Tag: Trump

  • See this fist?

    The Guardian report was posted before Bolton gave his speech; the Times reports the speech given.

    The Trump administration threatened the International Criminal Court with sanctions if it pursued an investigation of American troops in Afghanistan, opening a harsh new attack on an old nemesis of many on the political right.

    “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” President Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said in a speech on Monday in Washington.

    “We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States,” Mr. Bolton said. “We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and, we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists in an I.C.C. investigation of Americans.”

    In other words: Listen up, peasants: the United States is better than everyone else, and it is above the law. We can do whatever we want because we are the Colonial Power and you are the colonized. We have the biggest fist, and you can’t touch us. To sum up: we don’t give a rat’s ass about your stupid “international law” and your “treaties” and your “court.” If you don’t give us what we demand, we’ll just take it. In conclusion, fuck all of you.

    Mr. Bolton’s hostile words, in what the White House has called his first major address as national security adviser, echoed the position he took as a senior official in the George W. Bush administration, when Mr. Bolton emerged as the most virulent foe of the court, which is based in The Hague.

    The United States declined to join the court during Mr. Bush’s first term, when Mr. Bolton was an under secretary of state and later ambassador to the United Nations. After he left the Bush administration, the White House showed a little less resistance to the court’s work, even expressing support for its investigation of atrocities in Darfur.

    Let’s keep this in mind when Trump makes us look back on Bush as not so bad.

    Under President Barack Obama, the United States began helping the court in investigations and shifted to a policy of “positive engagement,” according to Harold Koh, then the State Department’s legal adviser.

    Still, the United States never joined the court. And with Mr. Bolton back in power, the White House has swung back to the language of 2002 and 2003. In his speech, he made familiar arguments against the court, saying that it infringed on American sovereignty, had unchecked power, and was “ineffective, unaccountable, and indeed, outright dangerous.”

    What about Germany’s sovereignty? Huh? Didn’t the Nürnberg trials infringe on Germany’s sovereignty? Why shouldn’t a country commit genocide if it feels like it and nobody can stop it? Not just any country, of course, but the US, and…no, just the US.

    “The largely unspoken, but always central, aim of its most vigorous supporters was to constrain the United States,” Mr. Bolton said. “The objective was not limited to targeting individual U.S. service members, but rather America’s senior political leadership, and its relentless determination to keep our country secure.”

    By “senior political leadership” he of course means “more firepower.” The idea that we have “senior political leadership” at this moment is a mix of laughable and emetic.

  • Because we are Perfect

    Oh great, John Bolton is going to trash the ICC. That’s a good look.

    John Bolton, the hawkish US national security adviser, will threaten the international criminal court (ICC) with sanctions when he makes an excoriating attack on the institution in a speech in Washington.

    According to drafts of his speech, Bolton will push for sanctions over an ICC investigation into alleged American war crimes in Afghanistan. He is also expected to announce on Monday the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington because of its calls for an ICC inquiry into Israel.

    “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton will say, according to a draft of his speech seen by Reuters.

    How is the ICC illegitimate? It’s illegitimate because it dares to investigate something the US did. Nobody has any right to investigate anything the US does, because the US is Sacred. In case this isn’t clear, just look at Trump and Mueller. It’s the same principle – Mueller has no right to investigate anything Trump does, because Trump is Sacred. How is he Sacred? He just is, that’s all, and asking questions about it is illegitimate.

    “The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel,” the draft text continues. It says the Trump administration “will fight back” if the ICC formally proceeds with opening an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by US military and intelligence staff during the war in Afghanistan.

    No investigation allowed, because John Bolton says so.

    Bolton is expected to propose that the Trump administration bans ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the US, impose sanctions on any funds they have in the States and prosecute them in the American court system.

    “We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us,” Bolton’s draft text says.

    That’s grown-up foreign policy right there: the ICC is dead to us. You are dead to us, ICC! Don’t even try to call, we won’t answer!

    The UN-backed court’s remit is to bring to justice the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The US did not ratify the Rome treaty that established the ICC in 2002. The then president George W Bush was strongly opposed to the court. President Barack Obama subsequently took measures to improve cooperation with the organisation.

    And we can’t have that.

  • It was you, Donnie

    Trump and his thugs are pretending to think the anonymous “hero” is a security threat.

