Tag: Trump

  • Invite Russia to the party or else

    In case the summit wasn’t going to be acrimonious enough, Trump poured in a new ingredient:

    President Trump on Friday said Russia should be readmitted to the Group of Seven leading economies, breaking with other world leaders who have insisted that Moscow remain ostracized after its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

    “Now, I love our country. I have been Russia’s worst nightmare . . . . But with that being said, Russia should be in this meeting,” Trump said Friday as he left the White House. “Whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run . . . . They should let Russia come back in.”

    Yes, it’s just silly political correctness to try to discourage big countries from annexing smaller ones. Sensible grown-up realists like Trump know better than that.

    Trump’s suggestion that Russia be readmitted to the G-7 was heavily criticized by political opponents back home, including Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who said Trump was “turning our foreign policy into an international joke.”

    “We need the president to be able to distinguish between our allies and adversaries, and to treat each accordingly,” Schumer said. “On issue after issue, he’s failed to do that.”

    Pffffff. Political correctness run mad. France and Canada are our enemies, and Russia and China are our friends, as any fule kno.

    In the past several months, Trump has pushed to completely overturn many of the post-World War II institutions put in place to strengthen global ties. These tensions have created immense strain ahead of the summit in Canada, with top leaders questioning if they are in the midst of a transformational disruption brought on by the United States.

    “The rules-based international order is being challenged,” European Commission President Donald Tusk told reporters here. “Quite surprisingly, not by the usual suspects but by its main architect and guarantor, the U.S. … We will not stop trying to convince our American friends and President Trump that undermining this order makes no sense at all.”

    The trouble is, “trying to convince” Trump of anything is a mug’s game, because it assumes he’s amenable to persuasion or argument. He’s not. His mind doesn’t work that way. Nothing is joined up in there, it’s all just random firing, so reasoning with him is much the same as bowing to a rock or lighting a candle. You might get lucky and trigger a random firing that prompts him to do something reasonable, but the odds are low.

  • What’s shaping up to be an acrimonious summit

    The CBC reports a slight disagreement between Trudeau and Macron on the one hand and Trump on the other.

    Canada and France plan to take what their leaders describe as a polite, persuasive but firm approach to Donald Trump at the G7 summit, warning the U.S. president that his punishing trade tariffs will backfire and harm America’s economy and workforce.

    But as he prepared to travel to Canada, Trump’s Twitter feed suggested Thursday night that the president is in a mood to push back.

    “Prime Minister Trudeau is being so indignant, bringing up the relationship that the U.S. and Canada had over the many years and all sorts of other things,” Trump tweeted.

    Ah oui, so indignant, so unlike our own calm, polite, reasonable, affable president.

    On the eve of what’s shaping up to be an acrimonious summit in Charlevoix, Que., Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron offered support for and “solidarity” with the U.S. president’s efforts to denuclearize North Korea, but they denounced his decision to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

    The two leaders have a blunt message for Trump.

    “American jobs are on the line because of his actions and because of his administration,” Trudeau said at a joint news conference on Parliament Hill Thursday. “When we can underscore this, and we see that there’s a lot of pressure within the U.S., perhaps he will revise his position.”

    Or perhaps he’ll throw a tantrum, or declare war, or fire Jeff Sessions. There’s just no telling when you have a toddler for president.

  • A particular specialty was insulting other monarchs

    Apropos of nothing Miranda Carter at the New Yorker asks what happens when a bad-tempered distractable doofus runs an empire.

    One of the few things that Kaiser Wilhelm II, who ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918, had a talent for was causing outrage. A particular specialty was insulting other monarchs. He called the diminutive King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy “the dwarf” in front of the king’s own entourage. He called Prince (later Tsar) Ferdinand, of Bulgaria, “Fernando naso,” on account of his beaky nose, and spread rumors that he was a hermaphrodite. Since Wilhelm was notably indiscreet, people always knew what he was saying behind their backs…

    …One of the many things that Wilhelm was convinced he was brilliant at, despite all evidence to the contrary, was “personal diplomacy,” fixing foreign policy through one-on-one meetings with other European monarchs and statesmen. In fact, Wilhelm could do neither the personal nor the diplomacy, and these meetings rarely went well. The Kaiser viewed other people in instrumental terms, was a compulsive liar, and seemed to have a limited understanding of cause and effect. In 1890, he let lapse a long-standing defensive agreement with Russia—the German Empire’s vast and sometimes threatening eastern neighbor. He judged, wrongly, that Russia was so desperate for German good will that he could keep it dangling. Instead, Russia immediately made an alliance with Germany’s western neighbor and enemy, France.

