Tag: Trump

  • But ours are so massive and powerful

    Trump canceled the meeting with Kim, and sent him a ridiculous letter saying so…and tweeted the ridiculous letter so that we can all see how ridiculous it is. He seems to have actually written much of it (that is, spoken it aloud) himself.

    I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.

    Says the childish stupid man who called Kim “Little Rocket Man” repeatedly on Twitter.

    Trump withdrew from the summit after a North Korean vice minister of foreign affairs slammed Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday as a “political dummy,” the latest harshly worded statement from Pyongyang.

    Trump and his aides were infuriated by the statement and wanted to respond forcefully, multiple people familiar with the situation told CNN. The specific and personal targeting of Pence is what irked US officials, three people familiar with the matter said.

    Infuriated on what grounds? Given the way Trump talked about and to Kim repeatedly in full public view?

    Trump and his aides had insisted over the past week that planning for the summit was still ongoing amid the increased bluster from Pyongyang. A logistics team was dispatched to Singapore to finalize details with North Korea officials. And a commemorative coin was stamped by military aides labeling Kim the “Supreme Leader.”

    Oops. Those coins are supposed to appear after a successful summit meeting, not before. Guess why.

    The whole letter in all its clownish absurdity:

    Dear Mr. Chairman:

    We greatly appreciate your time, patience, and effort with respect to our recent negotiations and discussions relative to a summit long sought by both parties, which was scheduled to take place on June 12 in Singapore. We were informed that the meeting was requested by North Korea, but that to us is totally irrelevant. I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting. Therefore, please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place. You talk about nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.

    I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me, and ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters. Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you. In the meantime, I want to thank you for the release of the hostages who are now home with their families. That was a beautiful gesture and was very much appreciated.

    If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write. The world, and North Korea in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth. This missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in history.

    Love,

    Donnie

    “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me”

    But then you broke my heart.

  • Unblock

    Trump can lie cheat and steal but at least he can’t block his critics on Twitter.

    U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald cited First Amendment principles in holding that the social media platform offered a forum in which people could not only consume information and opinion from public figures but offer feedback to elected officials — just as they have the right to do in newsprint or in person in public spaces.

    Buchwald boiled down the case to two simple questions: Can a public official block someone from seeing her or his Twitter feed given First Amendment protections of free speech? And does it matter if that public official is the president?

    “The answer to both questions is no,” Buchwald wrote at the top of her opinion.

    The case was technically filed against Trump, his former communications director Hope Hicks, his chief press secretary Sarah Sanders, and his social media director, Daniel Scavino. The White House did not give any indication to NPR or others whether the administration will appeal the decision.

    Buchwald did not order any compensation for damages but instead offered a declarative judgment — one that involved declarative statements from the judge. “[N]o government official — including the President — is above the law,” she wrote, “and all government officials are presumed to follow the law as has been declared.” The judge wrote she expects Scavino to unblock critics and to not block others in the future.

    He uses it (a lot) to make presidential assertions and blurts and insults, so it’s only reasonable that that means he can’t wall it off.

  • Guest post: So that the worst person in the world can skate by

    Originally a comment by Seth on The ultimate disrupter.

    The worst thing about this whole mess is that, if the Republic does somehow limp through and Trump manages to get re-elected without going full-on fascist and sunsets without too much fuss when it’s over, the presidency will forever then be seen as an insulating force to one’s criminality and indeed one’s reputation. Just listen to the milquetoast way the author says ‘…a president who might not always be known for accuracy’.

    Such an obvious Bowdlerisation of what everyone knows to be true is disgusting. Everyone who matters is pretending that the prestige of the office is paramount, and in so doing they are shitting on all of the work done by all of Trump’s predecessors in building that prestige and earning that respect so that the worst person in the world can skate by on his venal criminality. And when he’s gone, without having had to answer for any of his crimes, with a party eager to ‘put it behind them’ and a country too weary to right itself, nobody will ever be able to trust or respect the President of the United States ever again.