    “We’ll find out if there was criminal activity involved,” vice-president Mike Pence told Fox News Sunday. “I think the president’s concern is that this individual may have responsibilities in the area of national security.”

    Don’t be schewpid, of course it’s not. Trump’s concern is Trump.

    Pence was echoed by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union as the hunt for the author continued.

    “There could be a national security risk at hand,” she warned. “It depends on what else has been divulged by this individual … Anybody who would do this, you don’t know what else they’re saying.”

    Please. The threat is Trump. The calls are coming from inside the house.

    On Friday, Trump called on his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to lead an investigation to identify the author. But Conway acknowledged that the opinion piece per se did not constitute criminal activity.

    “I think this person is going to suss himself or herself out,” Conway said. “Cowards are like criminals, eventually they tell the wrong person.”

    That’s not what “suss” means.

  • Trump should be shackled

    Is Trump wrong in the head? Yes, Trump is wrong in the head. Woodward’s book says so, anomynous really anomynous I mean anonymous says so, mental health experts say so.

    None of this is a surprise to those of us who, 18 months ago, put together our own public service book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”

    My focus as the volume’s editor was on Trump’s dangerousness because of my area of expertise in violence prevention. Approaching violence as a public health issue, I have consulted with governments and international organizations, in addition to 20 years of engaging in the individual assessment and treatment of violent offenders.

    All involved were aware of the norms against diagnosing people at a distance, but they were also aware of the norms in favor of harm reduction and risk reporting, and the latter weighed more heavily than the former.

    We already know a great deal about Trump’s mental state based on the voluminous information he has given through his tweets and his responses to real situations in real time. Now, this week’s credible reports support the concerns we articulated in the book beyond any doubt.

    These reports are also consistent with the account I received from two White House staff members who called me in October 2017 because the president was behaving in a manner that “scared” them, and they believed he was “unraveling”. They were calling because of the book I edited.

    The op-ed author talked of Trump’s lack of principle and his impulsive and reckless decision-making.

    These are obviously psychological symptoms reflective of emotional compulsion, impulsivity, poor concentration, narcissism and recklessness. They are identical to those that Woodward describes in numerous examples, which he writes were met with the “stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters.”

    They are also consistent with the course we foresaw early in Trump’s presidency, which concerned us enough to outline it in our book. We tried to warn that his condition was worse than it appeared, would grow worse over time and would eventually become uncontainable.

    Really? Because I’ve thought he’s been steadily improving all this time.

    Hahaha kidding.

    My current concern is that we are already witnessing a further unraveling of the president’s mental state, especially as the frequency of his lying increases and the fervor of his rallies intensifies.

    I am concerned that his mental challenges could cause him to take unpredictable and potentially extreme and dangerous measures to distract from his legal problems.

    Yep. One of these days he could just launch some nukes, to make things a little pleasanter for himself. It’s kind of a shame that nobody who could do anything about this is doing anything about this.

    Mental health professionals have standard procedures for evaluating dangerousness. More than a personal interview, violence potential is best assessed through past history and a structured checklist of a person’s characteristics.

    These characteristics include a history of cruelty to animals or other people, risk taking, behavior suggesting loss of control or impulsivity, narcissistic personality and current mental instability. Also of concern are noncompliance or unwillingness to undergo tests or treatment, access to weapons, poor relationship with significant other or spouse, seeing oneself as a victim, lack of compassion or empathy, and lack of concern over consequences of harmful acts.

    The Woodward book and the New York Times op-ed confirm many of these characteristics. The rest have been evident in Trump’s behavior outside the White House and prior to his tenure.

    The fact that he ticks not some but all of the boxes should be cause for alarm, Bandy Lee says. Yep, no denying that.

    She says more about how bad it all looks. Not a word of it seems anything but self-evident and impossible to deny.

    From my observations of the president over extended time via his public presentations, direct thoughts through tweets and accounts of his close associates, I believe that the question is not whether he will look for distractions, but how soon and to what degree.

    At least several thousands of mental health professionals who are members of the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts share the view that the nuclear launch codes should not be in the hands of someone who exhibits such levels of mental instability.

    They absolutely should not. Is anyone trustworthy doing anything about it? Possibly so, but it would be nice to be sure.

  • Opining

    Trump still thinks it’s illegal to criticize him.

