Trump 19: Please Cry for Us Montenegro (and We Are so Sorry!)

[fraurosena]

I really wonder why nobody on the Hill is looking into the blatant disregard of the emoluments clause. Isn't it their job to uphold the Constitution? 

Trump Hotel Received $270,000 From Lobbying Campaign Tied to Saudis

Spoiler

President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel received roughly $270,000 in payments linked to Saudi Arabia as part of a lobbying campaign by the Gulf kingdom against controversial terrorism legislation last year.

The payments—for catering, lodging and parking—were disclosed by the public relations firm MSLGroup last week in paperwork filed with the Justice Department documenting foreign lobbying work on behalf of Saudi Arabia and other clients.

As part of a lobbying effort against the bipartisan Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, Saudi Arabia’s Washington lobbyists and consultants spent about $190,000 on lodging, $78,000 on catering, and $1,600 on parking at the Trump International Hotel. The Daily Caller website first reported on the payments.

Mr. Trump last month made Saudi Arabia the first stop of his first international trip as president, and described the country as a key ally in the war on terror and an important partner in bringing peace and stability to the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia has been lobbying against JASTA, a law that was passed by Congress over former President Barack Obama’s veto. It allowed Americans to sue foreign governments over terrorists attacks.

The payments to the Trump Hotel were made by one of MSLGroup’s subcontractors and reimbursed by the Saudi government, according to Michael Petruzzello, an MSLGroup executive. They were part of a lobbying campaign bringing American military veterans to Capitol Hill to advocate against JASTA, he said.

All the hotel spending took place between Nov. 2016 and Feb. 2017, according to Mr. Petruzzello. Most of the payments to the hotel were made before Mr. Trump was officially sworn inas president, but some were made after he became president.

Survivors and families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have been pushing for the law so that a lawsuit can proceed against Saudi Arabia for any alleged role in the attacks. The kingdom has denied any involvement and U.S. officials have backed that position.

Ethics officials have raised questions about foreign government payments to the Trump Organization. Watchdog groups say the Trump Organization’s business with foreign entities in particular governments that book rooms or events or other business at the Trump International Hotel near the White House, risks violating a constitutional provision that bars federal officers from accepting payments or gifts from foreign countries without Congress’s consent.

The president has retained ownership of his business empire while turning over management to his two adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric. Critics say those steps don’t do enough to fully separate the president from his business interests.

The Trump Organization has thus far declined to provide details about its handling of profits from foreign government, after Mr. Trump earlier this year said his company would transfer any such profits to the U.S. Treasury.

The White House referred questions about the payments to the Trump Organization. A spokeswoman for the company said it would donate the “profits of this transaction” at the end of the year, but didn’t immediately respond to a question about how it would publicly disclose that transfer.

The Trump Organization in recent weeks has tangled with the House Oversight Committee over its handling of profits from foreign government. The committee in April requested that the company provide documents detailing how it identified payments from foreign governments or foreign government-owned entities, as well as how it calculated profits from those payments and how it would donate those profits to the Treasury.

In response, the company sent a pamphlet saying it wouldn’t attempt to identify representatives of foreign governments unless customers presented themselves as such. It also said it wouldn’t identify all of its foreign customers, describing the request as “impractical in the service industry.”

“This is a textbook example of a foreign government paying directly into the President’s pocketbook while pursuing its own policy goals,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the oversight committee, in a statement. “Saudi Arabia is spending vast amounts of money at President Trump’s hotel while at the same time pressing to limit the rights of U.S. citizens to sue the Saudi government.”

The White House had no immediate comment on Mr. Cummings’s statement.

So Saudi Arabia is protesting JASTA, bribes the presidunce in order to influence him on that, and the TT makes a weaponsdeal with them worth $100 billion. And what do the Senate and the House do?

Exactly. Nothing. 

Why?

[fraurosena]

Not surprising. Nope, not surprising at all. Isn't that sad, though?

Nikki Haley warns US may pull out of UN Human Rights Council

Quote

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the US is "reviewing its participation" in the Human Rights Council over what said is the group's "chronic anti-Israel bias".

The Geneva-based Council made up of 47 member countries is beginning a three-week session and Ms Haley said the US "sees some areas for significant strengthening" in the group. 

The Council's critical stance of Israel has long been a contentious issue for the US, Israel's main ally. 

However, despite remaining allies, former President Obama had an icy relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The Council's members have taken a strong position against Israel's continued occupation of territory seized in the 1967 Middle East war, its treatment of Palestinians, and its building of Jewish settlements.

Most countries in the UN system and international bodies consider the settlements illegal since they are built in areas Palestinians consider part of an eventual independent state. 

What I do find surprising is the reasoning they're using to pull out of the Human Rights Council.

What is the correlation between the rights of all human beings on this planet and Israel, that is reason enough to say, Human Rights, nope not doing that anymore?

