Tag: Trump

  • Sir, point of order, Sir

    So the question of the hour is: does a Twitter blurt from the Toddler President equal a direct order to the military if it announces a new policy on who can join that military?

    It seems to be blindingly obvious that it doesn’t, but not everyone agrees. Some say it’s a direct order and the military is disobeying a direct order by saying they’re not doing anything until they hear from the White House.

    I just don’t see how it can be a genuine order to the military. It’s not addressed to them. It’s much closer to a “who will rid me of this meddling priest?” than it is to a direct explicit do it now order. Telling the world about a new policy isn’t the same thing as directing the relevant agency or department to carry out that order. A generalized tweet isn’t an order just as a press release isn’t an order. A tweet actually addressed to the Secretary of Defense or the head of the Joint Chiefs might qualify as an order, but a general unaddressed tweet? It can’t be. Something that addresses everyone can’t be an order to someone specific, surely?

    (And an order delivered via a tweet addressed to the Secretary of Defense or the head of the Joint Chiefs would be grotesque. What non-deranged head of state would ever do that?)

    But I ain’t no lawyer and I ain’t no expert on military procedures, neither.

  • Sir, not so fast, Sir

    Subtext: Yet again Trump shot off his mouth on Twitter as if he were three years old and having a meltdown at the supermarket checkout because he wants the candy bar HE WANTS IT WAAAAAAAH. Literal text: no change unless and until the White House talks to the Defense Department by a more reliable and discreet channel than fucking Twitter.

    The nation’s highest-ranking military officer said Thursday that the Defense Department was making “no modifications” to current policy regarding transgender service members until President Trump gives more direction.

    “I know there are questions about yesterday’s announcement on the transgender policy by the President,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said in a statement. “There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance.”

    Which hasn’t happened yet because no oddly enough just blurting about it on Twitter does not equate to the President’s sending direction to the Secretary of Defense, no even though Toddler Donald did say very official-like “please be advised.”

    “In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect,” he added. “As importantly, given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions.”

    Sort of admits that in future they might stop treating all of their personnel with respect, if Toddle Donald orders them to.

    The Department of Defense echoed that message, saying it was “awaiting formal guidance from the White House,” according to a statement by chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White. “We will provide detailed guidance to the Department in the near future for how this policy change will be implemented.”

    Subtext: Mr President, Sir, with all due respect, you fucking fool, TALK TO US BEFORE YOU ANNOUNCE A NEW RULE FOR THE MILITARY ON FUCKING TWITTER.

    In a press briefing on Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the White House and the Pentagon would work together to implement the policy, with the Defense Department taking “the lead.”

    But the statement from Dunford pushes back on that idea — and instead indicates the Pentagon is waiting for guidance from Trump.

    Guidance from an enraged toddler. What a world we live in.

  • Trump heading for Mount Rushmore

    More from the latest fascist uprising speech:

    So we’re going to start enriching our country. We’re going to start bringing back our jobs, and we will be fools no longer, folks. We’ll be fools no longer. Every single President on Mt. Rushmore — now here’s what I do. I’d ask whether or not you think I will some day be on Mt. Rushmore, but, but here’s the problem. If I did it joking, totally joking, having fun, the fake news media will say, “he believes he should be on Mt. Rushmore.” So I won’t say it, okay? I won’t say it. But every president — they’ll say it anyway tomorrow. “Trump thinks he should be on Mt. Rushmore.” Isn’t that terrible? What a group. What a dishonest group of people, I’ll tell you. [Cheers from crowd] And you know the funny thing is that you would think they’d want to see our country be great again. You would really think so. But they don’t. Some day they’ll explain it to me why. Every president on Mt. Rushmore believed in protecting American industry. We have to protect our industry. And now we are going to start, we are reclaiming our heritage as a manufacturing nation again. Bob Kraft, the owner of the New England patriots, I don’t know if you like New England but they have a hell of a team. [Boos from crowd] That’s okay. But he came to the Oval Office and he brought a sheet with him that just came out. Manufacturing enthusiasm in the United States is at an all-time high. Isn’t that great? To me that’s so great. because we’re going to bring back our jobs,bring back our wealth, and we are going to bring back our dreams, and we are going to bring back, once again our sovereignty as a nation. As a nation.

    As a nay-shun.

    Nobody is coming anymore because they know they can’t get through our southern border. So they don’t even come. [Cheers from crowd] Never again will America surrender the security of our people, the safety of our communities or the sovereignty of our nation. We are cracking down hard on the foreign criminal gangs that have brought illegal drugs, violence, horrible bloodshed to peaceful neighborhoods all across our country. We are throwing MS-13 the hell out of here so fast. You know, we’re actually — hard to believe that we’re talking about our great country. We are actually liberating towns and cities. We are liberating — people are screaming from their windows, thank you, thank you to the border patrol and to General Kelly’s great people that come in and grab the thugs and throw them the hell out. We are liberating our towns and we are liberating our cities. Can you believe we have to do that? [Chants of “build that wall wall” from crowd] Earlier in year and immigration and customs enforcement conducted the largest single raid of transnational gangs in the history of our country. We are dismantling and destroying the bloodthirsty criminal gangs, and well, I will just tell you in, we’re not doing it in a politicly correct fashion. We’re doing it rough. Our guys are rougher than their guys. I asked one of our great generals, “how tough are our people? How tough are they?” He said, “sir, you don’t want to know about it.” Then I saw one guy come out, a customs officer who is a monster. I said, “so general, you think i could take that guy in a fight?” He said, “Mr. President, sir i don’t even want to think about it.” I said “you’re right, actually.” We have tough people. Our people are tougher than their people. Our people are tougher and stronger and meaner and smarter than the gangs.

    Yep, that’s fascism. Flabby puffy lazy Donald Trump has a lust for violence as long as he gets to stay out of it.

