Tag: Trump

  • How shall we disguise the fix?

    One interpretation of Barr’s rebuke of Trump’s DoJ tweeting is that it’s a show of independence meant to disguise actual complete submission. The Washington Post offers a different take:

    Attorney General William P. Barr pushed back hard Thursday against President Trump’s attacks on the Justice Department, saying, “I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody,” an assertion of independence that could jeopardize his tenure as the nation’s top law enforcement official.

    The DoJ is all in a swivet over the Stone case and Trump’s outbursts and the fact that it looks as if Trump is managing their every move.

    People close to Barr said that in recent months he has become increasingly frustrated with Trump’s tweets about the Justice Department. The president, they said, seemed not only to be undercutting his own political momentum but also to be fostering doubts about the department’s independence. Trump’s tweet complaining that he believed his friend was being treated unfairly proved something of a last straw, they said, because it was so damaging to morale at the department.

    But does Barr care more about the department than he does about enabling Trump?

    Barr was comfortable not being universally loved by career employees, but he felt the tweet Tuesday raised a bigger problem, giving people reason to wonder whether the department had been corrupted by political influence and decided he could no longer remain silent about the president’s public denunciations, these people said.

    While other people said that was all a smokescreen so that Barr could continue enabling Trump without all this hassle from the press and the people.

    Behind that public fight, according to people familiar with the discussions, is a deeper tension between Trump and Barr’s Justice Department over the lack of criminal charges against former FBI director James B. Comey and those close to him.

    Trump wants to lead a mob organization disguised as a country, while Barr…is either ok with that or not ok with that. One of those.

    Since becoming attorney general last year, Barr has enthusiastically defended the president, much to the frustration of congressional Democrats and some current and former Justice Department officials upset over what they consider an erosion of the agency’s independence. Thursday’s interview marked a stunning break from that practice.

    Or a performance of a stunning break from that practice. One of those.

    Trump is getting more and more pissed off with the Justice Department, we’re told.

    Trump has repeatedly complained about FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in recent months, saying that Wray has not done enough to change the FBI’s culture, purge the bureau of people who are disloyal to him or change policies after violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

    Wray also hasn’t scrubbed Trump’s toilet or kissed his bum. It’s a disgrace.

    He has also tweeted many times that he thinks Comey should be charged with crimes, and he was particularly upset that no charges were filed over the former FBI director’s handling of memos about his interactions with Trump. An inspector general report faulted the former director for keeping some of those memos at his home and for arranging for the contents of one of the memos to be shared with a reporter after Comey was fired in 2017.

    The IG referred the memo thing to prosecutors, who concluded there was nothing to prosecute.

    That sent Trump into a rage, according to people briefed on his comments. He complained so loudly and swore so frequently in the Oval Office that some of his aides discussed it for days, these people said. Trump repeatedly said that Comey deserved to be charged, according to their account.

    He also wanted McCabe charged. I hope it ruins his day that McCabe is now a commentator on CNN.

    There were a couple of things last month that got up his nose, which may be partly why he’s so rabid right now.

    First, prosecutors updated their position in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying a sentence of some prison time would be appropriate. Around the same time, The Washington Post reported that U.S. Attorney John Huber in Utah — tapped years earlier to reinvestigate several issues related to vague allegations of corruption against Hillary Clinton — had quietly wound down his work after finding nothing of consequence.

    Those two developments further enraged the president, according to people familiar with the discussions. These people said that while the public debate in recent days has focused on leniency for Stone, the president is more upset that the Justice Department has not been tougher on his perceived enemies.

    Yeah! Why isn’t the Justice Department beating up everyone who crosses Trump?? It’s so unfair!

    In the president’s mind, it is unacceptable that people such as Comey and McCabe have not been charged, particularly if people such as Stone and Flynn are going to be treated harshly, these people said.

    “Mind” isn’t the right word there. Limbic system maybe?

    Barr tapped U.S. Attorney John Durham in Connecticut to investigate whether any crimes were committed by FBI and CIA officials in the pursuit of allegations in 2016 that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump’s campaign.

    …Trump has become more insistent that Durham finish his work soon, according to people familiar with the discussions. Trump, these people said, wants to be able to use whatever Durham finds as a cudgel in his reelection campaign.

    Because that’s exactly how the Justice Department is supposed to function: as a source of damaging lies for the president’s reelection campaign.

