Trump 17: James Comey and the Goblin of "You're Fired"

[fraurosena]

6 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

What I really, really, really want to see is Trump called before the Senate and forced to answer questions. I don't think he could do it. I don't think he could sit there for hours being bombarded with tough questions without completely losing it and having a tantrum. 

Yes, yes, yes! 

How I would love to see his orange ass squirming before a committee. I'll bet you when the going gets tough, he'll just get up and try to walk out, saying "That's enough. I'm done." like he did when that reporter started asking him difficult questions.

 

[sawasdee]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

What I really, really, really want to see is Trump called before the Senate and forced to answer questions. I don't think he could do it. I don't think he could sit there for hours being bombarded with tough questions without completely losing it and having a tantrum. 

When he has previously been deposed in legal suits, his standard answer seems to have been "I don't recall".......

[nvmbr02]

Seriously, he just can't keep his mouth shut. His big mouth and tiny fingers are what will lead to his downfall I believe...

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Putin started laughing last November and never stopped ever since. He is thinking: "We are the greatest leaders, I am the greatest strategist he is the greatest moron hahahaha".

[fraurosena]

This is the tweet in question.

Two things:

1. He's all but admitting he tapes conversations in the WH, and is now openly using them as blackmail (reminder, obstruction of justice is an impeachable offence)
2. If there is no collusion as he's constantly saying, what on earth is the toddler so afraid of that Comey could leak that he is resorting to public blackmail?

[GreyhoundFan]

8 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

Major media outlets are falsely reporting reporting that today's FBI raid was about Ken Cuccinelli: 

http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/cuccinelli-fbi-annapolis/2765/

 

I would love if Cuccinelli somehow got fried. I despise him as much as I despise McTurtle and Lyan. His fervent desire was to make Virginia a paradise for evangelicals and alt-righters. He came close to winning, because the Dems put up Terry McAuliffe, who many saw as a carpetbagger. I was hoping after the loss, Cuccinelli would fade away, but no such luck.

 

8 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Just wanting to say how now I'm alternating between not thinking this is normal to not thinking this is real life.

Every morning I wake up, I hope that the last seven months have been a bad dream. When I realize this is real life, it depresses me a bit.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is priceless: "Trump threatens to cancel White House briefings because it is ‘not possible’ for his staff to speak with ‘perfect accuracy’"

Quote

President Trump threatened Friday morning to end White House press briefings, arguing that “it is not possible” for his staff to speak with “perfect accuracy” to the American public.

Trump's comments come after his description of his decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey in an NBC News interview Thursday flatly contradicted the accounts provided earlier by White House officials, including Vice President Pence, exposing their explanations as misleading and in some cases false.

In a pair of tweets sent Friday, Trump suggested he might do away with the daily press briefings at the White House and instead have his spokespeople communicate to the public only via “written responses.”

...

 

You couldn't make this shit up.

 

 

[fraurosena]

He's really losing grip.

President Trump Threatens to Cancel White House Press Briefings

Quote

President Trump took to Twitter Friday morning to defend his spokespersons' conflicting accounts of James Comey's firing — blaming the "fake media" for the confusion and then threatening to cancel all future press briefings.

"As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!" the president tweeted. "Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???"

His reaction comes after several days of press secretary Sean Spicer, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Vice President Mike Pence and Trump himself all offering different accounts of both the reasoning and process of Trump firing the FBI director earlier this week.

Trump also slammed the "fake media" Friday morning and once again denied any collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia, amid speculation that he fired Comey for reasons related to the FBI's investigation into the matter. "Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election," he tweeted. [...]

 So, because he's active (whatever the hell that means) his press secretary and his deputy can't be accurate, but they can be accurate when writing it down? 

 

 

1 minute ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is priceless: "Trump threatens to cancel White House briefings because it is ‘not possible’ for his staff to speak with ‘perfect accuracy’"

You couldn't make this shit up.

 

 

ha, we posted the same thing at the same time! 

[fraurosena]

The fabulous Keith Olbermann.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

8 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

snip

 

ha, we posted the same thing at the same time! 

Great minds...

I just saw a comment following a WaPo article that read, "It's time to to consider formal charges and prison time....Mar a Leavenworth". I love it and agree 100%!