    One by one we are finding the illegal gang members, drug dealers, thieves, robbers, criminals and killers. And we are sending them the hell back home where they came from. And once they are gone, we will never let them back in. Believe me. The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people, these beautiful, beautiful,innocent young people will, will find no safe haven anywhere in our country. And you’ve seen the stories about some of these animals. They don’t want to use guns, because it’s too fast and it’s not painful enough. So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15, and others and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die. And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long. Well, they’re not being protected any longer,folks. And that is why my administration is launching a nationwide crackdown on sanctuary cities. American cities should be sanctuaries for law-abiding Americans, for people that look up to the law, for people that respect the law, not for criminals and gang members that we want the hell out of our country.

    What’s he telling the people in that audience? That immigrants are in gangs that slice up beautiful young girls with knives. He’s encouraging them to think that he’s describing all immigrants.

    We are going to get criminals off our streets. And we are going to make America safe again. We also strongly believe that our borders must always be closed to terrorism and extremism. We don’t want radical Islamic terrorists in our country. We’ve seen the total devastation in Europe.

    The what? The total devastation? So it’s like April 1945 – much of Europe is a smoking ruin?

    Of course it isn’t. The attacks are horrible, but they’re nothing like total devastation. He’s fear-mongering, as fascists do.

    My administration is working every single day to heed and honor the will of the voters. That includes working on one of the biggest tax cuts in American history. And actually if I get what I want it will be the single biggest tax cut in American history. We have the highest taxes anywhere in the world, and this will really bring them down to one of the lowest.

    Huge lie. He tells it every chance he gets, but it’s a lie.

    We want this country that we love so much, America, to be strong, proud and free. Which means America must also be united. Because when America is united, America is totally unstoppable. Although I’ll be totally honest with you even if it’s not united we’re unstoppable so don’t worry. We’re gonna to be unstoppable either way but it would be nice, wouldn’t it? Our small differences are nothing compared to our common history, common values and common future. We share one heart, one home and one glorious destiny. Now it is up to us to preserve the birth right of freedom and justice, the birth right of prosperity that our ancestors won for us with their sweat, with their sweat, with their blood, with their work, with their muscle, with their brain. They won it for us and we’re gonna make it bigger and better and stronger than it ever was before.

    So that we’ll all live in a huge condo overlooking Central Park; it’ll be awesome! Fuck common values, man, just give us the money.

  • Weak voice, weak voice, don’t worry

    Some horrors from Trump’s speech in Youngstown, Ohio yesterday.

    Then yesterday I was in West Virginia with almost 50,000 of our most impressive young Americans. They are young men who learned to cherish words like duty, honor, god, and country, the Boy Scouts. Then only a few hours ago the senate approved a vote to begin debating the repealing and replacing the Obamacare disaster. [ cheers and applause ] Finally. You think that’s easy? That’s not easy. We’re now one step closer to liberating our citizens from this Obamacare nightmare, and delivering great health care for the American people.

    …

    I’m here this evening to cut through the fake news filter and to speak straight to the American people. Fake news. fake, fake, fake news. [Chants of “drain the swamp” from arena]. Boy oh boy, people. Is there anyplace that’s more fun, more exciting and safer than a Trump rally?

    …

    This has been a difficult week for the media because I forced them to travel with us all around the country and spend time with tens of thousands of proud Americans who believe in defending our values, our culture, our borders, our civilization, and our great American way of life.

    It’s funny he says that, really, because in reality he is no fan of our values, our culture, or our way of life. Our values include various norms about how people in government should behave, and he spits on those every minute of every day. Our values are not just right-wing values. Our culture includes science, scholarship, arts – music, dance, design – originality, creativity, discipline, collaboration – none of which he shows the smallest sign of sharing. The only version of “our great American way of life” he believes in is the one he shares with mobsters and Ponzi schemers – do whatever it takes to get as rich as you possibly can, and call everyone else “losers.” All he really means by that string of phrases is “white people.”

    And finally, we believe that family and faith, not government and bureaucracy, are the foundation of our society. You’ve heard me say it before on the campaign trail and I’ll say it again tonight. In America we don’t worship government. We worship God.

    Says a man who worships nothing but money and himself.

    [Crowd boos at something]. They’re pointing to a protester. Honestly, if you don’t point, nobody’s even going to know he’s here. Weak voice, weak voice, don’t worry. [Chants of “USA” from crowd.] Boy,he’s a young one. He’s going back home to mommy. Oh is he in trouble. He’s in trouble. He’s in trouble. And I’ll bet his mommy voted for us, right?

    …

    Political correctness for me is easy. Sometimes they say he doesn’t act Presidential. And I say, hey look, great schools, smart guy, it’s so easy to act presidential but that’s not gonna to get it done. In fact, I said it’s much easier, by the way, to act presidential than what we’re doing here tonight, believe me. And I said — and I said with the exception of the late great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any President that’s ever held this office. That I can tell you. It’s real easy. [Cheers]

    Hm.

    Image result for trump youngstown

    Image result for obama speech

    We will never be silenced by the media. I want to protect America, and i want to protect the citizens of america. Your hopes are my hopes. Your dreams are my dreams. I’ve had a great successful career. I’ve built a great, great business. This is the only thing that matters. This is the only thing that matters. There is nothing else.

    Values.

  • Don’s snuff porn

    The American Prospect tells us about Trump’s latest crowd-incitement, yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio.

    On Tuesday evening, at a campaign-style rally in Youngstown, Ohio, President Donald Trump treated his audience to a bit of snuff porn involving high-school age girls and some bad hombres.

    After painting all the people currently under deportation orders as drug-importing gang members, the president described their purported crimes. “So they’ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15—and others—and they slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before any die,” Trump said. “And these are the animals that we’ve been protecting for so long.”

