Trump 21: Tweeting Us Into the Apocalypse

[milkteeth]

11 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

Part of the problem with the Democrats was that they underestimated the sheer amount of nastiness and vitriol that resides in much of the American electorate. They assumed that "of course" most voters wouldn't vote for such an unorthodox and blatantly offensive candidate like Trump and thought 2016 would be an easy victory. Even on here, a lot of people were hoping that Trump would win the GOP primary because it would be a shoo-in for Hillary, and I pointed out that tge "solid South" would go for whoever has an R next to their name. Then on election night, not only did the South go for Trump but formerly reliable blue states like Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Democrats bought into the hype about Obama's election showing that we were somehow "post-racial" and ran with it. The most important thing that I took away November 8, 2016 was to never forget that this is a country founded on genocide and slavery, and that many Americans think this is a good thing. Trump is not an abandonment of some Platonic ideal of "American values" so much as he's the alpha and omega of the notion that this country was founded by and for white, landowning males, who can "grab pussy" and it's all good somehow. As far as I'm concerned, Thomas Jefferson was no different than Trump in these regards, other than being superficially more cultured.

 

I kept trying to warn people not to underestimate the Democrat's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory throughout the election, even against someone like Trump. Not only did they run a terrible campaign and take the Obama coalition for granted, but they seem to be fixed on the delusion that there's some mythical moderate Republican out there who cares more about political propriety than their tax cuts.

Not only are we a country founded on slavery and genocide, but this is a country where it's citizens are being gunned down by police, going without clean drinking water and has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Of course a country that does these things would elect someone like Donald Trump.

 

 

[milkteeth]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

With the new season starting tonight, this is for all you GOT fans out there.

Game of Trump

  Reveal hidden contents

Wicked siblings willing to do anything for power. Secret deals with sworn enemies. The shock of a dead body. A Wall. Foreign bawds, guns for hire, and snakes. Back-stabbing, betrayal and charges of treason. Little birds spying and tattling. A maniacal mad king and his court of scheming, self-absorbed princesses and princelings, swathed in the finest silk and the most brazen immorality, ruling with total disregard for the good of their people.

The night in Washington is dark and full of terrors. The Game of Trump has brought a pagan lawlessness never before seen in the capital.

So far in life, Donald Trump has survived and thrived on the same philosophy espoused by Littlefinger in “Game of Thrones”: “Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder.”

But is the rampant deception and corruption in his gaudy, jangly realm about to engulf the Emperor of Chaos? Is this the grisly endgame for Cersei in King’s Landing and Donald in Washington? A talent to distract on Twitter, our Joffrey-like president will learn, is not the same as the ability to walk through fire.

The crowds are swelling, yelling: “Shame. Shame. Shame.”

Hugging their tattered brand, the family tried for a respite this weekend. Ivanka and Jared fled to Sun Valley to hang out with the global elite at Herb Allen’s conference. After escaping to the City of Light for Bastille Day — poor battered Sean Spicer had to settle for a party at the French Embassy here — Trump and Melania were going to his Bedminster club to attend the U.S. Women’s Open being held there. (Some women protested, saying the Open should be closed to Donald Trump.)

Trump always inflates his numbers, using his own special brand of ego arithmetic. But Don Jr. and Jared have been busy deflating their numbers.

Don Jr. pooh-poohed the meeting revealed in The New York Times’s scoop that he met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with Kremlin contacts, and Rob Goldstone, a publicist who represents a Russian pop star who featured Trump in his music video. But it later turned out there was more to the picture.

First we learned there were six, not four, people in the meeting, including a lobbyist who just happened to be a former member of the Soviet unit dealing in counterintelligence. Then we found out there were eight. Next, we’ll find out Putin was FaceTiming from Moscow.

Don Jr. was not ashamed that he had gleefully met with Russians to collect dirt on Hillary Clinton. He was only annoyed, as he told Sean Hannity in the womb of Fox News, that the meeting turned out to be “a nothing” and “just a wasted 20 minutes.” The thought that it was improper has not entered his mind.

Jared Kushner has had to amend his list of foreign contacts three times, adding more than 100 names that had somehow eluded him. “His lawyers have said this was inadvertent and that a member of his staff had prematurely hit the ‘send’ button for the form before it was completed,” Michael Isikoff wrote in Yahoo News.

No one in Washington, a land intimately familiar with obnoxiously oppressive forms, believed that. As Vox noted: “But the thing is, there isn’t one ‘send button’ for this kind of security clearance form. There are 28.”

As theater, the Trump saga is spectacular, with a dazzling collection of fools and jesters. Who could make up Rob Goldstone, the rotund, vodka-swilling, chocolate-inhaling, British publicist who liked to party at the Russian Tea Room?

The Daily Beast recalled that back in the ’80s, when Goldstone represented John Denver and Michael Jackson, he went to Ethiopia for Band Aid, a rock concert to help famine victims, and managed to gain seven pounds. As he explained to The Sydney Morning Herald, “I mean, what else is there to do in a country like Ethiopia but eat?” In 2010, Goldstone wrote an essay in The Times on “The Tricks and Trials of Traveling While Fat.”

And who possibly could concoct Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz? According to ProPublica, after a man watching Rachel Maddow emailed Kasowitz Wednesday telling him to “Resign Now,” the lawyer shot back with a bunch of nasty messages, such as “Watch your back, bitch” and “I already know where you live, I’m on you. … You will see me. I promise. Bro.”

Kasowitz, ProPublica reports, has a drinking problem that could hamper him getting a security clearance. He has grown increasingly frustrated by Trump’s lack of discipline as the president sulks and rages in his tent over the Russia labyrinth, according to The Washington Post.

So this lawyer is the one trying to instill discipline in that president?

In an interview with reporters on Air Force One on the way to Paris, President Trump once more tried to deflect blame from Russia for the election hacks. “And I’m not saying it wasn’t Russia,” he said. “What I’m saying is that we have to protect ourselves no matter who it is. You know, China is very good at this. I hate to say it, North Korea is very good at this. Look what they did to Sony Studios.”

He bragged about his cunning when he brought up the hacks with Putin. After citing it once, Trump said, “I then said to him again, in a totally different way.”

Wow. That must have really outfoxed the lethal former K.G.B. agent. You know nothing, Donald Trump.

Trump defended his beleaguered oldest son — who is the same age as Emmanuel Macron — as “a good boy.” Don Jr. certainly learned Trump family values.

