Trump 21: Tweeting Us Into the Apocalypse

[formergothardite]

Trump is stupid beyond all words, addicted to attention and IMO, most likely being controlled by Russia. While Trump might have thought this wouldn't come out or wouldn't be a big deal if it did come out, Putin absolutely knew it would come out and be a big deal. He is playing Trump. 

[GrumpyGran]

3 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Trump is stupid beyond all words, addicted to attention and IMO, most likely being controlled by Russia. While Trump might have thought this wouldn't come out or wouldn't be a big deal if it did come out, Putin absolutely knew it would come out and be a big deal. He is playing Trump. 

I'm a bit confused about what happened here. The article says Trump got up and moved to a seat next to Melania? She wasn't seated next to him? And Putin was where? Whose seat did he take?

It's one thing to converse with someone near you but if he got up and actually changed seats to have this conversation, good God, he does have an obsession with the man, doesn't he? I think Putin thinks it's hilarious how obsessed he is and is working him. Trump probably blathered on about how tremendous he is and what a incredible job he's doing(Trump) and then occasionally complimented Putin, sadly also dropping a few top-secret facts to impress.

He's a dangerously stupid gas bag.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Will Trump's Obsession With Loyalty Bring Him Down?"

Spoiler

Now that Donald Trump Jr.’s emails reveal that the Trump campaign welcomed election interference by the Russians (“I love it,” Junior enthused at the promise of receiving intel on candidate Hillary Clinton from a Kremlin-linked source), it might be a good time to turn the spotlight back to President Donald Trump and whether his actions since becoming president constitute obstruction of justice.

History does not necessarily repeat itself, but sometimes it smells the same. And once again, Watergate provides a useful yardstick for measuring Trump’s Russia-gate. A review of how events unfolded over the two years of disclosures during the Watergate probe suggests a pattern: President Richard Nixon was involved in a cover-up to protect people close to him, not necessarily himself. It’s very possible that a similar story is unfolding today—that Trump’s undoing isn’t direct involvement in Kremlin-backed election interference, but rather obstrution of justice to protect both his son and his son-in-law for their role in the Russia scandal.

Let’s start with this simple fact: There is no evidence that Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in before it happened. All these years, tapes and Congressional investigations later, nothing has emerged to prove that Nixon had advance knowledge of the Watergate operation against the Democrats that was being run by Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt.

But Nixon’s good friend and former attorney general, John Mitchell, did have his fingerprints all over the Watergate operation, without question. The evidence is overwhelming that Mitchell, as the head of the Campaign to Re-Elect the President (known as “CREEP” to many) in 1972, approved the plans of Liddy and Hunt. And when Nixon found out about the break-in, he guessed as much.

It’s important to understand the nature of Nixon’s relationship with Mitchell to comprehend the president’s actions. The two were law partners in New York City after Nixon lost the governorship of California to Pat Brown, famously telling the press that he was done with politics. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” he said, “because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

But it wasn’t Nixon’s last press conference—largely thanks to Mitchell, who became one of the steadying forces that assisted the embittered Nixon in his journey back to public life. As a lawyer with a national bond practice (to finance public housing and other projects), Mitchell knew a lot of politicians across the country. These connections and Mitchell’s stone-faced authoritarian manner made him a logical choice for Nixon’s campaign director in 1968.

Nixon believed he would never have won the presidency without Mitchell’s guiding hand. He insisted that Mitchell take the attorney general job during his first term and then asked him to chair his reelection campaign in March 1972, just in time for the former attorney general to approve harebrained schemes of Liddy and Hunt.

In the week after the Watergate break-in, Oval Office tapes show that Nixon fretted most about whether Mitchell had been involved and what it might mean to him personally if he was implicated. Mitchell had his hands full with his mercurial spouse, Martha, who was threatening suicide if he remained in politics (ironically enough, they lived in the swanky apartments in the Watergate complex, and she told her husband that she intended to throw herself off a Watergate balcony in her manic moments).

In taped conversations with his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, Nixon kept coming back to the same question: Was Mitchell involved? At one point in a conversation on June 21, 1972, Nixon’s second day back in the White House after the break-in, Haldeman and Nixon considered telling the truth and letting Liddy and Hunt come forward to plead guilty to the “third-rate burglary,” reasoning that as first offenders they probably would get suspended sentences.

Nixon observed that he was inclined to go with full disclosure because, as he said, “if that’s the truth, the truth you always figure may come out, and you’re a hell of a lot better doing that than to build another tissue around the God-damn thing.”

But then he backtracked. “Let me say this,” he said to Haldeman, “if it involved Mitchell, then I would think you couldn’t do it, just because it would destroy him, you know.” He then mused that Mitchell “probably knew” about the operation, but cautioned Haldeman not to tell him about it, allowing him to have “plausible deniability,” a term that came into vogue at the White House during the Watergate scandal.

This conversation and several like it took place just before Nixon agreed to a scheme to shut down the FBI investigation into Watergate. The tape of that meeting, dated June 23, 1972, became known as the “smoking gun” tape and played a crucial role in forcing Nixon’s resignation.

The story of Nixon and Mitchell casts Trump’s actions in connection with the Russian investigation in a new light: The president may not have known directly about details of the proposed Russian interference, but he likely knew that his son and son-in-law met with individuals who had Russian connections, and thus that they would be in jeopardy if the FBI continued to dig. By this logic, it is not hard to conceive that Trump’s string of startling and obstructive decisions—asking FBI Director James Comey to discontinue the Flynn investigation, firing Comey when the Russia investigation seemed to be expanding and asking the country to move on rather than sanctioning Russia—have been to protect his children.

Nixon did not have to lose his presidency over the bungled break-in. But his personal concern for his close friend was probably the main reason he became enmeshed in a career-ending cover-up that he had no rational hope of controlling. Think of how much easier it would be to fall into that trap with the reputations of one’s own children on the line.

In the end though, as Nixon said, the truth has a way of coming out. Now, we simply await the next shoes to drop.

Unfortunately, Trumplethinskin is incapable of learning from the mistakes made by others.

--- separation of merged posts ---

 

18 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

I'm a bit confused about what happened here. The article says Trump got up and moved to a seat next to Melania? She wasn't seated next to him? And Putin was where? Whose seat did he take?

It's one thing to converse with someone near you but if he got up and actually changed seats to have this conversation, good God, he does have an obsession with the man, doesn't he? I think Putin thinks it's hilarious how obsessed he is and is working him. Trump probably blathered on about how tremendous he is and what a incredible job he's doing(Trump) and then occasionally complimented Putin, sadly also dropping a few top-secret facts to impress.

He's a dangerously stupid gas bag.

Often at these big shindigs, spouses are not seated near each other. From what I understand, it was after the dinner portion of the evening concluded, and people were milling about. AO went over to Putin, who was seated next to Melania and had an hour-long conversation, which was out of earshot of everyone except the Russian translator. And, yes, he is a dangerously stupid gas bag.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump is threatening to harm millions out of pure spite. Here’s what to watch for now."

Spoiler

Now that the Senate GOP health-care bill has collapsed, the chatter in Washington is all about whether Republicans and Democrats will — or even can — come together behind some kind of bipartisan deal to shore up the individual markets. Central to this question is the fact that President Trump is now threatening to sabotage those markets himself. He appeared to renew this with an early-morning tweet that was odder than usual, if you can believe that:

... <tweet from Twitler: "The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is, & it will get even better at lunchtime.The Dems scream death as OCare dies!" >

...

Senate Republicans are set to meet with Trump today to discuss what’s next, and Trump’s tweet appears to build on his vow yesterday to “let Obamacare fail” to force Democrats “to come to us” eager to support a compromise on his terms. This tweet helpfully illuminates his emotional grasp of the situation, which is drenched in grievance and spite. Letting Obamacare “die” will punish Democrats (they will “scream death”) for the collapse of his bill. Remember, he has raged at Democrats for not being willing to work with him as he tries to destroy Obamacare, apparently unaware of how absurd this stance is. Now he will make them “scream death.”