    A more perfect encapsulation of the proclivities of the president’s poisonous psyche could not be imagined by even the likes of Quentin Tarantino. It’s all there, the racism, the dehumanization of immigrants, and a sexualized violence involving bleeding women—or, in this case, girls.

    He what?

    It’s true.

    https://youtu.be/EclstsdYMx0

  • It’s just a tantrum, official says

    Don is still making an exhibition of himself on Twitter, asking the world why Sessions does what he does when he’s the one who appointed him and we’re not. Dude why are you asking us?

    But, you know, it’s all part of his cunning plan to bully Sessions into quitting, or inspiring Rod Rosenstein to jump up in the middle of the night and fire Mueller, or something. It looks like crazy but it’s actually fiendishly clever manipulation.

    Or is it. The Post talked to people who say it’s just Trump being Trump.

    President Trump renewed his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions Wednesday, questioning on Twitter why the top U.S. law enforcement official had not replaced the acting FBI director — a move that Trump himself has the authority to do.

    In two tweets just before 10 a.m., Trump wrote, “Why didn’t A.G. Sessions replace Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a Comey friend who was in charge of Clinton investigation but got big dollars ($700,000) for his wife’s political run from Hillary Clinton and her representatives. Drain the Swamp!”

    Drain the Swamp! he cries, but he’s the one who chose the swamp and appointed the swamp. He chose Sessions, he nominated Sessions, he made Sessions part of his administration. It was you, Charlie.

    Trump has for days been attacking his attorney general, and he has similarly been critical of McCabe, who took over as the acting director of the FBI after Trump fired James B. Comey. But his latest attack is curious.

    Sessions was not the attorney general during the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. And the president himself could remove McCabe without Sessions. Administration officials actually contemplated doing so after Comey’s firing. Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein met with four other candidates to lead the FBI on an interim basis, though the administration ultimately stuck with McCabe.

    Plus…why is he asking us?

    A person familiar with internal White House discussions about Sessions said Trump’s attacks on Sessions are a public airing of what the president has been saying for months privately — that he blames Sessions’s recusal for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate possible ties to Russia. But the person cautioned that neither the president nor his advisers have articulated a plan for replacing Sessions with someone else, and the angry words are primarily a venting of the president’s anger, rather than a calculated effort to drive the attorney general out of office.

    Oh yes? So it’s not a cunning plan – it’s just Trump acting like a giant baby, “venting” his narcissistic rage in public on social media?

    It’s hard to tell which is more terrifying: his malignancy or his stupidity.

  • The degradation of the independent law enforcement function itself

    Benjamin Wittes has thoughts on the effects of the current situation on people at the Department of Justice and on the rest of us.

    The trouble is that remaining in office does not merely demean the individual dignity of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general when the President whines about the attorney general’s compliance with Justice Department recusal rules; when he attacks the attorney general for not investigating a political opponent; when he openly suggests that the Justice Department’s leadership should act in his personal interests; or when he suggests that the deputy attorney general is biased against him as a result of previous service as U.S. attorney in a Democratic-majority city. These are also degradations of the institutional offices these men hold. And continuing to hold those offices in silence when the president says these things them permits that degradation to go unchallenged—both before the workforce and before the public.

    To the workforce, this sort of rope-a-doping by the department’s leadership might provide a short-term protection against political interference in an investigation, and I don’t diminish the importance of that protection. Rosenstein and Sessions (who is recused, in any event) may by tolerating belittling by the President to allow their investigators and prosecutors to do their work unmolested. But the long-term cost is the corrosion of the norm not merely that investigators and prosecutors are ultimately protected from White House interference on investigative matters, but that presidential attempts at such interference are themselves unacceptable. To allow the Justice Department and FBI workforces to witness on an ongoing basis the president hectoring, threatening to fire, and belittling the attorney general and deputy attorney general is to allow them to witness also the degradation of the independent law enforcement function itself. For the departmental leadership to tolerate the repeated statements by the president of his expectation that their function is nothing more elevated than that of agents of his political power and protection is, at some level, to accede to the acceptability of those statements. Even if in practice, in the short term, law enforcement functions independently as a result, accepting this characterization of its function has to socialize over time the way people at the relevant agencies understand the jobs they are doing. It will drive honest people away, prevent good people from coming on board, and over time it will influence the way many people think about their work.

    Perhaps even more important than the message that leadership’s rope-a-doping sends to law enforcement officers is the message it sends to the public about law enforcement. For the public to see this kind of presidential behavior towards the attorney general and the deputy attorney general, for the public to see both men tolerate it, and for the public to see there be no consequences for it will, again over time, make it acceptable behavior. That’s the way political norms change—the way old norms get discarded and the way new ones develop. If it’s okay for the president to criticize the attorney general for recusing when it’s not convenient for his interests for the attorney general to do so, then why is not okay for him to demand as a condition of appointment that the attorney general promise not to recuse? And why is it not okay for a prospective attorney general to comply with such a demand? If it’s okay for the President to tweet that his political opponent should be investigated, why is it not okay for the attorney general to investigate those the President says should be criminally investigated? Why is it not okay for the President to order up such an investigation?

    That’s all the more true since a lot of people are probably paying more attention to the DoJ right now than they ever have before. We’re drinking in what’s being played out before us day after day; how can we help but absorb the messages being sent?

  • You have to know about the word “momentum”

    But my favorite part of Trump’s Address to the Nations Boy Scouts is where he just veers off into telling them a long boring story about this one guy he met 50 years ago, like any other damn windbag you accidentally sit next to at a dinner or on a bus or in the dentist’s waiting room. You know those – the ones who just talk, regardless of who is next to them or what the likelihood is that anyone in hearing will give a damn.

