Tag: Trump

  • The deep rot of bad faith

    Greg Sargent at the Post on Trump’s nonsense about the Texas slaughter:

    (I know, I’m harping on it, but Trump’s disgusting cynical frivolity about this cries out for obsessive finger-pointing.)

    It has become an Internet meme that Donald Trump favors extreme vetting for arriving immigrants, but not for would-be gun buyers, and today in South Korea, Trump was confronted by a question about this contrast. It produced a useful answer — one that once again illustrated the deep rot of bad faith at the core of his approach to difficult policy questions.

    You can see that bad faith when he closes his eyes. He’s taking a second to think up a way to sell the lies.

    It’s being widely reported that the Air Force failed to follow the proper policies that would have barred Devin Patrick Kelley, who killed 26 people in a Texas church, from buying firearms. Kelley was discharged from the Air Force after a conviction for domestic violence — including cracking his toddler stepson’s skull — but this information, which could have stopped him from buying the guns he obtained, was not properly transmitted to the FBI or entered into the federal background check database. The Air Force has launched an internal investigation.

    So this morning the reporter asked her question and Trump blatted out his lies.

    “If you did what you’re suggesting, there would have been no difference three days ago. And you might not have had that very brave person who happened to have a gun or a rifle in his truck go out and shoot him and hit him and neutralize him. If he didn’t have a gun, instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead.”

    The claim that there would have been “no difference” if Kelley had undergone “extreme vetting” is another way of saying that an improved gun background check system would not have stopped this shooting. But Trump has no earthly way of knowing this one way or the other.

    But he’s too thick to understand that he can’t know it, and too callous and frivolous to care.

    Trump told us that his thinly veiled Muslim ban was necessary so that we could review our vetting procedures and see where they need to be improved. Applying his own logic to the gun debate should lead to a similar place: If our current system of background checks is inadequate, we should review it to see whether it needs to be improved, too.

    Trump, of course, does not believe that the gun background check system should be improved. He is entitled to that view. But the notion that this shooting shows that improving the system wouldn’t make any difference is utter nonsense. What it really shows is that Trump views the flaws he sees in our system of vetting new arrivals as a threat worth addressing, but does not view the flaws in our gun background check system as a threat worth addressing.

    My point is not that the Texas shooting itself makes the case for any particular set of background check improvements. It doesn’t, and again, seizing on isolated events isn’t how we should be debating policy. The Air Force’s review of its mistakes here is an appropriate response to this particular horror. Rather, my point is this: Either you believe, in a broad sense, that we should be trying to improve our background check system to make it harder for prohibited people to get guns, or you do not. Trump’s silly misdirection tells us that he does not believe this — and that he probably hasn’t thought seriously about the question for even a second.

    Exactly, which is what I mean by callous and frivolous. He’s too frivolous to do the work and too callous to care that he’s not doing it. He’s fine with his own lazy ignorance and brutality.

  • If

    Trump said if there had been “extreme vetting” of the guy who slaughtered all those people in Texas, “you would have had hundreds more dead.” You can watch him close his eyes while he pretends to think. You can see him end triumphantly with his cherished cliché “the great state of” Texas.

  • We could let a little time go by

    Trump, today, at a press conference in South Korea:

    Reporter: You’ve talked about wanting to put extreme vetting on people trying to come into the United States, but I wonder if you would consider extreme vetting for people trying to buy a gun.

    Trump: Well…you know you’re bringing up a situation that probably shouldn’t be discussed too much right now, we could let a little time go by, but it’s ok if you feel that that’s an appropriate question.

    Trump a week ago, immediately after a perp in a truck killed eight people and injured more in lower Manhattan:

    Trump the next day:

    President Trump said Wednesday that he is considering sending the Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in Tuesday’s terrorist attack in New York to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that the United States must be “much tougher” with its treatment of terror suspects.

    Trump also called on Congress to immediately dismantle the State Department’s Diversity Visa Lottery program, through which authorities have said the suspected attacker, Sayfullo Saipov, came to the United States from Uzbekistan.

    “Diversity lottery — sounds nice. It’s not nice,” Trump told reporters at the White House during a meeting with his Cabinet. “It’s not good. It’s not good. It hasn’t been good. We’ve been against it.”

