Tag: Trump

  • At a conference on preventing cyberbullying

    Today Melania Trump told people not to be abusive on social media.

    Melania Trump warned that social media can be used in a “destructive and harmful” manner during remarks Monday at a conference on preventing cyberbullying. On the morning that she attended the event in Rockville, Md., her husband ripped into his adversaries on Twitter.

    “In today’s global society, social media is an inevitable part of our children’s daily lives,” the first lady said. “It can be used in many positive ways but can also be destructive and harmful when used incorrectly.”

    …

    After the first lady spoke, she listened to a panel titled “Perspectives From Social Media Industry: Existing Efforts to Support Youth.” One of the speakers was Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s public policy manager.

    “We have strong rules against abusive behavior, and we’ve leveraged technology to help us enforce those rules,” Culbertson said during the session.

    No, they don’t. They really don’t. Their “rules” are no more effective against abusive behavior than Melania’s bleats about using social media “correctly.”

    President Trump had already spent part of his morning on Twitter calling special counsel Robert S. Mueller III “disgraced and discredited.” After the first lady’s speech, the president was again on Twitter, calling John Brennan “the worst CIA Director in our country’s history.”

    Which, in a president, is about as abusive as it gets.

    Trump’s use of Twitter to target his real and perceived enemies is well known. Only last week he prompted an uproar by referring to former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman as “that dog” — a term many found to be racist and misogynistic.

    While many didn’t? Come on. Of course it’s racist and misogynistic to call a black woman “that dog.”

    Anyway, the point is, it borders on insulting for Melania Trump to be lecturing us on not using social media to abuse when she’s married to the world’s biggest abuser and recently saw fit to announce that she really doesn’t care.

  • To try to prevent these abuses in the future

    Brennan says he’s willing to take Trump to court to prevent him from taking any more security clearances away for personal vindictive reasons.

    “I am going to do whatever I can personally to try to prevent these abuses in the future, and if it means going to court, I will do that,” Brennan said in an appearance on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”

    Brennan voiced his eagerness to challenge Trump on the same day that national security adviser John Bolton floated the idea of a sweeping review of all security clearances held by those both inside and outside the government. Such a review could affect more than 4 million Americans.

    A review overseen by Bolton and Trump? Not a good plan.

    Brennan, who is among Trump’s most outspoken critics, was abruptly stripped of his clearance by the White House last week. Brennan said Sunday that since then, a number of lawyers have contacted him to offer advice on pursuing an injunction to prevent Trump from taking similar actions in the future.

    I imagine a great sea of restive lawyers out there, driven to near madness by a president with such a thoroughgoing disdain for the rule of law.

    “If my clearances — and my reputation, as I’m being pulled through the mud now — if that’s the price we’re going to pay to prevent Donald Trump from doing this against other people, to me, it’s a small price to pay,” Brennan said.

    He did not elaborate on what such a legal move would entail.

    Asked during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” about a possible lawsuit by Brennan, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, described it as a welcome opportunity.

    “I would volunteer to do that case for the president. I would love to have Brennan under oath,” Giuliani said. “We will find out about Brennan, and we will find out what a terrible job he did.”

    What a sack of shit Giuliani is.

    As furor over Trump’s actions has intensified, the president has shown no signs of backing down. According to senior administration officials, the White House is preparing paperwork to strip the clearances of several other current and former officials who have either sharply critiqued Trump or have played a role in the Russia probe.

    That last one looks like yet more obstruction of justice.

    H/t Rob at Miscellany Room

  • An epithet too many

    Steve Benen at Maddow Blog gives some details on why it’s so absurd for Trump to scream about “McCarthyism.”

    First, Trump might want to read his first book. In “The Art of the Deal,” his ghostwriter wrote, “Tough as he was, Roy Cohn had a lot of friends, and I’m not embarrassed to say I was one. He was a truly loyal guy.”

    In a more recent interview with the Washington Post, Trump said of Cohn, “Some people didn’t like him, and some people were offended by him. I mean, they would literally leave a dinner. I had one evening where three or four people got up from a table and left the table because they couldn’t stand the mention of his name. But with all of that being said, he did a very good job for me as a lawyer. I get a kick out of winning, and Roy would win.”

    Trump’s morality in a nutshell – he likes to win and he doesn’t give the tiniest damn about how he does it.

    Also, Trump’s gang love McCarthy. Of course they do.