    Bush did immeasurable harm to the office, and to the country. Obama was such a stark contrast that his very presence allowed the world to forget, to write Bush off as a temporary madness, and to more-or-less pretend the whole sordid administration simply had not happened. Now that the office has been opened to naked hucksters and ravening criminals (as long as they are Republicans, anyway), the US will never be able to recoup that reputation. It’s gone, and it simply is not coming back.

    Good luck. You’ll need it.

  • The ultimate disrupter

    Mark Leibovich at the Times talked to some press secretaries for the Golden Hitler.

    “What’s true on Monday in terms of a process decision may change by Friday,” Sanders said. “And I can’t always know that things will be different.” It often does not take that long for a “process” to evolve, I said. Sometimes a 5 a.m. tweet generated from the White House residence amounts to a “process” in Trump’s presidency. Or an old friend of Trump’s who just joined his legal team might go to dinner and jump on Fox News for a few minutes, and then the “process” jumps again. Like many of her White House colleagues, Sanders is quick to suggest that some of the criticism the Trump White House has received is a product of a biased press.

    Except that that’s less true of Trump than it is of other Republican presidents. There are many Republicans who detest his lies and bullying (the two are closely linked – lying is a kind of bullying, especially in someone as powerful as he is).

    “It certainly bothers me,” she said of the “liar” rap. “Because one of the few things you have are your integrity and reputation.” She added that “there’s a difference between misspeaking or not knowing something than [and] maliciously lying.”

    Integrity and reputation can’t survive working for Trump. It’s not humanly possible.

    No one would argue that a person’s integrity isn’t of paramount importance, I said. But I asked Sanders if there is a danger in linking your integrity to a president who might not always be known for accuracy. There have been many instances where the president has not told the truth, I said.

    “But you’re asking about me,” Sanders said, not challenging the premise.

    True, I said, but she has to speak for him. I asked the question another way: “Is it possible to be factual if you’re speaking for someone who is trying to make a point that is not factual?”

    “Uh, I don’t know,” Sanders said. “I’m not following totally.” But it was important for me to remember this: Donald Trump is president. “And I think one of the biggest reasons Donald Trump is president is because he is not scripted, not following your conventional playbook.” He is “the ultimate disrupter,” and people find his plain-spoken style “refreshing.” They like that he is unfiltered, she said, like that he “tells it like it is.”

    Whoooosh, there goes her integrity and reputation, never to be seen again.

    Yes, Trump is not “scripted,” not “following your conventional playbook” – that has rules about things like telling the truth and not using high office to enrich yourself. One could say that about anyone – murderers, rapists, Mafia bosses, genociders. Ultimate disruption is not always desirable, and a “refreshing” plain-spoken style that calls people animals and brags about grabbing women by the pussy is not a good thing, especially in a president.

  • By the way, Trump’s phones are insecure

    But her emails.

    President Donald Trump uses a White House cellphone that isn’t equipped with sophisticated security features designed to shield his communications, according to two senior administration officials — a departure from the practice of his predecessors that potentially exposes him to hacking or surveillance.

    The president, who relies on cellphones to reach his friends and millions of Twitter followers, has rebuffed staff efforts to strengthen security around his phone use, according to the administration officials.

    He doesn’t have time for that, he’s too busy tweeting. On his phone. The one without sophisticated security features designed to shield his communications.

    The president uses at least two iPhones, according to one of the officials. The phones — one capable only of making calls, the other equipped only with the Twitter app and preloaded with a handful of news sites — are issued by White House Information Technology and the White House Communications Agency, an office staffed by military personnel that oversees White House telecommunications.

    While aides have urged the president to swap out the Twitter phone on a monthly basis, Trump has resisted their entreaties, telling them it was “too inconvenient,” the same administration official said.

    Because there could be a tweet-demanding emergency at any moment.

    The president has gone as long as five months without having the phone checked by security experts. It is unclear how often Trump’s call-capable phones, which are essentially used as burner phones, are swapped out.

    President Barack Obama handed over his White House phones every 30 days to be examined by telecommunications staffers for hacking and other suspicious activity, according to an Obama administration official.

