Tag: Trump

  • Want them!

    Donnie is agitated.

    No they didn’t. He was told no they didn’t at the time. He doesn’t listen if he doesn’t want to hear it.

    Updating to add Elie Honig tweet:

    Oddly enough, Ken Starr’s saying something on Fox News makes no difference to the Special Counsel investigation.

  • The gut versus the intel

    Intelligence officials are, not surprisingly, frustrated that Trump is too lazy and too stupid to pay attention to what they tell him.

    Donald Trump continues to reject the judgments of US spy agencies on major foreign policy fronts, current and former US officials said, creating a dynamic in which intelligence analysts frequently see troubling gaps between the president’s public statements and the facts laid out for him in daily briefings.

    The pattern has become a source of mounting concern to senior US intelligence officials who had hoped Mr Trump would become less hostile to their work and more receptive to the information that spy agencies spend billions of dollars and sometimes put lives at risk gathering.

    Trump can’t “become” anything. He’s stuck fast as himself, and can’t modify a single atom.

    Instead, presidential distrust that once seemed confined mainly to the intelligence community’s assessments about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has spread across a range of global issues.

    Among them are North Korea’s willingness to abandon its nuclear weapons program, Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions, the existence and implications of global climate change and the role of the Saudi crown prince in the murder of a dissident journalist.

    So just minor stuff then.

    US officials involved in interactions with the White House said the disconnect between spy agencies and the president is without precedent and that senior analysts have spent the past year struggling to find ways to adapt to an arrangement they describe as dysfunctional.

    …

    [F]or every area of agreement, there are examples of significant disparity. Mr Trump, for example, asserted in June that because of his administration’s negotiations with Pyongyang, there is “no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” US intelligence officials said there is no such view among analysts.

    Mr Trump accused Iran of violating a 2015 nuclear agreement with the US and other major powers despite assessments by American spy agencies and allies that Tehran was in compliance.

    More recently, Mr Trump has claimed his decision to abandon the nuclear deal had forced Iran into regional retreat and led to turnover in the top ranks of its government.

    “They’re a much, much different group of leaders,” the president said in June.

    But CIA assessments do not describe any such shift, officials said, noting Iran’s religious rulers remain firmly entrenched and that the country continues to uses proxies to fuel conflict across the Middle East.

    He just makes it up. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s making it up – he probably thinks that if it’s in his head, that means it’s true. He gives every appearance of not understanding that there is a difference between truth and made-up bullshit, and that it’s not all just a matter of who is sitting in the Big Boy Seat.

    One official said CIA employees were staggered by Mr Trump’s performance during a news conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki earlier this year in which Mr Trump treated denials by the Russian president as so “strong and powerful” they offset the conclusions of the CIA.

    “There was this gasp” among those watching at CIA, the official said. “You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock.”

    …

    “I think you definitely do see a bewilderment and a concern over the president’s conduct and relationship to the intelligence community,” said representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the house intelligence committee, who frequently visits with senior CIA officials on overseas trips.

    Mr Trump’s disagreements are not driven by “questions about their methodology or differing interpretations of the same facts,” Mr Schiff said. “He wants to tell an alternate narrative.”

    That’s what I mean. He thinks it’s just a matter of stories, and the boss’s story gets to prevail, because the boss is the boss. That applies only when he’s the boss of course, but now that he is the boss, that state of affairs has become internal, in his mind.

    Mr Trump has frequently noted blunders by US spy agencies, particularly in the run-up to the Iraq War. He has also been dismissive of other experts in his administration, saying his own instincts are superior. “I have a gut,” he said in an interview last month, “and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”

    What I’m saying. He thinks it’s true because he says it’s true. It’s magical thinking, and he thinks magic is real.

  • Ranting and venting

    That’s something to look forward to:

    Trump has ranted about why no one around him is doing anything to stop any of it and vented about the lack of support he believes he has in Congress and within his own White House, the sources tell NBC News.

    In addition to the much-anticipated report from Mueller on the Russia investigation, Democrats could ask prosecutors in the SDNY to similarly share details of their probe into Cohen that are related to the president.

    Ohhh, could they indeed.