    And third, if anyone in contemporary politics can credibly claim the mantle to McCarthyism, it’s the president who’s now asking us to “study” the late senator’s tactics. To understand anything about McCarthyism is to recognize the fact that the GOP demagogue relied on baseless allegations and conspiracy theories to generate fear. When pressed for evidence to support his incendiary accusations, McCarthy always refused, lashing out at those who asked.

    Aka reversing victim and offender. Trump does it all the time.

  • Hiding in plain sight

    A new book says Trump may be a Russian asset compromised by billions of laundered dollars in shady real estate deals.

    In House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, veteran journalist and author Craig Unger names 59 Russians as business associates of Trump (who has claimed he has none) and follows the purported financial links between them and the Trump Organization going back decades.

    Newsweek asked Unger some questions.

    You call this the greatest intelligence operation of our time. What do you mean by that?
    It started out as a simple money-laundering operation at Trump Tower in 1984, when a Russian mobster came to Trump Tower with $6 million in cash and bought five condos. This is the template for what begins to unfold. At least 1,300 of Trump condos in the United States have been sold similarly. All cash purchases through anonymous sources. Those numbers reflect only domestic property. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the KGB decided to create multibillion-dollar companies to survive. The use of the term mafia state is not just a metaphor. It really explains how Russia works. The mafia essentially reports to Putin.

    But, Newsweek says, the Trumps have always talked about this openly, so how does the government not know about it? Unger says the real estate industry has terrible regulation.

    Which of your findings do you think Americans would find most shocking?
    There is a Russian asset in the White House. He is an asset. I believe he is an agent, but it’s hard to prove he is knowledgeable. When you look at the 59 Russians, some live in Trump Tower. The Russian mafia is a state actor, and it has direct ties to Russian intelligence, and they have been located in the home of the president of the United States!

    And not only is he an asset, he is also a very obedient asset. Helsinki.

  • A scramble on Saturday

    Oopsie. Trump’s lawyers don’t know exactly what McGahn told the Mueller team.

    The president’s lawyers said on Sunday that they were confident that Mr. McGahn had said nothing injurious to the president during the 30 hours of interviews. But Mr. McGahn’s lawyer has offered only a limited accounting of what Mr. McGahn told the investigators, according to two people close to the president.

    That has prompted concern among Mr. Trump’s advisers that Mr. McGahn’s statements could help serve as a key component for a damning report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which the Justice Department could send to Congress, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

    But that’s ok, because Trump is telling us on Twitter that Mueller is “disgraced” so naturally nobody will care about his stinky old report.

    Or, even more likely, the Republicans will just bury it…unless they’re outnumbered.

    Trump’s lawyers realized they had this little problem once they read the Times story about McGahn. I’m sure that made for a jolly weekend.

    The article set off a scramble on Saturday among Mr. Trump’s lawyers and advisers. The president, sequestered at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., solicited opinions from a small group of advisers on the possible repercussions from the article. The president ordered Mr. Giuliani to tell reporters that the article was wrong, but Mr. Giuliani did not go that far in his television appearances.

    Donnie ordered Rudy to lie for him but Rudy told slightly fewer lies than Donnie ordered him to tell. This is the state of things.

    Mr. Trump was rattled by the Times report, according to people familiar with his thinking. The president, who is said to be obsessed with the role that John W. Dean, the White House counsel to President Richard M. Nixon, played as an informant during Watergate, was jolted by the notion that he did not know what Mr. McGahn had shared.

    I hope he’s miserable. I hope he’s stressed all to fuck and climbing the walls.

  • Ya dirty rat

    The Times ran a much discussed piece yesterday about a White House lawyer telling the Mueller inquiry the truth.

    The White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, has cooperated extensively in the special counsel investigation, sharing detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice, including some that investigators would not have learned of otherwise, according to a dozen current and former White House officials and others briefed on the matter.

    …

    Among them were Mr. Trump’s comments and actions during the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and Mr. Trump’s obsession with putting a loyalist in charge of the inquiry, including his repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to claim oversight of it. Mr. McGahn was also centrally involved in Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which investigators might not have discovered without him.

    This isn’t what lawyers usually do.

    Mr. McGahn’s cooperation began in part as a result of a decision by Mr. Trump’s first team of criminal lawyers to collaborate fully with Mr. Mueller. The president’s lawyers have explained that they believed their client had nothing to hide and that they could bring the investigation to an end quickly.

    Oops.

    McGahn didn’t want to suffer John Dean’s fate, so he talked frankly to Mueller’s team.

    To investigators, Mr. McGahn was a fruitful witness, people familiar with the investigation said. He had been directly involved in nearly every episode they are scrutinizing to determine whether the president obstructed justice. To make an obstruction case, prosecutors who lack a piece of slam-dunk evidence generally point to a range of actions that prove that the suspect tried to interfere with the inquiry.