    Well there you go. He was born in Kenya, so obviously Trump is going to do the opposite of whatever he did.

    Former national security officials are virtually unanimous in their agreement about the dangers posed by cellphones, which are vulnerable to hacking by domestic and foreign actors who would want to listen in on the president’s conversations or monitor his movements.

    “Foreign adversaries seeking intelligence about the U.S. are relentless in their pursuit of vulnerabilities in our government’s communications networks, and there is no more sought-after intelligence target than the president of the United States,” said Nate Jones, former director of counterterrorism on the National Security Council in the Obama administration and the founder of Culper Partners, a consulting firm.

    While the president has the authority to override or ignore the advice provided by aides and advisers for reasons of comfort or convenience, Jones said, “doing so could pose significant risks to the country.”

    But what does that matter compared to Trump’s convenience?

    [C]ybersecurity experts pointed to sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China as the biggest threats, and expressed shock over the president’s refusal to take measures to protect himself from them, particularly when engaged in delicate negotiations.

    “It’s baffling that Trump isn’t taking baseline cybersecurity measures at a time when he is trying to negotiate his way out of a trade war with China, a country that is known for using cyber tactics to gain the upper hand in business negotiations,” said Samm Sacks, a China and technology expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    It’s not really baffling if you keep in mind how self-centered and stupid Trump is.

  • Hurry up with those boots

    Lie often enough and shamelessly enough and you win the game.

    James R. Clapper said something Tuesday that he maybe shouldn’t have. In the course of rebutting President Trump’s conspiracy theories about the FBI “spying” on his campaign, the former director of national intelligence momentarily conceded Trump’s premise.

    “They were spying on — a term I don’t particularly like — but on what the Russians were doing,” Clapper said. Asked whether Trump should be happy the FBI was doing this, Clapper said, “He should be.”

    “He should be” if he cared about US interests, or about how authoritarian and criminal Putin is, or both.

    Trump’s response? Take that badly out of context.

    And to be clear, this is a really important semantic point. Trump and his allies have launched a concerted effort to insert the word “spy” in this debate, despite there being no evidence that there was anything untoward about the FBI’s use of an informant, Stefan Halper, to look into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump included the word in ALL CAPS infourseparatetweets Wednesday morning — including christening the supposed scandal as “SPYGATE.” The word also appeared almost incessantly on his favorite morning show, “Fox & Friends.”

    So they’ll win, by being willing and eager to repeat lies often enough and shamelessly enough.

  • The DoJ works for HIM

    How much does Trump understand about the institutions he’s damaging and the norms he’s defying? It doesn’t really matter, because he doesn’t care in any case. As has been regularly pointed out, his motivations are all entirely self-directed; he does what he considers good for him and is entirely indifferent to what’s good for other people or the country as a whole.

    Greg Sargent at the Post:

    [W]hat we now see happening is that Trump is directly pressuring Justice to conduct this investigation into his campaign in a certain way, and at least to some extent, it is complying. As Charlie Savage puts it, Trump is slowly eroding an “established constraint on executive power.”

    Trump signaled in his own words that he was going to do this and more. Trump recently tweeted that “at some point” he will “use the powers granted to the Presidency and get involved!” Late last year, he said that “I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.” On still another occasion, Trump revealingly admitted that he is “very frustrated” by the fact that he is “not supposed to be involved” with the Justice Department, meaning he recognizes there is a norm that dictates this limit on his power, but he sees it as an inconvenience and does not recognize that there are good institutional reasons for preserving it.

    He recognizes that there is a rule (however tacit) that dictates this limit on his power, but he has worked out an ideology that lets him see rules of that kind as Children of the Swamp aka Artifacts of the Deep State, so that he is doing a fine and populist thing by smashing them for his own criminal purposes. He may well recognize that from the point of view of the FBI there are good institutional reasons for preserving the rule, but the fact that the rule is an obstacle to what he wants is far more salient. To the rest of us, the ability of the FBI to find out what Putin and Co did to our election is important, but to Trump it is as a bit of milkweed before his need to avoid prosecution. Who ya gonna take care of, the whole country or Trump? The question answers itself.