    Everybody makes a mistake now and then.

    When Wilhelm became emperor, in 1888, at twenty-nine years old, he was determined to be seen as tough and powerful. He fetishized the Army, surrounded himself with generals (though, like Trump, he didn’t like listening to them), owned a hundred and twenty military uniforms, and wore little else. He cultivated a special severe facial expression for public occasions and photographs—there are many, as Wilhelm would send out signed photos and portrait busts to anyone who’d have one—and also a heavily waxed, upward-turned moustache that was so famous it had its own name, “Er ist Erreicht!” (It is accomplished!)

    In fact, Wilhelm didn’t accomplish very much. The general staff of the German Army agreed that the Kaiser couldn’t “lead three soldiers over a gutter.” He had neither the attention span nor the ability. “Distractions, whether they are little games with his army or navy, travelling or hunting—are everything to him,” a disillusioned former mentor wrote. “He reads very little apart from newspaper cuttings, hardly writes anything himself apart from marginalia on reports and considers those talks best which are quickly over and done with.” The Kaiser’s entourage compiled press cuttings for him, mostly about himself, which he read as obsessively as Trump watches television. A critical story would send him into paroxysms of fury.

    They might as well be twins.

    I spent six years writing my book about Wilhelm and his cousins, King George V, of England, and Tsar Nicholas II, and the Kaiser’s egotism and eccentricity made him by far the most entertaining of the three to write about. After a while, though, living with Wilhelm—as you do when you write about another person over a long period—became onerous. It was dispiriting, even oppressive, to spend so much time around someone who never learned, and never changed.

    Yes, it is.

  • It’s about attitude

    Yes sure enough – Trump is supposed to be “preparing” for his meeting with Kim, and he doesn’t want to go to Canada for the G 7 because it will take time away from his “preparation,” but if you ask him he will promptly say that he doesn’t need to prepare because it’s not about preparation, it’s about attitude.

    During a White House pool spray with Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe on Thursday, President Trump said he doesn’t think he has a lot of preparation to do ahead of a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in which the two leaders will discuss North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

    “I think I’m very well prepared. I don’t think I have to prepare very much. It’s about attitude,” Trump said. “It’s about willingness to get things done, but I think I’ve been preparing for the summit for a long time, as has the other side. I think they’ve been preparing for a long time also. So, this isn’t a question of preparation, it’s a question of whether or not people want it to happen, and we’ll know that very quickly.”

    Perhaps with a series of loud bangs.

    Trump is not preparing for the summit with North Korea at the same time his lawyers have been publicly making a case that he’s too busy to sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller.

    Trump’s Twitter history suggests he has a lot of time on his hands, however. Ahead of Abe’s visit to the White House, Trump posted 12 tweets during the a.m. hours on Thursday — more than half of them either attacking [either] Mueller’s investigation, James Comey, Democrats who no longer hold elected office, or Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

    Exercising his hatred muscles.

    https://youtu.be/SGgqDdJZywk

    H/t Jeff Engel

  • The darkness at Trump’s core

    Charles Blow starts his essay on Trump’s passionate love for hatred by noting that we get exhausted by him and by the torrent of terrible news he creates.

    When my enthusiasm for resisting this vile man and his corrupt administration starts to flag, I remember the episode that first revealed to me the darkness at Trump’s core, and I am renewed.

    He then tells the story of the Central Park 5 – the forced “confessions” after more than 24 hours of interrogation without food sleep or water, and the exoneration via DNA evidence years later.

    A few days after the attack, long before the teenagers would go on trial, Donald Trump bought full-page ads in New York newspapers — you may think of this as a precursor to his present-day tweets to a mass audience — under a giant, all-caps headline that read: “Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!”

    Wanna see it?