[Imaginary_Wonderland]

I really like Sadiq Khan's response when questioned about Trump tweets, and I can fully support a travel ban that prevents Trump from visiting Uk right now. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Just lovely: "Trump’s hotel company moves into his political territory, beginning with Mississippi"

Spoiler

NEW YORK — President Trump’s hotel company is pushing into territory he conquered as a political candidate, beginning with four new hotels in Mississippi.

The company will open the first of its Scion line of hotels — marketed as a four-star boutique brand — early next year through a deal the company inked for a property under construction in Cleveland, Miss., population 15,800.

The Trump Organization also announced three hotels under a new brand called American Idea, building off experiences Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump said they picked up on the campaign trail supporting their father in communities far from Trump Tower, where they grew up and made the announcement Monday night at a cocktail reception for hotel executives.

“Eric and I got a great crash course in America over the last two years,” Donald Trump Jr. said to the crowd of about 500. “We saw so many places and so many towns and heard so many stories that were so touching. People that were so excited about the prospect of this country and Americana in general.”

“We started talking, Eric and I, as brothers, and saying, ‘You know what, there’s something here, there’s a market here that we’ve been missing our entire lives by focusing only on the high end,’ ” he added.

The deals mark the first new projects the company announced since Trump left the business for the White House and are overshadowed by the president’s decision to retain ownership of his company while in office.

The president’s refusal to divest, over the objections of the government’s top ethics official, has raised questions about whether he could profit from his position in the White House — issues that are likely to dominate as his company pushes an aggressive expansion.

All four Mississippi deals are franchise agreements for hotels owned by a family-run firm headed by Indian American brothers, Dinesh and Suresh Chawla. They own 17 hotels in the Gulf Coast region, including three in Cleveland, Clarksdale and Greenville, Miss., that will be converted to American Idea hotels.

The properties will be owned by the Chawla family. The Scion, which is under construction, is a $20 million project financed by $5 million from Guaranty Bank, Dinesh Chawla said. It will become the nation’s first Scion hotel under a deal signed with Eric Danziger, chief executive of Trump Hotels.

All of the hotels will be priced lower than the luxury brand Trump minted with his name before running for president, offering rates that working-class voters in Mississippi and elsewhere can more easily afford.

Many more deals are on the way. Danziger said he had agreed to 39 letters of intent — informal preliminary agreements — for other hotels across the country.

The Chawla brothers said their father was a refu­gee in India before emigrating to Canada and then the United States. Thirty years ago, they said, their father called Donald Trump asking for advice, and Trump called him back.

Whether the hotels will trade on Trump’s power and popularity remains to be seen. Donald Jr. and Eric Trump remain adamant that the brands will not feature the Trump family name, to preserve its status as a luxury brand with outposts in Soho, Washington, Chicago and Las Vegas.

“The Trump name is reserved for the Turnberrys of the world,” said Eric Trump, referring to the company’s Scotland golf resort.

Dinesh Chawla described himself as a social liberal and said he would like the Mississippi Scion to become a stop for tourists on the Mississippi Blues Trail and visitors to the Grammy Museum Mississippi, which opened recently nearby.

“As far as president Trump, I am an immigrant,” he said. “I have sympathy for people who are refugees. I would do anything as far as supporting them financially; I think that it’s very important that we do help people like that. But I do believe in legal immigration — not to punish people, but I believe in being a law-abiding person.”

Suresh Chawla, who noted that his father’s hero was former president Bill Clinton, said the hotel would succeed based on its service and not on politics.

“What’s important to the hotel is whether there are clean rooms and a quality experience,” he said.

Gee, isn't it great that they get so much free publicity from daddy's presiduncy?

[fraurosena]

As humor often helps in times of exasperation, here's a joke to lighten the mood:

An airplane was about to crash. There were 4 passengers on board, but only 3 parachutes. The first passenger said, "I am Steph Curry the best NBA basketball player. The Warriors and my millions of fans need me, and I can't afford to die." So he took the first pack and left the plane. The second passenger, Donald Trump, said, "I am the newly-elected US President, and I am the smartest President in American history, so my people don't want me to die." He took the second pack and jumped out of the plane. The third passenger, the Pope, said to the fourth passenger, a 10 year old schoolboy, "My son, I am old and don't have many years left, you have more years ahead, so I will sacrifice my life and let you have the last parachute." The little boy said: "That's ok, Your Holiness, there's a parachute left for you. America's smartest president took my schoolbag."

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Trump effect: Everyone’s thinking of running for president."

Spoiler

When former vice president Joe Biden announced a few days ago that he was setting up a new political action committee called American Possibilities, the political world read it as a signal: He’s seriously thinking of running for president in 2020.

Then again, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson got the same reaction when Hollywood’s highest-paid star told GQ magazine that running for office is “a real possibility,” though it’s not clear what party – if any – he would claim.