    The Watergate scandal led some to propose isolating Justice entirely from the executive branch. But this, too, was seen as unworkable, because that would mean the Justice Department is not subject to political accountability. So Justice must be overseen by the executive branch. But that subjects it to presidential manipulation. The answer to this thorny problem is the norm of prosecutorial independence. The answer is the idea, as one senator put it during Watergate, that the Justice Department’s “client is not only the president of the United States but includes the people.” The president is their boss, but prosecutors are answerable to the law and to the people as well. That norm’s existence depends on it being observed by both prosecutors and the president alike.

    But this is an idea that Trump plainly does not accept. He has said again and again and again in his own words that he views law enforcement as merely an instrument of his political will, to be turned loose on his political opponents at his whim and to be weaponized against itself when it tries to hold him accountable. This appears rooted in a uniformly corrupt impulse that also animates all of his profiteering off the presidency (as Adam Serwer writes), and is an extension of his long history of trampling rules and laws with impunity as a businessman (as Timothy L. O’Brien writes). As president, it’s not clear that Trump recognizes any institutional obligation of any kind to the law or to the people.

    Or rather, it’s all too clear that he does not.

  • What’s the problem?

    Jennifer Rubin explains the legal norms Trump is stamping on.

    Former acting attorney general Sally Yates hit the nail on the head on Monday on “Morning Joe.” She explained, “I think what we’re seeing here is the president has taken his all-out assault of the rule of law to a new level and this time he is ordering up an investigation of the investigators who are examining his own campaign. You know, that’s really shocking.” And things got even worse as the day progressed.

    Among the other things it is, it’s a massive abuse of power. The rest of us don’t get to order the Justice Department to investigate the people who are investigating us. But even more basically it’s the opposite of how this is supposed to work. Investigators are not supposed to collaborate with the suspects they’re investigating, for obvious reasons. Investigators look for evidence that the suspects don’t want them to find, so the two parties are kept separate. There is no expectation that investigators will share what they find with the suspects while the investigation is in progress. Trump and his people are pretending there is, and that it’s just normal and appropriate and Only Fair.

    Now, President Trump orders up an investigation of investigators based on no evidence of impropriety and then meets directly with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray to discuss sharing and/or releasing such information. Yes, we are through the looking glass.

    That’s the trouble with electing a criminal president. Let’s not do that again.

    “Based on the meeting with the President, the Department of Justice has asked the Inspector General to expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s or the Department of Justice’s tactics concerning the Trump campaign,” the White House said in a written statement. “It was also agreed that White House Chief of Staff [John] Kelly will immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DOJ, and DNI [Director of National Intelligence] together with Congressional Leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested.” It’s far from clear what this entails, but it appears to be a wholly improper attempt to give Trump’s allies in Congress a peek at critical documents for Trump’s legal benefit.

    Maddow pointed out with much emphasis that Nunes and his friends will instantly share any “highly classified and other information” they see with the White House.

    Trump’s TV lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani blabbed to Politico the real reason for the request:

    [He] said the documents requested by Trump will “indicate what the informant found.” He also said the memos “should be made available to us on a confidential basis,” he added. “We should be at least allowed to read them so we know this exculpatory evidence is being preserved.” It’s unclear if there were any arrangements made for the White House to view the documents.

    This goes beyond obstruction to total disruption of an investigation, with an implicit request for Congress to turn over to a potential defendant classified materials. Trump’s lawyer asking for critical investigative documents in the press is about as blatant as one can get.

    The normal separation between the White House and the Justice Department on investigative matters is being obliterated before our eyes — and worse, Trump is using his powers as president to aid in his own defense.

    And nobody is stopping him. Just a couple of weeks ago Rosenstein said the Justice Department won’t be extorted, but oh look the Justice Department is being extorted.

