Tag: Trump

It’s interesting how thoroughly terrible the protagonist of this character study is. The terribleness seeps everywhere and gets into all the corners and crevices and tiny little thumbtack holes. No possible terrible is overlooked.

Trump’s temper — honed over years as a public and political persona — hasn’t waned.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions bore the brunt of Trump’s most recently disclosed upbraiding. The New York Times reported this week that Trump, in front of multiple people, called his long-time supporter an “idiot.”

In the West Wing, Trump can be a temperamental commander-in-chief, prone to bursts of anger that dissipate as quickly as they came on. The rage is an extension of what many say they experienced on the campaign trail.

In other words, he’s abusive. He’s always been abusive – the piece starts with a fit of rage at employees in the 80s – and he carries on being abusive now that he’s in perhaps the single most responsible position in the world. A grown man who is “prone to bursts of anger” is abusive.

People who have been in meetings with the President describe a pattern for Trump’s outbursts. They arise without much warning — in keeping with Trump’s flair for the dramatic — making it difficult for those in the room to avoid situations where the businessman-turned-politician lets loose on his subordinates.

He’s not shy about singling out one particular aide for a lashing, even with others looking on. Fighting back rarely ends well, since there are few topics Trump won’t broach in his humiliating takedowns.

There. That’s the bit where every last crack is filled with terrible. He bursts into a rage unpredictably, he singles people out, he does it in front of others, and they can’t fight back because then he will just shame the victim. That right there describes a terrible human being.

It’s pathetic and shameful that no one has ever been able to tell him that adults don’t get to act like that; that money and money-power do nothing to make it ok for adults to act like that; that he has no right to treat people that way, period end of story.

One person who has been in meetings with Trump recalls the President displaying his “volcanic” temper when he “feels ganged up on” or when nobody tells him one of his ideas is good.

The tirades have, at times, left his staff shaken. After an angry phone call with the Australian prime minister in January, some of his staff were left white-faced after catching a first glimpse of his capacity for rage.

That’s a bad man. He enjoys making people feel afraid and shaken. That’s bad.

[A]s Trump developed an outsized persona as a real estate developer and later as a television celebrity, it wasn’t kindness that formed his reputation. It was anger in all its shades: the fury-filled executive, the high-maintenance billionaire, the pugnacious Twitter troll.

As Trump rants and raves through his first eight months in office, his penchant for outbursts has persisted. The isolation of the White House, paired with the enveloping cloud of the Russia investigations, have caused Trump to brood and bellow with unpredictable results.

Outbursts at his most loyal underlings have become commonplace. Multiple men of distinction, with long careers in public service, say the dressings-down that have sprung from Trump’s lips are the most demeaning they’ve enduring in their adult lives.

He’s abusive. That stuff he does is abuse.

Trump probably got that stupid and venomous claim that the tube bombing was carried out by “sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard” from Fox and Friends.

At 6:42 a.m., Mr. Trump tweeted that “sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard” carried out the explosion, which left 29 people injured in the blast and ensuing panic. It was not clear where Mr. Trump had gotten that information, though 23 minutes earlier, “Fox and Friends,” a program Mr. Trump regularly watches, broadcast a report in which an outside security analyst said the London police probably already knew the identity of the attackers.

“Can someone tell Scotland Yard?” asked Brian Kilmeade, one of the hosts of the program.

So that’s probably what put the idea in Trump’s empty head. Fox said it so it must be true, because Fox said it.

White House officials said they did not know whether “Fox and Friends” was the source for Mr. Trump. They tried to play down the contretemps, saying Mr. Trump’s tweet was referring to the longstanding efforts of British law enforcement authorities to investigate would-be terrorists, not to anyone involved in Friday’s attack.

“What the president was communicating is that obviously all of our law enforcement efforts are focused on this terrorist threat for years,” said the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster. “Scotland Yard has been a leader, as our F.B.I. has been a leader.”

Nope. That’s not what he was communicating at all.

The police in London also alluded to the president’s Twitter post. “This is a live investigation and we will provide further updates as it progresses,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

“Any speculation is extremely unhelpful at this time,” the statement said.

Well that’s Trump – here to be unhelpful!

David Graham at the Atlantic asks a necessary question – why is Trump so speedy at jumping to conclusions about what he takes to be Islamist terrorism and so slow and cautious about a bit of white supremacist terrorism caught on video?

For the second time in a month, President Trump has rushed to condemn a terrorist attack abroad as the work of Islamist terrorists, speaking out before the facts are known even to local officials. Trump’s remarks came just a day after he once again insisted he was right to cast blame on both sides after violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August. And they renew the question of why he is so quick to speak with such clarity in cases involving Islamist terrorism and yet so deliberate and equivocating in a clash involving white supremacists.

