Trump 21: Tweeting Us Into the Apocalypse

[Audrey2]

A couple of thoughts (and when I talk about age, I'm going to use gross rounding):

1. Here is Trump's connection to fundamentalism: Both prefer to enable kidults instead of teaching their offspring to be responsible, fully functional adults. At age 35, one can run for President. At age 35, military careerists should be improving their rank. At 35, people in the corporate world are rising through the ranks and acquiring more and  a more responsibility. If Trump's 35+ year old son isn't smart enough to realize he is meeting with Russians, both Donald and Jr are to blame. Donald because he's such a control freak he didn't allow his son to grow, and Jr because he's 35+.

2. As the planet warms and ocean waters threaten Mar a Lago, that will be Obama's fault, too, for not eradicating global warming. It will never be Trump's fault-finding he has never learned to take responsibility for his actions or inactions.

5 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Not about the orange menace, but this is a real president: "Jimmy Carter recovering after collapsing from dehydration in Winnipeg, report says"

  Reveal hidden contents

Former president Jimmy Carter was taken to a hospital Thursday for dehydration while in Winnipeg, according to a news report.

The 92-year-old was in Canada helping build a Habitat for Humanity home when he “collapsed,” a volunteer told CBC News, triggering a rush of paramedics and firefighters to assist him. An ambulance took Carter to a hospital.

“President Carter has been working hard all week. He was dehydrated working in the hot sun and has been taken offsite for observation. He encourages everyone to stay hydrated and keep building,” a statement from the Carter Center said.

As a precaution, Carter was transported to St. Boniface General Hospital for re-hydration, and former first lady Rosalynn Carter is with him, the center said.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are the organization’s most prominent supporters, and since 1984 have  built, renovated or repaired almost 4,000 homes globally, according to the nonprofit’s website.

The Carters arrived in Canada this week to build or repair as many as 100 homes across Canada in four days, ending Friday, the organization said.

Carter described a rising concern over housing costs in Canada as a reason to get involved.

“Housing affordability in Canada is at an all-time low. We are proud supporters of Habitat for Humanity and grateful to everyone who is joining us in our efforts to bring affordable housing to families across the country,” Carter said.

Carter announced in 2015 that he was free of a type of melanoma that spread across his brain.

The man is 92 and actually building houses. for the poor. The orange menace is 21 years younger and couldn't actually build something out of legos, much less actual buildings.

No! I love President Carter. I was only a third grader when Reagan was elected, so I don't feel qualified to judge him as a President, but I believe Carter is a great man. I respect his faith as he lives it, rather than preaches it. I respect his work for Habitat and for the various peace talks he's been a part of

*Note: I'm talking about Carter's commitment to his faith, not the Southern Baptist Church. I disagree with that church on many points.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump loves a military parade — it’s one reason he’s heading to Paris"

Spoiler

PARIS — President Trump was not expected to attend France’s Bastille Day, which this year will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War I.

But then he learned there would be a military parade.

French President Emmanuel Macron told Trump in a June 27 phone call about the event, which this year will feature U.S. and French troops marching through the historic streets near the Arc de Triomphe, fighter jets cutting through the skies above, and flags, horses and military equipment on display — the sort of spectacle that Trump wanted to stage at his own inauguration in January.

Trump told Macron he would be there, according to a White House official, and French and U.S. officials rushed to schedule a last-minute trip that will last about 27 hours and include dinner at an opulent restaurant in the Eiffel Tower and a visit to Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb.

The president arrived Thursday and quickly began a fast-paced schedule alongside Macron, who played tour guide at one of the French capital’s most-visited landmarks.

At the Invalides monument, which includes Napoleon’s tomb, Macron described some of the site’s highlights to Trump and first lady Melania Trump. Later, both leaders posed for photographers before entering the French presidential palace for talks.

Before the Trump meetings, Macron held discussions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who both noted their deep policy differences with Trump yet stressed the importance of keeping open dialogue with the White House.

Trump and Macron are political outsiders in the early months of their presidencies, and their relationship has been defined by public confrontations. Trump — who has repeatedly described Paris as dangerous and crime-ridden — clearly favored Macron’s rival in the French election this spring, and Macron’s win seemed to cool the nationalist movement sweeping the globe.

When the two first met in May in Brussels, Macron aggressively shook Trump’s hand and would not let go, later telling a French newspaper that “it was a moment of truth” and that “we must show that we will not make small concessions, even symbolic ones.” Trump hit back in early June when he announced that the United States would pull out of the Paris climate agreement because he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” Macron then defiantly launched a “Make the Planet Great Again” effort.

Macron’s jabs at Trump have been widely applauded in France, where a Pew Research Center poll recently found that only 14 percent of people say they have confidence in Trump.

But administration officials from both countries insist this visit will be a friendly one that is focused on the long relationship between the two nations — especially on the battlefield. In their private discussions, the two leaders are expected to focus heavily on the conflict in Syria and weakening the Islamic State terrorist group.

“It’s the 100th anniversary of the American entry into World War I — it’s a beautiful symbol,” François Heisbourg, a former French national security adviser under presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, said in an interview. “It’s also a reminder to Trump and to those in France that there’s a century of transatlantic history here, and that the not-so-subliminal history is quite strong.”

A senior Trump administration official who briefed reporters on the trip Tuesday echoed that sentiment, commending France for being “far and away one of the largest and strongest military members” in the NATO alliance.

“The fact that we participated in such a major way in World War I, side by side with the French, is a clear parallel to what we’re doing today,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We still live in a dangerous world. We still live in a world that has many, many threats.”

Trump’s whirlwind tour of Paris comes just days after he returned from a trip to Poland and Germany for the Group of 20 summit.

In Paris, Trump made his first visit the U.S. Embassy to meet with diplomats, military members participating in Friday’s parade and military leaders based in Europe. Trump said the bonds between the U.S. and France were “forged in the fires of war.”

Macron, 39, is France’s youngest leader since Napoleon, and some comparisons have been made between the two because of Macron’s quiet and quick consolidation of power and his penchant for displays of grandeur, such as his recent 90-minute address to both houses of Parliament in the opulent Palace of Versailles.

In the evening, Trump, Macron and their wives will dine at Le Jules Verne, a one-Michelin-star-rated restaurant perched high in the Eiffel Tower where the six-course tasting menu costs 230 euros, or $262, per person.

The restaurant is named for the famous 19th-century French author who wrote “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “Around the World in Eighty Days.” Its website proclaims: “One does not come to the Jules Verne by chance. It is a destination that transmits a dream.”

Friday morning will bring the military parade along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees that first caught Trump’s attention. This year’s parade will feature 1,200 people, 211 vehicles, 341 horseback riders and 63 aircraft — and a competing protest march titled “Don’t Let Your Guard Down Against Trump,” which will start from the Place de Clichy, nearly two miles away from where Trump will be seated.

Macron has been sharply criticized across the political spectrum for honoring Trump with this visit. Le Monde, France’s leading newspaper, editorialized that the invitation revealed that Macron “was an attentive student of Machiavelli” and that he “stole from the U.S. president the monopoly on unpredictability.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the erstwhile presidential candidate and leader of the far-left “France Unbowed” party in Parliament, said in an interview with Europe 1 radio that Trump is not welcome.

“The holiday of July 14th is that of the freedom of the French,” Mélenchon said. “Mr. Trump represents NATO and the enslavement of our nation to an international coalition in which it plays no role.”

Leila Charef, co-director of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, called Trump’s visit “a shocking symbol,” especially following Macron’s recent push to enshrine certain elements of France’s anti-terrorism “state of emergency” regimen into normal French law. The “state of emergency” went into place after the November 2015 terrorist attacks that killed 130 in and near Paris. The measures were intended to temporarily expand French authorities’ ability to investigate terrorism plots, but they have led to thousands of warrantless arrests and “weigh on the way Muslims are treated and perceived in France,” Charef said.

“It would be useful for good, anti-discrimination practices to circulate — not bad speeches,” she said.

Despite the angst among some about Trump’s visit, it was largely being overshadowed on the streets of Paris by Bastille Day, which marks the storming of the royal fortress during the French Revolution in 1789. By Wednesday afternoon, barricades had been installed along the parade route, and preparations were underway for a massive fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower. There were few signs of Trump’s impending arrival, and many Parisians seemed more interested in discussing their holiday plans than U.S. ­politics.

Paris law enforcement officials had planned for heightened security on Bastille Day after a terrorist last year drove a truck through a crowd that had just watched a fireworks display in the seaside city of Nice in southern France, killing 86.

After the parade, Macron plans to travel to Nice to remember those who were killed. Trump was not invited to come along, according to the White House, although he probably will mention the attack in his public remarks. Trump will return to the United States on Friday afternoon, arriving home in time for the start of the weekend.

“Anytime that you can go visit a couple like the Macrons in the City of Light, it’s pretty tremendous,” the senior administration official told reporters Tuesday. “On this particular day, however, it’s got added significance. So I think the president is excited and very much looking forward to that.”

Good grief, he really wants to be a dictator of a banana republic.

[AnywhereButHere]

http://www.politico.eu/article/trump-calls-macrons-wife-beautiful-and-in-good-shape/

Oh look, our creep-in-chief strikes again.

 

[JMarie]

http://www.businessinsider.com/president-trump-tells-brigitte-macron-good-shape-france-2017-7

Quote

President Donald Trump told the French first lady that she was in "such good shape" during a meeting in France on Thursday.