  • Where past presidents have rarely tread

    The Times tries to talk it down:

    President Trump on Sunday demanded that the Justice Department open an investigation into whether the department or the F.B.I. “infiltrated or surveilled” his campaign at the behest of the Obama administration, following through on his frequent threats to use his own government to target his political opponents.

    Mr. Trump made the order on Twitter during a day of public venting about the special counsel investigation, which he charged had turned up no evidence of collusion with Russia and was now casting a worldwide net so that it could harm Republicans’ chances in midterm congressional elections this fall.

    But in ordering up a new inquiry, Mr. Trump went beyond his usual tactics of suggesting wrongdoing and political bias by those investigating him, and crossed over into applying overt presidential pressure on the Justice Department to do his bidding, an extraordinary realm where past presidents have rarely tread.

    Rarely? Isn’t it more like never? Or never apart from Nixon? It’s kind of a third rail.

    The president’s call came two weeks after he publicly expressed frustration with the Justice Department for failing to give Republican lawmakers documents they are seeking about the basis and findings of the special counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign worked with the Russians to sway the 2016 election. The president said then that “at some point, I will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the Presidency and get involved!”

    But those powers aren’t granted to the presidency.

    Legal experts said Mr. Trump’s promise of intervention had little precedent, and could force a clash between the sitting president and his Justice Department that is reminiscent of the one surrounding Richard M. Nixon during Watergate, when a string of top officials there resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s order to fire a special prosecutor investigating him.

    “I can’t think of a prior example of a sitting president ordering the Justice Department to conduct an investigation like this one,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “That’s little more than a transparent effort to undermine an ongoing investigation.”

    Into himself.

    If Mr. Trump were to follow through with the demand, Mr. Vladek added, “it seems to me that the recipients of such an order should resign — and that we’re heading for another Saturday Night Massacre.”

    But a confrontation between Mr. Trump and his Justice Department over the order was not a certainty. It was not clear whether Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, or Mr. Rosenstein could refer the president’s demand to the department’s inspector general, who is already investigating surveillance of a Trump campaign aide, Carter Page. Such a step could defuse the current crisis and perhaps satisfy Mr. Trump.

    We look forward to finding out.

  • Step one of the coup

    Ok this is scary now.

  • A textbook case of how dehumanizing rhetoric works

    Trump’s “They’re not people, they’re animals” is not being forgotten in the onslaught of news.

    So I did read it; it’s outstanding. A few highlights:

  • How it starts

    Leon Mugesera called Tutsis “cockroaches.”

    In 1992, then an official in Rwanda’s ruling Hutu party, Mugesera told more than 1,000 party members that they should kill Tutsis and dump their bodies in the river.

    Milošević called Bosnians “internal enemies.”

    Hailed as “the new Tito”, Milošević propagated a message of extreme Serbian nationalism, calling for the expansion of the Serbian state into Bosnian territory.  In a 1988 Belgrade speech, Milosevic identified Bosniaks as the “internal enemy”, a gesture eerily similar to Hitler’s pre-WWII demonization of the Jews in Germany.

    Trump said immigrants are not people, “they’re animals.”

  • Our own Wannsee conference

    He says it. He says it.

  • Fingers crossed behind back ok sir?

    Trump’s lawyer basically told Walter Shaub that Trump’s financial disclosure wasn’t true and asked if that would be ok, USNews reported a year ago:

    President Donald Trump’s attorneys initially wanted him to submit an updated financial disclosure without certifying the information as true, according to correspondence with the Office of Government Ethics.

    Attorney Sheri Dillon said she saw no need for Trump to sign his 2016 personal financial disclosure because he is filing voluntarily this year. But OGE director Walter Shaub said his office would only work with Dillon if she agreed to follow the typical process of having Trump make the certification.

    He put it more strongly on Twitter just now.

    https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/996813720524349441

    Back to the story:

    The documents indicate that after OGE pushed back, Trump now plans to certify the information by mid-June [2017]. But his attorney’s effort to sidestep certification of his personal financial disclosure marks another departure from the norm. Each year, the OGE processes thousands of those forms, all of which are certified.