Sadly, it’s not even a question. He likes the white supremacists. He likes what they’re doing. He made Jeff Sessions Attorney General so that he Sessions could suppress the black vote as he’s spent his whole career trying to do. He’s an active, enthusiastic racist.

Shooting from the hip is not unusual for Trump. After an attack in Barcelona last month, Trump quickly condemned it as terror and resurrected an old and slanderous falsehood about General John Pershing’s handling of Muslim fighters in the Philippines. Earlier this year, he got into a tiff with London Mayor Sadiq Khan over the response to terror, also drawing chastisement from British authorities. And during the presidential campaign, he was quick to label the downing of an EgyptAir flight as terror, even though few facts were then known.

…

The London attack and Trump’s speculative response to it comes the day after he reaffirmed his “both sides” response to Charlottesville. On Wednesday, Trump met with Senator Tim Scott, a black Republican from South Carolina who had been critical of Trump’s response to the attacks. Scott tried to impress upon Trump the long history that fed into the clash.

“I shared my thoughts of the last three centuries of challenges from white supremacists, white nationalists, KKK, Nazis,” Scott said. “So there’s no way to find an equilibrium when you have three centuries of history versus the situation that is occurring today.”

And Trump listened, and finally got the point?

Scott did not seem optimistic that Trump had grasped the lesson. Asked whether Trump expressed regret, the senator said, “He certainly tried to explain what he was trying to convey.” He also offered caution about future statements, using the soft condescension that allies often use when discussing the president: “Anyone that expects an epiphany or a transformation to happen overnight because somebody walks in a room, I think you don’t understand human nature.”

Human nature is one thing, and Trump nature is another. It’s a bit insulting to humans to imply that Trump stands for all of us. Trump is exceptionally uninformed, and thick, and narcissistic, and callous.

Even Trump’s semi-friends, such as Theresa May, aren’t thanking him for his “proactive!” tweets.

British officials rebuked President Donald Trump on Friday for claiming that the individuals responsible for setting off explosives in the London subway had been “in the sights of” law enforcement who failed to be “proactive.”

Prime Minister Theresa May reproached Trump for his rhetoric in the wake of what police are investigating as a terrorist attack that injured at least 18 people.

“I never think it’s helpful for anybody to speculate on what is an ongoing investigation,” she said. “As I’ve just said, the police and security services are working to discover the full circumstances of this cowardly attack and to identify all those responsible.”

And Donald Trump, in particular, is a stupid loudmouth bully who knows nothing about the situation. Even if he’s been briefed he knows nothing, because he doesn’t pay attention, or care, or listen, or remember.

A White House official said on Friday that chief of staff John Kelly wasn’t with the president when he fired off his tweets about “loser terrorists” before 7 a.m. Kelly has tried to bring structure to the West Wing and contain some of the president’s impulses by serving as a gatekeeper to what people and what information make it into the Oval Office.

But there is of course a limit to what Kelly can do. He can’t sleep on a cot in the Trump bedroom and he can’t barge in at 6 a.m.

Nick Timothy, a former aide to May, echoed the prime minister’s sentiment. He said the tweet is “so unhelpful from leader of our ally and intelligence partner.”

Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden later Friday morning that the attack is “a terrible thing” and reiterated his calls for America to “be very smart” and get “very, very tough.”

With all the eloquence of a three-year-old.

“We’re not nearly tough enough,” said Trump, who added that he would call May on Friday. “That is just an absolutely terrible thing.”

With all the thoughtfulness of an enraged ten-year-old boy. “WE’RE NOT TOUGH ENOUGH. WE HAVE TO HIT MORE PEOPLE.”

Earlier on Friday Trump had followed up his tweets on the London incident with one criticizing the administration of former President Barack Obama while claiming success against fighting terrorists.

“We have made more progress in the last nine months against ISIS than the Obama Administration has made in 8 years,” he said in the tweet. “Must be proactive & nasty!”

He’s got the nasty part down.

Trump is parading his id on Twitter again.

Another attack in London by a loser terrorist.These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017

Must be proactive! he says – meaning, no doubt, that once someone is “in the sights” of Scotland Yard (actually MI5), that someone should be arrested and held indefinitely, no matter how slim or shaky the evidence. Never mind human rights, never mind the law, never mind probabilities: when in doubt throw people in prison and leave them there.

Loser terrorists must be dealt with in a much tougher manner.The internet is their main recruitment tool which we must cut off & use better!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017

We must cut off the Internet! And use it better! Both at the same time!

Trump himself is doing a lot of recruiting. Trump himself likes to incite people to hatred and violence. Trump is not the guy to tell anyone how to use the Internet.

The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific-but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017

Trump’s beloved travel ban should be far larger – it should ban all Muslims from everywhere. It should be tougher – it should ban them instantly, starting right now, and tough shit if they’re already on planes in the air. It should be more specific – it should ban all Muslims.

