Tag: Trump

  • An untrained mind bereft of information

    Golly, I agree with George Will about something. He says the state of Trump’s mind is so parlous that it amounts to a disability. I think that’s right.

    It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump’s inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.

    I’ve been doing that all along. In that area my conscience is clear.

    What is most alarming (and mortifying to the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated) is not that Trump has entered his eighth decade unscathed by even elementary knowledge about the nation’s history. As this column has said before, the problem isn’t that he does not know this or that, or that he does not know that he does not know this or that. Rather, the dangerous thing is that he does not know what it is to know something.

    It’s all three, and more. Let’s not be precious about it. Yes the problem is that he doesn’t know X or Y, and that he doesn’t know he doesn’t know. And then it’s everything else too. Everything about the way he thinks and talks is the problem.

    The United States is rightly worried that a strange and callow leader controls North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. North Korea should reciprocate this worry. Yes, a 70-year-old can be callow if he speaks as sophomorically as Trump did when explaining his solution to Middle Eastern terrorism: “I would bomb the s— out of them. . . . I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch, there would be nothing left.”

    Quite. This is why I keep saying there should be a filter of some kind to keep hopeless intellectual incompetence out of the presidency.

    As president-elect, Trump did not know the pedigree and importance of the one-China policy. About such things he can be, if he is willing to be, tutored. It is, however, too late to rectify this defect: He lacks what T.S. Eliot called a sense “not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.” His fathomless lack of interest in America’s path to the present and his limitless gullibility leave him susceptible to being blown about by gusts of factoids that cling like lint to a disorderly mind.

    Americans have placed vast military power at the discretion of this mind, a presidential discretion that is largely immune to restraint by the Madisonian system of institutional checks and balances. So, it is up to the public to quarantine this presidency by insistently communicating to its elected representatives a steady, rational fear of this man whose combination of impulsivity and credulity render him uniquely unfit to take the nation into a military conflict.

    Or into four years of its existence.

  • A coupla smart cookies

    Trump’s clueless stupidity strikes again:

    U.S. President Donald Trump said he would meet with Kim Jong Un amid heightened tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program if the circumstances were right.

    “If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Trump said Monday in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News. “If it’s under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that.”

    He’d be “honored” to do it. He is such a fucking fool.

    McCain is not impressed:

    Speaking to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday, McCain said that Trump’s latest attempts to side with leaders like Kim Jong Un of North Korea were beyond comprehension.

    “I don’t understand it, and I don’t think that the president appreciates the fact that when he says things like that, it helps the credibility and prestige of this really outrageous strongman,” McCain said, referring to Kim Jong Un. “I wish the president would consider much more carefully his comments.”

    We all wish that, but it’s not a thing that Trump does. He seems to be unable to consider anything carefully, and especially anything that’s about to fly out of his mouth.

    Trump sent shockwaves in the national security community after calling Jong Un a “smart cookie” and acknowledging that he would be “honored” to meet with him. To date, no sitting US president has ever held a meeting with a current North Korean leader.

    Yeah but Trump’s all mavericky up in there. If it’s a thing no sitting president has done, why, it’s a good thing for Trump to do. No sitting president has called for a government shutdown before? Excellent reason for Trump to be the first!

    Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also criticized Trump’s remarks on CNN Tuesday. “A president doesn’t go to a country without any preparation, and ‘honored’ would definitely be the wrong way to discuss somebody who is keeping his people in poverty and starving and control,” Albright said on CNN’s “The Lead.”

    Trump doesn’t care about that. He might manage to care about it for a second if Ivanka showed him a photo of a starving North Korean child, but short of that, forget it.

    “I think that part of the issue is that President Trump seems to believe that he can have just one-on-one relationships,” Albright said. “And maybe that’s possible in business, but that is not something that is possible as president of the United States.”

    Well, it’s not possible for all those other losers, but Trump is SuperPresident!

  • To fix mess

    Trump saying it.

  • What we need

    So now Trump is saying there should be a government shutdown. That’s new. The Republicans have deliberately caused them in the recent past, but I don’t think they have called for them ahead of time, as if they’re an inherent good.

    President Trump on Tuesday called for a government shutdown later this year and suggested the Senate might need to prohibit future filibusters, dramatic declarations from a new commander in chief whose frustration is snowballing as Congress continues to block key parts of his agenda.