 

This is disconcerting: "The one little number that — so far — is all the protection Donald Trump needs". Too much to quote, especially all the charts, but the heart of the analysis is:

Quote

Those engaging in such speculation, though, are warned: There’s one little number that makes such a move unlikely. That number is 84 percent, Trump’s job approval rating among Republicans in the most recent weekly average from Gallup.

Why’s that one number so important? Allow me to explain.

On Thursday, shortly before the interview with Trump aired, NBC’s political team released numbers from a poll conducted with the firm SurveyMonkey. A majority of Americans disagreed with Trump’s decision on Comey, it turns out, with 54 percent saying that Comey’s termination was inappropriate. A majority also said that allegations that the campaign was in contact with Russian actors was a serious issue, and not a distraction.

But notice how those figures break down by party. On the Comey question, majorities of Democrats and independents think that the move was inappropriate — but three-quarters of Republicans are fine with it.

...

Basically, he can do anything and the DOHers will approve.

 

[fraurosena]

Interesting and promising.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena : I fervently hope Comey has multiple sources of documentation stashed away.

 

This is so true: "The Health 202: Trump needs to take Health Policy 101"

Quote

It’s been more than two months since President Trump said “nobody knew” health care could be so complicated (see the video above). The president doesn’t seem to have studied up on the topic since then -- despite House Republicans passing a health-care bill.

Exhibit A: Trying to follow Trump’s line of logic as he spoke to The Economist about the GOP bill was challenging, to say the least. In the interview published this week, Trump showed that he not only doesn’t understand how health insurance works -- he’s also still unclear on exactly how the House-passed measure would even change the current system.

Lawmakers in both parties misspeak about health policy all the time. We get that, to some extent. Since it’s a complex issue, not everyone can be an expert and it’s hard to predict what kind of impact legislation will have on patients, doctors and markets, anyway. Recall how President Obama promised people their insurance premiums would come way down under his health-care law? And supporters of Obamacare dramatically underestimated how costly the marketplace enrollees would be for health insurers, who have been exiting in droves (Aetna, most recently).

But Trump has appeared consistently incoherent on the issue in the past few months, as he hounded GOP leaders to get a health-care bill through. Just as the divided House Republican Conference seemed to be working through their differences, he’d fire off tweets promising they’d deliver on certain polices that were still very much up in the air or highlight contentious issues Republicans weren’t eager to discuss.

...

Preexisting conditions was one of several health-related topics Trump weighed in on during his Economist sit-down this week -- an interview that motivated The Health 202 to turn today’s Prognosis into one epic fact-checker. Here are five of Trump’s statements that stuck out like a sore thumb:

1. “Our health care is much better than Obamacare…We’re going to have competition, we’re getting rid of the state lines.”

The facts: The House bill does not, in fact, allow insurers to sell plans across state lines. It’s a policy conservatives have backed for a long time, and some activist groups are pushing for it to be added to a Senate bill replacing Obamacare. But House GOP leaders didn’t add it to their plan, fearing it would be stripped out under rules governing what can go into a budget reconciliation bill (the vehicle Republicans are using to repeal the Affordable Care Act, requiring just 51 Senate votes instead of the usual 60).

...

3. “Insurance is, you’re 20 years old, you just graduated from college, and you start paying $15 a month for the rest of your life and by the time you’re 70, and you really need it, you’re still paying the same amount.”

The facts: That’s not the way insurance works, unless you regulate insurers (which Republicans generally don’t want to do). Older people pay higher premiums because they cost insurers more.

--Bringing premiums for the young and old closer together is actually something envisioned under Obamacare, which allows insurers to charge older folks only three times what they charge younger ones. The Republican health plan would expand that to a five-to-one ratio, allowing insurers to shift more costs onto older people.

...

5. “We have a pool for people that are having difficulty…it’s a high risk pool…we’re putting in $8 billion…and you’re going to have absolute coverage.”

The facts: A last-minute amendment to the House health bill indeed adds $8 billion over five years for states to set up pools for people with preexisting conditions, the ones who dramatically increase costs for everyone else.