    He added, “I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program.”

    Speaking generally, Trump said U.S. immigration laws and the criminal justice system’s handling of suspects are “a joke” and “a laughingstock.”

    “We have to get much tougher,” he said. “We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. We’re so politically correct that we’re afraid to do anything.”

    Trump said the United States needs a system of “punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They’ll go through court for years… We need quick justice, and we need strong justice.”

    Referring to Saipov as an “animal,” Trump said the 29-year-old was responsible for the entry of 23 immigrants, many of them family members. The president said this “chain migration” endangers national security.

    “This man that came in, or whatever you want to call him, brought in with him other people, and he was the primary point of contact for — and this is preliminarily — 23 people that came in or potentially came in with him,” Trump said. “That’s not acceptable.”

    Asked whether Saipov’s family members represent a security threat, Trump said, “They certainly could. He did. They certainly could represent a threat.”

    When a reporter asked whether Saipov should be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Trump replied, “I would certainly consider that, yes. Send him to Gitmo. I would certainly consider that.”

    It wasn’t too soon for all of that the same day and the next day when it was some Mooslim immmmigrant, but it’s too soon two days later when it’s a white guy with a gun.

  • At the highest level

    Trump says it’s not a guns situation. Nope nope nope. Not at all. It’s a bats in the belfry situation. It’s a MenTal HeAlth SituAtion. That’s what it is. The guy was cray cray. Nothing to do with guns at all. Could just as well have been a poisoned amuse-bouche. Could have been flung rocks. Could have been a rabid dog smuggled in under his coat. It just happened to be a semi-automatic rifle. Totally random.

    Asked at a press conference in Tokyo what policies he might support in response to the shooting, Mr Trump said preliminary reports suggested the gunman was “a very deranged individual, [with] a lot of problems.”

    Actually he said “a lot of problems over a long period of time.” He used that stupid canned phrase of his that signals how radically impoverished his vocabulary and mental activity are. The Indy left it out no doubt because of how stupid and knee-jerk it is.

    “We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries. But this isn’t a guns situation,” he said. “Fortunately somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction.”

    He said that. He did. He actually said that.

    “This is a mental health problem at the highest level,” he added. “It’s a very, very sad event.”

    The highest level? What highest level? The highest level of what?

    More filler. More filler to attempt to disguise the emptiness of his mind and the nonexistence of his human feeling.

    Earlier this Mr Trump signed a bill blocking plans that would have prevented an estimated 75,000 people with mental health disorders buying guns. The proposals were part of former president Barack Obama’s push to strengthen the federal background check system in the wake of the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School…

    Well that’s just Radical Left Craziness, because shootings are never caused or enabled or assisted by guns. Of course not. If it were not guns it would be strangling people one by one, which is not at all more difficult to carry out on a mass scale than shooting with a semi-automatic rifle.

  • Unscheduled stop

    The sleaze rolls on.

    Trump stopped in Hawaii on his way to Japan.

    But on his way back to the airport, Trump made another stop — this time at the Trump Hotel in Waikiki.

    According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump wanted to greet the employees and thank them for their hard work in making the Trump Hotel a “tremendously successful project.”

    Oh did he. Is that what he wanted to do. But the trouble is, he’s the chief executive, and he’s supposed to be doing that job, not promoting his own business on our time and our money, and not using his public service job to make more money go into his bank account.

    This stop, which happened amidst a taxpayer-funded trip, was both unexpected and unannounced, according to reporters travelling with the president.

    Also unlawful and unappropriate and unacceptable and unwhatheshouldbedoing.

    Kyle Griffin of MSNBC reports that this is Trump’s 97th day at a Trump property since his inauguration on January 20th.

    97th day in under ten months – that’s a stunningly high percentage.

    The Trump Hotel in Waikiki says on its website that it is “not owned, developed, or sold by Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization, or any of their affiliates.” But Trump’s taxpayer-funded detour to the property proves that the only connection Trump finds important is the branding — and that despite any vocalized separation between Trump and the Trump Organization, he still views himself as the organization’s owner and its ultimate brand ambassador.