    Trump has in recent days been made aware of this possibility from people close to him, opening up a new vulnerability for the president.

    Good. Good good good.

  • He thinks the people would revolt

    Trump told Reuters yesterday that it’s all fine, it’s all legal, it’s nothing, it’s peanuts, oh look a squirrel.

    “It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview.

    “I’m not concerned, no. I think that the people would revolt if that happened,” he said.

    Nope. Some of “the base” might, but “the people” no. Most of us hate him and hate being under the thumb of a criminal.

    “Michael Cohen is a lawyer. I assume he would know what he’s doing,” Trump said when asked if he had discussed campaign finance laws with Cohen.

    “Number one, it wasn’t a campaign contribution. If it were, it’s only civil, and even if it’s only civil, there was no violation based on what we did. OK?”

    Asked about prosecutors’ assertions that a number of people who had worked for him met or had business dealings with Russians before and during his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said: “The stuff you’re talking about is peanut stuff.”

    He then sought to turn the subject to his 2016 Democratic opponent.

    “I haven’t heard this, but I can only tell you this: Hillary Clinton – her husband got money, she got money, she paid money, why doesn’t somebody talk about that?” Trump said.

    And what about the Lindbergh baby? And that guy who shot Lincoln? And Guy Fawkes? Why doesn’t somebody talk about that?

    Jennifer Rubin is not impressed.

    We have gone from “hoax” and “witch hunt” to “Well, tax fraud, lying to the FBI and campaign violations are penny ante stuff.” That’s essentially President Trump’s newest line of defense: He and others didn’t break the law. But if they did, it’s no big deal.

    Plus Hillary Clinton and Guy Fawkes.

    What makes Trump’s blithe dismissal of felony crimes doubly horrifying is as chief executive Trump took an oath to “execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” not to “execute the Office of President of the United States — except when it comes to ‘peanut stuff.’”

    Trump’s party is no better. When Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) says he doesn’t care if Trump broke the law, it’s time to question whether he or any other Republican congressional apologists for Trump, who took an oath as well, is fit for office. (This is the same crowd who wants to lock up migrants for the misdemeanor of entering the country illegally. Silly them — if only they’d obstructed justice or committed some “peanut stuff,” they’d be in fine shape.)

    Orrin Hatch doesn’t care if the president committed crimes. Funny world we’re in, isn’t it.

    Trump’s declaration that “the people would revolt” if he were impeached, if not an implicit threat to stage a civil uprising, represents a perfect distillation of his authoritarian outlook. Ultimately, nothing matters in his mind because he controls the streets. If he sounds like thuggish autocrats like Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, you can understand why he embraces such characters. He is one of them.

    We can be sure it is a threat – he’s telling us he’ll call on “the people” to stage a coup for him. Yay populism.

  • A personal and mental incarceration

    Natasha Bertrand and Russell Berman on Cohen’s paying the price for loyalty to Trump:

    The sentencing marked the culmination of a months-long saga that began in April with a dramatic FBI raid on Cohen’s home and office and ended with Trump’s most loyal lieutenant and fixer—who once said he would take a bullet for his boss—turning against the president and implicating him directly in criminal misconduct. In Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, Cohen apologized to his family and to “the people of the United States.”

    As well he might, since he did his bit to get Trump elected president. Maybe without his bit Trump wouldn’t have been elected? It was very close. Some 50 thousand votes or so in 3 states? So close.

    “Today is the day that I am getting my freedom back,” he said in a prepared statement. “I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the day that I accepted the offer to work for a real-estate mogul whose business acumen I deeply admired.” He said that his “blind loyalty” to Trump led him “to take a path of darkness instead of light.”

    Much of Trump’s “business acumen” was fraud, theft, and exploitation. That’s personal and mental incarceration for you.

    Cohen still poses a significant threat to the president in the investigation into a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. He has taken Mueller deep inside the Trump Organization, describing how he helped Trump pursue a real-estate deal in Russia well into the election campaign, and provided the first in-court evidence that Trump may have been compromised by Russia while President Vladimir Putin was waging a direct attack on the United States. Cohen has committed to continuing his cooperation with Mueller, even after being sentenced in the Southern District, according to the special counsel’s filing.