As did Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, when he set out to meet people in every state and dropped in for dinner with an Ohio Democratic family that voted for Donald Trump.

Go ahead and groan. Yes, the two nominees from 2016 are still trading fire about the election’s results, and the 2020 Iowa caucuses are still more than 30 months away.

But presidential buzz seems to be building around an unusually large and varied group of Democrats and famous names from outside of politics — a parlor game that includes pretty much every current Democratic senator and governor, mayors and House members, barons of the business world and, of course, the occasional wild-card celebrity. The Hill newspaper recently tallied 43 people who might run against Donald Trump.

This is a country, it has often been said, where anyone can grow up to be president. Last year, a billionaire reality-TV star with no government experience proved that to be true.

“How can you possibly tell someone they shouldn’t run for president? There’s no one on the planet who you can tell, ‘That’s crazy,’ ” said Jennifer Palmieri, a presidential campaign veteran who was communications director for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

There is more at work here than the sheer improbability of Trump’s election.

The president’s low poll numbers suggest a real opportunity for whomever the Democrats pick as their standard-bearer.

“Everybody assumes that Trump will be dead meat by 2020,” said former Democratic National Committee chairman Don Fowler.

And for the first time in at least a generation, the race for the nomination appears wide open, with no presumed early front-runner to be overcome in a Democratic primary. Conspicuously absent from the preseason handicapping is anyone named Clinton.

The nomination will be “a very inviting prize to have,” said David Axelrod, who was Barack Obama’s chief strategist in 2008 and 2012. “It is more expeditious to put together a list of Democrats who are not thinking they are running for president in 2020, than ones who are.”

Beyond that, “it’s only a matter of time until a Donald Trump runs as an independent and swamps both parties,” said Joe Trippi, a longtime Democratic operative who managed Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s insurgent 2004 campaign.

It has been decades since the landscape appeared so fluid and unpredictable for Democrats. Back then, however, the forces worked in reverse from today’s dynamic.

Going into 1992, the party’s biggest names — most notably, New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo — took a pass on the race, scared off in part by then-President George H.W. Bush’s stratospheric poll numbers.

Instead, the nomination went to a little-known governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, who went on to win the White House when a recession brought Bush’s popularity crashing to earth.

The lesson, which would-be candidates have taken to heart ever since, is not to hesitate. It was reinforced in 2008, when Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, won the Democratic nomination over prohibitive early favorite Hillary Clinton.

Politics takes a circular path sometimes: A quarter-century after his father declined what in retrospect looks like his biggest opportunity, Cuomo’s son Andrew, now himself the governor of New York, is among those being talked about as a 2020 possibility.

But any survey of likely candidates has to begin with a look backward, at people who have run before. One old joke has it that the only cure for presidential ambition is embalming fluid.

Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, the distant third-place finisher in the 2016 Democratic primary, has been the most active of the presumed hopefuls. He has shown up in 13 states since the election, campaigning and raising money for candidates, and speaking at party dinners.

O’Malley “made friends here,” said former DNC head Fowler, who lives in South Carolina. “There are some people here who have an affinity for him.”

Should Biden decide to make a third bid for the Oval Office, he would be “first among equals, even at this stage in life,” Axelrod said. At 74, the former vice president is four years older than Trump, who is himself the oldest first-term president in U.S. history.

Others argue that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), 75, would have the pole position, by virtue of his 2016 performance and his legions of liberal supporters.

“He hasn’t made up his mind,” said former Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver. “He’s open to it.”

So, many liberals hope, is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has been touring the country to promote her latest book. At a fundraising dinner last month for a local NAACP chapter in Detroit, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) introduced Warren as the woman “who might just be the next president.”

Yet there is also a longing for fresh new faces. And while the Senate and governor’s mansions are traditional launching pads for presidential nominees, this time around could see an opening for mayors like Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans or Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, or highly visible House members, such as Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) or Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.).

What Democratic leaders do not want to see this time is a repeat of what happened to the Republicans last year.

With 17 declared candidates, the GOP debates became roller derby-like spectacles. The sheer size of the field created an opening for a candidate like Trump to stage what amounted to a hostile takeover of the process.

“That’s great that there are 38 [potential Democratic candidates] thinking about it, but once you hit Labor Day 2019, I hope it shakes down to a manageable few,” said New Hampshire party chairman Raymond Buckley.

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who at one point considered an independent bid in 2016, warned in an interview with New York Times columnist Frank Bruni that if there are too many Democrats running, “they’ll step on each other and reelect Donald Trump.”

Bloomberg set the odds at “a 55 percent chance he gets reelected.”

The prospect of the kind of mogul-to-mogul matchup that Bloomberg took a pass on last time is tantalizing.

That is why names come up like those of former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and lifestyle empress Oprah Winfrey, who caused a sensation earlier this year when she joked — or did she? — that Trump’s election made her think she might be more qualified for office than she thought.