    After thanking his hotel employees, Trump boarded a plane to Asia, where he will presumably spend the next 12 days trying to ward off a looming nuclear war with North Korea.

    Or more likely threatening to start one.

  • He looked just like Steve McQueen

    Trump gave a talk to American troops in Japan this morning, wearing a bomber jacket. Sure, Bone Spurs, that’s all it takes to look Military. His words at many points did not match his actions.

    “No one — no dictator, no regime and no nation — should underestimate, ever, American resolve,” Mr. Trump said, having shed his suit jacket for a leather bomber jacket as he addressed hundreds of fatigues-clad women and men. “You are the greatest threat to tyrants and dictators who seek to prey on the innocent.”

    But he is a tyrant and dictator. He bullies and lies to the press, he’s working to suppress voting, he demands loyalty to himself from people who are supposed to be serving the country, he uses his office to enrich himself, he hires relatives, he attacks judges and the justice system in general – he does what tyrants and dictators do.

    He also preys on the innocent whenever it suits his purpose.

    The president used his speech on Sunday to call for building a “free and open Indo-Pacific” region, a new approach to Asia that is likely to be seen by China as a challenge. The idea, first proposed by the Japanese and adopted in recent days by Mr. Tillerson, envisions the United States strengthening ties with three other democracies in the region — Japan, Australia and India — to contain a rising China.

    But he is an enemy of democracy. He battles it and resists it and attacks it every day of his life.

    Mr. Trump also makes the trip hobbled by new questions about the Russia investigation back in Washington, sharpened in recent days by revelations that his aides sought to arrange meetings between him and Mr. Putin during the campaign. In contrast, Mr. Abe and Mr. Xi are newly empowered, with their countries handing them sweeping mandates.

    Mr. Trump denied being at a disadvantage when reporters noted on Sunday that Mr. Xi was in a particularly powerful position.

    “Excuse me, so am I,” Mr. Trump said, citing stock market gains and low unemployment in the United States, and asserting that “ISIS is virtually defeated in the Middle East.”

    “We are coming off some of the strongest numbers we’ve ever had, and he knows that and he respects that,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Xi. “We’re going in with tremendous strength.”

    Well, except for the poll numbers, which are record-breakingly low. Excuse me, his “tremendous strength” is illusory.

  • He needs norm-glasses

    The Post goes into contortions to say it politely:

    President Trump on Friday pressured the Department of Justice — and specifically the FBI — to investigate Hillary Clinton, ticking through a slew of issues involving the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and her party, and urging law enforcement to “do what is right and proper.”

    Trump’s advocacy for criminal probe of his political opponent marked a significant breach of the traditional boundaries within the executive branch designed to prevent investigations from being politicized.

    In other words Trump’s rant was completely deranged and trampled all over the norms that prevent total breakdown and internecine war and corruption.

    In his Thursday radio interview, Trump said, “You know, the saddest thing is, because I am the president of the United States I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing and I am very frustrated by it.”

    The interview was on “The Larry O’Connor Show.” (Never heard of it.)

    As he departed the White House Friday morning for an 12-day trip to Asia, Trump told reporters: “A lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me.”

    In a series of Friday morning tweets, Trump claimed there was mounting public pressure for the Justice Department to investigate Clinton. Trump suggested law enforcement reopen its probe of the deleted emails from Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state, as well as a Russian uranium sale and the international business of Democratic super-lobbyist Tony Podesta.

    He also went on and on about Clinton and the DNC yadda yadda – so on the eve of his trip abroad he sounded like a raving lunatic. That’s productive.

    This marks only the latest attempt by Trump to use his presidential bully pulpit to influence the criminal justice process. He has delivered off-the-cuff remarks this week recommending punishment for Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect accused of killing eight people with a rental truck in New York. Trump at first said he was considering sending Saipov to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but then reversed course and advocated a civilian trial in federal court for the terrorism suspect he called “an animal.”

    The Justice Department is a part of the executive branch; the attorney general is nominated by the president. So it is normal for the White House to direct the Justice Department on broad policy goals.