    Have a nice day, Donnie.

  • One by one, the prosecutors are removing possible Trump defenses

    Oh look, what’s this.

    Press release today from the SDNY:

    Michael Cohen Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison

    U.S. Attorney’s Office Also Announces Non-Prosecution Agreement with American Media, Inc., Related to Its Payment of $150,000 to a Woman to Influence 2016 Presidential Election

    Robert Khuzami, Attorney for the United States, Acting Under Authority Conferred by 28 U.S.C. § 515, announced that MICHAEL COHEN was sentenced today to three years in prison for tax evasion, making false statements to a federally insured bank, and campaign finance violations.  COHEN pled guilty on August 21, 2018, to an eight-count information before U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III, who imposed today’s sentence.  In a separate prosecution brought by the Special Counsel’s Office (“SCO”), COHEN pled guilty on November 29, 2018 to one count of making false statements to the U.S. Congress and was also sentenced on that case today, receiving a two-month concurrent sentence.

    According to the allegations in Information 18 Cr. 602 (WHP), filed by the United States States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (the “Office”), as well as previous court filings and statements in public court proceedings:

    Between 2012 and 2016, COHEN concealed more than $4 million in personal income from the Internal Revenue Service, avoiding more than $1.3 million in income tax.  COHEN also made false statements to a federally insured financial institution to obtain a $500,000 home equity loan.  Finally, in 2016, COHEN made or caused two separate payments to women to ensure that they did not publicly disclose their alleged affairs with a presidential candidate in advance of the election.  In one instance, COHEN caused American Media, Inc. (“AMI”), which was identified in previous court filings as “Corporation-1,” to make a $150,000 payment to one woman; in the other, COHEN made a $130,000 payment to another woman through an LLC he incorporated for the purpose of making the payment.  COHEN was reimbursed for the latter payment in monthly installments disguised as payments for legal services performed pursuant to a retainer, when in fact no such retainer existed.  COHEN made or caused both of these payments in order to influence the 2016 election and did so in coordination with one or more members of the campaign.

    He also has to pay out a bunch of money, including the back taxes.

    And then the AMI thing:

    The Office also announced today that it has previously reached a non-prosecution agreement with AMI, in connection with AMI’s role in making the above-described $150,000 payment before the 2016 presidential election.  As a part of the agreement, AMI admitted that it made the $150,000 payment in concert with a candidate’s presidential campaign, and in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election.  AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.

    Assuming AMI’s continued compliance with the agreement, the Office has agreed not to prosecute AMI for its role in that payment.  The agreement also acknowledges, among other things, AMI’s acceptance of responsibility, its substantial and important assistance in this investigation, and its agreement to provide cooperation in the future and implement specific improvements to its internal compliance to prevent future violations of the federal campaign finance laws.  These improvements include distributing written standards regarding federal election laws to its employees and conducting annual training concerning these standards.

    I wouldn’t want to be working in the White House today.

  • A veritable smorgasbord of crimes

    So anyway – Cohen was sentenced today; three years.

    Judge William H. Pauley III said Mr. Cohen had committed a “veritable smorgasbord” of crimes involving deception and “motivated by personal greed and ambition,” each of which “standing alone warrant serious punishment.”

    But he added that Mr. Cohen’s crimes — breaking campaign finance rules, tax evasion and lying to Congress — “implicated a far more insidious harm to our democratic institutions.”

    “As a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better,” the judge said.

    Before he was sentenced, a solemn Mr. Cohen, standing at a lectern, sounded emotional but resolved as he told the judge he had been tormented by the anguish and embarrassment he had caused his family.

    “I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today,” he said, “and it was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man” – a reference to Mr. Trump – “that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.”

    If you’re going to be blindly loyal to someone…don’t choose Donald Trump.

    Mr. Trump last week weighed in with his own sentencing recommendation, tweeting angrily, “He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.”

    Extra ice cream for lunch today.

  • Did you order the code wall?

    Pelosi dissed him.

    Moments after returning to Capitol Hill after an Oval Office standoffwith President Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi questioned Trump’s manhood and said the border wall was a matter of masculine pride.