    “This is not at all typical; in fact I’ve never heard of anyone trying this,” said Marilyn Glynn, an OGE employee for 17 years before retiring in 2008. Her positions included acting director and general counsel. “It would be as unusual as not signing your taxes.”

    It’s downright absurd. “Is it ok if we don’t include the bit that says ‘this is all true and accurate’?” Erm, no, that’s not ok, because the goal is disclosure, and you can’t call it disclosure if you don’t want to say it’s true.

    The certification means that if a person knowingly included incorrect financial information, the OGE can seek a civil penalty such as a fine, or even make a referral to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

    Glynn said OGE has indeed used those tools to enforce the integrity of certification.

    The letters indicate Shaub and Dillon talked through the importance of Trump presenting true information and signing off on it as such. OGE typically works with federal employees and their representatives and also certifies the financial disclosures.

     Talked through it? Because what, she didn’t understand that before?

    These people are just nuts.

  • Any inquiry you may be pursuing

    The Times on Trump’s oopsie:

    President Trump’s financial disclosure, released on Wednesday, revealed for the first time that he paid more than $100,000 to his personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen, as reimbursement for payment to a third-party.

    That is, this is the first time Trump has admitted it to the feds.

    Mr. Trump’s disclosure of the 2016 payment to Mr. Cohen raises the question of whether he erred in not reporting the debt on last year’s disclosure form. The document released Wednesday said that Mr. Trump was reporting the repaid debt “in the interest of transparency” but that it was “not required to be disclosed as reportable liabilities.”

    Yet a letter accompanying the report sent to Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, from the government ethics office’s acting director, David J. Apol, said that the Office of Government Ethics had determined “the payment made by Mr. Cohen is required to be reported as a liability.”

    Let’s see the rest of what the letter said:

    Dear Mr. Rosenstein,

    I write to you in connection with the complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on March 8, 2018 with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE). Specifically, the complaint requested that DOJ and OGE investigate whether a payment made by Mr. Michael Cohen to a third party constituted a loan to President Trump that should have been reported as a liability on his public financial disclosure report signed on June 14, 2017 (for calendar year 2016), and if so, whether the failure to report it was knowing and willful.

    Today I certified President Trump’ s financial disclosure report signed on May 15, 2018 (for calendar year 2017). OGE has concluded that, based on the information provided as a note to part 8, the payment made by Mr. Cohen is  required to be reported as a liability. OGE has determined that the information provided in that note meets the disclosure requirements for a reportable liability under the Ethics in Government Act. I am providing both reports to you because you may find the disclosure relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing regarding the President’s prior report that was signed on June 14, 2017.

    Then his signature. Notice he doesn’t address the knowing and willful part.

  • With omission under false statement liability

    This could get interesting.

    https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/996803765264113664

    SIREN: by disclosing Cohen debt on his just-released 278, Donald Trump just substantiated our @crewcrew criminal complaint that he should have disclosed it last year as well. Form is here https://oge.app.box.com/v/Trump2018Annual278 … and our criminal complaint is here

    https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/996810077414854656

    BREAKING: @OfficeGovEthics agrees with our @CREWcrew analysis that Trump was required to report Cohen debt & sends last year’s form with omission under false statement liability to DOJ & Rod Rosenstein in case “relevant to any inquiry you may be pursuing”! https://oge.app.box.com/v/OGELettertoDOJ …

    Well. No doubt Trump will explain it all in a tweet.

  • Hey, for $500 million it’s worth it

    Talk about leaving a trail…

    A mere 72 hours after the Chinese government agreed to put a half-billion dollars into an Indonesian project that will personally enrich Donald Trump, the president ordered a bailout for a Chinese-government-owned cellphone maker.

    “President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast,” Trump announced on Twitter Sunday morning. “Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

    To think that was only two days ago. I wondered about it at the time but thought it was a brain fart via talking to someone; I didn’t consider the bribery possibility (or I guess that should be likelihood). Probably because he said it on Twitter? I probably assumed, without thinking about it, that he wouldn’t announce an openly corrupt act on Twitter. Silly me.