    President Donald Trump said Friday he wanted Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation into who authored the explosive anonymous opinion article published in The New York Times earlier this week.

    “Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was, because I really believe it’s national security,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

    Yeah no that’s not a reason. That “because” isn’t. What Donald Trump “really believes” ≠ the law.

    It’s not clear what national security reasons would prompt a Department of Justice investigation. It is not a crime to leak information that is not classified.

    Asked for clarification whether the president was directing Sessions to investigate The New York Times op-ed or opining that Sessions should, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said, “opining.”

    “Look, he’s concerned that someone is trying to undermine the executive branch and he wants it looked at,” she said.

    No you look, Sarah. The guy you work for is not a king or a god-emperor; we’re allowed to try to “undermine the executive branch” i.e. get that maniac out of there before he destroys everything.

  • The corrupt bargain Washington Republicans have made

    Michelle Goldberg at the Times notes how Kavanaugh evaded all questions about whether he will protect Trump from law enforcement when he is on the Supreme Court, and notes that unless two Republicans suddenly discover a conscience he’ll soon be on the Court.

    He will owe his elevation to Trump, who is in effect an unindicted co-conspirator in a campaign finance crime that helped him achieve his minority victory. There’s every reason to believe that Kavanaugh will shield the president from accountability or restraints on his power. Yet even Republicans who think Trump is a menace are desperate to confirm his judicial pick.

    What we have here, in miniature, is the corrupt bargain Washington Republicans have made with a president many of them privately despise. They know Trump is unfit, but he gives them tax cuts and right-wing judges. Those tax cuts and right-wing judges, in turn, strengthen the president’s hand, buying him gratitude from rich donors and potential legal cover. Republicans who participate in this cycle seem convinced that the situation is, and will remain, under their control.

    And that the goals are worthwhile – that it’s such a good thing to make already rich people even richer and already struggling people downright desperate, and to make women prisoners of their own reproductive systems again, that the criminality and cruelty and vulgarity of Trump are a small price to pay.

    So about that anonymous op-ed on Wednesday.

    It was revealing, though not necessarily in the way the author intended. We already know that many of Trump’s closest aides hold him in contempt. What’s fascinating is how this official, who describes the president as amoral, anti-democratic and reckless, rationalizes working for him regardless.

    Exactly. Anonymous Hero parades the usual Republican shit before us as if we’ll all agree that it’s great stuff, and then asks us to admire the people who help Trump stay in office by preventing some of his crazy from going public.

    If Kavanaugh weren’t confirmed, it would be a profound blow to Trump, and not just because he would look weak and disappoint his evangelical base. Without Kavanaugh, Trump wouldn’t be assured of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court if and when it rules on him and his administration. With Kavanaugh, the tie-breaking vote on the Supreme Court will be a right-wing apparatchik chosen in part for his deference to executive power.

    A vote for Kavanaugh is thus a vote to give Trump a measure of impunity. Republican senators who know the president is out of control have a choice — they can maintain a check on his ill-considered autocratic inclinations, or solidify right-wing power on the Supreme Court for a generation. It’s obvious which way they’ll go. Maybe they’ll tell themselves having adults in the room at the White House makes it O.K.

    Allow me to state the obvious: nothing makes it ok.

  • Kavanaugh wouldn’t say

    Kavanaugh is being very deferential to Trump.

    Justice Neil Gorsuch called President Trump’s personal attacks on federal judges “demoralizing” during his confirmation hearing last year. “When someone criticizes the honesty, the integrity or the motives of a federal judge, I find that disheartening,” Gorsuch said, adding: “I’ve gone as far as I can go ethically.”

    Not very far, but far enough for Trump to fly into a rage and talk about withdrawing the nomination. (He had to be talked out of it.) Kavanaugh is being way more prudent.

    The president’s second nominee for the Supreme Court demurred, for example, when asked whether it was appropriate for Trump to say that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “mind is shot” when he called for her to resign.

    “I’m not going to get within three Zip codes” of answering that question, he replied.

    Kavanaugh wouldn’t say if it’s okay for Trump to say that the Justice Department should not prosecute Republicans because it will hurt their chances of holding the House in the midterms.

    He also refused to say that it was inappropriate for Trump to insist that Judge Gonzalo Curiel couldn’t fairly adjudicate a fraud lawsuit against Trump University because he is the son of Mexican immigrants. Speaker Paul Ryan once called this “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

    One way to view this is as a potential justice being carefully apolitical. Another way is to view it as being way too loyal to his benefactor (who happens to be a blatant criminal on a national scale).