In the immortal words of the villainous Ramsay Bolton on “Game of Thrones”: “If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”

4

 

I think we're giving the Trump admin waaaaaay too much credit to think that they're anywhere near the level of scheming and machinations that goes on in Westeros. If they were a television show, this would be their theme song.

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh boy, another theme week: "White House unveils ‘Made in America’ week, though many Trump products are made overseas"

Spoiler

PISCATAWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. — President Trump, whose company outsources the manufacturing of many of its products to overseas factories, is unveiling “Made in America” week at the White House to promote products made in the United States.

In keeping with the “America First” theme of Trump's inauguration, the administration will highlight U.S. manufacturing in the coming week, the latest of its theme weeks orchestrated by aides to bring discipline to the White House and focus Trump's schedule and message on a set of policies.

The week will begin Monday with a “Made in America product showcase” featuring crafts and other items created in each of the 50 states. The president plans to issue a declaration Wednesday and deliver remarks on the importance of making things in the United States. And Saturday, Trump will travel to Norfolk to attend the commissioning of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the first in the Navy's new class of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

“This week the Trump administration will honor the amazing American workers and companies who have products that are made in America,” Helen Ferre, the White House's director of media affairs, told reporters at a briefing here Sunday. She said America sets “the world standard for quality and craftsmanship.”

For Trump, highlighting U.S.-made products is inconsistent with his practices as a businessman. For years, the Trump Organization has outsourced much of its product manufacturing, relying on a global network of factories in a dozen countries — including Bangladesh, China and Mexico — to make its clothing, home decor pieces and other items.

Similarly, the clothing line of Ivanka Trump, the president's older daughter and a senior White House adviser, relies exclusively on foreign factories employing low-wage workers in countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and China, according to a recent Washington Post investigation.

Asked at Sunday's briefing whether “Made in America” week would include a commitment from the Trump Organization or Ivanka Trump's company to make more of their products in the United States, Ferre told reporters, “We'll get back to you on that.”

The White House hopes “Made in America” week can draw attention to actions the administration has taken that officials believe help U.S. manufacturing or promote the interests of U.S. workers, such as withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, moving to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement or removing a series of environmental and other regulations.

“Made in America” week comes as the Trump administration is nearing decisions on a number of trade matters, including investigations by the Commerce Department on steel and aluminum. Asked whether the administration is considering import tariffs on products manufactured in other countries, a senior administration official briefing reporters here Sunday said, “At this stage, everything is on the table.”

Trump's advisers also hope that by highlighting U.S. manufacturing they can underscore the need to overhaul the nation's tax code, including substantially reducing the corporate tax rate. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn have been working with key lawmakers to develop a tax reform legislation, which they hope will advance on Capitol Hill in coming weeks.

The White House will continue with its theme weeks into August. July 24 will kick off “American Heroes” week, and July 31 will be the start of “American Dream” week, Ferre said, though she would not specify what policies would be trumpeted either week.

Of course, every week is hypocrite week in this administration.

[fraurosena]

"I'm consulting myself, so you have to pay me..."

 

It's only a matter of time before he starts demanding royalty payments for his tweets... 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

18 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

It's only a matter of time before he starts demanding royalty payments for his tweets... 

Of course, because he's serving as communications director.

This is a good piece from the NYT: "Six Long Months of President Trump"

Spoiler

From the beginning, people around me talked nonstop about the end.

How long could Donald Trump’s presidency possibly last? Would impeachment or the 25th Amendment undo him? Before Trump, few of us even knew of the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to decree the president unfit. But suddenly everybody was up to speed, and no sooner had Trump been inaugurated than the “would you rather” question du jour became him versus Mike Pence. All-purpose lunacy or religious zeal: Choose your governance. Pick your poison.

Part of this, yes, reflected the company I keep. It doesn’t brim with Trump enthusiasts. But more of this came down to Trump himself — the lidless grandiosity, the bottomless vulgarity, the lies atop lies upon lies. I’ll never forget his second day in office, not just because he used an appearance at the C.I.A. to crow at great length about his many Time magazine covers and to insist, despite ready evidence to the contrary, that any beef of his with intelligence agencies was a media invention. It stays with me because of a text message I received from a journalist who covers him as well as any other, understands him better and was utterly flabbergasted by that display.

“We’re all going to die,” it said. While there was jest and hyperbole in that, there was also genuine alarm and the dark realization that Trump would not be transmogrified by the oath of office into anything approaching a dignified, responsible statesman. No, his extra power was just making him extra mean, and what we saw before Nov. 8 was what we got from Jan. 20 onward: a child in a man’s suit, a knave in a knight’s armor, a dangerous experiment with unforeseeable consequences.

They’re more seeable now. As of Thursday, July 20, Trump will have inhabited the presidency for a full six months, and we can reach certain conclusions with a measure of confidence.

No one can yet say how or when it ends. His dim namesake’s antics, evasions and omissions have reinvigorated talk of impeachment, but Republican lawmakers’ statements last week don’t support that scenario. With rare exception, the sternest words came from the most predictable quarters and hardly rose to the level of revolt. Maybe that’s a relief. Can you imagine Trump, with his thin skin and martyr complex, in the throes of impeachment? He’d wail and thrash and tear down everything around him. I mean, more than now.

We have to stop rolling our eyes when he brags about how much he has done, because he’s right. He has done plenty.

With his stances on climate change, trade and refugees and with all the air kisses blown at Vladimir Putin, he has altered our place in the world and splintered its postwar framework. Don’t be reassured by the recent pleasantries between him and Emmanuel Macron: Much of Western Europe is reeling from what it considers a surrender of American leadership. This, post-Trump, may be reparable. But I wonder if our sturdiest allies will ever feel quite the same way about this country again.

With his first Supreme Court appointment, he showed what he would almost surely do with a second and third: fully indulge the social conservatives who are one of the most dependable components of his base. If he lasts a full term and the Senate remains, as is likely, in Republican hands after the 2018 midterms, he could leave behind a court that leans sharply to the right for a generation to come.

With his sloppiness, scandals and inner circle of arrogant neophytes, he is frittering away time. That’s hardly a singular accomplishment, but we can’t afford more government paralysis and procrastination. Infrastructure that’s no longer competitive (or safe), a tax code crying out for revision, a work force without the right skills: When do we fix this? How far behind do we fall?