But “stupidly” we think that banning some 20% of the world’s people from immigrating to the US would be both religious discrimination and racist, and the label for that is “not politically correct.” To foul narcissistic callous shits like Trump it’s bad to reject racism and religious discrimination, it’s bad and weak and contemptible. To foul narcissistic callous shits like Trump the right thing to be is proudly, rudely, unashamedly racist and hostile.

That’s the president of the US.

Trump has returned to his “both sides” vomit.

Mr. Trump was characterizing his side of a conversation on Wednesday with Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, during which Mr. Scott, the Senate’s only black Republican, said he confronted the president on his claim that “both sides” were responsible for the violence that followed a torchlight protest against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee.

“Especially in light of the advent of Antifa, if you look at what’s going on there, you know, you have some pretty bad dudes on the other side also,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the anti-fascist group that clashed with neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

But what you did not have was some pretty good dudes on the racist side. See? Yes, there are some violence-loving jerks on the anti-racist side, but there are no fairness-loving goodies on the racist side.

On Thursday, speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Mr. Trump reverted to the unapologetic stance he took in a news conference last month at Trump Tower.

“Now because of what’s happened since then, with Antifa, you look at really what’s happened since Charlottesville — a lot of people are saying — in fact, a lot of people have actually written, ‘Gee, Trump might have point,” Mr. Trump said. “I said, ‘You’ve got some very bad people on the other side, which is true.’”

But you also said there were some good people on the racist side, which is not true, you lying toad.

In his remarks to reporters a day earlier, Mr. Scott made it clear he went to the White House to rebut Mr. Trump’s claim that “both sides” were responsible.

“My response was that, while that’s true, I mean I think if you look at it from a sterile perspective, there was an antagonist on the other side,” Mr. Scott said. “However, the real picture has nothing to do with who is on the other side.”

“It has to do with the affirmation of hate groups who over three centuries of this country’s history have made it their mission to create upheaval in minority communities as their reason for existence,” he continued. “I shared my thoughts of the last three centuries of challenges from white supremacists, white nationalists, KKK, Nazis. So there’s no way to find an equilibrium when you have three centuries of history versus the situation that is occurring today.”

And Trump responded by saying the same stupid thing all over again. Useful.

Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes on presidential abuse of power in the matter of James Comey:

This afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, from the White House podium, declared that former FBI Director James Comey may have “violated federal law” in sharing a memo documenting a conversation with the president:

The memos that Comey leaked were created on an FBI computer while he was the director. He claims they were private property, but they clearly followed the protocol of an official FBI document. Leaking FBI memos on a sensitive case, regardless of classification, violates federal laws, including the Privacy Act, standard FBI employment agreement and nondisclosure agreements that all personnel must sign. I think that’s pretty clean and clear that that would be a violation.

While conceding it was “not up to [her] to decide,” Sanders opined that “the facts of the case are very clear” and that “the Department of Justice has to look into whether something’s illegal or not.” (Comey shared one memo, according to his testimony, by the way, not “memos.”)

This follows Sanders’s accusation Monday, that Comey had given “false testimony,” another matter she suggested DOJ should “look at.” Then on Tuesday, she said that Comey’s “actions were improper and likely could have been illegal” and that while the ultimate decision to investigate Comey was for the Justice Department to make, “I think if there’s ever a moment where we feel someone has broken the law, particularly if they’re the head of the FBI, I think that’s something that certainly should be looked at.”

Life is too short to rebut every individual outrage or idiocy to emerge from the White House. But Sanders’s remarks bear attention because they are clearly part of a coordinated plan to maliciously besmirch an individual.

Her remarks were not really remarks; they were not spontaneous and unplanned but prepared in advance.

So this is not an impulsive, on-the-spot type slime job. This is a deliberate, planned effort of the type that reflects the Trump White House’s considered views of how it should respond to Comey. That is, with months to think about the matter, the White House has decided that it wants to respond to Comey’s testimony by falsely accusing him of criminal activity—and to offer no evidence to support its slanders.

It is a prototypical abuse of power—and particularly pernicious because of the White House’s attempts to involve the Justice Department in the project.

They go on to explain why Comey’s sharing of his memo was neither illegal nor immoral.

Here’s a hint for the President in the future: If you want your employees to keep your confidences on non-classified matters, a good rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t fire them and then lie about them in public.

…

Casting aspersions on the behavior or veracity of key witnesses is more norm than exception in defense lawyering. What is different here is that Trump is using the office of the presidency to bully, defame, and discredit his [critics] and bolster his own defense. Frivolously accusing individuals of crimes and then threatening them with Justice Department action by stating that the Justice Department should investigate their conduct is not acceptable White House behavior. It is not merely a gross civil liberties violation with respect to the individuals. It also threatens the integrity of law enforcement—by effectively directing law enforcement action against a disfavored individual, in this case, one who has already given derogatory testimony about the President and is expected to do so in the future. It’s what Trump threatened to do throughout the campaign when he promised prosecution of his opponent.