Trump and First Lady Melania Trump met with French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, in Paris ahead of Bastille Day celebrations on Friday.

After the Trumps and the Macrons toured the museums at Les Invalides, Trump turned to the French first lady and told her "you're in such good shape," according to footage posted to Facebook by the French government.

After repeating the statement to the French president, Trump turned to Brigitte Macron again and called her "beautiful."

Brigitte Macron, 64, is 25 years older than Emmanuel, whom she met while she was his school teacher outside Paris. 

Trump and Melania have a near identical age gap, as the President is 24 years older than the First Lady.

Trump has often commented on women's appearances in public — whether telling the new Irish prime minister that a reporter has "a nice smile on her face," tweeting that MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski was "bleeding badly form a face-lift," or commenting on then-presidential candidate Carly Fiorina's face during the campaign.

 

Ewwww.

[GreyhoundFan]

Wait, what? "Trump speaks to White House reporters off the record, then wonders why it wasn’t published"

Spoiler

Word came down from White House reporters that President Trump hung out with reporters for more than an hour as Air Force One flew to Paris for a Bastille Day celebration.

... <love Glenn Thrush's tweet here>

Off-the-record conversation with Trump, huh? Somehow the president greenlighted an on-the-record chat this week with Pat Robertson, he of “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “We are the most powerful country in the world and we are getting more and more powerful because I’m a big military person,” Trump told Robertson as part of an explanation as to why Russian President Vladimir Putin would have preferred to have Hillary Clinton in the White House. And Trump also made some on-the-record time for Reuters.

Switching to an off-the-record footing on an Air Force One flight doesn’t distance Trump from predecessors. President Barack Obama did the same thing. And an aide to President Bill Clinton stipulated that one of his Air Force One bull sessions with journalists proceed on “psych-background.” Trump will take some questions from the media during an appearance with French President Emmanuel Macron

Yet there can be no equivalence here. Trump has gone four months without a formal solo news conference, while dispersing thoughts about the “fake news” media being the “enemy” of the people; his aides have crippled the White House press briefing by banning cameras and prohibiting real-time audio; he and his people continue attempting to discredit the news media, yet love to cite it when the news is good; and Republican operatives are reportedly contemplating another level of anti-media operations.

So why would Trump while away 70 minutes with this hateful crowd? Because, in the words of a former tabloid reporter who covered Trump, chatting with media types “offer so many opportunities for him to gaze at the person he loves most.”

And it appears that Trump enjoyed his own remarks enough to wonder why they weren’t being published. A pool report from Maggie Haberman of the New York Times — who is writing pool reports on Trump’s France visit — raises the question as to whether this is the first time in U.S. history that a president has sought to move off-the-record remarks to an on-the-record basis: “POTUS asked your pooler why she didn’t use what he has said last night. Your pooler reminded him last night was off the record. POTUS asked if I had heard him say it could be on-record; your pooler replied truthfully no (co-poolers also were not under impression it was on-record, since Sarah Sanders had declared it off record).”

...

Update: Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells the Erik Wemple Blog via email: “The conversation was off the record but we are going to put out excerpts of the conversation.” That’s a strange pledge. Did the White House record the off-the-record session? Isn’t it the job of journalists to publish the interview? And how will the journalists agree to publish only excerpts? That would appear to resemble the much-dreaded practice of quote approval.

(Insert facepalm here)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Look past the smoke from the Trump White House funeral pyre, and you’ll see financial Armageddon"

Spoiler

There is so much smoke from the funeral pyre that is President Trump’s White House, its ties to Russia and the fool’s errand that is the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare that you’d be forgiven for not seeing the cliff over which the United States is about to plunge. Yep, I’m resuming my role as town crier about the debt ceiling because all this mind-boggling stuff we’re talking about now (Donald Trump Jr.’s emails?!) will pale in comparison to the financial Armageddon that awaits us if our fiscal car pulls a “Thelma and Louise.”

You might remember that at a congressional hearing on May 24, when asked when the debt ceiling would have to be raised to avoid default, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney went all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and said that it was his understanding that “the receipts, currently, are coming in a little bit slower than expected.” Tax receipts, that is, which means the treasury, already employing “extraordinary measures” to keep below the legal limit on federal borrowing, has less cash on hand to tread water until Congress gets around to raising that limit.

That’s significant because of three things that happened on June 30.

First, the Congressional Budget Office issued a report that warned that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised the federal government will “most likely” not have enough cash on hand to pay all of its bills in “early to mid-October.”

Second, in response, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at the White House, “For the benefit of everybody, the sooner that they do this the better.”

Third, 10 Republican senators sent an urgent letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), warning that after they return from the July 4 recess that there are “only 33 potential working days remaining before the end of the fiscal year.”

That calculation is probably different now that McConnell has shrunk the August recess. But with every waking moment spent on getting Trumpcare out of the Senate, you can pretty much guarantee no real movement on raising the debt ceiling. Oh, did you forget there is a fiscal year 2018 budget that needs to get done before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1?

The Bipartisan Policy Center estimated last March that sometime between October and November, the U.S. treasury might not have enough cash on hand to meet all of its financial obligations. That’s what it calls the “X date.” Well, on Wednesday, the nonprofit that lives up to its name revised its prediction.

...

“There is currently significant evidence to support an ‘X Date’ within the early to mid-October period,” the BPC announced. And this squares right up with what the CBO reported late last month. Early October is not only critical because it is the start of a new budget year. Specifically, on Oct. 2, as the BPC has been pointing out for months, Treasury must pump money into the Military Retirement Trust Fund. That payment was $81 billion in 2016.

The federal government not having enough money on hand to pay all of its bills on time would destroy the full faith and credit of the United States and throttle the American people in ways unimaginable. “When we’re talking about the payments that the government makes, these are to every American individual out there,” Shai Akabas, director of fiscal policy at BPC, said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. “Almost every single person gets some payment from either directly or indirectly from the federal government. So, whether, it’s Social Security beneficiaries, doctors who provide Medicare and Medicaid and the patients that they rely on them, welfare recipients … federal employees. These are all people who are waiting for payments from the government and people are waiting, then, in turn for payments from those people or businesses because the economy is obviously very dynamic and relies on each payment going before the next payment.”

As we get closer to that X date and the hysteria builds, you’re going to hear Republican lawmakers say there’s nothing to worry about because as long as the treasury makes the legally mandated interest payments, the United States won’t be in financial default in the eyes of credit-rating agencies and the global markets. Don’t buy it. Remember, the credit rating of the U.S. was downgraded for the first time in history when we went through the debt-ceiling crisis in 2011.

Akabas allows that those folks are technically correct. “My sense is that the credit-rating agencies’ people who evaluate technical default do actually draw distinctions between missing other payments that the government owes and actually missing a payment to bondholders because that’s effectively what the credit rating is. It is the credit of how likely you are to make your payments to bondholders.” Then he added this: “But in terms of what the perception would be, which is, I think, just as important, if the federal government, which is considered the most creditworthy entity on the planet, is missing payments that is owed on a large scale to either individuals or businesses, even if they are continuing to make all payments to bondholders, then I think you will see consequences that we can’t foretell right now.”

Akabas said he doesn’t think that “we will ever be in a position where policymakers who are entrusted with the responsibility of the full faith and credit of the United States will desire to default on our debt.” Still, he had an implicit warning for lawmakers:

But they could, either through their actions or lack of action, put us in a position where things spiral out of their control and then they’re not the ones who are determining whether or not we are defaulting on either our obligation or our debt. And so I would expect that if the federal government starts missing payments, we will see ramifications, whether it’s in the financial markets, whether it’s in terms of the general public or otherwise that are unanticipated, and that will cause, again, a lot of concern among folks who are responsible for these matters.

The reality-show presidency of Donald Trump is about to get real for every American real quick. Buckle up.

Must.not.scream.

[onekidanddone]

28 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Must.not.scream.

If you do you will have lots of company.

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, AnywhereButHere said:

http://www.politico.eu/article/trump-calls-macrons-wife-beautiful-and-in-good-shape/

Oh look, our creep-in-chief strikes again.

 

If it weren't for the secret service she should have decked him.

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The man is 92 and actually building houses. for the poor. The orange menace is 21 years younger and couldn't actually build something out of legos, much less actual buildings.

I'm not sure if I should up vote this because Carter is a really good person, or down vote because he collapsed 

[GreyhoundFan]

Ladies and gentlemen, another candidate for the lead in a remake of "Clueless": "Does Trump really believe the worst of the Russia scandal is behind him?"

Spoiler

The New York Times reports that President Trump believes he has weathered the storm. Just one day after his son, Donald Trump Jr., released the email chain arranging his meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, the president is “by turns angry, defensive and protective but ultimately relieved that for now, the worst appears to be over.”

According to the Times, Trump even told some aides, “I think this is getting better.” The president appears to believe that Trump Jr. has cleared the air by putting out the email chain and defending himself on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, which Trump hailed as “transparent.”

If Trump truly believes he has turned a corner, he is either overly confident in his ability to evade culpability or (and these two things aren’t mutually exclusive) he is delusional.

The Russia probe is not getting better for Trump. It’s just getting started. And Trump Jr.’s supposed transparency notwithstanding, if the behavior of Trump’s closest aides and confidants tells us anything, it’s not anything remotely like the case is closed. Instead, that behavior highlights the many lines of inquiry investigators are likely now pursuing.