    “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” Trump wrote in a series of tweets Tuesday morning.

    Or a tsunami! Or an earthquake! Or a direct hit from an ICBM!

    That’s our new president, calling for the destruction of our government.

    Trump’s call for a shutdown, which appears to be unprecedented from a sitting president, come as his problems are mounting within the House and Senate, chambers that are both controlled by his party.

    He’s a fucking reckless solipsistic lunatic, and he’ll destroy us all because he can’t get what he wants.

    Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told reporters Tuesday that Trump’s call for a shutdown later this year is a “defensible position, one that we will deal with in September.”

    No, it is not. A shutdown of the government is not something a president “calls for.” It’s a critical malfunction, not a goal. It is not defensible for the head of state to be “calling for” a broken state.

    In a speech on the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he was “deeply disappointed” by Trump tweeting about a “shutdown,” arguing that the spending bill was the result of bipartisan negotiations.

    “It is truly a shame that the president is degrading it because he didn’t get 100 percent of what he wanted,” Schumer said.

    It is truly a shame that we have an angry baby as head of state.

  • Besties no more

    Trump has stopped saying “Obama likes me!” He’s stopped saying he likes Obama. Now he says Obama was “very nice to me with words” but since then they have “no relationship.” Did he think they were going to be buddies? I suppose they could have played golf, but I’m pretty sure Obama knows more congenial people even for that.

    Meanwhile he’s still saying Obama spied on him, and when John Dickerson tries to get him to explain what he means, first Trump repeatedly says “You can take it the way you want, you can take it any way you want,” as if it were all a matter of “taking” things one way or another, as opposed to a matter of facts, evidence, accusations of committing a felony, and lying.

    Then he just makes a rude gesture and says get out.

    I have a little fantasy of having Trump in a room, all by ourselves, and he’s tied down, and I get to tell him what’s wrong with him. I get to explain it to him.

  • That’s a long time ago

    David Graham at the Atlantic on Trump’s history lesson:

    “I said, ‘When was Andrew Jackson?’ It was 1828, that’s a long time ago, that was Andrew Jackson,” Trump said, a sign that the history to follow would be somewhat shaky. Reminiscing about a visit to Tennessee in March, Trump continued:

    I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, “There’s no reason for this.” People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?

    I italicize “really” because that’s how he says it.

    On an historical level, Trump’s remarks are full of problems. It is difficult to know what the president means when he says that Jackson “was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War.” Jackson died in 1845, 16 years before the war began, though the challenge to national unity posed by slavery was clear by then. It’s possible Trump is referring to the Nullification Crisis, a conflict between the federal government and the state of South Carolina.

    No it isn’t. That would be a possible interpretation of what Trump said, in the abstract, but it’s not possible that it’s what Trump was referring to. Trump’s references to history are on the level of “very tough” and “big heart” and “Honest Abe.”

    It is difficult to imagine that Jackson, as a Southern slaveholder and defender of slavery, would have been willing to stand against the South in the event of a civil war. But that’s ultimately beside the point: Even if he had, such a position would likely have stood little chance of preventing the war, which flowed from the Southern commitment to slavery.

    Trump’s assertion that Jackson could have staved war off is a manifestation of Trump’s central, and perhaps only truly committed, political beliefs: a faith in the power of strength, and a faith in the power of dealmaking. It is why the president rushed to congratulate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a referendum empowering him and sapping democracy; it is why he is so fond of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; and it is why on Sunday he invited the vicious Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to the White House.

    What I’m saying. That’s his level of understanding. It’s the level of a fan of “reality” tv – it’s all about personalities. He thinks it’s all-important that he “likes” Xi; he thinks Obama “likes” him; he thinks it matters which heads of state he “likes” or doesn’t “like.” He can’t understand anything more complicated than that. He’s not a bright man.

    It’s perfectly possible that Trump, despite attending good private schools in New York and then graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, is, like many Americans, ill-served by his education when it comes to the Civil War. Many Americans are still taught, incorrectly, that the war was essentially a conflict over state’s rights, with abolition as a byproduct of the war. This revisionist view flourished after the war, and though gradually being displaced, is common across the country. (Many erroneous beliefs about the war remain similarly common. In 2016, Coates and others criticized Hillary Clinton for her historically faulty gloss on Reconstruction, rooted in the revisionist “Dunning School” approach.)

    I was taught Reconstruction that way. Fortunately I later read Eric Foner and David Oshinsky and learned better. Trump of course didn’t sit around reading history, he was too busy building a fraudulent real estate empire.

    Recent presidents make great show of their reading of history. Bill Clinton went on the Today show in 2011 to recommend a set of dense historical tomes. George W. Bush released reading lists full of historical works during his presidency, and he told Jay Leno in 2013, “I did what I did and ultimately history will judge.” One book Bush read in the White House was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, a selection he shared with Barack Obama, who liked the book so much that he depicted his own cabinet, including former primary opponent Hillary Clinton, as a “team of rivals.”

    Trump’s attempt to replicate this plays as caricature. Had the president read Goodwin’s book, it’s difficult to imagine he would have made the statement he did today. Trump has betrayed a weak grasp on American history, and in particular mid-19th century history, on several occasions. In February, he posted a fake Lincoln quote to Twitter. Marking Black History Month, Trump delivered a perplexing paean to a great abolitionist that suggested he believed the man was still alive: “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.” In March, speaking about the most famous Republican president in history, Trump said, “Most people don’t even know he was a Republican.”

    That’s his solipsism yet again. He means he didn’t know until someone told him, so he assumes most people didn’t know. He underestimates us.

  • This is our hell

    Some tweets on the president of the US’s ignorance of the history of the US.

    https://twitter.com/HITEXECUTIVE/status/859077289320996864

    https://twitter.com/darth/status/859034994143973376

    Updating to add Brad Jaffy’s audio clip which is indeed worth listening to. (Yes of course it’s also anguish to listen to but duty is duty.)

  • People don’t ask that question

    I still say we need better filters. I still say a head of state should know some basics before being allowed to touch the controls. I still say one of those basics should be some knowledge of the history of the state in question.

    Behold the current occupant of the US one:

    President Donald Trump is causing an uproar again this morning after a bizarre interview where he praised President Andrew Jackson and questioned the reason behind the Civil War. His remarks were from a radio conversation with Sirius XM’s Salena Zito on Monday morning.

    “I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. He was a really tough person, but he had a big heart,” Trump said, despite the fact that Jackson was behind Indian removal, the Trail of Tears and owned about 150 slaves.

    Does Trump’s description remind you of anything? A really tough person with a big heart? I know, that’s too easy – it’s Trump’s idea of his own precious self. It’s his translation of “a mean vindictive sexist racist shit who can get sentimental over individuals.”

    But more to the point…a president of the US really should have a better grasp of US history than that. We already knew that – he has no clue who Frederick Douglass was, he has no clue what John Lewis did, he thinks Lincoln’s real name is Honest Abe – but still this is horrifying.

    “He was really angry at that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, ‘There’s no reason for this,’” Trump added. Jackson died in 1845. The Civil War began in 1861.

    “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?,” he added, seeming to forget the basic curriculum of an American history class. “People don’t ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?” Hint: slavery. Another hint: “states’ rights.”

    His belief that people don’t ask that question is another thundering error. Of course they do.

    He should be instantly impeached on the grounds of hopeless ignorance and inability to learn.

  • Talking to Bozo

    Another Trump transcript, this one of an interview with CBS for Face the Nation.

    They start with North Korea. There was that missile test yesterday. It was a small one, Trump says, as if that makes a difference.

    But he understands we’re not going to be very happy. And I will tell you, a man that I’ve gotten to like and respect, the president of China, President Xi, I believe, has been putting pressure on him also.

    As if it’s meaningful that he’s “gotten to like and respect” Xi. He likes and respects anyone who puts on a good act for him. He has all the insight of a dish sponge.

    JOHN DICKERSON: The Chinese, our allies, have been allies with North Korea. How are you sure that they’re not using this as a way to test you?

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You can never be sure of anything, can you? But I developed a very good relationship. I don’t think they want to see a destabilized North Korea. I don’t think they want to see it.

    That delusion again. He thinks it’s personal, and he thinks he’s good at it.

    The relationship I have with China, it’s been already acclaimed as being something very special, something very different than we’ve ever had. But again, you know, we’ll find out whether or not President Xi is able to affect change.

    No. No it hasn’t. That’s delusional.

    A comedy interlude:

    TRUMP: You know, it’s very funny when the fake media goes out, you know, which we call the mainstream media which sometimes, I must say, is you.

    JOHN DICKERSON: You mean me personally or?

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, your show. I love your show. I call it Deface the Nation.

    No wonder he has such great relationships with all the people.

    JOHN DICKERSON: What do you know now on day 100 that you wish you knew on day one of the presidency?

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, one of the things that I’ve learned is how dishonest the media is, really. I’ve done things that are I think very good. I’ve set great foundations with foreign leaders. We have you know — NAFTA, as you know, I was going to terminate it, but I got a very nice call from a man I like, the president of Mexico.

    I got a very nice call from Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada. And they said please would you rather than terminating NAFTA —  I was all set to do it. In fact, I was going to do it today. I was going to do as we’re sitting here. I would’ve had to delay you. I was going to do it today. I was going to terminate NAFTA. But they called up and they said, “Would you negotiate?” And I said, “Yes, I will negotiate.”

    Because he got a nice call. Because they are very nice. Because he likes them. The man is a stone genius.

    JOHN DICKERSON: Presidents have to learn how to adapt. Every president comes into the job, it’s different than they expect, they must adapt. Surely, you’ve learned something else other than that the media is dishonest.

    Nope.

    Then they talk about the new health care bill, and they go back and forth on whether or not pre-existing conditions will be covered, for real, and that won’t be left up to the states. Trump keeps saying yes yes, and Dickerson keeps pressing for assurances. Then we get

    JOHN DICKERSON: But on that crucial question, it’s not going to be left up to the states? Everybody gets pre-existing, no matter where they live?

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, but the states–

    JOHN DICKERSON: Guaranteed?

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –are also going to have a lot to do with it because we ultimately want to get it back down to the states.

    JOHN DICKERSON: Okay. Is it a guarantee?

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Look, because if you hurt your knee, honestly, I’d rather have the federal government focused on North Korea, focused on other things, than your knee, okay? Or than your back, as important as your back is. I would much rather see the federal government focused on other things–

    Yes yes yes totally covered – but we don’t want to cover your knee, dude, because we have other things to do.

    Then they talk about his tax returns. He’s still being audited. He thinks it’s very unfair.

  • Something they’ve looked at

    They’re still dreaming of changing the libel laws. The goal? To make it so that anyone who criticizes Trump is immediately executed, and anyone who mocks the tiny-handed cheeto is tortured to death.

    One day after President Trump declined to attend the White House correspondents dinner to host a rally in Pennsylvania, his Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said the administration was considering changes to libel laws.

    “I think that’s something we’ve looked at, and how that gets executed and whether that goes anywhere is a different story,” Priebus said in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

    Priebus was also pressed about whether the President should be able to sue newspapers like the New York Times for unfair coverage. Currently, people in the U.S. only have grounds for a lawsuit if they can prove “actual malice,” which means the reporter knew the information was false, but published it anyway.

    “I think that newspapers and news agencies need to be more responsible with how they report the news,” Priebus responded, citing what he believes are a multitude of articles with “no basis or fact,” as well as constant reports floating the President’s contact with Russia.

    That’s interesting coming from the chief of staff for a guy who lies constantly, with all the weight of the presidency behind him. Remember that time he tweeted about a “sex tape” that would embarrass “disgusting” [his word] Alicia Machado? That was a lie.

  • A very friendly conversation

    Trump continues his program of outreach to murderous autocrats by inviting Duterte to the White House.

    The two leaders had “a very friendly conversation” in which they talked about the North Korea threat, according to the White House’s readout of the call. The two men, who have drawn comparisons for their tough rhetoric, also discussed the Philippine government’s fight against drugs.

    What remained unmentioned, however, are the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers and users as part of the government’s drug war. Thousands have been killed by police and vigilantes since Duterte took office and vowed to eradicate his country’s massive drug problem. The rising death toll has drawn criticisms from international human rights groups, at least one of which, the Human Rights Watch, has made the case for a criminal investigation of the Duterte administration.

    What’s to discuss? Trump likes that kind of thing. He thinks the cops should use whatever force and violence they think necessary, and everyone else should stfu.

    In a brief phone call in December about the drug war, then-President-elect Trump told Duterte that he was doing it the “right way,” according to the Philippine president’s account of the conversation.

    Extra-judicial killing is “the right way.” That’s our prez.

  • Donnie whips them up again

    A glimpse of hell.

    https://twitter.com/DBloom451/status/858449702408392704

    https://twitter.com/WayneDupreeShow/status/858459599682363396

    Ah the dignity and strength of the furious pout with folded arms.

    Yay the Nazi salute.

    https://twitter.com/JohnPaul_USA/status/858369296279273473

  • A certain authenticity and willingness to engage

    The Times has a piece on ways Donnie has changed the presidency. This one made me laugh.

    …he has cast off conventions that constrained others in his office. He has retained his business interests, which he implicitly cultivates with regular visits to his properties. He has been both more and less transparent than other presidents, shielding his tax returns and White House visitor logs from public scrutiny while appearing to leave few thoughts unexpressed, no matter how incendiary or inaccurate.

    Ha! Doin’ it wrong, Donnie. You’re supposed to reveal the stuff relevant to the job and hide the inappropriate thoughts that lurk in the pestilent swamp of your mind.

    Although Mr. Trump assumed that his experience in business and entertainment would translate to the White House, he has found out otherwise.

    “I never realized how big it was,” he said of the presidency in an interview with The Associated Press. “Every decision,” he added, “is much harder than you’d normally make.”

    How mindless do you have to be not to know that ahead of time? How could he possibly not have realized “how big” it is? How can it be that no one told him? Or that he didn’t listen when people did tell him? It still baffles me.

    Mr. Trump arrived at the White House unimpressed by conventions that governed the presidency. At first, he blew off the idea of receiving intelligence briefings every day because he was “a smart person” and did not need to hear “the same thing every day.” He telephoned foreign leaders during the transition without consulting or even informing government experts on those countries.

    But he’s not a smart person, is he. A smart person would have understood that being president “is big” ahead of time. A smart person wouldn’t charge around like a buffalo on speed, breaking everything in sight. A smart person would take the whole thing seriously.

    His Twitter account, of course, has been the vehicle for all sorts of outbursts that defy tradition, often fueled by the latest segment on Fox News. Presidents rarely taunt reality-show hosts about poor ratings, complain about late-night television comedy skits, berate judges or members of their own party who defy them, trash talk Hollywood stars and Sweden, declare the “fake news” media to be “the enemy of the American people” or accuse the last president of illegally wiretapping them without any proof.

    Well presidents other than Trump never do that. Not rarely, but never. Never ever.

    David Gergen, a White House aide to four presidents, including Reagan, noted that Franklin D. Roosevelt talked about the “moral leadership” of the presidency. “Unfortunately, we have lost sight of that vision in recent years, and it has almost disappeared during the first 100 days of the Trump administration,” Mr. Gergen said.

    In a way that’s the worst thing about him. He’s a moral nightmare. He’s poison for a generation of children watching him.

    But if the presidency had grown somewhat stale under the old norms as its occupants increasingly stuck to carefully crafted talking points and avoided spontaneity, Mr. Trump has brought back a certain authenticity and willingness to engage. His frequent news conferences and interviews can be bracingly candid, uninhibited, even raw. He leaves little mystery about what is on his mind.

    Oh shut up, Times. Shut up, Peter Baker. We don’t need “balance” on this subject. No balance is possible. There’s no “balance” on the subject of a president who calls a senator “Pocahontas” to a cheering audience of gun-fanatics.

  • Among the likely winners

    Guess who would benefit from Trump’s (sketched) tax plan?

    Oh darn you must have peeked. That’s right: it’s the man himself.

    Among the likely winners in President Donald Trump’s tax-cut plan would be a real estate developer turned reality TV star who now happens to occupy the White House.

    The one-page proposal released Wednesday seems sure to benefit the president’s businesses. It would eliminate the estate tax, repeal the alternative minimum tax that affects some affluent people, deeply slash corporate rates and reduce investment taxes — all of which could in theory benefit a billionaire real estate magnate like Trump.

    It’s a sensitive subject for a White House that is telling Americans its proposed cuts to individual and corporate tax rates would aid the middle class and fuel stronger economic growth.

    Well, if they will believe a lying cheating stealing real estate hustler when he tells them he’s on their side…but then not all of them did, did they. We like to “elect” people with fewer votes than the closest rival.

    When Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, was asked by reporters Thursday whether it was fair to inquire about the benefits that the tax cuts would provide for the president and his family, he sidestepped the question.

    “I would guess that most Americans would applaud what the president is doing,” Spicer said.

    Aw quit lying, Spicey. No you wouldn’t. Most Americans think Trump sucks, and some of them can spot a tax cut for the rich when it’s in front of their noses.

    The plan calls for the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which raises the federal tax bill of wealthy Americans like Trump who would otherwise capitalize on special tax breaks to pay far less. The benefit to Trump could run as high as tens of millions of dollars a year. According to recently leaked Trump documents from 2005 cited by Pelosi, Trump paid $36.5 million in federal taxes that year because of the AMT. Without it, he would have owed just $5.5 million.

    But that’s not why he wants to eliminate the AMT. No no no. It’s all about stimulating growth.

  • The worst 100

    So about those “hundred days”…

    David Leonhardt gives Donnie low marks.

    No doubt, you’ve seen a torrent of coverage in recent days of the milestone. And while it’s certainly an arbitrary milestone, it’s also a meaningful one. Presidents are at their most influential in their early months, which makes that period a particularly important one for a presidency.

    In other words the hundred days is an arbitrary number, but the first few months of a presidency, is not. Trump’s hundred, Leonhardt says gently, is the worst ever.

    Trump has made no significant progress on any major legislation. His health care bill is a zombie. His border wall is stalled. He’s only now releasing basic principles of a tax plan. Even his executive order on immigration is tied up in the courts. By contrast, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan had made substantial progress toward passing tax cuts, and Barack Obama had passed, among other things, a huge stimulus bill that also addressed education and climate policy.

    Well cut him a little slack – he was very busy with other things. Rallies; trips to Taco del Mar; photo ops; watching Spicey on tv; watching cable news on tv; watching Fox on tv; tweeting; bragging; threatening; calling people names. There are only so many hours in the day, ya know.

    Trump is far behind staffing his administration. Trump has made a mere 50 nominations to fill the top 553 positions of the executive branch, as of Friday. That’s right: He hasn’t even nominated anyone for 90 percent of its top jobs. The average president since 1989 had nominated twice as many, according to the Partnership for Public Service.

    He’s saving money. That’s 503 people not drawing a government paycheck!

    The Trump administration is more nagged by scandal than any previous administration. No new administration has dealt with a potential scandal anywhere near as large or as distracting as the Russia investigation. It could recede over time, true. But it also could come to dominate the Trump presidency.

    Plus the countless ethics violations and conflicts of interest. That shit’s not going to recede over time.

    His basement-level popularity is another problem.

    Trump’s low approval isn’t only a reflection of his struggles. It also becomes a cause of further struggles. Members of Congress aren’t afraid to buck an unpopular president, which helps explain the collapse of Trumpcare.

    Obviously, Trump can claim some successes on his own terms. Most consequentially, he has named a Supreme Court justice who could serve for decades. Trump has also put in place some meaningful executive orders, on climate policy above all, and he has allied the federal government with the cause of white nationalism, as Jonathan Chait wrote.

    He got some stuff done, but it’s bad stuff.

    It’s worth considering one final point, too. So far, I’ve been judging him on his own terms. History, of course, will not. And I expect that a couple of his biggest so-called accomplishments — aggravating climate change and treating nonwhite citizens as less than fully American — are likely to be judged very harshly one day.

    Or right now. Lots of us are judging them that way right now.

  • Disgrace

    Trump has been giving a talk at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting. In that talk – on camera, with reporters present – he called Senator Warren “Pocahontas” again.

    I am so sick of this trashy, vulgar, nasty, schoolyard-bully man.

  • Eliminate the safety regulations

    I guess Trump thinks the Gulf oil spill was a nice jobs-creator, or something. He wants to encourage that kind of thing.

    Just past the seventh anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, President Trump on Friday directed the Interior Department to “reconsider” several safety regulations on offshore drilling implemented after one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history.

    Friday’s executive order was aimed at rolling back the Obama administration’s attempts to ban oil drilling off the southeastern Atlantic and Alaskan coasts. It would erase or narrow the boundaries of some federally-protected marine sanctuaries, opening them up to commercial fishing and oil drilling.

    Because marine life, meh, who needs it, whereas oil – now there’s a useful and beneficent substance. We need to drive around in cars far more than we need to eat or breathe.

    Mr. Trump also took aim at regulations on oil-rig safety. In the final years of the Obama administration, the Interior Department implemented several new rules aimed at improving the safety of specific pieces of offshore drilling equipment that had failed during the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and were found to have been responsible for the deadly BP oil rig explosion that caused that spill.

    The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon killed 11, set off a weeks-long crisis for the Obama administration and spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the sea.

    Among other directives, the order instructs Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review an Obama administration plan that delineated where offshore drilling could and could not take place between 2017 to 2022. The plan put the entire southeast Atlantic coast and large portions of the Arctic Ocean off limits to drilling.

    Because when in doubt, it’s always better to risk more spills.

    The order also appears designed to roll back a permanent ban placed by President Barack Obama on offshore drilling off some portions of the Atlantic and Alaskan coasts, but that move is expected to be met with immediate legal challenges.

    Friday’s order will also direct Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary — who has jurisdiction over marine sanctuaries — to conduct a review of all such sanctuaries created over the past 10 years, and not to create any new sanctuaries during that review period.

    No marine sanctuaries! Let’s destroy the oceans entirely! Future generations won’t thank us but who cares, we won’t be here.

    Also last year, the Obama administration unveiled a set of regulations on offshore oil and gas drilling equipment, intended to tighten the safety requirements on underwater drilling equipment and well-control operations. In particular, the new rules tighten controls on blowout preventers, the industry-standard devices that are the last line of protection to stop explosions in undersea oil and gas wells.

    The 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig was caused in part by the buckling of a section of drill pipe, prompting the malfunction of a supposedly fail-safe blowout preventer on a BP well.

    It appears that those rules may be targeted in Mr. Trump’s new order. But when questioned on which specific equipment regulations would be reviewed, Mr. Zinke simply replied that the review would apply ”from bow to stern.”

    They want more Deepwater Horizon disasters. That’s who they are.

  • They won’t let him drive

    Reuters talked to Donnie and found out that he wants his old life back. We want that for you, Donnie! Do feel free to resign.

    He misses driving, feels as if he is in a cocoon, and is surprised how hard his new job is.

    President Donald Trump on Thursday reflected on his first 100 days in office with a wistful look at his life before the White House.

    “I loved my previous life. I had so many things going,” Trump told Reuters in an interview. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”

    He thought it would be easier. He thought it would be easier. Oh my god.

    More than five months after his victory and two days shy of the 100-day mark of his presidency, the election is still on Trump’s mind. Midway through a discussion about Chinese President Xi Jinping, the president paused to hand out copies of what he said were the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map.

    “Here, you can take that, that’s the final map of the numbers,” the Republican president said from his desk in the Oval Office, handing out maps of the United States with areas he won marked in red. “It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us.”

    He had copies for each of the three Reuters reporters in the room.

    He won. He was voted prom king. He won he won he won. Little Donnie from Queens who got no respect – he won. Sadly, that meant he had to work much harder than he wanted to, but still – he won, he won, he won. Make enough copies for every single reporter.

    Trump, who said he was accustomed to not having privacy in his “old life,” expressed surprise at how little he had now. And he made clear he was still getting used to having 24-hour Secret Service protection and its accompanying constraints.

    “You’re really into your own little cocoon, because you have such massive protection that you really can’t go anywhere,” he said.

    Yes, it sounds absolutely horrible. But surely he was aware of that before he decided to campaign for the job?

    Ah well, he has his final map of the numbers to cheer him up.

  • Managing him

    Another piece on how Trump’s people have to manage him as if he were a volatile heavily-armed toddler.

    As Trump is beginning to better understand the challenges—and the limits—of the presidency, his aides are understanding better how to manage perhaps the most improvisational and free-wheeling president in history. “If you’re an adviser to him, your job is to help him at the margins,” said one Trump confidante. “To talk him out of doing crazy things.”

    Interviews with White House officials, friends of Trump, veterans of his campaign and lawmakers paint a picture of a White House that has been slow to adapt to the demands of the most powerful office on earth.

    “Everyone is concerned that things are not running that well,” said one senior official. “There should be more structure in place so we know who is working on what and who is responsible for what, instead of everyone freelancing on everything.”

    But they’re learning. One key development: White House aides have figured out that it’s best not to present Trump with too many competing options when it comes to matters of policy or strategy. Instead, the way to win Trump over, they say, is to present him a single preferred course of action and then walk him through what the outcome could be – and especially how it will play in the press.

    As if he were a literal child. They have to “manage” him as if he were a literal child but one with dangerous powers. They can’t treat him like a fellow adult, because he isn’t.

