Rachel Maddow did a brilliant cold open last night about Trump and pardons and Nixon and Haldeman and criminal obstruction of justice. Her opening segment sometimes loses me, but this one was genius.

One part of it was about Camp David (complete with photos of various buildings there and explanation that they are named after trees and that the presidential building is called Aspen and sometimes people talk about the president at Aspen and they don’t mean the one in Colorado), and the fact that Bob Haldeman made a recorded diary entry at the end of every day as Chief of Staff, and he made one after a conversation with Nixon at Aspen right before the indictments and firings. It’s … Read the rest

Trump met yesterday with families of the people killed in the Santa Fe school shooting slaughter.

One mother said he showed sincerity and compassion. Another, not so much.

Rhonda Hart, whose 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly Vaughan, was killed at the school, told The Associated Press that Trump repeatedly used the word ‘wacky’ to describe the shooter and the trench coat he wore. She said she told Trump, “Maybe if everyone had access to mental health care, we wouldn’t be in the situation.”

Hart, an Army veteran, said she also suggested employing veterans as sentinels in schools. She said Trump responded, “And arm them?” She replied, “No,” but said Trump “kept mentioning” arming classroom teachers. “It was like talking to a toddler,”

And for his next trick…

Aboard Air Force One, Trump says he's considering pardons or commuting sentences for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Martha Stewart

— Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) May 31, 2018

Hmm. Corruption and lying to the FBI. That sounds familiar somehow…

PARDON NEWS: @realDonaldTrump considering commutation of sentence for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and a pardon of Martha Stewart, the lifestyles mogul.

— Michael D. Shear (@shearm) May 31, 2018

What’s the commonality here I wonder…

Pardoning convictions for bribery and public corruption (Blagojevich) and making false statements to the FBI (Stewart).

Someone gave him a list of all the possible charges he's going to face and he's finding celebrities convicted of them to pardon.#consciousnessofguilt

He’s off to Texas to meet with family members of the victims killed in the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School; he plans to have fun there.

Speaking with reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews Thursday morning, the president detailed his schedule for the day, boasting about the state of the economy and ongoing efforts to arrange a previously scrapped meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“I just want to tell you we’re doing very well with North Korea … a letter is going to be delivered to me from Kim Jong Un, so I look forward to seeing what’s in the letter,” Trump said. “…Other than that, the economy is good, stock

Yesterday Trump was way too busy with important president stuff to be talking about Roseanne Barr.

On Tuesday, when Sarah Sanders was asked for Trump’s view about the cancellation, Sanders said “that’s not what the president is looking at. That’s not what he’s spending his time on. And I think that we have a lot bigger things going on in the country right now, certainly that the President is spending his time when it comes to policy.”

He was thinking about North Korea, trade deals, the military, the economy, not trivial stuff about some sitcom actor’s racist tweets.

Today, on the other hand, he was thinking about himself and how come nobody calls him up to apologize? North Korea … Read the rest

Our Hitler in action:

Trump goads the crowd into calling members of MS-13 "ANIMALS!" Creepy stuff. pic.twitter.com/TSBAaT6GLo

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 30, 2018

… Read the rest

Oh good god.

Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that “ABC does not tolerate comments like those” made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2018

… Read the rest

Aha. So Trump is fashioning a rod for his own back.

In March 2017 Trump berated Jeff Sessions and told him he should rescind his recusal from the Russia investigation, and Sessions refused.

The confrontation, which has not been previously reported, is being investigated by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as are the president’s public and private attacks on Mr. Sessions and efforts to get him to resign. Mr. Trump dwelled on the recusal for months, according to confidants and current and former administration officials who described his behavior toward the attorney general.

He did some of that in public, on Twitter. Anyway, how interesting that Mueller is investigating. That hints that he could be investigating Trump’s current … Read the rest

Trump’s repetitive tweets are repetitive.

From Friday morning until Tuesday morning, Trump sent out 14 — yes, 14! — tweets focused on the ongoing Russia probe.

The tweets — ranging from quotes of supportive voices from Fox News Channel to references to the “13 Angry Democrats” on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team to allegations of election meddling — illustrate Trump’s near-complete obsessions with the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and its impact on his presidency.

What’s remarkable about the tweets — other than the pure number of them — is the similarities between them.

So “similar” that they’re the same three thoughts over and over again.

This is another marker of his deep stupidity, of course, … Read the rest

From last August but worth reviving for Memorial Day: Trump’s grandfather wrote to the local princeling begging him not to deport the little family.

When Donald Trump’s German grandfather was ordered by a royal decree to leave the country and never return, he wrote a letter pleading the prince regent of Bavaria not to deport him.

Friedrich Trump wrote the letter in 1905 when he returned to Germany with his wife and daughter after having emigrated to the US.