But seasoned operatives are skeptical that the party will ultimately turn to a Trump-like outsider.

“I don’t doubt that billionaires will start seeing presidents in the mirror, the way senators do now,” said Tad Devine, a longtime Democratic consultant.

But he added: “People don’t want another Trump on our side. They want to get as far away from him as possible.”

Axelrod agreed: “I don’t think you beat Trump by coming up with our own version of Trump. What is it that people find lacking in Trump? They find him lacking in experience, and lacking in knowledge of how government runs.”

Also likely to be important to Democrats is finding a candidate whose demeanor presents a contrast to Trump, and one with an inclusive unifying message.

For now, most of the possible contenders are demurring when asked about their plans for 2020.

A few — such as Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe — own up to the fact that they were thinking about running for president. But an establishment figure may start out at a disadvantage at a time when most of the party’s energy seems to be with “the resistance” to Trump.

Trippi says the Democratic primary field could sort itself into two groups.

“In early states, where you whittle down the field, there may be a governor or a senator who knows how to get things done, versus someone from the outside, and that’s the race,” Trippi said.

Traditional ways of campaigning, meanwhile, may be disrupted — putting less of a premium on money, and on the need to spend months or years getting to know local political leaders and grass-roots activists in the early states.

“Now that so much is online, the opinions of someone posting from their basement in Anaheim could have an influence in New Hampshire,” Granite State party chairman Buckley said. “The old rhythms are thrown out the window.”

We truly don't need another circus.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an excellent op-ed: "The Lawless Presidency"

Spoiler

Democracy isn’t possible without the rule of law — the idea that consistent principles, rather than a ruler’s whims, govern society.

You can read Aristotle, Montesquieu, John Locke or the Declaration of Independence on this point. You can also look at decades of American history. Even amid bitter fights over what the law should say, both Democrats and Republicans have generally accepted the rule of law.

President Trump does not. His rejection of it distinguishes him from any other modern American leader. He has instead flirted with Louis XIV’s notion of “L’état, c’est moi”: The state is me — and I’ll decide which laws to follow.

This attitude returns to the fore this week, with James Comey scheduled to testify on Thursday about Trump’s attempts to stifle an F.B.I. investigation. I realize that many people are exhausted by Trump outrages, some of which resemble mere buffoonery. But I think it’s important to step back and connect the dots among his many rejections of the rule of law.

They are a pattern of his presidency, one that the judicial system, Congress, civic institutions and principled members of Trump’s own administration need to resist. Trump’s view of the law, quite simply, violates American traditions.

Let’s walk through the major themes:

LAW ENFORCEMENT, POLITICIZED. People in federal law enforcement take pride in trying to remain apart from politics. I’ve been talking lately with past Justice Department appointees, from both parties, and they speak in almost identical terms.

They view the Justice Department as more independent than, say, the State or Treasury Departments. The Justice Department works with the rest of the administration on policy matters, but keeps its distance on law enforcement. That’s why White House officials aren’t supposed to pick up the phone and call whomever they want at the department. There is a careful process.

Trump has erased this distinction.

He pressured Comey to drop the investigation of Trump’s campaign and fired Comey when he refused. Trump has called for specific prosecutions, first of Hillary Clinton and more recently of leakers.

The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is part of the problem. He is supposed to be the nation’s head law-enforcement official, but acts as a Trump loyalist. He recently held a briefing in the White House press room — “a jaw-dropping violation of norms,” as Slate’s Leon Neyfakh wrote. Sessions has proclaimed, “This is the Trump era.”

Like Trump, he sees little distinction between the enforcement of the law and the interests of the president.

COURTS, UNDERMINED. Past administrations have respected the judiciary as having the final word on the law. Trump has tried to delegitimize almost any judge who disagrees with him.

His latest Twitter tantrum, on Monday, took a swipe at “the courts” over his stymied travel ban.

...

It joined a long list of his judge insults: “this so-called judge”; “a single, unelected district judge”; “ridiculous”; “so political”; “terrible”; “a hater of Donald Trump”; “essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country”; “THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”

“What’s unusual is he’s essentially challenging the legitimacy of the court’s role,” the legal scholar Charles Geyh told The Washington Post. Trump’s message, Geyh said, was: “I should be able to do what I choose.”

TEAM TRUMP, ABOVE THE LAW. Foreign governments speed up trademark applications from Trump businesses. Foreign officials curry favor by staying at his hotel. A senior administration official urges people to buy Ivanka Trump’s clothing. The president violates bipartisan tradition by refusing to release his tax returns, thus shrouding his conflicts.

The behavior has no precedent. “Trump and his administration are flagrantly violating ethics laws,” the former top ethics advisers to George W. Bush and Barack Obama have written.

Again, the problems extend beyond the Trump family. Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, has used political office to enrich himself. Sessions failed to disclose previous meetings with Russian officials.