But how seriously should we take this threat? Very seriously, until we have proof that he doesn’t really mean it, or until Republicans take active steps to defuse it, which they can do if they choose to.

Trump can indeed do a great deal of damage. He can “let Obamacare fail” by refusing to renew the so-called cost-sharing reductions (a full explanation of the CSRs is here), which are paid to insurers to subsidize out-of-pocket costs to millions of lower-income people. If he did this, insurers would probably have to hike premiums by enormous amounts, and many might exit the markets, further destabilizing them, potentially causing many millions to have no access to coverage. We know Trump sees this threat as working in his favor: Back in April, he explicitly threatened not to continue the payments for the express purpose of forcing Dems to negotiate with him. The administration didn’t go through with it, and the payments have continued, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be ended this time.

An insurance industry official told me today that insurance companies have gotten no indications from the administration that these payments will not happen this month. This official also told me that the industry would probably have received an indication if they were going to cease. So that may well mean this threat turns out to be empty.

For now, anyway. The next big thing to watch is what happens in late August. That is when lawyers for the administration and the House of Representatives are due to reappear in court as part of the ongoing litigation around the CSRs. The House previously sued the Obama administration to block the payment of the subsidies, arguing that they are unconstitutional if they are not appropriated. President Barack Obama fought this, and the current administration now has to decide whether to continue to defend the CSRs against the House lawsuit. If it decides not to, and if it decides to stop the payments, the damage could be severe. We will know a lot more next month.

As it is, the uncertainty around the payments has already done a good deal of damage. The American Academy of Actuaries recently noted that this uncertainty has already led insurers to price in the possibility of them disappearing as they set their premiums, and some insurers have openly blamed the Trump administration for their own premium hikes. At the same time, administration officials have dishonestly and reprehensively cited the partial results of their own sabotage — destabilized markets harming people — to make the case for the GOP health bill. Trump’s tweet today suggests he may continue with this, only with a different goal: Getting Democrats to “scream death.”

As it happens, congressional Republicans, if they chose, could put a stop to any such strategy by appropriating the money to cover the CSRs themselves, as the insurance industry has urged. At this point, there is no serious argument against doing this: Some Republicans have said it must happen, perhaps in part because they are mindful that they would likely be blamed for any serious chaos in the marketplaces that would result. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said that if the GOP health-care bill failed, Republicans would have to negotiate with Democrats over ways to stabilize the markets. And as Jonathan Cohn explains, there actually is room for bipartisan talks around an array of reforms that could give Republicans, and even Trump himself, some of what they want, in both substantive and political terms:

Polls also show the public strongly supports bipartisan action ― and if Trump were to sign a bill, flanked by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, he’d get the kind of signing ceremony he so obviously craves. He’d even look like he was governing.

But first Trump would have to give up on the idea that if he “lets Obamacare fail,” he will be able to grind down Democrats to the point where they will “scream death” and give him everything he wants. It’s an absurd idea to begin with — polls have suggested the public will hold Trump and Republicans responsible for further Affordable Care Act problems on their watch, so Trump doesn’t have the leverage he thinks he does. But the key point is that Trump believes it is within his power to do this.

...

Just like a toddler, "I didn't get what I wanted, so I'll make everyone miserable."

[GreyhoundFan]

How very true: "Trump’s penchant for extremes worked on the campaign trail but hinders his White House"

Spoiler

The Republican effort to overturn the Affordable Care Act was hanging in the balance when Vice President Pence issued a challenge to GOP senators: “Inaction is not an option,” he said. A couple hours later, however, his boss took a different view.

It was time, President Trump said, to give up and “let Obamacare fail.”

For Trump, the inability of Republicans to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment represented a stinging political defeat Tuesday. But it also was a chance, in the heat of the moment, for a president prone to bluster and hyperbole to move the debate immediately to the most extreme potential outcome.

This was not, as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had suggested a day earlier, a moment to pursue compromise with Democrats — to Trump, it was a signal to predict mayhem and chaos.

“The Dems scream death as OCare dies!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning.

It’s a style that worked successfully for Trump during his campaign, when he spoke to voter anxieties by warning, in often apocalyptic terms, of the threats of illegal immigrants, threatening to pull out of an “obsolete” NATO and promising to blow up multilateral trade deals and climate pacts painstakingly negotiated by his predecessor.

But in the White House, Trump’s preference for governing in extremes has left him, in the wake of his health-care defeat, with narrowing options to improve a system that has left states and consumers struggling to cope with rising insurance premiums. His withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal and Paris climate agreement has led governors to open direct talks with foreign governments and to pledge emissions curbs that contradict the White House approach. And his continued demonization of immigrants as threats to public safety has closed off potential compromises with Democrats on a comprehensive overhaul bill that the president said last week he would like to pursue.

Fellow Republicans and presidential historians said Trump’s view of politics as a zero-sum, black-or-white grudge match has boxed him in six months into office with fewer tools at the negotiating table and diminishing returns with voters. Trump’s approval ratings have tumbled to 36 percent in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, the worst among presidents at this point in their tenures in 70 years.

“He’s a man with the disposition of someone who is inclined to burn down the village,” said Peter Wehner, a former George W. Bush administration official who has warned of Trump’s extremism. “If Obamacare fails, people will not blame Barack Obama so much as they will blame Trump and Republicans. He was elected to try to take care of problems. For him to stand up and say, ‘Let it fail and they’ll crawl back to Trump to fix it,’ is an alternate reality.”

White House aides have defended the president’s approach by suggesting that Washington is not used to a political outsider who is truly willing to disrupt business-as-usual. When attacked, they said, Trump will hit back harder. During the campaign, he did not apologize for even some of his most outlandish behavior, and he has attacked cable news hosts in recent weeks in often personal terms.

Aides said this approach is reflected in a political strategy that aims to keep opponents off balance and to go around the mainstream media to leverage his large social media following into a potent political force. Despite the conventional wisdom in Washington, internal polling from the White House’s political operation has showed broad public support for the president’s hard-line approach to immigration, aides said.

“I’m not going to own it,” Trump said of the prospect of the health-care system collapsing. “I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it.”

But critics have pointed out that Trump’s threats and bullying did little to move the needle on the health-care repeal and replace effort. The House needed two attempts to pass a version of the legislation and, although Trump feted Republican members with a Rose Garden ceremony after the second bill passed, he was unable to convince enough wavering senators to get on board.

“Immoderate people tend to view the world in black and white, as uniformly bad or good, and they are unable to appreciate positions in the middle,” said Aurelian Craiutu, a political-science professor at Indiana University and author of “Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes.”

“No doubt on health care, the final outcome will be something in the middle,” Craiutu said. Trump’s “inability to appreciate that is a sign of immoderation. There are moments in history, where we are fighting against Hitler or Stalin, when that works. But there are certain issues, such as health care, where compromise is part of the democratic process.”

To that end, Trump’s rhetoric has contrasted sharply with that of his predecessor. Obama often used the bully pulpit to call for bipartisan compromise, although Republicans accused him of pursuing liberal policies with little patience for their input.

The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 by a Congress controlled by Democrats with no GOP support. And in his final two years, after Republicans won full control of Congress, Obama moved rapidly to enact executive actions.

But on immigration, Obama supported a bipartisan bill that passed the Senate before failing in the House. On trade, Obama worked to win support from Republicans and some Democrats for the TPP, a 12-nation trade pact in the Asia-Pacific.

Craiutu said Obama, as a former law professor, at times exuded the sense that “I have the right way and others who disagree do not see the light.” But far more than Trump, he added, “President Obama did try to be a tightrope-walker. To do that, above all, you need balance. The balance is the most difficult thing to achieve when you have crosscurrents and winds blowing from each side.”

Republican critics of Trump say, having lost support from moderates, he appears willing out of desperation to appeal strictly to his base, which still responds to his extreme rhetoric. Trump reportedly wanted to label Iran in violation of the nuclear deal but was talked out of it by advisers only at the last minute Monday.

Geoffrey Kabaservice, who left his role as a consultant at the Republican Main Street Partnership earlier this year over disagreements on the health-care strategy, said Trump tapped into authentic economic angst among voters who believed Washington no longer worked for them.

But, Trump “seems to present nastiness and tweets as his governing strategy,” Kabaservice said. “There’s an opportunity for the Republican Party or the Democratic Party or Trump himself to recover his message and what has been to some degree a needed populist emphasis. But at this point, it seems Trump has lost any idea what he once seemed to stand for. It’s all been posturing and transactionalism. That’s the point we’ve reached, which is not to say it can’t get worse.”

In reference to the last paragraph: Agent Orange doesn't actually stand for anything (other than enriching himself), to foolish BT's, he "seemed" to stand for an agenda. Oh, and yes, it can always get worse.

[milkteeth]

53 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Will Trump's Obsession With Loyalty Bring Him Down?"

  Reveal hidden contents

Now that Donald Trump Jr.’s emails reveal that the Trump campaign welcomed election interference by the Russians (“I love it,” Junior enthused at the promise of receiving intel on candidate Hillary Clinton from a Kremlin-linked source), it might be a good time to turn the spotlight back to President Donald Trump and whether his actions since becoming president constitute obstruction of justice.

History does not necessarily repeat itself, but sometimes it smells the same. And once again, Watergate provides a useful yardstick for measuring Trump’s Russia-gate. A review of how events unfolded over the two years of disclosures during the Watergate probe suggests a pattern: President Richard Nixon was involved in a cover-up to protect people close to him, not necessarily himself. It’s very possible that a similar story is unfolding today—that Trump’s undoing isn’t direct involvement in Kremlin-backed election interference, but rather obstrution of justice to protect both his son and his son-in-law for their role in the Russia scandal.

Let’s start with this simple fact: There is no evidence that Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in before it happened. All these years, tapes and Congressional investigations later, nothing has emerged to prove that Nixon had advance knowledge of the Watergate operation against the Democrats that was being run by Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt.

But Nixon’s good friend and former attorney general, John Mitchell, did have his fingerprints all over the Watergate operation, without question. The evidence is overwhelming that Mitchell, as the head of the Campaign to Re-Elect the President (known as “CREEP” to many) in 1972, approved the plans of Liddy and Hunt. And when Nixon found out about the break-in, he guessed as much.

It’s important to understand the nature of Nixon’s relationship with Mitchell to comprehend the president’s actions. The two were law partners in New York City after Nixon lost the governorship of California to Pat Brown, famously telling the press that he was done with politics. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” he said, “because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

But it wasn’t Nixon’s last press conference—largely thanks to Mitchell, who became one of the steadying forces that assisted the embittered Nixon in his journey back to public life. As a lawyer with a national bond practice (to finance public housing and other projects), Mitchell knew a lot of politicians across the country. These connections and Mitchell’s stone-faced authoritarian manner made him a logical choice for Nixon’s campaign director in 1968.

Nixon believed he would never have won the presidency without Mitchell’s guiding hand. He insisted that Mitchell take the attorney general job during his first term and then asked him to chair his reelection campaign in March 1972, just in time for the former attorney general to approve harebrained schemes of Liddy and Hunt.

In the week after the Watergate break-in, Oval Office tapes show that Nixon fretted most about whether Mitchell had been involved and what it might mean to him personally if he was implicated. Mitchell had his hands full with his mercurial spouse, Martha, who was threatening suicide if he remained in politics (ironically enough, they lived in the swanky apartments in the Watergate complex, and she told her husband that she intended to throw herself off a Watergate balcony in her manic moments).

In taped conversations with his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, Nixon kept coming back to the same question: Was Mitchell involved? At one point in a conversation on June 21, 1972, Nixon’s second day back in the White House after the break-in, Haldeman and Nixon considered telling the truth and letting Liddy and Hunt come forward to plead guilty to the “third-rate burglary,” reasoning that as first offenders they probably would get suspended sentences.

Nixon observed that he was inclined to go with full disclosure because, as he said, “if that’s the truth, the truth you always figure may come out, and you’re a hell of a lot better doing that than to build another tissue around the God-damn thing.”

But then he backtracked. “Let me say this,” he said to Haldeman, “if it involved Mitchell, then I would think you couldn’t do it, just because it would destroy him, you know.” He then mused that Mitchell “probably knew” about the operation, but cautioned Haldeman not to tell him about it, allowing him to have “plausible deniability,” a term that came into vogue at the White House during the Watergate scandal.

This conversation and several like it took place just before Nixon agreed to a scheme to shut down the FBI investigation into Watergate. The tape of that meeting, dated June 23, 1972, became known as the “smoking gun” tape and played a crucial role in forcing Nixon’s resignation.

The story of Nixon and Mitchell casts Trump’s actions in connection with the Russian investigation in a new light: The president may not have known directly about details of the proposed Russian interference, but he likely knew that his son and son-in-law met with individuals who had Russian connections, and thus that they would be in jeopardy if the FBI continued to dig. By this logic, it is not hard to conceive that Trump’s string of startling and obstructive decisions—asking FBI Director James Comey to discontinue the Flynn investigation, firing Comey when the Russia investigation seemed to be expanding and asking the country to move on rather than sanctioning Russia—have been to protect his children.

Nixon did not have to lose his presidency over the bungled break-in. But his personal concern for his close friend was probably the main reason he became enmeshed in a career-ending cover-up that he had no rational hope of controlling. Think of how much easier it would be to fall into that trap with the reputations of one’s own children on the line.

In the end though, as Nixon said, the truth has a way of coming out. Now, we simply await the next shoes to drop.

Unfortunately, Trumplethinskin is incapable of learning from the mistakes made by others.

--- separation of merged posts ---

 

Often at these big shindigs, spouses are not seated near each other. From what I understand, it was after the dinner portion of the evening concluded, and people were milling about. AO went over to Putin, who was seated next to Melania and had an hour-long conversation, which was out of earshot of everyone except the Russian translator. And, yes, he is a dangerously stupid gas bag.

My favorite part about this meeting is that there's a very good chance that Trump spent the entire time whining to Putin about how mean CNN is to him and how he wishes the cake at the White House was as good as the cake at Mar a Lago, completely oblivious to how bad this would look for him and to Putin trying to push the conversation in a more beneficial direction.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"A White House dinner as a case study for Trump’s inability to close a health-care deal"

Spoiler

As the blame game launches on the Senate health-care bill, there is perhaps no more illustrative example of President Trump's role in the negotiations than this:

It's Monday evening. A second version of the Republicans' bill is in danger of flatlining. Two GOP senators are opposed to it, almost a dozen have expressed serious concerns with it, and if just one more Republican opposes it, it's game over for an Obamacare overhaul.

Trump is having dinner at the White House with seven Republican senators to talk health care. Of the seven, only Steve Daines (Mont.) had publicly expressed concerns about the bill.

As they dined, fellow Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Jerry Moran (Kan.) were crafting statements that would implode the GOP's attempts to unravel Obamacare for the foreseeable future.

That Trump was completely blindsided by the news that the bill was effectively dead shows, despite his rhetoric on Twitter and in public appearances, how unable or unwilling Trump has been to influence the outcome of the health-care debate.

Lee and Moran announced, together, on Twitter around 7:30 p.m. Eastern time that they couldn't support the bill because it didn't go far enough to repealing Obamacare.

...

That would make four “no's” — two more than the bill could afford. Just like that, the Republicans' second attempt to undo Obamacare died. And the person arguably in charge of the Republican Party and its platform — Trump — was caught off guard by this, as he was dining with senators who actually support the legislation.

Here's Trump, speaking briefly to reporters Tuesday:

...

Republicans in Washington were dumbfounded that, with the GOP health-care bill on the line, Trump decided to spend his time eating with allies rather than trying to win over adversaries. And it blew up in his face in the most spectacular way.

“The senators who announced their opposition last night were two that have been most vocal about their hesitation to McConnell’s efforts for weeks,” said a Republican who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the president's strategy. “It hasn’t been a secret who those people are, and those are who the president should be wining and dining. To be spending valuable time with reliable ‘yes’ votes doesn’t seem to make much sense.”