This is what it looks like when the White House itself plays in these waters. It’s the stuff of petty strong-man dictatorships for the President to pronounce an individual guilty of a crime without having to proffer any evidence, offer a legal theory, or convince a jury.

A petty strong-man dictatorship is what we have, except that the resources he can command are not petty at all.

Now why would anyone anywhere ever call Trump a white supremacist? I just can’t imagine, can you?

Nobody can.

Donald Trump became a household name by “firing” people on national television; now, it seems his administration is trying to fire people they don’t even employ.

Earlier this week, while ESPN host Jemele Hill was interacting with her followers on Twitter, she called President Trump a “white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”

Whereupon the world came to a crashing halt as everyone stared in amazement.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about Hill’s tweets during her daily briefing on Wednesday, and said they should be considered a “fireable offense.”

“I’m not sure if [Trump’s aware of the comments.] That is one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make and is a fireable offense by ESPN,” Sanders said.

When pressed about why influential African American figures such as Hill believe that Trump — who hires, promotes, and defends white supremacists — was a white supremacist, Sanders noted that Trump had met black people before.

“I’m not going to speak for that individual,” she said. “I know the president has met again with people like Senator Scott, who are highly respected leaders in the African American community. He’s committed to working with them to bring the country to work together. That’s where we need to be focused, not on outrageous statements like that one.”

He talks to them, too. Remember that early press conference? Where journalist April Ryan asked him if he’d talked to the Congressional Black Caucus and he interrupted her to demand that she arrange a meeting with them? You know, because she’s black and black people all know each other and it’s their job to arrange things for white people?

Meanwhile

Just a day after the Senate unanimously passed a joint resolution condemning the acts violence and domestic terrorism by white supremacists and neo-Nazis over the weekend of August 11 in Charlottesville, Virginia, the House of Representatives unanimously passed it by a voice vote Tuesday evening.

Tonight the House passed my resolution condemning hate groups & the Charlottesville attack. POTUS should send a clear message & sign it ASAP

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) September 12, 2017

Has POTUS signed it? Funny story: no he has not.

Asked whether president will sign, WH spox says "No announcements at this time." https://t.co/Scf2yh14AW

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 12, 2017

The joint resolution was introduced last week by the Congressman who represents Charlottesville, Rep. Tom Garret (R-VA), and calls on Trump to “speak out against hate groups that espouse racism, extremism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and White supremacy; and use all resources available to the President and the President’s Cabinet to address the growing prevalence of those hate groups in the United States.” Additionally, the measure calls on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to work with the Secretary of Homeland Security and other Federal agencies to “investigate thoroughly all acts of violence, intimidation, and domestic terrorism by White supremacists, White nationalists, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and associated groups.”

The White House’s hesitancy to come out in support of a joint resolution that explicitly condemns white supremacists and affiliated groups is notable in light of Trump’s comments immediately after the violence in Charlottesville, when he equated white supremacists with the people who gathered to protest them.

Well, you see, they’re very busy over there, working on getting a reporter fired for calling him a white supremacist.

The White House press secretary isn’t shy about using her pulpit to attack people.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders set aside some time during the daily press briefing Wednesday to declare that former FBI director James B. Comey should face criminal punishment for allowing negative information about the president to be leaked to the New York Times, and that ESPN reporter Jemele Hill should be fired for her comments about Trump and race.

…

The Comey comment came in response to a question from a reporter, following up on Sanders’s comment Tuesday that Comey had broken the law in asking a friend to leak information from a memo that he’d prepared after a conversation with the president.

Sanders explained her rationale for claiming that the law had been broken: The memos Comey wrote about his interactions with the president were written on an FBI computer and “clearly followed the protocol of an official FBI document.” Leaking such a memo “violates federal laws, including the Privacy Act,” as well as employee agreements. (Those, of course, are likely moot, since Trump already fired Comey.) “I think that’s pretty clean and clear that that would be a violation,” she said.

…

Asked what she thought should happen, she said it was “not up to me to decide” but that “the Department of Justice has to look into any allegations of — whether something’s illegal or not.”

There’s no evidence that the information leaked was classified and, as Sanders noted, Comey has argued that they were his personal — not professional — notes. The Times’s Peter Baker points out that no memo was leaked, just the contents of one, detailing a request Trump made of Comey to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The thing is, Trump was abusing all these rules about secrecy and not leaking and yadda yadda to try to strongarm Comey. That’s why Trump made Sessions get out when he wanted to bully Comey again, and it’s why Comey told Sessions he must never leave him alone with Trump again. It’s a bit much to expect Comey to respect the rules about secrecy after all that.