Their attitude is clear: If we’re doing it, it’s O.K.

CITIZENS, UNEQUAL. Trump and his circle treat themselves as having a privileged status under the law. And not everyone else is equal, either.

In a frightening echo of despots, Trump has signaled that he accepts democracy only when it suits him. Remember when he said, “I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win”?

The larger message is that people who support him are fully American, and people who don’t are something less. He tells elaborate lies about voter fraud by those who oppose him, especially African-Americans and Latinos. Then he uses those lies to justify measures that restrict their voting. (Alas, much of the Republican Party is guilty on this score.)

The efforts may not yet have swung major elections, but that should not comfort anyone. They betray the most fundamental democratic right, what Locke called “the consent of the governed.” They conjure a system in which the benefits of citizenship depend on loyalty to the ruler.

Trump frequently nods toward that idea in other ways, too. He still largely ignores the victims of terrorism committed by white nationalists.

TRUTH, MONOPOLIZED. The consistent application of laws requires a consistent set of facts on which a society can agree. The Trump administration is trying to undermine the very idea of facts.

It has harshly criticized one independent source of information after another. The Congressional Budget Office. The Bureau of Labor Statistics. The C.I.A. Scientists. And, of course, the news media.

...

Trump attacks the media almost daily, and McClatchy has reported that these attacks will be part of the Republicans’ 2018 campaign strategy. Trump has gone so far as to call journalists “the enemy of the people,” a phrase that authoritarians have long used to paint critics as traitors. “To hear that kind of language directed at the American press,” David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, has said, “is an emergency.”

All Americans, including the president, should feel comfortable criticizing the media. (I certainly do.) Specific media criticisms are part of the democratic cacophony. But Trump is doing something different.

He demonizes sources of information that are not sufficiently supportive. He tells supporters that they can trust only him and his loyal mouthpieces to speak the truth. La vérité, c’est moi.

The one encouraging part of the rule-of-law emergency is the response from many other parts of society. Although congressional Republicans have largely lain down for Trump, judges — both Republican and Democratic appointees — have not. Neither have Comey, the F.B.I., the C.B.O., the media or others. As a result, the United States remains a long way from authoritarianism.

Unfortunately, Trump shows no signs of letting up. Don’t assume he will fail just because his actions are so far outside the American mainstream. The rule of law depends on a society’s willingness to stand up for it when it’s under threat. This is our time of testing.

 

[sawasdee]

@fraurosena earlier quoted from a Mother Jones article about the Der Spiegel article on the G7 meeting. The follow up article is interesting, and scary.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/trump-pulls-out-of-climate-deal-western-rift-deepens-a-1150486.html

It's a long article, so I won't attempt to post it, but well worth reading. One paragraph that sent a shiver down my back:

Quote

In Trump's world, there are no allies and no mature relationships, just self-interested countries with short-term interests. History means nothing to Trump; as a hard-nosed real-estate magnate, he is only interested in immediate gains. He cares little for long-term relationships.

And one who we had thought to be a voice of sanity, McMasters, is backing him.

[sawasdee]

His need for a show of his 'authority' is getting even more ridiculous.

http://crooksandliars.com/2017/06/trump-holds-bogus-signing-ceremony-pretend

Spoiler

Quote

Of all of the things that happened today, this one might be the dumbest one yet.

You may have heard that Trump had an "event" where he got to have people applaud for him and the press to broadcast his "announcement" after Mike Pence introduced him like he was the King of England (okay, maybe not England, but you get the idea).

Infrastructure. It was an announcement about infrastructure because this is "Infrastructure Week" where he can pretend to ignore the fact that it's really James Comey Week.

After his announcement where the sycophants applauded on cue, he held a "signing ceremony" to pretend like he had to sign a thing in order to goose Congress into doing its job.

.........

Here's something Trump didn't do today.

He didn't mention the angry lunatic who shot up a workplace and killed 5 people in Orlando, Florida. No anger, no thoughts, no prayers for the victims, in spite of the fact that this nutcase left two kids orphaned.

 

The tweets in this article are magnificent - worth clicking for the whole thing.

But he's definitely getting battier.

[GreyhoundFan]

Maybe he'll ditch Sessions too (that would make me smile): "Trump is now raging at Jeff Sessions. This hints at a deeply unsettling pattern."

Spoiler

On Monday, President Trump angrily lashed out at the Justice Department for defending the weaker second version of his immigration ban. This was odd, because Trump himself signed the executive order promulgating that revised version, which was ostensibly designed to address the court’s concerns about the first — objections the White House itself said it hoped to address.

But it turns out Trump’s anger at the Justice Department has a deeper source: Rage at Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The New York Times reports this morning on what’s at the root of it:

He has intermittently fumed for months over Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election, according to people close to Mr. Trump who insisted on anonymity to describe internal conversations. In Mr. Trump’s view, they said, it was that recusal that eventually led to the appointment of a special counsel who took over the investigation.