    Image result for trump ad central park 5

    How did Trump respond after having called for them to be put to death? In true Trump fashion, he refused to apologize or show any contrition whatsoever.

    In a 2014 opinion essay in The Daily News, Trump wrote that the settlement was a “disgrace” and that “settling doesn’t mean innocence.” He continued his assertion that the men were guilty, urging his readers: “Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts. These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels.”

    Some people will never admit that they are wrong, even when they are as wrong as sin.

    But it is the language in the body of Trump’s 1989 death penalty ad that sticks with me. Trump wrote:

    “Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”

    And when evidence turns up that they didn’t kill, they should still be hated and executed, in the name of Glorious Hatred. Or something like that.

    Anyway Charles Blow has named what it is that’s so shamingly awful about Trump: his embrace of hatred and rage, and his enactment of both in full public view many times every day. That may be why the Hitler comparison comes to mind so readily, Godwin or no Godwin – it’s because of all those clips of Hitler raging in front of crowds.

    That to me is the thing with this man: He wants to hate. When Trump feels what he believes is a righteous indignation, his default position is hatred. Anyone who draws his ire, anyone whom he feels attacked by or offended by, anyone who has the nerve to stand up for himself or herselfand tell him he’s wrong, he wants to hate, and does so.

    This hateful spirit envelopes him, consumes him and animates him.

    He hates women who dare to stand up to him and push back against him, so he attacks them, not just on the issues but on the validity of their very womanhood.

    He hates black people who dare to stand up — or kneel — for their dignity and against oppressive authority, so he attacks protesting professional athletes, Black Lives Matter and President Barack Obama himself as dangerous and divisive, unpatriotic and un-American.

    He hates immigrants so he has set a tone of intolerance, boasted of building his wall (that Mexico will never pay for), swollen the ranks of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and attacks some as criminals and animals.

    He hates Muslims, so he moves to institute his travel ban and attacks their religion with the incendiary comment that “I think Islam hates us.”

    He always disguises his hatred, often as a veneration and defense of his base, the flag, law enforcement or the military. He hijacks their valor to advance his personal hatred.

    A small quibble: no he doesn’t always disguise his hatred. He sometimes covers it up as flag-worship or similar, and he sometimes combines the two, but he also frequently lets the hatred hang right out there for all to see. His epithets and insults and taunts are not disguised.

  • Skip the lectures

    Trump is having a sulk about his boring homework of going to stinky old CANADA when he hates Canada and would much rather watch tv and eat ice cream.

    The president has vented privately about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as their trade tensions have spilled into public view. He has mused about finding new ways to punish the United States’ northern neighbor in recent days, frustrated with the country’s retaliatory trade moves.

    To…punish Canada? For what? For Trudeau not saying “how high?” when Trump says “jump”?

    And Trump has complained to aides about spending two days in Canada for a summit of world leaders, believing the trip is a distraction from his upcoming Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with Trump’s views.

    Distraction from…what? Making scowly faces in the mirror? What’s Trump paying attention to in connection with his get-together with Kim? We know it’s not anything to do with knowledge or understanding, so what is it?

    In particular, the president said Tuesday to several advisers that he fears attending the Group of Seven summit in rural Charlevoix, Quebec, may not be a good use of his time because he is diametrically opposed on many key issues with his counterparts — and does not want to be lectured by them.

    Of course he doesn’t. He wants to be left in peace in his state of imperturbable ignorance. He doesn’t want to have to talk to people who know more than he does. Knowledge, to him, represents “the swamp,” and he won’t find anybody at the G 7 who can come close to his limpid pure intact state of emptiness.

    Additionally, Trump has griped periodically both about German Chancellor Angela Merkel — largely because they disagree on many issues and have had an uneasy rapport — as well as British Prime Minister Theresa May, whom he sees as too politically correct, advisers say.

    Also? They are both women. Uggggh. How dare those bitches try to lecture him? It’s Crooked Hillary and Pocahontas all over again.

    Trump is a homebody president, preferring to sleep in the White House — or at one of his signature properties — than in hotels, so he is generally reluctant to take long journeys. Furthermore, he prefers visiting places where he is feted — such as on his trips last year to Beijing, Paris and the Saudi capital — over attending summits where the attending leaders are treated as equals.