--But will they get “absolute coverage” as Trump said? That’s unclear, considering the bill doesn’t specify who would be eligible for the pools, how much of their costs would be covered or how much they’d be required to pay in premiums. Depending on how many states applied for the $1.6 billion that would be available per year, the funds may be insufficient to keep premiums affordable in these “high risk” pools.

"...consistently incoherent...", yeah, that describes the tangerine toddler to a T.

[onekidanddone]

This administration feels line one long non stop fever dream.  He must have 'files' on all his people and his defenders in the House and Senate.  I can't see any other reason why they won't jump ship to avoid the tsunami of orange sewage. 

[47of74]

35 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

He's really losing grip.

President Trump Threatens to Cancel White House Press Briefings

 So, because he's active (whatever the hell that means) his press secretary and his deputy can't be accurate, but they can be accurate when writing it down? 

 

 

ha, we posted the same thing at the same time! 

Can you imagine if President Obama had done something anywhere even close to that?  Donnie Dumbfornicate and the rest of the teabilly fornicate sticks  would have never stopped screaming about that.

 

[fraurosena]

Great op-ed in the NYT today:

Who Will Save the Republic?

Quote

You have seen them on high, scurrying with great urgency between columns of marble, the clicks of Armani-heeled favor seekers never far behind. You have heard them in the past few days, saying they are “troubled” or “disappointed” about the latest assault on democracy from the White House.

They know enough history to get this: Donald Trump is the first president in history whose campaign has come under federal investigation for collusion with a hostile foreign power. And now the person heading that investigation, the F.B.I. director, has been fired.

We’re looking for a few good men and women in Congress to understand the gravity of this debasement. We don’t need more parsing about the bad “optics” or “timing” of Trump firing the man who could have ended his presidency. We need a Republican in power to call it what it is: a bungled attempt to obstruct justice.

And the tragic part is that Trump is likely to succeed, at least in the short term. The person he chooses for F.B.I. director will never assemble a prosecutable case of treason that leads to the doorstep of this White House.

The courts can do only so much. They can block orders that violate the Constitution. But they can’t be real-time truth seekers in a moment of real urgency. As for Ivanka Trump, the supposed sane person in an insane White House, she has only so many whispers into Daddy’s ear that will be listened to.

Thus, it falls to a half-dozen or so Republicans to heed the words of a man whose statue they pass every day in the Capitol. “Even if you’re on the right track,” said Will Rogers, Oklahoma’s gift to American gab, “you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

As it is, they’re getting run over. Things that never happened before now happen with such regularity that the numbing and the dumbing down can make a rational human inert. Trump is a tutorial in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s observation about “defining deviancy downward.” Here is a man who doesn’t share basic democratic values, who uttered nearly 500 lies or misleading statements in his first three months in office, and it has all become mere background — the screen saver of this presidency.

The civilized world was recently appalled at Trump’s outreach to tyrants from North Korea, the Philippines and Turkey. This week, we find out that the family of the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, offered Chinese business owners a path to United States citizenship if they invested in a Kushner property. And a White House visit of Russian political operatives was closed to the American press. We needed Tass, which is to Vladimir Putin what Fox News is to Trump, to provide official documentation for that meeting.

The Trump White House makes gangsters look more civilized, and organized. With Trump, as with most outsize characters in fiction or real life, character drives action. He’s a lifelong charlatan, a con man, a habitué of bankruptcy courts. He thinks this will blow over — everything always does. He’s off to Europe soon, the rogue man out. And that photo with Pope Francis will surely make people forget the chaos back home.

But the truth will out. The journalism of the past few days — those labeled Enemies of the People by Trump now doing the people’s work, as envisioned by the founders — has been extraordinary.

It’s obvious that Trump fired James Comey because he was getting closer to the truth of what happened with Russian manipulation of the American election. His advisers say an enraged Trump screamed at the television when this story would not go away. “Russia, Russia, Russia,” Kellyanne Conway said, sounding like a “Brady Bunch” brat complaining about “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.”

Trump’s assertion that Comey told him three times he wasn’t under investigation has yet to be backed up and looks like another bogus Trump claim, if not a violation of Justice Department protocol.

So, we turn to a handful of people in Trump’s own party to do something courageous — to do the job they were sworn to do. Trump was at 38 percent approval in Gallup’s tracking poll on Thursday and 36 percent in a Quinnipiac survey — both historic lows at this stage in a modern presidency. These numbers may stiffen the spines of some Republicans in Congress.

The Irish Undertaker, Paul Ryan, is a lost cause — and increasingly looks like a bystander to the multiple-car wreck happening before him. The Senate leader, Mitch McConnell — whose wife, don’t forget, is in Trump’s cabinet — is also sitting this one out.

Call out the names: Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, Richard Burr and Bob Corker, Ben Sasse and Lisa Murkowski. They have committees and investigators at their disposal. Their party impeached Bill Clinton for lying about sex. The least they can do is demand some accountability of a man whose entire presidency is a lie.

Favorite quote in the whole article: Trump is a tutorial in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s observation about “defining deviancy downward.”

 

[Flossie]

And now for something a little more lighthearted:

Quote

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/11/media/stephen-colbert-trump-no-talent-comment/

Some people would be upset if the president of the United States said they had no talent, but Stephen Colbert was downright giddy about it on Thursday night.

The host of CBS' "The Late Show" opened Thursday's broadcast by firing back at President Trump, who said in an interview with Time magazine that Colbert was "a no-talent guy" and not funny. 

Colbert responded with a smile. 

"The president of the United States has personally come after me and my show, and there's only one thing to say ... yay!" Colbert said, clapping his hands together and laughing. 

He then blew kisses to the camera and waved as his audience chanted his name. 

"Mr. Trump, there's a lot you don't understand, but I never thought one of those things would be show business," Colbert said. "Don't you know I've been trying for a year to get you to say my name? And you were very restrained -- admirably restrained -- but now you did it. I won." 

And Colbert has definitely been winning during the Trump administration. His show has been on a ratings streak, topping late night last week for the fourteenth consecutive week. 

That's a point that even Trump has noticed. 

"The guy was dying. By the way, they were going to take him off television, then he started attacking me and he started doing better," Trump told Time. 

The president said that he had been a guest on Colbert's show when he was a candidate and that it was "the highest rating he's ever had." 

In fact, Colbert's premiere in September of 2015 holds that distinction, bringing in 6.6 million viewers. Trump's guest spot scored 4.6 million viewers a few weeks later. 

(And away from Colbert's regular time slot, his post-Super Bowl special in 2016 nabbed 21.1 million.) 

Colbert pointed this out to Trump, saying that his appearance was highly rated but fell short of Jeb Bush's. (Bush was one of the guests for Colbert's premiere.) 

"You got beat by 'low energy Jeb,'" he said. "But don't worry, you won the ratings college." 
 

The host continued by saying that making jokes about the president have, in fact, been good for ratings. 

"It's almost like a majority of Americans didn't want you to be president," Colbert said. "You know who's got really bad ratings these days? You do. Just terrible approval numbers. I hear they're thinking about switching your time slot with Mike Pence." 

According to Time, Trump brought up Colbert because of a lewd joke the late night host made about him last week, which sparked an online backlash. 

"What he says is filthy. And you have kids watching," Trump said. "And it only builds up my base. It only helps me, people like him." 

Colbert responded to this, as well. 

"I will give this to the man. You're not wrong. I do occasionally use adult language and I do it in public instead of in the privacy of an Access Hollywood bus," he said. 

The host then told Trump there was one obvious way he could take "The Late Show" down. 

"Resign," Colbert said. "If you did that, what would I talk about then? Except your resignation because that'd be fun." 

The whole monologue is on the page, the article left out some jokes, like the one where Stephen mentions Trumps 'tiny hands.'

My favorites:  

My favorites:

"You got beat by 'low energy Jeb,'...But don't worry, you won the ratings college." 

"I hear they're thinking about switching your time slot with Mike Pence." 

"I do occasionally use adult language and I do it in public instead of in the privacy of an Access Hollywood bus"

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s ‘tapes’ tweet is too much. Hasn’t the GOP had enough?"

Quote

President Trump tweeted this morning, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” One doesn’t know if this is a threat or another bit of bluster. Congress should immediately issue a subpoena for all tapes of presidential conversations, just to be on the safe side. The sheer bizarreness of his tweet will, for those not immune to Trump’s lunacy, reintroduce questions about his mental stability. One wonders when, if ever, Republicans will declare they’ve had enough.