Some of the people closest to Trump, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Vice President Pence have done things in recent days that will only pique the interest of investigators, not diminish it.

To summarize: Since the New York Times first broke the story of the June 9, 2016, meeting — which included Trump Jr., Kushner, and then-campaign chair Paul Manafort — three people very close to Trump have either admitted they failed to be fully transparent about their meetings with foreign entities during the campaign or were, in fact, not transparent about whether they had such meetings.

Let’s review: On Tuesday, the Times reported that at some point in the past few weeks — it’s not clear precisely when— Kushner’s legal team became aware, while reviewing documents, that he was present at the June 9, 2016, meeting with the Russian lawyer in Trump Tower. After Kushner’s lawyers discovered this, they amended his application for a security clearance to include it. All of this came before we learned of the meeting.

Then, when the news of the meeting broke, leading to questions about why Kushner had originally failed to include it on the security clearance application, Kushner’s lawyer issued a statement saying that Kushner had “prematurely” submitted an application that “did not list any contacts with foreign government officials.” Kushner’s lawyer clarified that he has since amended it to include this information, as well as a lot more. The amended application noted that during the campaign and transition, “he had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during transition,” and included the meeting with the Russian lawyer.

The security clearance form — SF-86 — is not at all vague in its requirement to disclose meetings with foreign government entities. The question on the form reads: “Have you or any member of your immediate family in the past seven (7) years, had any contact with a foreign government, its establishment (such as embassy, consulate, agency, military service, intelligence or security service, etc.) or its representatives, whether inside or outside the U.S.?”

Kushner attorney Jamie Gorelick’s statement concedes that Kushner initially listed no such meetings and only later amended his answer to include more than 100.

Now, Sessions. Back on Jan. 10, during his confirmation hearings, he testified that he “did not have any communications with the Russians” during the campaign. But then, on March 1, The Post reported that Sessions did in fact meet with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on two occasions during the campaign. The next day, Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation.

And yet, as NPR reported this morning, Sessions had also said on his SF-86 that he had no such meetings. We now know this only because Sessions released just one page from his SF-86, and only under court order, after being sued in a Freedom of Information Act case by American Oversight, a government watchdog group. (American Oversight’s request, and ensuing lawsuit, were triggered by Sessions’s testimony in which he said he had never met with the Russians.)

But Sessions has not amended his SF-86, if the excerpt he filed in court is still current. And he’s the top law enforcement official in the United States. We know he met, at a minimum, with Kislyak on two occasions, after saying he hadn’t. Yet his form still says he met with no foreign government representatives.

Now on to Pence. He has given less-than-definitive answers about whether he had any contacts with foreign governments during the campaign. After Trump Jr. released the email chain on Tuesday, Pence quickly pointed out through a spokesman that the June 9, 2016, meeting with Veselnitskaya took place before he joined the campaign, thus distancing himself from it.

Yet when asked on Fox News yesterday about whether Pence himself had met with any “representatives from Russia” or “representatives of the Russian government” after he joined the campaign, Pence’s spokesman dodged the question. When pressed, the spokesman said he was “not aware” of any such meetings. Note the phrasing, which leaves open the possibility that there could have been meetings that he was not aware of.

And on top of all this, there is Trump himself, who has also been far from transparent — which may soon come back to haunt him. As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, hinted today, investigators may well subpoena the president’s tax returns, which he has long refused to release. “There is credible information to suggest that the tax returns would reveal contacts with Russia,” said Whitehouse. “He is exactly the model of the business mark the Russians target in their election interference strategies.” In other words, Trump himself, because of his business dealings, was the kind of person Russian intelligence would recruit to assist them — and his tax returns would provide clues about whether that happened.

The worst for Trump appears to be far from over. Investigators are likely pursuing a range of inquiries — including meetings, phone calls, emails, business transactions and more — that would go much further in drawing connections between the Trump camp and Russian actors. As each piece of information comes out, the Trump camp appears to believe it can swat the story away with a “Hannity” appearance or Twitter. But each of these reinforce the sense that lurking in the background is a much more sprawling probe with untold revelations to come.

 

[fraurosena]

Three weeks = a couple of days in the alternative universe. Just so you know.

Sources: Trump lawyers knew of Russia emails three weeks ago

Spoiler

President Trump’s legal team was informed more than three weeks ago about the email chain arranging a June 2016 meeting between his son Donald Jr. and a Kremlin-connected lawyer, two sources familiar with the handling of the matter told Yahoo News.

Trump told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that he learned just “a couple of days ago” that Donald Jr. had met with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, hoping to receive information that “would incriminate Hillary” and was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” A day earlier, on Tuesday, Donald Jr. released the email exchanges himself, after learning they would be published by the New York Times.

Trump repeated that assertion in a talk with reporters on Air Force One on his way to Paris Wednesday night. “I only heard about it two or three days ago,” he said, according to a transcript of his talk, when asked about the meeting with Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in June 2016 attended by Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign chief, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

But the sources told Yahoo News that Marc Kasowitz, the president’s chief lawyer in the Russia investigation, and Alan Garten, executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization, were both informed about the emails in the third week of June, after they were discovered by lawyers for Kushner, who is now a senior White House official.

The exchange apparently was initiated on June 3, 2016, when a Trump family associate, publicist Rob Goldstone, emailed Donald Jr. with an offer of something “very interesting” … “official documents and information” that “would be very useful to your father.” On June 8, 2016, Trump Jr. forwarded an email to Kushner and Manafort about the upcoming meeting with the subject line: “FW: Russia-Clinton-private & confidential.” Trump Jr. wrote back later that day, telling Goldstone “if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

The discovery of the emails prompted Kushner to amend his security clearance form to reflect the meeting, which he had failed to report when he originally sought clearance for his White House job. That revision — his second — to the so-called SF-86, was done on June 21. Kushner made the change even though there were questions among his lawyers whether the meeting had to be reported, given that there was no clear evidence that Veselnitskaya was a government official. The change to the security form prompted the FBI to question Kushner on June 23, the second time he was interviewed by agents about his security clearance, the sources said.

But the information that Trump’s lawyers were told about the emails in June raises questions about why they would not have immediately informed the president. Trump’s campaign is under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion with Russian government officials. The emails appear to be the first hard evidence of contacts between top campaign officials and someone connected to the Kremlin.

A spokesman for Kasowitz declined to comment, saying the matter involved “privileged information.” Garten did not respond to an email request for comment.

Richard Painter, the former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush told Yahoo News Thursday night that he finds it “weird” and “unbelievable” that Trump’s lawyers would not have informed the president about a matter so sensitive relating to the Russia investigation. “You have a professional obligation to inform the client about information that he needs to make informed decisions,” he said. That would be especially true for a client “who feels the need to comment on every last thing in the world,” he added.

Pushing back the discovery of the emails to the third week in June also raises additional questions about the initial public statements made by the White House after the existence of the meeting was first reported by the New York Times on July 8. At that time, Trump Jr. issued a public statement describing the session as a “short introductory meeting” in which the primary topic of discussion was “the adoption of Russian children” by American families. The actual purpose of the meeting, to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton ostensibly collected by the Russian government, wasn’t mentioned in Trump’s initial statement.

The next day, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that the meeting was a “big nothing burger.”

The president himself repeatedly described the Russia investigation as “fake news” and ridiculed television networks’ reports about it. “With four months looking at Russia … under a magnifying glass, they have ‘zero tapes’ of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!” the president wrote in two tweets on June 26.

[ TT's tweets ]

But questions were raised about President Trump’s account of when he learned about the meeting, in light of a statement he made on June 7, 2016 — before the meeting, but after the email exchanges with Donald Jr. On that day, Trump promised a major address the following week that he said would describe Clinton’s “corrupt dealings” to give “favorable treatment” to foreign governments, including “the Russians.” White House officials have said the timing of Trump’s statement was a coincidence and that his promised address about the Clintons was postponed when, a few days later, an Islamic State-inspired security guard went on a rampage at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., killing 49 people.

Aside from questions about the credibility of White House statements, the disclosure of the emails potentially has raised new questions about Kushner’s security clearance. He initially filed his SF-86 on Jan. 18, leaving out any mention of meetings with foreign government officials during the transition and the campaign. His lawyers have said this was inadvertent and that a member of his staff had prematurely hit the “send” button for the firm before it was completed. Within twelve hours, they have said, Kushner notified the FBI that he would make amendments and disclose his meetings with foreign officials.

This was followed by a revised security clearance submission on May 11 in which Kushner reported more than 100 meetings with officials from over 20 countries, including a meeting with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and another with Sergey Gorkov, head of a Russian state-owned bank.

The revised security clearance led to Kushner’s first FBI interview about the matter in mid-May, the sources said. The bureau is now reviewing Kushner’s second amended form following the new disclosure about his meeting with the Russian lawyer. His lawyers are confident that it won’t raise any additional problems since, as they have asserted, Kushner had forgotten the meeting — he was only briefly present — and had no intent to conceal it. In the meantime, he has an interim security clearance, sources said.

I have a lot of questions about Jared's interim security clearance:

An interim security clearance? What does that mean? Is this clearance the same as a 'normal' clearance only temporary? Or is his clearance limited in some way? If so, which security information is he privy to, and which not? Does it restrict his ability to do his job?