More broadly, though, it’s extremely unusual for the White House to hint that a political opponent — which Comey unquestionably is — should face a criminal inquiry. When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump repeatedly suggested that he would have Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton prosecuted if he won the election, Fortune interviewed a slew of legal experts and former attorneys general to gauge the appropriateness of such a move.

The responses were nearly uniform: The attorney general would make the call on any prosecution (as Sanders stated) — and that it’s inappropriate for the president to push the attorney general to take such an action.

But they simply don’t care. They’re Assistants to the Narcissist in Chief, so they are not in a position to care about what’s appropriate.

A short while later, Sanders offered her thoughts on ESPN’s Hill who, on Monday, tweeted among other things that “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”

Asked about the comment by The Post’s David Nakamura, Sanders replied, “I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make, and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.”

Beyond the White House suggesting that criticism of the president should result in a person losing his or her job, it’s worth remembering that Hill is a member of the media. Sanders is suggesting, then, that a journalist be fired by a media outlet for offering her opinion — a slightly more significant argument than if Hill had simply been an average citizen who said the same thing.

Plus, of course, it’s true. Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has surrounded himself with many other white supremacists.

Sanders’s suggestions — which she’ll no doubt soon emphasize were only that — were abnormal comments that echoed a common theme. Criticism of the president and drawing attention to unpopular political decisions he makes results in the White House telling reporters that they should face punishment.

To put it mildly: This isn’t usually how the presidency works.

It’s how a criminal gang works.

A reporter who has the bad taste to be a woman reports on what it was like to cover Trump’s campaign while female.

During his campaign events, Trump often called out the news media, but he delighted in singling out Tur, publicly deriding her as “little Katy” and a “third-rate reporter.” Part of the animosity was in response to Tur’s (accurate) reporting about his behavior at rallies, which prompted him to threaten a boycott of NBC News and to demand an apology. (They settled things over the phone, although Tur is adamant that she did not apologize.) On one occasion, Trump went so far as to kiss her — an unwelcome and uninvited act — just before he appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Before I know what’s happening, his hands are on my shoulders and his lips are on my cheek,” Tur writes. “My eyes widen. My body freezes. My heart stops.” Her immediate reaction is telling. “F—. I hope the cameras didn’t see that. My bosses are never going to take me seriously.”

You can grab them by the pussy. You can grab them by the shoulders and plant one. You can do whatever you want to.

Trump chastises Tur at the end of a July 2015 interview, telling her, “You’ll never be president!” (“Neither will you,” she thinks to herself.) It’s an odd line of attack — Tur is not the one running, after all — but it’s meant to undercut her confidence. “I’m not going to let this guy get into my head,” she tells herself when he mocks her at a rally. “Unbelievable” shifts between a chronological timeline of the race and a detailed breakdown of Election Day, and along the way Tur provides an italicized inner monologue of what she was really thinking.

“Can I say penis on TV?” she deliberates after Trump defends his girth during a GOP primary debate. “What about manhood? Mini-Trump?” She bucks herself up after one of his public attacks: “Shake it off. It’s worse if they think he scares you. Just smile.” And after she realizes that Trump has indeed won the presidency, Tur wonders: “Does anyone really believe he’ll respect term limits?”

This last point is less a constitutional concern than a personal one; by this time Tur was exhausted with the race, with Trump, with concerns about her personal safety — she was constantly harassed by Trump supporters, and after a rally in which the candidate called out her name, Secret Service agents escorted her to her car — and with the uncertainty of what would come next for her career.

Notice the way the fear and the harassment and the personal targeting by Trump are just tucked in there, as if they were a side issue.

Tur invariably looks sharp and composed on television, and the author reveals the effort behind it all. “Being a woman is a pain in the ass,” she explains. You have to look ‘good.’ Your hair needs to be neat — not just combed through, but ‘done.’ Blow-dried, ironed, curled, sprayed. Your face needs to be enhanced. Foundation, powder, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, blush, contour. Your clothes have to look sharp, too. And you can never wear the same thing twice — at least not in the same week. A guy can throw on the same suit every single day and no one would notice.”

It’s impossible to watch tv news without noticing that. It drives me crazy. All the women are foofed up like poodles; only the men are allowed to look as if they’re working as opposed to modeling. Maddow is the only woman I know of who is allowed to look as if she’s working as opposed to modeling. This is part of the picture too; guys like Trump feel free to bully women like Tur partly because of this differential treatment. Men are on the job, women are there to look pretty – which are ya gonna bully?

Oh, huh. Guess who pays for it if Mar-a-Lago gets smacked by a hurricane.

The taxpayers.

In the first nine months of his term, America has gotten depressingly used to Donald Trump using his presidency to suck up money for himself. It’s not just the constant Mar-a-Lago trips. Foreign dignitaries are encouraged to stay at the president’s D.C. hotel. Hurricane Harvey photo ops are a chance to plug his latest shit hat. The Secret Service has spent so much money on Trump Tower in New York that the agency can’t even afford to stay there anymore.

