Tag: Trump

Here’s a foundational question. From a piece by Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider that discusses Trump’s lawyer’s badgering of her over her reporting of That Letter:

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump’s legal team was trying to fend off an obstruction-of-justice charge from Mueller’s investigators by arguing that the president has the authority to fire whomever he wants, and that Comey is an unreliable witness.

My question is this: what’s their point? Or, what difference does that make? Or, what is the relevance? It can be the case that a president has the authority to fire anyone he wants and still also be the case that a particular firing is evidence of obstruction of justice.

Maybe it’s a pointless question, because they’re his lawyers so they’ll argue anything that won’t get them disbarred…but in the larger scheme of things it isn’t, because obviously one major part of the Trump Problem is that he’s a narcissist and an authoritarian who is determined to abuse the authorities allotted to him as much as he possibly can, and more. (“And more” because he may think he can but find out that he can’t.)

So one would hope that even though a president has broad powers, that doesn’t mean they are absolute.

One would hope.

Some wonky thinking here.

President Donald Trump met with leaders of the Christian community in the Oval Office and urged the nation to pray for the survivors of Hurricane Harvey and for the response and recovery efforts on Sunday. He also pledged $1 million of his personal money to help victims in Texas and Louisiana.

“From the beginning of our nation, Americans have joined together in prayer during times of great need to ask for God’s blessing and God’s guidance,” President Trump told the christian leaders Friday. “When we look across Texas and Louisiana, we see the American spirit of service embodied by countless men and women.”

But we also see a fuck-ton of water, and ruined houses, schools, hospitals, roads, parks, farms, neighborhoods, cities…

And if we’re asking for God’s blessing and God’s guidance…can we also ask God why God did this to us in the first place? By which I really mean why the fuck are we flattering “God” and requesting favors when “God” didn’t see fit to divert the hurricane or weaken it or abort it? Why are we babbling about God’s blessing and God’s guidance when God is the perp? Why do we keep doing this? If God can help, God could have prevented. If God did this to us, God is not a friend and not an entity to admire and praise and grovel to.

At least 44 people have died in incidents related to Hurricane Harvey, while 32,000 people have been forced into shelters, according to officials.

“We invite all Americans to join us as we continue to pray for those who have lost family members and friends, and for those who are suffering from this great crisis,” Trump said.

Why? What for? If a gang comes to your house and burns everything up and tortures you and throws poison into your well, then that gang intends harm toward you. That gang is not someone you should be petitioning or sucking up to.

“And behind me, we have faith-based people who are highly respected, and especially so in their communities where they’re not only respected, but they’re loved — evangelical leaders, Christian leaders — many people of faith. And I just want to thank you all for being with us today because we’re going to be signing a Day of Prayer, and that will be on Sunday. It will be a very special day. And I don’t know when this was done last, but it’s been a longtime coming. It’s been a longtime coming.”

That’s so Trump. He has no idea what to say, so he talks about reputations. They’re respected, they’re loved – they’re famous, they’re huge. It’s all appearance with him; he doesn’t even know what substance is.

And if he doesn’t know when it was last done then how can he know “it’s been a longtime coming”?

He can’t, it’s just a stupid whiny culture war thing to say.

Meanwhile, Trump also promised to donate $1 million.

But he didn’t actually do it. He could have done it, but he didn’t – instead he “promised.” He’s broken all such promises in the past.

The imbecile president went back to Houston today. He says everything’s great, people there are blissed out.

President Trump toured part of a cavernous Houston convention center on Saturday that has provided refuge to thousands of families displaced by flooding since Hurricane Harvey roared into the city a week ago.

Trump said he saw happiness among the people crowded into the NRG Center. Many have lost their homes, cars and possessions in the epic flooding.

“We saw a lot of happiness,” Trump told reporters traveling with him. “It’s been really nice. It’s been a wonderful thing. As tough as this was, it’s been a wonderful thing, I think even for the country to watch it, for the world to watch. It’s been beautiful.”

Yeah. It’s been great. The people who lost everything are so happy, it’s really nice, plus it’s great television. It’s beautiful. It’s just a fabulous fabulous thing all around.

Asked what people had said to him, Trump replied, “They’re really happy with what’s going on. It’s been something that’s been very well-received. Even by you guys [the media], it’s been well-received.”

Definitely. The hurricane was well-received, the flooding was well-received, the days in the shelter were well-received. The whole thing has been absolutely awesome.

Some of the adults did not sound particularly happy.

Devon Harris, 37, a construction worker, was skeptical about the impact of a presidential visit.

“Is he going to help? Can he help? I lost my home. My job is gone. My tools are gone. My car is gone. My life is gone. What is Trump going to do?”

Later, the Trumps put on plastic gloves and helped hand out lunch boxes — hot dogs, potato chips and applesauce.

Yum.

After Trump’s remarks on stage, he and Mrs. Trump went outside, where a line of cars was waiting to collect supplies. They loaded about a half-dozen cars and trucks.

“Hey can you handle this?” Trump said to the first recipient, a man in a pickup truck as the president handed him a plastic American Red Cross bucket.

“There’s a lot of stuff in here,” Trump said. “You’re all set,” he said after loading a few boxes in the flatbed and slapping the truck a couple of times.

“It’s good exercise,” Trump said as the man drove off.

Awesome.

About that letter that’s today’s boom, the one that Trump and Miller cobbled together on a rainy day at Bedminster to explain why Trump hates Comey and was going to fire him, and that is now in Mueller’s hands – apparently it looks bad for Rosenstein. It means he knew all along that Trump wanted to fire Comey because of the Russia investigation, and sheds a harsh light on his failure to recuse himself. I gather this from reading Benjamin Wittes on Twitter.

The Times:

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has obtained a letter drafted by President Trump and a top political aide that offered an unvarnished view of Mr. Trump’s thinking in the days before the president fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey.