    But unlike other executive branch agencies, the Justice Department traditionally enjoys a measure of independence, especially when it comes to individual criminal investigations. Government lawyers have long sought to enforce a clear line preventing White House officials from influencing specific investigations or prosecutions to ensure such work is not politicized.

    Like this business of interviewing candidates for federal prosecutor jobs – that’s entirely abnormal and wrong and bad. We have a system that’s full of “norms” that prevent the government from acting like a dictator, and Trump is stampeding all over them, acting like a dictator. They’re norms as opposed to laws, so it’s turning out to be impossible to make him obey them, because he’s a reckless narcissistic monster who cannot see any norms or needs that don’t serve his desires. He can’t perceive them; it’s as if they’re on some other spectrum that his senses can’t detect.

    The president directing a particular investigation — especially of a former political rival — would be viewed by most in law enforcement as inappropriate. When Trump made similar comments on the campaign trail a year ago, even former Republican attorney general Michael Mukasey, a vocal Clinton critic, said Trump ordering a prosecution of her would be “like a banana republic.”

    Remember that? I remember that. He said it in one of the debates – I think the second one. He said if he were elected he would have her prosecuted, and there was an outcry. Then he got elected and we all fell into hell.

  • Trump says Trump is the only one that matters

    Narcissism plus total incompetence plus grotesque overconfidence=what could go wrong?

    President Trump says: “I’m the only one that matters” in setting U.S. foreign policy, thus downplaying the importance of high-level jobs such as the assistant secretary of state, which is currently vacant.

    “Let me tell you, the one that matters is me,” Trump said in an interview that aired on Fox News on Thursday night. “I’m the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be. You’ve seen that, you’ve seen it strongly.”

    He was talking to some fool on Fox News, in his 700th interview with Fox News, which he advertised on his deranged Twitter, intermixed with 700 other deranged tweets about “Pocahontas” and “Crooked Hillary” and Comey and godknowswhat.

    Trump said, “So, we don’t need all the people that they want. You know, don’t forget, I’m a businessperson. I tell my people, ‘Where you don’t need to fill slots, don’t fill them.’ But we have some people that I’m not happy with their thinking process.”

    Yeah, don’t forget, he’s a businessperson, with no knowledge or understanding whatsoever of government and public service and diplomacy and working for the greater good. All he knows is Munnee, gett moar munnneee, fire all the peepul and put their munnneee in your pokkkket.

    For months, Trump’s administration has been criticized over budget cuts to the State Department and its pace of nominations for high-profile ambassadorships in Asia and the Middle East.

    As NPR’s Michele Kelemen reported in September, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “has raised a lot of eyebrows, maintaining a hiring freeze long after it was lifted for the rest of the federal government. Secretary Tillerson has also hired outside consulting groups.”

    For Trump, the approach extends beyond the State Department. His recent remarks echo what he said in October, when he told Forbes, “I’m generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be — because you don’t need them.”

    He has no idea that “you don’t need them” because he has no understanding of what any of it is for in the first place. He just assumes that “you don’t need them” because the crude money-saving angle is all he can grasp with his tiny shrinking defective brain. “Lookame, mommy, I’m saving the kuntree monneee.”

  • Breakdown

    He’s lost it.

  • How to gett tuffer

    Legal types on Twitter are pointing out that Trump damaged the government’s ability to prosecute Saipov by barfing out his stupid murderous thoughts on Twitter. The Times explains.

    A day after an immigrant from Uzbekistan was arrested on suspicion of plowing a pickup truck along a crowded bicycle path in Manhattan, killing eight people, Mr. Trump denounced the American criminal justice system as “a joke” and “a laughingstock,” adding that he was open to sending “this animal” instead to the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

    Shortly before midnight, the president took it a step further, posting a message on Twitter declaring that the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, should be executed. “NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room,” he wrote, referring to the driver’s reported interest in the Islamic State extremist group. “He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!”

    Presidents are typically advised never to weigh in on pending criminal cases because such comments can be used by defense lawyers to argue that their clients cannot get a fair trial — especially when the head of the executive branch that will prosecute the charges advocates the ultimate punishment before a judge has heard a single shred of evidence at trial. But Mr. Trump has disregarded such advice in other instances, as well.