But we didn’t know we were insuring his expensive resort.

[A]s the Huffington Post reports, any flood damage Mar-a-Lago sees will likely be paid for by the American people–and for once the payout has nothing to do with Trump being president.

That’s thanks to something called the National Flood Insurance Policy, a Nixon-era FEMA program that provides federally-backed insurance coverage to areas with high flood risk that private insurers won’t touch. That sounds magnanimous at first, but in practice it means that the people who mainly benefit are the wealthy owners of beachfront property.

Trump reeeeeeeeeeeally wants to keep out some Mooslims. He gets to do that! He’s the top dude and he gets to!! No stinking lawyers should be able to stop him – they couldn’t build an ugly tower in Manhattan if they tried for a century.

So the Justice Department is pushing it.

The Trump administration is returning to the Supreme Court in an effort to overturn lower court rulings crimping the application of President Donald Trump’s travel ban executive order.

Justice Department lawyers asked the high court Monday to allow authorities to keep up a block on many refugees covered by Trump’s ban.

However, the administration threw in the towel for now on efforts to insist that grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins of U.S. citizens be covered by the ban despite the Supreme Court ordering an exemption for close family members.

A federal judge in Hawaii ruled against the federal government on both issues in July. Last week, a 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel declined to disturb that ruling.

They are so mean. What’s it to them if Trump wants to keep out some Mooslims just because he doesn’t like them? Presidents get to do that. It’s in the Constitution, somewhere.

At issue are about 24,000 refugees who have been assigned to U.S. refugee resettlement agencies but not yet given final approval to depart for the U.S.

See? See? It’s just 24 thousand. Peanuts. A blip. Sure, Trump has no reason at all to think they’re a threat, but so what? It sends a message! It sends a message that Mooslims are all a threat and that even keeping out a random 24 thousand of them is well worth doing, out of sheer spite if nothing else.

Hey, here’s an idea – let’s cut the budgets of disaster relief agencies. Disasters don’t happen, so why budget money to relieve them?

Numerous federal agencies targeted for major budget cuts or even elimination by the Trump administration are playing important roles in helping people recover from Hurricane Harvey along the Gulf Coast. Many agencies in the budget crosshairs also are closely monitoring the path and intensity of Hurricane Irma and making preparations if the storm strikes the United States.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, and other agencies have been responding to Harvey and could be sending staff to Florida later this week if Irma strikes the state. These same employees, as they provide vital services to storm-damaged areas, understand their jobs are in jeopardy based on President Donald Trump’s budget priorities.

The story is dated September 5, when Irma was looming as opposed to settled in.

The Environmental Protection Agency is responding to Harvey’s impact on industrial facilities and toxic dumps, including Superfund sites. The agency has 143 personnel working on response efforts to Harvey. Trump’s 2018 budget plan for the EPA, however, calls for cutting the Superfund cleanup program by approximately 25 percent. Overall, the president’s FY18 budget request would cut the EPA’s budget by 31 percent and eliminate 3,200 staff and over 50 programs.

“The damaging cuts proposed make clear that the administration is willing to put Americans at risk by shortchanging investments in disaster preparedness,” Rachel Cleetus, lead economist and climate policy manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a blog post.

Oh well. Rich people will get big tax cuts, so that makes it all worthwhile, right?

The proposed budget also would make steep cuts to FEMA’s Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, which helps communities become better prepared before disaster strikes instead of focusing only on post-disaster recovery efforts. Furthermore, about $190 million would be cut from FEMA’s Flood Hazard Mapping and Risk Analysis Program.

Let’s just cut everything. Cut cut cut cut cut. Give all the money to rich people, and they’ll fix things when the hurricanes come ashore.

The Trump administration wants to slash the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) budget by 16 percent. Several NOAA programs are developing advanced modeling to make storm forecasts more accurate and reliable. But the administration requested a $5 million funding cut for these modeling programs. The agency’s climate research arm — the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — would face a 32 percent budget cut, the largest of any NOAA agency.

“At a time when storms are getting more destructive, floods more devastating and people and property more vulnerable, accurate weather forecasting is more critical than ever — which is why the Trump administration’s brazen proposal to slash funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s most important forecasting and storm prediction programs has set off alarms,” Scott Weaver, a senior climate scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote in response to the administration’s proposed NOAA budget cuts.

Yes but tax cuts for rich people. Let’s keep a clear head about this.

Ah yes, let’s pretend Trump is an “independent” – as opposed to a ruthless self-serving shit.

President Trump demonstrated this past week that he still imagines himself a solitary cowboy as he abandoned Republican congressional leaders to forge a short-term fiscal deal with Democrats. Although elected as a Republican last year, Mr. Trump has shown in the nearly eight months in office that he is, in many ways, the first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system around the time of the Civil War.