How long will he have this interim  security clearance? What will it take for him to get full clearance, or to have his security clearance stripped from him?  If he won't get full security clearance, will he be fired because he can't do his job anymore? 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena -- Here's a little about interim clearances.

"In Trump’s world, innocence is proved by guilt"

Spoiler

Given what we know about the collusion — and there is no other word for it — between then-candidate Donald Trump’s most senior advisers and what they thought was a Kremlin-tied lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, the most shocking thing is that no one on the Trump side was shocked. The most offensive thing is that no one took offense. Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign manager treated the offer of aid by a hostile foreign power to tilt an election as just another day at the office. “I think many people would have held that meeting,” the president affirmed. It is the banality of this corruption that makes it so appalling. The president and his men are incapable of feeling shame about shameful things.

Donald Jr. certainly doesn’t know what all the fuss is about. Instead of offering a hint of contrition, he offered a complaint that the proffered information was not particularly useful. “I applaud his transparency,” father said of son. But disclosure is not really a virtue if you are admitting highly unethical actions without apology. It is more like the public confession of serious wrongdoing, and the attempted normalization of sliminess.

The ultimate explanation for this toxic moral atmosphere is President Trump himself. He did not attend the meeting, but he is fully responsible for creating and marketing an ethos in which victory matters more than character and real men write their own rules. Trumpism is an easygoing belief system that indulges and excuses the stiffing of contractors, the conning of students, the bilking of investors, the exploitation of women and the practices of nepotism and self-dealing. A faith that makes losing a sin will make cheating a sacrament.

Republicans have sometimes employed the excuse that members of the Trump team are new to politics — babes in the woods — who don’t yet understand all the ins and outs. Their innocence, the argument goes, is proved by their guilt. This might apply to minor infractions of campaign finance law. It does not cover egregious acts of wrongdoing. Putting a future president in the debt of a foreign power — and subject, presumably, to blackmail by that power — is the height of sleazy stupidity. It is not a mistake born of greenness; it is evidence of a vacant conscience.

The foundation for this approach to campaigning and governing is a belief that politics is an essentially dirty business. Trump seems honestly convinced that the system is “rigged” against him — to the point of defrauding him of millions of votes. If the system is truly manipulated by political enemies, then only suckers are bound by its norms and requirements. Those who denigrate our system of government are providing an excuse for gaming it. And that is precisely what Trump Jr. was doing — trying to game American democracy.

Some believe that the political enterprise is noble but fallen. They have the goal of restoring something lost and loved. Others believe that politics is essentially low and grubby, and must be conducted by its own ruthless rules. This attitude makes it difficult, apparently, to distinguish between political hardball and subversion.

During the Trump campaign and his young, paralyzed presidency, we have heard some conservatives argue, “We’re not electing a pastor in chief.” It has been particularly strange to hear religious conservatives claim that the character of leaders doesn’t count. But the character of a president leaves an imprint on everyone around him. A high ethical standard — think Gerald Ford or George H.W. Bush — creates a general expectation of probity. A low ethical standard — think Richard Nixon or Donald Trump — has a pervasive influence of its own, inevitably resulting in scandal.

C.S. Lewis posited three elements that make up human beings. There is the intellect, residing in the head. There are the passions, residing in the stomach (and slightly lower). And then there are trained, habituated emotions — the “stable sentiments” of character — which Lewis associated with the chest.

In the realm of political ethics, voters last year did not prioritize character in sufficient numbers, during the party primaries or the general election. Now we are seeing the result. “In a sort of ghastly simplicity,” Lewis said, “we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

 

[fraurosena]

6 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@fraurosena -- Here's a little about interim clearances.

"In Trump’s world, innocence is proved by guilt"

  Hide contents

Given what we know about the collusion — and there is no other word for it — between then-candidate Donald Trump’s most senior advisers and what they thought was a Kremlin-tied lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, the most shocking thing is that no one on the Trump side was shocked. The most offensive thing is that no one took offense. Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign manager treated the offer of aid by a hostile foreign power to tilt an election as just another day at the office. “I think many people would have held that meeting,” the president affirmed. It is the banality of this corruption that makes it so appalling. The president and his men are incapable of feeling shame about shameful things.

Donald Jr. certainly doesn’t know what all the fuss is about. Instead of offering a hint of contrition, he offered a complaint that the proffered information was not particularly useful. “I applaud his transparency,” father said of son. But disclosure is not really a virtue if you are admitting highly unethical actions without apology. It is more like the public confession of serious wrongdoing, and the attempted normalization of sliminess.

The ultimate explanation for this toxic moral atmosphere is President Trump himself. He did not attend the meeting, but he is fully responsible for creating and marketing an ethos in which victory matters more than character and real men write their own rules. Trumpism is an easygoing belief system that indulges and excuses the stiffing of contractors, the conning of students, the bilking of investors, the exploitation of women and the practices of nepotism and self-dealing. A faith that makes losing a sin will make cheating a sacrament.

Republicans have sometimes employed the excuse that members of the Trump team are new to politics — babes in the woods — who don’t yet understand all the ins and outs. Their innocence, the argument goes, is proved by their guilt. This might apply to minor infractions of campaign finance law. It does not cover egregious acts of wrongdoing. Putting a future president in the debt of a foreign power — and subject, presumably, to blackmail by that power — is the height of sleazy stupidity. It is not a mistake born of greenness; it is evidence of a vacant conscience.

The foundation for this approach to campaigning and governing is a belief that politics is an essentially dirty business. Trump seems honestly convinced that the system is “rigged” against him — to the point of defrauding him of millions of votes. If the system is truly manipulated by political enemies, then only suckers are bound by its norms and requirements. Those who denigrate our system of government are providing an excuse for gaming it. And that is precisely what Trump Jr. was doing — trying to game American democracy.

Some believe that the political enterprise is noble but fallen. They have the goal of restoring something lost and loved. Others believe that politics is essentially low and grubby, and must be conducted by its own ruthless rules. This attitude makes it difficult, apparently, to distinguish between political hardball and subversion.

During the Trump campaign and his young, paralyzed presidency, we have heard some conservatives argue, “We’re not electing a pastor in chief.” It has been particularly strange to hear religious conservatives claim that the character of leaders doesn’t count. But the character of a president leaves an imprint on everyone around him. A high ethical standard — think Gerald Ford or George H.W. Bush — creates a general expectation of probity. A low ethical standard — think Richard Nixon or Donald Trump — has a pervasive influence of its own, inevitably resulting in scandal.

C.S. Lewis posited three elements that make up human beings. There is the intellect, residing in the head. There are the passions, residing in the stomach (and slightly lower). And then there are trained, habituated emotions — the “stable sentiments” of character — which Lewis associated with the chest.

In the realm of political ethics, voters last year did not prioritize character in sufficient numbers, during the party primaries or the general election. Now we are seeing the result. “In a sort of ghastly simplicity,” Lewis said, “we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

 

Thanks for the info @GreyhoundFan!

I'm pleased to see that his clearance limits his access to classified information. It means he can't do the issues he has been tasked with, but due to his decided lack of experience and qualifications, I don't think he could do them in any case. At least now, he can't misuse classified information, and that's a relief.

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena -- you're welcome! He can do enough damage as it is...

Oh, this is just lovely: "Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz to critic: ‘Watch your back. . . . I already know where you live’"

Spoiler

Marc E. Kasowitz, President Trump’s longtime attorney representing him in the Russia investigations, reportedly sent angry, threatening and profane emails to a random stranger who criticized him this week, cursing at the man and telling him, “I already know where you live, I’m on you.”

Kasowitz, speaking through a spokesman, did not dispute the account, which was reported Thursday by the independent nonprofit journalism site ProPublica. Kasowitz’s spokesman said in a statement to The Washington Post on Thursday night that Kasowitz regretted his words and that the email “came at the end of a very long day that at 10 p.m. was not yet over.”

The exchange began when the unidentified man, described as a retired public relations worker, saw a ProPublica story on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” that discussed how Kasowitz had made the unusual decision not to seek a security clearance to handle the Russia case.

After the segment aired Wednesday night, the man sent Kasowitz an email with the subject line, “Resign Now.” According to ProPublica, the message read in part: “I believe it is in your interest and the long-term interest of your firm for you to resign from your position advising the President re. pending federal legal matters. No good can come from this.”

...

Kasowitz responded with a flurry of messages sent between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern Time. ProPublica published the thread in full, saying it had confirmed the man’s identity and verified that the emails had come from Kasowitz’s firm.

The exchange comes amid ongoing turmoil within Trump’s legal team, which has struggled to rein in a client notorious for his unfiltered early-morning tweet storms, off-the-cuff speaking style and general lack of verbal restraint.

As the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election have intensified, Trump has defied his attorneys’ instructions to avoid talking about the matter in his tweets and private conversations with others under scrutiny, including Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, as The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Trump’s relationship with Kasowitz, his personal lawyer and head of the legal team, was showing strain and that the president was growing disillusioned by his strategy. Kasowitz, in turn, had become “deeply frustrated” by the president, the Times reported.

After receiving the stranger’s email Wednesday night, Kasowitz wrote a message back saying “f‑‑‑ you,” then followed up 15 minutes later with a longer response, according to ProPublica.

“How dare you send me an email like that,” he wrote. “I’m on you now. You are f‑‑‑ing with me now Let’s see who you are Watch your back, bitch.”

