Tag: Trump

  • Darling it’s you at last

    Ouch.

  • Bone spurs, bad hair, umbrella horrors, rain

    This business of blowing off the ceremony at the Aisne-Marne cemetery today because it was raining may even get some of Trump’s fans riled at him. It’s not a good look, Mr Filthy Rich Fat Cat going to France at our expense to attend this ceremony of respect to US soldiers killed in a world war, and backing out because it was too damp…that’s not peak patriotic manly duty. They may start thinking about the bone spurs.

  • Canceled due to rain

    Trump was supposed to visit the Great War cemetery at Belleau Wood this morning but he skipped it because it’s raining.

    After an hour of talks between the two leaders and lunch with their wives Melania and Brigitte, Mr Trump had been scheduled to visit two American cemeteries over the weekend, but later cancelled his trip to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial due to “scheduling and logistical difficulties caused by the weather”.

    The White House said that Gen John Kelly, its chief of staff, would attend on the president’s behalf.

    The decision attracted much derision on social media, including from former George W Bush speechwriter David Frum who like many drew comparisons with the conditions faced by the troops who fought and died in World War One.

    Mr Trump is still expected to attend a sombre commemoration at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a memorial to France’s fallen under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

    On Saturday afternoon, Mr Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the town of Compiègne in northern France, where the Allies and Germany signed the Armistice.

    Visiting heads of state will then gather for dinner in Paris in the evening.

    Sunday afternoon will see Mr Macron and Mrs Merkel attend a peace conference – the Paris Peace Forum – with leaders including Mr Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    Mr Trump will not be present, however, which his National Security Adviser John Bolton put down to a diary full of “pressing issues”.

    By which of course he means much tv to watch.

  • The list grows longer

    Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star is tracking Trump’s serial lies about Matt Whitaker.

  • It is not subtle

    David Nakamura at the Post cautiously hints that Trump’s racist remarks to and about various black reporters over the past few days are…[whispers]…racist.

    Image result for you don't say

    Over the past several days, including before he left Washington for an Armistice Day ceremony here this weekend, Trump has launched personal attacks against a trio of black female journalists. He accused one of asking “a lot of stupid questions.” He demanded another “sit down” at a news conference and followed up later by calling her a “loser.” He lambasted a third for asking, in his view, a “racist question.”

    Trump recently called Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (D), a gubernatorial candidate in Florida, a “thief,” and declared that Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the state Senate in Georgia and the Democratic candidate for governor there, was “not qualified” for the job. A feature of his campaign rallies ahead of Tuesday’s elections was mocking Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a black lawmaker heavily critical of him, and calling her a “low-IQ person.”

    The defense is that he insults everyone. Yes, but he uses particular tropes that are, indeed, racist.

    Trump’s supporters reveled in the exchange, holding it up as an example of Trump showing his tormentors who is the boss.

    “If you ask stupid questions, be prepared for @realDonaldTrump to call you out. #MAGA,” Harlan Z. Hill, a Republican operative and commentator, wrote on Twitter to his 171,000 followers, linking to a video clip of the exchange. The tweet had racked up more than 1,800 retweets and 5,000 “likes” within a few hours.

    Because this is where Trump has taken us.

    Eddie Glaude Jr., chairman of the African American studies department at Princeton University, said Trump’s language was not a dog whistle because “it is not subtle.” He compared Trump’s attacks on the intelligence of black public figures to “The Bell Curve,” a widely disparaged 1994 book that connected intelligence to race.

    “He does it over and over again,” Glaude said. “It’s important for us not just to reduce it to Trump just being transactional and understand this as a central part of who he is.”

    And we do need to document it in order to isolate it and resist it.

  • Trump indisputably meets the criteria

    Linda Charnes and Dahlia Lithwick at Slate argue that Trump is a malignant narcissist and narcissists never stop being narcissists, so we should stop paying attention to his narcissistic tantrums and focus only on what he’s doing to us.

    The problem is not that journalists are especially narcissistic, as [Jon] Stewart says, but that Trump is pathologically so. Trump indisputably meets the criteria for severe narcissistic personality disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Many psychiatrists and psychologists have said as much, although they can’t formally diagnose him because they haven’t personally examined him, which triggers the Goldwater rule.