Oh bollocks. All presidents quarrel with their own parties at times. What Trump does isn’t “independence” in that political sense, it’s just a mix of childish self-will and incoherence and zero impulse-control.

In recent weeks, he has quarreled more with fellow Republicans than with the opposition, blasting congressional leaders on Twitter, ousting former party officials in his White House, embracing primary challenges to incumbent lawmakers who defied him and blaming Republican figures for not advancing his policy agenda.

Yes no kidding, and that’s because he’s a narcissist and a psychopath, plus a greedy ignorant pig.

“The truth is that he is a political independent, and he obviously won the nomination and the presidency by disrupting a lot of norms that Republicans had assumed about their own party and their own voters,” said Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, a conservative website. “This week was the first time he struck out and did something completely at odds with what the Republican leadership and establishment would want him to do in this position.”

Right, he’s “an independent” the way those teenagers who threw smoke bombs into the Columbia Gorge and started a massive forest fire were “independents.” He’s a reckless thoughtless mindless clown. That is being “independent” in a way…but not in the way Ben Domenech was using the word.

The Republicans have learned what everyone else already knew – that Trump is a narcissistic psychopath who has no scruples of any kind. Trump does what Trump sees as good for Trump, period, end of story.

In agreeing to tie Harvey aid to a three-month extension of the debt ceiling and government funding, Trump burned the people who are ostensibly his allies. The president was an unpredictable — and, some would say, untrustworthy — negotiating partner with not only congressional Republicans but also with his Cabinet members and top aides. Trump saw a deal that he thought was good for him — and he seized it.

The move should come as no surprise to students of Trump’s long history of broken alliances and agreements. In business, his personal life, his campaign and now his presidency, Trump has sprung surprises on his allies with gusto. His dealings are frequently defined by freewheeling spontaneity, impulsive decisions and a desire to keep everyone guessing — especially those who assume they can control him.

Only those who assume they can control him? I think it’s also those who assume he owes them, those who expect a modicum of consistency or coherence, those who trust him.

He also repeatedly demonstrates that, while he demands absolutely loyalty from others, he is ultimately loyal to no one but himself.

Visibly. And that, right there, is what makes him a narcissist and a psychopath. He sees himself as the only person on earth who counts, and everyone else as existing to serve him.

“It makes all of their normalizing and ‘Trumpsplaining’ look silly and hollow,” said Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist sharply critical of Trump, referring to his party’s congressional leaders. “Trump betrays everyone: wives, business associates, contractors, bankers and now, the leaders of the House and Senate in his own party. They can’t explain this away as [a] 15-dimensional Trump chess game. It’s a dishonest person behaving according to his long-established pattern.”

Dishonest and ruthlessly selfish.

Democrats remain skeptical about just how long their newfound working relationship with Trump will last. But for Republicans, the turnabout was yet another reminder of what many of them have long known but refused to openly admit: Trump is a fickle ally and partner, liable to turn on them much in the same way he has turned on his business associates and foreign allies.

“Looking to the long term, trust and reliability have been essential ingredients in productive relationships between the president and Congress,” said Phil Schiliro, who served as director of legislative affairs under Obama. “Without them, trying to move a legislative agenda is like juggling on quicksand. It usually doesn’t end well.”

He’s a bad man. They know that; they’ve always known that. They supported him anyway because he was their bad man.

Robert Reich on Betsy DeVos’s plan to get rid of Obama’s Title IX guidelines.

Today Education Secretary Betsy DeVos vowed to roll back Obama era guidelines for how colleges and universities should handle sexual harassment and sexual violence cases under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. She said students accused of perpetrating sexual assault have been deprived of due process in “kangaroo courts,” and that the Obama standard of “preponderance of the evidence” isn’t high enough.

Rubbish. I’ve been a professor on campuses for decades and I know this:

1. Only a small fraction of instances of sexual assault are reported, and, when they are, a very small fraction rape reports are found to be false.

2. Before the Obama education department raised the standards, university officials around the country often ignored allegations of rape and sexual assault to avoid bad publicity for the institution, or getting mired in complicated, difficult-to-prove cases.

3. The Obama administration pushed colleges to respond more quickly and protect students who reported sexual assaults, threatening to withhold federal funding to schools that did not comply. As a result, these cases were treated as priorities, as they should be.

4. The “preponderance of the evidence” is a sensible standard because college officials aren’t determining whether someone should be sent to jail, just whether they violated school policy. A “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard is only appropriate for criminal law, and intentionally skewed to protect those who are accused.

DeVos is utterly ignorant. Once again, the Trump administration sides against those who have been wronged.

Now why would Trump favor weak protections against sexual assault and strong protections against accusations of sexual assault, I wonder.

Trump is jumping up and down with glee at how he stuck it to the…er…Republicans yesterday. He gloated about it in North Dakota last night and then this morning he called up Pelosi and Schumer to gloat with them. Which is hilarious, in a nauseating kind of way.