    Of course he has – because he’s stupid, reckless, out of control, childish, undisciplined, self-involved, and obstinate.

    While the White House deemed it unseemly to have a policy debate on gun control immediately after the massacre in Las Vegas last month, Mr. Trump was eager on Wednesday to have a policy debate on immigration. He pressed Congress to cancel a visa lottery program that allowed the driver into the country, attributing it to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and called Democrats “obstructionists” who “don’t want to do what’s right for our country.”

    “We have to get much tougher,” the president told reporters. “We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. We’re so politically correct that we’re afraid to do anything.”

    “Politically correct” there means simply humane, decent, not racist, not sadistic. It means respectful of human rights and the law – and he vulgarly pushes it away like a child throwing cabbage on the floor. Hours later he puts the whole prosecution in jeopardy.

  • In blatant disregard of his oath

    Jennifer Rubin (a conservative) on Trump’s attack on the US justice system:

    When Trump pops off about the defects of our justice system with no understanding of what he is saying, he underscores his unfitness and undermines one of the great jewels of American democracy, the court system. For Trump to slander the courts as a “joke” gives aid and comfort to our enemies (both terrorists and thug-ocracies such as Russia). It is a regrettable but natural continuation of his indefensible slurs about “so-called judges.” Unfortunately, Republicans have been too cowardly to take him on, even rhetorically on this point. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore his unwillingness to defend the Constitution, of which courts are a part, in blatant disregard of his oath. His meek retreat this morning underscores just how ignorant he is — and how willing to make irresponsible assertions.

    Today he’s been screaming for the death penalty – yet another thing a normal, reasonable, ethical, halfway decent president should not do.

    All caps scream for death penalty twice in three tweets. He’s like a rabid dog – a dog who was never a nice dog in the first place and is now a brain-inflamed monster.

  • Due process: it takes too long

    The Guardian on the White House press briefing today:

    15:20

    White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is holding a press briefing. She denies that the president was going the “political route” by attacking Chuck Schumer on Twitter this morning.

    “The president’s not blamed senator Schumer. He doesn’t believe that the senator is responsible for the attack,” says Huckabee Sanders.

    5:22

    Huckabee Sanders is asked about the president’s willingness to “send him to Gitmo.”

    She basically makes clear that that was something the president just said but there’s no thinking behind it:

    He supports or would support that but he wasn’t necessarily advocating for it.

    ‘I believe we would consider this person to be an enemy combatant, yes,” Huckabee Sanders said. But that doesn’t mean the administration does not support trying him in federal court.

    The “enemy combatant” designation has a narrow legal definition with implications for the detainees’ rights and potential trial, and the label has never been applied to a suspect detained in the United States.

    15:29

    The press secretary is asked about Trump’s calling the US justice system a “laughingstock.”

    “He was voicing his frustration with the lengthy process that often comes with a case like this,” Huckabee Sanders says.

    Due process: it takes too long.

    15:43

    Sanders denies that Trump called the justice system a “laughingstock.” Instead she says the president said that “the process” of trying terror suspects in court is regarded by others as a laughingstock.

    But she’s mischaracterizing what he said. Trump said “we need quick justice…because what we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughingstock”.

    Full quote:

    “We have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They’ll go through court for years, at the end they’ll be – who knows what happens. We need quick justice, we need strong justice, much quicker and much stronger than we have right now, because what we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughingstock.”

    He leaned on the word “joke” – leaned on it with contempt and venom. He has venomous contempt for our justice system – not because of its grotesquely high use of prison sentences, but because of its observance of due process.

    That’s the head of state.

  • The worst political adviser in the White House in modern history

    Trump thinks it’s all so unfair.