    In life, in order to be successful, and you people are well on the road to success, you have to find out what makes you excited. What makes you want to get up each morning and go to work? You have to find it.

    If you love what you do and dedicate yourself to your work, then you will gain momentum, and look — you have to, you need to. The word momentum — you will gain that momentum, and each success will create another success. The word momentum.

    I’ll tell you a story that’s very interesting for me when I was young. There was a man named William Levitt — Levittowns, you have some here, you have some in different states. Anybody ever hear of Levittown? (Applause.) And he was a very successful man. He was a homebuilder — became an unbelievable success, and got more and more successful. And he built homes, and at night he’d go to these major sites with teams of people and he’d scour the sites for nails and sawdust and small pieces of wood. And they’d clean the site so when the workers came in the next morning, the sites would be spotless and clean, and he did it properly. And he did this for 20 years, and then he was offered a lot of money for his company.

    And he sold his company for a tremendous amount of money. At the time especially — this was a long time ago — sold his company for a tremendous amount of money. And he went out and bought a big yacht, and he had a very interesting life. I won’t go any more than that because you’re Boy Scouts, so I’m not going to tell you what he did.

    AUDIENCE: Booo —

    TRUMP: Should I tell you? Should I tell you?

    AUDIENCE: Yes!

    TRUMP: Oh, you’re Boy Scouts, but you know life. You know life. So — look at you. Who would think this is the Boy Scouts, right?

    So he had a very, very interesting life, and the company that bought his company was a big conglomerate. And they didn’t know anything about building homes, and they didn’t know anything about picking up the nails and the sawdust and selling it — and the scraps of wood. This was a big conglomerate based in New York City, and after about a ten year period they were losing a lot with it. It didn’t mean anything to them, and they couldn’t sell it.

    So they called William Levitt up and they said, would you like to buy back your company, and he said yes, I would. He so badly wanted it, he got bored with this life of yachts and sailing and all of the things he did in the south of France and other places. You won’t get bored, right? You know, truthfully, you’re workers. You’ll get bored too. Believe me. (Applause.) Of course, having a good few years like that isn’t so bad. (Applause.) But what happened is he bought back his company, and he bought back a lot of empty land. And he worked hard in getting it zoning, and he worked hard on starting to develop.

    And in the end he failed, and he failed badly. Lost all of his money. He went personally bankrupt, and he was now much older. And I saw him at a cocktail party, and it was very sad because the hottest people in New York were at this party. It was the party of Steve Ross who was one of the great people — he came up and discovered — really founded — Time Warner, and he was a great guy. He had a lot of successful people at the party.

    And I was doing well so I got invited to the party. I was very young, and I go in — but I’m in the real estate business — and I see 100 people, some of whom I recognize and they’re big in the entertainment business. And I see, sitting in the corner, was a little old man who was all by himself. Nobody was talking to him. I immediately recognized that that man was the once great William Levitt of Levittown, and I immediately went over — I wanted to talk to him more than the Hollywood show business communications people.

    So I went over and talked to him, and I said, Mr. Levitt, I’m Donald Trump. He said I know. I said, Mr. Levitt, how are you doing? He goes, not well, not well at all. And I knew that, but he said not well at all. And he explained what was happening and how bad it has been and how hard it has been. And I said what exactly happened? Why did this happen to you? You’re one of the greats ever in our industry. Why did this happen to you? And he said, Donald, I lost my momentum. I lost my momentum. A word you never hear when you’re talking about success. When some of these guys that never made ten cents, they’re on television giving you things about how you’re going to be successful, and the only thing they ever did was a book and a tape.

    But I’ll tell you, it was very sad, and I never forgot that moment. And I thought about it, and it’s exactly true. He lost his momentum. Meaning, he took this period of time off long — years — and then when he got back, he didn’t have that same momentum. In life, I always tell this to people, you have to know whether or not you continue to have the momentum, and if you don’t have it that’s okay. Because you’re going to go on and you’re going to learn and you’re going to do things that are great. But you have to know about the word momentum.

    As long as you know about the word “momentum” you’ll be fine.

  • It’s downright icky

    Some parents of Boy Scouts are furious.

    One parent wrote: “Done with scouts after you felt the need to have my kid listen to a liar stroke his ego.”

    …

    Responding to the criticism of the speech, the Boy Scouts of America insisted it was “wholly non-partisan and does not promote any one position, product, service, political candidate or philosophy”.

    It said the invitation to Mr Trump was a “long-standing tradition and is in no way an endorsement of any political party or specific policies”.

    Except that the way it played out, it was.

    Many parents, lobbyists and politicians took to social media to cite the 107-year-old organisation’s values, and to suggest Mr Trump had failed them.

    Lobbyist for women’s and LGBT rights Amy Siskind tweeted: “If the Boy Scouts organization has any decency, they’ll come out with a statement tonight denouncing Trump, and giving instructions for all troop leaders to speak to these boys about what they just heard and why it was wrong.”

    https://twitter.com/Leila_A_Rice/status/889676297852604417

  • The Trumpler youth cheered and chanted

    More on Trump’s confusion of the Boy Scouts with the Hitler Youth:

    “Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts?” President Trump asked the 40,000 people gathered in Glen Jean, West Virginia, on Monday for the Boy Scout Jamboree.

    The answer is President Trump. The event, which occurs every four years, was attended by about 24,000 boys, ages 12 to 18, but Trump treated it like a raucous campaign rally. During a rambling, 35-minute speech, he playfully threatened a member of his cabinet about getting the votes to repeal Obamacare, recounted his election win in great detail, and attacked President Obama.

    A post on the Jamboree’s blog had warned troops to be “courteous” and refrain from chanting phrases like “lock her up” as they are “considered divisive by many members of our audience, and may cause unnecessary friction between individuals and units.” That did not prevent the audience from applauding Trump’s partisan attacks and even booing when he mentioned Hillary Clinton.

    “Divisive” is a weasel-word. Those chants are worse than just “divisive.” In any case the warning failed; the Boy Scouts cheered and booed on cue.

    It seems the president had prepared a speech about letting “your scouting oath guide your path,” but his trademark asides and non sequiturs dominated the address. Here are Trump’s weird comments to his largely underage audience.

    1. Trump starts off by marveling at the size of the crowd and attacking the press.
    “Boy, you have a lot of people here. The press will say it’s about 200 people. [Laughter.] It looks like about 45,000 people. You set a record today. [Applause.] You set a record. That’s a great honor, believe me. Tonight we put aside all of the policy fights in Washington, D.C. — you’ve been hearing about that with the fake news and all of that. [Applause.] We’re going to put that aside. And instead we’re going to talk about success, about how all of you amazing young Scouts can achieve your dreams … I said, who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts, right?”

    2. Trump calls our nation’s capital a “cesspool.” 
    “You know, I go to Washington and I see all these politicians, and I see the swamp. And it’s not a good place. In fact, today, I said we ought to change it from the word swamp to the word cesspool, or perhaps, to the word sewer. But it’s not good. Not good.” [Applause.]

    3. Trump boasts that ten members of his cabinet were Boy Scouts, then threatens to fire one of them.
    “Secretary Tom Price is also here. Today Dr. Price still lives the Scout Oath, helping to keep millions of Americans strong and healthy as our Secretary of Health and Human Services. And he’s doing a great job. And hopefully, he’s going to get the votes tomorrow to start our path toward killing this horrible thing known as Obamacare that’s really hurting us, folks.”

    [Applause. Crowd chants “USA! USA! USA!”]

    Yep; it did. That’s the part that’s making me hate this country today: that that rich narcissistic pig stood up in front of 40 thousand Boy Scouts and called expanded health insurance “this harrible thing” – and they applauded and chanted. I hate this nightmare.

    4. Trump says we need more “loyalty,” doesn’t explain what he’s referring to. 
    “As the Scout Law says: ‘A Scout is trustworthy, loyal’ — we could use some more loyalty, I will tell you that.”

    5. Trump marvels at the size of the crowd and attacks the “fake media” for refusing to show it (though CNN aired the speech).
    “I’m waving to people back there so small I can’t even see them. Man, this is a lot of people. Turn those cameras back there, please. That is so incredible. By the way, what do you think the chances are that this incredible, massive crowd, record-setting is going to be shown on television tonight? One percent or zero? [Applause.] The fake media will say: President Trump — and you know what this is — President Trump spoke before a small crowd of Boy Scouts today. That’s some — that is some crowd. [Applause.] Fake media. Fake news. Thank you.”

    6. Trump attacks his predecessor for failing to address the Boy Scouts (Obama sent a video message in 2010).
    [Audience chants, “We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump!”]

    “By the way, just a question, did President Obama ever come to a jamboree?”

    [Audience shouts, “No!”]

    “And we’ll be back. We’ll be back. The answer is no, but we’ll be back.”

    There’s a lot more, including a long wandering story about rich men in New York and the wild parties on their yachts and what they get up to out there and not saying it to the Boy Scouts wink wink nudge grab them by the pussy wink nudge.

    Nightmare, I tell you.

    From Gnu Atheism with apologies to Tom Lehrer

    Image may contain: one or more people, people standing and text

    Be prepared!
    If you are a Scout today.
    Be prepared!
    For what Trump might come and say.
    Seems they couldn’t get a speaker from the Klan
    So they got someone about to hit the fan.

    Be prepared!
    He does not need any notes
    For a long
    Diatribe about his votes.
    Let him count the countless thousands who the press won’t say were there.
    They’re the very few survivors of that dread Obamacare.
    If you do not vote against it then be scared.
    Be prepared!

    Be prepared!
    God and Christmas have come back.
    Be prepared!
    Even if belief you lack.
    If you claim he’s not for freedom, that’s just spin,
    “But if you do what we say” then ” you will win”.

    Be prepared!
    Be alert and be awake,
    For the news
    Has to praise him or it’s fake.
    Even Fox, apart from Hannity, has had it up to here.
    If you haven’t lost your sanity you know the end is near;
    In his lying tweets he soon will be ensnared.
    Be prepared!

  • Roosevelt used the occasion to talk about good citizenship

    The Post details how aberrant and wrong and narcissistic Trump’s speech to the Boy Scouts yesterday was.

    For 80 years, American presidents have been speaking to the National Scout Jamboree, a gathering of tens of thousands of youngsters from around the world eager to absorb the ideas of service, citizenship and global diplomacy.

    In keeping with the scouts’ traditions, all eight presidents and surrogates who have represented them have stayed far, far away from partisan politics.

    I had assumed that, without knowing anything specific about it, because after all, it’s the Boy Scouts – it’s not a set of people you would expect to be interested in the minutiae of Donald Trump’s political biography and it’s also not a set of people you have any business assuming are political allies. That’s not how Trump played it though. He made it all about him, and he treated them as rabid Republicans.

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the occasion to talk about good citizenship. Harry S. Truman extolled fellowship: “When you work and live together, and exchange ideas around the campfire, you get to know what the other fellow is like,” he said.

    President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked the “bonds of common purpose and common ideals.” And President George H.W. Bush spoke of “serving others.”

    For a brief moment at this year’s jamboree in West Virgina, President Donald Trump indicated that he would follow that tradition — sort of.

    “Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts?” he said.

    It’s a miracle he didn’t tell them about his adventures in pussy grabbing.