Trump appears worryingly unable to contemplate his own role in bringing about the special counsel. The firing of FBI director James Comey led to reports that Trump allegedly demanded Comey’s loyalty and to Trump’s admission he fired Comey over the Russia probe. That revealed the Justice Department’s memo providing Trump his initial rationale for the firing (Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton probe) was bogus. Which led to the special counsel.

Beyond this, though, note this: Trump’s seething anger at Sessions is disconcertingly similar to the anger that led him to fire Comey. As the Times previously reported, Trump privately “burned” as he watched Comey testify to Congress about Russia’s efforts to tip the election to Trump, and was “particularly irked” when Comey conceded his own intervention, via a letter about Clinton’s emails, may have influenced the outcome, which Trump “took to demean his own role in history.” The Post added that Trump was “infuriated” at the FBI’s failure to investigate and stop leaks, which have led to news accounts detailing what the Russia probe was finding.

Both Comey and Sessions enraged Trump because in some manner or other, they failed to show a level of loyalty to Trump that would have trumped (as it were) legitimate processes. Comey kept publicly validating the Russia investigation (which Trump dismisses as nothing but Fake News) and would not make it disappear by stopping leaks about it. Sessions recused himself to display (nominal) independence, which Trump somehow interpreted as a lapse into weakness that led to the special counsel, further affirming the probe’s weightiness.

Students of authoritarianism see a pattern taking shape

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University who writes extensively on authoritarianism and Italian fascism, told me that a discernible trait of authoritarian and autocratic rulers is ongoing “frustration” with the “inability to make others do their bidding” and with “institutional and bureaucratic procedures and checks and balances.”

“Trump doesn’t respect democratic procedure and finds it to be something that gets in his way,” Ben-Ghiat said. “The blaming of others is very typical of autocrats, because they have difficulty listening to a reality that doesn’t coincide with their version of it. It’s part of the authoritarian temperament to blame others when things aren’t working.”

Trump expects independent officials “to behave according to personal loyalty, as opposed to following the rules,” added Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale University who wrote “On Tyranny,” a book of lessons from the 20th Century. “For Trump, that is how the world is supposed to work. Trump doesn’t understand that in the world there might truly be laws and rules that constrain a leader.”

Snyder noted that authoritarian tendencies often go hand in hand with impatience at such constraints. “You have to have morality and a set of institutions that escape the normal balance of administrative practice,” Snyder said. “You have to be able to lie all the time. You have to have people around you who tell you how wonderful you are all the time. You have to have institutions which don’t follow the law and instead follow some kind of law of loyalty.”

It seems obvious that early worries about an unbound authoritarian Trump — fears that our institutions would not hold up or that Trump would bulldoze them — now look overblown. But nonetheless, echoes of these traits do appear present. The nonstop lying appears designed to obliterate shared agreement on the legitimate institutional role of the news media in holding Trump accountable to some semblance of shared truth and reality. Many of those lies exaggerate the significance of his electoral victory: There’s the claim that Trump would have won the popular vote if not for millions of illegal voters; the buffoonish efforts to inflate his inaugural crowd sizes; and the assertion that Barack Obama wiretapped his phones, showing that he, too, had been illicitly targeted during the election.

Trump’s underlings must constantly find ever-more-creative ways of propping up those lies: A “vote fraud” commission; Sean Spicer’s assaults on the media for minimizing Trump’s crowd sizes; the internal hunt for “evidence” of the Obama wiretap; and so forth. But the Russia probe persists. It plainly nags at Trump because he believes it undercuts his legitimacy. Sessions and Comey have both failed to make it go away. He is reportedly raging about it. And Comey hasn’t even told his side of the story in public yet.

...

 

[JMarie]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

As humor often helps in times of exasperation, here's a joke to lighten the mood:

An airplane was about to crash. There were 4 passengers on board, but only 3 parachutes. The first passenger said, "I am Steph Curry the best NBA basketball player. The Warriors and my millions of fans need me, and I can't afford to die." So he took the first pack and left the plane. The second passenger, Donald Trump, said, "I am the newly-elected US President, and I am the smartest President in American history, so my people don't want me to die." He took the second pack and jumped out of the plane. The third passenger, the Pope, said to the fourth passenger, a 10 year old schoolboy, "My son, I am old and don't have many years left, you have more years ahead, so I will sacrifice my life and let you have the last parachute." The little boy said: "That's ok, Your Holiness, there's a parachute left for you. America's smartest president took my schoolbag."

Except Trump would never say he was the smartest President in American history.  He would claim to be the smartest President EVER!