Trump wasn't the only one surprised by the sudden death of the Republican health-care bill. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), whose job as the No. 2 Senate Republican is to count votes, said he was caught off guard by the timing of Lee and Moran's announcement.

But Cornyn has played an active role in at least trying to sell these senators on the legislation. Politico called him “Obamacare repeal's top salesman.”

Cornyn was one of the attendees at the Monday White House dinner, along with Sens. Daines, Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), James Lankford (Okla.), Richard C. Shelby (Ala.) and John Thune (S.D.).

Unlike Cornyn, Trump never expressed more than a passing interest in getting the bill passed. Sure, he tweets about how bad Obamacare is. And he tweets veiled threats at some Republicans who aren't cooperating. But he hasn't made any concrete lobbying effort to win over those senators. He hasn't gone out of his way to explain why Americans should support the bill, other than it's not Obamacare. Not coincidentally, the bill is really unpopular.

In fact, on Tuesday, he raised eyebrows by trying to spin the bill's loss as a personal win.

... <tweet: As Senate health bill collapses, Trump takes credit for winning over most Republicans: "would have been 48-4. impressive by any standard">

...

We can look all the way back to this spring, when House Republicans were trying to pass their measure unraveling Obamacare. Trump wasn't a central figure in that fight, either.

As House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was about to face an embarrassing setback on the legislation, Trump went to Michigan to promote his administration's reconsideration of fuel efficiency standards. He didn't mention health care once. (The same day, we counted almost 60 Republican House members who had serious concerns about the bill, more than enough to sink it.)

There are several reasons Republicans control all of Washington and have failed to deliver on their singular promise, to repeal Obamacare.

But Trump's total lack of interest in selling the legislation — and seemingly ham-handed efforts to inject himself in the debate — is perhaps Republicans' biggest struggle of all. They don't have a president who seems to understand how to close a deal in Washington.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Hmmm, wonder if this was one of the things they discussed at the secret meeting: "Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow"

Spoiler

President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials.

The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy since Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later.

Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests. The shuttering of the program is also an acknowledgment of Washington’s limited leverage and desire to remove Assad from power.

Just three months ago, after the United States accused Assad of using chemical weapons, Trump launched retaliatory airstrikes against a Syrian air base. At the time, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, said that “in no way do we see peace in that area with Assad at the head of the Syrian government.”

Officials said Trump made the decision to scrap the CIA program nearly a month ago, after an Oval Office meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security adviser H.R. McMaster ahead of a July 7 meeting in Germany with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Spokesmen for the National Security Council and the CIA declined to comment.

After the Trump-Putin meeting, the United States and Russia announced an agreement to back a new cease-fire in southwest Syria, along the Jordanian border, where many of the CIA-backed rebels have long operated. Trump described the limited cease-fire deal as one of the benefits of a constructive working relationship with Moscow.

The move to end the secret program to arm the anti-Assad rebels was not a condition of the cease-fire negotiations, which were already well underway, said U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the secret program.

Trump’s dealings with Russia have been under heavy scrutiny because of the investigations into the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election. The decision on the CIA-backed rebels will be welcomed by Moscow, which focused its firepower on those fighters after it intervened in Syria in 2015.

Some current and former officials who support the program cast the move as a major concession.

“This is a momentous decision,” said a current official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a covert program. “Putin won in Syria.”

The decision will not affect a separate Pentagon-led effort to work with U.S.-backed Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State. And the CIA-backed rebels were part of the larger moderate opposition.

Some analysts said the decision was likely to empower more radical groups inside Syria and damage the credibility of the United States.

“We are falling into a Russian trap,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, who focuses on the Syrian resistance. “We are making the moderate resistance more and more vulnerable. . . . We are really cutting them off at the neck.”

Others said it was recognition of Assad’s entrenched position in Syria.

“It’s probably a nod to reality,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.

U.S. intelligence officials say battlefield gains by rebels in 2015 prompted Russia’s direct military intervention on the side of the Assad regime. Some U.S. officials and their allies in the region urged President Barack Obama to respond by providing the rebels with advanced anti­aircraft weapons so they could better defend themselves. But Obama balked, citing concerns about the United States getting pulled into a conflict with Russia.

Senior U.S. officials said that the covert program would be phased out over a period of months. It is also possible that some of the support could be redirected to other missions, such as fighting the Islamic State or making sure that the rebels can still defend themselves from attacks.

“This is a force that we can’t afford to completely abandon,” Goldenberg said. “If they are ending the aid to the rebels altogether, then that is a huge strategic mistake.”

U.S. officials said the decision had the backing of Jordan, where some of the rebels were trained, and appeared to be part of a larger Trump administration strategy to focus on negotiating limited cease-fire deals with the Russians.

Earlier this month, five days into the first cease-fire in southwest Syria, Trump indicated that another agreement was under discussion with Moscow. “We are working on the second cease-fire in a very rough part of Syria,” Trump said. “If we get that and a few more, all of a sudden we are going to have no bullets being fired in Syria.”

One big potential risk of shutting down the CIA program is that the United States may lose its ability to block other countries, such as Turkey and Persian Gulf allies, from funneling more sophisticated weapons — including man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS — to anti-Assad rebels, including more radical groups.

Toward the end of the Obama administration, some officials advocated ending the CIA program, arguing that the rebels would be ineffective without a major escalation in U.S. support. But the program still had the support of a majority of top Obama advisers, who argued that the United States couldn’t abandon its allies on the ground and give up on the moderate opposition because of the damage that it would do to U.S. standing in the region.

Even those who were skeptical about the program’s long-term value, viewed it as a key bargaining chip that could be used to wring concessions from Moscow in negotiations over Syria’s future.

“People began thinking about ending the program, but it was not something you’d do for free,” said a former White House official. “To give [the program] away without getting anything in return would be foolish.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

OMFG, they are just not giving up: "Trump challenges senators to resurrect Obamacare repeal effort: ‘We’re close’"

Spoiler

Hoping to avoid a humiliating political defeat, President Trump on Wednesday demanded that Republican senators resume their efforts to approve a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, insisting that lawmakers are “very close.”

A day after the GOP strategy to roll back the ACA appeared dead, Trump invited Republican senators to lunch at the White House and challenged them to work out an agreement even if it means remaining in Washington through their summer recess next month. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had previously announced that the recess would be delayed by two weeks.

“People should not leave town unless we have a health insurance plan, unless we give our people great health care,” Trump said at the beginning of the lunch. “We’re close, very close … We have to hammer this out and get it done.”

The president’s effort to resurrect negotiations came a day after he declared that it was time to give up on the contentious process to overturn President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement and “let Obamacare fail.”

With Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a key vote who has wavered on the GOP’s repeal proposal, sitting to his right, Trump touted what he said were benefits of the plan — including the repeal of the individual mandate, expanded coverage options and getting rid of “burdensome taxes.”

The president appeared to issue a veiled threat that he would campaign against Republicans who stood in his way.

“He wants to remain a senator, doesn’t he?” Trump said with a laugh of Heller, who also chuckled. “And I think the people of your state, which I know very well, I think they’re going to appreciate what you hopefully will do.’’

Trump added: “Any senator voting against starting debate is telling the American people you’re fine with Obamacare.” But the current health-care law, approved in 2010, has “failed,” Trump declared. “It’s gone.”

Yet Trump’s remarks were sharply at odds with the comments from Senate GOP leaders over the past day who have said the reality is that there is not enough support for a replacement plan.

The effort by Senate Republicans to undo Obamacare has been fraught with internal divisions and apparent discord between the White House and GOP leaders. With little room for error, McConnell abruptly switched course Monday after several Republicans announced they would block efforts to vote on a replacement bill that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would leave up to 22 million more Americans without health insurance.

Instead, McConnell announced plans to vote early next week on a straight repeal of the law with a two-year delay that would give Congress more time to work out a replacement plan. But that strategy appeared doomed as at least three GOP members said they would oppose that course of action, enough to block it. A repeal of the ACA without a replacement plan would leave even more people uninsured, according to the CBO.

