Tag: Trump

  • A really big “if”

    Cohen says Trump knew.

    On Thursday night, both NBC and CNN reported that Cohen, per a source close to him, was prepared to tell investigators that he was present when Trump Jr. told his father about the possibility of meeting with the Russian lawyer to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.

    The publicist offered Junior dirt on Clinton, Junior said he loved it and needed to talk to the publicist’s client Agalarov.

    Three days later, Trump Jr. and Agalarov spoke (a call Trump Jr. claimed not to remember but that Agalarov did). Call logs suggest that Agalarov called Trump Jr. at 4:04 p.m. on June 6 and that they spoke for a minute or two. About 20 minutes later, Trump Jr. received a call from a blocked number, after which he immediately called Agalarov back. The call lasted three minutes, and, the next morning, the meeting was set up (after Trump Jr. placed calls to both campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, the other two meeting attendees — calls Trump Jr. says he didn’t remember).

    The same evening as the calls to Agalarov, after Trump won several Republican primary contests, he gave a victory speech.

    “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week, and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” he said during the speech. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting. I wonder if the press will want to attend, who knows.”

    He didn’t give that speech; the dirt turned out to be not very interesting dirt.

    There are still question marks.

    Was Cohen with Trump when the then-candidate called his son and was told about the Russia meeting? Did he find out some other way? Is the presentation from that source close to Cohen accurate? (Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, now on Trump’s legal team, says Cohen is lying.) More broadly — and more subject to interpretation — is the key question: What does this tell us about Trump’s relationship with Russia before the election?

    The bad news for Trump is that, so far, the safe bet has consistently been to assume that the Trump Tower situation is more incriminating than Trump’s team would have you believe. The revelations on Thursday further bolster that idea.

    Jennifer Rubin analyzes:

    If true, Cohen’s account would put Trump front and center in a plan to conspire — collude, if you will — with Russians to help him win the presidency. This almost certainly would make Trump’s mantra of “no collusion” a baldfaced lie and his conduct over the past 18 months (e.g. denying knowledge of the meeting, writing a phony account of the meeting, badgering Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself, threatening the special prosecutor, firing James B. Comey as FBI director, concocting bizarre and false conspiracy theories to distract investigators) nothing short of obstruction of justice. But that is a really big “if.”

    Trump barfed out a loony tunes tweet this morning screaming “I NEVER DID” but then he lies about everything so who cares.

    Rubin continues:

    Interestingly, Trump’s TV lawyer Rudy Giuliani didn’t deny the allegations Thursday night; he simply attacked Cohen’s credibility. Giuliani’s defense that Cohen is a “pathological liar” raises the question as to why the president would employ such a scoundrel for years. Moreover, given that Trump has told thousands of lies as president and that the large majority of Americans think Trump is dishonest, he’s not in a particularly strong position to get into a credibility contest with Cohen.

    …

    [I]f Trump’s direct approval of cooperation with Russians can be proved, it will be the biggest political scandal in American history. His presidency for all intents and purposes would be delegitimized. We are talking about a presidential candidate who sought and received help from a hostile foreign power, covered it up and “repaid” the favor by public obsequiousness to that power’s leader. Again, this has yet to be proved.

    And so we await developments.

  • See the bunny? See the flowers?

    How do you negotiate with Trump, they wonder. How do you break it down into small enough bits that he’ll be able to understand? How do you get him to focus?

    Maybe brightly colored cards will help?

    Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, came to Washington to try to persuade President Trump to stop his trade war with the European Union. Juncker’s approach, reports The Wall Street Journal, involved dumbing the material down just short of the point of using finger puppets to explain what “trade” means:

    Backing up his points, Mr. Juncker flipped through more than a dozen colorful cue cards with simplified explainers, the senior EU official said. Each card had at most three figures about a specific topic, such as trade in cars or standards for medical devices.

    “We knew this wasn’t an academic seminar,” the EU official said. “It had to be very simple.”

    By “academic seminar” he of course means “at an adult level with someone intelligent enough to follow.” By “it had to be very simple” he of course means “had to be so basic that a child in nursery school could grasp it.”

  • Do it to them

    Rebecca Morin at Politico on Trump’s grotesque “Russia is helping the Democrats!” tweet:

    “I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!” the president tweeted.

