Trump 20: Sauron Doesn't Seem So Bad After All

[fraurosena]

Press barred from Trump fundraiser

Quote

White House reporters were shut out of covering what was billed as President Trump's first re-election fundraiser on Wednesday night at his Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. Most of the money raised at the event went to the Republican National Committee.

The White House decided late in the day to open the event to the press, only to rescind the decision an hour before the event, claiming "logistical concerns."

Mr. Trump's motorcade -- on its way to the fundraiser -- was met by a group of protesters who chanted "shame" as the motorcade passed them. 

A Republican source told CBS News that the fundraiser is expected to pull in roughly $10 million dollar for the GOP. Individual donors forked up $35,000 to attend the event, and for $100,000 an individual scored a designation as a member of the host committee. 

Senior adviser Jared Kushner, First Lady Melania Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, and advisers Omarosa Manigault and Kellyanne Conway were spotted by a GOP source mingling at the fundraiser pre-reception. 

Former President Obama kept some fundraisers closed to the press — of his 36 fundraisers in 2016, 15 of them were closed, and several of those were held at private homes, as opposed to public venues like the Trump hotel. However, tensions between reporters and the Trump administration flared this month, as the White House has limited access and reduced the number of briefings, with the majority of them being held off-camera. 

On top of acrimonious exchanges between members of the White House press corps and press secretary Sean Spicer and his deputy Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president himself has aired his grievances with the press repeatedly on Twitter this week, tweeting false accusations of "FAKE NEWS" at media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post. 

Mr. Trump did not take questions on Monday during his appearance alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and will not take questions on Thursday during a joint statement with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. A White House official could not explain to reporters Wednesday why the world leaders would not be answering questions at the joint appearances. 

Blech. That just conjured up a GOT image of the presidunce doing a walk of shame from the WH to the Capitol I did not want in my head. 

 

I find it increasingly worrying the way the press is being side-lined by this administration. This authoritarian rule we've been talking about is becoming more and more close to reality with every day that passes under this presidunce.

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena -- that fundraiser chaps my hide. Here's what the local news station (and AP) had to say about it. "Trump rakes in $10 million at first re-election fundraiser"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was whisked a few blocks from the White House to the Trump hotel on Wednesday night for his first re-election fundraiser, where he raised an estimated $10 million behind closed doors.

Some 40 months ahead of the 2020 election, the president held court for about two hours at a $35,000-per-plate donor event at the Trump International Hotel. About 300 people were expected to attend the event, which was expected to raise about $10 million, said Lindsay Jancek, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Security was tight at the hotel, where guests in long gowns and crisp suits began arriving around 5 p.m. But the event also drew critics. The president’s motorcade was greeted by dozens of protesters, who hoisted signs with slogans like “Health care not tax cuts” and chanted “Shame! Shame!”

Among the fundraiser’s attendees: Longtime GOP fundraiser-turned television commentator Mica Mosbacher and Florida lobbyist and party financier Brian Ballard were among the fundraiser’s attendees.

Breaking the tradition of his predecessor, Trump didn’t allow reporters into the event — despite an announcement earlier in the day that a pool of reporters would be allowed in to hear the president’s remarks.

“It’s a political event and they’ve chosen to keep that separate,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said when asked why the event is closed to the media.

After reporters complained, Sanders announced that the president’s remarks would be opened to the press — only to reverse herself hours later.

Sanders said there was nothing unusual about raising political cash so early.

“He’s raising money for the party,” she said. “I don’t think that’s abnormal for any president.”

Sanders’ statement that Trump is raising cash for the GOP told only part of the story, though.

The first cut of the money raised goes to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. The rest gets spread among the RNC and other various Republican entities. Having multiple beneficiaries is what allowed Trump to ask for well above the usual $5,400 per-donor maximum for each election cycle.

Those contribution limits are likely to change because this fundraiser is so early that new donation limits for 2020 have not been set by the Federal Election Commission.

Trump’s hotel has become a place to see and be seen by current and former Trump staffers, as well as lobbyists, journalist and tourists. Several Washington influencers popped into the hotel’s lobby even though they didn’t plan to attend the event.