[CTRLZero]

18 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“Trump doesn’t respect democratic procedure and finds it to be something that gets in his way,” Ben-Ghiat said. “The blaming of others is very typical of autocrats, because they have difficulty listening to a reality that doesn’t coincide with their version of it. It’s part of the authoritarian temperament to blame others when things aren’t working.”

This article really clarified what I suspected of Trump all along, but find difficult to articulate.  Thanks for posting this, @GreyhoundFan.

[fraurosena]

30 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

His need for a show of his 'authority' is getting even more ridiculous.

http://crooksandliars.com/2017/06/trump-holds-bogus-signing-ceremony-pretend

  Hide contents

 

The tweets in this article are magnificent - worth clicking for the whole thing.

But he's definitely getting battier.

Ok, it's not the end of the week yet, and we still have Rogers' and Comey's testimonies to come, but surely this WUT cannot be trumped.

So, I hereby grant this the WUT OF THE WEEK award.

 

[onekidanddone]

29 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Maybe he'll ditch Sessions too (that would make me smile): "Trump is now raging at Jeff Sessions. This hints at a deeply unsettling pattern."

 

Read Robert Graves two books  I Claudius and Claudius the King. The emperor is turning on his people.  It can only get more ugly and if I were Sessions, I wouldn't eat any food offered to him by TT.

[sawasdee]

@fraurosena Love Robert Graves - have both books! And the fantastic serialisation from the seventies with Derek Jacobi as Claudius - a gift from a clever friend!

And yes, Sessions - and maybe Gorsuch, now - AVOID FRUIT from any of TT's family......

ETA And I feel so honoured to get the WUT of the Week Award!

[fraurosena]

3 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

@fraurosena Love Robert Graves - have both books! And the fantastic serialisation from the seventies with Derek Jacobi as Claudius - a gift from a clever friend!

And yes, Sessions - and maybe Gorsuch, now - AVOID FRUIT from any of TT's family......

Ah, yes, I do like those books too. Oh, and remember John Hurt as Caligula in that tv series! Unforgettable.

But I don't want to take credit where it isn't due: it wasn't me posting about the books... it was @onekidanddone 

[fraurosena]

By Rufus!

He's going to be LIVE TWEETING during Comey's testimony...

 

Please, please, please let this be true!  

[sawasdee]

Plum Line in today's WaPo is on fire.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/06/06/trump-is-now-raging-at-jeff-sessions-this-hints-at-a-deeply-unsettling-pattern/?utm_term=.f5d2fbfad92d

As is the NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/opinion/the-lawless-presidency.html?_r=0

They've stopped pulling any punches. It feels as though they are gearing up for a fullout onslaught on Congress to act.

Please let that be so......

[47of74]

8 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Ah, yes, I do like those books too. Oh, and remember John Hurt as Caligula in that tv series! Unforgettable.

But I don't want to take credit where it isn't due: it wasn't me posting about the books... it was @onekidanddone 

And now we have Orange Caligula.  (Which sounds like a bad drink). 

2 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

By Rufus!

He's going to be LIVE TWEETING during Comey's testimony...

 

Please, please, please let this be true!  

Oh boy.  That ought to be interesting.  That ought to be interesting when man-baby's rantings get used against him later on.  Hopefully people will screenshot his tweeted diarrhoea in case Orange Caligula decides to delete the tweets later on.

[formergothardite]

4 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

By Rufus!

He's going to be LIVE TWEETING during Comey's testimony...

 

Please, please, please let this be true!  

If this happens it will be truly amazing. I guess we should be happy he spends most of his time watching television and tweeting instead of learning how to get his crazy policies passed. 

[sawasdee]

An interesting article on the moral dilemma of continuing to serve in the TT's administration.....

https://newrepublic.com/article/143101/dear-trump-appointees-quit-jobs-lose-souls

Spoiler

Quote

Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Dear Trump Appointees: Quit Your Jobs or Lose Your Souls

For those who made a moral calculation in joining the administration, the time to reconsider has arrived.

By Brian Beutler

June 6, 2017

In the immediate aftermath of last year’s election—before anyone could know for sure  how thuggishly the Trump transition would conduct itself, or how resistant the president-elect would be to running the government in the public interest—large swaths of the conservative professional class faced a moral quandary. “It’s safe to assume that the figures who denounced [Donald Trump] most vocally will not be in line for key positions,” wrote conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. “But for others, especially the many younger public servants who would normally staff a Republican administration, a hard question looms: If they fear how Trump might govern, can they in good conscience work for him?”

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Douthat, among others, argued persuasively that this reluctant class of public servants, professional climbers, and experienced hands should agree to join the administration precisely because Trump was an object of fear—but only if they were prepared at some point to quit in protest. If the presidency descended beyond a gray zone of morally questionable leadership into a realm of lawlessness and corruption, “then there will be an obligation not to serve, but to resign.”

Six months later, we have very clearly entered that realm. On Monday, the conservative legal scholar Jack Goldsmith, who served in George W. Bush’s Department of Justice, wondered on Twitter, “How much can *executive branch officials* indulge the presumption of regularity in their work? And: To the extent that they can’t, how long do they continue to serve?”

Trump officials’ answers to those questions will differ depending on their positions, but the number of them who can claim their continued service is morally requisite is dwindling rapidly by the day.

.......

Trump endangers the country with ad hoc policy and then makes liars and collaborators of the people who agreed to work for them. The Rosensteins and Mattises of the administration should be asking themselves whether they could do more good by resigning and blowing the whistle than they can by filling positions Trump can’t easily clog with loyalists.

........

 

The criticism is getting more overt, and more demanding of conscience of those in the administration.

The literate part of the fourth estate is doing its job.

[GrumpyGran]

Can't drive right now so sending the hubby out for lots of wine and snacks. Why do I feel like I need a seat belt and one of those pull-down bars for my couch? I feel like something "unpresidented" is coming. He may tweet himself into oblivion!

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, sawasdee said:

And yes, Sessions - and maybe Gorsuch, now - AVOID FRUIT from any of TT's family......

Gorsuch?  What did he do?

[sawasdee]

@onekidanddoneHe has suggested that the courts do not necessarily follow the president's orders - he called the TT's criticism of judges 'disheartening' - that's enough to go in the disloyal column!

[GreyhoundFan]

Wow, if he does indeed live tweet on Thursday, I think his attorneys are going to need the industrial vat-sized version of Maalox with Xanax chasers.

 

Another good one from Jennifer Rubin: "Trump’s freaking out, and it’s only Tuesday"

Spoiler

If one measures President Trump’s emotional state by the number of early morning tweets, or the number of exclamation points and all-capitalized words, then he seems to be, well, losing it. New criticism on multiple fronts seems to have triggered his most recent meltdown.

Since the terrorist mayhem in London, Trump has been harshly condemned for attacking the mayor of London. He chose to double down with: “Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his ‘no reason to be alarmed’ statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!” He has been taunted for invoking the travel ban in the middle of a tragedy (that may or may not involve immigrants) — and giving away that it is a travel ban. (In his retort, he insisted on using “TRAVEL BAN” — all caps, a “tell” that he’s under stress.) And he has been blasted for the slow pace of his nominations, which leaves hundreds of positions unfilled and which courts danger if a disaster strikes in an area for whom he has not bothered to nominate anyone. (“Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors. They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS! Want approvals.” Again, with the all-capital letters?)

After laughable TV appearances, his flacks Sebastian Gorka and Kellyanne Conway were ridiculed for saying their boss’s words shouldn’t be a big deal. That argument didn’t work in the Muslim TRAVEL BAN (sorry, I couldn’t resist) litigation; it likely won’t pass the straight-face test with the majority of voters.

Trying to tease out Trump’s motivations or anticipate his blowups is a risky proposition. That said, he seems to be unusually volatile on an unusually wide array of issues. Might it be that he’s just a teensy bit nervous about former FBI director James B. Comey’s Thursday testimony? He has good reason to be.

No matter how hard Trump tries to deflect attention, Comey’s testimony, which the big four broadcast TV networks are expected to carry live, is at least as anticipated as was Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi hearing. (Even Anita Hill’s testimony “only” involved a Supreme Court nominee, now-Justice Clarence Thomas, not the president.) In the case of Comey, however, the witness is on offense — prepared to tell a damaging story — and not merely fencing with incompetent blowhards on a committee. Moreover, with Comey we don’t know what he is going to say or even what topics he will discuss. Will he stick to the tale of possible obstruction or also delve into evidence of collusion? Listen, no matter how intensely Republicans followed Benghazi, not even the most partisan Republicans thought testimony was going to bring down a president. But Comey’s testimony does have that potential.\

The critical components needed for a bombshell story are here: The country’s near-undivided attention will focus on a witness with powerful but unknown ammunition against a sitting president. Unfortunately for Trump, that witness has years of experience testifying before Congress and a Jimmy Stewart, aw-shucks demeanor. On top of that, he reportedly has notes on his most explosive recollections.

Comey might be one of the few people over whom Trump has zero leverage. He cannot fire Comey again, nor threaten him (without proving the obstruction charge). Comey cannot be bought off or sued. Trump’s usual tricks fail him here. His own credibility is so atrocious that if it’s his word against the notes-bearing ex-FBI chief, it won’t be a contest.

You can see why Trump might be a wee bit on edge this week. During the campaign, he would get caught in an endless loop  — outrageous statement, followed by scorching news coverage, followed by Trump’s doubling down. But then Trump could create a new outrage of equal of greater newsiness — or simply holler, “Crooked Hillary!” Neither of those seem to be plausible tactics now. Trump is trapped, in other words, and — as more than one reader has observed — is lashing out like a wounded beast. If you think it’s bad now, just wait until Thursday.