“Call me. Don’t be afraid, you piece of s‑‑‑,” he wrote in another message. “Stand up. If you don’t call, you’re just afraid.”

A later email read: “I already know where you live, I’m on you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.”

The man sent only one response, thanking Kasowitz for his “kind reply” and saying he may get in touch with him “as appropriate.” He later told ProPublica he was so disturbed by the conversation that he forwarded it to the FBI.

...

Kasowitz said through his spokesman Thursday: “The person sending that email is entitled to his opinion and I should not have responded in that inappropriate manner. I intend to send him an email stating just that. This is one of those times where one wishes he could reverse the clock, but of course I can’t.”

In the story that prompted the exchange, ProPublica’s Justin Elliott and Jesse Eisinger reported that Kasowitz did not expect to apply for a security clearance, even though the Russia investigations would involve reviewing classified materials.

Even if Kasowitz applied for a security clearance, ProPublica suggested he will likely have trouble getting one because of personal issues which were disputed by a Kasowitz spokesman as “false and defamatory.” The Post has not independently confirmed ProPublica’s allegations.

Kasowitz’s spokesman told the publication he did not require a security clearance to represent the president.

Trump retained Kasowitz to help him navigate the Russia investigations in May, shortly after former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III was appointed special counsel in charge of the Department of Justice’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign.

Kasowitz, who has represented Trump in a variety of cases over the years, is known in New York law circles for his aggressive style in and out of the courtroom. In a recent profile, Bloomberg called him a “bare-knuckled litigator” and a “pit bull loyal to the boss.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo has a daily mega-article about the big topics of the day. The beginning of today's article is quite good: "The Daily 202: Trump’s children become bigger liabilities for the White House, complicate damage-control efforts"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: You can’t fire family.

A voter asked Hillary Clinton during one of the debates last October to say something positive about Donald Trump. Amid an especially nasty campaign — when her opponent was encouraging chants of “lock her up” during his rallies — she didn’t hesitate. “I respect his children,” the former secretary of state said. “His children are incredibly able and devoted and I think that says a lot about Donald.”

Clinton certainly wouldn’t give that answer anymore, especially after what’s transpired this week.

Trump yesterday defended Donald Jr.’s sit-down with a Russian attorney during last year’s campaign, saying “zero” improprieties occurred and “most people would have taken” the meeting.

“He's a good boy,” the president said during a gaggle on Air Force One. “He's a good kid.”

“My son is a wonderful young man,” the president added during a news conference in Paris.

In fact, Don Jr. is 39. He’s the same age as the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, who was standing next to Trump when he said that. Both kids/boys/young men — whatever he wants to call them — were born in 1977.

Don Jr. pulled his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, who is 36, into a meeting with someone he was told had dirt on Clinton from the Russian government. Then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is 68, also attended.

A youthful indiscretion this was not.

It’s also a reminder that you don’t have to be young to be stupid.

Perhaps most importantly, though, Trump’s spirited defense offered a window into how much more complex dealing with the Russia scandal is for the White House when multiple members of the president’s family are now implicated.

-- Trump’s embrace of a kind of nepotism that’s historically been more common in banana republics than the first world continues to backfire on him — creating a myriad of legal and political headaches. And they’re probably only going to get worse.

-- Trump has no problem shunting aside staff when he concludes that they’ve outlived their usefulness to him or become more trouble than they’re worth. In addition to Manafort, there’s a cast of characters from Sam Nunberg to Corey Lewandowski, Carter Page and Michael Flynn. Other fall guys have been left in Trump’s wake, especially if you broaden your time horizon to include the casinos he drove into bankruptcy and his many other failures in business.

Remember when White House press secretary Sean Spicer ludicrously claimed that Manafort, who ran the campaign for months, “played a very limited role for a very limited period of time”? Or when Sean insisted that Flynn, the former national security adviser, was merely a “volunteer of the campaign”?

But, as The Fix’s Aaron Blake notes, “Disowning or minimizing his own family isn't really an option for Trump.”

-- Most White House aides are trying to protect the principal: the president and, really, the presidency itself. But Trump himself seems focused primarily on protecting his personal interests, which includes his family. He was reportedly involved in the preparation of Don Jr.’s initial, misleading statement to the New York Times, which claimed the meeting with the Russian lawyer was about adoption. The personal and the political have come into conflict quite a lot over the past week, and by all indications they will continue to.

-- This has exasperated Republicans on Capitol Hill. Rep. Bill Flores (R-Tex.) said on-the-record what many feel privately when he told the Texas CBS affiliate KBT: “I'm going out on a limb here, but I would say that I think it would be in the president's best interest if he removed all of his children from the White House. Not only Donald Trump, but Ivanka and Jared Kushner.”

-- The president’s shifting version of events continues to unravel in other ways. Trump has maintained that he was unaware of his eldest son’s June 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer until right before the New York Times broke the story. He said on Wednesday night that he “just heard about it two or three days ago.”

Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff now reports that Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal attorney, and Alan Garten, the top lawyer for the Trump Organization, were both informed about the emails three weeks ago by Kushner’s legal team. “The discovery of the emails prompted Kushner to amend his security clearance form to reflect the meeting, which he had failed to report when he originally sought [his security clearance],” Isikoff writes. “That revision — his second — to the so-called SF-86, was done on June 21. The change to the security form prompted the FBI to question Kushner on June 23, the second time he was interviewed by agents about his security clearance … But the information that Trump’s lawyers were told about the emails in June raises questions about why they would not have immediately informed the president. Pushing back the discovery of the emails to the third week in June also raises additional questions about the initial public statements made by the White House after the existence of the meeting was first reported.”

-- Kasowitz has labored to underscore the potential risk to the president if he engages without a lawyer in discussions with other people under scrutiny in the investigation, including Kushner. Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and Devlin Barrett have some fantastic reporting this morning on the growing tensions behind the scenes: “Nearly two months after Trump retained outside counsel to represent him in the investigations of alleged Russian meddling in last year’s election, his and Kushner’s attorneys are struggling to enforce traditional legal boundaries to protect their clients, according to half a dozen people with knowledge of the internal dynamics and ongoing interactions … A third faction could complicate the dynamic further. Trump’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., hired his own criminal defense attorney this week … Trump Jr. also is considering hiring his own outside public relations team. …

“The challenge for President Trump’s attorneys has become, at its core, managing the unmanageable — their client. He won’t follow instructions. After one meeting in which they urged Trump to steer clear of a certain topic, he sent a tweet about that very theme before they arrived back at their office. He won’t compartmentalize. With aides, advisers and friends breezing in and out of the Oval Office, it is not uncommon for the president to suddenly turn the conversation to Russia — a subject that perpetually gnaws at him — in a meeting about something else entirely. … Senior White House officials are increasingly reluctant to discuss the issue internally or publicly and worry about overhearing sensitive conversations, for fear of legal exposure. … As in Trump’s West Wing, lawyers on the outside teams have been deeply distrustful of one another and suspicious of motivations. They also are engaged in a circular firing squad of private speculation about who may have disclosed information about Trump Jr.’s meeting…”

Trump, for his part, is also now trying to force the Republican Party to pick up his legal tab. Another scoop from Phil, Ashley and Devlin’s story: “Some in Trump’s orbit are pushing the Republican National Committee to bear the costs … Although the RNC does have a legal defense fund, it well predates the Russia investigations and is intended to be used for legal challenges facing the Republican Party, such as a potential election recount. The RNC has not made a decision, in part because the committee is still researching whether the money could legally be used to help pay legal costs related to Russia. But many within the organization are resisting the effort, thinking it would be more appropriate to create a separate legal defense fund for the case. … The White House has not said whether Trump, Kushner and other officials are paying their legal bills themselves or whether they are being covered by an outside entity.”

...

-- Because of the nature of their work inside the White House, the president’s daughter and son-in-law pose a unique set of additional problems.

Kushner has been pushing internally this week for a more aggressive defense of Trump Jr.’s meeting, which he also attended, but he has faced resistance from some of Trump’s top press aides. Sources tell Politico’s Tara Palmeri that “Kushner wants the White House to more aggressively push out surrogates and talking points to change the narrative … But some of the communications aides, including [Spicer] … have expressed reservations. They say it’s best to leave it to outside counsel to handle the furor around Trump Jr., and fear inviting further legal jeopardy if Trump aides and allies more forcefully defend a meeting that they don’t fully know the details of. …  After hours of little defense from the White House on Tuesday following Trump Jr.’s release of the email chain … Kushner spoke with Spicer and [Sarah] Huckabee Sanders. During the conversation, Spicer and Sanders made the case for crafting a longer-term battle strategy … but Kushner called for full-on combat.”

Remember, The Post reported back in May that Kushner was already a focal point of the Russia investigation. He met last December with Russia's ambassador to the United States and a banker with ties to the Kremlin. The Post has also reported that Sergey Kislyak told Moscow that Kushner floated the idea of a secret communications channel — or back channel — with Moscow.

“Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have tried their best to soar gracefully above the raging dumpster fire that is the Trump administration. Unhappily for the handsome couple, gravity makes no allowances for charm,” Eugene Robinson quips in his column for today’s paper. “Kushner, already reported to be a ‘person of interest’ in the Justice Department probe of President Trump’s campaign, is arguably the individual with the most to lose from the revelation that the campaign did, after all, at least attempt to collude with the Russian government to boost Trump’s chances of winning the election. … Jared and Ivanka have first-class educations. They know how the Icarus story ends.”