    The whole thing is a complete sewer.

  • Lesson learned

    Now that Trump has been impeached by the House but not removed by the Senate, he is hell-bent on revenge and dictatorship.

    In the week since his acquittal on impeachment charges, a fully emboldened President Donald Trump is demonstrating his determination to assert an iron grip on government, pushing his Justice Department to ease up on a longtime friend while using the levers of presidential powers to exact payback on real and perceived foes.

    And we are helpless to do anything about it and we could be completely and utterly screwed.

    Trump has told confidants in recent days that he felt both vindicated and strengthened by his acquittal in the Senate, believing Republicans have rallied around him in unprecedented fashion while voters were turned off by the political process, according to four White House officials and Republicans close to the West Wing…

    In short he’s even more dangerous than he was before.

    In recent days, the White House has yanked a senior Treasury Department nomination away from a former Justice Department official who supervised the prosecutions of several of Trump advisers. The administration also fired an EPA official who claims he was ousted because he was deemed too friendly with Democrats.

    …

    “We are witnessing a crisis in the rule of law in America — unlike one we have ever seen before,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday. Schumer called for the Justice Department’s independent inspector general to probe the department’s action in the Stone case. Later, House lawmakers announced Attorney General William Barr would come before them next month to answer questions.

    Late next month. When the date comes he’ll probably say he has to do laundry that day.

    Trump turned testy during an Oval Office appearance when reporters asked him about interfering in the Stone case and whether he learned anything from his impeachment ordeal.

    He didn’t “turn testy.” He carried on like a bad-tempered bully as he so often does.

    He slammed the four prosecutors who recommended the stiff sentence for Stone and asserted they “ought to apologize for a lot of the people whose lives they’ve ruined.”

    He described the lesson he gleaned from being just the third president to endure an impeachment trial: “Democrats are crooked. … They’re vicious, they shouldn’t have brought impeachment and that my poll numbers are 10 points higher because of fake news.”

    He learned the lesson a childish stupid narcissist would learn: he’s right and everyone else is wrong.

  • The clearest terms yet

    We’re supposed to be impressed-like that John Kelly has said a little more about what a dangerous lunatic Trump is. I’m not impressed.

    Over a 75-minute speech and Q&A session, Kelly laid out, in the clearest terms yet, his misgivings about Trump’s words and actions regarding North Korea, illegal immigration, military discipline, Ukraine, and the news media.

    But he provided cover for Trump when he was Chief of Staff.

    Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, said that Vindman is blameless and was simply following the training he’d received as a soldier; migrants are “overwhelmingly good people” and “not all rapists”; and Trump’s decision to condition military aid to Ukraine on an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden upended long-standing U.S. policy.

    Any apology for the lies about Representative Frederica Wilson?

    When Vindman heard the president tell Zelensky he wanted to see the Biden family investigated, that was tantamount to hearing “an illegal order,” Kelly said. “We teach them, ‘Don’t follow an illegal order. And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.’”

    Good, but way too late.

  • Off with his head

    Trump continues to tell damaging lies (aka libel) about Vindman.

    President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the military will likely look at disciplinary action against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, just days after the National Security Council official was ousted from the White House after giving damaging testimony during the House impeachment hearings.

    “That’s going to be up to the military, we’ll have to see, but if you look at what happened, they’re going to certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that,” Trump said in response to a follow-up question about what he meant when he said, “the military can handle him.”

    I’m so sick of his idiotic stock phrases – “we’ll have to see,” “if you look at what happened” – empty meaningless filler because he has nothing of substance to say. Then there’s the genius juxtaposition of ” they’re going to certainly, I would imagine” – well which is it? Are you certain, or do you imagine?

    Trump also said he wasn’t “happy” with Vindman and his twin brother Yevgeny, who served as a senior NSC lawyer and was also recalled on Friday despite not being a witness in the president’s impeachment hearings.

    “Happy” – another meaningless filler word. He has zero reason to punish Yevgeny Vindman but doesn’t like to say so, so he’s just “not happy” with him. He might as well wear a neon sign saying his head is entirely empty.

    Trump, without providing evidence or specific examples, said Alexander Vindman reported “very inaccurate things” about the “perfect” call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

    “It turned out that what he reported was very different,” Trump said. “And also when you look at the person he reports to, said horrible things, avoided the chain of command, leaked, did a lot of bad things. And so we sent him on his way to a much different location, and the military can handle him any way they want.”