Several bar patrons also expressed enthusiasm about the unusually lucrative fundraiser so soon after the last election.

Trump’s decision to hold a fundraiser at his own hotel again raised issues about his continued financial interest in the companies he owns. Unlike previous presidents who have entirely divested from their business holdings before taking office, Trump moved his global business empire assets into a trust that he can take control of at any time. That means that when his properties — including his Washington hotel — do well, he stands to make money.

Trump technically leases the hotel from the General Services Administration, and profits are supposed to go to an account of the corporate entity that holds the lease, Trump Old Post Office LLC. It remains unclear what might happen to any profits from the hotel after Trump leaves office, or whether they will be transferred to Trump at that time.

Under campaign finance rules, neither the hotel nor the Trump Organization that operates it can donate the space. It must be rented at fair-market value and paid for by either the Trump campaign, the RNC or both.

First-time candidate Trump got a late start on fundraising in 2016, holding his first big-ticket donor event only five months before Election Day. This time, he’s started unusually early.

Trump’s historically early campaigning comes with benefits and challenges.

In the first three months of this year, the Trump campaign raised more than $7 million, through small donations and the sale of Trump-themed merchandise such as the ubiquitous, red “Make America Great Again” ball caps.

The RNC also is benefiting from the new president’s active campaigning, having raised about $62 million through the end of last month. The party has raised more online this year than it did in all of 2016 — a testament to Trump’s success in reaching small donors.

Trump’s re-election money helps pay for his political rallies. He’s held five so far, and campaign director Michael Glassner says those events help keep him connected to his base of voters.

The constant politicking, however, means it is challenging for government employees to avoid inappropriately crossing ethical lines. Some watchdog groups have flagged White House employee tweets that veer into campaign territory. White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters says the employees work closely with lawyers to avoid pitfalls.

Walters also says the White House takes care to make sure that Trump’s political events and travel — including the Wednesday fundraiser — are paid for by the campaign and other political entities.

___

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

The only campaign even I want to see is the one that campaigns to put the TT in an orange jumpsuit.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump has given us no reason to believe he knows anything about health-care policy"

Spoiler

There was a revealing detail buried in the New York Times’s report on the Senate Republicans’ Tuesday evening trip to the White House to talk health care with President Trump.

“A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan,” the Times’s Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin reported, “and seemed especially confused when a moderate Republican complained that opponents of the bill would cast it as a massive tax break for the wealthy, according to an aide who received a detailed readout of the exchange.”

“Mr. Trump said he planned to tackle tax reform later,” the report continued — suggesting that the president was unaware that a key component of the Senate plan is the elimination of taxes that, under Obamacare, helped cover the costs of insuring poorer Americans. The elimination of those taxes is one of the reasons that the bill has such a significant impact on Medicaid — which itself is a central part of the Senate bill.

That anecdote quickly wormed its way under Trump’s skin. He tweeted about it twice (albeit indirectly) on Wednesday morning.

...

It’s certainly the case that the Times report relies on the impression one senator was left with after the meeting. But, that said, there’s no indication that Trump “know the subject well.”

The bill that’s on the table in the Senate, like the House Republican effort before it, bears no resemblance to the promises that Trump made on the campaign trail. Trump pledged to protect social safety net programs and to cover everybody while bringing costs down, promises that were obviously mutually unattainable at the outset.

But the Senate bill doesn’t do any of those things: According to the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis, it cuts planned Medicaid funding and would see a net reduction in the number of insured, in part because costs for older Americans would spike.

...

His campaign website had a policy paper presenting his plan for health care, but it was itself at odds with the rhetoric Trump used when he was discussing the issue at campaign events. It’s quite possibly the result of a dynamic with which we’ve grown familiar: Trump freewheeling and casual when speaking from the cuff, detailed and constrained when reading words that were prepared for him.

Trump did regularly argue in interviews and during rallies that one problem was that insurance couldn’t be sold across state lines, which his site’s plan includes as its second point. That wasn’t even included in the House bill, forcing Trump to assure people that it would be added later.

...

Other presidents would by now have sat down with members of the media to discuss the sweeping policy they were advocating, allowing the press to probe and question the proposal and, from the president’s standpoint, allow him to make the case for what was being presented.