And what, in the meantime, happens to Americans’ already shriveled faith in Washington? Trump’s election reflected many voters’ exasperation with the status quo and sense of permanent estrangement from some gilded clique of winners. He was their pyrrhic retort. How much hotter will their anger burn when they realize they got played?

I’m more likely to win a season of “The Bachelorette” than he is to build that incessantly promised wall. His professed disdain for Wall Street was a campaign-season pose, abandoned the minute he started assembling his administration. Health care that’s better, cheaper and more universal? Oh, please.

It’s possible that Trump’s fans will never blame him, because of one of his most self-serving and corrosive feats: the stirring of partisanship and distrust of institutions into the conviction that there’s no such thing as objective truth. There are only rival claims. There are always “alternative facts.” Charges of mere bias are the antiquated weapons of yesteryear; “fake news” is the new nullifier, and it’s a phrase so dear to him that his unprincipled acolytes are building on it. Last week a Trump adviser, Sebastian Gorka, lashed out at the “fake news industrial complex.” Trump reportedly swooned.

What happens to a democracy whose citizens not only lose common ground but also take a match to the idea of a common reality? Thanks in part to Trump, we may find out. He doesn’t care about civility or basic decency, and even if he did, he lacks the discipline to yoke his actions to any ideals. The Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik expressed it perfectly, telling me, “His presidency is what happens when you have road rage in the Oval Office.”

I was just 9 when Richard Nixon resigned and a teenager during the Jimmy Carter years. I began paying close attention only with Ronald Reagan. He and every one of his successors bent the truth, to varying degrees. He and every successor had a vanity that sometimes ran contrary to the public good. But none came close to Trump in those regards.

None shrugged off conflicts of interest the way he does. None publicly savaged women (and men) based on their looks or supposed cosmetic surgery. None made gloating a trademark of his public discourse. Two scoops for Trump, one for everybody else. He’s president and you’re not. The pettiness radiates outward, as does the viciousness and lack of ethics — to his lawyers, to his kin. And it’s more than just coarse spectacle. It’s an assault on what it means to be president and what the presidency means. The injury to the office won’t be quick to heal.

...

I can’t shake two incidents in particular. A few weeks before his inauguration, Trump tweeted a New Year greeting that was, instead, a spitball thrown at anyone who hadn’t genuflected before him. Last month, he coaxed his cabinet members to kiss his ring as the television cameras rolled. Those grotesque bookends affirmed that he is changeless and that he rules as he lives, for Trump and Trump alone.

Still I try for optimism: We won’t all die.

But suffer? Count on it.

 

[fraurosena]

Garry Kasparov has an interesting op-ed in the NY Daily News.

Donald’s Pravda: Trump and his apologists spookily echo Vladimir Putin

Spoiler

For autocrats, angry denial is the first phase of responding to accurate charges against them. "No! Never! A complete fabrication!"

As evidence accumulates, this shifts to feigning ignorance and claiming misunderstanding, along with attempts to distract by slandering the accusers, blaming others for similar sins and discrediting the concept of knowable truth. "I didn't know it was wrong! The media is out to get me! Others have done worse! Who knows what really happened?"

When even this proves insufficient, it's time for the final step, confession. Not the kind that is said to be good for the soul, but the aggressive, defiant boasting of someone who is sure that they won't be punished in this life or the next for the crime they denied for so long. "I did it, but so what? There's nothing wrong with it! What are you going to do about it?"

After many months of denials, lies and distractions in an effort to dismiss the mounting evidence that the Trump campaign knowingly worked with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election, the Trump train is approaching the final station. What else is left after it was revealed last week that Donald Trump Jr. eagerly took a meeting on June 9, 2016, to receive supposedly damaging material about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government?

Last week, as the New York Times prepared to publish an exposé on the meeting, Trump Jr. released excerpts of an email chain in a bizarre effort to claim transparency. It was as if a robber was caught red-handed in the jewelry store, surrounded by police, and then asked for leniency for turning himself in.

Among other things, the emails showed that top Trump aides Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner also participated in the meeting and knew about its scurrilous content in advance. Instead of refusing the meeting or contacting the FBI, they went ahead with it. It's almost as if such an arrangement did not come as a surprise.

As usual, when news from the Trump-Russia front looks bad, it soon turns out to be even worse. On Friday, the list of attendees of the June meeting was expanded to include Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist who just happens to be an alleged former Soviet counter-intelligence agent.

Other reports later added a translator and at least one other person from the Russian side of the equation to the cast of characters Don Jr. must have forgotten to mention in his burst of transparency.

Mark Twain wrote that if you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. Ironically, this profound phrase was tweeted by none other than Donald Trump Jr. in 2013.

The Trump team has made a full-time job of forgetting things. To be fair, it must be difficult to keep so many difficult Russian names straight, along with so many changing stories.

The next wave of revelations about collaboration between the campaign team and administration of Donald Trump and Russia will surprise only in their specifics, not their character. That treasonous nature, of collaborating with a hostile foreign power, has been exposed once and for all.

There will almost surely be more names, more meetings, more smoke and more fire, but the raw truth of collusion is now undeniable. Further evidence will decide if it's also legally actionable.

This steady drumbeat has served one useful purpose whether it leads to Trump's early departure from the presidency or not. It has exposed a class of pundits, politicians and supporters for whom nothing is too foolish, too sleazy or too un-American to defend him from. Every time you imagine the lines of good conscience cannot be drawn any lower, they slide under the bar like a subpoena slipped under an office door.

Their constant excuses for Trump's behavior are nearly as outrageous as his statements and actions.

The countless personal insults and offensive statements Trump made during the campaign were just his blunt personal style, they said. His unprecedented praise of dictators like Vladimir Putin was either geopolitical naivete or clever brinkmanship. (Why not both?)

Trump would change once in office, we were told. He would rise to the level of the presidency, hire competent communications experts and foreign policy advisors — and listen to them — and run the country like a business.

In his six months in office, Trump has lowered the American presidency to his level, speaking directly to America and the world in mangled exclamations on social media. When his top national security official, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, turned out to be working for foreign governments, Trump did hire a few competent advisors.

The formidable duo of National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary James Mattis spend much of their time quietly reassuring America's allies by contradicting Trump on American policy, military strategy and basic geography.