McConnell told reporters after the lunch that he still intends to hold the vote next week on a repeal plan, but other key senators suggested they would need an acceptable replacement before agreeing to move forward.

“I’m glad @POTUS agrees that we cannot move to repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan that addresses the needs of West Virginians,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) wrote on Twitter.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told reporters upon returning to the Capitol, “I don’t think there are 40 votes” for a repeal-only bill.

Trump, who had invited Republican leaders to a health-care strategy dinner Monday night, was apparently blindsided by the opposition from some conservative members, including Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.).

Trump, as he has done numerous times in recent weeks, reminded the lawmakers that Republicans had campaigned against the ACA for years and their supporters are counting on them to make good on their promises.

“I’m ready to act,” Trump said. “I have my pen in hand. I’m sitting in that office. I have pen in hand. You’ve never had that before. For seven years, you’ve had the easy route — we repeal, we replace, but he (Obama) never signs it. I’m signing it. So it’s a little different.”

Yeah, nothing like a little threat to make people want to work with you. <end sarcasm>

[GreyhoundFan]

"The harbingers of doom for the Trump administration: The president's ego is writing checks his administration can't cash."

Spoiler

In the wake of the Senate’s failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, BuzzFeed offered up a pungent analysis of Trump’s accomplishments to date:

The White House has lost control of its foreign policy to the military and to allies who can’t work with a globally loathed American leader even if they wanted to. He has lost control of his domestic policy to Congress, which has been unable to give him a signature win despite Republicans controlling both chambers. He has lost control of his own aides to leaks and investigations, of his old television cronies to spiteful personal feuds, and most of all of the narrative of an “America First” presidency with a coherent vision or promise.

“The premise of the value proposition that voters bought into was, this guy knew about the art of the deal and that he could break through ‘Washington,’ break through political norms, and get things done,” a conservative Republican congressman said of Trump. “Things aren’t getting done, and that shows weakness.” …

Trump’s struggles go beyond health care. More than six months into Trump’s presidency, Republicans have no legislative accomplishments other than the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a confusing foreign policy, and a White House that is perpetually in damage control mode. From lawmakers and governors to donors and foreign policy experts, a certain realization is sinking in within the party, based on more than a dozen interviews in recent days: Donald Trump has been a historically weak and ineffective president.

Now as I wrote back in March, it is dangerous to infer that a leader’s domestic policy failures will lead to a foreign perception of weakness. But I also noted at the time:

I don’t think the failure of AHCA will convince foreign leaders that Trump is a paper tiger. The problem is, there are plenty of other things that Trump has done in foreign affairs to convince them of that already.

I warned people about this in November: Words matter in foreign policy, and Trump doesn’t really understand how to use his words. In making grandiose threats and then not following through, he is becoming more predictable and less credible. That’s a bad combination during a foreign policy crisis.

The cheap talk of Trump’s rhetoric is the one thing that unites his domestic and international failures. Trump is great at insulting the status quo and lousy at coming up with alternatives to the status quo. The New York Times’ Emily Badger and Kevin Quealy note that the president is far better at insults than policy promotion:

For a politician who has shown remarkable skill distilling his arguments into compact slogans — “fake news,” “witch hunt,” “Crooked Hillary” — those health care pitches have fallen far short of the kind of sharp, memorable refrain that can influence how millions of Americans interpret news in Washington.

Analyzing two years of his tweets highlights a pair of lessons about his messaging prowess that were equally on display as the Republican health care bill, weakly supported by even Republican voters, collapsed again in Congress on Monday. Mr. Trump is much better at branding enemies than policies. And he expends far more effort mocking targets than promoting items on his agenda.

Both patterns point to the limits of the president’s branding powers when it comes to waging policy fights. He hasn’t proved particularly adept at selling his party’s ideas — or shown much inclination to turn his Twitter megaphone toward them. He seemed effective in branding his immigration policy during the primary campaign — #BuildTheWall — but even that subject has occupied less of Mr. Trump’s attention on Twitter since he became president than, say, CNN.

I will go out on a limb and suggest that the problem is not just with the branding, but with the God-awful content that Trump is supposed to brand. There were good reasons why the AHCA and BHCA were ridiculously unpopular, for example.

There are multiple harbingers of Trump administration bargaining failures to come. Consider how Brexit, the populist precursor to Trump’s victory, is going right now. It would be safe to say that the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf is pessimistic about the U.K.’s chances at a graceful Brexit. See if this description sounds familiar:

The Conservative party is so split over Brexit as to be no longer a coherent party of government. It is, as a result, questionable whether the compromises needed over money owed to the EU, rights of EU residents and the role of the European Court of Justice, could win approval in parliament. The Labour party will offer no relief: it wants another general election and is now about as split over Brexit as the Tories….

The UK government has failed to prepare the ground for any of the necessary compromises. It could probably not do so, in any case, because a significant number of Brexiters fail to understand the weakness of the UK’s hand: damage to access to the EU market would, for example, be far worse for the UK than vice versa, because the EU’s economy is some five times bigger than Britain’s.

This failure to reconcile grandiose political promises and grubby political realities on Brexit sounds awfully familiar on this side of the Atlantic. Indeed, there are issues where Trump’s bargaining strategy is so bad that he’s isolated from his own hand-picked Cabinet. For example, while the Trump administration certified Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal, the New York Times’ Peter Baker reported that Trump thinks that there is a better deal to be had:

At an hourlong meeting last Wednesday, all of the president’s major security advisers recommended he preserve the Iran deal for now. Among those who spoke out were Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson; Defense Secretary Jim Mattis; Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser; and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to an official who described internal discussions on the condition of anonymity. The official said Mr. Trump had spent 55 minutes of the meeting telling them he did not want to.

Nowhere in Baker’s story is there any sense of how Trump thinks he can get a better deal than what exists now. This is likely because Trump has no idea how to get a better deal except to tell his national security and foreign policy advisers, “get a better deal.” But just issuing an order like that does not lead to good bargaining outcomes. Quite the contrary, in fact.

P.S. this is exactly how things are playing out on the idiotic steel tariffs as well:

[T]he president and a small band of America First advisers made it clear they’re hell-bent on imposing tariffs — potentially in the 20% range — on steel, and likely other imports….

Everyone else in the room, more than 75% of those present, were adamantly opposed, arguing it was bad economics and bad global politics. At one point, Trump was told his almost entire cabinet thought this was a bad idea. But everyone left the room believing the country is headed toward a major trade confrontation.

Nothing we have seen to date suggests that Trump is knowing what he’s doing on foreign policy. His bargains with other countries have either stalled out or never came to fruition in the first place. Because the president continues to be Donald Trump, none of these bargains will work out.

What’s happening with Brexit offers a harbinger of the immediate future for Trump, and it’s not pretty. It’s not pretty at all.

Interesting comparison with Brexit.

[AnywhereButHere]

 

Quote

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Mr. Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision “very unfair to the president.”

In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-interview-sessions-russia.html

I'd ask if this guy was for real, but sadly, yes he is. 

[candygirl200413]

He still thinks Sessions is suppose to be his lawyer doesn't he?

 

[47of74]

22 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is a clip from an article published during the Nixon administration. Does any of this sound familiar?

Yeah this looks very familiar.  You could probably rub out Roosevelt and Truman and replace them with Presidents Clinton and Obama, as well as Mrs. Clinton. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Hmmmm: "Pro-Trump TV pundit’s firm took undisclosed payments from Trump campaign"

Spoiler

For months, Mark Serrano has been one of President Trump’s fiercest defenders and most enthusiastic supporters on TV. In semiregular appearances on the Fox Business Network, the veteran Republican operative has praised Trump’s leadership and bashed news media coverage of him. He’s called Ivanka Trump the most “powerful or influential advocate for women’s empowerment ever in our history.”

Fox News and Fox Business have described Serrano variously as a Republican strategist, a crisis-management expert and a former adviser to President George H.W. Bush since he began appearing on the networks in 2014.

But Serrano has had another role this spring, one that wasn’t disclosed to viewers as he was touting Trump: His firm was a paid consultant to the president’s 2020 reelection campaign.