    Trump, meanwhile, has reacted to the deteriorating situation by lashing out on Twitter and venting in private to friends. He’s frustrated that the investigation seems to have no end in sight. “Trump wants to be critical of Mueller,” one person who’s been briefed on Trump’s thinking says. “He thinks it’s unfair criticism. Clinton hasn’t gotten anything like this. And what about Tony Podesta? Trump is like, When is that going to end?” According to two sources, Trump has complained to advisers about his legal team for letting the Mueller probe progress this far. Speaking to Steve Bannon on Tuesday, Trump blamed Jared Kushner for his role in decisions, specifically the firings of Mike Flynn and James Comey,that led to Mueller’s appointment, according to a source briefed on the call. When Roger Stone recently told Trump that Kushner was giving him bad political advice, Trump agreed, according to someone familiar with the conversation. “Jared is the worst political adviser in the White House in modern history,” Nunberg said. “I’m only saying publicly what everyone says behind the scenes at Fox News, in conservative media, and the Senate and Congress.”

    Oh, gee, so I guess we shouldn’t all have told him to hire Kushner?

    No, that’s not it; he shouldn’t have hired Kushner, not least because there’s a law against it. If it’s biting him in the ass now I don’t see what we can do other than laugh.

    Surprise surprise: a real estate manager whose father went to prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering, turns out to be not very good at political advising. Who could have foreseen that? Why wouldn’t he be brilliant at something he knows nothing whatever about? It’s all so puzzling.

  • “What we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughing stock.”

    Trump seized the opportunity to fling more mud in the direction of the US system of laws.

    President Trump said on Wednesday that he would consider sending the suspect arrested after the terrorist attack in New York to the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and called on Congress to cancel a longstanding immigration program that he blamed for allowing the man into the country.

    Or hey, why not put the suspect on a ship and tell the crew to throw him overboard in the middle of the Pacific?

    The president’s comments came at the beginning of a cabinet meeting a day after an immigrant from Uzbekistan plowed a pickup truck along a crowded bicycle path in Manhattan, killing eight people. Asked by reporters if he would send the suspect to Guantanamo, Mr. Trump said, “I would certainly consider that.”

    “Send him to Gitmo, I would certainly consider that, yes,” Mr. Trump said.

    No one arrested on American soil has ever been sent to Guantánamo Bay, and no one captured on foreign soil has been sent there since 2008. Transferring the suspect from New York would raise a host of constitutional and legal issues, and it was not clear that Mr. Trump actually would follow through on the idea since his comment was in reaction to a question rather than part of his prepared remarks.

    But even in response to a new question he hasn’t heard before, a minimally decent president should know better than to say that. Instead what we have is a racist monstrosity whose brain is rotting.

    The remarks he had outlined in advance focused on immigration. “I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program,” he said. “I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program.”

    “It sounds nice,” he added of the diversity program. “It’s not nice. It’s not good. It’s not good. We’ve been against it.”

    See what happened there? He read two written sentences in normal adult English, and then paused to comment in his own voice, and talked like a four-year-0ld.

    The president also promised to toughen sentences against terrorists but did not specify how. “We need quick justice and we need strong justice, much quicker and much stronger than we have right now,” he said. “Because what we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughing stock.”

    Said the president of the United States about the US judicial system.

    It’s worth watching to get the full venom and stupidity in what he said.

    At a news conference updating the public about the attack, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York chided Mr. Trump for his tweets, saying they “were not helpful,” were not “even accurate” and “tended to point fingers and politicize the situation.”

    “You play into the hands of the terrorists to the extent that you disrupt and divide and frighten people in this society,” said Mr. Cuomo, who is a Democrat. “And the tone now should be the exact opposite by all officials on all levels. This is about unification, this is about solidarity.”

    What a wimp, right? Oh wait.

    Democrats on Wednesday noted that Mr. Trump was quick to assail his political opponents and immigration policies less than 24 hours after the New York attack, even though his own White House declared it unseemly to talk about gun control policies in the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Las Vegas, in which a heavily armed American citizen shot and killed 58 people and injured hundreds of others.

    “This is an unspeakable tragedy. Today is a day for consoling of survivors and mourning those we lost,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said at the time, scolding those who called for more gun control. “There is a time and place for political debate, but now is a time to unite as a country.”

    Well that was different.

  • There is no such filter

    Trump’s fun game for today is pretending that Saipov’s slaughter and maiming yesterday are the fault of Chuck Schumer because IMMIGRATION.