    That’s a damning fact. It’s self-evidently true, but it’s damning. He wants to strut around playing Big Dick at all times, not be just one of a bunch of colleagues.

  • So unfair, and vicious

    Today:

    A year ago:

  • They just get lower and lower

    Another day, another

    The AP article on Rudy’s jaunt to Tel Aviv:

    TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is trying to frame President Donald Trump.

    Football players who kneel while a patriotic song is sung are Disloyal but the president’s lawyer talking shit about the US justice system in a foreign country is Loyal+++.

    “There are a group of 13 highly partisan Democrats who make up the Mueller team, excluding him, and are trying very, very hard to frame him to get him in trouble when he hasn’t done anything wrong,” said Giuliani, who has been serving as Trump’s lawyer amid the Russia scandal.

    “They can’t emotionally come to grips with the fact that this whole thing with Russian collusion didn’t happen. They are trying to invent theories of obstruction of justice,” Giuliani told a business conference in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

    “They have revealed no evidence that President Trump has done anything wrong,” he added. “None.”

    The investigation is in progress. Giuliani is a lawyer (and a former prosecutor) and I’m not, but I’m pretty sure investigations are not required to reveal evidence before they are completed. I think it is rather the other way around: they’re supposed to refrain from doing that.

    Just another Wednesday.

  • No here’s what REALLY happened

    Now the White House press secretary has put out a statement with a new story about why Trump picked a fight with some football players.

    (I know this is small potatoes compared to the boulder-size ones, but I’m morbidly fascinated by this kind of culture war bullshit.)

    After extensive discussions with the Eagles organization, which began in February, the team accepted an invitation from the President to attend a June 5 celebration of their victory in Super Bowl LII at the White House.

    On Thursday, May 31, the team notified the White House of 81 individuals, including players, coaches, management, and support personnel, who would attend the event.  On Friday, the Secret Service cleared them for participation.  These individuals, along with more than 1,000 Eagles fans, were scheduled to attend the event.

    Late Friday, citing the fact that many players would not be in attendance, the team contacted the White House again, and attempted to reschedule the event.  The President, however, had already announced that he would be traveling overseas on the dates the Eagles proposed.  The White House, despite sensing a lack of good faith, nonetheless attempted to work with the Eagles over the weekend to change the event format that could accommodate a smaller group of players.  Unfortunately, the Eagles offered to send only a tiny handful of representatives, while making clear that the great majority of players would not attend the event, despite planning to be in D.C. today.  In other words, the vast majority of the Eagles team decided to abandon their fans.

    So presidential. Can you imagine Obama whining that way? Or starting a fuss of this kind to begin with? Can you imagine any reasonably sane president making a display of his own petulance this way?

    Upon learning these facts, the President decided to change the event so that it would be a celebration of the American flag with Eagles fans and performances by United States Marine Band and the United States Army Chorus.

    And to tell lies about the whole thing on Twitter. Okaaaaaaaay…

  • A fragile egomaniac

    Philadelphia’s mayor issued a statement about Trump’s abrupt last-minute cancellation of the celebration he had offered the city’s football team.

    Mayor Kenney released the following statement on the recent decision of President Trump to disinvite the Philadelphia Eagles from visiting the White House:

    “The Eagles call the birthplace of our democracy home, so it’s no surprise that this team embodies everything that makes our country and our city great. Their athletic accomplishments on the field led to an historic victory this year. Fans all across the country rallied behind them because we like to root for the underdog and we feel joy when we see the underdogs finally win. I’m equally proud of the Eagles’ activism off the field. These are players who stand up for the causes they believe in and who contribute in meaningful ways to their community. They represent the diversity of our nation—a nation in which we are free to express our opinions.

    “Disinviting them from the White House only proves that our President is not a true patriot, but a fragile egomaniac obsessed with crowd size and afraid of the embarrassment of throwing a party to which no one wants to attend.

    “City Hall is always open for a celebration.”

    A fragile egomaniac and a mean bully, since the players who were planning to go were probably excited about it.

  • Salute the flag or else

    Chris Cillizza itemizes the wrongs in Trump’s idiotic “statement” yesterday on why he was telling a football team that they can’t come to his our house.