    Mr. McGahn gave to Mr. Mueller’s investigators, the people said, a sense of the president’s mind-set in the days leading to the firing of Mr. Comey; how the White House handled the firing of the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn; and how Mr. Trump repeatedly berated Mr. Sessions, tried to get him to assert control over the investigation and threatened to fire him.

    So now Trump is pitching a fit.

    President Trump attacked The New York Times on Sunday in a series of tweets in which he denounced a report describing the extensive cooperation between the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, and the special counsel’s investigators.

    In the Twitter posts, the president confirmed that he had made the unusual decision to allow Mr. McGahn and other officials to cooperate fully with the inquiry, saying he had “nothing to hide.” But Mr. Trump said the Times article had falsely insinuated that Mr. McGahn had “turned” on him.

    “The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel, he must be a John Dean type ‘RAT,’” Mr. Trump said, referring to the Nixon White House counsel who cooperated with investigators in the Watergate investigation.

    Notice how breezily Trump reveals his mindset – that Dean’s telling the truth to Watergate investigators makes him a RAT. It couldn’t be more mob-boss-like.

    The Times stands by its story.

    The article detailed how Mr. McGahn, fearing that he could be made a scapegoat by the president, has described Mr. Trump’s actions and anger toward the Russia inquiry in at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled about 30 hours. In those interviews, Mr. McGahn gave the investigators information that they might not otherwise have gotten, according to a dozen current and former White House officials and others.

    …

    Mr. Trump used his tweets on Sunday morning, which he wrote from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., to intensify his assault on the special counsel investigation.

    He called the inquiry “McCarthyism at its WORST!” — a reference to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s persecution of suspected communist sympathizers in the 1950s.

    “Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby!” Mr. Trump said of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and his federal prosecutors. “Rigged Witch Hunt!”

    I don’t think Trump himself has studied Joe McCarthy, because what he did is not similar to what Mueller is doing. I think Trump recognizes the name solely as a pejorative label meaning “something I don’t like,” so he has no idea how to apply it accurately or illuminatingly. Trump is far more akin to McCarthy in thinking and character than Mueller is.

  • He’s got more important things on his mind

    You might think Republicans would want to distance themselves from Trump’s racist outbursts, but no, they’re cool with all that.

    The president of the United States had just lobbed another racially charged insult — this time calling his former top African American adviser a “dog” — but Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) had no interest in talking about it.

    “I’ve got more important things on my mind, so I really don’t have a comment on that,” said the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, chuckling at the question.

    Oh, more important things – so the president spewing racist insults on Twitter isn’t important. Well it’s not important to this one white guy at least.

    Has President Trump ever said anything on race that made Cornyn uncomfortable? “I think the most important thing is to pay attention to what the president does, which I think has been good for the country,” the senator demurred.

    What he says is included in what he does.

    What about his constituents back home — are they concerned? “I know you have to ask these questions but I’m not going to talk about that,” Cornyn said, politely ending the brief interview in the basement of the U.S. Capitol. “I just think that’s an endless little wild goose chase and I’m not going there.”

    Ah yes, silly reporters, thinking racist abuse matters.

  • Trump has accused Brennan of lèse majesté

    Tim Weiner, a former NY Times reporter and author of a history of the CIA and one of the FBI, reminds us (and Trump) that Trump is not a king.

    (It’s true that literally speaking he’s not, but we’re learning every day that he has royal and more than royal powers. He’s doing shit that constitutional monarchs in Europe wouldn’t dare do, and we can’t stop him.)

    In times of crisis, the leaders of the military and intelligence communities try to put aside their differences, often many and sundry, and work together for the good of the country. That’s what’s happening today with a remarkable group of retired generals, admirals and spymasters who have signed up for the resistance, telling the president of the United States, in so many words, that he is not a king.

    The open letter from the thirteen intelligence boffins did that.

    They rebuked Mr. Trump for revoking the security clearance of John Brennan, the C.I.A. director under President Obama, in retaliation for his scalding condemnations and, ominously, for his role in “the rigged witch hunt” — the investigation into Russia’s attempt to fix the 2016 election, now in the hands of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel. The president’s latest attempt to punish or silence everyone connected with the case, along with his fiercest critics in political life, will not be his last.

    First he went after his F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and the acting attorney general, Sally Yates. Then he came for Mr. Brennan. Now it’s Bruce Ohr, a previously obscure Justice Department official targeted by right-wing conspiracy theories, a man who will lose his job if he loses his clearances. Tomorrow it may be James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, a cable-news Trump critic and a co-signer of the letter. It’s clear there will be more.