Trump has not offered the media a chance to do so. He has held one full news conference as president — and only three in the past year. He has not had an interview with any outlet except Fox News in nearly two months. The last such interview in which he participated was not what might be described as hard-hitting.

...

If Trump is intimately familiar with the details in the Senate bill — policies that are significantly at odds with his campaign rhetoric — there’s no real way for us to know it.

There’s probably a reason that Trump hasn’t given many recent interviews. If he’s not familiar with a policy, interviews are a good way to suss that out. When he discussed the House bill with CBS’s John Dickerson in May, Trump promised, after being asked about it, that the bill would be tweaked to mandate coverage for preexisting conditions. That ended up not being the case.

This question of Trump’s engagement extends beyond health care. The Times reported in February that Trump was incensed when he found out that White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon set aside a seat for himself on the National Security Council. Trump was “[angry] that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed,” one week into his administration. He’s given over control of the conflict in Afghanistan to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. He criticized the Justice Department for crafting a revised travel ban aimed at passing court scrutiny — a revision that, at the end of the day, was signed into effect by Trump.

Trump emerged on the political scene making a case rooted in emotion, not in policy savvy. On the campaign trail, he was famously uninterested in the details of his proposals, telling reporters at one point that only the press cared about such things. The natural assumption that one would make about Trump would be that he has little interest in or awareness of the details of legislation, and the evidence at hand reinforces that. The stretch, in this case, is to believe his new assertion that he “know the subject well.”

When the House bill passed in May, Trump held a celebratory ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. It wasn’t the bill that was important, clearly, it was simply that Trump was able to say that his side had carried the day.

His tweets on Wednesday morning culminated in a similar rallying cry. He wants “victory for the U.S.” with this health-care legislation.

Or at least, victory for “us” — his administration and his party.

I would like to email the WaPo to correct the title of the article, it should be: "Trump has given us no reason to believe he knows anything about health-care policy anything."

Edited to add -- sorry, I can't turn off the strike out.

[fraurosena]

Good grief. The tangerine toddler's twitter tirade today:

So, he doesn't watch any more, huh? Well, I don't think he watches any less either!

 

Please, read the comments. They are hilarious. 

[47of74]

17 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Good grief. The tangerine toddler's twitter tirade today:

So, he doesn't watch any more, huh? Well, I don't think he watches any less either!

 

Please, read the comments. They are hilarious. 

Mika got back at Trumplethinskin

Spoiler

Brzezinski swiftly responded to Trump’s personal attack with one of her own, tweeting an image of the back of a cereal box labeled “made for little hands.”

Trump’s opponents have long talked about the size of his hands to insult him, starting with Spy Magazine editor Graydon Carter’s frequent references in the 1980s to Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian.”

 

[Destiny]

I'm not a fan of Morning Joe and I don't think I would recognise either of the hosts if I walked past them on the street, but I'm honestly appalled at those tweets. No one should be treated like that by the president of the United States.

I'm wondering whatever happened to Melania's anti cyber bullying campaign. Perchance she should start with her husband.

[fraurosena]

18 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Mika got back at Trumplethinskin

  Hide contents

Brzezinski swiftly responded to Trump’s personal attack with one of her own, tweeting an image of the back of a cereal box labeled “made for little hands.”

Trump’s opponents have long talked about the size of his hands to insult him, starting with Spy Magazine editor Graydon Carter’s frequent references in the 1980s to Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian.”

 

I thought this comment said it all...

[GreyhoundFan]

I liked MSNBC's statement:

Spoiler

In response to Thursday's tweets, MSNBC said: “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”

Yeah, Melania isn't going to take action on the biggest bully of them all.

[fraurosena]

Well, well, well... I wonder what prompted this defective comment from Lyin' Ryan?

 

My guess would be self-preservation. 

[GrumpyGran]

The responses to that Twitter tirade were great! He was probably upset about his buddy Sean Hannity inadvertently reminding everyone watching FOX about that possible Russian hooker tape.

I also think Macron is setting him up. Really, how hard is it? I wonder if anyone will talk him out of it. They do realize that this is just another opportunity for him to look foolish, right?