German authorities had given him eight weeks to leave and denied him repatriation because he failed to complete his mandatory military service and to register his initial emigration to the US 20 years earlier.

Emphasis added. Like granddaddy like grandson … Read the rest

David Frum on Trump’s official Memorial Day statement:

It is the responsibility and honor of the president to speak for the nation on the solemn occasions of collective remembrance. Some presidents are endowed with greater natural eloquence than others, but that does not matter. What the country listens for is the generous and authentic message underneath the rhetoric, whether that rhetoric is graceful or clumsy. The last general to win the presidency said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” The country heard those words, believed them, and trusted him.

That was of course Eisenhower, who was in charge of sending … Read the rest

During intervals from lying about the investigation into Russian meddling in the election Trump is lying about his administration’s policy and practice of taking children away from parents who immigrate illegally.

President Trump’s attempt to blame Democrats for separating migrant families at the border is renewing a political uproar over immigration, an issue that has challenged Trump throughout his presidency and threatens to grow more heated as he imposes more restrictions to stem the flow of illegal immigration.

In one of several misleading tweets during the holiday weekend, Trump pushed Democrats to change a “horrible law” that the president said mandated separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. But there is no law specifically requiring the government to

Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god

Happy Memorial Day! Those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud at how well our country is doing today. Best economy in decades, lowest unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics EVER (& women in 18years), rebuilding our Military and so much more. Nice!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2018

… Read the rest

I hope someone brings this to Trump’s attention.

Two graduates of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., penned an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun questioning President Trump’s suitability to deliver the commencement speech to this year’s graduating class of midshipmen on Friday.

“It is right and fitting that the president of the United States give a commencement address to a service academy’s graduating class,” Daniel Barkhuff and William Burke wrote in Wednesday’s edition of the paper. “It is also right and fitting that citizens of the democracy for which these graduates will soon be charged with protecting point out the personal cowardice, narcissism and incompetency of the current president.”

They graduated in 2001.

They wrote of the sacrifices

Trump is on a relentless campaign to Repeat the Lies over and over and over and over to chip slowly away at the number of people who recognize that he is both a liar and malevolent.

With Spies, or “Informants” as the Democrats like to call them because it sounds less sinister (but it’s not), all over my campaign, even from a very early date, why didn’t the crooked highest levels of the FBI or “Justice” contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018

This whole Russia Probe is Rigged. Just an excuse as to why the Dems and Crooked Hillary lost the Election and States that haven’t been lost

How the beautiful friendship between Kim and Trump fell apart so sudden-like:

Inside the White House residence, the first alarm sounded about 10 p.m. Wednesday when national security adviser John Bolton told Trump about North Korea’s public statement threatening a “nuclear-to-nuclear showdown” and mocking Vice President Pence as a “political dummy.”

Trump was dismayed by Pyongyang’s bellicose rhetoric, the same theatrics Trump often deploys against his adversaries. Bolton advised that the threatening language was a very bad sign, and the president told advisers he was concerned Kim was maneuvering to back out of the summit and make Americans look like desperate suitors, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

Trump was “dismayed” that an adversary is as big … Read the rest

Trump is reeeeeeeally mad at Kirsten Nielsen – not of course because she’s too racist and xenophobic but because she’s not racist and xenophobic enough.

As illegal crossings are once more on the rise and Trump hears a cascade of criticism from conservative allies, Nielsen finds herself on the receiving end of the president’s visceral anger about immigration, seeing the issue as the reason he won in 2016 and a key to his politicking ahead of the midterm elections.

The president has chastised her on several occasions this spring, including a much publicized meeting earlier this month when he attacked her in front of the entire Cabinet. He has grown furious because his administration has made little progress building

Yes, thank you for asking, it is quite strange that subjects of an investigation were allowed to plant their lawyers and friends in a meeting to discuss the investigation while it is in progress. As a matter of fact, to put it more technically, it’s a fucking circus.

The president’s chief of staff and the White House counsel attended a classified briefing Thursday with top Justice Department officials and lawmakers about an investigation into the president and his associates — and the events have floored national-security experts and former intelligence officials.

When the White House announced the first of the two briefings earlier this week, it said chief of staff John Kelly would not be attending.

One former FBI

Elsewhere in Trump:

President Trump praised the NFL’s decision to mandate that players either stand for the national anthem or stay in the locker room in a TV interview that aired Thursday.

And he questioned whether players who choose not to stand “proudly” should be in the country at all.

Oh did he. Did he really. This lying stealing bullying garbage fire of a man who defecates on this country every day has the gall to question whether African American athletes who protest racism by kneeling instead of standing while a song is sung should be in the country at all.

“Well, I think that’s good,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “I don’t think people should