 68 stories. It has 58.

    That’s a lot of fraud. Bernie Madoff is in the pen for fraud as we speak.

    Now, investigators on Capitol Hill and in New York are homing in on these unusual documents in an apparent attempt to determine whether Trump’s familiar habit of bragging about his wealth ever crossed a line into fraud.

    Or to determine whether they can prosecute. The fraud seems pretty god damn obvious.

    The Trump Organization also declined to comment about the statements or answer questions about specific errors the statements contained. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president’s sons who are running his business, noted on social media that Cohen has provided false testimony about other topics.

    Oh well that’ll take care of it. Just say stuff on social media and it will all blow over.

    Farenthold and O’Connell say decorously that the Post has “reviewed copies of these documents,” which they obtained from various sources including…Cohen.

    [Kyle Welch, an assistant professor of accountancy at George Washington University,] said Trump could be protected by disclaimers that his own accountants added to the statements, warning readers that they weren’t seeing the full picture. And in an odd way, Welch said, Trump could be helped by the sheer scale of the exaggerations. They were so far off from reality, Welch wondered whether any real bank or insurer could have been fooled.

    Welch said he’d never seen a document stretch so far past the normal conventions of accounting.

    “It’s humorous,” Welch said. “It’s a humorous financial statement.”

    That’s what Trump does, isn’t it – his awfulness is so over the top we don’t know how to deal with it, and much of the time we do point and laugh.

  • Speak up for all the things

    Another item Trump posted a bit later:

    Nunes. Devin Nunes. Great hero. Future great hero, to be hailed as. Why? Because “he spoke up for good and just, and all of the things you have to speak up for.”

    Almost makes you wish you’d known the fellow.

  • Bully, attack, defame, pander, provoke

    Not to forget keeping track of Trump.

    Commentary:

    The primary source:

    As you can see, the order is reversed from the Translate Trump list, which went down the page while chronology goes up.

    As Translate Trump indicates, every single one of these is wildly inappropriate from a president. Racist, libelous, abuse of power, a threat to the free press and the ability of all of us to know what’s going on and what he’s doing to us, bullying, more bullying, even more bullying – this is what Republicans can support to the bitter end? It’s terrifying. It makes you fear they’d eat us all for lunch if they got just slightly hungry.

  • Very, very evil things, very bad things

    Trump is making threats now. Of course he is.

    President Donald Trump says his enemies who did “evil” and “treasonous things” will be under scrutiny after he was absolved of colluding with Russia.

    Speaking in the Oval Office, he said no other president should have to be investigated over “a false narrative”.

    …

    Mr Trump was hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House on Monday when a reporter asked him about the outcome of the Mueller report.

    “There’s a lot of people out there that have done some very, very evil things, very bad things,” Mr Trump said, “I would say treasonous things, against our country.”

    “And hopefully people that have done such harm to our country, we’ve gone through a period of really bad things happening.

    “Those people will certainly be looked at, I’ve been looking at them for a long time.

    “And I’m saying, ‘why haven’t they been looked at?’ They lied to Congress – many of them, you know who they are – they’ve’ done so many evil things.”

    Mr Trump did not name the alleged culprits.

    He added: “It was a false narrative, it was terrible thing, we can never let this happen to another president again, I can tell you that. I say it very strongly.”

    Threat threat threat, but his language is so impoverished nobody can tell what he’s talking about. “Very bad things”; ok then, we’ll get right on that.

  • While not determinative

    Aaron Blake at the Post asks, in guarded language, if the fix is in.

    A big question hanging over William P. Barr’s nomination to be attorney general this year was whether, once he got the job, he would do President Trump’s bidding. Barr had made statements critical of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, and he even wrote a long memo rejecting the need for the obstruction of justice portion of Mueller’s inquiry. Trump also repeatedly made clear his desire for a loyalist to oversee the investigation.

    On Sunday, Barr made a big decision in Trump’s favor. And he did so in a way legal experts say is very questionable.

    In his summary, Barr wrote that Mueller didn’t conclude that Trump committed obstruction of justice but also that he didn’t conclude that he didn’t.

    So Barr did it for him.

    “After reviewing the Special Counsel’s final report on these issues; consulting with Department officials, including the Office of Legal Counsel; and applying the principles of federal prosecution that guide our charging decisions,” Barr wrote, “Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”

    He further explained. “In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that ‘the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,’ and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President’s intent with respect to obstruction.”

    So the idea is that the lack of evidence that Trump was involved in the Russian interference is a reason to think Trump didn’t try to obstruct?

    Well that’s ridiculous.

    This is Trump. A rational person with a good grasp of all the facts and a clean record would probably refrain from trying to obstruct an investigation of the kind Mueller did, but Trump is not that person.

    Legal experts say it’s odd that he emphasized the lack of an underlying, proven crime, given that’s not necessary for obstruction of justice.

    “I think this is the weakest part of Attorney General Barr’s conclusions,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “You do not need to prove an underlying crime to prove obstruction of justice. Martha Stewart is quite aware of this fact.”

    There have been Martha Stewart jokes on Twitter this morning.

    “For example,” added former federal prosecutor David Alan Sklansky, now of Stanford University, “if the President wrongfully tried to block the investigation into Russian interference in the election because he wanted to protect the Russians, or because he didn’t want people to know that a foreign government had tried to hack the election in his favor, that would constitute obstruction.”

    …

    Barr’s argument is that the lack of an underlying crime suggests there’s less reason to believe Trump had a “corrupt intent” behind his actions regarding the investigation. But if you set aside collusion, there would seem to be plenty for Trump to want to cover up. Even if these proven and alleged crimes didn’t involve criminal activity by Trump personally, he would seem to have a clear interest in the outcomes of these investigations, both because of his sensitivity about the idea that Russia assisted him and because of the narrative it created of a president surrounded by corruption.

    He, personally, likes the image of himself surrounded by corruption. He likes being the godfatha. But he doesn’t want to have to live in a small cell because of it.

  • You think he should just take that sitting down?

    Now that’s funny – Kellyanne Conway is defending Trump’s insults aimed at George Conway.

    Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday defended President Donald Trump’s attacks on her husband George Conway saying he’s “a counterpuncher” and asserting that the president is free to respond when he’s accused of having a mental illness.

    “He left it alone for months out of respect for me,” Conway, a senior Trump aide, told POLITICO in a brief telephone interview. “But you think he shouldn’t respond when somebody, a non-medical professional, accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?”

    Oh no, definitely not, he should definitely get on Twitter and call him Mister Wife’s Name and a loser and a husband from hell, as presidents so normally do. Definitely. The fact that you’re married to him is neither here nor there.

    (By the way the expression is “take that lying down.”) (Maybe she’s nervous of using the word “lying” in connection with her boss.)

  • Alexander Pope, eat your heart out

    New level achieved: