Tag: Trump

  • One orb to bind them

    He put his tiny hands on it. He is their captive now.

    https://twitter.com/owillis/status/866372875879686144

  • Trump hopes to cut school lunch programs

    Hooray for “populism.”

    President Trump’s first major budget proposal on Tuesday will include massive cuts to Medicaid and call for changes to anti-poverty programs that would give states new power to limit a range of benefits, people familiar with the planning said, despite growing unease in Congress about cutting the safety net.

    Fewer protections for the poor, more money for the rich – that’s populism? What’s pop about it?

    After The Washington Post reported some of the cuts Sunday evening, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump was pulling “the rug out from so many who need help.”

    “This budget continues to reveal President Trump’s true colors: His populist campaign rhetoric was just a Trojan horse to execute long-held, hard-right policies that benefit the ultra wealthy at the expense of the middle class,” he said.

    My point exactly. Why do people keep being so confused about this?

    The proposed changes to Medicaid and SNAP will be just some of several anti-poverty programs that the White House will look to change. In March, the White House signaled that it wanted to eliminate money for a range of other programs that are funded each year by Congress. This included federal funding for Habitat for Humanity, subsidized school lunches and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness across 19 federal agencies.

    Yeah, take away lunches from those lazy shiftless children. Why aren’t they part of the labor force?!

  • Not here to lecture

    Trump gave his Talk to The Mooslims today, telling them he’s fine with the oppression of women as long as they don’t set off the odd bomb in places we Americans like to hang out.

    President Trump sought to rally leaders from around the Muslim world on Sunday in a renewed campaign against extremism, rejecting the idea that the fight is a battle between religions even as he promised not to chastise them about human rights violations in their own countries.

    “Go ahead! Violate all the human rights you want to at home! Just don’t do bad things to us. Do it to her, not to me.” Such a noble sentiment.

    While Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush in different ways and to different degrees had promoted human rights and democracy as tactics to undercut support for radicalism, Mr. Trump made clear he did not plan to publicly pressure Muslim nations to ease their repressive policies.

    Did Obama and Bush promote human rights and democracy solely as tactics to undercut support for radicalism? Did they not do so also because human rights and democracy are inherent goods?

    “We are not here to lecture,” he said. “We are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship. Instead, we are here to offer partnership — based on shared interests and values — to pursue a better future for us all.”

    But it’s not about “telling other people how to live, what to do, who to be.” It’s about protecting everyone’s rights to decide how to live, what to do, who to be. In Saudi Arabia and similar theocracies, women are not free to decide how to live, what to do, who to be. Saying that human rights should be universal is not more coercive or intrusive than saying that human rights should be exclusive to men or white men or men of the correct religion.

    Of course, Trump is such a reckless fool that it may be just as well that he’s not trying to address human rights issues…but that’s just one more reason to want him gone.

  • Dina Ali Lasloom

    Speaking of Saudi Arabia and women…Human Rights Watch tells us about one:

    A fleeing Saudi woman faces grave risks after being returned to Saudi Arabia against her will while in transit in the Philippines, Human Rights Watch said today. Saudi authorities should ensure that Dina Ali Lasloom, 24, is not subjected to violence from her family or prosecution by Saudi authorities for trying to flee, Human Rights Watch said.

    “Trying to flee” – that is what we in other countries know as traveling or emigrating.

    On April 10, 2017, Saudi activists posted videos that appeared to show Lasloom at Manila’s international airport pleading not to be returned because she feared her family would kill her. The Saudi embassy in the Philippines issued a statement on April 12 saying that Lasloom’s return was a “family matter.”

    No adult’s forcible return against her will is a “family matter.” Families don’t get to own people.

    Human Rights Watch interviewed four people linked to Lasloom’s case, including two who said that they spoke to her at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

    A Canadian woman, Meagan Khan, transiting through Manila on April 10, told Human Rights Watch that Lasloom approached her at 11 a.m. to ask if she could borrow her cell phone. She said that Lasloom identified herself as a Saudi woman living in Kuwait who intended to flee to Australia to escape a forced marriage and that airport officials had confiscated her passport and boarding pass for a scheduled 11:15 a.m. flight to Sydney.

    Khan said she then assisted Lasloom in filming several short videos explaining her case, which were later circulated on social media networks. One video shows Lasloom saying: “They took my passport and locked me up for 13 hours … if my family comes they will kill me. If I go back to Saudi Arabia I will be dead. Please help me.” Khan said several hours later, two men Lasloom identified as her uncles arrived at the airport. After sitting with her for eight hours, Khan then left for her connecting flight.

    Philippine immigration officials denied holding Lasloom in immigration detention, according to local media outlets. An airline security official, who requested not to be identified, told Human Rights Watch that he met Lasloom at about 12:30 p.m. on April 11 in the lobby of a small temporary lodging facility in Terminal One. He said that Lasloom told him that she feared going back to Saudi Arabia with her uncles and that he saw bruises on her arms that she said were the result of a beating by her uncles.

    The security official said that at 5:15 p.m., while he was in the hotel lobby, he saw two airline security officials and three apparently Middle Eastern men enter the hotel and go to her room, which he said was near the lobby. He said he heard her screaming and begging for help from her room, after which he saw them carry her out with duct tape on her mouth, feet, and hands. He said she was still struggling to break free when he saw them put her in a wheelchair and take her out of the hotel.

    Next stop, Saudi Arabia – where Donald Trump is currently making new friends.

    A Saudi source sent Human Rights Watch photos obtained via a contact who works at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport that show flight information that includes details of Lasloom, along with her two uncles, as passengers on Saudia Airlines flight SV871, which departed Manila at 7:01 p.m. on April 11 and arrived in Riyadh at midnight local time.

    Reuters reported that several passengers said they had seen a woman being carried onto the plane screaming. One woman told Reuters, “I heard a lady screaming from upstairs. Then I saw two or three men carrying her. They weren’t Filipino. They looked Arab.” Two people who went to Riyadh airport at midnight to seek information about Lasloom told Human Rights Watch that she did not emerge from the flight with the rest of the passengers. Reuters also reported that a Saudi activist who went to the airport to meet Lasloom appeared to have been detained after approaching security officials to inquire about the case.

    The role Philippine authorities played in Lasloom’s return is unclear. As a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Convention against Torture, the Philippines has an obligation not to return anyone to a territory where they face persecution because of their gender or a real risk of torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

    Maybe Donald Trump could ask his hosts about her?

    No of course not. He’s been very clear: he doesn’t care about human rights. He’s all right Jack.

    Lasloom’s whereabouts are currently unknown.

    The Saudi authorities should disclose whether Lasloom is with her family or held by the state, Human Rights Watch said. If held by the state, the authorities should disclose under what conditions she is being held, including whether she is at a shelter at her request and whether she has freedom of movement and ability to contact the outside world. State shelter facilities in Saudi Arabia are used both to detain women and to provide protection for those fleeing abuse, and may require a male relative to agree to their release. Lasloom is at serious risk of harm if returned to her family. She also faces possible criminal charges, in violation of her basic rights, for “parental disobedience,” which can result in punishments ranging from being returned to a guardian’s home to imprisonment, and for “harming the reputation of the kingdom” for her public cries for help.

    Human Rights Watch has documented how under Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system, adult women must obtain permission from a male guardian to travel abroad, marry, or be released from prison, and may be required to provide guardian consent to work or get health care. These restrictions last from birth until death, as women are, in the view of the Saudi state, permanent legal minors.

    “Saudi women face systematic discrimination every day, and Lasloom’s case shows that fleeing abroad may not protect them from abuses,” Whitson said.

    Enjoy your stay, Don.

  • Donnie Twoscoops goes on a trip

    Trump is a big hit in Saudi Arabia, because he’s suddenly developed an understanding of foreign affairs and mature skill at diplomacy.

    Just kidding. He’s a big hit because he’s a cynical self-serving pig.

    On Sunday, Mr. Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech that White House aides described as a call to Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Muslim world to unite against extremism. One senior White House official said the president hoped to “reset” both the global fight against Islamist terrorism and his own reputation for intolerance of Muslims, which was fueled by his campaign call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” After taking office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to temporarily block visitors from some predominantly Muslim countries, but courts have blocked it pending a legal review.

    But he didn’t mean Saudi Muslims. He didn’t mean rich Muslims with lashings of oil to sell. He meant those other Muslims – the ones he doesn’t like. No it’s true that he didn’t say that, but everyone knows it’s what he meant.

    Mr. Trump’s royal hosts, whose country was not among those covered by the travel ban, have chosen to ignore that history in the interests of working with an American president who seems to share their goals and will not lecture them about repression of women or minority Shiites in Saudi Arabia, or its brutal conduct of the war in Yemen.

    Hell no. He doesn’t care about any of that. Why would he? He cares only about himself, and money, and grabbing women by the pussy.

    “Traditional Arab allies welcome the U.S. back because they believe it is largely on their terms: a U.S. that is clearly anti-Iran and anti-political Islam, a U.S. that de-emphasizes political reform and human rights, a U.S. that is in business mode and a White House that seems more accessible than in the past eight years,” said Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

    Anti-political Islam unless it’s Wahhabi political Islam. The little fact that the Saudis fund Wahhabi mosques all over the world, very much including the US, is neither here nor there.

    Mr. Trump is the only sitting president to make Saudi Arabia the first stop on his inaugural, nine-day trip overseas.

    And that says a lot about him, doesn’t it. He makes a beeline for an authoritarian theocratic country that treats the bulk of its people like shit.

  • Keep it short. Assume he knows nothing.

    Spare a thought for the unhappy people who have to deal with Traveling Donnie from Queens. They’ve been up nights trying to work out how to do it without setting off a war or indictments or global disgrace.

    Embassies in Washington trade tips and ambassadors send cables to presidents and ministers back home suggesting how to handle a mercurial, strong-willed leader with no real experience on the world stage, a preference for personal diplomacy and a taste for glitz.

    Oh if only that were all. There’s also the profound stupidity, the lack of control, the vanity and narcissism, the dishonesty, the rudeness, the total ignorance of history, politics, economics, and everything else, the temper, the vulgarity…to name a few.

    After four months of interactions between Mr. Trump and his counterparts, foreign officials and their Washington consultants say certain rules have emerged: Keep it short — no 30-minute monologue for a 30-second attention span. Do not assume he knows the history of the country or its major points of contention. Compliment him on his Electoral College victory. Contrast him favorably with President Barack Obama.

    In other words treat him like a toddler not yet out of diapers. How shaming it is.

  • Visiting royalty

    Donnie Twoscoops is having fun for the first time in awhile, because the Saudis are treating him like a Seriously Important Special Dude.

    President Trump was received like visiting royalty here Saturday, as his debut on the world stage competed for attention at home with ongoing news of the scandal encircling his presidency.

    In a series of official arrival ceremonies — at the airport and the Royal Court palace — Trump, his wife, Melania, and an entourage including virtually his entire senior White House staff and much of his Cabinet, were serenaded by military bands, treated to a flyover of Saudi jets, feted in opulent palaces and given the undivided attention of King Salman, the ruler of this ultra-conservative Muslim nation.

    That’s all he wants, you know. Non-stop groveling and adulation – is that so much to ask? He’s got gold plating on his faucets. Enough said.

    As this desert capital baked in triple-digit heat under a pall of dust, American and Saudi flags flew from lightpoles. The facade of the Ritz Carlton, the palace-like hotel where Trump is staying, was illuminated with massive photographs of the two leaders and the red, white, blue and green of the two nations’ flags.

    So pretty.

    The only U.S. president to make Saudi Arabia his first foreign visit, Trump was presented with the highest honor for a foreign dignitary, the collar of Abdulaziz al-Saud, named for the kingdom’s founder, which Salman hung on a thick gold chain around Trump’s neck.

    Image result for trump saudi medal

    CNN

    Just imagine his ecstasy at that moment.

  • Because he keeps running his mouth

    Even Trump’s own people are calling him names now, at least according to the Daily Beast.

    The administration officials and West Wing aides who were left grounded stateside on Friday late afternoon couldn’t do much more than dodge questions and vent inflamed frustrations at their boss.

    Were they thinking he’s better than this? That doesn’t seem very bright either.

    “Trump himself hasn’t been implicated in any of these leaks except where he’s implicated himself, where he says something that makes his perhaps less-than-sterling intentions clear,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the controversy candidly. “He keeps saying there’s no collusion, and I think he’s right. So if he would just shut his trap, what would Dems have?”

    “Okay, he fired Comey,” the official conceded. “With a semi-competent comms operation, that would blow over in 24 hours. And that’s the worst part: he has a competent comms staff. But they can’t do their jobs because he keeps running his mouth.”

    Doesn’t he just. But is that really a surprise?

    Trump’s repeated media missteps have frustrated even longtime supporters. “Every day he looks more and more like a complete moron,” said one senior administration official who also worked on Trump’s campaign. “I can’t see Trump resigning or even being impeached, but at this point I wish he’d grow a brain and be the man that he sold himself as on the campaign.”

    He seemed to have a brain during the campaign? Not that I saw.

    Asked whether an administration staff change-up would ameliorate this latest crisis, a Republican source formerly involved with a pro-Trump political group told The Daily Beast, “yes, if it comes with a frontal lobotomy for Trump.”

    And Trump has the nuclear codes.

  • Who you calling a nut job?

    I’ve been away for a few hours – anything new?

    Not much – just Trump telling Lavrov and Kislyak that Comey is a “nut job” and a White House official being a suspect in the Russia investigation. Just another day in the world of Donnie Twoscoops. (Double meaning there, geddit?)

    The Times scoop:

    President Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office this month that firing the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had relieved “great pressure” on him, according to a document summarizing the meeting.

    “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

    Trump calls Comey a nut job. In Trump world, Trump is reasonable and Comey is a nut job.

    Mr. Trump added, “I’m not under investigation.”

    The conversation, during a May 10 meeting — the day after he fired Mr. Comey — reinforces the notion that Mr. Trump dismissed him primarily because of the bureau’s investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives. Mr. Trump said as much in one televised interview, but the White House has offered changing justifications for the firing.

    Which helps its credibility a lot.

    The White House document that contained Mr. Trump’s comments was based on notes taken from inside the Oval Office and has been circulated as the official account of the meeting.

    So they’re proud of it then.

    Spicey didn’t dispute the story.

    In a statement, he said that Mr. Comey had put unnecessary pressure on the president’s ability to conduct diplomacy with Russia on matters such as Syria, Ukraine and the Islamic State.

    “By grandstanding and politicizing the investigation into Russia’s actions, James Comey created unnecessary pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia,” Mr. Spicer said.

    Wtf? What is this “grandstanding” crap? I hate what Comey did in October and I hate it that he says he’d do it again, but how is investigating Russian meddling in our election “grandstanding” as opposed to doing his job?

    A third government official briefed on the meeting defended the president, saying Mr. Trump was using a negotiating tactic when he told Mr. Lavrov about the “pressure” he was under. The idea, the official suggested, was to create a sense of obligation with Russian officials and to coax concessions out of Mr. Lavrov — on Syria, Ukraine and other issues — by saying that Russian meddling in last year’s election had created enormous political problems for Mr. Trump.

    Oh, please.

    The president has been adamant that the meddling did not alter the outcome of the race, but it has become a political cudgel for his opponents.

    He can be as adamant as he likes, it makes no difference. He can’t possibly know that the meddling did not alter the outcome of the race. Insisting on it doesn’t make it true.

    With all the glass he broke in that one meeting, just imagine what he’s going to get up to on this trip he just started. We may be at war by Sunday.

  • We remember fascism

    Robert Reich on Facebook:

    European governments, preparing for a round of major summits with Donald Trump next week, are wary.

    I spent much of the past week speaking with officials and cabinet ministers in Europe. All they wanted to talk about was Trump. Here, in summary, are the most frequent remarks I heard, in rough order of frequency:

    1. Trump is unstable, and we’re not going to count on anything he says or commits to.

    2. Trump doesn’t support NATO or European integration.

    3. Trump is actively encouraging racist nationalists in our country.

    4. Trump is allied with Putin to bring Europe down.

    5. There’s no doubt Trump worked with Putin to win the U.S. presidential election.

    6. If Trump’s polls drop too low, he’ll start a war in order to get Americans to rally around him. (Opinions varied on whether Trump’s war would be with North Korea, Iran, terrorists in Nigeria, or an escalation in Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan.)

    7. How did you Americans come to elect this ego-maniac? (Others called him an infant, moron, ignoramus, fool.)

    8. He’s another Berlusconi (or Franco, Mussolini, Salazar, Hitler).

    9. We remember fascism. We never thought it would happen in America.

    10. The world depends on American leadership. We’re very worried.

    My overall impression: Anti-Trump sentiment is even stronger in Europe than it is in the U.S. If Trump expects his European trip to give him a reprieve from his troubles at home, he’s mistaken.

    I’d be flabbergasted if it were otherwise.

  • Just conversations between friends

    Another Times piece that made a splash yesterday: Michael Schmidt on Comey’s uncomfortable relations with Trump.

    President Trump called the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, weeks after he took office and asked him when federal authorities were going to put out word that Mr. Trump was not personally under investigation, according to two people briefed on the call.

    Mr. Comey told the president that if he wanted to know details about the bureau’s investigations, he should not contact him directly but instead follow the proper procedures and have the White House counsel send any inquiries to the Justice Department, according to those people.

    It’s Trump, so it’s not a surprise, but it is. How can he be dumb enough to think that if he were under investigation by the FBI it would work to keep pestering the head of the FBI to shut that whole thing down? How can he not have realized that the head of the FBI is the last person to pester to do anything about that?

    But maybe other people can pester the FBI director on Trump’s behalf?

    The day after the Flynn conversation, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, asked Mr. Comey to help push back on reports in the news media that Mr. Trump’s associates had been in contact with Russian intelligence officials during the campaign.

    Oh dear god. No. Why would they think Comey would help them with their PR at all, let alone in that situation?

    Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on Thursday that “the sworn testimony” of both Mr. Comey and Andrew G. McCabe, the F.B.I.’s acting director, “make clear that there was never any attempt to interfere in this investigation. As the president previously stated, he respects the ongoing investigations and will continue working to fulfill his promises to the American people.”

    Well that’s an enormous lie.

    The F.B.I.’s longest-serving director, J. Edgar Hoover, had close relationships with several presidents. But in the modern F.B.I., directors have sought an arm’s length relationship with the presidents they serve and have followed Justice Department guidelines outlining how the White House should have limited contact with the F.B.I.

    Those guidelines, which also cover the F.B.I., prohibit conversations with the White House about active criminal investigations unless they are “important for the performance of the president’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.” When such conversations are necessary, only the attorney general or the deputy attorney general can initiate those discussions.

    But reality tv stars don’t know anything about guidelines and wouldn’t care if they did. They’re amateurs, intent on 1. enriching themselves and 2. trashing the joint.

    Mr. Comey has spoken privately of his concerns that the contacts from Mr. Trump and his aides were inappropriate, and how he felt compelled to resist them.

    “He had to throw some brushback pitches to the administration,” Benjamin Wittes, a friend of Mr. Comey’s, said in interviews.

    Mr. Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the editor in chief of the Lawfare blog and a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, recalls a lunch he had with Mr. Comey in March at which Mr. Comey told him he had spent the first two months of Mr. Trump’s administration trying to preserve distance between the F.B.I. and the White House and educating it on the proper way to interact with the bureau.

    Mr. Wittes said he never intended to publicly discuss his conversations with Mr. Comey. But after The New York Times reported earlier this month that shortly after his inauguration Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey for a loyalty pledge, Mr. Wittes said he saw Mr. Trump’s behavior in a “more menacing light” and decided to speak out.

    So let’s read the post Wittes wrote last night, after the Times story appeared, since the rest of the article is based on Schmidt’s interview with Wittes. The post is riveting.

    A few words of elaboration are in order.

    I called Schmidt Friday morning after reading his earlier story, which ran the previous evening, about Comey’s dinner with President Trump and the President’s demands at that dinner for a vow of loyalty. Schmidt had reported that Trump requested that Comey commit to personal loyalty to the President, and that Comey declined, telling the President that he would always have Comey’s “honesty.” When I read Schmidt’s account, I immediately understood certain things Comey had said to me over the previous few months in a different, and frankly more menacing, light. While I am not in the habit of discussing with reporters my confidential communications with friends, I decided that the things Comey had told me needed to be made public.

    I think he’s right about that. They are of public interest, to put it mildly, plus there’s Trump’s bullshit about “leaks.”

    I did this interview on the record because the President that morning was already issuing threatening tweets suggesting that Comey was leaking things, and I didn’t want any room for misunderstanding that any kind of leak had taken place with respect to the information I was providing. There was no leak from Comey, no leak from anyone else at the FBI, and no leak from anyone outside of the bureau either—just conversations between friends, the contents of which one friend is now disclosing.

    …

    Comey was preoccupied throughout this period with the need to protect the FBI from these inquiries on investigative matters from the White House. Two incidents involving such inquiries have become public: the Flynn discussion and Reince Priebus’s query to Andrew McCabe about whether the then-Deputy FBI Director could publicly dispute the New York Times’ reporting regarding communications between Trump associates and Russian officials. Whether there were other such incidents I do not know, but I suspect there were. What I do know is that Comey spent a great deal of energy doing what he alternately described as “training” the White House that officials had to go through the Justice Department and “reestablishing” normal hands-off White House-Bureau relations.

    Teaching the clueless tv star and his hacks how to do their jobs, in short. Imagine how trying that would be to someone who has other things to do.

    Comey understood Trump’s people as having neither knowledge of nor respect for the independence of the law enforcement function. And he saw it as an ongoing task on his part to protect the rest of the Bureau from improper contacts and interferences from a group of people he did not regard as honorable. This was a general preoccupation of Comey’s in the months he and Trump overlapped—and the difference between this relationship and his regard for Obama (which was deep) was profound and palpable.

    See all three are people who give a damn about the law, while Trump and Co are the opposite of that.

    That’s one of the things I hate most about Trump and people like him – this refusal to respect knowledge and expertise no matter how significant and valuable it may be. I hate this cynical, frivolous, contemptuous indifference in people who know nothing but how to Market.

    Second, Comey described at least two incidents which he regarded as efforts on the part of the President personally to compromise him or implicate him with either shows of closeness or actual chumminess with the President.

    The first incident he told me about was the infamous “hug” from Trump after the inauguration…

    Which despite its infamy I didn’t know about. I’ve seen the clip of the final few seconds many times lately, but I didn’t know it was the end of any infamous hug. The story is fascinating.

    The hug took place at a White House meeting to which Trump had invited law enforcement leadership to thank them for their role in the inauguration. Comey described really not wanting to go to that meeting, for the same reason he later did not want to go to the private dinner with Trump: the FBI director should be always at arm’s length from the President, in his view. There was an additional sensitivity here too, because many Democrats blamed Comey for Trump’s election, so he didn’t want any shows of closeness between the two that might reinforce a perception that he had put a thumb on the scale in Trump’s favor. But he also felt that he could not refuse a presidential invitation, particularly not one that went to a broad array of law enforcement leadership. So he went. But as he told me the story, he tried hard to blend into the background and avoid any one-on-one interaction. He was wearing a blue blazer and noticed that the drapes were blue. So he stood in the back, right in front of the drapes, hoping Trump wouldn’t notice him camouflaged against the wall. If you look at the video, Comey is standing about as far from Trump as it is physically possible to be in that room.

    And for a long time, he reported, Trump didn’t seem to notice him. The meeting was nearly over, he said, and he really thought he was going to get away without an individual interaction. But when you’re six foot, eight inches tall, it’s hard to blend in forever, and Trump ultimately singled him out—and did so with the most damning faint praise possible: “Oh, and there’s Jim. He’s become more famous than me!”

    Comey took the long walk across the room determined, he told me, that there was not going to be a hug. Bad enough that he was there; bad enough that there would be a handshake; he emphatically did not want any show of warmth.

    Again, look at the video, and you’ll see Comey preemptively reaching out to shake hands. Trump grabs his hand and attempts an embrace. The embrace, however, is entirely one sided.

    Comey was disgusted. He regarded the episode as a physical attempt to show closeness and warmth in a fashion calculated to compromise him before Democrats who already mistrusted him.

    The loyalty dinner was five days after that.

    Comey never told me the details of the dinner meeting; I don’t think I even knew that there had been a meeting over dinner until I learned it from the Times story. But he did tell me in general terms that early on, Trump had “asked for loyalty” and that Comey had promised him only honesty. He also told me that Trump was perceptibly uncomfortable with this answer. And he said that ever since, the President had been trying to be chummy in a fashion that Comey felt was designed to absorb him into Trump’s world—to make him part of the team. Comey was deeply uncomfortable with these episodes. He told me that Trump sometimes talked to him [in] a fashion designed to implicate him in Trump’s way of thinking. While I was not sure quite what this meant, it clearly disquieted Comey. He felt that these conversations were efforts to probe how resistant he would be to becoming a loyalist. In light of the dramatic dinner meeting and the Flynn request, it’s easy to see why they would be upsetting and feel like attempts at pressure.

    I have a guess at what he meant by “in a fashion designed to implicate him in Trump’s way of thinking.” It’s what Trump does to all of us, in a way, but no doubt more so: he talks as if we all share his assumptions, no matter how crass and disgusting they are. My guess is that he says revolting things that Comey won’t feel he can dispute or rebuke, and that’s designed to implicate him in Trump’s way of thinking. We all feel slightly dirtier after watching Trump talk, I think?

    There’s another story about Trump’s calling Comey up just to chat – as if they were chat-bros.

    What bothered Comey was twofold—the fact that the conversation happened at all (why was Trump calling him to exchange pleasantries?) and the fact that there was an undercurrent of Trump’s trying to get him to kiss the ring.

    Or maybe just to buy an overpriced condo in Boca del Vista.

    He said one other thing that day that, in retrospect, stands out in my memory: he expressed wariness about the then-still-unconfirmed deputy attorney general nominee, Rod Rosenstein. This surprised me because I had always thought well of Rosenstein and had mentioned his impending confirmation as a good thing. But Comey did not seem enthusiastic. The DOJ does need Senate-confirmed leadership, he agreed, noting that Dana Boente had done a fine job as acting deputy but that having confirmed people to make important decisions was critical. And he agreed with me that Rosenstein had a good reputation as a solid career guy.

    That said, his reservations were palpable. “Rod is a survivor,” he said. And you don’t get to survive that long across administrations without making compromises. “So I have concerns.”

    In retrospect, I think I know what Comey must have been thinking at that moment. He had been asked to pledge loyalty by Trump. When he had declined, and even before, he had seen repeated efforts to—from his point of view—undermine his independence and probe the FBI’s defenses against political interference. He had been asked to drop an investigation. He had spent the last few months working to defend the normative lines that protect the FBI from the White House. And he had felt the need personally to make clear to the President that there were questions he couldn’t ask about investigative matters. So he was asking himself, I suspect: What loyalty oath had Rosenstein been asked to swear, and what happened at whatever dinner that request took place?

    And under all this…there’s the fact that Comey himself may be the reason Trump is president.

  • O the disunity

    Trump thinks all this is just terrible, because it makes us look Not United.

    “I believe it hurts our country terribly, because it shows we’re a divided, mixed-up, not-unified country,” Mr Trump told CNN and CNBC .

    Huh. That’s funny, because his campaign was all about how divided and not-unified we are, and also all about making us more so. His whole shtick is Us versus Them. Drain the swamp; the people versus the experts; good people versus bad hombres; real Murkans versus scary immigrants; real voters versus fake voters; Trump versus women he dislikes. His inaugural address was about what a toilet the country is. His tweets are all about the press as enemies of the people and demons persecuting Donald Trump.

  • He’s a human Failure to Read the User’s Manual

    Alexandra Petri on what Trump is.

    The Trump presidency is the discovery that what you thought was a man in a bear suit is just a bear. Suddenly the fact that he wouldn’t play by the rules makes total sense. It wasn’t that he refused to, that he was playing a long game. It was that he was a wild animal who eats fish and climbs trees, and English words were totally unintelligible to him. In retrospect, you should have suspected that after he just straight-up ate a guy. But at the time everyone cheered. It was good TV. Also, he was your bear.

    …

    Who can help? The people in there with him are the people who did not realize that what they had on their hands was an animal. Now they are trying to whisper him, like a horse. Do horses understand whispering? Horses probably think that people are just conspiring against them all the time. Horses are probably quite paranoid and delusional. But at least a horse would not fire the FBI director.

    …

    It is bringing your drunk relative to a party where you need to impress people for work, but 24 hours a day, and your co-workers are the entire world, and some of them have nukes.

    It is like expecting a cardboard cutout of a pro wrestler to perform open-heart surgery.

    It is like watching a golden retriever try to disable a bomb. The dog can’t determine which is the red button and which is the green button. It can’t see color. It’s a dog, for Pete’s sake. What did you expect?

    …

    He’s a human Failure to Read the User’s Manual.

    He’s a cartoon character. He only looks real on TV. When real things are put into his hands he drops them, and people get hurt.

    Confidence is good, up to a point. Now here is someone who thinks juggling hand-painted Fabergé eggs will impress you. Not because he is so supremely confident in his ability to juggle, but because he literally doesn’t know what they are. That they’re breakable. Only your house is in the egg. You are in the egg. Everything you care about is in the egg.

    Obviously, you should read the whole thing. Genius.

  • Sir yes sir

    Trump knew Flynn was under investigation when he hired him. As his national security adviser.

    Michael T. Flynn told President Trump’s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign, according to two people familiar with the case.

    Despite this warning, which came about a month after the Justice Department notified Mr. Flynn of the inquiry, Mr. Trump made Mr. Flynn his national security adviser. The job gave Mr. Flynn access to the president and nearly every secret held by American intelligence agencies.

    So does that seem like a wise and responsible move? No it does not.

    Mr. Flynn’s disclosure, on Jan. 4, was first made to the transition team’s chief lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, who is now the White House counsel. That conversation, and another one two days later between Mr. Flynn’s lawyer and transition lawyers, shows that the Trump team knew about the investigation of Mr. Flynn far earlier than has been previously reported.

    Which means they acted even more recklessly than has been previously reported.

    And now the breaking news is that Flynn is refusing to honor the Senate Intelligence Committee’s subpoena.

    Retired Gen. Michael Flynn will not cooperate with the Senate intelligence committee’s subpoena request for documents regarding the former national security adviser’s interactions with Russian officials.

    Gen. Flynn’s lawyers said he would not honor the subpoena, and that’s not a surprise to the committee, but we’ll figure out on Gen. Flynn what the next step, if any, is,” committee chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, told reporters Thursday morning.

    Just another day in Trump’s America.

  • Road trip

    Saudia Arabia still loves Donnie Twoscoops. They’re excited about his trip.

    The Saudis have internationalized the event, organizing a sprawling “Arab Islamic American Summit” with leaders from dozens of Muslim countries, as well as talks with the king, the inauguration of a counterterrorism center, and public forums for business executives and young people.

    Saudi Arabia, home to some of Islam’s holiest sites, will be pulling out all the stops for a man who has declared “Islam hates us” and said the United States is “losing a tremendous amount of money” defending the kingdom.

    But Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies were so angry over former President Barack Obama’s policies toward the Middle East that they appear prepared to dismiss Mr. Trump’s remarks as campaign rhetoric, and to see in him a possibility of resetting relations.

    Yes, secretly he’s a big fan of Islam. I’m sure this will go swimmingly.

    There are three summit meetings planned: between Mr. Trump and King Salman, the Saudi monarch; between Mr. Trump and the leaders of Persian Gulf states; and between Mr. Trump and more than 50 leaders and representatives from across the Muslim world.

    Mr. Trump and King Salman will also inaugurate the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology, where Mr. Trump is to give a speech about Islam.

    A speech about Islam. Trump. In Saudi Arabia. Oh yes, that should go well.

    I mock, but they do in fact have a lot in common.

    Some aspects of Mr. Trump’s tenure that have caused criticism in the United States do not seem to bother the Saudis.

    His reliance on his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner — both of whom will join him in Riyadh — for policy advice is business as usual in a monarchy where princes run the government and the king has appointed one son as defense minister and another as ambassador to Washington.

    And worries that Mr. Trump could use his presidency to benefit Trump hotels and golf courses get little traction in a country that is named after its royal family, and where the line between public and private wealth is vague.

    Mr. Trump’s apparent lack of interest in human rights also suggests that he is unlikely to complain about the Saudi justice system or the limited rights of Saudi women.

    Nepotism, corruption, and contempt for human rights: friendship glue.

    Also invited to Riyadh is President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes including genocide, although it remains unclear whether he will attend or, if he does, whether he will meet Mr. Trump.

    But hey, Obama was much worse, right?

  • Donnie Twoscoops is back

    They let Donnie have his phone back for a bit. He managed two tweets.

    Well no, because it’s not a witch hunt at all. It’s an investigation, authorized by the Acting Attorney General (because the compromised Attorney General had to recuse himself), and overseen by a former FBI head.

    Is Donnie Twoscoops being unfairly singled out by mean bad people who are just jealous of how awesome and huge he is?

    No. Donnie Twoscoops is corrupt and incompetent and reckless, and there is plenty to investigate.

    Says the guy who just blabbed sensitive intelligence to his Russian besties because he needed to brag about how important he is.

  • Trump’s Waco

    The Times reports a lot of fervent endorsement of the choice of Mueller as Special Counsel.

    Members of both parties view Mr. Mueller as one of the most credible law enforcement officials in the country. He served both Democratic and Republican presidents, from 2001 to 2013, and was asked by President Barack Obama to stay on beyond the normal 10-year term until Mr. Comey was appointed.

    …

    “He’s an absolutely superb choice,” said Kathryn Ruemmler, a former prosecutor and White House counsel under Mr. Obama. “He will just do a completely thorough investigation without regard to public pressure or political pressure.”

    She added: “I cannot think of a better choice.”

    John S. Pistole, who served as the F.B.I.’s deputy director under Mr. Mueller, also praised the appointment.

    “You need an independent assessment of what the president has done, how he has done it and perhaps why he has done it,” said Mr. Pistole, who is now president of Anderson University in Indiana. “The appointment of Director Mueller is exactly what is needed to attempt to bring credibility to the White House when there are so many questions about the president’s actions and motives.”

    The order to appoint Mr. Mueller was signed by Mr. Rosenstein on Wednesday, drawing on a regulation granting the attorney general the authority to appoint a special counsel for only the second time in history. The first time it was used was in 1999 by Janet Reno, who appointed Jack Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, to lead an investigation into the botched federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., in 1993 that killed 76 people.

    People are pointing out that Trump could fire him. Am I naïve to think even Trump would see the problems with doing that?

  • As Kelly laughed

    The Post on some high points today:

    Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the House minority leader, praised the pick of Robert Mueller as a special prosecutor, calling him a “a respected public servant of the highest integrity.”

    She said that did not go as far, however, as the creation of an independent commission. Pelosi said that would be more free of the Trump administration.

    “The Trump Administration must make clear that Director Mueller will have the resources and independence he needs to execute this critical investigation,” Pelosi said in a statement.

    Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was more positive, though [he] echoed Pelosi’s praise of Mueller.

    “Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead,” Schumer said in a statement.

    Plus he’s a former FBI head. I have a feeling people who fit that description don’t like seeing a corrupt dishonest president messing with the FBI to protect his own lies and corruption.

    On Wednesday, President Trump spoke at the commencement ceremony at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.

    There, the president — who is currently mired in controversies — railed against the media and claimed that “no politician in history” had been “treated worse or more unfairly.”

    During the commencement, Trump was presented with a ceremonial saber. After accepting it to applause, he returned to his seat next to Secretary of Homeland Security Gen. John F. Kelly.

    Smiling, Kelly leaned over the president and said, of the saber, “You can use that on the press.”

    “Yeah, that’s right,” said Trump, as Kelly laughed.

    Then Kelly gave Trump a few affectionate licks on the face.

     

  • Meet the new special counsel

    Special counsel appointed.

    The Justice Department on Wednesday appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, including potential collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials.

    Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to the position in a letter obtained by CNN.

    Sessions of course has recused himself, and occasionally remembers that he has.

    As special counsel, Mueller is “authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters,” according to the Justice Department order Rosenstein signed.

    Mueller was Bush Junior’s FBI Director and stayed on in the Obama admin until 2013, when Comey took over.

  • Things will work out just fine

    Don from the outer boroughs gave a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy just now. He talked about himself.

    President Donald Trump, amid his own swirling controversies, advised United States Coast Guard Academy graduates that while things aren’t always fair, “you have to put your head down and fight, fight, fight.”

    The comment was a clear reference to the fact that Trump’s White House is now besieged by bipartisan questions about his alleged request that former FBI Director James Comey to halt an investigation into his former top national security aide.

    “Never, never, never give up. Things will work out just fine,” he said in New London, Connecticut, Wednesday.

    Right. Good advice. Always assume you’re right, no matter what; always assume that any disagreement is wildly unfair and that you should fight fight fight fight fight fight fight fight. Unless of course you’re disputing Donald Trump, in which case you should prostrate yourself and beg for clemency.

    Then he went to directly talking about himself – as he always does.

    “Look at the way I have been treated lately, especially by the media,” he said. “No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly. You can’t let them get you down, you can’t let the critics and the naysayers get in the way of your dreams.”

    No politician in history is it.