The circumstances and reasons for the firing are believed to be a significant element of Mr. Mueller’s investigation, which includes whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice by firing Mr. Comey.

The letter, drafted in May, was met with opposition from Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, who believed that its angry, meandering tone was problematic, according to interviews with a dozen administration officials and others briefed on the matter. Among Mr. McGahn’s concerns were references to private conversations the president had with Mr. Comey, including times when the F.B.I. director told Mr. Trump he was not under investigation in the F.B.I.’s continuing Russia inquiry.

Mr. McGahn successfully blocked the president from sending the letter — which Mr. Trump had composed with Stephen Miller, one of the president’s top political advisers — to Mr. Comey. But a copy was given to the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, who then drafted his own letter. Mr. Rosenstein’s letter was ultimately used as the Trump administration’s public rationale for Mr. Comey’s firing, which was that Mr. Comey had mishandled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

So that kind of means Rosenstein aided a deception – he crafted a bogus explanation for why Trump was firing Comey, and put it out there in his capacity as the acting Attorney General (since Sessions was recused). It was always a matter of speculation whether or not Rosenstein knew his letter was a smoke screen, and the fact that he saw the draft letter means he did know.

Mr. Rosenstein is overseeing Mr. Mueller’s investigation into Russian efforts to disrupt last year’s presidential election, as well as whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice.

He’s…overseeing it after having meddled in it, on behalf of the chief suspect. In his capacity as head of the Justice Department. Erm. That doesn’t look good.

Mr. Trump was angry that Mr. Comey had privately told him three times that he was not under investigation, yet would not clear his name publicly. Mr. Comey later confirmed in testimony to Congress in June that he had told the president that he was not under investigation, but said he did not make it public because the situation might change.

Mr. Miller and Mr. Kushner both told the president that weekend that they were in favor of firing Mr. Comey.

Mr. Trump ordered Mr. Miller to draft a letter, and dictated his unfettered thoughts. Several people who saw Mr. Miller’s multi-page draft described it as a “screed.”

Sounds like Trump.

Mr. McGahn arranged for the president to meet in the Oval Office that day with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein, whom he knew had been pursuing separate efforts to fire Mr. Comey. The two men were particularly angry about testimony Mr. Comey had given to the Senate Judiciary Committee the previous week, when he said “it makes me mildly nauseous” to think his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation might have had an impact on the 2016 election.

Mr. Comey’s conduct during the hearing added to concerns of Mr. Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein that the F.B.I. director had botched the Clinton investigation and had overstepped the boundaries of his job. Shortly after that hearing, Mr. Rosenstein expressed his concerns about Mr. Comey to a White House lawyer, who relayed details of the conversation to his bosses at the White House.

During the May 8 Oval Office meeting with Mr. Trump, Mr. Rosenstein was given a copy of the original letter and agreed to write a separate memo for Mr. Trump about why Mr. Comey should be fired.

Mr. Rosenstein’s memo arrived at the White House the next day. The lengthy diatribe Mr. Miller had written had been replaced by a simpler rationale — that Mr. Comey should be dismissed because of his handling of the Clinton email investigation. Unlike Mr. Trump’s letter, it made no mention of the times Mr. Comey had told the president he was not under investigation.

Mr. Rosenstein’s memo became the foundation for the terse termination letter that Mr. Trump had an aide attempt to deliver late on the afternoon of May 9 to F.B.I. headquarters in Washington. The White House made one significant revision, adding a point that was personally important to Mr. Trump: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau,” the letter said.

Rosenstein acted like Trump’s personal lawyer as opposed to a top official of the Justice Department. That seems all wrong.

Trump says he’s going to donate a million dollars to the victims of Harvey. I’ll believe it when he actually does it. He has a history of saying he’s going to do things like that and then not doing them, and he does not have a history of doing things like that. Put the two together and you get a hard time believing he’ll actually do what he said he was going to do. He’s not a kind man, or a generous man, or a compassionate man. He’s a man who gets two scoops when everyone else gets one.

President Trump has pledged to donate $1 million from his personal fortune to storm victims in Texas and Louisiana.

“He would like to join in the efforts that a lot of the people that we’ve seen across this country do,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Thursday during her daily briefing at the White House.

Ms. Sanders said the president has not decided when or where he will send the donation.

Yeah I bet he hasn’t, and he’ll still be mulling over it next week and next month and next year.

Mr. Trump’s pledge is one of the largest financial commitments made by a sitting president to a charitable cause. Ms. Huckabee, pressed by reporters, said she wasn’t sure whether the donation would come from Mr. Trump’s foundation or his own bank account, saying only that it would come from the president’s “personal” funds.

His foundation isn’t his personal funds. He’s not supposed to use it to pay for portraits of himself, and I doubt that he’s supposed to use it to make donations from himself personally. If the donation comes from his “foundation,” in other words, it’s not a personal donation and he doesn’t get to call it that.

Trump reportedly donates far less of his income and assets than many of his ultra wealthy peers, and this donation comes with questions attached. In the past, he has failed to follow through on promised donations from his nonprofit foundation.

Quite so. He wouldn’t even comp his facilities for a charity event one of his sons put on.

That disgusting pig, that thieving racist billionaire, is slashing funding for the outreach that helps people sign up for health insurance. He’s deliberately causing poor people to fail to get health insurance out of spite and political revenge.

The Trump administration will significantly scale back Obamacare outreach efforts for the upcoming enrollment season, slashing spending on advertising and funding to community groups deployed to boost enrollment.

Senior HHS officials on Thursday afternoon said the federal government will cut the Obamacare advertising budget from $100 million to $10 million in the upcoming 2018 enrollment season. Funding for so-called navigator organizations that help people enroll will be cut from $63 million last year to roughly $37 million.