    But the nominee’s steadfast unwillingness to even mildly distance himself from Trump’s sustained attacks on the third branch of government, despite being given dozens of opportunities to do so by senators in both parties over the course of 24 hours in the hot seat, means that the question lingers of how independent he’ll be once confirmed to the highest court in the land.

    Also…

    Several Democratic senators expressed concern that Trump did not add Kavanaugh — widely known in legal circles as an outspoken critic of investigations into sitting presidents — to his list of potential Supreme Court picks until last November— six months after the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

    “In this age of President Donald Trump, this expansive view of presidential power takes on added significance,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

    Because Trump has chosen a justice who will be ruling on any case to do with Trump’s immunity from prosecution. The state of play seems to be that no matter what Trump has done – even if evidence turns up showing that he has committed mass murder – he gets a pass as long as he’s president, and Republicans refuse to remove him as president for any reason whatsoever.

  • Dude’s a symptom

    Obama has Said the Name.

    Former President Obama on Friday delivered a blistering criticism of the political tactics of his successor President Trump, saying he had built on the fears of the powerful as they look to diminishing importance in a rapidly changing nation.

    “It did not start with Donald Trump,” Obama said during a noon speech at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “He is a symptom not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years, the fear and anger that’s rooted in our past.”

    Naturally; Trump isn’t intelligent enough to originate anything. But by god he does have a talent for connecting with The Evil in people, and drawing it out and amplifying it.

  • Apparently Giuliani is the boss of everything

    Giuliani says Trump will not answer questions. Mind you he’s been saying that for weeks, but maybe now he’s saying it for real no backsies.

    President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president’s attorneys told The Associated Press on Thursday.

    Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said questions about obstruction of justice were a “no-go.”

    Because look: he stole the election fair and square and now he’s in there and you can’t do a damn thing about it so ha.

    Giuliani’s statement was the most definitive rejection yet of special counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview the president about any efforts to obstruct the investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and Russians.

    Most definitive how? Jonathan Lemire doesn’t say.

    If the legal team holds its stance, it could force Mueller to try to subpoena the president, likely triggering a standoff that would lead to the Supreme Court.

    And that’s why Trump nominated Kavanaugh.

    Mueller’s office has previously sought to interview the president about the obstruction issue, including his firing last year of former FBI Director James Comey and his public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump’s legal team has argued that the president has the power to hire and fire appointees and the special counsel does not have the authority to ask him to explain those decisions. Giuliani said Thursday the team was steadfast in that position.

    So it’s basically just “I can because I can and it doesn’t matter how corrupt and criminal it is, you can’t touch me, so ha.” In other words the US is an authoritarian kleptocracy and that’s the end of it.

    Though the president has publicly said he was eager to face questions from Mueller, his lawyers have been far more reluctant to make him available for an interview and have questioned whether Mueller has the right to ask him about actions that he is authorized, under the Constitution, to take as president.

    This is what I mean; this is fucked up. We shouldn’t be having a criminal guy who does criminal things telling us we can’t touch him because of the Constitution – the one that he 1. knows nothing about and 2. shits on every chance he gets. We shouldn’t have thug Giuliani thugging around the place and telling us the thugs can do whatever they want. This is ALL WRONG.

  • Unwavering faith

    Ahh good, he still has support from a friend.

     

  • Kelly scurried in and out

    Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman give us a look inside the West Wing in the aftermath of the “We are the unsung heroes” editorial yesterday.

    Mr. Trump erupted in anger after reading the Op-Ed article and John F. Kelly, the chief of staff, and other aides scurried in and out of the press office trying to figure out how to respond. Advisers told Mr. Trump that this was the same as leakers who talk with the news media every day, but a hunt for the author of the offending article was quickly initiated and scrutiny focused on a half-dozen names. Aides said they assumed it was written by someone who worked in the administration but not the White House itself, although they could not be sure.

    Look for someone who is massively pleased with himself and not terribly bright.

    Yeah I know – sarcastic “Well that narrows it down a lot” response is deserved.