And he invited the Cubs back to the WH? Yeah, so he could get a Cubs shirt with HIS number on it. I can see where this is going. Failure at being an athlete, so will now collect as many winning team jerseys, etc as possible, have them framed and then hang them in his hotels and golf resorts. *sigh*

5 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Well, well, well... I wonder what prompted this defective comment from Lyin' Ryan?

 

My guess would be self-preservation. 

"Obviously"? Whoa, there buddy. We do know you. The only thing obvious to me about you is that you are hiding a tail in those pants.

[candygirl200413]

Malaria's comment about her husband

Quote

"As the First Lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder," the first lady's communications director Stephanie Grisham said in a statement to CNN when asked about the tweets.

So she'll never talk about cyberbullying ever First lady Melania Trump stands by the President's tweets

[formergothardite]

My representatives' offices have been floundering when I have called to ask why they are staying silent when the president decided to call someone low I.Q. as an insult. I told them I had a daughter who is developmentally delayed and that it is not okay for the president to use insults like that and that her congressmen should be standing up for her and people like her and that the people who stay silent are no better than the people who say stuff like that. 

[fraurosena]

32 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

Malaria's comment about her husband

So she'll never talk about cyberbullying ever First lady Melania Trump stands by the President's tweets

I so hope that's not a typo! 

Does she ever talk though? I mean, after that disastrous interview during the campaign where she was constantly looking over the interviewers shoulder at someone (TT maybe) for confirmation she was doing alright, she's never said a thing in public, has she? The only times you see her, she looks just like a mannequin, with a dead look in her eyes and a fake smile plastered on her stony face. 

[fraurosena]

It's been confirmed. The bigliest buddies in the whole wide world are going to meet!

Trump to meet with Putin at the G-20 summit

 

Quote

President Trump will hold his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, White House officials said Thursday.

“We have no specific agenda,” national security adviser H.R. McMaster told reporters during a briefing on the trip, which includes a stop in Warsaw. “It’s whatever the president wants to talk about.”

The Kremlin also announced a meeting between the two leaders, but neither side offered details.

“They will meet” on the sidelines of the G-20, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, but added: “If we are speaking about preparations for a separate meeting with Trump, no preparations are being made for any separate meeting at the moment. There is no progress yet.”

The face-to-face conversation would come amid an ongoing FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials during last year's U.S. election. U.S. intelligence officials have said that Russian operatives stole emails and other documents from leading Democrats and released them publicly to embarrass Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump.

Trump has denied that he and his top campaign aides colluded with Russian operatives.

Gary Cohn, Trump's chief economic adviser, said the White House expected the meeting to be a formal bilateral one, rather than an informal “pull-aside” conversation. Trump will meet with several other world leaders similarly, officials said, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“Our relationship with Russia is no different than any other country,” McMaster said. He said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who visited Moscow in April and met with Putin, has played a leading role in the bilateral relationship.

“We’re engaged in wide-ranging discussions about irritants and problems in the relationship and areas to explore common interests and opportunities,” McMaster said.

McMaster said Trump instructed his national security team to do three things regarding Russia — confronting its “destabilizing behavior,” including cyberthreats and political subversion; deterring Moscow from a confrontation that could lead to “a major power war”; and fostering areas of cooperation, including on North Korea and Syria.

I do have to confess to looking forward to how this meeting will play out. 

And as to the bolded:

Bwaha-hahahahaha!  No different than any other country... except that the other countries didn't meddle in the elections, but that's just nit-picking, right?

Awww, and they're in need of some couples counselling, to work on those irritants and problems in the relationship and explore common interests and opportunities. How cute! I'm sure they'll kiss and hug it out in the end...

[GrumpyGran]

38 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

It's been confirmed. The bigliest buddies in the whole wide world are going to meet!

Trump to meet with Putin at the G-20 summit

 

I do have to confess to looking forward to how this meeting will play out. 

And as to the bolded:

Bwaha-hahahahaha!  No different than any other country... except that the other countries didn't meddle in the elections, but that's just nit-picking, right?

Awww, and they're in need of some couples counselling, to work on those irritants and problems in the relationship and explore common interests and opportunities. How cute! I'm sure they'll kiss and hug it out in the end...