As for running the country like one of his businesses, we have been reminded vividly that Trump filed for six bankruptcies. His undeniable commercial success was a TV show in which he played a businessman, exploiting his brand name and his ability to sound tough while following a script. Now that he's the President of the United States, Trump is unwilling or unable to follow a script, leaving the world trembling anxiously each morning for his arrival on Twitter.

Through it all, Republican leaders like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have stayed loyal to Trump's increasingly incoherent agenda. The pundits of Fox News either defend Trump's latest outrages or, since many are indefensible, simply ignore them in favor of running more attacks on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — neither of whom, it should be pointed out, is the President of the United States.

It is painful to do so, but Trump's critics must admit that his clownish character and hateful demagoguery have substantial support in the American electorate.

Still, it has been startling to find that defending Trump on these emotional and nationalist grounds extends readily to matters of national security. It is here that we see the real impact of 18 months of demonizing the media and attacking every investigation and critique as fake news.

There is no other explanation for the partisan defenses of the latest developments in the Trump-Russia storylines, one past and one present.

To start with current events, Trump met with Putin a little over a week ago in Hamburg, Germany. That two-hour-plus meeting was the culmination of a public dance between the two men that has been carried on in their interviews, speeches and remarks to the news media for well over a year.

Their personal relationship, which has been alternately touted and denied by Trump numerous times, has faded into the background as more Russia connections between Trump's staff and family have fueled the daily news cycle.

The Hamburg encounter brought their strange bromance back to the front page, despite a lack of anything substantial coming out of the meeting. The White House had already admitted that there was no real agenda from the American side — which makes sense because there is nothing the United States really needs from Putin's Russia. That fact has frequently been overlooked as Trump's camp defended its many Russian connections as vital engagement.

There is no significant official business between the United States and Russia unless you include Putin's sustained propaganda and cyberwar against the United States as official business, but Trump said he accepted Putin's claims of innocence and was eager to put that behind him.

Every national security department and expert is warning about the next Russian attack, but Trump says to forget about it, let's just move on. Of course he does, since the hacking and misinformation campaign were both in his favor during the campaign. This is the clearest example of how Trump always puts what benefits him personally over U.S. interests and his oath to defend the Constitution.

There is a clear parallel here to what we have experienced in Russia for the past 17 years under Putin: the intentional conflation of the private interests of the few with the public good. When Putin talks about what's best for Russia, he always only means what is best for him and his cronies — what keeps them wealthy and in power.

There is now a similar dynamic with Trump, especially where Russia is concerned. His Hamburg meeting with Putin was a great gift to the Russian dictator, who needs prominent photo-ops to reassure his gang back home that he's still a big boss who can protect their investments abroad.

Meanwhile, the U.S. needs nothing from Russia. No, despite Trump claims to the contrary, we're not really on the same side in Syria. And U.S. sanctions are locked to Russia's exit from Crimea, which is not going to happen any time soon.

So why the meeting? It's a case of "Ask not what Russia can do for America, ask what Putin can do for Trump — and what has he been doing for him already?"

Trump also loves photo ops and feeling like a big man on the international stage, especially with his domestic agenda of health care, tax reform, infrastructure and immigration foundering.

Immediately after the Putin meeting, Trump boasted about potential U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria and, laughably, in cybersecurity. It revealed Trump's desperate desire to be seen as a global dealmaker — a desire easily exploited by Putin. Ukraine and other key topics for Putin will likely now become areas of focus for Trump's State Department — led, lest we forget, by Rex Tillerson, a favorite of Putin's while Tillerson was the Exxon-Mobil CEO.

Collaboration during the campaign is making the headlines today, and that investigation must continue. But any cooperation between Trump and Putin in the future will be even more dangerous, both for Russians and Americans.

Trump has no international agenda and Putin is happy to fill in the blanks. Trump can follow a script, after all, and right now it looks like that script is being written in Moscow.

 

The article is looooong, but it makes some good points.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting article about the picture with the evangelicals laying hands on the TT: "Several pastors prayed over President Trump. Another one says they bordered on ‘heresy.’"

Spoiler

Being president of the United States is hard, and one could argue that the person sitting in the Oval Office needs all the help he can get — earthly or divine.

Donald Trump was prayed for on the campaign trail. Barack Obama called his Christian faith “a sustaining force.” And George W. Bush began his second term with prayer and reflection at Washington National Cathedral.

But an image of evangelical pastors laying hands on and praying over President Trump last week has struck an especially visceral chord with critics of Trump and his policies.

The religious leaders in the Oval Office said they were praying for God to give Trump guidance, supernatural wisdom and protection.

...

But in the short term, their photo turned into a lightning rod.

...

Chief among the critics on Saturday, was Rev. William Barber II, the leader of several morality-based protest movements that have targeted Trump and his policies.

On MSNBC’s “AM Joy” Saturday morning, Barber called the now-viral photo “theological malpractice bordering on heresy.”

“When you can p-r-a-y for a president and others while they are p-r-e-y, preying on the most vulnerable, you’re violating the most sacred principles of religion,” Barber told host Joy Reid.

The attack is unsurprising given Barber’s history. He’s lashed out at politicians who he says use obscure biblical texts as scriptural cover for laws that hurt people. Barber has extended his disdain to the religious leaders who support them.

He told The Washington Post that the Bible says little about abortion, prayer in schools and same-sex marriage, but there are hundreds of scriptures that deal with how people should treat “the least of these.”

That biblical admonition, he believes, should extend to the political debate over who gets health care and who goes without, as he told Reid:

When we have this extremist Trump Republican agenda that takes health care, transfers wealth to the greedy, that’s hypocrisy and sin. Seven hundred billion dollars, Joy? You haven’t seen that kind of transfer of wealth on the backs of bodies of people since slavery. Claiming to care about life, but then passing a bill when you know thousands will die — 22 million people, poor, working people will be hurt — that is hypocrisy and sin. When you know it will hurt children, the disabled and veterans, that is sin. That is hypocrisy.

Laying hands on someone is a particularly intimate act for Evangelicals, communing with people and with God at the same time. As The Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey wrote: Jesus’ apostles in the New Testament would touch believers. It’s seen as a sign of responsibility or authority. Many Christians lay hands on those who are being ordained in the church.

But things start to get dodgy when the practice is brought out of the church and into, well, the Oval Office.

Trump has said he is a Presbyterian, but he does not attend church regularly and has not joined any of the D.C.-area Presbyterian churches.