    As details emerged about the incident, prominent right-wing commentators and news outlets seized on an ABC7 story reporting that alleged attacker Sayfullo Saipov had come to the United States from Uzbekistan under a State Department program known as the Diversity Visa Lottery.

    That story is unconfirmed, but Trump appeared off base in his criticism of Schumer. The program originated in part in a bill introduced by the New York Democrat in 1990; but Schumer was also among a group of lawmakers who later sought to drop the visa protocols assailed by Trump.

    Still, Schumer was singled out as the brains behind the program and therefore, critics said, bears responsibility for the attack.

    In news interviews, blog posts and tweets, critics tried to pin blame on the leading Democrat, saying he was “responsible” for allowing the 29-year-old suspect’s entry into the country.

    Who was responsible for Stephen Paddock’s entry into Las Vegas then? Who was responsible for his presence in The Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino? Who was responsible for his possession of all those guns and his ability to take them to his room and his ability to fire them out his window? Who was responsible for his ability to add a bump stock to one of the 17 assault rifles he had in the room?

    Trump wants “merit based.” Because what? That would filter out anyone who might want to kill a bunch of people while yelling “Allahu akbar”?

    Yes, no doubt that’s exactly what he’s thinking, because he’s just that dumb. But it wouldn’t. Reminder for Trump: most of the bangers behind 9/11 had high levels of technical education. They were engineers and similar. They were full of Merit.

    There isn’t any kind of immigration filter that can prevent people from deciding they like ISIS and want to give it a helping hand, just as there isn’t any kind of hotel guest filter that can screen out guys who long to shoot into a concert crowd from a high window.

  • Planning a coup

    Greg Sargent at the Post says Trump and his enforcers are attempting to put together another “Saturday Night massacre,” i.e. another case of a criminal president firing the people who are investigating his crimes.

    Let’s be clear on what’s happening in our politics right now. President Trump and his media allies are currently creating a vast, multi-tentacled, largely-fictional alternate media reality that casts large swaths of our government as irredeemably corrupt — with the explicitly declared purpose of laying the rationale for Trump to pardon his close associates or close down the Russia probe, should he deem either necessary.

    We often hear that Trump and his allies are trying to “distract” from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s intensifying investigation. That’s true, but this characterization inadequately casts this in terms ordinarily applied to conventional politics. Instead, Trump’s trafficking in this stuff should be seen as another sign of his fundamental unfitness to serve as president. Similar efforts by his media allies should be labeled as a deliberate effort to goad Trump into sliding into full-blown authoritarianism, and to provide the air cover for him if he does do so.

    That is to say, Fox. Fox is trying to goad Trump into sliding into full-blown authoritarianism, and it will shield him if he does. There was no Fox when Nixon attempted his coup.

    Monday night, Sean Hannity delivered perhaps the most perfect expression yet of efforts to create the rationale for such moves. Hannity dismissed the news of major allegationsagainst Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort and the cooperation adviser George Papadopoulos as big nothingburgers. He also hit all the high points of the new Trump/media campaign. Those include reviving the made-up scandal that Hillary Clinton approved a deal for a Russian nuclear agency to gain access to U.S. uranium extraction rights in exchange for kickbacks, and the absurdly exaggerated claim that the Clinton campaign, having paid through various intermediaries for research that ultimately led to the “Steele Dossier,” actually colluded with Russia to interfere in the election. These have been extensively fact checked and debunked.

    But Fox is Fox. It trades in lies. It has no qualms about it.

    [I]t’s important to reckon with the scope of what Trump and his allies are alleging. The idea is that Mueller — who was originally appointed to head the FBI by George W. Bush, and who became special counsel because of Trump’s own firing of his FBI director over the Russia probe — originally participated in a hallucinatory conspiracy to cover up Clinton collusion with Russia. Now Mueller is using the current investigation to distract from it. In this alternate universe, all of that is the crisis (Hannity’s word) we face, and the only way to address it is for Trump to close all of it down. Dem strategist Simon Rosenberg is right to point out that Trump’s trafficking in all of this — his endorsement of the idea of preposterous levels of corruption and conspiracy theories unfurling at many levels throughout the government — itself raises questions about Trump’s fitness to serve. We need to confront the insanity and depravity of all this forthrightly, and convey it accurately.