Federal disclosure forms filed by the Trump committee Saturday show that it paid Serrano’s firm, ProActive Communications, a total of $30,000 for “communications consulting.” The records indicate that it paid $20,000 on April 17 to the company, based in Leesburg, Va., and another $10,000 on May 30.

TV news organizations, including Fox, typically screen would-be pundits and panelists for any financial connection to campaigns, issues or companies they might be asked to comment about on the air. Insiders, such as a campaign official or party strategist, are often welcomed, but only if their professional role is disclosed to viewers upfront.

The disclosures are a matter of transparency; they are supposed to flag a pundit’s potential conflicts of interest and to let viewers know when a commentator has a financial stake that might affect his or her commentary.

Serrano did not reply to multiple requests for comment by email and phone.

People at Fox said Serrano didn’t disclose his connection to the Trump reelection campaign until the latter part of June, two months after his firm and ProActive apparently began working for Trump’s committee.

Serrano subsequently made one appearance on the Fox Business program “Risk & Reward,” during which he was introduced as “Trump’s campaign senior adviser.” He has not appeared on the air since that program aired July 6.

A person familiar with the network’s internal discussions, who wasn’t authorized to speak about them publicly, said Serrano won’t be booked on Fox programs “for the foreseeable future” as a result of the nondisclosure of his work for Trump.

Fox Business issued a statement Monday after reporters inquired about Serrano. It read: “It is the policy of the network to disclose all ties our guests have to any subject matter, and in the case of Mark Serrano, as soon as we were made aware of his new title last month, we made sure to disclose his role during his on-air appearances.”

An official with Trump’s reelection committee said Serrano and his firm were paid for communications strategy, not for his appearances or advocacy on Fox. The official also noted that Serrano’s support for Trump on TV predates his hiring by the reelection committee.

In fact, Serrano has spoken favorably about Trump on Fox and Fox Business from the earliest days of Trump’s presidential campaign.

“You got to remember, Donald Trump has something that none of these other candidates has,” he said in August 2015, according to a transcript of the Fox Business program. “He’s had the experience, on television, these past 12 or 14 years. That is a serious draw for a lot of Americans and that’s why he is more unique than most of these other candidates.”

Since Trump’s inauguration, Serrano has defended him on several issues, including his firing of FBI Director James B. Comey and the various investigations into whether his campaign colluded with the Russian government.

“The only collusion going on in Washington . . . [is] between the media, the Democrats and the deep state, which brings into serious question our national security leaks taking place from the White House,” he said on Fox Business on May 16.

A week later, on the same network, he ripped the news media for their coverage of Trump. “I really don’t even reference it as fake news anymore,” he said. “I consider it E and O news — errors and omissions.”

 

[JMarie]

Bravo to the brave soul who plowed through Trump's 991 tweets and compiled this list.

http://trumptwitterarchive.com/

[GreyhoundFan]

"6 months of President Trump, in 7 issues"

Spoiler

On Thursday, President Trump will have been in office for 181 days, a.k.a. 4,344 hours, a.k.a. 260,640 minutes, a.k.a. six months.

My first reaction is: “Only six months?” Perhaps it's because so much has happened in those six months. And perhaps it feels like time has slowed down because, paradoxically, Trump has not overseen many tangible policy changes since becoming president.

So how has he spent these six months? Here's a rundown, in seven issues that were central to his campaign.

1. Health care

The promise: Repeal and replace Obamacare.

The reality: A fractious Republican Party hasn't done either, and Trump has seemed mostly uninterested in trying to help them find a way to come together on it. On the day — actually, the moment — the bill died, he was chit-chatting over dinner with Republican senators who support the bill.

Watch for: Whether Trump (and Republicans) give up trying to repeal Obamacare and work with Democrats to tweak it.

2. Immigration

The promise: Build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The reality: He still really wants to build that wall. Trump hasn't been one to delve into policy details, but he's uncharacteristically engaged on the finer details of the wall, our ace White House team reports: “The wall of his dreams — 700 to 900 miles long, with transparent sections so that border agents aren’t hit on the head by 'large stacks of drugs' tossed over from the Mexican side, and outfitted with solar panels.”

Buuut Trump hasn't figured out how to make Mexico pay for it, which means Congress would reluctantly have to.

Watch for: Whether Trump demands funding for a wall as Congress funds the government by Oct. 1, which could lead to a government shutdown. (He backed down from a fight with Congress in April.)

2b. The travel ban

The promise: Temporarily ban Muslims or people from terrorism-prone countries from coming to the United States.

...

The reality: As of Wednesday, his travel ban is half on pause while a federal court decides whether it's actually constitutional. Washington Post Justice Department reporter Matt Zapotosky explains what to watch for:

...

3. Federal government

The promise: Make it work more efficiently.

The reality: Depends how you look at this. The Post's Lisa Rein reports that the federal government workforce of 2.1 million people has become a target for Trump and his allies to “drain the swamp,” blunting morale for many of these workers.

Also interesting: A Washington Post-ABC News poll found that about half of Americans believe in the concept of a deep state — i.e. “military, intelligence and government officials who try to secretly manipulate government policy.”

No evidence of this exists, leading The Fix's Aaron Blake to call this “Trump's most compelling conspiracy theory.”

Watch for: Whether Trump nominates people to lead a historically understaffed federal government or leaves much of it vacant.

...

4. China

The promise: Stop China from taking advantage of the United States.

The reality: Again, depends how you look at this. International relations experts argued that when Trump left the Paris climate agreement, it empowered China, the world's other largest greenhouse gas emitter, to cozy up to Europe. Trump also did an about-face from a key campaign promise when he suddenly decided China is not a currency manipulator.

Watch for: China and the United States' so-so relationship to deteriorate. Any day now, Trump could light the spark for a trade war with China (and Europe) by restricting imports of steel.

5. Russia

The promise: To get along with Russia better than Obama did.

The reality: Trump may be getting along with Russia at the expense of his perception by Americans. We learned on Tuesday that he had a previously undisclosed one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit earlier this month.

And a July Washington Post-ABC News poll found that of the 60 percent of Americans who think Russia tried to influence the election, 41 percent think Trump's campaign helped.

Watch for: Only special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his growing team of lawyers can answer what happened. They're investigating potential collusion (like Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer), financial crimes and whether the president obstructed justice. Mueller's timeline is months, maybe even years.

...

6. Congress

The promise: To make it work.

The reality: Trump does not have a good relationship with Congress. He works under chaos; Congress has a hard time functioning in chaos. He prefers to threaten lawmakers; Congress prefers to be cajoled. He's not interested in details; Congress must have details.

The differences have manifested themselves in Republicans' inability to pass major legislation, despite the fact that their party controls Washington.

Watch for: Privately, Republicans are fed up with Trump's penchant for controversy. So is it a matter of when, not if, some of them start ditching him publicly?

7. Winning

... <TT's blather about winning so much that everyone will be sick of winning>

The promise: See above.

The reality: This one's in the eye of the beholder.

It's only been six months? It seems like sixty years.

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Jennifer Rubin: "A wounded Trump lashes out over the Russia probe"

Spoiler

President Trump has always been the most effective, dangerous witness against himself in the burgeoning Russia scandal. He told NBC’s Lester Holt that when he fired former FBI director James B. Comey, he had the Russia scandal in mind. He then seemed to threaten Comey, hinting there might be tapes of one of their conversations. In a New York Times interview, Trump on Wednesday once again put out incriminating information, potentially setting himself up for serious consequences, be they political or legal.

He declared, “[Attorney General Jeff] Sessions should never have recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me so I could have picked someone else.” In a single run-on sentence, he humiliated Sessions, conveyed that he had intended to use Sessions to insulate himself from the Russia mess and reinforced the perception that he sees the Justice Department as his personal legal firm, not a department whose independence must be respected. (He also whined that he did not like Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein overseeing the investigation because there are very few Republicans from Baltimore. Did he not know whom he had nominated for the deputy attorney general position?) Whether Sessions chooses to remain in a position for which the president now regrets nominating him remains an open question, but without the president’s confidence in the attorney general, the Justice Department becomes a diminished force. Sessions may love playing “cops and robbers,” but so long as he remains, the Justice Department lacks a champion in the Cabinet who has sway with the president.