    We say, Goldwater rule be damned, the writing is on the national wall. The “logic” of a narcissist is always bent, and Trump is no different. He sucks the media into what we might call a faulty causal loop. Psychologists who specialize in narcissism have a name for this phenomenon: DARVO, which stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.” It’s both effective and infuriating: Every time Trump kicks someone and the press calls him out on it, he screams, “OW, they’re attacking me.”

    There was another one today or yesterday: reporters asked him about something Michelle Obama says in her new book, which is that she’ll never forgive him for the “birther” lies and the way it put her children at risk. His answer? Wull he can’t forgive Obama, either, for not spending enough on the military. So stupid, and so narcissist. He will not absorb any criticism, and if he won’t absorb it he can’t learn from it. He appears to literally think he is always right and always the best at everything. It’s immensely frustrating. It’s also just how it is with narcissists.

    The challenge for the press is similar to the broader problem we all face: how to grapple with a man whose only concern is himself? We think it’s time to stop wondering what motivates Trump and focus instead on what compels people to react so strongly to him.

    Okay hang on. There’s one obvious answer to that question and it outweighs all the others combined. We react so strongly to him because he’s the fucking president of the US. I would love to be able to ignore him because he’s just some puffed-up asshole who was a reality tv star for a few years. I went many happy years ignoring him, until July 2016 when I belatedly realized he was no longer a joke.

    So that’s why we react so strongly to him. It’s the only reason that counts. Yes, he’s uniquely infuriating and uniquely terrible, but if he were back in the tiny world he belongs in, that would be his family’s problem but not ours. Well, his family’s and his employees’ and his tenants’ and his customers’ and his business partners’ and so on – a lot of people, to be sure, but still not the whole damn world.

     Given that most journalists and reporters want to report factual events, it’s not surprising that many fall into the time-suck of disproving one lie after another while also trying to defend their reputations as professionals. Putting people on the defensive and forcing them to explain themselves over and over again is how clinical narcissists manipulate their victims. So how is a good journalist to avoid getting stuck on the narcissist’s causal loop? MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow offered up a partial model when, in 2017, she stopped allowing her show to cover Trump’s fleeting tweets or efforts to engage the media in conflict and instead focused her coverage on what he actually does.

    I get it, and that may be the best way to go, but I would also point out (not for the first time) that all this saying he does is also what he does. I do think journalists have to document that too. Not all of them; it’s fine for Maddow to ignore that part, but I think when he calls black reporters and Congressional Representatives stupid, I think some journalists should be on that story.

  • Hit the play button

  • They were surprised by the criticism

    Good grief, they’re surprised.

    There is a growing sense of concern inside the White House over the negative reaction to Matthew Whitaker being tapped as acting attorney general after Jeff Sessions’ abrupt firing.

    Whitaker, who was Sessions’ chief of staff, has faced criticism since Wednesday afternoon’s announcement for his previous comments on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

    Several senior officials told CNN they were surprised by the criticism, and believe it could potentially jeopardize Whitaker’s chances of remaining in the post if it continues to dominate headlines.

    How can they possibly be surprised??

    Just for a start, Whitaker is a complete nobody. To go on, the normal thing would be to make the Deputy AG the acting AG. To continue, we all know about Trump’s suspicions of Rosenstein, and Trump’s determination to kneecap the Mueller investigation if he can, and Trump’s delusion that the Justice Department belongs to him as opposed to the executive branch and the government and the people. Skipping over the normal and obvious person to be acting AG in favor of an unknown chief of staff with a long record of trashing the Mueller investigation…should have been just fine with us? Can they really be that deluded?

    It was not widely known among White House staff that he’d commented repeatedly on the special counsel’s investigation in interviews and on television — which is ironic given that this is what drew President Donald Trump to him and raises continued questions over the depth of the administration’s vetting process.

    Sooooo…what, they were all on vacation when the appointment was being discussed?

    George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, co-authored a New York Times op-ed published Thursday that called the appointment “unconstitutional.”