    “It’s like a manhood thing for him. As if manhood could ever be associated with him. This wall thing,” said the California congresswoman.

    Wall! Yooge wall! Yooge throbbing wall!

    She told colleagues that she was “trying to be the mom” in the room while Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) bickered about the coming funding showdown.

    But she described Trump’s admission during the 17-minute on-camera tete-a-tete that he would be “proud” to shut the government as a political triumph.

    “The fact is, we did get him to say, to fully own, that the shutdown was his,” she said, according to the aide. “That was an accomplishment.”

    Image result for colonel jessup

  • Trumpride

    And then there’s Trump’s self-declared pride at shutting down the government.

    “I am proud to shut down the government,” he announces in his dopy shouty petulant scratchy voice.

  • Uh oh, she’s saying words again

    This is maddening to watch, along many axes – but the most maddening to me is the way Trump shouts Pelosi down seconds after she starts talking, every time, along with slapping his hand at her in the “shut up I want to do all the talking” signal*…while he sits sullenly still and quiet while Schumer talks. His feels of dominance toward her and submission toward Shumer are painfully, infuriatingly obvious.

    *Updating: found a picture of the shut up gesture at Pelosi.

  • Let them drink Roundup

    Meanwhile Trump wants us to have dirtier water – dirtier in the sense of more toxic, not muddier – and he’s putting his want into action. Thanks, Don!

    The Trump administration is expected on Tuesday to unveil a plan that would weaken federal clean water rules designed to protect millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of miles of streams nationwide from pesticide runoff and other pollutants.

    Because why shouldn’t we have to drink pesticide?! We can always buy Perrier by the case. If we can’t do that it’s our own damn fault for being so lazy and shiftless and not corrupt, so we deserve the pesticide in our water.

    Environmentalists say the proposal represents a historic assault on wetlands regulation at a moment when Mr. Trump has repeatedly voiced a commitment to “crystal-clean water.” The proposed new rule would chip away at safeguards put in place a quarter century ago, during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, who implemented a policy designed to ensure that no wetlands lost federal protection.

    “They’re definitely rolling things back to the pre-George H.W. Bush era,” said Blan Holman, who works on water regulations with the Southern Environmental Law Center. Wetlands play key roles in filtering surface water and protecting against floods, while also providing wildlife habitat.

    Blah blah blah, no they don’t, they just make socialists happy; pave them all!

    The proposed water rule, scheduled to be announced Tuesday morning at the Environmental Protection Agency, is designed to replace an Obama-era regulation known as Waters of the United States. Tuesday’s unveiling of the proposal is expected to coincide with its publication in the federal register. After that, the administration will take comment on the plan for 60 days, and it could then revise the plan before finalizing it next year.

    The Obama rule, developed jointly by the E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers under the authority of the 1972 Clean Water Act, was designed to limit pollution in about 60 percent of the nation’s bodies of water, protecting sources of drinking water for about a third of the United States. It extended existing federal authority to limit pollution in large bodies of water, like the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, to smaller bodies that drain into them, such as tributaries, streams and wetlands.

    Which, of course, means more rules about what farmers whose land drains into those small bodies have to do to prevent pollutants from draining into the streams.

    Mr. Trump won cheers from rural audiences on the presidential campaign trail when he vowed to roll back the Obama rule. Real estate developers and golf course owners (industries in which Mr. Trump worked for decades) were also among the chief opponents of the earlier rule. One of Mr. Trump’s first actions in office was to sign an executive order directing his E.P.A. chief to repeal and replace the rule.

    Trump is the savior of farmers and golf course owners! Everybody else, however, can go to the wall.

  • Trump’s got the loomies

    Interesting. Republicans are said to be chatting about dropping Donnie Two-scoops. Impressive that it only took them three years.

    Donald Trump is facing “looming problem” as Republicans contemplate abandoning the president as more evidence of wrongdoing comes to light, Los Angeles Times White House reporter Eli Stokols explained on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” on Monday.

    Host Nicolle Wallace played a clip of Trump supporter and former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie wondering what additional evidence special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in Manhattan have obtained.