The announcement is the latest sign that President Donald Trump, who has vowed to let Obamacare collapse, will significantly diminish Obamacare implementation after the repeal effort in Congress stalled a month ago.

He wants it to fail. It’s not named after him, so he wants it to fail.

Jennifer Rubin explains one line of argument against Trump’s pardon of Arpaio.

Meanwhile, Protect Democracy, an activist group seeking to thwart Trump’s violations of legal norms, and a group of lawyers have sent a letter to Raymond N. Hulser and John Dixon Keller of the Public Integrity Section, Criminal Division of the Justice Department, arguing that the pardon goes beyond constitutional limits. In their letter obtained by Right Turn, they argue:

While the Constitution’s pardon power is broad, it is not unlimited. Like all provisions of the original Constitution of 1787, it is limited by later-enacted amendments, starting with the Bill of Rights. For example, were a president to announce that he planned to pardon all white defendants convicted of a certain crime but not all black defendants, that would conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Similarly, issuance of a pardon that violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause is also suspect. Under the Due Process Clause, no one in the United States (citizen or otherwise) may “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” But for due process and judicial review to function, courts must be able to restrain government officials. Due process requires that, when a government official is found by a court to be violating individuals’ constitutional rights, the court can issue effective relief (such as an injunction) ordering the official to cease this unconstitutional conduct. And for an injunction to be effective, there must be a penalty for violation of the injunction—principally, contempt of court.

Put simply, the argument is that the president cannot obviate the court’s powers to enforce its orders when the constitutional rights of others are at stake. “The president can’t use the pardon power to immunize lawless officials from consequences for violating people’s constitutional rights,” says one of the lawyers who authored the letter, Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People. Clearly, there is a larger concern here that goes beyond Arpaio. “After repeatedly belittling and undermining judges verbally and on Twitter, now President Trump is escalating his attack on the courts into concrete actions,” says Ian Bassin, executive director of Protect Democracy. “His pardon and celebration of Joe Arpaio for ignoring a judicial order is a threat to our democracy and every citizen’s rights, and should not be allowed to stand.”

It seems compelling, doesn’t it. The Due Process clause exists. People have a right to due process. A court found that Arpaio was violating that right. Trump tore that finding up – meaning the right wasn’t enforced. A right is worthless if an authoritarian chief executive is going to prevent courts from enforcing it.

Those challenging the pardon understand there is no precedent for this — but neither is there a precedent for a pardon of this type. “While many pardons are controversial politically, we are unaware of any past example of a pardon to a public official for criminal contempt of court for violating a court order to stop a systemic practice of violating individuals’ constitutional rights,” Fein says. He posits the example of criminal contempt in the context of desegregation. “In 1962, after the governor and lieutenant governor of Mississippi disobeyed a court order to allow James Meredith to attend the University of Mississippi, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ordered the Department of Justice to bring criminal contempt charges, which it then did,” Fein recalls. “Eventually, while the criminal contempt case was pending, the Mississippi officials relented and allowed Meredith (and others) to attend the university. But if the president had pardoned the Mississippi officials from the criminal contempt, it would have sent a clear message to other segregationist officials that court orders could be ignored.”

And that would have been awful.

Benjamin Wittes tweeted a new “BOOM” four minutes ago. NBC News:

Manafort Notes From Russian Meet Contain Cryptic Reference to ‘Donations’

Well that could certainly be interesting.

Paul Manafort’s notes from a controversial Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign included the word “donations,” near a reference to the Republican National Committee, two sources briefed on the evidence told NBC News.

The references, which have not been previously disclosed, elevated the significance of the June 2016 meeting for congressional investigators, who are focused on determining whether it included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.

It is illegal for foreigners to donate to American elections. The meeting happened just as Trump had secured the Republican nomination for president, and he was considered a longshot to win. Manafort was the campaign chairman at the time.

It’s almost as if there are actually drawbacks to having a lying cheating thieving gangster running for president.

Manafort’s notes, typed on a smart phone and described by one briefed source as cryptic, were turned over to the House and Senate intelligence committees and to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They contained the words “donations,” and “RNC” in close proximity, the sources said.

Oh well, maybe he was just fantasizing.

NBC News reported earlier this week that Mueller’s investigators are keenly focused on President Donald Trump’s role in crafting a response to a the New York Times article that first disclosed the meeting.

The sources told NBC News that prosecutors want to know what Trump knew about the meeting and whether he sought to conceal its purpose.

The president dictated a statement sent out under the name of his son that was drafted aboard Air Force One, people familiar with the matter have said.

And was a pack of lies.

A person familiar with Mueller’s strategy said that whether or not Trump made a “knowingly false statement” is now of interest to prosecutors.

“Even if Trump is not charged with a crime as a result of the statement, it could be useful to Mueller’s team to show Trump’s conduct to a jury that may be considering other charges,” the person said.

Goes to intent, m’lud.

Rich Lowry at Politico nudges us to look at the implications of Trump’s apparent inability to fire his insubordinate subordinates.

First, it was chief economic adviser Cohn saying in an interview that the administration—i.e., Donald J. Trump—must do a better job denouncing hate groups. Then, it was Secretary of State Tillerson suggesting in a stunning interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that the rest of the government speaks for American values, but not necessarily the president. Finally, Secretary of Defense Mattis contradicted without a moment’s hesitation a Trump tweet saying we are done talking with North Korea.

In a more normal time, in a more normal administration, any of these would be a firing offense (although, in Mattis’ defense, he more accurately stated official U.S. policy than the president did). Tillerson, in particular, should have been told before he was off the set of Fox News on Sunday that he was only going to be allowed to return to the seventh floor of the State Department to clean out his desk.

The fact that this hasn’t happened is an advertisement of Trump’s precarious standing, broadcast by officials he himself selected for positions of significant power and prestige.