    Horrible things, bad things. Well ok then.

  • And falling

    President Scary.

  • This miscarriage of justice

    The mafia boss issues instructions.

    He says “cannot allow” as if he were a literal dictator.

    Barr leaps to obey as if Trump were a literal dictator.

    The president sent his message a little before 2am on Tuesday, after a rally in New Hampshire and a visit to Delaware to honour two US soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

    On Tuesday, it seemed the tweet would have its desired effect.

    The Washington Post quoted a “senior justice department official” as saying: “The department finds the recommendation extreme and excessive and disproportionate to Stone’s offences. The department will clarify its position later today.”

    The Post characterised the move as “a stunning rebuke of career prosecutors that will surely raise questions about political meddling in the case”.

    Questions which will go unheeded as the Trump mafia tightens its hold on everything.

    Trump has indicated he might pardon Stone.

    Tighter and tighter.

  • We all know who SHOULD be escorted out

    Disgusting.

    Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the Ukraine expert at the National Security Council who became a star witness in the House impeachment hearings on President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, was escorted out of the White House on Friday, his lawyer said, adding Trump had “decided to exact revenge.”

    Trump should be scrubbing Vindman’s kitchen floor, with a toothbrush.

    “There is no question in the mind of any American why this man’s job is over, why this country now has one less soldier serving it at the White House. LTC Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth,” David Pressman of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP said in a statement.

    “The truth has cost LTC Alexander Vindman his job, his career, and his privacy. He did what any member of our military is charged with doing every day: he followed orders, he obeyed his oath, and he served his country, even when doing so was fraught with danger and personal peril. And for that, the most powerful man in the world – buoyed by the silent, the pliable, and the complicit – has decided to exact revenge,” Pressman said.

    The most powerful and the most spiteful, the most tiny-minded, the most self-focused, the most evil and poisonous and trashy.

  • Sound of own voice

    Trump is being his usual garrulous self-admiring random tedious self in North Carolina at an official event at a North Carolina community college. Also getting everything wrong.

    I’d cry; I’d cry because he’s in it.

    Image result for nazi rally

    I’m sure the community college students are fascinated.

    Trump is the nobodyest nobody I’ve ever seen.

  • Profit

    Nice little earner:

    The president’s company charges his own Secret Service agents up to $650 a night to stay at his properties – a bill that is ultimately paid by U.S. taxpayers – when they stay the night protecting him, the Washington Post reported this morning. Here’s more from the Post:

    At Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, the Secret Service was charged the $650 rate dozens of times in 2017, and a different rate, $396.15, dozens more times in 2018, according to documents from Trump’s visits.

    And at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, the Secret Service was charged $17,000 a month to use a three-bedroom cottage on the property, an unusually high rent for homes in that area, according to receipts from 2017. Trump’s company billed the government even for days when Trump wasn’t there.

    Moneymoneymoneymoney

  • His majesty frowns

    Payback begins.

    Standing outside the White House for some Chopper Talk this morning, Donald Trump said that there will be a decision sometime in the future about what to do with Lt Col Alexander Vindman, a member of the national security council who testified against the president during the impeachment trial. Bloomberg News reported last night that the White House is thinking about moving Vindman out of the council and rotate him to a position in the Department of Defense.

    …

    When asked about any plans to remove Vindman from his position, Trump said that he is “not happy with him” and that a decision about what do with him will be made later.

    The tyrant is not happy. Heads must roll.

  • That a lot of people wouldn’t have said

    I’ve almost finished with the Trump-excoriation for now, but not quite.

    Politico reports:

    Later Thursday, at a victory lap celebrating his impeachment acquittal, Trump said: “I had Nancy Pelosi sitting four seats away, and I’m saying things that a lot of people wouldn’t have said. But I meant everything. I meant every word of it.”

    Beware of people who brag about saying things that a lot of people wouldn’t have said. Beware beware beware. Doing that is a sure sign of someone who is both an egomaniac and a rude bully. Turn around and walk swiftly away.

    “I don’t need any lessons from anybody, especially the president of the United States, about dignity,” Pelosi said Thursday, adding she feels “liberated” now. “I feel that I’ve extended every possible courtesy, I’ve shown every level of respect.”
    …

    And Pelosi said she and other Democrats thought that when Trump’s State of the Union speech veered into talking about a “special” and “beloved” man battling cancer that he was going to honor Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights icon who is battling advanced pancreatic cancer.