    The tweet follows a week of backlash from Republicans and Democrats alike from the president’s summit with Vladimir Putin, in which he appeared to side with the Russian president over his own intelligence officers on whether Moscow interfered in the 2016 election.

    During that same news conference, Putin explicitly stated that he did want Trump to win, which undercuts Trump’s Tuesday tweet.

    Oops. I guess Don forgot that part.

    Norm Eisen is quite forthright about it.

    https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/1021794806270513153

  • Based on the what now?

    Trolling.

  • An extremely unflattering evidentiary record

    Jennifer Rubin points out that what Trump is doing is an attack on the First Amendment (you know, the first amendment to that thing he swore an oath to protect and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic).

    the attempt to squelch criticism of the administration based on the content of these ex-officials’ speech is a blatant violation of the First Amendment. “Despite the great latitude given the president in national security matters, and particularly on clearances, this is a new low,” says former White House counsel Norman Eisen. “It is so transparently based upon personal and political retaliation.” He continues, “It brings to mind other Trump classifications found unconstitutional by courts, including on First Amendment grounds, like the first Muslim ban or the Twitter ban. Because of the extreme deference to the executive here, court redress might be tough to obtain — but Trump and team are certainly creating an extremely unflattering evidentiary record.”

    That’s a nice way of summing him up. I like it.

    Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me, “This is probably the clearest and most indefensible of Trump’s First Amendment violations.” He observes, “The idea that it could be covered up vis-à-vis the courts by blanket claims that national security is at issue strikes me as highly implausible.” He continues, “If the president [were] to make individualized findings that one of the officials he seeks to deprive . . . of security clearance has in fact [abused] the privilege of using that security clearance by releasing classified information, that would be another thing. But to take an enemies list of this kind and threaten every member of it the way the president has done makes Nixon’s enemies list look trivial by comparison.”

    If you watch the video of Sanders announcing his plan you can see that she’s eager to do it, she’s all excited about the chance for revenge. It’s an ugly spectacle.

    Protect Democracy’s Roadmap for Renewal, released on July 4, warned against “threats against critics of the presidency, or government actions that bully private individuals.” The report recommends that legal redress for government retaliation against dissenters be strengthened, a proposal that certainly seems prescient. In the short run, robust criticism from the public and Congress should rebuke the president. Ultimately, however, the country — by ballot or impeachment or demands for resignation — must remove a president whose contempt for the Constitution and disdain for his oath of office know no bounds.

    It’s basically just mobster/dictator behavior. “Don’t dispute me or you’ll be punished.” Why does Trump hate America?

  • Punishing the vocal critics

    Astonishing.

    President Donald Trump is considering revoking security clearances from ex-officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday.

    Sanders said Trump believed that the former officials “politicized” their positions by accusing Trump of inappropriate contact with Russia, and she said in that some cases they “monetized their clearances,” without clarifying what she meant.

    “The fact that people with security clearances are making baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence,” Sanders said. She also said Trump was eyeing clearances held by former NSA Director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser Susan Rice and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whose security clearance was deactivated after he was fired.

    What a spiteful reckless unguided missile he is.

    He’s so reckless and ego-centered that he doesn’t care that they’re in a position to know and understand why it’s not clever to try to be besties with Putin, he cares only that they failed to say he’s right about everything. This should get him swiftly removed from office, but it won’t.

    Brennan, Comey and Clapper have been vocal critics of Trump, often making headlines over their displeasure with the president’s performance.

    Last week, Brennan lambasted Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, calling it “nothing short of treasonous.”

    “Making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia or being influenced by Russia against the president is extremely inappropriate,” Sanders said during Monday’s press briefing. “And the fact that people with security clearances are making these baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence.”

    No, making treasonous overtures to Putin without witnesses present is “extremely inappropriate.” Punishing the people who say so is also not appropriate, or productive or legitimate or responsible or adult or anything else a president ought to be.

    Several minutes after Huckabee announced that the White House was seeking to revoke his clearance, Clapper on Monday called it “a petty way of retribution: for speaking out against Trump and said that “it’s an abuse of the system.”

    “The security clearance has nothing to do with how I or any of us feel about the president,” Clapper said in an interview with CNN, adding that he does not get security briefings and does not have access to classified information.

    But taking it away is its own reward, aka spite.