    It’s clear because Trump has explicitly said so, because news reports say he is working on it, and because of course he is.

    The text was equally striking: “You don’t have to agree with what John Brennan says (and, again, not all of us do) to agree with his right to say it, subject to his obligation to protect classified information,” they wrote. “We have never before seen the approval or removal of security clearances used as a political tool, as was done in this case.” The president sent “a signal to other former and current officials” to refrain from criticizing him, the letter continued, and “that signal is inappropriate and deeply regrettable.”

    Notice their confidence that Brennan wasn’t violating his obligation to protect classified information. That’s significant because the right is accusing him of doing just that.

    It’s clear that Mr. Brennan’s fierce political and personal attacks rattled the china in the Oval Office. The president essentially has accused Mr. Brennan of lèse majesté — the crime of criticizing the monarch, tantamount to treason. Remarkably, this relic of the days when kings were deemed divine remains on the books in some European monarchies as well as nations like Saudi Arabia, where a critique of the crown is considered terrorism.

    It’s not a crime in the United States. That’s why we fought a revolution against a mad king.

    It’s not a crime, and it’s a protected right under the First Amendment. As people keep having to point out, the First Amendment doesn’t prohibit private entities from interfering with speech, but it damn well does prohibit the government from doing so, and Trump has parked his syphilitic bum on top of that government. He can’t come after us for mentioning his syphilitic bum…but he can do things like take security clearances away.

    You don’t need a secret decoder ring to see what’s happening here. John Brennan, who knows whereof he speaks, believes that the president is a threat to the security of the United States — a counterintelligence threat, no less, in thrall to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The president attacks him, severing Mr. Brennan’s access to classified information. The deans of national security rise up to defend him — and, by implication, intelligence officers and federal investigators who are closing in on the White House.

    They are sending a message to active-duty generals and admirals, soldiers and spies. Remember your oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Think twice before following this man’s orders in a crisis. You might first consider throwing down your stars.

    Trump is, in short, a domestic enemy of the Constitution.

  • 60 more

    There’s another letter, this one from 6o former CIA officers saying Sir this is bullshit Sir.

    In a nutshell, it says they believe former government officials have the right to express their unclassified views on what they see as critical national security issues without fear of being punished for doing so.

    Sad that a president needs that explained to him. Even sadder that he’ll pay no attention whatever.

  • Trump mansplains to the vets

    A clusterfuck we didn’t hear about at the time:

    Early on in the Donald Trump administration, the president vested many of his nearest and dearest with tasks they were woefully unprepared for—and Apprentice superstar Omarosa Manigault-Newman was no exception.

    Long before she was his chief antagonist, Manigault-Newman was tapped by President Trump to handle veterans’ issues for the White House—causing immediate backlash from vets organizations who read this as a slap in the face and a betrayal of his campaign rhetoric about “taking care of our veterans.”

    What, just because she had no relevant experience or expertise and was appointed as an act of grotesque frivolity by her reality TV buddy? Picky picky picky.

    So they all had a meeting in March 2017.

    The event nearly degenerated into a uniquely Trumpian trainwreck.

    During this White House meeting, certain details of which have not been previously reported, the president managed to again annoy and confuse U.S. war veterans, this time by getting into a bizarre, protracted argument with Vietnam War vets present about the movie Apocalypse Now and the herbicide Agent Orange.

    “It was really fucking weird,” one attendee bluntly assessed to The Daily Beast.

    Well, he’s a fucking weird guy.

    So they were all at the big table, right? And Trump goes around the table calling on people.

    Soon, he got to Rick Weidman, co-founder of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), who was one of Vietnam vets in the room that day, having served a tour of duty in 1969 as a medic. (Trump famously avoided military service in that disastrous war, ostensibly due to “bone spurs,” and had once said that his prolific sex life was his own “personal Vietnam.”)

    …

    During the course of the meeting, Weidman brought up the issue of Agent Orange, an extremely notorious component of the U.S. herbicidal warfare on Vietnam. Weidman was imploring the president and his team to permit access to benefits for a broader number of vets who have said they were poisoned by Agent Orange.

    Trump responded by saying, “That’s taken care of,” according to people in the room.

    His reply puzzled the group.

    Attendees began explaining to the president that the VA had not made enough progress on the issue at all, to which Trump responded by abruptly derailing the meeting and asking the attendees if Agent Orange was “that stuff from that movie.”