How will they hide their love affair from prying eyes? 

[GreyhoundFan]

Go, Jennifer Rubin!: "Why are these tweets different from any other?"

Spoiler

By now most plugged-in news watchers know that with his health-care bill going down in flames, the North Korea crisis percolating, a special prosecutor investigating both the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia and President Trump’s own very public attempts to obstruct the investigation, Trump chooses to tweet two obnoxious, gross and misogynistic tweets in retort to criticism from “Morning Joe’s” two anchors. You can care to read them if you like; we find it unnecessary to amplify them further. His spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asked about the tweets on the administration’s state TV, Fox News, blithely declared that he “will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media or liberal elites in Hollywood or anywhere else.” The president is once again a victim of bullying, the poor dear. For the umpteenth time, we are obliged to ask what this suggests and whether it matters.

This time, maybe wearied from the routine and quite certain the president’s popularity is sinking like a stone, notable Republicans told him to clam up. Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.) tweeted: “Please just stop. This isn’t normal and it’s beneath the dignity of your office.” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) expressed a similar sentiment: “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” And Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), whose vote Trump needs to pass a health-care bill, responded, “This has to stop – we all have a job – 3 branches of gov’t and media. We don’t have to get along, but we must show respect and civility.” Several Republican House members chimed in as well. So far no word from GOP leadership, which was pleading for more civility in the wake of the horrific shooting of GOP House members at a baseball field.

Update: House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) did speak up, but in the mildest way possible. “Obviously, I don’t see that as an appropriate comment,” Ryan said. “What we’re trying to do around here is improve the tone and the civility of the debate. And this obviously doesn’t help do that.” Ryan, let’s not forget, stuck with Trump as the line of defamed, mocked and vilified victims of his verbal abuse grew longer. Like with so many other Republicans now morally compromised, any criticism he might mumble underscores the lack of moral stature within the GOP.

President Trump’s latest outbursts are not part of a brilliant strategy. He gains nothing, at a time when his grasp of his job is openly questioned. He gains no allies in the health-care debate. He reminds the country that Republicans who chose to ignore or rationalize this kind of behavior will go down as moral quislings. He reminds us that the conservative evangelicals who embraced him are not exemplars of moral or religious behavior. They are apologists and tribalists who rejoice in his exacting revenge on “elites.” No upside comes from this behavior; it’s the reaction of a man-child who cannot contain his belligerence.

As for Sanders, she joins the legions of those who will do anything, defend anything, justify anything for their moments(s) in the White House. Patriotism, decency, honor? These have no place in their calculus. We need shed no tears when they are humiliated, undercut and eventually fired by their boss. They’ve made their pact with the devil and deserve no sympathy.

If these tweets fortify his base, that speaks volumes about those who would be buoyed by such conduct. But that’s an exercise in diminishing returns. He is shedding support from those who see him for what he is and retain reason and decency in their political judgments.

Does this indicate his mental unfitness to serve? Yes, but there have been dozens of signals he is, as Sasse put it, “not normal.”

What is to be done? We’d applaud if Republican leaders rebuked him in some formal way (a resolution perhaps). But don’t hold your breath. Opponents of the president and defenders of democratic norms and simple decency should fortify themselves and redouble their efforts. They’ve been reminded who is in the Oval Office and the damage he does to our society on a daily basis.

I agree that we can't hold our breath for Repug leaders to do something formal.

[fraurosena]

The latest from Keith Olbermann:

 

Alas, it's as you say, @GreyhoundFan, we can't hold our breaths waiting for it to happen soon. Although I do find it a little heartening to see that there are gradually more R's speaking out against this conduct. So, whilst still breathing - and often sighing - I will keep my fingers crossed it will - eventually - lead to something more formal.

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

So she'll never talk about cyberbullying ever First lady Melania Trump stands by the President's tweets

 If Melania speaks out against him, he will punish her, or their son, for her disloyalty. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The creeping authoritarianism of Trump’s attacks on the free press"

Spoiler

“Some of the Fake News Media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare,” President Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “Wrong, I know the subject well & want victory for U.S.”

Fine, Mr. President, there’s an easy way to prove your asserted knowledge: Have a news conference. Answer questions that aren’t softballs tossed by your friends at Fox News.