“All Roads Now Lead to Kushner,” Nicholas Kristof writes in his NYT column.

“Kushner Keeps Making the Russia Scandal So Much Worse,” says New York Magazine.

“Ivanka and Jared try to dodge reporters in Sun Valley” is a headline in today’s New York Post.

Kushner’s own business interests exposes the White House in other ways, as well. One of the most under-covered stories this week came from The Intercept: “Not long before a major crisis ripped through the Middle East, pitting the United States and a bloc of Gulf countries against Qatar, Jared Kushner’s real estate company had unsuccessfully sought a critical half-billion-dollar [bailout] from one of the richest and most influential men in the tiny nation … Kushner is a senior adviser to President Trump … and also the scion of a New York real estate empire that faces an extreme risk from an investment made by Kushner in the building at 666 Fifth Avenue, where the family is now severely underwater.”

...

-- Speaking of progeny: Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, has written a post on her blog entitled “THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING.” The former first daughter expresses alarm: “One man, whose arrogance and ego lead him trippingly into chaos of his own making, can turn a shining city on the hill into a shadowy, taudry replica of itself. … If he was quiet for five minutes he might hear the echo of (Vladimir) Putin’s laughter carried on the wind across countries and oceans. But Trump’s ego is a loud, boisterous thing and will never allow him to hear anything that might cause him to reflect. … Our democracy, and the dignity of America, is wounded and bleeding out. It doesn’t mean that it can’t be restored and healed, but not by this administration. And it will only get worse if those intent on making excuses continue saying that Trump and his extended family are new at this governing thing, and are just bumbling a bit.”

...

So now the TT wants the Repugs to pay his legal fees. Hey, he could bankrupt the party. They're already morally bankrupt, so that would just make their finances fit in.

[mamallama]

For once I hope he succeeds.  The GOP should learn a lesson from this debacle.

[fraurosena]

In @GreyhoundFan's post above, the article mentions Patti Davis's blog post "The Russians are Coming." It's pretty good, so I'm adding a link to it for those of you who would like to read it in it's entirety:

http://booksbypattidavis.com/the-russians-are-coming/

 

If the Repugliklans try to pay for his legal fees, how would the average American (R)'s that donate to the party react do you think? I'm guessing the BT's would be ok with it, but the others? I would like to think they would start resisting... or will they still toe the party line? 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Forecast of weak economic growth raises big questions about Trump’s populist agenda"

Spoiler

President Trump’s budget would not add to economic growth or eliminate the deficit in coming years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Thursday, casting doubt on a plan the White House has touted as central to achieving the president’s domestic agenda.

The CBO projected that the economy would grow at only 1.9 percent under the White House’s plan — far below the 3 percent goal the administration continued to outline as recently as Thursday. It also warned that contrary to White House claims that deep cuts to the safety net in the budget would lead to a financial surplus in a decade, the deficit would actually be $720 billion.

The report was one of several big questions that emerged Thursday about whether Trump would be able to deliver on the central promises of his populist agenda for governing.

He had pledged to replace President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act with a better policy that guaranteed “insurance for everybody.” But Republican Senate leaders on Thursday were advancing a proposal — its fate uncertain — that would still swell the nation’s ranks of the uninsured by tens of millions.

Trump also faced questions about whether he would follow through on repeated promises to stop foreign competitors from “killing our companies and our workers” by dumping steel at ultra-cheap prices onto the global market — and he repeated to reporters traveling on Air Force One during his trip to France that “it’ll stop.”

Yet he has been promising action for weeks, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross would only tell a meeting of senators on Thursday that he planned to provide options to Trump soon.

Trump’s combination of setbacks and delays on key policy initiatives highlight how the president is struggling to advance a populist vision of governing in a Republican Party that historically has not been receptive to such an approach.

With his budget and health care, Trump is falling in line with some of his party’s most conservative voices, even if the policies threaten to harm many of the working-class voters who elected him.

On trade — an issue where he could act unilaterally — Trump is facing opposition from companies, foreign allies and numerous White House advisers who say restricting imports could hurt U.S. industry broadly far more than it helps steel companies.

The delay on steel imports follows a decision not to label China a currency manipulator as he advocated during the campaign, and a last-minute decision not to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he had often maligned.

“He certainly, as a president, has not been able to articulate a coherent agenda that responded to the concerns of the country, or the concerns of the people who elected him. A lot of them were low-income blue-collar whites, and his agenda is not addressing those concerns or those problems,” said Peter Wehner, a former speechwriter for Republican president George W. Bush. “House and Senate Republicans weren’t in tune with what he was running on either, so that was always going to be a problem.”

As it emphasized progress on health care and trade, the White House dismissed the CBO report as flawed because it had earlier misjudged how many people would sign up for the Affordable Care Act.

“It’s not surprising that a bureaucracy which underestimated by more than 100 percent Obamacare participation would also underestimate the economic benefits of MAGAnomics,” Office of Management and Budget spokesman John Czwartacki said, using a new buzzword for the administration’s economic policy that stands for “Make America Great Again”-economics. “They are great people, but are just wrong on this.”

"MAGAnomics"? KMN

[GrumpyGran]

20 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump loves a military parade — it’s one reason he’s heading to Paris"

  Reveal hidden contents

PARIS — President Trump was not expected to attend France’s Bastille Day, which this year will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War I.

But then he learned there would be a military parade.

French President Emmanuel Macron told Trump in a June 27 phone call about the event, which this year will feature U.S. and French troops marching through the historic streets near the Arc de Triomphe, fighter jets cutting through the skies above, and flags, horses and military equipment on display — the sort of spectacle that Trump wanted to stage at his own inauguration in January.

Trump told Macron he would be there, according to a White House official, and French and U.S. officials rushed to schedule a last-minute trip that will last about 27 hours and include dinner at an opulent restaurant in the Eiffel Tower and a visit to Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb.

The president arrived Thursday and quickly began a fast-paced schedule alongside Macron, who played tour guide at one of the French capital’s most-visited landmarks.

At the Invalides monument, which includes Napoleon’s tomb, Macron described some of the site’s highlights to Trump and first lady Melania Trump. Later, both leaders posed for photographers before entering the French presidential palace for talks.

Before the Trump meetings, Macron held discussions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who both noted their deep policy differences with Trump yet stressed the importance of keeping open dialogue with the White House.

Trump and Macron are political outsiders in the early months of their presidencies, and their relationship has been defined by public confrontations. Trump — who has repeatedly described Paris as dangerous and crime-ridden — clearly favored Macron’s rival in the French election this spring, and Macron’s win seemed to cool the nationalist movement sweeping the globe.

When the two first met in May in Brussels, Macron aggressively shook Trump’s hand and would not let go, later telling a French newspaper that “it was a moment of truth” and that “we must show that we will not make small concessions, even symbolic ones.” Trump hit back in early June when he announced that the United States would pull out of the Paris climate agreement because he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” Macron then defiantly launched a “Make the Planet Great Again” effort.

Macron’s jabs at Trump have been widely applauded in France, where a Pew Research Center poll recently found that only 14 percent of people say they have confidence in Trump.

But administration officials from both countries insist this visit will be a friendly one that is focused on the long relationship between the two nations — especially on the battlefield. In their private discussions, the two leaders are expected to focus heavily on the conflict in Syria and weakening the Islamic State terrorist group.

“It’s the 100th anniversary of the American entry into World War I — it’s a beautiful symbol,” François Heisbourg, a former French national security adviser under presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, said in an interview. “It’s also a reminder to Trump and to those in France that there’s a century of transatlantic history here, and that the not-so-subliminal history is quite strong.”

A senior Trump administration official who briefed reporters on the trip Tuesday echoed that sentiment, commending France for being “far and away one of the largest and strongest military members” in the NATO alliance.

“The fact that we participated in such a major way in World War I, side by side with the French, is a clear parallel to what we’re doing today,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We still live in a dangerous world. We still live in a world that has many, many threats.”

Trump’s whirlwind tour of Paris comes just days after he returned from a trip to Poland and Germany for the Group of 20 summit.

In Paris, Trump made his first visit the U.S. Embassy to meet with diplomats, military members participating in Friday’s parade and military leaders based in Europe. Trump said the bonds between the U.S. and France were “forged in the fires of war.”

Macron, 39, is France’s youngest leader since Napoleon, and some comparisons have been made between the two because of Macron’s quiet and quick consolidation of power and his penchant for displays of grandeur, such as his recent 90-minute address to both houses of Parliament in the opulent Palace of Versailles.

In the evening, Trump, Macron and their wives will dine at Le Jules Verne, a one-Michelin-star-rated restaurant perched high in the Eiffel Tower where the six-course tasting menu costs 230 euros, or $262, per person.

The restaurant is named for the famous 19th-century French author who wrote “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “Around the World in Eighty Days.” Its website proclaims: “One does not come to the Jules Verne by chance. It is a destination that transmits a dream.”

Friday morning will bring the military parade along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees that first caught Trump’s attention. This year’s parade will feature 1,200 people, 211 vehicles, 341 horseback riders and 63 aircraft — and a competing protest march titled “Don’t Let Your Guard Down Against Trump,” which will start from the Place de Clichy, nearly two miles away from where Trump will be seated.