    Mr. Trump angrily lashed out during public events and on Twitter. He assailed what he called the “gutless editorial” by the unnamed official and he dismissed Mr. Woodward’s book as “a total piece of fiction” and “totally discredited.” He attributed the accounts to a news media that has sought to destroy his presidency.

    Trump acted like Trump, to the surprise of no one.

    In the hours after the Op-Ed published, Washington has been scrambling to pin down the identity of this anonymous official.

    “It is not mine,” Mike Pompeo, the secretary of State, said of the piece during brief remarks in India on Thursday.

    “I come from a place where if you’re not in the position to execute the commander’s intent, you have a singular option, and it’s to leave,” Mr. Pompeo said. “And this person instead, according to The New York Times, chose not only to stay, but to undermine what President Trump and this administration are trying to do.”

    …

    Mr. Trump’s mood vacillated from fury to calm throughout Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday. Some of his top aides worked the phones to figure out who was leaking or who might have spoken, and his daughter Ivanka Trump and other advisers tried to quell his distress.

    He seemed satisfied that Mr. Kelly and Mr. Mattis had denied remarks attributed to them in Mr. Woodward’s book — Mr. Kelly was quoted calling the president an “idiot” and Mr. Mattis said he had the understanding of a “fifth or sixth grader.” But his ire was trained particularly on two former aides, the former director of the National Economic Council, Gary D. Cohn, and the former staff secretary, Rob Porter, according to people close to the White House.

    It’s just such a puzzle, why so many people who work with Trump have criticisms of him.

  • Actually, we’re the real heroes of the story

    David Frum has a ringing retort to the disgustingly self-congratulatory Times op-ed.

    If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.

    My point exactly. Don’t tell us how secretly defiant you are, get him out. Until then, just shut up.

    The author of the anonymous op-ed is hoping to vindicate the reputation of like-minded senior Trump staffers. See, we only look complicit! Actually, we’re the real heroes of the story.

    But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.

    What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down the Mueller investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart, and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.

    He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous.

    Oh gee, so he will – I hadn’t thought of that part.

    The new Bob Woodward book set the bad precedent. The high official who thought the president so addled that he would not remember the paper he snatched off his desk? Those who thought the president stupid, ignorant, beholden to Russia—and then exited the administration to return to their comfortable, lucrative occupations? Who substituted deep-background gripe sessions with a reporter for offering detailed proof of presidential unfitness, or worse, before the House or Senate? Yes, better than the robotic servility of the public record. But only slightly.

    What would be better?

    Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.

    Your service in government is valuable. Thank you for it. But it is not so indispensable that it can compensate for the continuing tenure of a president you believe to be amoral, untruthful, irrational, anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.

    Exfuckingactly.

  • No YOU’RE putting your ego first

    Sarah Sanders has issued a press release that was obviously dictated by Trump and cleaned up a little. Jake Tapper shares it:

    Nearly 62 million people voted for President Donald J. Trump in 2016, earning him 306 Electoral College votes – versus 232 for his opponent. None of them voted for a gutless, anonymous source to the failing New York Times.

    You see why I say it’s obvious. Even his piggiest people don’t talk that childishly for public consumption.

    We are disappointed, but not surprised, that the paper chose to publish this pathetic, reckless, and selfish op-ed. This is a new low for the so-called ‘paper of record, and it should issue an apology, just as it did after the election for its disastrous coverage of the Trump campaign.

    No it didn’t. That’s one of Trump’s pet lies.

    President Trump has laid out a bold and ambitious agenda. Every day since taking office, he has fulfilled the promises he made. His accomplishments in less than two years have been astounding.

    The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected President of the United States. He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people. This coward should do the right thing and resign.

    Trump breathes in every word.

    Sarah Sanders gave us a picture of it.

  • Look, look, they issued statements and everything

    Trump has gone Full Woodward. Of course he has.

    Oooh, a press statement from the press secretary – now that’s authoritative!

    That is, two guys who still work for you have attempted to distance themselves from Woodward’s book. Wow, imagine our astonishment.

    Eight hours between those two, so I guess he got a good night’s sleep. Or maybe somebody took his phone away.

    He hasn’t read it.

  • “You are not a good witness.”

    Part 2 of the Post on Woodward on Trump:

    Gary Cohn kept Trump from yanking the US out of NAFTA by stealing the letter saying “We’re out!” off his desk.

    Cohn and Kelly both pretty much hate him.