    It’s Reichstag fire stuff. Fox is Goebbels. There are no guarantees Trump will fail.

  • Innocent by reason of all caps

    Half an hour ago.

    The second one just cracks me up. Oh, ok then; why didn’t you tell us?

  • Trump boils over

    Don’t do it to me, do it to her, to her, TO HER.

    President Trump’s frustration at the investigations into his campaign’s ties with Russia boiled over on Sunday, as he sought to shift the focus to a litany of accusations against his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, a day before the special counsel inquiry will reportedly produce the first indictment in the case.

    Great plan, except for the fact that Clinton does not hold any elected office or other official post, so she’s not in a position to toss the whole country into the fire the way Donald Noimpulsecontrol Trump is.

    In a series of midmorning Twitter posts, Mr. Trump said Republicans were now pushing back against the Russia allegations by looking into Mrs. Clinton. But the president, who has often expressed anger that his allies were not doing more to protect him from the Russia inquiries, made it clear he believed that Mrs. Clinton should be pursued more forcefully, writing, “DO SOMETHING!”

    He did not specify who should take such action, though critics have accused him of trying to improperly sway the inquiries.

    Or of inciting mob action.

    CNN reported on Friday that a federal grand jury in Washington had approved the first charges in Mr. Mueller’s investigation, and that plans had been made for anyone charged to be taken into custody as early as Monday. CNN said the target of the charges was unclear.

    Multiple congressional committees have undertaken their own investigations into Russian meddling in the elections, following up on the conclusion of United States intelligence agencies that Moscow sought to sway the contest in favor of Mr. Trump — an idea that he has frequently dismissed as a hoax.

    Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the president had been “too defensive” about Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. “We ought to instead focus on the outrage that the Russians meddled in our elections,” said Mr. Portman, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

    And the outrage that it worked and the outrage that we’re stuck with the Queens Monster as a result.

  • Do something

    Now Trump is inciting violence.

    On Sunday morning, President Trump expressed frustration that his campaign is under investigation over possible ties to Russia’s plot to influence the 2016 election but that his former opponent Hillary Clinton is not facing the same level of scrutiny.

    In four tweets sent over 24 minutes, Trump wrote: “Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?), the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more. Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia, ‘collusion,’ which doesn’t exist. The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!”

    It’s interesting that it takes him 24 minutes to write that.

    But it’s alarming that he ends it with DO SOMETHING!

    The tweets came as CNN has continued to report that on Friday a federal grand jury in Washington approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, citing “sources briefed on the matter.” The charges are sealed, and it’s unclear who could be charged and for what.

    But we’ll find out tomorrow – if Trump’s uprising doesn’t intervene.

  • Meet Mr Horror

    Oh gawd.

    President Donald Trump had a Halloween event with reporters’ children in the Oval Office on Friday, expressing shock that the press “produced such beautiful children.”

    “I cannot believe the media produced such beautiful children,” Trump said. “How the media did this, I don’t know.”

    He pointed to members of the press and asked the kids, dressed up in Halloween costumes, if they knew who the reporters were.

    “They’re the friendly media,” Trump said. “That’s the press.”

    He looked over at one of the kids to his left.

    “Are you crying for me sweetheart?” he asked.

    He added “these are beautiful, wonderful children,” asking if they are “going to grow up to be like your parents?”

    He expressed tepid disapproval for that idea, but said the kids should not “answer” because “that could only get me in trouble, that question.”

    “You have wonderful parents, right?” he asked.

    Then what? He pinched them, threw mud at them, offered them drain cleaner, stuck his hand down their pants?

    A flunky then handed him some candy to give the traumatized children.

    Turning to one of the kids, Trump said, “You have no weight problems — that’s the good news, right?”

    Trump said he bets that the kids “get treated better by the press than anyone in the world.”

    He congratulated the assembled media for doing “a good job here” with their children. He pointed to himself and said, “I wouldn’t say you did a good job here.”

    “But, really beautiful children,” he said, adding that “they can stay, the parents, maybe not so much.”

    Then he dropped his pants and waggled his dick at them.