The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol remarks to me, “I think there is movement among Hill Republicans, for now mostly in private and behind the scenes. And then, I think (and history suggests), the dam will break suddenly.” One hopes that is right, but outwardly, the Republicans by and large continue to support Trump and defend his nonsense.

The 2016 election demonstrated that the party once united by political thought (e.g., smaller government, objective truth, respect for tradition, the rule of law) and respect for civic virtue would accept a thoughtless, entirely unscrupulous leader for the sake of holding power. (“Sure, he’s totally ignorant about the world, but we’ll get the Supreme Court.” “Well, he’s obviously lying about a bunch of issues, but he’ll sign whatever the House gives him.“) En masse, most Republicans — including those at some premier publications (which are now unreadable to all but the Trump cultists) — declared willingness to defend ignorance, bigotry, dishonesty and ineptitude on the chance that they’d get a top marginal tax rate of 28 percent. The calculation, to those not driven by partisan zeal, seems shockingly small-minded and tribalistic. (At least Hillary Clinton’s not there to raise taxes!) One marvels at other trades they’d make. (Lose an independent judiciary for sake of a meaningless and offensive travel ban?)

Republican Party identification has begun requiring intellectual vacuity. One has to be free from shame to agree that it’s no big deal when Trump confesses he fired former FBI director James B. Comey because he decided Russian interference in the election was “just a made-up story.” A slew of FBI agents is now investigating the “made-up story,” the entire intelligence community verifies it and members of both parties acknowledge that it occurred. To go along with such utterances means condoning Trump’s inability to accept reality (Russia did, in fact, meddle) and refusing to concede that pressuring and then firing the FBI director must be impeachable, if not criminal, conduct. This mind-set forces Trump defenders to say daft things such as: Trump has the right to fire Comey, so what’s the problem? Democrats didn’t like Comey, anyway. It doesn’t matter that he gave a pretextual answer for the firing.

Our incredulity does not concern Trump’s buffoonish performances. We’re not surprised in the least that the president thinks he’s entitled to shut down an investigation if he doesn’t like the way his political opponents are utilizing evidence to attack him. We expected nothing less and warned fellow Republicans that this was what they were buying into.

No, we remain incredulous that so many seemingly mature conservatives are going along with this, even now when his political utility to the party is so slight. (It’s not as though he’s capable of delivering on campaign promises or leading the party to victories in 2018.) We’re not talking about Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson, but, in this context, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the majority of 2016 presidential candidates, right-wing think tankers, too many right-leaning pundits, etc. Have they truly lost their intellectual bearings, or are they so cynical as to conclude that sticking with the “tribe” is better than simple truth-telling?

We’re hoping that the dam breaks quickly, before more harm comes to the republic. The GOP, however, may be irreparably broken.

I agree, I wonder where "the line" is that Agent Orange will have to cross to get the rank-and-file DOHers to finally step and and say "enough".

[JMO]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/trump-explains-economics-to-the-economist-hilarity-ensues.html

I hope this wasn't covered already. Has anyone else read about this yet? This is awesome.  

The best part is when he claims to have invented the phrase "prime the pump" with relation to economic theory.  Awesome.  He also claims that the US has the highest rate of taxes in the world.  

[GreyhoundFan]

"The ‘Merrick Garland for FBI’ scheme shows why liberals lose"

Quote

We live in a golden age of political stupidity, but I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this: The idea of pulling Judge Merrick Garland off the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court and into the FBI is one of the silliest ideas I've seen anyone in Washington fall for. It's like Wile E. Coyote putting down a nest made of dynamite and writing “NOT A TRAP” on a whiteboard next to it. It's also an incredibly telling chapter in the book that's been written since the Republican National Convention — the story of how Republicans who are uncomfortable with the Trump presidency gritting their teeth as they use it to lock in control of the courts.

On Thursday, as we reported at the Post, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) gave real oomph to an idea that had been bouncing around conservative media. Democrats had vetted and praised Garland when President Barack Obama nominated him for the Supreme Court — how, then, could they object to the idea of putting him in charge of the FBI?

The reasons to object were quickly explained by reporters and by liberal court analysts like Dahlia Lithwick. “Garland probably won’t want to give up his lifetime tenure as the chief judge of the second-most important court in the land,” wrote Lithwick, “and surely the most significant bulwark against Trump administration overreach, in exchange for a 12-minute gig on The Apprentice before he uses the wrong color highlighter and gets fired by a crazy person.” Among most court-watchers, the scheme was pretty obvious: Lee would give Republicans a chance to tweak a Garland-less court, changing a 7-4 liberal majority to a 6-5 majority. And in his tweet, Lee was explicit: if Garland went to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Democrats wouldn't need a Trump/Russia special prosecutor.

Yet what Lee apparently realized was that the churn of political conversation in Washington would get his idea looked at seriously. Lee floated the idea before the Senate's final votes of the week, meaning that senators of both parties would be available to reporters for hours. In that time, they were confronted with a shiny object — the Garland-for-FBI float — with little time to consider it. The conservative Washington Examiner went all-in on the story, getting Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) to say that Garland “meets a lot of criteria” and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to say he'd back him, but Garland probably wouldn't want the job. (The Examiner also quoted Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican, saying “it would also create a vacancy in the important D.C. circuit, so maybe I like it better the more I think about it.” Well, yeah.)

Lee, who does not stop in the hallways to talk to reporters, must have realized that the senators who did would push the idea along. Democrats, after all, came to feel that Garland was a good man robbed of a job — their first instinct, when asked about him, was obviously to sing his praises. Their second thought might be to point out that this was a cartoonishly obviously ploy to give a conservative judge a lifetime appointment on a powerful court. But most people, hearing the idea, might not get to the second thought. Amusingly, a number of liberal opinion-havers glommed onto the Garland idea, apparently unaware that he was still on the court in D.C. From the former Secretary of the Treasury:

...

But is it Summers's fault that the scheme wasn't obvious? Every reporter asking about Lee's idea knew that it was a ploy to open up a seat on the D.C. circuit. Every Democrat or liberal observer has the power to recognize the ploy. Why have some of them been suckered?

The reason, I think, is a fanciful analysis of Trump's relationship with the GOP that has caused Democrats to make mistake after mistake for the better part of two years. For a long time, Democrats assumed that Trump would lose the Republican nomination. When he didn't, they highlighted Republican critics of Trump inside the party, in the hope of winning them over to Hillary Clinton. Some suburbanite Republicans did come over, but according to the exit poll, 88 percent of self-identified Republicans went for Trump, compared to 89 percent of Democrats for Clinton.

Six months later, Democrats are still obsessed with finding intra-Republican resistance to Trump. Some of that's just accepting reality — Republicans control Congress and most of the states, so they can stop Trump when Democrats can't. But some of it assumes an Aaron Sorkin-scripted conclusion to the Trump presidency. At some point, possibly, Trump's own party will stand up to him and bring him down. When Republicans say they want Merrick Garland for FBI, Democrats hear Trump's party in rebellion, because that's what they want to hear.

They are getting it exactly backward. Lee, like most Republicans, is willing to grit his teeth through most of what Trump does in exchange for priceless long-term conservative gains in the regulatory state and in the courts. Democrats understand this attitude when Republican voters display it. They know that many Republicans put up with Trump so that they could keep Garland off the Supreme Court and replace the late Antonin Scalia with a conservative.

Famously, Lee was the first sitting senator to demand that Trump quit the presidential race after the release of live mic recordings that found him crudely joking about sexual assault. “If anyone spoke to my wife, or my daughter, or my mother, or any of my five sisters, the way that Donald Trump has spoken to women, I wouldn't hire that person,” Lee said at the time. What he said next was more important — Trump had become a “distraction” and needed to “allow someone else to carry the banner” to “defeat Hillary Clinton.” What Trump had done was horrible, but not horrible enough to countenance a vote for the candidate who could keep him from the White House.

At the time, Democrats heard this as the trumpet kicking off a “civil war” inside the GOP. It really wasn't. Some Democrats want this week's Lee gambit to reveal that Republicans are now bailing on Trump and ready for a real Russia probe. That's not what's happening. So far, the major Republican response to the firing of James Comey, from one of the party's leading Trump critics, is to suggest that Trump be given an open slot on a key court that can be filled by a conservative judge.