Still, white evangelicals overwhelming voted for Trump, according to the Pew Research Center. A survey in April found that 80 percent of white evangelical Protestants who attend church once a month approve of Trump’s job performance.

Johnnie Moore, who photographed the “laying hands” moment, then tweeted it, said Monday’s meeting was an informal gathering where they prayed for wisdom, that God would protect him and his family and that God would lead him. “It was normal, what a lot of us pray when we pray for elected officials,” he said. “It was like a meeting of friends.”

Still, Barber repudiated the religious leaders, who he said should be calling out Trump’s actions, not laying hands on him.

“What leaders ought to be doing is challenging the president — challenging McConnell, challenging Ryan and challenging these senators and others and not trying to appease them,” Barber said. “Instead, they’re acting like priests of the empire rather than prophets of God.”

How very true.

[Howl]

Just wanted to share!

[onekidanddone]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Of course, every week is hypocrite week in this administration.

A head ache in my eye this man gives me. Weren't all his MAGA has made in China?

[singsingsing]

Just rediscovered this forum, and I want to say that I actually love brussels sprouts! Seriously, folks, don't disparage brussels sprouts - they're tasty and nutritious! The trick is to bake them, not boil them.

As for Trump... I would eat a pound of brussels sprouts boiled with lice if it would get him out of office.

[Howl]

9 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

Just rediscovered this forum, and I want to say that I actually love brussels sprouts! Seriously, folks, don't disparage brussels sprouts - they're tasty and nutritious! The trick is to bake them, not boil them.

As for Trump... I would eat a pound of brussels sprouts boiled with lice if it would get him out of office.

Shaved brussels sprouts are a thing now in some restaurants in my city.  I usually saute with bok choy and cabbage.  

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Garry Kasparov has an interesting op-ed in the NY Daily News.

Donald’s Pravda: Trump and his apologists spookily echo Vladimir Putin

Great read.  I like his point that the US doesn't need anything from Russia. Nada.  Key question: So why is Trump going out of his way to court Putin?

[AuntK]

Every week I go through the same feelings at this time.  It's Sunday night. Another week in this nightmare. And I wonder what disaster awaits us this week.

[candygirl200413]

So now he's doing themed weeks? Which reminded me of spirit week back in high school. Which again makes no sense since nothing sold with the Trump name is made in America. Also the distraction, could it be considered gaslighting?

Under siege on Russia and health care, Trump’s White House plans more “theme weeks”

Quote

President Donald Trump's White House, bogged down by yet more revelations into his team's alleged connections to Russian agents who leaked damaging information about Democrats during the 2016 elections and a foundering Affordable Care Act repeal bill from the GOP in Congress, is responding by turning to "theme weeks."

According to Politico, in the next three weeks the administration "will hold events pertaining to three vaguely defined themes: 'Made in America,' 'American Heroes' and 'American Dreams.'" The first week will include at least two events celebrating U.S.-made products, including a "product showcase" of items made in all 50 states, while White House spokeswoman Helen Aguirre Ferre suggested the hero-themed week would be centered around veterans.

In the past, Trump's theme weeks have largely been overshadowed by the various scandals plaguing his administration and relentless mockery by its critics. His "infrastructure week," for example, quickly fell apart as the focus turned to his decision to mock London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Twitter for Khan's response to a terror attack. That week also saw former FBI Director James Comey's damning testimony that the president had tried to coerce him over an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's alleged misconduct.

Similar controversies seem likely to plague the White House's renewed efforts. The Republican plan to repeal and replace the ACA is failing to gain enough traction to achieve a simple majority in the Senate, while more unflattering stories about Trump and his team's links to Russia have continued to emerge on a near-weekly basis.

 

 

[Cartmann99]

9 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Still, white evangelicals overwhelming voted for Trump, according to the Pew Research Center. A survey in April found that 80 percent of white evangelical Protestants who attend church once a month approve of Trump’s job performance.

He's making a mockery of the things these people claim to hold dear, and they are too far gone to see it. If Trump performed an abortion on the White House lawn tomorrow, the majority of his so-called pro-life supporters would suddenly find a way to be okay with abortion. 

3 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

So now he's doing themed weeks? Which reminded me of spirit week back in high school.

I keep thinking of how cable channels will have a promotion like 'Shark Week' or showing all the movies that a recently deceased movie star starred in. 

We should lobby for 'Silence is golden' week, where Trump doesn't tweet anything for seven whole days. 

---------------------------

Also, since it looks like some of our senators are wanting to have a little public chit-chat with Dim Donald 2.0 this week, if that happens, should the blow-by-blow discussion for those watching the hearing be located here, or in the Russian thread, or in the thread about the Senate shenanigans, or in the thread about the Trump sons, or should we have a new continuous thread for any and all Trump-related open hearings that happen from now on? 

[GreyhoundFan]

11 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

A head ache in my eye this man gives me. Weren't all his MAGA has made in China?

The WaPo had an article last year about this. The MAGA hats were one of the few Drumpf family products made in the US.

[GreyhoundFan]

I would substitute "US" for "Republican Party" in this opinion piece by Joe Scarborough: "Trump is killing the Republican Party"

Spoiler

I did not leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left its senses. The political movement that once stood athwart history resisting bloated government and military adventurism has been reduced to an amalgam of talk-radio resentments. President Trump’s Republicans have devolved into a party without a cause, dominated by a leader hopelessly ill-informed about the basics of conservatism, U.S. history and the Constitution.

America’s first Republican president reportedly said , “Nearly all men can stand adversity. But if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” The current Republican president and the party he controls were granted monopoly power over Washington in November and already find themselves spectacularly failing Abraham Lincoln’s character exam.

It would take far more than a single column to detail Trump’s failures in the months following his bleak inaugural address. But the Republican leaders who have subjugated themselves to the White House’s corrupting influence fell short of Lincoln’s standard long before their favorite reality-TV star brought his gaudy circus act to Washington.

When I left Congress in 2001, I praised my party’s successful efforts to balance the budget for the first time in a generation and keep many of the promises that led to our takeover in 1994. I concluded my last speech on the House floor by foolishly predicting that Republicans would balance budgets and champion a restrained foreign policy for as long as they held power.

I would be proved wrong immediately.