    Instead, Trump meant Rush Limbaugh, a conservative radio host who has been accused of making racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ remarks on his show. Trump awarded Limbaugh, who has advanced lung cancer, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — in the middle of his annual address.

    Ouch. I didn’t know that part.

    “Do it in your own office. We don’t come in your office and do congressional business. Why are you doing that here?” Pelosi said. “That was not a State of the Union, that was his state of mind.”

    To rub our noses in it, probably.

  • Defying belief

    This

    is

    BONKERS

    It’s stark raving bonkers.

  • He feels emboldened

    For a time my Twitter feed was full of journalists, lawyers, ethics boffins, and former federal employees all exclaiming at how unhinged and incoherent Trump’s endless “speech” was turning out to be.

    CNN sums up:

    President Donald Trump emerged vindictive and angry at a rambling noontime event on Thursday meant to mark his impeachment acquittal.

    “We’ve been going through this now for over three years. It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops, it was leakers and liars. And this should never, ever happen to another president, ever,” Trump told an East Room packed with conservative lawmakers, media pundits, and a number of Cabinet officials, who cheered as Trump meandered through a list of grievances and musings after the Senate declared him not guilty.

    He called Comey “a dirty cop,” he called the Mueller investigation “bullshit.”

    It was a stream-of-consciousness victory lap that even Trump acknowledged had no real format.

    “It’s not a news conference, it’s not a speech, it’s not anything,” he said of the event, which stretched more than an hour.

    It’s just boring rich right-wing guy who thinks he’s fascinating, going on and on and on and on, but doing it on national tv.

    Trump has shown signs he feels emboldened by the acquittal. After the vote, he tweeted a video meme suggesting he could remain in office for decades to come, a joking affront to his rivals.

    But not really joking. He hides behind that when he thinks he needs to, but he’s not really joking. There’s nothing he would stop at, nothing he would refuse to do because too wrong.

  • The revenge

    Trump is giving a “speech” (a series of blurts and ramblings) to celebrate his successful coup.

    I suppose he means there were people who thought he was a bad man before he started running for president. Well no kidding. Birtherism? The Central Park 5? Yes we thought he was a bad man; of course we did. He stands around preening and smirking about how bad he is and also whines about people who think he’s bad. He’s not very alert to cause and effect, it seems.

    Trump calling other people “mean and vicious.”

  • Latest consignment of lies

    The lies continue.

    President Donald Trump made a striking claim Monday, insisting it was he who ensured that people with preexisting medical problems will always be covered by health insurance.

    He wasn’t.

    Duh. That’s the whole point of the ACA – spreading the risk.

    He also complained anew that Democrats didn’t allow him to send lawyers to the impeachment inquiry. The opposite is true: Democrats invited him to send lawyers to the inquiry and he said no.

    He should have been impeached on day one for being such a relentless shameless liar.

    Trump’s administration has been pressing in court for full repeal of the Obama-era law, including provisions that protect people with preexisting conditions from health insurance discrimination.

    With “Obamacare” [the ACA] still in place, preexisting conditions continue to be covered by regular individual health insurance plans.

    Insurers must take all applicants, regardless of medical history, and charge the same standard premiums to healthy people and those who are in poor health, or have a history of medical problems.

    Which is the whole point. Without that, people quickly get priced out of being able to get health insurance – because they need it most – and that’s the problem the ACA is meant to solve. It would be better to socialize the whole system, but short of that, the ACA is what there is.

    He won’t stop lying until he stops breathing.

  • The moral arc of the golf resort

    There is no depth too low, it seems.

    Ken Starr, an attorney for the president, invoked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his closing defense at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. “We hear the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream-filled speech about freedom,” Starr told the U.S. senators in attendance. 

    Oddly enough, though, by “freedom” King didn’t mean freedom to lie, to cheat, to steal, to grab by the pussy, to brag about grabbing by the pussy, to bully, to insult, to extort, to blackmail, to encourage and reward murderers and punish those who resist murderers.

    “And during his magnificent life, Dr. King spoke not only about freedom, freedom standing alone, he spoke frequently about freedom and justice,” Starr continued. “And in his speeches he summoned up regularly the words of an abolitionist from the prior century, Theodore Parker, who referred to the moral arc of the universe — the long moral arc of the universe points toward justice.”