    He did not initially name the film he was referencing, but it quickly became clear as Trump kept rambling that he was referring to the classic 1979 Francis Ford Coppola epic Apocalypse Now, and specifically the famous helicopter attack scene set to the “Ride of the Valkyries.”

    Source present at the time tell The Daily Beast that multiple people—including Vietnam War veterans—chimed in to inform the president that the Apocalypse Now set piece he was talking about showcased the U.S. military using napalm, not Agent Orange.

    Trump refused to accept that he was mistaken and proceeded to say things like, “no, I think it’s that stuff from that movie.”

    Yes, that’s a good look, a guy who never went to Vietnam correcting a bunch of vets who did go to Vietnam on the content of a famous movie about the war in Vietnam. Who is more likely to have paid close attention and remembered it in detail, a vet who was in the war or a real estate speculator who was not? Next Trump should summon some astronauts and explain Apollo 13 to them.

    He then went around the room polling attendees about if it was, in fact, napalm or Agent Orange in the famous scene from “that movie,” as the gathering—organized to focus on important, sometimes life-or-death issues for veterans—descended into a pointless debate over Apocalypse Now that the president simply would not concede, despite all the available evidence.

    And the fact that he was the least likely to know person in the room.

    Finally, Trump made eye contact again with Weidman and asked him if it was napalm or Agent Orange. The VVA co-founder assured Trump, as did several before him, that it was in fact napalm, and said that he didn’t like the Coppola film and believed it to be a disservice to Vietnam War veterans.

    According to two people in attendance, Trump then flippantly replied to the Vietnam vet, “Well, I think you just didn’t like the movie,” before finally moving on.

    The debate over Apocalypse Now in the Roosevelt Room lasted at least two minutes, according to estimates from those who endured it. The president was not able to call on everyone at the roundtable by the end of the event, in part due to these types of tangents.

    Today he’s back at his golf club. Before leaving he told reporters it was going to be work, all work.

  • A major rupture in civil-military relations

    Fred Kaplan at Slate says yesterday’s op-ed by retired admiral William McRaven is a big deal.

    One former senior intelligence official who read the op-ed sent me an email: “Takes my breath away. This is BIG!!!” Another wrote, again on background, that fellow officers—retired and active-duty—will take this as a sign of a major rupture in civil-military relations, brought on by Trump’s blatant disrespect for national security officials and the entire security system.

    Which has to be alarming for people in the military. The guy at the top who can unilaterally make things happen is a flaming lunatic and egomaniac – yes that’s pretty scary.

    Then, late on Thursday night, 12 former CIA directors and deputy directors released a similar statement. By coincidence, the statement was written a few hours before McRaven’s op-ed appeared, according to two of the organizers.

    The intelligence officials stopped short of asking Trump to revoke their clearances—that idea hadn’t come up in conversation. But like McRaven, they defended Brennan’s integrity and denounced Trump’s action as having “nothing to do with who should and should not hold security clearances—and everything to do with an attempt to stifle free speech.”

    The statement went on: “We have never before seen the approval or removal of security clearances used as a political tool, as was done in this case,” adding that “this action is quite clearly a signal to other former and current officials” to stay silent. It noted that some of the signatories agree with Brennan’s long string of critical statements about Trump, while others do not. However, they all agree that decisions on security clearances “should be based on national security concerns and not political views.”

    Plus, again, the views aren’t political so much as moral. Trump is a bad man and that wouldn’t change if he switched parties.

    The ex-officials include William Webster, Porter Goss, Gen. Michael Hayden, and John McLaughlin (those who served Republicans); Leon Panetta, Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. James Clapper, Michael Morell, Avril Haines and David Cohen (those who served Democrats); and George Tenet, and Stephen Kappes (who served presidents of both parties).

    More significant, seven of the 12—Webster, Goss, Hayden, McLaughlin, Clapper, Morell, and Kappes—were career intelligence officials. One, Petraeus, was a career combat commander. [Update, Aug. 17, 2018, 12:10 a.m.: Just before midnight, a 13th ex-director, Robert Gates—another career CIA official who has served under several presidents of both parties—added his name to the statement. He had been inaccessible, until then.]

    One of the signers told me that some who signed the statement did so reluctantly, given the long-standing principle that intelligence and military officers should remain apolitical. However, the consensus was that Trump’s behavior has gone beyond the pale.

    Again – it’s not political. Firing people because they criticize you isn’t a matter of party allegiance, it’s a matter of crazed reckless narcissism. Trump holds a political office but what’s wrong with him is moral rather than political.