Trump’s frustration over Sessions’s refusal to violate ethical standards stands out as further evidence that for Trump, loyalty is everything. Ethical and legal boundaries do not register with him; indeed, his loyal underlings are expected to disregard such niceties to protect him. Nothing better underscores his unfitness for office. He did, after all, take an oath to faithfully execute the laws, not to use government lawyers to shield him from inquiry. That concept is foreign to Trump, who sees the FBI and Justice Department as his supplicants. “In an environment in which the President of the United States, in a single interview, expresses no-confidence in the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, the special counsel, the acting FBI director, and the special counsel’s staff, and in which he makes clear that the FBI should be his personal force and that all of law enforcement should be about serving him, the [principal] protection is having people with backbone who are willing to do their jobs and stand up for one another in the elevation of their oaths of office over political survival,” writes Benjamin Wittes.

No wonder Trump felt compelled to go after Comey and then special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Trump warned that Mueller would cross a red line if he strayed into investigation of Trump’s finances apart from Russia. If that is where the investigation leads, would Trump fire Mueller? That seemed to be the implication, although he did not say so directly. (This comes in the context of a Times report that Deutsche Bank will cooperate with Mueller’s requests for information on Trump’s finances; the bank reportedly has lent Trump and his family millions over the years.) Again, Trump openly plays the intimidation game, unaware or untroubled by the potential that this will be seen as part of a scheme of obstruction and interference in an ongoing investigation.

Trump’s gnawing obsession and anger with the Russia investigation, which he has called a witch hunt, certainly were on full display. Trump bemoaned Sessions’s recusal as “unfair,” accused Comey of lying about their conversations (and trying to use the dossier as leverage against Trump!) and attacked Mueller for conflicts of interest. His fury carried the whiff of desperation, if not panic. As he is wont to do, Trump repeatedly contradicted prior statements. After Comey testified, Trump’s team claimed the president was “vindicated”; now he says Comey’s account was full of lies. So which is it? Trump is flailing, throwing mud in every direction in the vain hope that his words will disable his critics. However, his undisguised fury with investigators only gives weight to the accusation that he tried his best to stop — obstruct, that is — an investigation into his team’s web of connections to Russia.

Perhaps most interesting, Trump insisted, contrary to other witnesses’ accounts, that he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin privately at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg for only 15 minutes. (Surely, others who were at the event can be asked about the length of the conversation). He also noted that the topic of Russian adoptions — the same pretext given for the Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and assorted Russians in June 2016 — came up. One suspects that this might be the approved segue into discussions of Russian demands with Trump family members. (Yesterday, the administration announced that it was cutting off support for Syrian rebels, just the move that Russia has long sought.)

Trump’s presidency is sinking into the quicksand of the Russia investigation. The more he decries his tormentors, the more support he provides for their investigation. Who can doubt that he was determined to stop the Russia investigation? In lashing out at prosecutors, he commits new acts of intimidation, vainly hoping to curtail their inquiry.

The entire fiasco (in addition to Trumpcare’s failure) is devouring the presidency. Trump — not Sessions, Comey, Mueller or Rosenstein — is solely to blame for his predicament. His grave mistake was thinking that he could avoid scrutiny, just as he has done for decades in a privately held, family business.

So, how is “Made in America Week” going?

He needs to be handed a binky and put down for a nap.

[GreyhoundFan]

Here's a good op-ed: "Why Trump’s chat with Putin is not just a chat'

Spoiler

THE ALARMS over President Trump’s second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit are, in one way, overheated. Staying engaged with Russia and its leader, including through a spontaneous pull-aside at a closed dinner for world leaders, is not in itself a fault: At best, it might help alleviate mistrust and avoid miscalculation at a time of high tension. While it is possible to object to Mr. Trump’s impulsive style and tendency to bypass established channels, the problem is not so much that he sought out Mr. Putin for an informal chat. Rather, it is the deeply troubling and unresolved questions about his relationship with Russia, which mean that any such contact raises serious — and understandable — concerns.

“Engagement” is not a dirty word. Even in the worst days of the Cold War, in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and the 1983 war scare, the United States remained in close communication with the Soviet Union. A back channel often proved vital. During the tense days of autumn 1983, the National Security Council specialist on Soviet affairs, Jack F. Matlock Jr., met quietly in a cafeteria opposite the Old Executive Office Building with a Soviet journalist he had known, who revealed the dire situation in Moscow, including Soviet leaders’ deepening uncertainty about possible war with the United States. This was important information.

Talk isn’t bad; what’s key is the nature of the talk. To carefully calibrate messages to world leaders, presidents usually rely on an elaborate bureaucratic machine, including the interagency process and the National Security Council staff. Mr. Trump’s dinner chat showed once again his proclivity to act alone, and he undoubtedly created headaches. With no U.S. note-taker or interpreter, the U.S. national security structure was left without a record of the exchange, except for Mr. Trump’s memory. Mr. Putin will have a better record.

But the deeper problem is the epidemic of mistrust Mr. Trump has created about his ties to Russia, which sensationalizes contacts that might otherwise be unremarkable. The doubts began during the campaign with his failure to release his tax returns, which could show the origins of his income, and grew worse when Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and the email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Mr. Trump refused to accept U.S. intelligence community warnings of Russian interference during the election, and his family and his campaign associates have repeatedly been negligent or untruthful about their contacts with Russian officials — most recently, in the accounts of a meeting with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Ms. Clinton. In his first meeting as president with Russia’s foreign minister, Mr. Trump blurted out classified information. It’s reasonable to worry about what he might have told Mr. Putin.

Mr. Trump often calls investigations of his Russia ties a “witch hunt.” But the fact is that he created the swirl of suspicion. Only he can clear it up — and until he does, there will be reason for concern about any contact he has with Mr. Putin.

 

 

[GrumpyGran]

23 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

OMFG, they are just not giving up: "Trump challenges senators to resurrect Obamacare repeal effort: ‘We’re close’"

  Hide contents

Hoping to avoid a humiliating political defeat, President Trump on Wednesday demanded that Republican senators resume their efforts to approve a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, insisting that lawmakers are “very close.”

A day after the GOP strategy to roll back the ACA appeared dead, Trump invited Republican senators to lunch at the White House and challenged them to work out an agreement even if it means remaining in Washington through their summer recess next month. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had previously announced that the recess would be delayed by two weeks.

“People should not leave town unless we have a health insurance plan, unless we give our people great health care,” Trump said at the beginning of the lunch. “We’re close, very close … We have to hammer this out and get it done.”

The president’s effort to resurrect negotiations came a day after he declared that it was time to give up on the contentious process to overturn President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement and “let Obamacare fail.”

With Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), a key vote who has wavered on the GOP’s repeal proposal, sitting to his right, Trump touted what he said were benefits of the plan — including the repeal of the individual mandate, expanded coverage options and getting rid of “burdensome taxes.”

The president appeared to issue a veiled threat that he would campaign against Republicans who stood in his way.

“He wants to remain a senator, doesn’t he?” Trump said with a laugh of Heller, who also chuckled. “And I think the people of your state, which I know very well, I think they’re going to appreciate what you hopefully will do.’’

Trump added: “Any senator voting against starting debate is telling the American people you’re fine with Obamacare.” But the current health-care law, approved in 2010, has “failed,” Trump declared. “It’s gone.”

Yet Trump’s remarks were sharply at odds with the comments from Senate GOP leaders over the past day who have said the reality is that there is not enough support for a replacement plan.

The effort by Senate Republicans to undo Obamacare has been fraught with internal divisions and apparent discord between the White House and GOP leaders. With little room for error, McConnell abruptly switched course Monday after several Republicans announced they would block efforts to vote on a replacement bill that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would leave up to 22 million more Americans without health insurance.