As the new century began, Republicans gained control of the federal government. George W. Bush and the GOP Congress responded by turning a $155 billion surplus into a $1 trillion deficit and doubling the national debt, passing a $7 trillion unfunded entitlement program and promoting a foreign policy so utopian it would have made Woodrow Wilson blush. Voters made Nancy Pelosi speaker of the House in 2006 and Barack Obama president in 2008.

After their well-deserved drubbing, Republicans swore that if voters ever entrusted them with running Washington again, they would prove themselves worthy. Trump’s party was given a second chance this year, but it has spent almost every day since then making the majority of Americans regret it.

The GOP president questioned America’s constitutional system of checks and balances. Republican leaders said nothing. He echoed Stalin and Mao by calling the free press “the enemy of the people.” Republican leaders were silent. And as the commander in chief insulted allies while embracing autocratic thugs, Republicans who spent a decade supporting wars of choice remained quiet. Meanwhile, their budget-busting proposals demonstrate a fiscal recklessness very much in line with the Bush years.

Last week’s Russia revelations show just how shamelessly Republican lawmakers will stand by a longtime Democrat who switched parties after the promotion of a racist theory about Barack Obama gave him standing in Lincoln’s once-proud party. Neither Lincoln, William Buckley nor Ronald Reagan would recognize this movement.

It is a dying party that I can no longer defend.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham has long predicted that the Republican and Democrats’ 150-year duopoly will end. The signs seem obvious enough. When my Republican Party took control of Congress in 1994, it was the first time the GOP had won the House in a generation. The two parties have been in a state of turmoil ever since.

In 2004, Republican strategist Karl Rove anticipated a majority that would last a generation; two years later, Pelosi became the most liberal House speaker in history. Obama was swept into power by a supposedly unassailable Democratic coalition. In 2010, the tea party tide rolled in. Obama’s reelction returned the momentum to the Democrats, but Republicans won a historic state-level landslide in 2014. Then last fall, Trump demolished both the Republican and Democratic establishments.

Political historians will one day view Donald Trump as a historical anomaly. But the wreckage visited of this man will break the Republican Party into pieces — and lead to the election of independent thinkers no longer tethered to the tired dogmas of the polarized past. When that day mercifully arrives, the two-party duopoly that has strangled American politics for almost two centuries will finally come to an end. And Washington just may begin to work again.

 

[CTRLZero]

19 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Asked at Sunday's briefing whether “Made in America” week would include a commitment from the Trump Organization or Ivanka Trump's company to make more of their products in the United States, Ferre told reporters, “We'll get back to you on that.”

OK, uh huh,  right.  One of my first postcards to the White House was suggesting the Trump familia take a personal step toward making America great again by returning manufacturing jobs to America, specifically, the Ivanka line.  They haven't replied to me, either...

 

12 hours ago, singsingsing said:

I would eat a pound of brussels sprouts boiled with lice if it would get him out of office.

I would eat a pound of lice boiled with brussels sprouts!  The downside is that the line of succession isn't pretty!

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo's daily mega-article starts out today with an analysis of support for the TT. It's interesting; "The Daily 202: Only 1 in 4 Americans strongly support Trump"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump is not Teflon, and the conventional wisdom that “nothing matters” is wrong.

A fresh Washington Post/ABC News poll underscores the softness of Trump’s support as he prepares to mark six months in the White House on Thursday.

It also highlights a growing intensity gap. Support for the president is more tepid, but opposition is increasingly inflamed.

The president’s overall approval rating has slipped to 36 percent from 42 percent in April. For context, George W. Bush and Barack Obama both held 59 percent approval ratings in Post/ABC polls conducted around their six-month anniversaries.

Media coverage often focuses on how rank-and-file Republicans, as well as elected officials, continue to stand behind Trump. While true, a close examination of the results suggests that no more than 1 in 4 Americans believe passionately in him or his presidency at this juncture.

Trump’s disapproval rating has risen to 58 percent in the national survey, which was conducted last Monday through Thursday. Overall, 48 percent disapprove strongly of how he’s doing. But while 36 percent approve of Trump overall, only 25 percent approve strongly.

Consider the partisan breakdown: 82 percent of self-identified Republicans approve of how Trump is doing, including 62 percent who approve strongly. Meanwhile, 85 percent of Democrats disapprove of Trump, but a larger 75 percent disapprove strongly.

Where Trump really differs from Obama is that his approval leans more heavily on strong backers. Obama’s average “strong” approval was 28 percent during his presidency, not much different than Trump today. But Obama averaged 21 percent “somewhat” approval, 10 points higher than Trump.

Across the battery of questions in the survey, Trump’s hardcore base of support appears to be about a quarter of the public, give or take:

• 24 percent say that, since taking office, Trump has “acted in a way that’s fitting and proper for a president of the United States.” Seventy percent say Trump has acted in a way that is “unpresidential.”
• 24 percent approve of Trump’s use of Twitter. Just 13 percent strongly approve. Two-thirds disapprove of the president’s use of social media, and 53 percent strongly disapprove.
• Compared with previous presidents, 23 percent think “Trump is doing a better job than most.” While 17 percent say he’s doing a “much better” job, 38 percent think he’s doing “much worse.”
• 3 in 10 believe Trump is “a positive role model for young people.” For perspective, 18 percent said the same of Bill Clinton in a Post/ABC poll conducted the week after the salacious Starr Report was released in 1998.
• 27 percent think “America’s leadership in the world has gotten stronger” under Trump.
• 26 percent believe it was appropriate for Trump’s son, Donald Jr., to meet last summer with a Russian lawyer who said she had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. (This includes just less than half of Republicans.)
• Despite all evidence to the contrary, just over 3 in 10 Americans still do not think the Russian government tried to influence the outcome of last fall’s U.S. presidential election.
• While 34 percent trust Trump to negotiate on America’s behalf with other world leaders, only 19 percent trust him “a great deal.” The other 15 percent trust him just “a good amount.” Two-thirds of the country does not trust Trump at all in negotiations, which is remarkable when you think back to how heavily he emphasized his negotiating skills during the campaign.
• On health care, 24 percent favor the Republican plan over Obamacare. Seventeen percent “strongly” favor the GOP plan, which was not explained in detail.
• Would you say that the more you hear about Trump, the more you like him? Or the more you hear about Trump, the less you like him? Asked that question, roughly 3 in 10 adults said more. Nearly 6 in 10 said less.