    I’m going to give the statement its own post. It needs room to breathe.

  • Donnie likes to collect all his toys in one place

    Trump has canceled his fascist parade and blamed the DC government for making it too expensive.

    President Trump on Friday canceled plans for a military parade this fall in Washington, blaming local officials for inflating the costs and saying they “know a windfall when they see it.”

    Washington’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, pushed back on Twitter, saying that she had “finally got thru” to the president to convey the “realities” of what it costs to stage events like military parades in the city.

    She put the number at $21.6 million, though the city’s costs are just a fraction of the total, with federal agencies also kicking in millions of dollars. A day earlier, the Pentagon said Mr. Trump’s parade to celebrate the military could be postponed to 2019, as officials acknowledged that the event could cost more than $90 million.

    And what would all that money be for? Nothing. A treat for Trump, and a threat to the rest of us – which is not nothing but it’s also not something we should have to pay for. It would be for nothing in the sense of a reasonable goal or purpose.

    Mr. Trump, who enjoys military history, called last year for a parade of troops, tanks, jets and other equipment to pass through the streets of the nation’s capital. Early cost estimates for the fanfare ranged from $10 million to $30 million; CNBC first reported the new $90 million figure.

    Nicely sly wording. Trump doesn’t study or pursue or research military history, he doesn’t even read it, he “enjoys” it – meaning, he likes to watch displays of military hardware. That’s not actually military history, of course, it’s just shopping.

    Mr. Trump was impressed by a Bastille Day parade that he attended in Paris in July 2017. The city is scheduled to hold its annual Armistice Day parade in November. It was not immediately clear which parade the president plans to attend at Andrews.

    The president had hoped to have military tanks and jets at his own inauguration parade, but he was told he could not.

    The last time a similar parade was held in Washington was in 1991, celebrating the end of the Persian Gulf War. It cost about $12 million, or about $22 million in today’s dollars.

    Mr. Trump’s dream of a military parade with tanks barreling down the streets and fighter jets flying above him has faced resistance. Critics have said these parades typically mark a victory in a war. Others have said it may not be the best use of the Defense Department’s money.

    I wish this stupid infant would just go away.

  • The man who knew too much

    David Ignatius asks:

    What was so threatening about the former CIA chief? Beyond Brennan’s sheer cussedness, I’d guess that Trump was frightened — and remains so to this day — about just how much Brennan knows about his secrets. And by that, I don’t just mean his dealings with Russian oligarchs and presidents but the way he moved through a world of fixers, flatterers and money launderers.

    Hmm, yes, Brennan probably does know a lot about Trump’s secrets. So…it wasn’t particularly clever to piss him off further, was it.

    Brennan, like Comey, was there at the beginning of this investigation. Trump must have asked himself: What does Brennan know? What did he learn from the CIA’s deep assets in Moscow, and from liaison partners such as Britain, Israel, Germany and the Netherlands? Does Trump think Brennan will be a less credible witness without a security clearance?

    Well, he’s dumb enough. He’s dumb enough to think that removing the security clearance actually removed the knowledge from Brennan’s brain.

  • Come at me, sir

    The retired admiral who oversaw the raid that killed bin Laden tells Trump to take away his security clearance too.

    Dear Mr. President:

    Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.

    Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.

    He says he had hoped when Trump was elected he would rise to the occasion and become a great leader.

    A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.

    Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.

    If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be.

    Which will be never. He couldn’t if he wanted to – he doesn’t have the faintest idea how, or the qualities that would enable him to learn how. He’s bad quality all the way down.

  • With the face of a pig

    Trump has always called women dogs, so lighten up already. Gail Collins is one of those women:

    Hey, it was long ago, but it still comes up. Particularly now that we’re making lists of all the women our president has ever compared to a canine. Back when I worked for New York Newsday, he sent me a copy of a column I’d written, scrawled with objections, along with an announcement that I was “a dog and a liar” and that my picture was “the face of a pig.” At the time, he was only a flailing real estate developer trying to make a deal with the city, yet it still seemed so weird that at first I wondered if it might be a joke, or some enemy of Trump’s trying to embarrass him. But no, it was a missive from the man himself.

    She thought it couldn’t be at first because normal adults don’t act like that. Period. An adult who sends personal abuse to a total stranger is badly broken somewhere. Trump has always been badly broken.

    This week, of course, Trump referred to his ex-friend Omarosa in a tweet as “that dog.” I am going to go out on a limb and say that when the president of the United States insults a woman that way in a public statement, it’s a little bit more of an issue.