    Trump did not mention in that tweet or its follow-ups that on Thursday, the developer of a theme park resort outside of Jakarta had signed a deal to receive as much as $500 million in Chinese government loans, as well as another $500 million from Chinese banks. Trump’s family business, the Trump Organization, has a deal to license the Trump name to the resort, which includes a golf course and hotels.

    No, he didn’t mention that. I guess he wanted reporters to do the work. He’s such a big tease!

    “You do a good deal for him, he does a good deal for you. Quid pro quo,” said Richard Painter, the White House ethics lawyer for former President George W. Bush and now a Democratic candidate for Senate in Minnesota.

    “This appears to be yet another violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution,” Painter said, referring to the prohibition against the president receiving payments from foreign governments.

    The White House did not respond to HuffPost queries asking if there was a connection between the “MNC Lido City” project and Trump’s directive regarding ZTE.

    At Monday’s daily briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah referred questions about the Indonesian project to the Trump Organization. “That’s not something that I can speak to,” he said.

    Yeah that won’t do. Trump is “the Trump Organization” and vice versa, and he is doing favors for China in exchange for favors for Trump and his organization. They don’t get to refuse to answer questions about it. This is pathetic.

    ZTE phones have already been described as a security risk by the U.S. military and intelligence community. Two weeks ago, the military banned their use on bases for fear they could be used to track the locations of service members.

    The company, which is owned 33 percent by Chinese-government-owned enterprises, had been fined $1.2 billion last year after it was found to be violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and North Korea. After it was determined that ZTE officials had lied about their actions, the U.S. government last month banned it from purchasing U.S. components for seven years — a decision that essentially forced the company to shut down.

    Violating US sanctions against Iran…Trump just pulled the US out of the Iran deal, yet he’s doing favors for a Chinese company that violated US sanctions against Iran.

    Trump followed up late Monday afternoon with a new tweet on the issue: “ZTE, the large Chinese phone company, buys a big percentage of individual parts from U.S. companies. This is also reflective of the larger trade deal we are negotiating with China and my personal relationship with President Xi.”

    His personal relationship ffs – as if that’s supposed to determine foreign policy. (Also as if he actually has one, and it’s as cozy as he seems to think. What an imbecile.)

    The new statement, however, still did not address the question of the Indonesian resort and the Trump Organization’s coming profit thanks to Chinese investment.

    “This is stunning. They perpetually find new things to surprise me,” said Robert Weissman, president of the open government advocacy group Public Citizen. “The idea of the president intervening in a law enforcement matter to satisfy a foreign government is extraordinary. And it’s extraordinary because it doesn’t happen. Opening that door threatens the integrity of all corporate law enforcement.”

    Well that wouldn’t bother Trump any.

    During his campaign, Trump attacked China almost daily for “stealing” U.S. jobs by manipulating its currency and using unfair trade practices. “No one has ever stolen jobs like other countries have taken from us,” Trump told a Nevada rally on Nov. 5, 2016. “We’ve lost 70,000 factories since China joined the WTO,” Trump told a Pittsburgh-area audience the following day.

    Blah blah blah. He was just kidding.

    For ethics advocates, the timing of the ZTE tweet on the heels of the Indonesian development announcement is yet another example of the consequences of Trump’s unwillingness to abide by the emoluments clause.

    “The Chinese government seems to have figured out a way to manipulate President Trump,” Weissman said. “It’s exactly why this anti-bribery clause of the Constitution is common sense.”

    Oh well!

  • Don’t call it a gaffe

    Another blatant lie Trump told, on camera:

    He told an audience of military spouses at the White House on Wednesday that he was “proud” of the 2.4 percent raise for 2018 which was the “first time in 10 years” troops had received a salary boost.

    That’s the lie – there has been a raise every year in those ten years. Is there anything special about the ten years part? Of course: it covers the Obama presidency.

    RTS1QO78

    Flattering pic.

    It was the second gaffe in recent weeks that Trump has made about the military.

    It’s not a “gaffe.” It’s a lie.