Okay, I think this is my favorite line of the week: "...in exchange for a 12-minute gig on The Apprentice before he uses the wrong color highlighter and gets fired by a crazy person."

[fraurosena]

25 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The GOP, however, may be  is irreparably broken.

There. FTFY.

[GreyhoundFan]

1 minute ago, JMO said:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/trump-explains-economics-to-the-economist-hilarity-ensues.html

I hope this wasn't covered already. Has anyone else read about this yet? This is awesome.  

The best part is when he claims to have invented the phrase "prime the pump" with relation to economic theory.  Awesome.  He also claims that the US has the highest rate of taxes in the world.  

Yes, I posted about it last night. I just love that daffy duck thinks he's explaining economics to The Economist. What a moron.

[JMO]

@GreyhoundFan I just read back and saw that.  He kills me.  I don't understand the Trump apologists.  He's such a sorry excuse for a human and now he's flagrantly abusing his power and Mitch keeps defending him.  WTF.  I hope that not only Trump goes down but he brings the whole lot of them down with him in the 2018 elections. Sadly Mitch isn't up for re-election until 2020.  Hopefully Ryan can be tossed though!

[fraurosena]

This is too funny!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"NYC hotel owner joins lawsuit against Trump alleging violation of emoluments clause"

Quote

A part-owner of several New York City hotels and restaurants has joined a lawsuit alleging that President Trump has violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from taking payments from foreign governments.

Eric Goode is a part-owner of four boutique hotels and three restaurants in Manhattan. On Wednesday, he officially joined a lawsuit that was filed just days after Trump’s inauguration by a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. That group formerly had strong ties to Hillary Clinton's campaign, but it says it has cut those ties and become a nonpartisan entity.

The lawsuit alleges that Trump is in violation of the Constitution because his business continues to accept payment for hotel rooms, banquet halls and food from foreign states and state-owned businesses. Although Trump has said that he no longer has day-to-day control of the Trump Organization — having passed it to his sons Donald Jr. and Eric — documents show that Trump remains the beneficiary of his businesses, and he can legally withdraw money from them at any time.

The heart of the lawsuit has remained the same since January: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked a federal judge to bar Trump from accepting foreign payments and to provide financial records to prove he has done so. The group’s complaint says that Trump “has violated the Constitution since the opening moments of his presidency and is poised to do so continually for the duration of his administration.”

The Trump Organization declined to comment Thursday, noting that the president — and not his business — was formally named as a defendant in the case. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s attorneys have said previously that the plaintiffs are misinterpreting the emoluments clause. It was designed to stop foreign kings from bribing ambassadors and officers of the young United States with gifts. But, the attorneys said, it does not preclude Trump from taking payments for things of value — like, for instance, accepting a fee to rent a banquet hall to a foreign embassy.

The lawsuit against Trump will face a key legal hurdle at the outset. Before the plaintiffs can make their case about the meaning of “emolument,” they must convince a judge that they have standing to sue Trump. To do that, the plaintiffs will need to show that they suffered harm because of Trump’s conduct.

...

Goode doesn’t know of a specific instance in which he has lost business to a Trump-owned hotel or restaurant. But the complaint contends he might, saying that Trump’s businesses and Goode’s occupy similar niches in the same city.

“The case is really about changing the marketplace with unfair competition,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. He meant that Trump’s businesses could offer foreign clients something Goode could not: a chance to impress the president.

Goode did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.

 

[JMO]

This gave me a juvenile laugh:

http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/05/president-donald-trump-demands-two-scoops-of-ice-cream-with-dessert.html

 

"The waiters know well Trump’s personal preferences. As he settles down, they bring him a Diet Coke, while the rest of us are served water, with the Vice President sitting at one end of the table. With the salad course, Trump is served what appears to be Thousand Island dressing instead of the creamy vinaigrette for his guests. When the chicken arrives, he is the only one given an extra dish of sauce. At the dessert course, he gets two scoops of vanilla ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, instead of the single scoop for everyone else. The tastes of Pence are also tended to. Instead of the pie, he gets a fruit plate."