    And it is emetically disgusting to compare that idea of the moral arc of the universe to anything related to Donald Trump. If the moral arc of the universe produces or protects a Donald Trump then the hell with the moral arc of the universe.

  • For a guy who couldn’t

    Trump has been making a compelling case for something John Bolton something something is lying something. Compelling, I tells ya.

    Note the compulsive “sir” mention. Note also the blithe admission that people told him it was a bad idea and he did it anyway and now he’s screaming at us about it as if it were someone else’s fault that he did a typically stupid incompetent reckless thing. Note all of that. Note that he admits he hired someone who would have gotten us into three wars by now if he hadn’t been fired. Note that he admits he hired a reckless crazed warmonger and is whining about it now only because Bolton is a threat to his personal ass. Note it note it note it.

    I don’t know, Don, but more to the point, why didn’t you? If Bolton would have taken us into three wars then why did you hire him?

  • A good job on HER actually

    When not putting targets on SEALs, they’re putting targets on women reporters.

    Hurr hurr, smirk smirk, wink wink.

  • The splendor that radiates from each human soul

    Trump spent a little time at the “March for Life” today pretending to care.

    Donald Trump’s speechwriters really pulled out all the rhetorical flourishes for his remarks at the March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Friday. Mr. “Grab ‘em by the pussy” was spouting line after line about “the majesty of God’s creation” and “the splendor that radiates from each human soul” and “all of the blessings that will come from the beauty, talent, purpose, nobility, and grace of every American child.” 

    Every American child, please note. Obviously not every, or any, Mexican or Guatemalan or Nigerian or Ukrainian child.

    Trump then paced the stage, basking in the attention, for the duration of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” with chants of “Four more years” occasionally breaking through.  Then it was on to the high-flown rhetoric about how “every child is a precious and sacred gift from God. Together we must protect, cherish, and defend the dignity and the sanctity of every human life.”

    This from a man who has made tearing children out of their parents’ arms and imprisoning them in dangerous conditions with inadequate health care a high-priority policy.

    Those are children from shithole countries, you see. When he says “every child” he of course doesn’t mean children like that.

    He wants “every child born and unborn to fulfill their God-given potential,” said the man who has repeatedly sought to slash the nutritional assistance that allows so many children to go to school and think of their lessons rather than their hunger.

    Ok look he didn’t write the damn speech, all right? He’s too important to sit around writing words for his own self to say. Somebody else wrote it so blame whatever pencil-neck loser that was, not Trump.

  • The cleanest water except not

    Whenever someone mentions climate change to Trump, he babbles irrelevantly about his ardent desire for the cleanest air, the cleanest purest water. His babbling is not just irrelevant but also a brazen lie. He’s doing his level best to make our water filthy.

    The Trump administration is set to continue its corporate friendly assault on U.S. environmental regulations Thursday by finalizing a rule that will allow companies, landowners, and property developers—including golf course owners like the president—to dump pesticides and other pollutants directly into many of the nation’s streams and wetlands, potentially threatening the drinking water of millions of Americans.

    “This will be the biggest loss of clean water protection the country has ever seen,” Blan Holman, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement.

    He’s been working on it all this time, which is why this news is familiar, but this is the final step.

    The new measure will roll back Obama-era “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) regulations aimed at ensuring wetlands and streams are protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act, which the Trump Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly targeted despite the president’s professed desire for the U.S. to have the “cleanest water” in the world.

    The fake president’s professed desire is nothing but his reflexive mindless lying.

    As the New York Times reported late Wednesday, the Trump rule “will remove federal protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands, and hundreds of thousands of small waterways.” The measure, which one environmental group dubbed President Donald Trump’s “Dirty Water Rule,” is expected to be fully implemented in the coming weeks.

    “His administration had completed the first step of [the WOTUS regulation’s] demise in September with the rule’s repeal,” the Times noted. “His replacement on Thursday will complete the process, not only rolling back 2015 rules that guaranteed protections under the 1972 Clean Water Act to certain wetlands and streams that run intermittently or run temporarily underground, but also relieves landowners of the need to seek permits that the Environmental Protection Agency had considered on a case-by-case basis before the Obama rule.”

    Dirtier water for all! It’s democracy in action!