    Then, standing before all 40,000 of them, he bragged about the “record” crowd size, bashed President Barack Obama, criticized the “fake media” and trashed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. In the lengthy 35-minute speech, the president threatened to fire his Health and Human Services Secretary if he couldn’t convince members of Congress to vote for the Republican health-care bill.

    In short, he made a completely disgusting spectacle of himself.

    At one point, he told a rambling story about a conversation he had at a New York cocktail party with a once-successful home builder who “lost his momentum.” The lesson, apparently: “You have to know whether or not you continue to have the momentum. And if you don’t have it, that’s OK.”

    Throughout the address, Trump dropped in praise for “the moms and the dads and troop leaders” and thanked the scouts for upholding “the sacred values of our nation.”

    And then quickly reverted to talking about himself and his political to-do list.

    It was yet another example of Trump ignoring the custom that past presidents have dutifully observed in such public ceremonies. In his first full day in office, Trump bucked tradition at the CIA when he delivered a campaign-style speech in front of a memorial wall for fallen agency employees. In May, he used a commencement ceremony at the Coast Guard Academy to lament that he has been treated “more unfairly” than any other politician in history. And so it was at this year’s jamboree. Trump, who promised to be different than all the rest, was indeed just that, talking to the scouts in a way no president ever has.

    His only interest is himself, and he’s so Theory of Mind-deficient that he thinks everyone shares that interest.

  • He’s looking forward to it

    Oh, brilliant – now we’re expected to rejoice that War Hero With Glioblastoma Is Returning to the Senate to Vote on Urgent Matter – in fact to add his vote to the other Republican votes TO TAKE HEALTH INSURANCE AWAY FROM MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

    I hate this country right now. Hate it. Trump’s performance in front of the Boy Scouts yesterday has pushed me over the edge.

    John McCain has excellent health insurance, because he’s a senator, and he’s coming back to vote to take it away from people who don’t have the good fortune to get health insurance from their employers.

    It was just five days ago that John McCain, the longtime Arizona senator, two-time presidential candidate and perhaps America’s most famous prisoner of war, was diagnosed with a deadly form of brain cancer.

    And yet, McCain is set to make a dramatic return to the U.S. Senate Tuesday for a key vote on health care.

    “Look forward to returning to Senate tomorrow…,” McCain tweeted Monday night.

    …to vote to take health insurance away from people who aren’t John McCain.

    It will be a remarkable moment, to see this man, whom his daughter described poetically as a “warrior at dusk,” take his place again in the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” where he has represented his southwestern state for 30 years.

    Oh yes, very remarkable; remarkable for how disgusting it is.

    The GOP has not been able to gather the votes in the Senate — and that has started to really rankle President Trump. His irritation was evident during his appearance Monday at the Boy Scouts National Jamboree in West Virginia.

    “As the scout law says, a scout is trustworthy, loyal,” Trump said. He added, “We could use some more loyalty, I will tell you that.”

    Speaking of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, an Eagle Scout, he said, “Hopefully he’s going to gets the votes tomorrow to start our path toward killing this horrible thing known as Obamacare that’s really hurting us.”

    Yeah, he did. I watched the clip where he said it. My brain woke me up at 3 a.m. replaying it. It’s why I hate this country right now – that hideous vision of a bloated rich man telling the fucking Boy Scouts how Harrible Obamacare is. Now I’m being told to marvel that a mortally ill rich man is returning to add his vote to the struggle to grab health insurance away from millions of people.

    Before the Scouts, Trump wasn’t quite done yet: “He better get Senator Capito to vote for it. He better get the other senators to vote for it. It’s time.”

    Sen. Capito is West Virginia Sen. Shelly Moore Capito, one of the holdouts on voting for what Republicans have so far proposed when it comes to health care. She’s one of a dozen or so senators who have not committed to even voting for the motion to proceed.

    Nevermind that Boy Scouts is supposed to be an apolitical organization. The group put out a statement after the speech saying it does not endorse any candidate.

    He thought they were the Hitler Youth. Pathetically, a lot of them acted as if they were – there was a great deal of cheering.

    This is life at the bottom of the muck.

  • At least Loud Obbs thinks he’s doing a good job

    Aw poor Donald. He’s cracking. For the first time he’s letting us know it hurts.

    As if the laughter of the Russians were our fault and not his.

    Aw. If he weren’t such a sadistic monster, I might feel a little sorry for him at that. But he is, so I don’t. He’s earned his feelings of abandonment by being such a terrible human being and head of state.

    No, the sad thing is that Republicans so far have not done anything to stop him or slow him down.

    And every story is bad because…?

    Blah blah, blurt blurt. He’s watching Fox with his phone in his hand.

    That’s just pathetic.

  • He can’t, unless he can

    On Friday the Post ran an editorial by Laurence Tribe, Richard Painter, and Norm Eisen, titled No, Trump can’t pardon himself. The Constitution tells us so.

    Can a president pardon himself? Four days before Richard Nixon resigned, his own Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined no, citing “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” We agree.

    The Justice Department was right that guidance could be found in the enduring principles that no one can be both the judge and the defendant in the same matter, and that no one is above the law.

    The Constitution specifically bars the president from using the pardon power to prevent his own impeachment and removal. It adds that any official removed through impeachment remains fully subject to criminal prosecution. That provision would make no sense if the president could pardon himself.

    But Trump doesn’t care what makes sense and what doesn’t, so could he and his people just go ahead and do it anyway? Is there anyone who can stop him who would stop him? Millions of people would if they could, but among people who actually can, I don’t know what the numbers are.

    President Trump thinks he can do a lot of things just because he is president. He says that the president can act as if he has no conflicts of interest. He says that he can fire the FBI director for any reason he wants (and he admitted to the most outrageous of reasons in interviews and in discussionwith the Russian ambassador). In one sense, Trump is right — he can do all of these things, although there will be legal repercussions if he does. Using official powers for corrupt purposes — such as impeding or obstructing an investigation — can constitute a crime.