    When asked whether the president was punishing those ex-officials for speaking out, Sanders said: “The president doesn’t like that people are politicizing agencies and departments that are specifically meant to not be political and not meant to be monetized off of security clearances.”

    “Accusing the president of the United States of treasonous activity when you have the highest level of security clearance, when you’re the person that holds the nation’s deepest, most sacred secrets at your hands, and you go out and make false accusations against the president of the United States, he thinks that is something to be very concerned with,” Sanders added.

    They’re not false. A week ago Trump stood there next to Putin and said he didn’t believe Dan Coats, he believed Putin. The accusations that Trump behaved deplorably and quite possibly treasonously in Helsinki are not false, they are visibly true.

    Updating to add Rand Paul’s tweets:

  • A word has not been said

    This one, in particular.

    That sub-literate phrasing – “A Rocket has not been launched by North Korea in 9 months” when he means “No rocket has been launched by NK” or “NK has launched no rocket”…he can’t even get something that basic right.

    But then of course the substance is just fatuous. The fact that they’re not currently launching rockets doesn’t mean Trump Performed Miracles – it doesn’t mean much of anything.

    Then the ludicrous “Japan is happy, all of Asia is happy.” Oh really? Is Burma happy? Is Pakistan happy? And what is “happy” anyway? It can be “…in anticipation of its triumph over the US.” Maybe China is “happy” and maybe that’s because it’s watching Trump take a sledge hammer to everything he can reach.

    And then complaining that the news people never ask him when he never holds press conferences.

    Then saying he’s “Very Happy!” Nah he’s not. He’s frustrated that we’re not all wearing MAGA caps.

  • Be cautious my dude

    More extreme crazy.

    We’ll just ignore for now the absurdity of Trump yelling at someone else for “demented words of violence and death” and go directly to wtf.

    The Times:

    Mr. Trump’s message was apparently in response to a speech on Sunday by Mr. Rouhani, who warned the United States that any conflict with Iran would be the “mother of all wars.”

    Mr. Rouhani had earlier threatened the possible disruption of regional oil shipments if its own exports were blocked by United States sanctions.

    On Saturday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said he supported Mr. Rouhani’s suggestion, an indication that Iran’s leadership was in accord over the apparent threat. Mr. Rouhani has long been considered a more pragmatic leader who was seen as tolerable to moderates.

    …

    Mr. Trump’s emphatic tweet about Iran, with its reminders of the enormous military power the United States projects in the Persian Gulf, had echoes of his treatment of North Korea last summer. He would often denounce the regime as corrupt. In the president’s mind, these threats destabilized the North and forced it into negotiations over its nuclear weapons and missile programs.

    So, maybe it’s step 1 toward the apocalypse, maybe it’s a step in one of Trump’s peculiar games of I Am Smart Diplomat, maybe it’s a venting of steam over Russia-Manafort-Cohen, maybe it’s a late night brain fart. Who knows.

  • Buckle your tinfoil hat

    News world is abuzz over the release of documents related to the surveillance of Carter Page, with Trump screeching that it all shows how right he is about everything and rational people saying no it doesn’t.

    President Trump claimed without evidence on Sunday that his administration’s release of top-secret documents related to the surveillance of a former campaign aide had confirmed that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had “misled the courts” in the early stages of the Russia investigation.

    “Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

    In a series of early-morning tweets, Mr. Trump left unmentioned how the documents laid out in stark detail why the F.B.I. was interested in the former campaign adviser, Carter Page: “The F.B.I. believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.” They also said Mr. Page had “established relationships with Russian government officials, including Russian intelligence officers,” and had been “collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”

    But 13 Angry Democrats! Plus four! Add one, carry the six, divide by nine, what day is it?

    Those assessments were included in an October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Mr. Page. The New York Times and other news outlets obtained the application and several renewal documents through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. The president had declassified their existence last year.

    Fakenewswitchhuntsquawk

    The materials revealed that the Federal District Court judges who signed off on the wiretapping of Mr. Page were all appointed by Republican presidents.

    Well that just shows how cunning they are. Deep State. All those Republican presidents were actually moles, and this is their plan coming to fruition.

  • Sunday eloquence

    Today Trump is combining noisy vituperation aimed at the government he supposedly leads and passionate glorification of violence. That’s a good look.