    The Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, Conway wrote, “means Mr. Trump’s installation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States after forcing the resignation of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional. It’s illegal. And it means that anything Mr. Whitaker does, or tries to do, in that position is invalid.”

    Whitaker’s standing ultimately depends on the President. But continued negative coverage will get Trump’s attention.

    There it is again, that “it’s illegal/Trump can do it” split.

  • It is a profoundly dangerous moment

    There are conflicting streams of thought, or maybe I just mean of talk, about whether or not Trump can get away with kneecapping the Mueller investigation right in plain sight. Some people – including lawyers – are saying he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, and others are saying like hell he can’t. Jeffrey Toobin was exasperatedly emphatic voicing the latter on CNN last night. Others are emphatic that he can’t, but they seem to mean just morally speaking, not that it’s literally impossible. It seems to be the case that Trump can get away with it if nobody stops him, and that it’s not at all clear that anyone can stop him. It’s hard to get clarity about it because so many people are muddling up the meaning of “can.”

    Lawfare has a six-author post on the subject by Mikhaila Fogel, Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn, Anushka Limaye, Benjamin Wittes.

    The firing of Jeff Sessions and his replacement on an interim basis by a man who has expressed open hostility to the Mueller investigation and in whose loyalty President Trump has expressed confidence marks a major moment in the course of the Russia investigation.

    It is a profoundly dangerous moment: The president fired the attorney general, as he once fired the FBI director, for plainly illegitimate reasons: because the attorney general acted appropriately on an investigative matter in which Trump himself has the deepest of personal interests. Trump does not even pretend there are other reasons. He removed the attorney general because the attorney general did not protect him from investigation. Yes, the president has the raw power to do this. But as was the case with the firing of James Comey, it is an abuse of the power he wields.

    There it is in a nutshell, what I’m trying to figure out. He has the raw power but it’s an abuse of that power.

    It’s not reassuring.

    Trump obviously thinks the whole point of power when he has it is that he can abuse it to get whatever result he wants. Nothing else has any meaning to him.

    Jeff Sessions has now left his post as attorney general and has been replaced on an acting basis by a man about whom a significant measure of anxiety is only prudent.

    In other words be scared shitless because Whitaker is going to let Trump abuse his raw power to his vestigial heart’s content.

    The immediate question is whether Whitaker will seek to impede the Mueller investigation. His public statements on the subject, to put the matter mildly, do not inspire confidence. Here’s a sampling:

    • As the Washington Post noted on Oct. 10—when it reported that Trump had spoken with Whitaker about assuming Sessions’s role—Whitaker argued in a CNN.com op-ed that any investigation by Mueller into the finances of Trump and his associates could be a “red line.”
    • A month before his CNN op-ed was published, Whitaker said on the network that “I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced by a recess appointment and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigations [sic] grinds to almost a halt.”
    • He defended Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower, saying that he would have taken the meeting as well.
    • Immediately after Trump fired James Comey as FBI director, Whitaker penned an opinion article in the Hill defending the dismissal and making the case against the appointment of a special counsel.
    • While Whitaker’s Twitter account is mostly about football, he tweeted a link to an article referring to the Russia investigation as a “lynch mob” in August 2017
    • He also criticized the special prosecutor’s search of the home of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort as “designed to intimidate”

    But maybe he’ll be forced to recuse himself?

    Like Sessions, Whitaker may be obligated to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation. The relevant Justice Department guideline is Section 45.2 of Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which states that “no employee shall participate in a criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with” either “any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution” or “any person or organization which he knows has a specific and substantial interest that would be directly affected by the outcome of the investigation or prosecution.”