  • Too many jobs in China lost

    Trump is doing what now?

    President Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday that he was working with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to prevent the collapse of the Chinese electronics giant ZTE, which shut down major operations after being sanctioned by the United States Department of Commerce last month.

    “Too many jobs in China lost,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

    Too many jobs in China lost? Is he confused? Has he forgotten his own America First ideology? Has MAGA left the building? Has he forgotten the name of the country he’s the president of which?

    The department last month banned shipments of American technology to ZTE for seven years, saying the company had failed to reprimand employees who violated American trade controls on Iran and North Korea. The department said Sunday that it had no comment.

    Naturally not; it was asking itself all the above questions and more (plus it was at church).

    Mr. Trump’s tweet on Sunday left many scratching their heads. The president has taken a tough stance on what his administration deems unfair trade practices by the Chinese government. And he has trumpeted his efforts to safeguard American jobs even if it means creating economic strain in other countries.

    The prospective shutdown of ZTE has been seen as major leverage in continuing trade discussions between China and the United States over Chinese trade practices. If Mr. Trump was announcing a huge concession with his tweet, it was without any indication of what he might have gotten in return.

    Also without any indication that it was a massive brain fart that happened while he was watching Sunday morning cartoons on the tv machine.

    Scott Kennedy, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that in expressing concerns about Chinese jobs, Mr. Trump was reiterating the case made by Beijing on ZTE’s imminent collapse.

    “Jobs is the talking point,” he said, adding that for Mr. Trump to write about Chinese jobs in the tweet, “it must have just been part of the conversation, which would have come from the Chinese side.”

    Ah well that explains it then. Someone said it to Trump, and Trump said it to Twitter. You can’t expect him to evaluate what people tell him.

  • An interesting piece of information

    This raises some horrifying possibilities: Trump knew about Schneiderman years ago.

    Back in 2013, Donald Trump was exploring a presidential run. His Trump University was in the crosshairs of New York’s crusading attorney general. Around the same time, Trump and his personal lawyer got an interesting piece of information: Eric Schneiderman, the AG, was accused of sexually abusing two women.

    Interesting and perhaps useful? Leverage?

    After five years under wraps, those abuse allegations surfaced Friday in the Manhattan court where federal prosecutors and lawyers have been battling over documents related to Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

    In a letter to the judge, attorney Peter J. Gleason asserted Trump and Cohen knew about the old abuse allegations. He argued that information about the women might be found in files the FBI seized last month from Cohen and should be kept under seal to protect the women’s privacy. Later Friday, the judge said Gleason must submit a formal memo in support of his letter or pull it.

    The revelations come just days after allegations of abuse by four women forced Schneiderman’s abrupt resignation. They raise concerns about how Trump may have used such information, if true, about the top prosecutor in his home state, and whether a jeering tweet from Trump’s account five years ago was an oblique reference to the allegations.

    That’s the Attorney General of his state, where he did business, and lived.

    Updating to add: the Times has more.

    In his interview on Friday, Mr. Gleason also said that he had told several elected officials of his concerns about Mr. Schneiderman’s abusive behavior nearly five years ago, but was rebuffed.

    “The highest levels of our state and city government were well aware of Eric Schneiderman,” he said.

    Mr. Gleason refused to identify the officials, and noted that the women he represented were not among the four who came forward this week in an article in The New Yorker that prompted Mr. Schneiderman’s resignation.

    …

    Mr. Gleason’s account was supported in part by Jeanne Wilcke, the treasurer of the Downtown Independent Democrats, a New York City political club that Mr. Gleason belongs to. In an interview on Friday, Ms. Wilcke said that in 2013, Mr. Gleason had warned her about Mr. Schneiderman without revealing any specific details.

    “He told me I should be very careful about Schneiderman,” Ms. Wilcke said. “Not to be in a room alone with him — for women, it was bad.”

    Ms. Wilcke, a former president of the organization, noted that the club had supported Mr. Schneiderman for many years. But, she added, “every once in a while, Pete would again give me a warning. It registered with me.”