    Oh don’t worry about it, just let this criminal sack of shit go on destroying the country and the world for another couple of years. What could go wrong?

    “Republican lawmakers who are — have a huge role to play in this if it goes forward — are starting to tell me privately, some of them, that, you know, if there’s obvious evidence, the bottom is going to fall out,” he explained.

    “They’re not going to be able to stand by this White House and that’s a looming problem for the president,” he concluded.

    Trump may even face a greater threat from the Southern District of New York investigations.

    “It’s much harder to stop what’s happening in that office as opposed to with the special counsel’s investigation,” Stokols noted. “This train has left the station, there’s really nothing that this White House can do about it.”

    “I think that’s a source of frustration to the president. Also, it’s difficult to politicize, it’s difficult to go out and demonize that office because, as you pointed out already, that’s a Trump appointee running that office,” he added.

    Oops.

  • Noted

    Meanwhile…

    The United States joined a controversial proposal by Saudi Arabia and Russia this weekend to weaken a reference to a key report on the severity of global warming, sharpening battle lines at the global climate summit in Poland aimed at gaining consensus over how to combat rising temperatures.

    The US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. That’s who we are now: Team Evil.

    Arguments erupted Saturday night before a United Nations working group focused on science and technology, where the United States teamed with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to challenge language that would have welcomed the findings of the landmark report, which said that the world has barely 10 years to cut carbon emissions by nearly half to avoid catastrophic warming.

    The US didn’t want to “welcome” the report, it wanted to “note” it.

    The U.S. position lines up with the views of the Trump administration, which is plowing ahead with a raft of aggressive policies on coal power and oil exploration that are likely to worsen the effects of climate change — steamrolling over dire environmental warnings issued by the administration’s own team of experts in a major report just two weeks ago.

    I wouldn’t call that “views” so much as murderously selfish determination to do the wrong thing.

    “The fact that nations are spending this much time on minor wording issues while the science finds increasing risk of catastrophe has to be seen as a metaphor for how inadequate the global response to the climate challenge has been,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton climate adviser who is in Poland. “It also shows that the lack of U.S. leadership has massive costs to global ambition.”

    Yes but at least we’re onside with Russia and Saudi Arabia.

    Ignoring the climate assessment of experts within their own administration, released the day after Thanksgiving, U.S. officials in recent days cleared a path to build more highly polluting coal-fired power plants, authorized seismic studies in the Atlantic Ocean that could harm marine animals, and opened millions of acres of land in the West to mining and fracking, stripping protections for a near-threatened species of bird.

    White House officials said that the rollback of Obama-era regulations had been in the works for months and that the timing of the announcements just days after the Nov. 23 release of the National Climate Assessment was coincidental. But experts said the Trump administration has clearly accelerated its energy agenda this year as the president seeks to lock in the rule changes, which can take months to finalize, before the end of his first term.

    At least he’ll accomplish something, right?

  • Not as simple as all that

    Philip Bump at the Post:

    President Trump’s day began Monday, as many of his days do, with watching Fox News. A guest on “Fox and Friends First” — the version of the show that airs in the pre-dawn hours — argued that former FBI director James B. Comey’s Friday testimony left Democrats without a smoking gun on the question of coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016. (It wasn’t intended to; it had been demanded by congressional Republicans.) Trump seized on the comment in a pair of typo-marred tweets.

    “Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James B. Comey’s testimony,” he wrote on Twitter. “…So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution, which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s — but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). [Trump’s former personal attorney Michael] Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced.”

    There’s a lot in there, but the main message is worth picking out: Trump is actively trying to rebut questions about possible campaign finance violations in which he has been implicated.

    The payments to McDougal and Daniels, he explains, violated campaign finance laws only if they had to do with the campaign.

    Trump’s argument, in short, is that these payments weren’t related to the campaign. Instead, they were “a simple private transaction.”

    That could be true, but we’ve learned a lot that makes it look unlikely.

    In his agreement in August, Cohen testified under oath that the payments he made were undertaken “in coordination with, and at the direction of” Trump, with the goal of protecting “information that would be harmful to the candidate and to the campaign to keep the individual from disclosing the information.” Of course, this is the same Cohen who, late last month, admitted to lying under oath to Congress. (Hence Trump’s “just trying to get his sentence reduced.”)