Macron has been sharply criticized across the political spectrum for honoring Trump with this visit. Le Monde, France’s leading newspaper, editorialized that the invitation revealed that Macron “was an attentive student of Machiavelli” and that he “stole from the U.S. president the monopoly on unpredictability.”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the erstwhile presidential candidate and leader of the far-left “France Unbowed” party in Parliament, said in an interview with Europe 1 radio that Trump is not welcome.

“The holiday of July 14th is that of the freedom of the French,” Mélenchon said. “Mr. Trump represents NATO and the enslavement of our nation to an international coalition in which it plays no role.”

Leila Charef, co-director of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, called Trump’s visit “a shocking symbol,” especially following Macron’s recent push to enshrine certain elements of France’s anti-terrorism “state of emergency” regimen into normal French law. The “state of emergency” went into place after the November 2015 terrorist attacks that killed 130 in and near Paris. The measures were intended to temporarily expand French authorities’ ability to investigate terrorism plots, but they have led to thousands of warrantless arrests and “weigh on the way Muslims are treated and perceived in France,” Charef said.

“It would be useful for good, anti-discrimination practices to circulate — not bad speeches,” she said.

Despite the angst among some about Trump’s visit, it was largely being overshadowed on the streets of Paris by Bastille Day, which marks the storming of the royal fortress during the French Revolution in 1789. By Wednesday afternoon, barricades had been installed along the parade route, and preparations were underway for a massive fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower. There were few signs of Trump’s impending arrival, and many Parisians seemed more interested in discussing their holiday plans than U.S. ­politics.

Paris law enforcement officials had planned for heightened security on Bastille Day after a terrorist last year drove a truck through a crowd that had just watched a fireworks display in the seaside city of Nice in southern France, killing 86.

After the parade, Macron plans to travel to Nice to remember those who were killed. Trump was not invited to come along, according to the White House, although he probably will mention the attack in his public remarks. Trump will return to the United States on Friday afternoon, arriving home in time for the start of the weekend.

“Anytime that you can go visit a couple like the Macrons in the City of Light, it’s pretty tremendous,” the senior administration official told reporters Tuesday. “On this particular day, however, it’s got added significance. So I think the president is excited and very much looking forward to that.”

Good grief, he really wants to be a dictator of a banana republic.

I'm way behind, sorry. And sleep-deprived. I'm worried now that the Velveeta Raccoon* will sign something making himself an honorary member of the military and then start strutting around in one of those uniforms that banana-republic dictators wear.

*I can't claim this, it was in one of the replies to a tweet mentioned somewhere in this thread. But I love it!

17 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

20 hours ago, AnywhereButHere said:

http://www.politico.eu/article/trump-calls-macrons-wife-beautiful-and-in-good-shape/

Oh look, our creep-in-chief strikes again.

 

If it weren't for the secret service she should have decked him.

I wish Melania had decked him.

[GreyhoundFan]

Uh-oh, wait for the tweetstorm: "Grandparents, other extended relatives exempt from Trump travel ban, federal judge rules"

Spoiler

Grandparents and other extended relatives are exempt from President Trump’s travel ban, a federal judge in Hawaii declared late Thursday, again stopping the administration from implementing the president’s controversial executive order in the way that it wants.

U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson wrote that the government’s “narrowly defined list” of who might be exempt was not supported by either the Supreme Court decision partially unfreezing the ban or by the law.

“Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents,” Watson wrote. “Indeed, grandparents are the epitome of close family members. The Government’s definition excludes them. That simply cannot be.”

Watson wrote that refugees with an assurance from a resettlement agency could also be exempt from the ban.

...

A Justice Department spokeswoman said the department would likely have a statement on the ruling later Friday and referred other questions to the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, which she said had issued communications to their field offices.

Department of Homeland Security and State Department spokespeople said their agencies were reviewing the decision with the Department of Justice to work on implementation.

At issue is how far the administration can go in keeping relatives of U.S. residents out under the president’s travel ban, which temporarily bars entry for all refugees and the issuance of new visas to residents of six Muslim-majority countries.

The Supreme Court ruled late last month that the government could begin enforcing the measure, but not against those with “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship” with a person or entity in the United States.

The court offered only limited guidance on what type of relationship would qualify. “Close familial” relationships would count, the court said, as would ties such as a job offer or school acceptance letter that were “formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course.”

The administration said it would let into the United States from the six affected countries parents, parents-in-law, siblings, spouses, children, sons and daughters, fiances, and sons-in-law and daughters-in-law of those already here.

Still banned, however, were grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. And the administration also said it would keep out refugees who had a formal assurance from a resettlement agency.

The state of Hawaii, which has been suing over the travel ban, soon asked Watson to intervene.

The district judge had initially ruled against Hawaii in the case, telling it to go straight to the Supreme Court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit also rebuffed the state’s request, although it offered a way forward: Watson, the appeals court said, would have jurisdiction over a reframed request. Hawaii then filed such a request, setting up Watson’s ruling Thursday — which allows those the government had wanted to keep out to come in.

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas S. Chin said in a statement, “The federal court today makes clear that the U.S. Government may not ignore the scope of the partial travel ban as it sees fit. Family members have been separated and real people have suffered enough. Courts have found that this Executive Order has no basis in stopping terrorism and is just a pretext for illegal and unconstitutional discrimination. We will continue preparing for arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in October.”

The government had argued that it drew its definition of who counted as a close family member from immigration law. The ruling is a blow to the administration, although it almost certainly won’t be the last word on the case. Both those suing over the ban and the government lawyers defending it indicated earlier they thought the question of who could properly be kept out after the Supreme Court unfroze the ban was a matter destined for appellate courts.

And while the Supreme Court partially unfroze Trump’s travel ban, it did so only temporarily, indicating it would truly take up the case in the fall. By that time, the bans might have expired. The barring of new visas to those from six countries is supposed to last 90 days, and the barring of refugees is supposed to last 120 days.

 

[GrumpyGran]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@fraurosena -- you're welcome! He can do enough damage as it is...

Oh, this is just lovely: "Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz to critic: ‘Watch your back. . . . I already know where you live’"

  Reveal hidden contents

Marc E. Kasowitz, President Trump’s longtime attorney representing him in the Russia investigations, reportedly sent angry, threatening and profane emails to a random stranger who criticized him this week, cursing at the man and telling him, “I already know where you live, I’m on you.”

Kasowitz, speaking through a spokesman, did not dispute the account, which was reported Thursday by the independent nonprofit journalism site ProPublica. Kasowitz’s spokesman said in a statement to The Washington Post on Thursday night that Kasowitz regretted his words and that the email “came at the end of a very long day that at 10 p.m. was not yet over.”

The exchange began when the unidentified man, described as a retired public relations worker, saw a ProPublica story on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” that discussed how Kasowitz had made the unusual decision not to seek a security clearance to handle the Russia case.

After the segment aired Wednesday night, the man sent Kasowitz an email with the subject line, “Resign Now.” According to ProPublica, the message read in part: “I believe it is in your interest and the long-term interest of your firm for you to resign from your position advising the President re. pending federal legal matters. No good can come from this.”

...

Kasowitz responded with a flurry of messages sent between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern Time. ProPublica published the thread in full, saying it had confirmed the man’s identity and verified that the emails had come from Kasowitz’s firm.

The exchange comes amid ongoing turmoil within Trump’s legal team, which has struggled to rein in a client notorious for his unfiltered early-morning tweet storms, off-the-cuff speaking style and general lack of verbal restraint.

As the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election have intensified, Trump has defied his attorneys’ instructions to avoid talking about the matter in his tweets and private conversations with others under scrutiny, including Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, as The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Trump’s relationship with Kasowitz, his personal lawyer and head of the legal team, was showing strain and that the president was growing disillusioned by his strategy. Kasowitz, in turn, had become “deeply frustrated” by the president, the Times reported.

After receiving the stranger’s email Wednesday night, Kasowitz wrote a message back saying “f‑‑‑ you,” then followed up 15 minutes later with a longer response, according to ProPublica.

“How dare you send me an email like that,” he wrote. “I’m on you now. You are f‑‑‑ing with me now Let’s see who you are Watch your back, bitch.”

“Call me. Don’t be afraid, you piece of s‑‑‑,” he wrote in another message. “Stand up. If you don’t call, you’re just afraid.”

A later email read: “I already know where you live, I’m on you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.”

The man sent only one response, thanking Kasowitz for his “kind reply” and saying he may get in touch with him “as appropriate.” He later told ProPublica he was so disturbed by the conversation that he forwarded it to the FBI.

...

Kasowitz said through his spokesman Thursday: “The person sending that email is entitled to his opinion and I should not have responded in that inappropriate manner. I intend to send him an email stating just that. This is one of those times where one wishes he could reverse the clock, but of course I can’t.”

In the story that prompted the exchange, ProPublica’s Justin Elliott and Jesse Eisinger reported that Kasowitz did not expect to apply for a security clearance, even though the Russia investigations would involve reviewing classified materials.

Even if Kasowitz applied for a security clearance, ProPublica suggested he will likely have trouble getting one because of personal issues which were disputed by a Kasowitz spokesman as “false and defamatory.” The Post has not independently confirmed ProPublica’s allegations.

Kasowitz’s spokesman told the publication he did not require a security clearance to represent the president.

Trump retained Kasowitz to help him navigate the Russia investigations in May, shortly after former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III was appointed special counsel in charge of the Department of Justice’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign.