    2. Trump doesn’t own the White House. Trump seems to be treating 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue like one of his Trump properties. If only you had done things the way I wanted them done, then maybe you could be reclining in one of my 5-star hotels right now — or playing golf at one of my award-winning courses. That is how Trump thinks.

    But it’s not his, and he’s not supposed to brandish it to punish people for dissent. He’s not supposed to punish people for dissent at all.

    3. Trump’s definition of patriotism is very, very narrow. By the definition offered in his statement tonight, patriotism for Donald Trump is standing proudly for the National Anthem, with your hand on your heart. Doing anything else is disrespectful — not only to Trump but to the military and to the country as a whole.

    Which underlines what a shallow trivial empty little mind he has. He can understand only show, not substance. Random arbitrary downright stupid shows of fake “patriotism” are all, and actually doing things that benefit the country is nothing.

    4. Trump thinks patriotism must equal unwavering loyalty to his view of the National Anthem. If you take Trump at his word in the statement released Monday night, the only way that you can show love and appreciation for those who have fought and died for our country is to stand with your hand over your heart during the playing of the National Anthem. That’s it. That’s the only route.

    It’s even cruder than that, because it’s stand with your hand over your heart during the playing of the National Anthem before a football game. It’s not all sports. He’s not out there hounding tennis players or swimmers or marathon runners to stand with hand over heart during the playing of the National Anthem; it’s specific to football, as if football were actually a branch of the military.

    How did this ever become a thing in the first place? Football is a game, it’s not warfare. Football players are not the military. What is the perceived connection? Why is so much angry emphasis placed on Visible Patriotism At Football Games but not at other games?

    Meanwhile, the real reason Trump suddenly told the Eagles to stay away is because not that many of them were planning to go anyway. He didn’t want to draw a small crowd.

    Trump insisted that the Eagles “disagree with their president because he insists that they proudly stand for the national anthem,” an assertion that carries echoes of dissatisfaction with their failure to submit to his will as well as any anger over treatment of the flag. Of course, as The Post reports, no Eagles knelt in this manner, and the team privately conveyed to the White House that fewer players than expected would show up. Trump told the lie about kneeling Eagles to justify the cancellation in part because he anticipated low turnout, which he hates.

    But let’s not let the true import of Trump’s action today get lost in the usual spectacle of Trumpian lying and megalomania. His true message is that African American dissenters protesting in the quest for racial equality — in a manner he claims to find offensive — have no place at a celebration of this country’s heritage over which he is presiding.

    In his statement canceling today’s event, Trump claimed that the Eagles do not want to place “hand on heart, in honor of our great men and women of the military.” Instead, he said, he will preside over “a different type of ceremony” that will “honor our great country” and “loudly and proudly play the national anthem.”

    In other words, whether any Eagles ever knelt or not, Trump’s explicitly stated justification for disinviting them is that they did kneel to protest the national anthem. That this is a lie is beside the point. The justification he is offering is itself a deliberate statement, and a reprehensible one. After all, what if some Eagles had knelt, as he claims? His argument is that in carrying out this act, they have disqualified themselves from attending a celebration of our national heritage at his White House.

    It’s not a president’s job to extort particular arbitrary displays of patriotism from the citizens. What good is patriotism if it’s extorted anyway? Does he put a gun to Barron’s head to extort a loving goodnight? Does he wrench Melania’s arm to make her say how attractive he is? Does it not occur to him that coerced patriotism is not worth the astroturf it stands on?

  • De gustibus

    Michelle Goldberg cites a disquieting statistic:

    Whatever Trump does, most Republicans will probably go along with it. In 500 days, Trump has managed to turn much of what remains of his party into an authoritarian cult. Among Republicans, he has an 87 percent approval rating; the only modern Republican president who was more popular with his own party at this point in his term was George W. Bush, and that was mere months after Sept. 11. A recent poll of voters in congressional swing districts found that 71 percent of Republicans “mostly like” Trump’s handling of F.B.I. and criminal justice officials.

    Among Republicans he has an exceptionally high approval rating.

    That’s appalling. That terrible mean bullying venomous vindictive obscene man is what they like best.