    But there is one thing we know that Trump cannot do — without being a first in all of human history. He cannot pardon himself.

    He would love to be a first in all of human history.

  • We would be a dictatorship, not a democracy

    Harvard professor of constitutional law Noah Feldman says no, Trump can’t pardon himself, not because it would break a rule but because it would be the end of the US.

    Here’s some unsolicited advice for President Donald Trump: Don’t listen to any lawyers who might tell you that you can pardon yourself, or even that it’s a close legal question. You can’t — and no court is going to rule otherwise.

    There’s a decent historical argument about why, but it’s beside the point. The bottom line is that if the president could pardon himself, we would no longer have a republic — nor a government of laws rather than men. We would be a dictatorship, not a democracy.

    You know that. Americans know it. The Supreme Court knows it. Now let’s move on.

    Well I think “You know that” is too optimistic, but anyway.

    [A]s early as 1311 (you read that right), Parliament forced the king to promise that he would only pardon “by process of law and the custom of the realm.” The idea was to rein in the pardon power, making it into an instrument of law, not of arbitrary royal prerogative.

    Given that worry about the anti-legal nature of the pardon power was already more than 450 years old when the Founding Fathers drafted the U.S. Constitution during the hot summer of 1787, it’s a bit surprising that the pardon power even made it in.

    In Philadelphia, the more rights-oriented republicans, like George Mason of Virginia, questioned the whole idea of the pardon power. The more pro-executive participants, like Alexander Hamilton and James Wilson, managed to get it in, albeit without much debate. The idea was that pardons served mercy and could be expedient.

    Pardoning oneself obviously has nothing to do with mercy.

    But frankly, the history isn’t the point. The basic problem with self-pardon is that it would make a mockery of the very idea that the U.S. operates under the rule of law. A president who could self-pardon could violate literally any federal law with impunity, knowing that the only risk was removal from office by impeachment.

    We have a name for an elected leader who is outside the law: dictator. And dictatorship is fundamentally inconsistent with the republic established by the Constitution. In fact, it’s a little difficult to think of any single idea that would more grossly violate the rule of law than a president free to break any and every law and then wave a get-out-of-jail-free card.

    Trump is being a dictator in every way he can get away with it.

    I can predict with complete confidence that no court would uphold a presidential self-pardon. To do so would be to render the courts essentially useless as checks on the executive, to say nothing of Congress, which passes the laws in the first place.

    This isn’t a normal legal problem for courts to resolve by weighing plausible, competing arguments. It’s the whole ball of wax: the survival of constitutional government. The courts will treat it as such.

    Good. I hope he’s right. It seems likely that he is – justices are not likely to surrender to a dictator.

  • Burning up the twitters

    Trump was busy this morning.

    A couple of days ago he was hanging Sessions out to dry; now he’s all indignant that a major newspaper dares to report his lies about contacts with Russia. He gets to shit on his people but no one else does, I guess.

    The “failing” New York Times that he spilled his guts to a few days ago. Ok dude, whatever.

    Having the power to do it isn’t the same thing as being able to get away with it.

    “So many”=Donald Trump.

    What about the fact that she’s a private citizen now?

    Ooof, that’s big lie even for him. Little Don gave his emails to the media only after the Times told him they were about to release them. Plus Little Don has corrupt ties to the White House right now, which Hillary Clinton does not.

    Taking away health insurance from millions is a WIN to this guy.

    Repeat repeat repeat.

    Aw Donnie’s playing sojer, how cute.

  • Stress test

    As many people have been noticing, this situation exposes a certain flaw in the US Constitution – one that can be boiled down to: what happens if the president turns out to be a shameless crook?

    CNN looks at how difficult it would or wouldn’t be for Trump to fire Mueller and then the constitutional issue.

    Even if Trump cannot dispense with Mueller easily, the very idea that he might try exposes an inherent flaw in the US Constitution’s design, says Harvard Law School Professor Noah R. Feldman.

    Feldman points out that the president is ultimately in charge of law enforcement as the head of the executive branch — a structural arrangement that works just fine until the president or those close to him come under investigation.

    So if the President tries to fire Mueller or gets him fired, “it would expose a deep flaw in constitutional design” says Feldman, because it shows the ability of the president to successfully block an investigation — not a sign of a democratic society.

    Indeed not, as we are learning with ever-deepening horror. Somehow a massively and visibly corrupt man got elected president after losing the popular vote by a wide margin, and now surprise surprise he’s acting the way a massively corrupt man would act, given nearly unfettered power.

    Feldman says it’s a stress test. So far we’re failing it.

  • Brink

    Brian Beutler at the New Republic sums it all up chillingly: it’s an authoritarian crisis waiting to happen.

    The scope of that crisis is much clearer now that the Washington Post is reporting that Trump is discussing the possibility of pardoning himself, his family, and his closest aides to short-circuit the sprawling investigation of his campaign’s complicity in Russia’s subversion of the 2016 election. Trump’s team is also, according to the Post and another Times story, digging up dirt on the special counsel investigators in an attempt to discredit them.

    It’s not Sessions, he says, it’s Mueller, and Trump’s telling the Times he thinks Mueller’s investigating his financial doings crosses a line.

    In a more rule-bound environment, Mueller’s interest in opening Trump’s books would probably be checkmate for the president. Quite apart from the question of whether his campaign conspired with Russian intelligence to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign, it is widely suspected that a peek under the hood of the Trump organization will reveal serious financial crimes. Assuming that informed speculation is correct, and assuming our system of checks hasn’t broken down, Mueller would uncover the wrongdoing and bring down a president, or Trump would fire Mueller and Congress would step in to edge Trump out.

    But at the moment there are no reliable sources of accountability. None.