In the age of Trump, some of the president’s deviations from democratic and political norms slap you in the face. Attacks on federal judges for decisions that don’t go his way. Attacks on news organizations for articles that portray him in a bad light. Misstatement piled on misstatement. Nepotism run amok. Transparency abandoned, from disclosure of tax returns to release of White House visitor records.

But other shifts, equally audacious and equally troubling, take a more subtle form. They unfold slowly until, perhaps too late, the change becomes blindingly apparent. So it is with Trump’s dealings with the media, and the effective disappearance of public accountability. Authoritarianism does not announce itself. It creeps up on you.

The president has had a single formal news conference — in February, 168 days after his previous such encounter with the media. At this point in their presidencies, Barack Obama had held seven; George W. Bush three; Bill Clinton seven; George H.W. Bush 15.

Like his predecessors, Trump has also answered a few questions at joint news conferences with foreign leaders — although Trump has had a smaller number of such events than his predecessors and, unlike them, has made a habit of directing questions to friendly conservative news outlets. Until, that is, Monday’s joint appearance with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at which the leaders of the world’s two largest democracies took zero questions.

And so, all the fuss over whether the regular White House press briefing will be televised misses the more fundamental point of presidential inaccessibility. The practice of live on-camera briefings is far better, but it’s not as if this practice is chiseled in stone; it didn’t start until the Clinton administration.

The medium is not the message — the message is. What’s more important than video is having spokesmen capable of speaking with authority on the president’s positions — not the relentless incuriosity of Trump’s flacks, who seem never to have gathered his thoughts on topics from Russian hacking to climate change.

What’s more important is having spokesmen who use the briefing as more than a platform for irresponsible media-bashing, such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s magnificently ironic complaint about “the constant barrage of fake news directed at this president,” followed by approvingly citing (“whether it’s accurate or not, I don’t know”) an anti-CNN video by fake news huckster James O’Keefe.

And what’s most important is the opportunity to question the president himself. A president automatically commands airtime; this president, through his Twitter feed, automatically commands attention. But publicity without accountability is the antithesis of democracy. Reporters questioning elected officials serve in this sense as surrogates for the public.

Remember back when Trump and his campaign were busy blasting Hillary Clinton for failing to hold a news conference.

As for other ways in which Trump has made himself accessible, or not? Well, he went 41 days between interviews — from May 13 with Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro (“Your agenda is not getting out, because people are caught up on the [James B.] Comey issue, and ridiculous stuff”) to June 23 with Fox News’s Ainsley Earhardt (on Trump’s bogus suggestion there might be tapes of Comey, she said “That was a smart way to make sure he stayed honest in those hearings”).

But Pirro and Earhardt looked like Woodward and Bernstein compared with “Fox & Friends’” Pete Hegseth, who pummeled Trump on June 25 with questions such as “Who’s been your biggest opponent? Has it been Democrats resisting? Has it been the fake-news media?Has it been deep-state leaks?”

Wow. Who’s a snowflake now?

This isn’t journalism — it’s a pillow fight. And the beauty of submitting to this faux-interviewing is its perfect circularity: Trump gets to make his remarks, coddled by Fox News. Then White House press secretary Sean Spicer, with the cameras not rolling, gets to cite them as a shield against providing further information: “I believe that the president’s remarks on ‘Fox & Friends’ this morning reflect the president’s position.”

Is this what our democracy has been reduced to? We in the media can’t make Trump take our questions. But supinely accepting his silence threatens to normalize the distinctly abnormal.

We have to keep reminding ourselves that this is not normal.

[LeftCoastLurker]

If there was only some legal way in which "we the people" could sue for removal of the sitting president. That his actions are such that he could cause harm to us, "we the people" with his actions/inaction/words, etc...

[GreyhoundFan]

Just now, Cartmann99 said:

 If Melania speaks out against him, he will punish her, or their son, for her disloyalty. 

I have no doubt that their prenup includes language forbidding her from ever saying a negative word about him publicly. He'd be the type to take custody of Barron just to be nasty.

[candygirl200413]

@fraurosena  Nope! my mom is eastern african and one day we were watching the news and she said Malaria purely by accident but it stuck with our family.