  • A day that will live in infamy

    The Times leans back and puts its feet up and swirls the ice cubes around in its glass of bourbon, and drawls comfortably that the legal thinking on whether Trump can pardon himself isn’t quite as simple as he thinks.

    President Trump declared Monday that the appointment of the special counsel in the Russia investigation is “totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!” and asserted that he has the power to pardon himself, raising the prospect that he might take extraordinary action to immunize himself from the ongoing probe.

    Yes but that’s not the only prospect that extraordinary assertion raises. It also raises the prospect that he thinks he can do anything at all with impunity. Why should we assume that Trump is thinking only about the Mueller investigation here?

    In a pair of early-morning tweets, Mr. Trump suggested that he would not have to pardon himself because he had “done nothing wrong.” But he insisted that “numerous legal scholars” have concluded that he has the absolute right to do so, a claim that vastly overstates the legal thinking on the issue.

    No shit, but the point is, it’s what he’s claiming right now, and he could act on it in all sorts of terrible ways. We seem to be paralyzed to stop him.

    Monday’s tweets by the president went further than before in attempting to undermine the legal basis for the investigation into whether people on Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian meddling during the election, and whether anyone in the administration tried to cover up their activities.

    The president’s assertions came in tweets just a day after Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of his lawyers, told HuffPost that Mr. Trump is essentially immune from prosecution while in office, and could even have shot the former F.B.I. director without risking indictment while he was president.

    I doubt that Giuliani really does think that – my guess is that that’s just his re-wording of the reality that Republicans are in the majority in both houses and will never do anything to stop Trump.

    Mr. Giuliani also said over the weekend that the president “probably” has the power to pardon himself, but said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it would be “unthinkable” for him to do so.

    Doing so, Mr. Giuliani said, would “lead to probably an immediate impeachment,” adding that he “has no need to do that. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

    Well I tell you what, I hope Giuliani hustled his ass right over to the Oval Office this morning to explain to Trump that if he did “pardon himself” he would be instantly impeached, because Trump didn’t mention that part in his I Am Dictator tweet.

    Mr. Trump’s statement about pardons on Twitter went further than Mr. Giuliani and raises the prospect that the president might try to test the limits of his pardon power if Mr. Mueller, tried to indict him for obstruction of justice in the case.

    Or for any other reason that pops into his rotting head.

    The comments by Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani about the legal limits of presidential power follow a report in The New York Times that the president’s lawyers had authored a 20-page memorandum in January arguing that Mr. Trump could “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”

    In the memo, sent to Mr. Mueller’s office in January, the president’s legal team said that the president cannot, by definition, illegally obstruct any part of the Russia probe because the Constitution gives him the power to end it in the first place.

    Lawyers are supposed to do what it takes to defend their client…but surely they are also supposed to respect and protect the rule of law? Surely they shouldn’t be trying to make it legal doctrine that presidents can flout the law with impunity? Surely they know presidents swear a fucking oath to protect and defend the Constitution?

    I just can’t believe what we’re seeing here. Watergate was bad enough, but this is Watergate with the criminals winning.

  • This is not a drill

    To be exact…Trump’s announcing this is surely an emergency. He’s saying he’s not constrained by any law, because he has an absolute right to pardon himself.

    We can’t be having a president, with the powers a president has, who thinks and says he is bound by no law.

    He could do anything. He’s a lunatic, and a rage-prone vindictive impulsive lunatic at that. He’s all of that and he claims the law cannot touch him.

    Sure looks like an emergency to me.

  • Trump declares himself above all law

    Trump walks farther out on the tightrope.

  • A single entity personified by the president

    Matt Yglesias underlines the dangers in what Trump’s legal muscle says.

    The key passage in the memo is one in which Trump’s lawyers argue that not only was there nothing shady going on when FBI Director James Comey got fired there isn’t even any potential shadiness to investigate because the president is allowed to be as shady as he wants to be when it comes to overseeing federal law enforcement. He can fire whoever he wants. Shut down any investigation or open up a new one.

    Indeed, the President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of course, the power to pardon any person before, during, or after an investigation and/or conviction. Put simply, the Constitution leaves no question that the President has exclusive authority over the ultimate conduct and disposition of all criminal investigations and over those executive branch officials responsible for conducting those investigations.