Well, yes. Mind you it’s also a sign of how awful he is. His own people are disavowing him, because he’s even more awful than they thought.

Trump, of course, largely brought this on himself. He is reaping the rewards of his foolish public spat with Jeff Sessions and of his woeful Charlottesville remarks.

By publicly humiliating his own attorney general, Trump seemed to want to make him quit. When Sessions stayed put, Trump didn’t take the next logical step of firing him because he didn’t want to deal with the fallout. In the implicit showdown, Sessions had won. Not only had Trump shown he was all bark and no bite, he had demonstrated his lack of loyalty to those working for him.

So all his people now know two things: he’ll trash them in public any time he feels like it, and he won’t do anything about it if they trash him back.

Sounds like a fun place to work.

Mattis and Co. obviously consider themselves the president’s minders more than his underlings. But the least they could do is not air this patronizing attitude. They are impressive and accomplished people, but no one elected any of them president of the United States. They don’t do the country any favors by highlighting Trump’s weakness and by making it obvious that the American government doesn’t speak with one voice.

Oh I don’t agree with that at all. They do the country the favor of making Trump’s removal more likely. The less support he has from his own side, the more likely it is that Congress will act.

Mexico offered to help with the response to Harvey, and Trump’s administration responded with “We’ll call you if we need you.” Apparently that’s where it remains: Mexico offered help and the administration didn’t accept it.

They helped with Katrina, and Bush wasn’t such a shit that he said no thank you.

The U.S. government and Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Katrina was widely criticized, but Americans came together to offer housing, clothing, meals and monetary help to the affected. President George W. Bush even accepted a huge offer of aid from Mexico.

The aid Mexico sent was no small thing — it was an extraordinary gesture, and it may have saved many lives. Marking the first time that Mexican troops had set foot on U.S. soil since the Mexican-American War in 1846, President Vicente Fox sent an army convoy and a naval vessel laden with food, water and medicine. By the end of their three-week operation in Louisiana and Mississippi, the Mexicans had served 170,000 meals, helped distribute more than 184,000 tons of supplies and conducted more than 500 medical consultations.

On Sunday, as Harvey was drowning Houston and environs, Trump was busy tweeting about The Wall.

With Mexico being one of the highest crime Nations in the world, we must have THE WALL. Mexico will pay for it through reimbursement/other.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2017

Late on Sunday, Mexico’s foreign ministry issued a statement responding to Trump’s tweets, as well as offering assistance, though without any specifics. The statement reiterates the Mexican government’s long-held position that it will not pay for a border wall “under any circumstances,” and that drug trafficking and related crime are a “shared problem.”

Then it moves on to Harvey. “The Mexican government takes this opportunity to express its full solidarity with the people and government of the United States for the damages caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas, and express that we have offered the US government help and cooperation to be provided by different Mexican government agencies to deal with the impacts of this natural disaster — as good neighbors should always do in difficult times.”

Did Trump put the needs of people in Texas ahead of his own stupid fight-picking with Mexico? Of course he didn’t.

The offer would put Trump in a bind. Should he accept the generosity, which, to some of his supporters, might ring of hypocrisy and weakness? Or should he deny it, while Texans cope with a nightmare?

For now, the U.S. government is deferring that decision, essentially saying, “If we need you, we’ll call.”

In a statement emailed to The Washington Post late Sunday, a State Department spokesman said, “It is common during hurricanes and other significant weather events for the U.S. Government to be in close contact with our neighbors and partners in the region to share data and cooperate as needed and appropriate. If a need for assistance does arise, we will work with our partners, including Mexico, to determine the best way forward.”

As if the need for assistance were some distant contingency as opposed to what was happening right then.

PBS has a useful compilation of Trump on race. There are a few wild cards but mostly it’s what you’d expect…and there’s a lot of it.

To understand this side of the president, especially after his remarks about the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, we combed the archives (and Internet) for more of Trump’s words and actions on race. We found nearly 100 critical moments.

1973

Discrimination charge. Donald and Fred Trump are accused of violating the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against potential minority renters. They insist they are innocent and fight the sweeping charges.

1975

DOJ settlement. The Trumps settle with the Department of Justice over housing discrimination charges, agreeing to meet certain standards while not admitting any wrongdoing.

1978

Renewed discrimination charge. The Department of Justice accuses the Trumps of continuing to discriminate in spite of their settlement.

1983

Report: disproportionately white tenants. The New York Times reports that two Trump properties have populations that are 95 percent white.

1989

Central Park Five Ads. After five young men of color — known as The Central Park Five — are arrested for a brutal attack on a jogger, Donald Trump buys full-page newspaper ads stressing law and order and urging return of the the death penalty. He writes that white, black, Hispanic and Asian families have lost a sense of security in their neighborhoods. (The five men, who[m] Trump called “crazed misfits,” were exonerated 13 years later.)

…

1993

“They don’t look like Indians to me,” Trump says during a Congressional hearing when talking about Native American casino officials, accusing them of working with organized crime. He adds that political correctness have given Native American status to some people who don’t “look like Indians.”

But then one of the wild cards.

1995

Opens racially-inclusive club. Trump turns his Mar-a-Lago resort into a private club open to Jews, African-Americans and all races, breaking with many other local elite clubs in Palm Beach, Florida.

Jumping to 2011.

FEB. 10, 2011

First publicly doubts Obama. Trump tells conservative CPAC that President Barack Obama’s classmates never saw him at school. Politifact rated this statement “pants on fire.”

MARCH 23, 2011

Birtherism begins. Trump goes on “The View,” says that President Obama must show his birth certificate.

APRIL 21, 2011

Questions Obama’s place at Harvard. In an interview with the Associated Press, Trump questions how President Obama got into Columbia and Harvard. Later, he tells reporters Obama should “get off the basketball court.”