The poll, based on a sample of more than 1,000 adults, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

-- Responding on Twitter, Trump said his 36 percent approval rating – which he rounded up to 40 percent – “is not bad at this time.” But he also attacked the Post-ABC poll as “just about the most inaccurate poll around election time!” In fact, The Post and ABC’s final poll was well within the sampling error and correctly showed Clinton ahead in the national popular vote.

-- What Americans love and hate about Trump: A job approval rating can be an unsatisfyingly vague barometer. What exactly are people thinking when they say they approve or disapprove of the way a president is handling his job? Our new poll included an open-ended question asking Americans what they have either liked or disliked most about his presidency so far.

The most common answer for why people think Trump is doing a good job was “strong leadership,” a variation of which was offered by 11 percent. “Speaking his mind” and “not being politically correct” was a close second, at 9 percent. “In total, 30 percent of Trump approvers mentioned his overall leadership or personality traits when asked what they approve of most. But a somewhat larger group of Trump approvers, 40 percent, mentioned a policy-related reason for approving of Trump’s performance,” pollster Scott Clement explains. “Some 7 percent said foreign affairs, while 6 percent apiece cited the economy, creating jobs (and) preventing illegal immigration … Slightly fewer mentioned fighting terrorism (or) his efforts on health care legislation.”

Americans who disapprove of Trump focused heavily on the president's personal and character traits. “Topping the list of non-policy criticisms is the way Trump talks and acts (13 percent), laments about him not being informed or knowledgeable (12 percent), while another 12 percent mentioned concerns about lies, false statements or general dishonesty,” Scott writes in a story that just published. “Among disapprovers who named issues as their biggest criticism, the most common were immigration (8 percent) and health care (7 percent), the travel ban at 3 percent and others at 2 percent or less. Altogether, 46 percent of Trump disapprovers criticized something about his personality, honesty or style, while 25 percent mentioned a policy-related concern.”

The country may seem hopelessly divided, but the people who strongly approve and disapprove of Trump have something in common: When asked what they love or hate most about the president, 12 percent of strong approvers and 14 percent of strong disapprovers volunteered “everything.”

...

 

[AnywhereButHere]

12 hours ago, singsingsing said:

Just rediscovered this forum, and I want to say that I actually love brussels sprouts! Seriously, folks, don't disparage brussels sprouts - they're tasty and nutritious! The trick is to bake them, not boil them.

As for Trump... I would eat a pound of brussels sprouts boiled with lice if it would get him out of office.

We may all be reduced to this if he and his people don't stop trying to destroy the natural world. We'll need the lice for protein after there's no more animals because there's no more habitat... Slight exaggeration - maybe.

https://www.texasobserver.org/trump-border-wall-texas-wildlife-refuge-breaking/

[GreyhoundFan]

Apparently Trumplethinskin has postponed his visit to the UK indefinitely:

Quote

-- During a conversation with British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump reportedly said that he would not make his state visit to the United Kingdom until he was guaranteed better coverage and a more positive reception. The Sun’s David Wooding reports: “A transcript of the chat, seen by senior diplomats, reveals his touchiness. Mr. Trump says: ‘I haven’t had great coverage out there lately, Theresa.’ She replies awkwardly: ‘Well, you know what the British press are like.’ He replies: ‘I still want to come, but I’m in no rush … So, if you can fix it for me, it would make things a lot easier … When I know I’m going to get a better reception, I’ll come and not before.’”

 

[JMarie]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-praised-a-woman’s-body-a-foreign-minister-wondered-‘if-she-could-say-the-same-of-him’/ar-BBEwBjp?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

Awesome response from Reebok

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump threatens to change the course of American Christianity"

Spoiler

If you want to understand white evangelicalism in the age of Trump, you need to know Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas.

Jeffress is not a household name in the United States, known mainly in Southern Baptist circles. But he has recently gained national attention as a “court evangelical” — my term for a Christian who, like the attendants and advisers who frequented the courts of monarchs, seeks influence through regular visits to the White House.

The court evangelicals are changing the religious landscape in the United States. The Trump presidency is only six months old, but it is already beginning to alter long-standing spiritual alignments. It seems as though Christians are not changing Trump, but rather that Trump could be changing Christianity.

Historians will write about this moment in terms of both continuity and change. On one hand, court evangelicals are part of a familiar story. For nearly half a century, evangelicals have sought to influence the direction of the country and its laws through politics. But Trump has forced them to embrace a pragmatism that could damage the gospel around the world, and force many Christians to rethink their religious identities and affiliations.

The court evangelicals have befriended Trump as a way to win his approval and advance their agenda of making the United States a Christian nation. If Trump believes in their agenda, he has done little to prove it. He does not attend church regularly and his references to Christianity are mostly scripted political talking points.

The court evangelicals have largely turned a blind eye to Trump’s indiscretions. When he recently made disparaging remarks about MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, they were mostly silent. Only Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, the largest Christian university in the world, made a public statement about the tweet. He told Fox News Channel that when Trump “hits them back on Twitter I actually appreciate that.”

Over the Fourth of July weekend, Court evangelicalism was on full display in Washington, during a Kennedy Center event honoring veterans.
Sounding like a 17th-century Puritan delivering a jeremiad calling the new Israel back to its spiritual roots, he described Trump as a messianic figure whom God had raised up to save the United States from spiritual ruin. Jeffress said, “but in the midst of that despair came November the 8th, 2016, and that day … God declared that the people, not the pollsters, were going to choose the next president of the United States.”

Historians can trace the court evangelical phenomenon to the early 1970s, when the popular evangelist Billy Graham remained loyal to President Richard Nixon, to quote biographer Grant Wacker, “long after most Americans smelled a rat.” When Nixon resigned in shame, Graham was embarrassed. He admitted that “Nixon’s magnetism clouded his judgment.” In 1993, Graham “urged young evangelists to avoid his mistake.”

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan appealed to evangelical concerns about big government, the threat of communism and legalized abortion. Christian political movements such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition educated an entire generation of evangelicals to believe that Christian political engagement was tied solely to electing Republican politicians and controlling the Supreme Court.

Very few evangelicals criticized these efforts to advance a Christian agenda through politics; those who did could not compete with the economic prosperity and Cold War victories that Reagan delivered. But some who rode this wave of evangelical political power had a hard time sleeping at night.