    This is a particularly extreme version of the “unitary executive” doctrine that conservative legal scholars sometimes appeal to (especially when there’s a Republican president), drawing on the notion that the executive branch of government — including the federal police agencies and federal prosecutors — are a single entity personified by the president.

    What does that sound like? Oh yes, an absolute monarchy. Let’s not go that way.

    (Mind you, even Priss Choss would be an improvement on the greedy abusive pig we’re stuck with at the moment.)

    But to push that logic into this terrain would not only give the president carte blanche to persecute his enemies but essentially vitiate the idea that there are any enforceable laws at all.

    Consider that if the memo is correct, there would be nothing wrong with Trump setting up a booth somewhere in Washington, DC where wealthy individuals could hand checks to Trump, and in exchange Trump would make whatever federal legal trouble they are in go it away. You could call it “The Trump Hotel” or maybe bundle a room to stay in along with the legal impunity.

    He’d do it, too. He’d be happy to do it. The checks of course would have to be enormous, but he’d do it.

    Of course, as the memo notes, to an extent this kind of power to undermine the rule of law already exists in the form of the essentially unlimited pardon power. This power has never been a good idea and it has been abused in the past by George H.W. Bush to kill the Iran-Contra investigation and by Bill Clinton to win his wife votes in a New York Senate race. Trump has started using the power abusively and capriciously early in his tenure in office in a disturbing way, but has not yet tried to pardon his way out of the Russia investigation in part because there is one important limit on the pardon power — you have to do it in public. The only check on pardons is political, but the political check is quite real (which is why both Bush and Clinton did their mischievous pardons as lame ducks) and the new theory that Trump can simply make whole investigations vanish would eliminate it.

    I followed that link on the Bill Clinton item, which was unfamiliar to me, and I’m not convinced…but on the other hand his pardoning of Marc Rich is as disgusting as it ever was, so the point is much the same.

    And just imagine what Trump will do with that pardon power if he does get another term and thus as a lame duck doesn’t need to care what the public thinks.

  • The sacred responsibility of the President

    The Times published the whole letter with annotations. It’s a lot.

    To take one item at random…

    It is also worth responding to the popular suggestion that the President’s public criticism of the FBI either constitutes obstruction or serves as evidence of obstruction. Such criticism ignores the sacred responsibility of the President to hold his subordinates accountable — a function not unlike public Congressional oversight hearings. After all, the FBI is not above the law and we are now learning of the disappointing results of a lack of accountability in both the DOJ and FBI.

    And that’s what Trump is doing, is it? Performing his sacred responsibility to hold his subordinates accountable? By screaming insults at them on Twitter every day? That’s how that’s supposed to be done?

    Nixon too tried to “hold the FBI accountable” by telling Haldeman to tell the CIA to tell the FBI to drop its investigation of the Watergate break-in. The CIA did what it was told and that’s why Mark Felt talked to Bob Woodward.

    Also what they say there ignores what we’ve been told a million times by now: that the White House is not supposed to meddle directly with the FBI or the DoJ, lest it appear to be interfering with law enforcement. That’s part of the president’s “sacred responsibility” too, we are told.

    Mind you, all this does underline what a shit system we turn out to have, when a reckless criminal lunatic like Trump cannot be stopped.

  • Because he has unfettered authority

    Trump’s lawyers are seriously arguing, in a long memo to Mueller, that Trump can’t obstruct justice because as president he is justice himself.

    President Trump’s lawyers have for months quietly waged a campaign to keep the special counsel from trying to force him to answer questions in the investigation into whether he obstructed justice, asserting that he cannot be compelled to testify and arguing in a confidential letter that he could not possibly have committed obstruction because he has unfettered authority over all federal investigations.

    Including federal investigations into his own crimes. So a president can do anything at all and then simply shut down or forbid all federal investigations because his authority is that absolute.

    So they’re saying presidents are dictators.

    In a brash assertion of presidential power, the 20-page letter — sent to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and obtained by The New York Times — contends that the president cannot illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia’s election meddling because the Constitution empowers him to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”

    [Read the Trump lawyers’ confidential memo to Mr. Mueller here.]