 

 

 

[Mela99]

I just can't understand the "BUT BUT BUT he's getting attacked! " 

[fraurosena]

This article from Slate mirrors my sentiments on the presidunce exactly:

Trump No Longer Seems Able to Hide His Raw Misogyny. Good.

Spoiler

The President of the United States began this morning as he often does, tweeting juvenile insults at the news media. But even by Donald Trump standards, today’s jabs at TV hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were unusually gross. Taken together, they read: “I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joespeaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

There’s a lot you can say about these tweets; among other things, it’s striking that Trump thinks that when journalists seek access to him, it means they like him. But I was most struck by Trump’s raw misogyny. Obviously, that’s not because Trumpian misogyny is anything new, but because, from the time he was inaugurated until this week, he’s mostly been holding it in.

Trump does not get much credit for being disciplined, but for the last five months, he’s mostly checked his tendencies to leeringly appraise women’s looks, at least in public. (Vanity Fair did report in April that during a visit by the Japanese Prime Minister, “the president told an acquaintance that he was obsessed with the translator’s breasts.”) So far, there’s been no reported pussy-grabbing in the Oval Office, no stumbling in women’s changing rooms or fantasizing aloud about female subordinates on their knees. Instead Trump, like other Republicans before him, has sublimated his misogyny into policies: expanding the global gag rule, sabotaging federal family planning programs, eroding enforcement of the law against gender discrimination in education.

But Trump appears to be feeling a lot of strain. He’s obsessed with the Russia probe, and a recent Washington Post story reported that his friends “privately worry about his health, noting that he appears to have gained weight in recent months and that the darkness around his eyes reveals his stress.” When you’re under pressure, it can be harder to hide your true self. And Trump’s true self is a pig.

On Tuesday, Trump interrupted a phone call with Ireland’s Prime Minister to sexually harass an Irish journalist named Caitriona Perry. Calling her forward, he said, “And where are you from? Go ahead. Come here, come here. Where are you from? We have all of this beautiful Irish press.” She stepped forward awkwardly and he looked her over. Then, returning to the call, he said with a smirk, “She has a nice smile on her face so I bet she treats you well.”

Trump’s insult of Brzezinski is the other side of this connoisseurship. To Trump, women’s worth lies in their fuckability; it’s why he’s praised his own daughter by saying he’d sleep with her if they weren’t related. Trump’s tweet was meant to make Brzezinski seem grotesque and pathetic, a failure in the struggle to remain attractive—the only struggle that, in his eyes, really matters for women. (Another Vanity Fair story alleged that he only let his third wife, Melania, have a baby on the condition that she would “get her body back.”) The reference to Brzezinski “bleeding badly,” of course, also recalls his claim that Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her whatever” when she aggressively questioned him during a debate; he instinctively projects his own revulsion toward menstruation onto women who threaten him.

I’m not sure that even well-intentioned men understand how relentlessly degrading this presidency is for many women. Having a man who does not recognize the humanity of more than half the population in a position of such power is a daily insult; it never really goes away. Perhaps this is why many women found the TV version of The Handmaid’s Tale so resonant, even though Trump, the former owner of a casino strip club, is the last person one can imagine instituting a Calvinist theocracy. Gilead’s fictional dystopia captures our constant incredulous horror at finding ourselves ruled by thuggish, unaccountable woman-haters who appear to revel in their own impunity.

If there is the barest sliver of consolation, it’s that Trump appears almost as miserable and anxiety-ridden as we are. He’s losing the tiny bit of control he had. It’s better for Trump to show us all who he really is than to let his lackeys pretend he’s remotely worthy of his office. Every time he tweets, he reveals his presidency as a disgusting farce. Let’s hope he keeps doing it.

 

[fraurosena]

7 minutes ago, Mela99 said:

I just can't understand the "BUT BUT BUT he's getting attacked! " 

It's all part of his standard and incredibly childish 'back at you' response:

"I'm not a puppet, YOU'RE a puppet."

"I'm not attacking, I'm being attacked!"

His sycophants are just mimicking the presidunce. It's as the Dutch saying goes: "Those you associate with contaminate you".