In 1999, two architects of the Moral Majority — Michigan pastor Ed Dobson and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas — published “Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America?” As they reflected on 20 years of their own political activism, Dobson and Thomas concluded that the movement to change the world through politics had failed. All that was left in the wake of a generation of political crusading was a cast of characters who had succumbed to the “aphrodisiac” of power and had sacrificed their spiritual authority in the process.

Around the time Dobson and Thomas published their book, the Christian Right was mobilizing against the many infidelities of Bill Clinton. James Dobson (no relation to Ed), a popular radio host known best for founding the Colorado Springs ministry Focus on the Family, chided Clinton for his adulterous affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and argued forcefully, in a September 1998 letter to supporters, that Clinton did not deserve evangelical support because he was a liar, immoral, lacking in character and motivated by “raw political power.”

Today Dobson, the man most responsible for promoting the long-standing GOP “family values” agenda, supports Trump. At one point in his 1998, letter Dobson wrote, “Yes, the [moral] rules have changed for the President.” Indeed they have.

The court evangelicals’ allegiance to Trump is taking them into a new and dangerous place. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (who famously claimed that Jesus was his favorite philosopher) had their flaws, but they were both men of character who possessed a respect for the history and integrity of the office of the president. When they were tested — Reagan in the fight against communism, and Bush during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — they responded with moral courage and leadership for the whole country.

Trump is different.

His campaign and presidency has shed light on a troubling wing of American evangelicalism willing to embrace nationalism, populism, fear of outsiders and anger. The leaders of this wing trade their evangelical witness for a mess of political pottage and a Supreme Court nomination.

Not all evangelicals are on board, of course. Most black evangelicals are horrified by Trump’s failure to understand their history and his willingness to serve as a hero of the alt-right movement.

The 20 percent of white evangelicals who did not vote for Trump — many of whom are conservative politically and theologically — now seem to have a lot more in common with mainline Protestants. Some in my own circles have expressed a desire to leave their evangelical churches in search of a more authentic form of Christianity.

Other evangelicals are experiencing a crisis of faith as they look around in their white congregations on Sunday morning and realize that so many fellow Christians were willing to turn a blind eye to all that Trump represents.

If the court evangelicals were students of history, they have learned the wrong lesson from evangelical political engagement of the 1970s and 1980s. Trump’s presidency — with its tweets and promises of power — requires evangelical leaders to speak truth to power, not to be seduced by it.

 

[Penny]

Robert Jeffers is a nut job. His church advertises in the Dallas Fort Worth area on tv. There was some controversy about something he said a couple of years ago, but I can't remember what it was. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Jennifer Rubin is back and on a roll: "Trump is failing faster than any president"

Spoiler

The Post reports, “Approaching six months in office, [President] Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped to 36 percent from 42 percent in April. His disapproval rating has risen five points to 58 percent. Overall, 48 percent say they ‘disapprove strongly’ of Trump’s performance in office, a level never reached by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and reached only in the second term of George W. Bush in Post-ABC polling.”

Trump’s efforts to discredit coverage of a burgeoning Russia scandal have kept his cultist followers on board, but few others. (“Just over one-third of all Americans say they trust the president either ‘a great deal’ or ‘a good amount’ in any such foreign negotiations. Asked specifically about Trump-Putin negotiations, almost 2 in 3 say they do not trust the president much, including 48 percent who say they do not trust the president ‘at all.’ . . . 60 percent of Americans think Russia tried to influence the election outcome, up slightly from 56 percent in April. Some 44 percent suspect Russian interference and think Trump benefited from their efforts. Roughly 4 in 10 believe members of Trump’s campaign intentionally aided Russian efforts to influence the election, though suspicions have changed little since the spring.”) Most striking, the poll finds that “no more than 1 in 4 Americans believe passionately in him or his presidency at this juncture. . . . Trump’s disapproval rating has risen to 58 percent in the national survey, which was conducted last Monday through Thursday. Overall, 48 percent disapprove strongly of how he’s doing. But while 36 percent approve of Trump overall, only 25 percent approve strongly.”

Even more than the president’s abysmal approval rating or the failure of his health-care plan to catch on (“twice as many Americans prefer the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, to GOP plans for replacing it — 50 percent to 24 percent”) is the significant number of deluded Republicans who are impervious to reality and to replete evidence, undisputed even by GOP senators, of Russian interference in our electoral system. (“Among Democrats, 8 in 10 believe Russia attempted to influence the election and more than 6 in 10 think members of Trump’s team attempted to aid their efforts. But among Republicans, one-third think Russia tried to influence the election outcome, and fewer than 1 in 10 think Trump’s associates sought to help them.”) Eighty-two percent of Republicans, according to the poll, approve of the job he is doing; 62 percent strongly approve. At some point, one must concede that GOP partisans who imbibe hours of Fox News propaganda daily are immune to rational persuasion.

Trump’s most loyal base remains white evangelicals, who still back him by a 61 percent to 35 percent margin. Apparently, an unhinged, ignorant president with a soft spot for America’s most formidable international foe has endeared himself to a group that touts its defense of American “values.” One could say Trump’s unbridled hatred for the media (urban elites more generally), his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and his vitriolic aversion to immigration are sufficient to keep these voters’ affection.

The extent to which Republicans have abandoned traditional national security concerns and, frankly, patriotism in defense of Trump startles us. The party that claimed victory in the Cold War and ridiculed the Obama team’s efforts at Russian reset denies it is even troubled by the fact that “Trump’s son, Donald Jr.; his son-in-law Jared Kushner; and his campaign manager Paul Manafort met last summer with a Russian lawyer who said she had damaging information about Hillary Clinton.” A 48 percent plurality of Republicans think this was appropriate. Surely if the Obama team had done the same, they’d be calling for impeachment and prosecution for treason.

While it’s troubling to the rest of Americans that about 35 percent of Americans are sticking with this president and even more distressing that they’d approve of his team’s consorting with Russian officials, the good news for the country is that Trump — who got 46 percent in the general election — has lost more than 20 percent of his support in just six months. In short, the true believers won’t be converted, but they can be soundly defeated at the polls.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love this quote of the day from the NYT:

Quote

“One of the great differences between Trump and more successful politicians, like J.F.K. and F.D.R., is that they would vent their spleen in private, but in public, they would project a more humorous and civilized face.”

ROBERT DALLEK, a presidential historian, on how in some ways Mr. Trump has reversed the usual dichotomy between the public and private president.

The only change I'd make is to remove the word, "more" before successful, since I can't imagine calling the TT successful in any way as a politician.