    One that will never go away. As the temperatures rise and the forests burn and the crops fail, it will still be the case that the US once had a hateful bully as a president.

    One of the worst things about this moment in our national lives is the fear that if Trump gets into trouble for doing something dumb and obnoxious, he’ll respond by doing something huge and maybe dangerous. Have you heard that Stormy Daniels is going to be on the British version of “Celebrity Big Brother”? What happens if she tells that story about a hotel room spanking session to a house full of smirking Europeans? He could declare a war.

    Or not even declare a war but just do a Pearl Harbor and drop a few nukes on someone.

    During the campaign Trump continually pointed out that he went to the Wharton School of Business. (“It’s like super genius stuff.”) That gave many people the impression he’d gotten the high-prestige Wharton M.B.A., but he was really just a transfer student into the undergraduate program. Skeptics suggested he only edged his way in because of family connections. He graduated without any honors or distinction, and went on to publish a best-selling memoir that was written by somebody else.

    I’m betting there were no dogs in it.

  • Arrest that woman

    Trump is triggered. His people have been telling him to ignore Omarosa and her book, which tells us that they’ve confused him with someone else.

    Now advisers fear his rage at Manigault Newman is fueling irrational outbursts that bolster the claim in her book that Trump said the “n-word” during an Apprenticeouttake.

    Irrational outbursts? Trump?? Surely not. It’s people like Brennan and Comey who go in for that kind of thing; Trump says so himself.

    In recent days, Trump has called Manigault Newman “crazed,” a “lowlife,” and a “dog” on Twitter. His campaign filed an arbitration suit against her seeking “millions.” And Trump told advisers that he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to have Manigault Newman arrested, according to one Republican briefed on the conversations. (It’s unclear what law Trump believes she broke.)

    No it isn’t! It’s perfectly clear: it’s the law against saying a single harsh word about Trump.

    Another Republican recounted how over the weekend Trump derailed a midterm-election strategy session to rant about Manigault Newman’s betrayal.

    Look. Election strategy is about other people as well as Trump. Manigault Newman’s “betrayal” is solely about Trump. Which one do you think he’s going to rant about? Let’s stay on our toes here.

    One Trump person said it’s a death spiral. That would be good.

  • Trump thinks they’re very duplicitous

    Well golly gee. Trump artlessly told the Wall Street Journal that he went after Brennan in order to obstruct justice in the Mueller inquiry.

    President Trump drew a direct connection between the special counsel investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and his decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan and review the clearances of several other former officials.

    In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Trump cited Mr. Brennan as among those he held responsible for the investigation, which also is looking into whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Mr. Trump has denied collusion, and Russia has denied interfering.

    Much as a mob bus might tell a lieutenant that Jones has to be silenced because he knows where the bodies are buried.

    “I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham,” Mr. Trump said in an interview. “And these people led it!”

    See what I mean by “artlessly”? He seems to think that we will take his calling it the rigged witch hunt as a decisive reason to agree that it is a rigged witch hunt. “Ohhhh, that’s what you call it, well that changes everything.”

    He seems to think we’ll believe him. That’s an enormous gap between belief and reality.

    Earlier in the day, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the administration was also reviewing the clearances of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, and former National Security Agency and CIA chief Michael Hayden.

    “I don’t trust many of those people on that list,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “I think that they’re very duplicitous. I think they’re not good people.”

    Says the most duplicitous and evil person on the planet.

    Mr. Trump and Mr. Brennan have sparred publicly for months, with Mr. Trump frequently tweeting quotes by others critical of Mr. Brennan.

    After Mr. Trump’s news conference last month with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Mr. Brennan wrote in a tweet that Mr. Trump’s conduct “rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors’ ” and called it “nothing short of treasonous.”

    Last month, he likened Mr. Trump to Bernie Madoff, the investor who executed a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, tweeting that the two shared “a remarkably unethical ability to deceive & manipulate others, building Ponzi schemes to aggrandize yourselves.”

    Cool. I’ve compared Trump to Madoff myself. Mind you it’s a pretty obvious comparison. Famous Psychopaths We Have Seen.

    Millions of U.S. citizens hold security clearances, needed for many government and private-sector jobs. The practice of having senior national security officials retain clearance after leaving the government is longstanding and serves various functions, national security officials and analysts said.

    When the White House first threatened to revoke the former officials’ security clearances last month, national security analysts described the move as unprecedented.

    “I cannot remember a time when the president of the United States got personally involved in the status of individual security clearances within the country,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a former chief of staff at the CIA. “This is an administration shooting itself in the foot by depriving itself of experience and knowledge that could be used for its benefit.”