That stupid illiterate pig of a man questioned how Obama got into Columbia and Harvard.

APRIL 24, 2013

Calls Jon Stewart by his Jewish birth name. Trump tweets that he’s smarter than “Jonathan Leibowitz – I mean Jon Stewart …”

As if Stewart were secretive about being Jewish.

The most recent item:

AUG. 22, 2017

“I love all the people” and Confederate statues are “our heritage.” Speaking at a rally in Phoenix, Trump lashed out at coverage of his remarks about Charlottesville, Virginia, saying he loves “all the people of our country” and repeating that “racism is evil.” He called the white nationalist driver who killed a protester in Charlottesville “a murderer.” Minutes later, Trump defended Confederate statues, charging that those who want to remove them “are trying to take our history and our heritage away.”

Trump this morning.

After reading the false reporting and even ferocious anger in some dying magazines, it makes me wonder, WHY? All I want to do is #MAGA!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2017

Oh please.

The life history of cheating and exploitation? The 1973 lawsuit for systematically discriminating against black people in housing rentals? Tricking people out of large sums of money for “tuition” at Trump “University”?

The Central Park 5? The birtherism?

The filth of the campaign – including a great deal of “ferocious anger”? Mexicans are rapists?

The constant name-calling? The bullying? The insults? The lies?

The conceit, the vanity, the self-importance, the self-obsession? The grotesque hubris of feeling qualified to be president?

“You can grab them by the pussy”?

The many allegations of sexual assault?

The endless crazed tweets? The lie about Obama’s wiretapping? The lie about Mika Brzezinski’s face lift? The personal attacks on countless people?

Pushing Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn? Firing Comey? That private meeting with the Russians with no US press allowed? Slandering Comey to the Russians?

“On many sides, on many sides?” That press conference three days later? Saying there were many good people among the white supremacists?

That appalling “rally” in Phoenix?

Pardoning Arpaio?

The complete incompetence along with the complete lazy indifference along with the corruption and dishonesty in the office?

To name just a few.

That’s WHY. Wonder no more.

Jane Chong and Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare say it’s time.

The evidence of criminality on Trump’s part is little clearer today than it was a day, a week, or a month ago. But no conscientious member of the House of Representatives can at this stage fail to share McConnell’s doubts about Trump’s fundamental fitness for office. As the Trump presidency enters its eighth month, those members of Congress who are serious about their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution” must confront a question. It’s not, in the first instance, whether the President should be removed from office, or even whether he should be impeached. It is merely this: whether given everything Trump has done, said, tweeted and indeed been since his inauguration, the House has a duty, as a body, to think about its obligations under the impeachment clauses of the Constitution—that is, whether the House needs to authorize the Judiciary Committee to open a formal inquiry into possible impeachment.

It’s not a hard question. Indeed, merely to ask it plainly is also to answer it.

I keep thinking it’s surprising that Republicans aren’t more eager to get rid of him than anyone else, for the same sort of reason that I especially hate him as an American. So much that’s wrong with Trump has little to do with political views but is instead mostly about what he is as a person. I say “little” as opposed to “nothing” because I think some of his terrible qualities are more compatible with being a Republican, but that’s a minor point. The major point is that I think his hideous moral character should be repulsive to anyone who holds public office. I would think Republicans would want to dump him as soon as possible because he’s ruining the brand.

In our view, Congress should be evaluating at least three baskets of possible impeachable offenses. There is a good deal of overlap between these classes of misconduct, but they are sufficiently distinct to warrant individual attention:

• his abuses of power, most obviously exemplified by his conduct with respect to the investigations into his campaign’s collusion with Russia;
• his failures of moral leadership; and
• his abandonment of the basic duties of his office.

At the extreme, each type of misconduct not only denigrates the presidency but also fundamentally undermines the security of the United States.

The security and so much else – the reputation, the standing, the credit. We dented the bejezus out of all of those during the Cold War, overthrowing lefty governments and installing right-wing dictators all over the place, but we still had some.

They go over a lot more detail, and then get to the issue of just plain not doing the job.

The most obvious kind of abandonment boils down to failure to make appointments, a task critical to ensuring the executive branch’s efficacy and accountability. To date, most key executive branch positions remain empty and their nominees unnamed seven months into the Trump presidency, including those he is legally obligated to fill; to date, 62 percent of the almost 600 positions that require Senate confirmation lack a nominee. Even while threatening “fire and fury” against nuclear North Korea and threatening military action in Venezuela, Trump has deliberately gutted the State Department, leaving the country rudderless on the world stage.

Count us as skeptical that delays in making appointments could become a stand-alone basis for impeachment, except in the most egregious cases of blatant refusal, and the macro numbers in any event indicate Trump, while behind, is not wildly out of range of his modern predecessors. There is a far more ominous form of delinquency Congress must consider, and that is abandonment as an outgrowth of Trump’s extreme incompetence. He is sufficiently deficient in judgment and discretion that he requires perpetual, and very public, babysitting; in many respects, he appears to have relinquished the job, but his advisers also live in constant fear of what will happen if he shows up to do it. Political scientist Dan Drezner has even been keeping a tally of times Trump’s advisers are quoted talking about him as though he were a toddler.  In fact, the only way to mitigate the damage Trump has proven capable of doing, particularly in the foreign policy arena—whether by way of an improvised threat to North Korea, Venezuela or Mexico or an an indefensible tweet at odds with his own administration’s diplomatic objectives—is for his advisers to counteract him, either by downplaying him or flat-out contradicting him. The result is not a president but a poltergeist, who does little more than make noise and threaten damage. He has all but abandoned the office for purpose of substantive leadership and governance, but is sufficiently present to make a mess. At some point, surely that amounts to more than “maladministration” but to the “gross and wanton neglect of duty” that Black described.