    Although the regulations do not indicate that Whitaker’s public statements alone necessarily require recusal, Whitaker has other connections to people whose conduct is at issue in the matter. For instance, the regulations define a political relationship as “a close identification with an elected official, a candidate (whether or not successful) for elective, public office, a political party, or a campaign organization, arising from service as a principal adviser thereto or a principal official thereof.” Rebecca Ballhaus of the Wall Street Journal reports that Whitaker chaired the 2014 Iowa state treasurer campaign of Sam Clovis, who went on to serve in the Trump campaign and administration and who, Ballhaus notes, is now a grand jury witness in the Mueller investigation. The Des Moines Register reported Whitaker’s chairmanship of Clovis’s campaign during the campaign itself. What’s more, in a text message to Ballhaus after Whitaker’s appointment, Clovis wrote that he was “proud of my friend,” referring to Whitaker, raising the question of whether there is a personal relationship as well.

    There is an important process point here: Under the same Justice Department regulation mentioned above, Whitaker is obligated to seek guidance from career ethics attorneys regarding whether he should recuse. This is the process Jeff Sessions used in determining that the rules required that he recuse, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein also sought guidance regarding his obligations, though Justice officials determined that his recusal was not required. If Whitaker either does not obtain an ethics opinion from career officials or if he departs from that guidance, that would be a serious red flag. Notably, the Washington Post reports that Trump “has told advisers that Whitaker is loyal and would not have recused himself from the investigation.” This raises a question about whether the president knows something about Whitaker’s intentions regarding recusal.

    That was yesterday; today the Post reports (as we’ve seen) that Whitaker says no way will he recuse himself. So that will be a serious red flag.

    Ok so what does that mean? It seems to me he’s already a serious red flag, but then what? Can anyone do anything about it?

    Apparently not.

    But if Whitaker does not recuse and actually supervises the investigation, he will be able to interfere with it if he chooses to do so.

    Well he’s not going to recuse, so he will be able to interfere with it.

    Image result for red flag

     

  • The heated exchange

    The Post story seems so quaint and archaic now, written before the White House banned Jim Acosta.

    President Trump lashed out at journalists during an afternoon press briefing, calling some of them “hostile,” instructing them to sit down and telling a CNN reporter, “You are a rude, terrible person.”

    The heated exchange occurred Wednesday when CNN reporter Jim Acosta continued to question Trump after the president dismissed him during a news conference about the 2018 midterm elections. Acosta had brought up the Central American migrant caravan, asking the president why he characterized it as “an invasion.”

    “I think you should let me run the country, you run CNN and if you did it well, your ratings would be much better,” Trump told Acosta.

    Then when Acosta tried to question Trump about the Russia investigation, the president shouted: “That’s enough. That’s enough. That’s enough. That’s enough,” telling him to “put down the mic.”

    Trump then told the reporter: “CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN. … You’re a very rude person. The way you treat Sarah Huckabee is horrible. And the way you treat other people are horrible. You shouldn’t treat people that way.”

    He didn’t actually say horrible, he said, as he always does, harrible. It’s one of his (50 or 60) go-to words but he doesn’t know how to pronounce it.

    Trump has repeatedly clashed with the media, especially CNN, lashing out at reporters and calling their stories “fake news.” As The Washington Post’s Elise Viebeck reported, Trump snapped at yet another reporter later in the press conference after she noted that the president had once called himself a “nationalist” and asked him whether his embrace of “nationalism” is supporting white nationalists.

    “I don’t know why you’d say that — that’s such a racist question,” Trump told PBS Newshour’s White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, who is black.

    “Why do I have my highest poll numbers ever with African Americans?” he said. “Why do I have among the highest poll numbers with African Americans? I mean, why do I have my highest poll numbers?”

    “That’s such a racist question,” he added. “Honestly, I know you have it written down and you’re going to tell me. Let me tell you, that’s a racist question.”

    Afterwards CNN spoke up.

    Following the confrontations, CNN said in a statement on Twitter that Trump’s “ongoing attacks on the press have gone too far.”

    “They are not only dangerous, they are disturbingly un-American,” according to the statement. “While President Trump has made it clear he does not respect a free press, he has a sworn obligation to protect it. A free press is vital to democracy, and we stand behind Jim Acosta and his fellow journalists everywhere.”

    So what does Trump do? Shut down the reporter. Tell him not to put his hand in the fire, he’ll put his hand in the fire just to show you you can’t tell him what to do.