    Woodward illustrates how the dread in Trump’s orbit became all-encompassing over the course of Trump’s first year in office, leaving some staff members and Cabinet members confounded by the president’s lack of understanding about how government functions and his inability and unwillingness to learn.

    But, again, who did they think he was? Other than an angry loudmouth?

    Last March, John Dowd met with Mueller and his deputy.

    Dowd then explained to Mueller and Quarles why he was trying to keep the president from testifying: “I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas are going to say, ‘I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?’ ”

    “John, I understand,” Mueller replied, according to Woodward.

    Later that month, Dowd told Trump: “Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit.”

    But Trump, concerned about the optics of a president refusing to testify and convinced that he could handle Mueller’s questions, had by then decided otherwise.

    “I’ll be a real good witness,” Trump told Dowd, according to Woodward.

    “You are not a good witness,” Dowd replied. “Mr. President, I’m afraid I just can’t help you.”

    The next morning, Dowd resigned.

    Nobody can help him. Or, apparently, us.

  • To try to control his impulses and prevent disasters

    A new book appears on the horizon: Bob Woodward’s Trump book, titled with elegant simplicity Fear.

    Woodward depicts Trump’s anger and paranoia about the Russia inquiry as unrelenting, at times paralyzing the West Wing for entire days. Learning of the appointment of Mueller in May 2017, Trump groused, “Everybody’s trying to get me”— part of a venting period that shellshocked aides compared to Richard Nixon’s final days as president.

    The 448-page book was obtained by The Washington Post. Woodward, an associate editor at The Post, sought an interview with Trump through several intermediaries to no avail. The president called Woodward in early August, after the manuscript had been completed, to say he wanted to participate. The president complained that it would be a “bad book,” according to an audio recording of the conversation. Woodward replied that his work would be “tough,” but factual and based on his reporting.

    Trump responds sourly that that means it will be “negative” but that’s ok grumble whine.

    I just listened to that whole recording. No surprises, it just underlines how intolerable he is. He whines, he brags, he snarls, he brags, he lies, and round and round it goes. Most complaints are followed with the passive-aggressive whiny “but that’s ok” [read: go ahead, call me names, I’m just making the entire universe better but you go right ahead and beat me up whiiiiiiiiiiiiine].

    A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.

    Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.

    Wouldn’t it be more efficacious to just drug him?

    Again and again, Woodward recounts at length how Trump’s national security team was shaken by his lack of curiosity and knowledge about world affairs and his contempt for the mainstream perspectives of military and intelligence leaders.

    Shaken? Who did they think he was?

    At a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19, Trump disregarded the significance of the massive U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, including a special intelligence operation that allows the United States to detect a North Korean missile launch in seven seconds vs. 15 minutes from Alaska, according to Woodward. Trump questioned why the government was spending resources in the region at all.

    We’re all gonna die.

    After Trump left the meeting, Woodward recounts, “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’ ”

    In Woodward’s telling, many top advisers were repeatedly unnerved by Trump’s actions and expressed dim views of him. “Secretaries of defense don’t always get to choose the president they work for,” Mattis told friends at one point, prompting laughter as he explained Trump’s tendency to go off on tangents about subjects such as immigration and the news media.

    He does it in that phone call to Woodward. He does it in his own tweets. It’s a sign of a badly rotted brain.

    White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was “unhinged,” Woodward writes. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

    As I said – no surprises.

    With Trump’s rage and defiance impossible to contain, Cabinet members and other senior officials learned to act discreetly. Woodward describes an alliance among Trump’s traditionalists — including Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser — to stymie what they considered dangerous acts.

    Isn’t it great to have it confirmed that no one can rein him in?

    End of Part One.

  • Good job Jeff

    Josh Dawsey at the Post explains Trump’s self-incriminating tweets:

    “Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department,” he said on Twitter. “Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time.”

    “Good job Jeff……” he added, in a sarcastic comment. Calling the agency the “Jeff Sessions Justice Department” is the president’s ultimate insult, Trump advisers say.

    Trump did not address the charges themselves or name the congressmen, but the tweet was apparently referring to the indictments this summer of Reps. Chris Collins of New York and Duncan D. Hunter of California, the president’s two earliest congressional endorsers.