One would hope.

Jennifer Rubin argues that it’s time to impeach Trump.

President Richard Nixon faced impeachment not for any crime but, under the first article of impeachment, because, “in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice.”

Trump’s been doing that from the beginning. That first surprise dinner with Comey? That was a week after the inauguration.

Now The Post reports:

A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Vladi­mir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress Monday.

Michael Cohen, a Trump attorney and executive vice president for the Trump Organization, sent the email in January 2016 to Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s top press aide.

So Trump was taking a soft line on Russia at the time his personal attorney was asking Putin for help. Perhaps “collusion” is too kind a word for trading favors with an enemy of the United States.

She goes through the list – the contacts, the lies about the contacts, the meeting, the encouragement of hacking, the pressuring of Comey, the firing of Comey.

That is a pattern of behavior that goes to the core of his oath of office and his obligation to faithfully enforce the laws. He is using the powers of government for selfish, personal ends in an attempt to prevent scrutiny of his own affairs and conduct. Certainly special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will add to the portrait, filling in with illustrative detail. However, the contours of the case for impeachment are already there.

…

When we consider the myriad other ways in which Trump has used and misused the presidency — e.g. praising police abuses, insulting federal (“so-called”) judges, pardoning someone who defied a court order, enriching himself while in office, putting unqualified relatives in office, refusing to reveal his financial dealings or to free himself of conflicts of interest — it becomes clear that Trump is not fulfilling his oath or faithfully executing the law; he’s enriching himself, deflecting inquiry and undermining the rule of law. How could impeachment not be on the table?

The short answer is: Republicans.

Speaking of Ivanka Trump’s pretensions to being a supporter of women’s “empowerment” and a legitimate senior adviser to a head of state – she endorses Trump’s intervention on the equal pay front.

The Trump administration, with the backing of first daughter Ivanka, has suspended a policy proposed by President Obama that would have made it easier for women and people of color to identify whether they were being paid less than white male counterparts at work.

Under the scheme, private employers with over 100 workers would have had to disclose pay data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on top of information on gender, race, and ethnicity already provided to the agency.

The policy was intended to help close the pernicious gender wage gap, which sees women and people of color paid far less than white men for the same jobs.

Ivanka Trump, who has built a brand off the claim that she supports working women, issued a statement supporting the move by the Office of Management and Budget.

“Ultimately, while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results,” said the first daughter, who recently published a book called ‘Women Who Work’ and markets a clothing and accessories line to working women.

How the hell does she know? Who is she to make that claim? What is the source of her expertise?

Activists who focus on pay equality have blasted this decision, with the executive director of Make It Work, a nonprofit aimed at improving women’s economic lives, calling it “a blatant attack on women.”

“To suspend a crucial Obama-era initiative aimed at increasing pay transparency and reducing the gender and racial pay gap is an unacceptable and deliberate attack on women in the workplace, especially black and Hispanic women who are currently paid only 63 cents and 54 cents to the dollar white men are paid, respectively,” said Tracy Sturdivant, who cofounded the Make It Work campaign.

But Ivanka Trump knows better because…what?

Oh wait, I know – it’s because she’s an employer and a purchaser. She doesn’t want to pay her employees more and she doesn’t want to pay more for the merch she sells. It’s not that she actually thinks it wouldn’t work; she’s lying just like Daddy about that – it’s that she thinks it will cost her money.

The CEO of the nonprofit National Women’s Law Center called the decision to halt the pay data disclosure initiative a “tremendous setback.”

“What they have said is that they thought this was ‘burdensome,’” said Fatima Goss Graves, who leads the organization aimed at advancing women’s equality. “That language has been used to halt all progress on civil rights — it’s not a new term.”

Goss Graves added that Ivanka Trump’s support of the administration’s move “entirely blows up the notion that she’s a champion of women’s issues.”

To put it mildly.

Even going to the scene of the disaster can’t take Trump’s mind off Trump.

As rescuers continued their exhausting and heartbreaking work in southeastern Texas on Tuesday afternoon, as the rain continued to fall and a reservoir near Houston spilled over, President Trump grabbed a microphone to address hundreds of supporters who had gathered outside a firehouse near Corpus Christi and were chanting: “USA! USA! USA!”

‘Thank you, everybody,” the president said, sporting one of the white “USA” caps that are being sold on his campaign website for $40. “I just want to say: We love you. You are special. . . . What a crowd. What a turnout.”

Yet again, Trump managed to turn attention on himself. His responses to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey have been more focused on the power of the storm and his administration’s response than on the millions of Texans whose lives have been dramatically altered by the floodwaters.

He has talked favorably about the higher television ratings that come with hurricane coverage, predicted that he will soon be congratulating himself and used 16 exclamation points in 22 often breathless tweets about the storm. But as of late Tuesday afternoon, the president had yet to mention those killed, call on other Americans to help or directly encourage donations to relief organizations.

He could probably watch people struggling in the water right in front of him and still not give a damn.

https://youtu.be/O24vxjf9q1E

Since Harvey slammed into the Texas coast Friday night, the president has made his awe of the powerful storm clear and used almost admiring terms to describe it — as if he were describing a sporting match or an action movie instead of a natural disaster.

“125 MPH winds!” the president tweeted Friday as the hurricane made landfall.

“Record setting rainfall,” he noted the next day, along with telling his FEMA director, “The world is watching!”

“Wow — Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood!” he tweeted on Sunday, following tweets promoting a book written by a conservative sheriff and announcing a Wednesday trip to Missouri, a state that “I won by a lot in ’16.”

At a news conference Monday, Trump continued to gush over the storm. “I’ve heard the words, ‘epic.’ I’ve heard ‘historic.’ That’s what it is,” he said, adding that the hurricane will make Texas stronger and the rebuilding effort “will be something very special.”