    Maybe Trump never said a word to Cohen about protecting the campaign! But then why were the prosecutors so confident in that filing?

    They offer some insights in the filing itself.

    “Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election,” the filing reads, going on to note that, “[a]fter making the payment to [Daniels], and after [Trump] was elected President, Cohen privately bragged to friends and reporters, including in recorded conversations, that he had made the payment to spare [Trump] from damaging press and embarrassment.” Cohen admitted in August to coordinating the payment with AMI and the government notes that he took credit for the payment in a secretly recorded conversation with Trump.

    Ah. Bit of a smocking gun perhaps? Just a wisp of smock?

    There’s more, too.

  • Not once but twice

    https://twitter.com/fredvegasbass/status/1072105788741701634

  • A simple private transaction

    Theme for today: beware the smocking gun.

    Also, of course, the “simple private transaction” was spending money to buy the silence of two women he had sex with so that the voters wouldn’t know he’d had sex with two women outside his marriage. How dare we invade his privacy like that.

    Also, it’s not “the Dems,” it’s federal prosecutors.

  • UP you go

    Oh dear, this is hilarious.

  • A unicorn

    Hold the phone – the Post says Trump has no plans to humiliate Kelly.

    How can that be when Kelly’s leaving and Trump is a bully and coward? But the Post says it is so.

    Kelly’s departure is anticlimactic, after months of the president’s musing about replacing him and complaining about his chief of staff to some advisers, even discussing possible successors. Still, the president did not diminish Kelly as he prepares to leave the White House, as he has done in other firings, and has no plans to humiliate Kelly, officials said. Current and former officials said Trump continues to respect Kelly, no matter how often the two men clashed.

    I’m floored. He should get some kind of award, don’t you think? No plans to humiliate Kelly – it’s like a Christmas miracle.

    Kushner and Ivanka Trump have battled for some time to replace Kelly, and the firing showed their continued influence in a West Wing where the president’s family members often have the last say.

    The couple told others privately that Kelly shared damaging stories about them and had not always served the president well. For his part, Kelly joked that the couple was “playing government” and said they should never have been brought into the White House — and that the pair thought they did not have to follow the traditional rules.

    Joked? That’s not a joke, it’s the straight-up truth. Of course they’re playing at government, because they have zero education or experience that would qualify them for even a low-level job in government, let alone senior adviser to the president. Playing at it is exactly what they’re doing.

    The chief of staff has told others in the White House that Trump is ignorant of the workings of much of the government — including military operations, immigration laws and Congress — and that he is obsessed with his news coverage.

    To “military operations, immigration laws and Congress” add everything else; he knows nothing about any of it. He’s a stupid, ignorant, lazy man with the intellectual curiosity of a flatworm.

  • Nailing Trump as a felon

    Laurence Tribe thinks it’s serious for Trump.

    “nailing Trump as a felon who directed a criminal conspiracy to steal the 2016 election” – that’s not a parking ticket.

  • Nobody and nothing can save him

    Paul Waldman at the Post says Trump is cooked.

    One of the remarkable things about the discussion we’ve been having lately is that the president still seems to think that he can be saved from whatever this investigation uncovers. He just announced that William Barr will be his next attorney general, and the New York Times reported that in private, “Mr. Trump has also repeatedly asked whether the next pick would recuse himself from overseeing the special counsel investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Russia in its interference in the 2016 election.” It’s as though he thinks this investigation is in its early stages and can be quashed by a properly loyal underling.

    But at this point it doesn’t matter. It’s far too late. Trump’s former aides have cooperated, they’ve conducted their interviews with the special counsel, they’re being sentenced, the documents have been reviewed, the connections have been traced, and the full picture is soon to be revealed.

    This scandal can’t be hidden away. Republicans in Congress can’t save Trump, his attorney general can’t save him, and no amount of desperate tweets can save him. Accountability is on its way, and it’s arriving very soon.

    But…if he tweets many times every day, in all caps? Will that save him?