Many Republicans were furious with President Donald Trump’s budget deal Wednesday, stunned that the president quickly gave in to Democratic demands to pair hurricane relief with a three-month debt limit hike — though getting nothing in return.

But in calls with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Thursday morning, Trump raved about the positive news coverage it had received, according to people familiar with the calls, and he seemed very pleased with his decision.

No cries of Fake News? No “failing New York Times”? No “Crying Chuck Schumer”?

Trump specifically mentioned TV segments praising the deal and indicated he’d been watching in a call with Schumer, two people said. And he was jovial in a call with Pelosi and agreed to send a tweet she asked for about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, these people said, while also mentioning the attention the deal had gotten. He indicated to both leaders he would be willing to work together again.

“He seemed super upbeat,” one person familiar with the calls said.

In other words, he’s a buffoon, a lunatic two-scoops buffoon. He’s manic because THE PEOPLE ON THE TV SAID HE’S AWESOME.

Trump was unaware that North Dakota is subject to drought. Now that he knows, though, he moved to console the people of North Dakota by telling them they’re better off than the people of coastal Texas.

Prior to leaving the White House, I had a great bipartisan meeting with Democrat and Republican leaders in Congress, and I’m committed to working with both parties to deliver for our wonderful, wonderful citizens. It’s about time. We had a great meeting with Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the whole Republican leadership group. And I’ll tell you what, we walked out of there — Mitch and Paul, and everybody, Kevin — and we walked out and everybody was happy. Not too happy — because you can never be too happy — but they were happy enough. And it was nice to see that happen for a change because that hasn’t happened for a long time in this country — for a very long time.

I want to take a moment to send our thoughts and prayers to the people of Texas and Louisiana who have truly suffered through a catastrophic hurricane. (Applause.) One of the worst hurricanes in our country’s history. And guess what? We have another one coming. You see that.

But our hearts are heavy with sadness for those who have lost everything. They have also filled us with hope because you watched and you witnessed the unyielding strength and resilience of the American spirit. You looked at that in Texas. You looked at Louisiana. You saw the spirit; you saw the spirit of so many other people coming from all over. It was a great thing. I was there twice, and I will tell you the people were absolutely incredible. What they’ve gone through — you would not believe this could have happened.

And I know you have a little bit of a drought. They had the opposite. Believe me, you’re better off. You are better off. They had the absolute opposite.

It’s the same with all these forest fires in Oregon and British Columbia. Fires are way better than floods. Believe me, they’re better.

I also want to tell the people of North Dakota and the Western states who are feeling the pain of the devastating drought that we are with you 100 percent — 100 percent. (Applause.) And I’ve been in close touch, numerous times, with our Secretary of Agriculture, who is doing a fantastic job, Sonny Perdue, who has been working with your governor and your delegation to help provide relief. And we’re doing everything we can, but you have a pretty serious drought.

I just said to the governor, I didn’t know you had droughts this far north. Guess what? You have them. But we’re working hard on it and it’ll disappear. It will all go away.

That’s right. They’re working hard on it so poof, it will disappear. That’s what “working hard on it” means.

Ick.

Donald Trump has revealed that his daughter Ivanka asked to join him on his North Dakota trip, telling crowds she said: “Daddy, can I go with you?”

…

Beckoning her up to the stage, he said: “Come up, honey”. Then he shared an anecdote about how Ms Trump asked her father if she could join him.

“She said, ‘Dad, can I come with you. Actually she said ‘Daddy, can I go with you?’ I like that,” he said. “I said, ‘Yes, you can.’”

Aww. Cute story. Is she five? Six?

Oh that’s right, she’s 35. She has children of her own. She’s a grown-ass adult.

Also, presidents don’t in fact make it a habit to bring their small children with them on working trips and then call them up onto the stage. On the contrary: they do their best to shield their small children from the glare of publicity. Their grown children, on the other hand, are treated like grown children: they have their own lives and their own work.

Also, can you imagine all this happening with Don 2 or Eric? Of course not. It’s infantilizing, and we don’t infantilize men; we reserve that for women.

Also, this is the guy who agreed with Howard Stern on live radio that his daughter is a piece of ass. He both infantilizes her and sexualizes her. It just doesn’t get much more awesome than that.

And how revolting is it that she plays along?

He added: “Look at Ivanka, come on up honey, she’s so good. She wanted to make the trip.”

Mr Trump heaped praise on the 35-year-old who often accompanies him unannounced to important political meetings.

“Everybody loves Ivanka,” he told cheering crowds. “Come up, honey. Should I bring Ivanka up? Come up.”

Ms Trump smiled widely at her father’s words and later shook his hand as she arrived on stage.

No, everybody does not love Ivanka. Many do not love Ivanka.