Kasowitz, who has represented Trump in a variety of cases over the years, is known in New York law circles for his aggressive style in and out of the courtroom. In a recent profile, Bloomberg called him a “bare-knuckled litigator” and a “pit bull loyal to the boss.”

 

What the ever-lovin' fuck? This is our president's lawyer and he threatened someone? On line, no less. Unparalleled arrogance.

I'll catch up, guys, I swear. Just slow down! LOL.

[GrumpyGran]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Forecast of weak economic growth raises big questions about Trump’s populist agenda"

  Reveal hidden contents

President Trump’s budget would not add to economic growth or eliminate the deficit in coming years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Thursday, casting doubt on a plan the White House has touted as central to achieving the president’s domestic agenda.

The CBO projected that the economy would grow at only 1.9 percent under the White House’s plan — far below the 3 percent goal the administration continued to outline as recently as Thursday. It also warned that contrary to White House claims that deep cuts to the safety net in the budget would lead to a financial surplus in a decade, the deficit would actually be $720 billion.

The report was one of several big questions that emerged Thursday about whether Trump would be able to deliver on the central promises of his populist agenda for governing.

He had pledged to replace President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act with a better policy that guaranteed “insurance for everybody.” But Republican Senate leaders on Thursday were advancing a proposal — its fate uncertain — that would still swell the nation’s ranks of the uninsured by tens of millions.

Trump also faced questions about whether he would follow through on repeated promises to stop foreign competitors from “killing our companies and our workers” by dumping steel at ultra-cheap prices onto the global market — and he repeated to reporters traveling on Air Force One during his trip to France that “it’ll stop.”

Yet he has been promising action for weeks, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross would only tell a meeting of senators on Thursday that he planned to provide options to Trump soon.

Trump’s combination of setbacks and delays on key policy initiatives highlight how the president is struggling to advance a populist vision of governing in a Republican Party that historically has not been receptive to such an approach.

With his budget and health care, Trump is falling in line with some of his party’s most conservative voices, even if the policies threaten to harm many of the working-class voters who elected him.

On trade — an issue where he could act unilaterally — Trump is facing opposition from companies, foreign allies and numerous White House advisers who say restricting imports could hurt U.S. industry broadly far more than it helps steel companies.

The delay on steel imports follows a decision not to label China a currency manipulator as he advocated during the campaign, and a last-minute decision not to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he had often maligned.

“He certainly, as a president, has not been able to articulate a coherent agenda that responded to the concerns of the country, or the concerns of the people who elected him. A lot of them were low-income blue-collar whites, and his agenda is not addressing those concerns or those problems,” said Peter Wehner, a former speechwriter for Republican president George W. Bush. “House and Senate Republicans weren’t in tune with what he was running on either, so that was always going to be a problem.”

As it emphasized progress on health care and trade, the White House dismissed the CBO report as flawed because it had earlier misjudged how many people would sign up for the Affordable Care Act.

“It’s not surprising that a bureaucracy which underestimated by more than 100 percent Obamacare participation would also underestimate the economic benefits of MAGAnomics,” Office of Management and Budget spokesman John Czwartacki said, using a new buzzword for the administration’s economic policy that stands for “Make America Great Again”-economics. “They are great people, but are just wrong on this.”

"MAGAnomics"? KMN

I think it's slowly becoming apparent to them that they can't meet the demands of their wealthy campaign donors and sustain this country. Which will they choose?

[GreyhoundFan]

"No matter how bad it gets for him, here’s why Trump isn’t getting impeached this year"

Spoiler

We quickly lose sight of how exceptional the bizarre moments of the past six months have been. It would have seemed ludicrous one week ago that we’d be sitting here today holding an email in which Donald Trump Jr. cops to seeking out negative information about Hillary Clinton from someone he believed was a Russian government official. Yet here we are.

Trump’s base of support has already appeared to brush aside the obvious demonstration of a willingness to collude in the transfer of information that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” as the first email to Trump Jr. read. President Trump once said that he could shoot someone dead in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any support. That no longer seems much like hyperbole.

Still, others will note, it’s not as if Trump is popular. His approval rating remains mired in the low-40s, with most Americans viewing his job performance negatively. Doesn’t that alone mean that, if some other significant revelation occurs over the next seven days, Trump’s position must surely grow wobblier?

Nope. Despite a Democratic member of the House initiating the process to remove Trump from office, there’s almost no chance at all that the president would be impeached this year, no matter what happens.

Why? Politics. Impeachment takes the form of a trial, but it isn’t one. It’s a political vote by politicians, all of whom would like to themselves avoid the fate of being thrown out of office. And Trump’s political career both relied on and thrives because of the nature of the moment that he launched it.

Let’s go back to those approval ratings. Here are the average ratings by party for each day on which a poll was conducted for the first six months or so of Trump’s presidency (via Huffington Post Pollster).

...

There’s been a distinct downward trend, both among all voters and in Trump’s base, members of the Republican Party. But the drop-off hasn’t been all that steep; he’s polling about seven or eight points lower now than he did in January, with a similar decline among Republicans. It varies by pollster and methodology, as you might expect.

As we’ve noted before, though, the only number that really matters is that approval rating among Republicans, for reasons we’ll get into below. If your job depended largely on majority approval from a group of 10 of your peers, you probably wouldn’t start updating your résumé just because you went from having nine of them love you to only eight.

Let’s dive in a little by looking at the numbers from Gallup. The weekly average of approval ratings for Trump by party looks like this. In Gallup’s numbers, he’s down seven points from his January polling among all voters — and down only four with Republicans.

...

But there’s a critically important split in those Republican opinions. Conservative Republicans are much more likely to view Trump positively. With that group, he’s consistently been at around 90 percent approval.

...

Remember, we noted that impeachment is a political process. It requires having members of the House pass articles of impeachment that then go to the Senate where punishment is determined. And every single one of those 435 members of the House have to face their own constituents next year in an effort to keep their jobs. Most (but certainly not all) will face challengers from within their own parties who they’ll need to defeat in primaries in order to be on the ballot in November.

And that is why Trump isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

In 2014, Pew Research Center looked at the composition of the primary electorate. It found that in the 2010 and 2014 off-year elections, the people who came out to vote in the Republican primaries were much more conservative than Republican voters overall. In 2010, the voting pool was 12 points more likely to espouse consistent conservative views on policy issues than Republican Party voters overall. Three years ago, the voting pool was 11 points more conservative.

...

To break it down explicitly: Republicans control the House, so nothing’s passing there without their support. Republican House members are all up for reelection each year. To get on the ballot in November, they need to win their primaries. Their primary fights will be against other Republicans (in most states), and be determined by the most conservative voters in their party.

And those conservative Republicans have a 90 percent approval rating for President Trump, even after all of the things that have emerged over the last six months.

Those hoping for a Trump impeachment, then, might wonder what happens after the primaries. After all, it’s not a coincidence that Richard Nixon resigned in August of 1974, after his party’s primaries that year — and after a visit to his office from congressional leaders who warned that his support on Capitol Hill had collapsed. Part of the concern, clearly, was that Nixon’s unpopularity was going to lead to a bruising defeat for House Republicans that November.

That may be a concern for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan next year, too, but there are two big differences. First, Republicans have a very healthy margin in the House that would allow them to lose more than 20 seats while still maintaining a majority. Second, there are a lot fewer close House races now than there were then — a function of a lot of things including population sorting and gerrymandering.

In 1974, the winners of 90 House seats were settled by margins of 10 points or less (including the Republican minority leader in the House who’d met with Nixon). In 2016, it was a third of that.

...

In 2016, only 15 Republicans were elected with margins of under 10 points.

To put a fine point on it: Far fewer House Republicans are dependent on cobbling together support from voters outside of their party in order to win reelection. And since the most fervent supporters within their party stand strongly behind Trump, that may offer them all of the political cover they’d seek.

Theoretically, something else could emerge that would cause Trump’s support from those Republicans to crumble. But it’s very, very hard to imagine what that might be.

How disheartening.

 

3 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

I think it's slowly becoming apparent to them that they can't meet the demands of their wealthy campaign donors and sustain this country. Which will they choose?

Gee, let's think about that...The TT will only ever really choose himself. The rest of the Repugs will only go for the wealthiest of the wealthy. They are hell-bent on screwing America for generations to come.

[fraurosena]

6 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

I think it's slowly becoming apparent to them that they can't meet the demands of their wealthy campaign donors and sustain this country. Which will they choose?

Whatever Russia wants them to. Duh!

Although I wish they would adhere to this sage advice:

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena -- one of my local PBS stations is rerunning Ken Burns' documentary, "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History." I started to tear up a couple of times because, although deeply flawed people, TR, FDR, and Eleanor, pushed to make life better for Americans. Were they always successful? No, but at least they took action. The episode that aired the other night included one of FDR's fireside chats, this one was right after the bank holiday, when people were panicking. He was calm and reassuring. One person's letter that was quoted included verbiage that the writer's parents were deeply conservative Republicans, but they were happy with FDR. Can you imagine that happening today? The TT wouldn't know calm and reassuring if it bit him in his ample ass.

[Palimpsest]

Really good article, thanks. @GreyhoundFan

"It is the banality of this corruption that makes it so appalling. The president and his men are incapable of feeling shame about shameful things."

That just about sums it up.