    CNN president Jeff Zucker reportedly said in a memo to employees Wednesday that “this organization believes fiercely in the protections granted to us by the First Amendment, and we will defend them, and you, vigorously, every time.”

    “I want you to know that we have your backs,” Zucker wrote, according to Hollywood Reporter.

    Welp, it will be interesting to see what he says now.

  • Now they’re shutting down the news media

    Ugh. Now Trump’s people have banned Jim Acosta from the White House.

  • A criminal subject president appointing his own prosecutor

    Fred Wertheimer and Norm Eisen on Trump’s latest move:

    After requesting and receiving Mr. Sessions’s resignation on Wednesday, President Trump wasted no time in naming Matthew Whitaker, Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff, as acting attorney general, and shifted the oversight role from Mr. Rosenstein back to the attorney general’s office and its new acting head.

    As ethics experts, we believe Mr. Whitaker should recuse himself from the investigation. If we have ever seen an appearance of impropriety in our decades of experience, this is it: a criminal subject president appointing his own prosecutor — one who has evidently prejudged aspects of the investigation and mused about how it can be hampered.

    No prosecutor — or indeed governmental official of any kind — should work on a matter under these circumstances. Mr. Whitaker must step aside. His conflicts are just as worrisome in their own way as Mr. Sessions’s conflict was, maybe more so.

    Whether or not Mr. Whitaker steps aside, Mr. Trump’s audacity now demands additional safeguards. Congress must quickly put in place a plan to protect the Russia investigation before President Trump makes any further efforts to control the special counsel’s office.

    It must, but will it?

  • This is extremely dangerous territory

    My congressional representative has issued a statement on Trump’s move to obstruct the Mueller investigation:

    SEATTLE, WA – Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, member of the House Judiciary Committee, released the following statement regarding the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions:

    “This was no simple resignation: President Donald Trump fired Jeff Sessions the day after an election in which his party lost control of the House. This is extremely dangerous territory, placing our nation in the throes of a potential constitutional crisis. We must do everything we can to protect the Special Counsel’s investigation, and to ensure that this president does not obstruct justice.

    “The president has made it clear for months now that he considered Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein impediments to ending the Special Counsel’s probe into interference in our elections, the Trump’s campaign’s role in that and any potential obstruction of justice from the president himself. President Trump also criticized Attorney General Sessions numerous times merely for doing the right thing and recusing himself from supervising Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. Installing a new Acting Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker, who has clearly and vocally been critical of the Special Counsel’s investigation and has called for limitations on Robert Mueller and his team, could—in and of itself—be another example of potential obstruction of justice by the president. Reports that Mr. Whitaker is seeking to take over the supervision of the Special Counsel’s investigation must be stopped immediately—we believe it is not only wildly inappropriate for Mr. Whitaker to supervise the Special Counsel, but actually illegal based on the existing regulations. The president may act as though he can simply hire and fire whomever he wants, but this is not the case if his actions are shown to subvert the rule of law and obstruct justice.

    “The House Judiciary Committee Democrats have already begun issuing letters to key officials demanding that they preserve all relevant documents to ensure evidence remains safe from improper interference or destruction. There is bipartisan support for these protections. Now is the time for Congress to pass the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act and protect the Special Counsel’s investigation from any attempt to interfere and obstruct.”

    It’s a bit of an emergency, really.

  • Is the coup approaching?

    Also scary.

  • Teetering

    CNBC reports:

    President Donald Trump’s new acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, will oversee special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

    “The Acting Attorney General is in charge of all matters under the purview of the Department of Justice,” a spokeswoman for the department said Wednesday when asked if Whitaker would oversee Mueller’s investigation.

    Which is kind of…how shall I say…shady, because Whitaker hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate.

    Whitaker argued in an August 2017 op-ed for CNN that Mueller’s investigation is “dangerously close to crossing” the so-called red line not to look into the Trump family’s finances.

    “It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else,” Whitaker wrote in the piece.

    “That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel.”

    Less than a month earlier, Whitaker had defended Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., for accepting a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Russian officials who had promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.

    “You would always take that meeting,” Whitaker said on CNN.

    He sounds…how shall I say…shady.