    Other lawyers don’t agree.

    (I don’t know that Schumer is a lawyer. Whatever.)

    The attempt to dissuade Mr. Mueller from seeking a grand jury subpoena is one of two fronts on which Mr. Trump’s lawyers are fighting. In recent weeks, they have also begun a public-relations campaign to discredit the investigation and in part to pre-empt a potentially damaging special counsel report that could prompt impeachment proceedings.

    They have begun a public-relations campaign to discredit the investigation and the FBI and the Justice Department, all in the effort to shield the guy who is supposed to be working for the good of the country as a whole (and its people), not for himself.

    Mr. Trump’s lawyers are gambling that Mr. Mueller may not want to risk an attempt to forge new legal ground by bringing a grand jury subpoena against a sitting president into a criminal proceeding.

    “Ensuring that the office remains sacred and above the fray of shifting political winds and gamesmanship is of critical importance,” they wrote.

    How can the office remain “sacred” when it’s occupied by that dreadful vulgar monster? He cheapens it with every word, every look, every gesture, every action, every photo op, and god knows every tweet.

    “The president’s prime function as the chief executive ought not be hampered by requests for interview,” they wrote. “Having him testify demeans the office of the president before the world.”

    That ship has sailed. That ship has made multiple circumnavigations of the globe; Trump himself demeans the office constantly. Having him testify would do a little bit to repair the damage he’s done by showing he’s not free to commit crimes and then laugh in our faces.

    They also contended that nothing Mr. Trump did violated obstruction-of-justice statutes, making both a technical parsing of what one such law covers and a broad constitutional argument that Congress cannot infringe on how he exercises his power to supervise the executive branch. Because of the authority the Constitution gives him, it is impossible for him to obstruct justice by shutting down a case or firing a subordinate, no matter his motivation, they said.

    If they’re right about it then this is a dictatorship. They’d better not be right.

  • The baleful impact

    Tom McCarthy at the Guardian talks to a couple of legal boffins about Trump’s erosion of democratic and legal norms.

    “We’ve never had a president attack the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that work for him in this way,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former assistant attorney general under George W Bush, said in an email. “He’s attacking them in order to discredit the Mueller investigation. But the baleful impact on those agencies’ morale and on public trust in them unfortunately extends far beyond that investigation.”

    While whispers of a “constitutional crisis” are in the air, many mainstream analyses reject that idea, pointing out among other things that the Mueller investigation continues full steam ahead, no matter how much Trump might whine about it.

    So far, it does. That could change. “So far so good” is not all that comforting given the maniac in the Oval Office who will bring it all down if he can.

    The bad news is that it doesn’t take a constitutional crisis to constitute a national emergency, said Eric Posner, a University of Chicago professor specializing in constitutional law.

    “I think the problem with thinking about this in terms of crisis is that we should be concerned about what Trump is doing whether or not there ever is a crisis,” Posner said. “It’s perfectly possible, for example, that Trump could undermine Mueller’s investigation without causing a constitutional crisis.”

    Plus he could and can undermine a great deal more than Mueller’s investigation; he’s doing it every day. This is the crisis; we’re in it, we’ve been in it for months; it’s not one loud bang but an hourly onslaught.

    “I think what people are worried about, when you look at other countries that have slid into authoritarianism, what has happened is that the leaders of those countries have proceeded incrementally, and so when he does some things initially that people didn’t resist, that enhances his power. Once he has more power he can do more things, take more action.

    “And you could slide into an authoritarian regime without a real crisis ever taking place, and I think that’s what people should be focusing on.”

    Especially since it’s already happening, it’s been happening since the day Obama left.

    Shortly after Trump’s election, Amy Siskind, a former Wall Street executive, started a website called The Weekly List, seeking to catalogue news stories documenting “eroding norms under the current regime”.

    The site, which Siskind said gets up to a million visitors a week and which this year produced a book blurbed by current Trump target Samantha Bee, bears this tagline: “Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.”

    That’s pretty much why I’ve been focusing so obsessively on Trump (along with the fact that I can’t look away). I feel a need to document it, to keep track.

  • Smiling photo-op

    Trump loves Kim again.

    https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1002708327552385024