    Collins was charged with insider trading, accused by federal prosecutors of tipping off his son about a biotechnology company’s failed drug trial to avoid significant investment losses. The alleged tip-off took place not during the Obama administration, as Trump’s tweet suggests, but in 2017, after Trump had become president.

    Hunter was charged with using more than $250,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses, including family vacations, school tuition and theater tickets.

    And this is outrageous, you see, because the Justice Department should be prosecuting Democrats only. Duh. Don’t they know anything? Republicans are allowed to do whatever they want.

    The tweet on Sessions was an unusually harsh salvo, even for a president who sometimes expresses his thoughts on Twitter to the chagrin of his staff. The tweet indicated that his attorney general should base law enforcement actions on how it could affect the president and the Republican Party’s electoral success. It also seemed to indicate that electoral popularity should influence charges.

    Yeah, so? And the biggest guy is supposed to get whatever he can grab, and losers are supposed to lose.

    Trump’s attacks on Sessions — and his efforts to force his attorney general to quit his post after Sessions recused himself from the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — are now part of an obstruction investigation into the president by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team.

    So it’s very clever of Trump to do more obstruction right out in the open. It’s like a triple bluff, ya know?

    Trump stayed at the White House on Monday, watching television. He emerged earlier in the day, apparently about to join a waiting motorcade, before returning inside.

    To watch more television.

  • Not some banana republic

    Trump, insane:

    Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff……….The Democrats, none of whom voted for Jeff Sessions, must love him now. Same thing with Lyin’ James Comey. The Dems all hated him, wanted him out, thought he was disgusting – UNTIL I FIRED HIM! Immediately he became a wonderful man, a saint like figure in fact. Really sick!

    Ben Sasse – a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee – responds:

    The United States is not some banana republic with a two-tiered system of justice – one for the majority party and one for the minority party. These two men have been charged with crimes because of evidence, not because of who the President was when the investigations began. Instead of commenting on ongoing investigations and prosecutions, the job of the President of the United States is to defend the Constitution and protect the impartial administration of justice.

    True, but…not what’s happening.

  • Trump whispers his secret to reporters

    Daniel Dale at the Toronto Star reports Trump’s latest Brilliant Move:

    High-stakes trade negotiations between Canada and the U.S. were dramatically upended on Friday morning after inflammatory secret remarks by President Donald Trump were obtained by the Toronto Star.

    In comments Trump wanted to be “off the record,” the U.S. president told Bloomberg News reporters on Thursday that he is not making any compromises at all in the talks with Canada — but that he cannot say this publicly because “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal.”

    He cannot say it publicly but he can say it to reporters. Very sensible.

    “Here’s the problem. If I say no — the answer’s no. If I say no, then you’re going to put that, and it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal … I can’t kill these people,” Trump said of the Canadian government.

    In another remark he did not want published, Trump said that the possible deal with Canada would be “totally on our terms.” He suggested he was scaring the Canadians into submission by repeatedly threatening to impose tariffs.

    “Off the record, Canada’s working their ass off. And every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” Trump said. The Impala is produced at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario.

    Such a sober, wise, careful administrator.

    Today he helpfully confirmed that he said it.

  • One of the angry

    What “President” Trump is inciting:

    The F.B.I. said on Thursday that it charged a California man who threatened to kill employees of The Boston Globe after calling them the “enemy of the people” in a series of menacing phone calls.

    Robert D. Chain, 68, was arrested on Thursday at his home in Encino, Calif. The F.B.I. said Mr. Chain owned several firearms and had recently purchased a small-caliber rifle.

    According to federal documents, Mr. Chain began calling The Boston Globe immediately after the newspaper announced on Aug. 10 that it would publish a coordinated editorial response to political attacks on the media. Prosecutors said the threats were in retaliation for The Globe’s leadership in the editorial campaign.

    In one call to the paper’s newsroom, Mr. Chain threatened to shoot the newspaper’s employees in the head, the F.B.I. said. Three days later, in another call, Mr. Chain said: “You’re the enemy of the people.” Using profane language, he threatened to kill “every” Globe employee.

    I wonder where he got the idea that a newspaper is “the enemy of the people.” Kidding; we all know exactly where he got it. He got it from the corrupt cornered reckless murderous criminal who got himself elected president of the US a couple of years ago.

    Are we embarrassed and ashamed enough yet?

    As the Times points out, Trump used the dangerous phrase yet again just yesterday.