    They’re all crooks and liars! Says the president!

    Guns, bombs, force, violence – they LOVE them! Violence is THE BEST THING.

    Scare quotes on “Justice” when talking about the Department of Justice…from the president.

    Does he sound scared?

    “Great” in what sense? How are we supposed to know when the meeting was closed and no one took notes? “Great” from whose point of view? Great for the world, great for the US and Russia, great for Trump? We don’t know, we have no way of knowing, but this notorious liar expects us to take his word for it.

  • Trump frustrated with that nice talented Mr Kim

    Oh my what a surprise, North Korea is being difficult.

    U.S. negotiators have faced stiff resistance from a North Korean team practiced in the art of delay and obfuscation.

    Diplomats say the North Koreans have canceled follow-up meetings, demanded more money and failed to maintain basic communications, even as the once-isolated regime’s engagements with China and South Korea flourish.

    Meanwhile, a missile-engine testing facility that Trump said would be destroyed remains intact, and U.S. intelligence officials say Pyongyang is working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear program.

    Other than that everything’s marvelous.

    The lack of immediate progress, though predicted by many analysts, has frustrated the president, who has fumed at his aides in private even as he publicly hails the success of the negotiations.

    Why didn’t anyone warn him this would happen? Why??

    Trump and his senior team “haven’t given up entirely” on the goal of full denuclearization, but they are worried, said one person familiar with the discussions.

    Climbing down from earlier soaring rhetoric, Trump told CBS this week that “I’m in no real rush. I mean whatever it takes, it takes,” he said.

    That more patient approach stands in contrast to earlier Trump administration demands for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program within a year.

    In other words he’s telling brazen lies in an attempt to save face.

    Many of the president’s top security and intelligence officials have long doubted that North Korea would live up to any of its commitments. But given the lack of options outside of the diplomatic realm, some analysts said a tolerant approach still provides the best outlook.

    “I worry that Trump might lose patience with the length and complexities of negotiations that are common when dealing with North Korea, and walk away and revert back to serious considerations of the military option,” said Duyeon Kim, the Korea scholar. “Getting to a nuclear agreement takes a long time, and implementing it will be even harder.”

    Trump lose patience with complexities? Surely not.

  • Click

    One ray of light in the stinking murk:

    President Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recording.

    The F.B.I. seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen’s office. The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Cohen’s involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws, and any conversation with Mr. Trump about those payments would be of keen interest to them.

    And the rest of us want to know all the “embarrassing” i.e. rapey or unfaithful or both news stories Trump used $$$ to conceal.

    The recording’s existence further draws Mr. Trump into questions about tactics he and his associates used to keep aspects of his personal and business life a secret.

    Doesn’t it just. This is what I want to know about. I want to see all the lying and concealment exposed, and all the pussy-grabbing and wife-abandoning made public.

    Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, confirmed in a telephone conversation on Friday that Mr. Trump had discussed payments to Ms. McDougal with Mr. Cohen on the tape. He said the recording was less than two minutes long, said Mr. Trump did not know he was being recorded and claimed that the president had done nothing wrong.

    It depends how we’re understanding “wrong.” Fucking around isn’t inherently wrong, but if it’s on the sly it arguably is. If Melania is and was and always has been fine with Trump using his penis on women who aren’t Melania (as it’s hard not to think she must be) then maybe he didn’t do anything wrong, but then why was he hiding it?

    The Cohen investigation began with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating the Trump campaign’s links to Russia. But as the Cohen case became increasingly focused on Mr. Cohen’s personal business dealings and his campaign activities unrelated to Russia, Mr. Mueller referred it to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who are now leading the investigation.

    Trump can’t pardon his way out of that.

  • American embassy told to ostracize Obama

    This one is just breathtaking in its petty vicious mean loathsomeness. Brian Sokutu in The Citizen:

    The Mandela 100 commemoration became a mini battlefield in the ongoing US political war this week, as the Trump administration ordered that Barack Obama not be given any assistance other than security arrangements by the American embassy in South Africa.

    The high-profile visit by the former president was mainly arranged and coordinated by the Nelson Mandela and Obama foundations, with no assistance from the US embassy in Pretoria – a break from the diplomatic tradition of offering support to any visiting American leader.