    That’s because it’s an administration that has no important goal other than the promotion and protection of Donald Trump.

  • Wild outbursts on the internet and television

    Vox gives us Sarah Sanders’s disgusting performance “explaining” Trump’s attack on Brennan.

    White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, reading a statement from the president during the daily press briefing on Wednesday, cited Trump’s “constitutional responsibility to protect the nation’s classified information” as justification for his decision to revoke Brennan’s clearance.

    “Mr. Brennan has recently leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations — wild outbursts on the internet and television — about this administration,” Sanders said, reading the president’s statement.

    “I’m not a reckless lunatic, you’re a reckless lunatic!” Trump is the guy who goes in for wild outbursts on Twitter and at his “rallies” and on the global stage; Brennan talks soberly and seriously about the danger Trump is to all of us.

  • Citing “erratic” behavior

    And now this:

    In a remarkable attack on a political opponent, President Trump on Wednesday revoked the security clearance of John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director under President Barack Obama, citing what he called Mr. Brennan’s “erratic” behavior.

    Trump calls Brennan erratic.

    The White House had threatened last month to strip Mr. Brennan and other Obama administration officials — including Susan E. Rice, the former national security adviser; and James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence — of their security clearances. At the time, Ms. Sanders said that Mr. Trump was considering doing it because “they politicized, and in some cases monetized, their public service and security clearances.”

    The lying hack.

    In a tweet this week, Mr. Brennan criticized Mr. Trump for the language that the president used to attack Omarosa Manigault Newman, his former top aide, who[m] he called a “dog.”

    Mr. Brennan wrote, “It’s astounding how often you fail to live up to minimum standards of decency, civility, & probity. Seems like you will never understand what it means to be president, nor what it takes to be a good, decent, & honest person. So disheartening, so dangerous for our Nation.”

    So the stupid worthless corrupt little shit took revenge.

    Mr. Trump’s decision to revoke Mr. Brennan’s security clearance was announced by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. Ms. Sanders said the president was reviewing the security clearances of other former Democratic officials who have been critics of the president. Those include, among others, Ms. Rice; Mr. Clapper; Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the C.I.A. and National Security Agency; and Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general.

    It’s war. If we can’t defeat him he will destroy everything.

    The announcement of the change in Mr. Brennan’s security clearance came as the White House has been mired in a public relations crisis created by the allegations from Ms. Manigault Newman, who has said the president suffers from mental incapacitation and has used racial slurs.

    Ms. Sanders read a statement from Mr. Trump that indicated that the reason for the revocation of Mr. Brennan’s security clearance was because he is among a group of former officials who have “transitioned into highly partisan” people.

    It’s not “partisan” to know a lying worthless bullying shit when you see one.

  • Remember, he’s not a real Strzok

    Trump has been on a Twitter binge. (Does he ever do any actual work?) One in particular got my attention.

    What what what? That sounds as if the FBI has been doing Trump’s bidding. Who is this Swecker and where did Don get that weird assertion? So I googled Swecker’s name and got a Think Progress piece from a couple of hours ago:

    As he’s in the habit of doing, on Wednesday morning President Trump tweeted out a quote from a friendly conservative commentator — his goal this time being to justify the controversial firing of FBI agent Peter Strzok.

    Trump shared a quote from former FBI official Chris Swecker, who wrote in a Fox News column that the Strzok firing “was a deci[sive] step in the right direction in correcting the wrongs committed by what has been described as Comey’s skinny inner circle.”

    The Fox column, as you can see, is dated yesterday. Think Progress continues:

    But there’s a big problem with Swecker’s column that Trump seemingly missed — to make his case, he cited tweets posted by fake Peter Strzok Twitter accounts.

    Oh good grief. I was fooled by that account for a couple of minutes right after Strzok was fired, and then I looked more closely and saw the @notpeterstrzok part. Apparently Swecker didn’t get that far.

    “Strzok is now engaged in an unhinged Twitter rant of vitriol towards President Trump that matches the hatred he expressed for Trump in his texts with Page. He has even revealed new and possibly classified or confidential investigative detail – or simply told lies – on Twitter,” Swecker wrote, paraphrasing fake Strzok tweets.

    As this is published, the real Strzok has only posted two tweets, and neither of them attack[s] the president.

    Trump promoted a column featuring fake Strzok quotes just minutes after he posted a tweet that employed circular reasoning to make a case that the FBI is infected with anti-Trump bias.

    Lies piled on lies, obstruction piled on obstruction.