    The sources of accountability are all contingent on political power. That’s no good.

    Should Trump fire Mueller, with the tacit assent of Republicans in Congress and the DOJ leadership, there will be little recourse. It is feasible (though difficult) to imagine a GOP House and Senate passing an independent counsel statute to restore Mueller to his job; it is nearly impossible to imagine them doing so by veto-proof margins. And should Trump pardon himself and his inner circle, it is dispiritingly easy to imagine Republicans reprising their familiar refrain: The president’s power to pardon is beyond question.

    So we could be living under a complete Trump takeover in a matter of weeks.

  • After denouncing chaos in the West Wing

    Spicey has had enough.

     Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, resigned on Friday morning, after denouncing chaos in the West Wing and telling President Trump he vehemently disagreed with the appointment of the New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director

    Mr. Trump offered Mr. Scaramucci the job at 10 a.m. The president requested that Mr. Spicer stay on, but Mr. Spicer told Mr. Trump that he believed the appointment was a major mistake, according to person with direct knowledge of the exchange.

    Scaramucci is a finance person and a commentator on Fox News.

    His resignation is a serious blow to the embattled White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, the former Republican Party chairman who brought Mr. Spicer into the West Wing despite skepticism from Mr. Trump, who initially questioned his loyalty.

    He was not alone. Mr. son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has grown critical of both Mr. Spicer and Mr. Priebus, whom he regards as party establishment figures who operate out of self-interest.

    I like the “Mr. son-in-law” – it sums him up. Why on earth does he have a job in the White House, given his complete lack of relevant education and experience? Because he’s Mr. son-in-law.

    The appointment of Mr. Scaramucci, a favorite of Mr. Trump’s earliest campaign supporters, was backed by the president’s daughter Ivanka, his son-in-law and adviser Mr. Kushner and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the officials said.

    I hope we can stop hearing about Ivanka as one of Trump’s more reasonable advisers now.

  • Loyalty

    The Times reports high anxiety in the White House.

    The effort to investigate the investigators is another sign of a looming showdown between Mr. Trump and Mr. Mueller, who has assembled a team of high-powered prosecutors and agents to examine whether any of Mr. Trump’s advisers aided Russia’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election.

    Some of the investigators have vast experience prosecuting financial malfeasance, and the prospect that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry could evolve into an expansive examination of Mr. Trump’s financial history has stoked fears among the president’s aides. Both Mr. Trump and his aides have said publicly they are watching closely to ensure Mr. Mueller’s investigation remains narrowly focused on last year’s election.

    Yes well see this is why it’s not such a great idea to elect a sleazy real estate marketer and scam artist to the presidency. Mr. Trump’s financial history is also Mr. Trump’s gigantic tangle of overlapping conflicts of interest.

    CNN points out that it’s always hard to tell with Trump if he’s deliberately testing boundaries or just blissfully unaware that they exist.

    The Washington Post and the Times ran stories Thursday night suggesting Trump’s lawyers are working on ways to undercut the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether any of the President’s campaign aides colluded in Russian election meddling. The two papers reported that Trump’s legal team is examining potential conflicts of interest in Mueller’s outfit, in what appears to be evolving into an unavoidable showdown between the White House and the special counsel.

    The quickly building drama is prompting discussion about the potential reach of presidential power and Trump’s willingness to test the boundaries of his authority, in possibly unprecedented ways.

    It is often difficult to be sure whether the President is pursuing a deliberate strategy to stretch his powers or is simply unfamiliar with their limits.

    In speculating on the parameters of the investigation by Mueller, and in rebuking Sessions, Trump appeared to be either confusing, or deliberately discounting, traditions that offer the Justice Department a high degree of insulation from politics and the White House itself.

    The complaint about Sessions reveals at a minimum that he’s indifferent to the fact that Sessions recused himself on the grounds that not to do so would cause a conflict of interest since he was a key member of Trump’s campaign team.

    The President’s comments caused consternation in Washington among Democrats who spoke out publicly and Republicans who expressed their concern in a more private fashion.

    “It would be unprecedented in American history for a President to be successful in removing that special counsel and dictating the terms of an investigation into possibly him and his family and his associates,” said Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro on CNN.

    Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons said that Trump’s attempt to brush back Mueller and his anger at Sessions were both inappropriate.

    “I think the President is confusing what the role is of the Department of Justice,” Coons told CNN. “Officials who lead of the Department of Justice take an oath to uphold the Constitution — not a loyalty oath to the President.”

    CNN makes the connection between these demands for loyalty and Trump’s mobster-like attempts to get Comey to swear loyalty to him.

    The President’s expansive view of the deference he is owed is not confined to his dealings with the Justice Department and the FBI. It is ingrained in his approach to politics and the Republican Party on Capitol Hill as well.

    When the Senate Republican majority first admitted defeat in the bid to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump took it as a personal insult.

    “Most Republicans were loyal, terrific & worked really hard,” Trump tweeted, implying that those GOP senators who opposed the bill were disloyal.

    On Wednesday Trump “jokingly” threatened a Republican senator with losing his seat if he didn’t Get Onside.

    Trump also seems to view the presidency as a justification for loyalty that only goes in one direction — in a departure from the way most recent presidents have kept the confidence of those who often make great sacrifices to work for them.

    His harsh criticism of Sessions in the New York Times interview further buckled morale in the West Wing, since Sessions, who gave up a safe Senate seat from Alabama to serve in the administration, showed early, and consistent, loyalty to Trump during the campaign.

    CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported that the episode has a “chilling” effect in the West Wing among officials who thought if Sessions could come under fire, they could face Trump’s wrath next.

    White House deputy spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied that Trump was hurting his own Cabinet.

    Of course she did; she’s one of the Loyal ones.

    Spicey on the other hand just quit.