    None of the US embassy staff had to play any role due to “instructions by Washington” that Obama should not be provided any assistance, according to a highly placed source.

    In the past, the US embassy has always provided full support to any visiting American leader regardless of party affiliation.

    That hideous gas-filled bladder of a man isn’t good enough to serve Obama lunch.

  • Ohhh, so that’s what that means

    It’s like the scene at the end of The Miracle Worker when Helen Keller suddenly at last understands what language is, except stupid.

    For 14 seasons, Donald Trump hosted The Apprentice, the reality show that gave millions of Americans the false impression that he is a business genius. But it was only today, July 19, 2018, that he realized what the title of the show meant.

    Speaking to a crowd at a White House event called Pledge to America’s Workers, Trump came across a line in the prepared text that included the word apprenticeships. Then he went off script: “That’s an interesting word for me to be saying, right? The Apprentice. I never actually put that together until just now,” he said.

  • Look at ambassadors not there

    More lies.

    “There’s been no president ever as tough as I have been on Russhah.”

  • A response to the fallout

    There was a huddle. They had a huddle to try to fix it. Even John Bolton was in the huddle.

    Top national security officials had huddled in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday to develop a response to the fallout. The meeting resulted in a determination that Trump would need to clarify his remarks. Top officials, including national security adviser John Bolton, were involved in crafting the statement that Trump delivered from the Cabinet Room.

    The President made some of his own additions to what his aides prepared; he scrawled in black marker that “THERE WAS NO COLLUSION” on one page.

    And “GUY IN BASEMUNT” on another.

    Earlier Tuesday, the President had offered a defiant rebuke of his critics, writing on Twitter:

    “While I had a great meeting with NATO, raising vast amounts of money, I had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia.”

    “Sadly, it is not being reported that way – the Fake News is going Crazy!” he proclaimed.

    Thus undercutting his own attempt at a walk-back later in the day. Whatevs.

  • “I miththpoke”

    Oh come on.

    Reuters:

    U.S. President Donald Trump tried on Tuesday to calm a storm over his failure to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, saying he misspoke in a joint news conference in Helsinki.

    …

    “I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,’” Trump told reporters at the White House, more than 24 hours after his appearance with Putin. “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.’”

    Well of course it should have been, but it wasn’t.

    Although he faced pressure from critics, allied countries and even his own staff to take a tough line, Trump said not a single disparaging word in public about Moscow on any of the issues that have brought relations between the two nuclear powers to the lowest ebb since the Cold War.

    Republicans and Democrats accused him of siding with an adversary rather than his own country.

    Mainly reading from a prepared statement, Trump said on Tuesday he had complete faith in U.S. intelligence agencies and accepted their conclusions. But he appeared to veer from his script to also hedge on who was responsible for the election interference.

    “It could be other people also – there’s a lot of people out there,” he said.

    Like that guy in a basement. Remember him? He could have done it.

    Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s comments on Tuesday were another sign of weakness, particularly his statement that it “could be other people” responsible for the election meddling.

    “He made a horrible statement, tried to back off, but couldn’t even bring himself to back off,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “It shows the weakness of President Trump that he is afraid to confront Mr. Putin directly.”

    The weakest thing about him is his head.

  • Guest post: Anger depletion

    Guest post by Robert Ahrens.

    I wish I had some pithy, cool, smartass remarks to make about this week’s news.

    From the indictment of Russia’s intelligence operatives and the astonishing details of their actions coupled with those of the Trump campaign, including Trump himself, to the events of today, where the President of the United States stood up before the world, on live TV and told us he trusts the leader of our most powerful enemy more than he does our own Intelligence services, I am numb.

    I should be angry.

    I should be virtually speechless with anger, with enraged disgust, and with outraged fury at both the actions and words of the traitor who inhabits the White House AND the Republican Party who have and continue to refuse to hold this disgusting little man to account.

    But, somehow, I’m just numb.

    Perhaps its because I don’t see Congress, under the GOP, doing anything. Perhaps its because the checks and balances built into this system have failed and continue to fail due to the corruption and traitorous greed being shown by the leadership of the GOP, who have been enabled by the actions of the NRA, as enticed by the Russian money offered by that Russian redhead the DOJ indicted as a foreign agent today.