    House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called on Whitaker to recuse himself, citing “his record of threats to undermine & weaken the Russia investigation.”

    But if he’s shady he’s not going to recuse himself, is he, and he sounds shady.

    The BBC has more:

    CBS News is reporting that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is no longer leading the Mueller inquiry, and that Matthew Whitaker will now assume control.

    The president cannot directly fire the special counsel, whose investigation Mr Trump has repeatedly decried as a witch hunt. But Mr Sessions’ replacement will have the power to fire Mr Mueller or end the inquiry.

    Mr Rosenstein was summoned to the White House on Wednesday for what was described as a previously scheduled meeting.

    This is not looking good.

    Democrats were outraged by the attorney general’s removal, with the Democratic National Committee noting that the appointee has not been confirmed for the role by the US Senate as required.

    The party’s Senate leader Chuck Schumer tweeted: “Clearly, the President has something to hide.”

    “Given his previous comments advocating defunding and imposing limitations on the Mueller investigation, Mr Whitaker should recuse himself from its oversight for the duration of his time as acting attorney general.”

    …

    House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said: “It is impossible to read Attorney General Sessions’ firing as anything other than another blatant attempt by President Trump to undermine & end Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation.”

    Not looking good at all.

  • Thanks and so long

    Bam, Sessions is out.

    Can the coup be far behind?

    Scary times.

  • Yew shud be aschamed

    Aren’t we cranky today.

    https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1060223898501824513

    There’s nothing quite like the irony of watching Donald Trump shaking his finger at Jim Acosta while saying “You are a rude, terrible person” while Acosta is in fact being perfectly polite.

  • The mountaintop

    To the surprise of no one (but the disgust of most), Trump is at peak monstrosity.

    President Trump is painting an astonishingly apocalyptic vision of America under Democratic control in the campaign’s final days, unleashing a torrent of falsehoods and portraying his political opponents as desiring crime, squalor and poverty.

    …

    Trump has never been hemmed in by fact, fairness or even logic. The 45th president proudly refuses to apologize and routinely violates the norms of decorum that guided his predecessors. But at one mega-rally after another in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, Trump has taken his no-boundaries political ethos to a new level — demagoguing the Democrats in a whirl of distortion and using the power of the federal government to amplify his fantastical arguments.

    In Columbia, Mo., the president suggested that Democrats “run around like antifa” demonstrators in black uniforms and black helmets, but underneath, they have “this weak little face” and “go back home into mommy’s basement.”

    In Huntington, W.Va., Trump called predatory immigrants “the worst scum in the world” but alleged that Democrats welcome them by saying, “Fly right in, folks. Come on in. We don’t care who the hell you are, come on in!”

    It’s the best fun he’s ever had. He’ll miss it like crazy when he can’t do it any more…unless his head explodes first.

    Trump has been fueling the baseless conspiracy theory that the caravan is being funded by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and Democratic mega-donor who was the target of a mail bomb last month. The same conspiracy theory allegedly motivated the suspect in the mass slaughter at a Pittsburgh synagogue eight days ago.

    “They want to invite caravan after caravan, and it is a little suspicious how those caravans are starting, isn’t it?” Trump asked at a Saturday night rally in Pensacola, Fla. “Isn’t it a little? And I think it’s a good thing maybe that they did it. Did they energize our base or what?”

    Those people who got slaughtered in Pittsburgh? Meh. Worth it to energize the base, right?

    Trump’s flood of misinformation has swelled to epic proportions in recent weeks, according to an analysis by The Washington Post’s Fact Checker. In the seven weeks leading up to the election, the president made 1,419 false or misleading claims, an average of 30 a day. That compares with 1,318 false or misleading claims during the first nine months of his presidency, an average of five a day.

    He has to keep upping the dose.

  • No YOU’RE the racist

    CNN, NBC, FOX and Facebook have all rejected Trump’s racist ad. Apparently reporters asked him about it this morning on his way to another fascist rally.

    My hope for tomorrow: Democrats win in House and Senate and Trump’s head explodes at 11 p.m. Eastern time.

    Updating to add the video where he says it:

  • You’re welcome