By focusing on the historic epicness of the hurricane, Trump has repeatedly turned attention to his role in confronting the disaster — a message reinforced by comments and tweets praising members of his administration.

Not to mention wearing self-advertising headgear throughout.

While Trump’s top aides gathered with Vice President Pence at the White House over the weekend, Trump videoconferenced in. On Saturday, he wore a white campaign hat. On Sunday, he opted for a red version. As of Tuesday evening, both hats — which feature “USA” on the front, “45” on a side and “Trump” in the back — were being sold on Trump’s campaign website, prompting ethics watchdogs to accuse the president of trying to profit off the crisis.

I’m trying to imagine Obama doing that. Can’t.

Trump wore one of the hats on his trip to Texas, too. I bet he sold quite a few. Congratulations, Mr President!

On the ground in Corpus Christi, Trump and his entourage traveled to a firehouse for a brief meeting with local and national officials, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the state’s two senators, Republicans Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. He praised everyone for working together so well and referred to his FEMA director, Brock Long, as “a man who’s really become very famous on television over the last couple of days.”

What a stroke of luck this hurricane has been for Brock Long! Isn’t it exciting?!

“It’s a real team, and we want to do it better than ever before. We want to be looked at in five years and 10 years from now as this is the way to do it,” Trump said. “This was of epic proportions. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this. And I just want to say that working with the governor and his entire team has been an honor for us.”

He then thanked the governor and added: “And we won’t say congratulations. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to congratulate. We’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished.”

Won’t that be exciting??

The president’s comments, which lasted mere minutes, angered many of those who served in President Barack Obama’s administration and could not imagine their former boss ever acting like this.

“It’s not a time for showboating,” said Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff for Obama. “It’s not a time for crowing about crowds. This weather event isn’t even over yet.”

Before Trump traveled to Austin for another briefing, Trump addressed supporters gathered outside, climbing a ladder positioned between two firetrucks and behind a black SUV. With his wife at his side, he sounded as if he were addressing a political rally instead of a state struggling to start to recover — but it was a tone that matched the screaming crowd. Some there carried pro-Trump signs and flags.

“I will tell you, this is historic — it’s epic, what happened,” Trump told them. “But you know what? It happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything.”

Also, Texas has really become very famous over the last few days. It’s terrific!!

CNN offers a little vignette illustrating how routinely horrible Trump is to everyone around him.

President Donald Trump was fuming as he sat in his Phoenix hotel watching news coverage ahead of his rally.

The venue for his first rally in nearly three weeks looked empty.

That’s when George Gigicos, Trump’s longtime advance man, got a call from Keith Schiller, the director of Oval Office operations who is almost always at Trump’s side, asking Gigicos why the crowds were scarce. Gigicos explained that while TV correspondents were live early from the venue, the rally wouldn’t start for several more hours and crowds had just begun to trickle in.

Oddly enough people don’t want to arrive at events hours early so that they can hang around doing nothing for hours. But Trump apparently thinks they ought to when he’s the one they’re coming to cheer.

Soon after, Gigicos heard from Trump himself. The President was irate, warning his former director of White House advance who had since returned to his private contracting business, that the venue better be full by the time he arrived, two sources familiar with the discussions told CNN as they described the scene and the President’s reaction.

Then after the rally Trump gave him the boot.

“George will be back,” one source familiar with the matter said, noting that Trump’s angry tirades are “not uncommon.” “This is what (Trump) does. He tries to get under your skin.”

“It wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t the worst thing I had ever seen,” another source said.

In other words, Trump is such an asshole that his firing someone because a venue was empty hours before an event is just ho hum, no big deal.

He was a nightmare throughout the campaign, too.

Trump would regularly call Gigicos before rallies to ensure the rally would deliver the crowd size he had come to expect. And if it didn’t meet those expectations, Gigicos would get upbraided by Trump, sources familiar with the Trump campaign said.

It wasn’t just the crowd sizes. Trump would also get upset during the campaign if the venue for the rally were too small, the sources said.

The fire marshals were also frequent targets of Trump’s ire, with Trump frequently calling them out from the stage and urging them to allow more people into the venue in spite of fire safety statutes.

During a January 2016 rally, Trump angrily complained about the faulty microphone at his podium, complaining about the “son of a bitch” who installed it.

And then, Trump added: “Do you hear that George? Don’t pay him. Don’t pay him,” Trump said. “And you gotta be tough with your people because they’ll pay, they don’t care. They’ll pay.”

A chronic habitual bully and narcissist.

I thought I remembered seeing a 60 Minutes about Arpaio long ago. Sure enough – in 2001.

While Arpaio has received nationwide attention in the last few years for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration — and for promoting the lie that President Obama was born outside the U.S. — he made a name for himself in Arizona years ago.

60 Minutes profiled Arpaio in 2001, when he was eight years into his tenure as sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. At the time, correspondent Morley Safer called him a “big-time publicity hound” who had “become famous ’round the world as just about the meanest man in the West.”

His reputation in 2001 was that of a tough-as-nails jailer who believed in punishment more than rehabilitation — and above all, in the humiliation of prisoners, reported Safer.

The Phoenix jail 60 Minutes visited with Arpaio was something of tent city, comprised of old Korean War tents with nothing to assuage the Arizona heat beyond holes in the canvas. Arpaio bragged to Safer that he spent more money on food for the jailhouse dogs than for inmates.

“They have to lose weight, too,” he said of the inmates. “They’re kind of heavy in there. I don’t see anybody dying around here.”

Arpaio got rid of the standard jailhouse uniform, dressing inmates in old-fashioned striped uniforms instead, and he used chain gangs for both male and female inmates.