    “You don’t walk in with a traditional presentation, like a binder or a PowerPoint. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t consume information that way,” said one senior administration official. “You go in and tell him the pros and cons, and what the media coverage is going to be like.”

    He doesn’t consume information that way – meaning, he’s stupid, and barely literate, and lazy, and not in the habit of thinking.

    Downplaying the downside risk of a decision can win out in the short term. But the risk is a presidential dressing-down—delivered in a yell. “You don’t want to be the person who sold him on something that turned out to be a bad idea,” the person said.

    Advisers have tried to curtail Trump’s idle hours, hoping to prevent him from watching cable news or calling old friends and then tweeting about it. That only works during the workday, though—Trump’s evenings and weekends have remained largely his own.

    “It’s not like the White House doesn’t have a plan to fill his time productively but at the end of the day he’s in charge of his schedule,” said one person close to the White House. “He does not like being managed.”

    Of course he doesn’t, but he’s so dangerous he has to be managed. But he refuses to be managed, and some damn fool left the door open and let him be elected president.

    While his predecessor was known as “no-drama Obama,” Trump has presided over a series of melodramas involving his top aides, including Priebus, Bannon, counselor Kellyanne Conway and economic adviser Gary Cohn.

    “He has always been a guy who loves the idea of being a royal surrounded by a court,” said Michael D’Antonio, one of Trump’s biographers.

    Not the idea of doing the real work of presiding over a major government, but the idea of playing king surrounded by lackeys.

    Trump continues to crave attention and approval from news media figures. Trump huddled in the Oval Office with Matt Drudge, the reclusive operator of the influential Drudge Report, to talk about his administration and the site. Drudge and Kushner have also begun to communicate frequently, said people familiar with the conversations. Drudge, whose visits to the White House haven’t previously been reported, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    Several senior administration aides said Trump loves nothing more than talking to reporters – no matter what he says about the “failing” New York Times or CNN – and he often seems personally stung by negative coverage, cursing and yelling at the TV.

    Good. I hope it stings sharply. It’s the only consolation we’ll ever get.

    Trump was grinning in his office last week. He wanted to pose for pictures behind the cleaned-off Resolute desk and in front of his gold curtains. He has posed for hundreds of pictures there – sometimes with a grin, sometimes with a thumbs-up – and has guests stand behind him.

    Of course he has. That’s what he is – a shallow, greedy, self-important child.

  • Beep beep

    Trump is pining to break up the Ninth Circuit.

    President Donald Trump is threatening to break up the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which blocked his executive order banning travel from several nations with large Muslim populations and restricted the acceptance of refugees.

    Asked by the Washington Examiner if he had considered proposals to split the court, Trump replied: “Absolutely, I have.”

    “There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It’s outrageous,” Trump told the website. “Everybody immediately runs to the 9th Circuit. And we have a big country. We have lots of other locations. But they immediately run to the 9th Circuit. Because they know that’s like, semi-automatic.”

    Trump claimed that those who oppose him are “shopping” for sympathetic judges by going to the 9th Circuit, where 18 of the 25 jurists were appointed by Democratic presidents.

    “You see judge-shopping, or what’s gone on with these people, they immediately run to the 9th Circuit,” he said. “It’s got close to an 80 percent reversal period, and what’s going on in the 9th Circuit is a shame.”

    Anything that impedes Trump’s ability to say “do it” and have it be done is “a shame” in his eyes. He thinks he’s the boss of all the things.

    The statistic Trump cited about the appeals court’s rulings being overturned 80 percent of the time was also misleading.

    According to The Washington Post, 80 percent of the 9th Circuit decisions taken up by the Supreme Court were reversed in 2015-2016. Yet only one-tenth of 1 percent of the 9th Circuit’s decisions were heard by the Supreme Court. In addition, other circuit courts had even higher reversal rates.

    That’s not “misleading,” it’s wildly wrong. The difference between 80% of decisions and 80% of .01% of decisions is an enormous difference.

    It’s an odd thing about Trump that his own ignorance seems never to give him pause, no matter what. I don’t understand that. You’d think that he would, being so vain, be careful not to expose himself to the risk of being shown up by trying to do things he’s not equipped to do.

    But maybe to him it’s all like driving the big truck. You just sit in the seat and blow the horn and scream, and that’s all it takes.

    Image result for trump truck