    Perhaps its because of the 40 some-odd percent of Americans who suck at the tit of the Republican Party and are so stupid they cannot see treason when it hits them upside the head with a baseball bat.

    Whichever reason, today, I’m just numb. I cannot feel anything but sadness and a kind of listless pain I cannot fully describe.

    This country has endured war, both civil and foreign, disease, famine, natural disaster, economic disaster, political disaster, and all sorts of other calamities for two hundred and forty-two years.

    When I started my Federal career, this country was two hundred years old. I spent 42 years and four months serving our government and you, the American taxpayer, in both military and civilian capacities. Today, I cry.

    There are people in prison today because they betrayed our country in various ways. In the past, our country has EXECUTED people for that crime. Today, I cry.

    Today, a wealthy man sits in the White House, guarded by our loyal and dedicated Secret Service agents tasked with the protection of the person who occupies the office of President of the United States. To see that, I cry more.

    He was elected through the actions of a foreign power with whom he and those under him colluded and plotted with to fraudulently ensure his success in gaining that office. Today, I cry.

    He has turned this country upside down through refusing to abide by both law and tradition in making this government work, refused to properly enforce the law, accepted emoluments from foreign governments as of the moment he took the oath of office, and today, has taken the side of a foreign dictator over the interests of the United States, in violation of both the Constitution and his Oath of Office.

    As of this evening, Pacific time, the GOP has done nothing.

    Oh, yeah, a few Republicans have displayed some form of complaint to the press.

    A few.

    If, by this time tomorrow, Congress has not seen the filing of at least one bill of Articles of Impeachment and actually advanced that legislation in serious intent, you can be certain that the GOP is most assuredly in cahoots with Trump and the Russians.

    …and this country is most assuredly screwed.

    I, for one, have no idea where this goes from here, but tonight, I’m just numb.

    If I didn’t have some form of cirrhosis from my overweight days, I’d go get drunk.

    Somebody cheer me up.

  • He knew

    The choreography of the whole thing was interesting. Trump went bopping off to Europe to insult more allies and fantasize aloud about his future friendship with Putin…when all the time he knew about the indictments that were in the pipeline.

    President Trump had been aware all along about the charges against Russian actors, and had been briefed on them by the Justice Department even before he left for Europe. “The President is fully aware of the department’s actions today,” Rosenstein told reporters as he announced the indictments, which lay out in methodical detail the ways in which agents of the Russian government systematically worked to infiltrate the Democrats’ 2016 campaign with the apparent goal of helping Trump win the American Presidency.

    Trump knew the indictment was coming when he bragged about what an easy meeting he would have with Putin. He knew it was coming when he once again attacked the investigation by his own government as “rigged.” And he knew it was coming when he rambled on about an agenda for the Helsinki summit that would cover just about everything but the Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Talk about brazen.

    Talk about treasonous.

    On Friday, the only White House comment after the indictments was not a condemnation of the Russian campaign, as outlined in damning detail in the indictment, to subvert American democracy. No, it was simply a partisan statement of support for the President, noting that all those charged in the case were Russians. “This is consistent with what we have been saying all along,” the statement said.

    It’s as if Trump were a literal god-king, and nothing in the world mattered except what Trump wanted.

    Democrats in Congress, and at least one Republican—the ever more isolated Senator John McCain—immediately demanded that Trump cancel the Helsinki summit, at least, as McCain put it, “if President Trump is not prepared to hold President Putin accountable.” But, of course, Trump is prepared neither to take Putin to task nor to cancel the summit he has spent months pushing his staff to arrange for him.

    And apparently nobody can do anything about it so we just have to sit here and watch him lay waste to everything.

  • Popular with the girls

    Dan Balz at the Washington Post points out that Trump is not universally popular with women. Who knew?

    Trump is doing nothing to mitigate the problem. Just the opposite. A man accused by multiple women of sexual misbehavior, he seems to take special delight in denigrating women, especially House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton. In one comment at a rally in Montana last Thursday, he mocked Warren and the #MeToo movement, and he also went after Waters.

    And then there was the time he threw candy at Angela Merkel.

    The latest Washington Post-Schar School poll, released Friday, highlights the differences in the way women and men see Trump. Overall, the president’s approval rating among men is 54 percent positive and 45 percent negative. Among women, it’s 32 percent positive and 65 percent negative.

    So what have the 32% been smoking?