Arpaio’s unorthodox approach turned more than a few heads; by 2001, Amnesty International, the ACLU and the Justice Department all condemned his methods. Donna Hamm, a former judge and then-prison reform advocate, told 60 Minutes the atmosphere of humiliation in Arpaio’s jails would only breed a meaner criminal.

Plus it’s wrong in itself.

SAFER: (Voiceover) It’s life under the big top in Phoenix’s tent city, one circus that never leaves town. Joe Arpaio, the P.T. Barnum of sheriffs, is an equal-opportunity jailer. Men and women are treated to the same miserable conditions.

ARPAIO: You’re in jail; you’re not in a hotel. You’ve got to pay your debt and that’s it. That’s what you’re here for. I’m tired of hearing about your complaints.

Unidentified Woman #1: We are human beings.

SAFER: (Voiceover) The place festers away between a dog pound and a local garbage dump. Since he was elected sheriff eight years ago, Arpaio has made tent city into one of the strictest jails in the country…

ARPAIO: All right, gentlemen. I need to see your IDs.

SAFER: (Voiceover) …which means no cigarettes, no coffee, no girlie magazines. Even National Geographic is doubtful. And then, of course, there’s the food.

Unidentified Man #2: For two days, we’ve been having cheese sandwiches.

ARPAIO: Grilled cheese?

Unidentified Man #2: No, it’s fake cheese.

Unidentified Man #3: No, it’s vegetable oil. It doesn’t even melt.

Unidentified Man #4: It turns to oil when it melts.

ARPAIO: I’m not a cook.

SAFER: You’ve boasted that you spend more on food for your jailhouse dogs than you do on your prisoners.

ARPAIO: I’m not going to lie about that. It’s $1.15 a day for the dogs. It’s only 90 to 95 cents a day for the inmates. But they get 3,000 calories. I’m on a 1,400-calorie diet. I think they can get by with 3,000.

SAFER: Yeah, because you wanted to lose a lot of weight.

ARPAIO: Well, they have to lose weight, too. They’re kind of heavy in there.

I don’t see anybody dying around here.

SAFER: (Voiceover) The food may not be so hot. How about the weather? As high as 120 degrees in the shade. Inmates live in old Korean War tents. The only air conditioning are the holes in the canvas.

ARPAIO: Uh-oh. Is that one there?

SAFER: That’s a big hole in that one.

ARPAIO: I don’t see any rain.

SAFER: (Voiceover) For prisoners who want to get away from this sweaty tedium, he offers outside work on the chain gang.

ARPAIO: (Voiceover) It’s the only time they ever work together. Of course, they have to. They’re hooked together. They learn discipline. They get up at 5. They have to clean their shoes. They have to have haircuts. They march, and they get on a chain gang. A great program.

SAFER: (Voiceover) And, of course, there’s the flashing neon vacancy sign, a constant reminder to inmates and visitors that there’s always room for one more.

ARPAIO: I will never change it to No Vacancy. Any cop or deputy sheriff wants to lock someone up, I will find room for them. There’s a lot of desert from here to Mexico.

SAFER: (Voiceover) An attitude that has proved irresistible to a string of get-tough Republicans: Bob Dole, Pete Wilson and George W., all perhaps suffering from poll envy. Joe’s approval rating hovers at 85 percent. And a delegation that doesn’t give a damn about polls: Chinese law enforcement officials drop in for some tips from Joe, who just brushed up on his Mandarin.

That’s former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the guy lionized by the current US president.

The Independent:

Eight of Donald Trump’s cyber-security advisers have resigned, warning the President had “given insufficient attention to the growing threats” facing the US.

A quarter of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council’s 28 members quit with a joint letter in which they claimed Mr Trump “threatened the security of the homeland”.

They cited his response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the vulnerability of the US election process.

Well hey, it’s only 8 out of 28. That’s not so bad.

The eight departing members accused Trump’s administration of failing to be “adequately attentive to the pressing national security matters” or “responsive to sound advice received from experts”.

“Your actions have threatened the security of the homeland I took an oath to protect,” said their letter, obtained by IT news website Nextgov.

…

“When asked about the horrific violence in Charlottesville, you failed to denounce the intolerance and violence of hate groups, instead offering false equivalences and attacking the motives of the CEOs who had resigned from their advisory roles in protest,” said the cyber-security experts’ resignation letter.

It added: “The moral infrastructure of our nation is the foundation on which our physical infrastructure is built.”

Or it was. Now we no longer have a moral infrastructure, and it’s not a good feeling.

The resignation letter added: “Additionally, your decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, your intent to revoke flood-risk building standards, and your many other actions to ignore the pressing threat of climate change to our critical infrastructure also point to your disregard for the security of American communities.”

To sum up: you’re a reckless shit and we can’t stand to work for you any more; please step down.

Yet another cringe-inducing Trump press conference with a fellow head of state, in which we’re forced to compare the grown-up on the left with the flailing grimacing aphasic toddler on the right.

A very rough and incomplete transcription of his response to the question about Arpaio – whom he insists on calling “Sheriff Joe” over and over and over and over…

“Well a lot of people think it was the right thing to do, and during a hurricane I thought the ratings would be a lot higher…[he thought it was very very unfair what they did to him] When I mentioned him the other night, you saw what a big crowd we had, the people went crazy…the place went absolutely crazy when I was in Arizona last week…Sheriff Joe is a great veteran of the military, great law enforcement official, won many many elections in the state of Arizona [then he gives a list of Clinton’s pardons, Obama’s pardons]…criminal LEEEAKER – you’ve heard the word leeeaker?…horrible horrible thing…Sheriff Joe is a patriot, Sheriff Joe loves our country, Sheriff Joe protected our borders, and Sheriff Joe was very unfairly treated by the Obama administration.”

The reporter laughs at him for bragging about having prepared remarks, because the question was a pretty obvious one.