Instead, McConnell announced plans to vote early next week on a straight repeal of the law with a two-year delay that would give Congress more time to work out a replacement plan. But that strategy appeared doomed as at least three GOP members said they would oppose that course of action, enough to block it. A repeal of the ACA without a replacement plan would leave even more people uninsured, according to the CBO.

McConnell told reporters after the lunch that he still intends to hold the vote next week on a repeal plan, but other key senators suggested they would need an acceptable replacement before agreeing to move forward.

“I’m glad @POTUS agrees that we cannot move to repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan that addresses the needs of West Virginians,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) wrote on Twitter.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told reporters upon returning to the Capitol, “I don’t think there are 40 votes” for a repeal-only bill.

Trump, who had invited Republican leaders to a health-care strategy dinner Monday night, was apparently blindsided by the opposition from some conservative members, including Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.).

Trump, as he has done numerous times in recent weeks, reminded the lawmakers that Republicans had campaigned against the ACA for years and their supporters are counting on them to make good on their promises.

“I’m ready to act,” Trump said. “I have my pen in hand. I’m sitting in that office. I have pen in hand. You’ve never had that before. For seven years, you’ve had the easy route — we repeal, we replace, but he (Obama) never signs it. I’m signing it. So it’s a little different.”

Yeah, nothing like a little threat to make people want to work with you. <end sarcasm>

He really has nothing to threaten them with. The Republican Senators who are up for re-election in 2018 will be most at risk in primaries so unless crazy trumpers can move a lunatic like Trump past them, they will likely be safe. Even the trumpers will vote for them in the general, rather than let an ebil Democrat take over. And I don't think Trump will make it to the general in 2020.

[GreyhoundFan]

"What was Trump talking about with $12-a-year health insurance?"

Spoiler

Among the many head-scratching comments made by President Trump in his interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, a remark about the ideal price of health insurance was perhaps the most baffling.

“Once you get something, it’s awfully tough to take it away,” Trump said to the Times’s Maggie Haberman about coverage for preexisting conditions, a key part of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare).

“That’s been the thing for four years,” she replied. “When you win an entitlement, you can’t take it back.”

“But what it does, Maggie, it means it gets tougher and tougher,” Trump said.

He continued:

As they get something, it gets tougher. Because politically, you can’t give it away. So preexisting conditions are a tough deal. Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan. Here’s something where you walk up and say, “I want my insurance.” It’s a very tough deal, but it is something that we’re doing a good job of.

Let’s set aside, for now, that “$12 a year” insurance. Let’s instead first parse what Trump is talking about.

We can get a hint from a comment he made in May to The Economist.

[W]e’re putting in $8bn [to a high-risk coverage pool] and you’re going to have absolute coverage. You’re going to have absolute guaranteed coverage. You’re going to have it if you’re a person going in … don’t forget, this was not supposed to be the way insurance works. Insurance is, you’re 20 years old, you just graduated from college, and you start paying $15 a month for the rest of your life and by the time you’re 70, and you really need it, you’re still paying the same amount and that’s really insurance.

The part that’s in bold gives us a sense of where he’s going.

Trump is arguing, it seems, that an insurance system is supposed to be based on people paying in over a lengthy period of time so that, when they need coverage, they’ve already helped offset the costs. He thinks of it, in other words, a bit like life insurance, or Social Security.

His point, it appears, is that a system where people suddenly have the need for new coverage or coverage that’s expensive from the outset “was not supposed to be the way insurance works.” That’s not really true, of course; for someone born with a heart condition, for example, there was no halcyon period in their 20s when they could pay into the system without needing more back in coverage.

That’s how health insurance differs from life insurance. Instead of one person paying against his own future needs, it’s a pool of people paying in against their collective future needs. So if you have insurance coverage now while you’re healthy, you’re helping to pay for that young kid with the heart condition — or someone who, in Trump’s formulation, “walks up” and demands insurance.

Trump’s comment about this not being how insurance works actually undercuts the comment he’d made a few sentences before in that Economist interview, and an argument he presented to Republican senators on Wednesday.

The point of Obamacare was to increase the number of healthy people paying into insurance pools so that coverage for those with preexisting conditions could be expanded. An insurance program that only covers the very sick would either have to limit coverage or have expensive policies. A program that has healthier people paying in can help keep costs down for those who need it. Healthy people don’t always want to buy insurance, though, which is why Obamacare has a mandate: have insurance or pay a tax penalty.

Trump’s right: Setting aside a few billion dollars of government money to help cover the costs of those with preexisting conditions in lieu of expanding the pool of participants is not the way it’s supposed to work. But he also doesn’t like the individual mandate, telling those senators that “[p]remiums are so high that 6.5 million Americans chose to pay a fine to the IRS instead of buying insurance, the famous mandate.” The GOP bill, he pledged, would “repeal the individual mandate,” which he hailed as a good thing.

Which doesn’t make much sense, given his $12/$15-a-year argument. If the ideal system in his eyes is one in which people pay in over the course of their lives, you’re either going to have to mandate that a young person have that coverage or hope that somehow, magically, they’ll decide to do so on their own, despite not being ill. That’s why you end up needing a pool of $8 billion to (partially) offset the difference.

Oh, also, health insurance costs a smidgen more than $1 a month. Maybe it would ideally by that inexpensive, and Trump’s making a tacit argument about dramatically gutting the costs of medical care. Or maybe he’s proposing a massive investment on the part of government that can absorb nearly all of the cost of coverage for all Americans. Sen. Bernie Sanders would be thrilled.

Or maybe he’s seen too many commercials on cable news channels about having life insurance for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day.

That's even more clueless than Tomi's dumbass comments about the price of birth control pills.

[GrumpyGran]

20 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"What was Trump talking about with $12-a-year health insurance?"

  Hide contents

Among the many head-scratching comments made by President Trump in his interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, a remark about the ideal price of health insurance was perhaps the most baffling.

“Once you get something, it’s awfully tough to take it away,” Trump said to the Times’s Maggie Haberman about coverage for preexisting conditions, a key part of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare).

“That’s been the thing for four years,” she replied. “When you win an entitlement, you can’t take it back.”

“But what it does, Maggie, it means it gets tougher and tougher,” Trump said.

He continued:

As they get something, it gets tougher. Because politically, you can’t give it away. So preexisting conditions are a tough deal. Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan. Here’s something where you walk up and say, “I want my insurance.” It’s a very tough deal, but it is something that we’re doing a good job of.

Let’s set aside, for now, that “$12 a year” insurance. Let’s instead first parse what Trump is talking about.

We can get a hint from a comment he made in May to The Economist.

[W]e’re putting in $8bn [to a high-risk coverage pool] and you’re going to have absolute coverage. You’re going to have absolute guaranteed coverage. You’re going to have it if you’re a person going in … don’t forget, this was not supposed to be the way insurance works. Insurance is, you’re 20 years old, you just graduated from college, and you start paying $15 a month for the rest of your life and by the time you’re 70, and you really need it, you’re still paying the same amount and that’s really insurance.

The part that’s in bold gives us a sense of where he’s going.

Trump is arguing, it seems, that an insurance system is supposed to be based on people paying in over a lengthy period of time so that, when they need coverage, they’ve already helped offset the costs. He thinks of it, in other words, a bit like life insurance, or Social Security.

His point, it appears, is that a system where people suddenly have the need for new coverage or coverage that’s expensive from the outset “was not supposed to be the way insurance works.” That’s not really true, of course; for someone born with a heart condition, for example, there was no halcyon period in their 20s when they could pay into the system without needing more back in coverage.

That’s how health insurance differs from life insurance. Instead of one person paying against his own future needs, it’s a pool of people paying in against their collective future needs. So if you have insurance coverage now while you’re healthy, you’re helping to pay for that young kid with the heart condition — or someone who, in Trump’s formulation, “walks up” and demands insurance.

Trump’s comment about this not being how insurance works actually undercuts the comment he’d made a few sentences before in that Economist interview, and an argument he presented to Republican senators on Wednesday.

The point of Obamacare was to increase the number of healthy people paying into insurance pools so that coverage for those with preexisting conditions could be expanded. An insurance program that only covers the very sick would either have to limit coverage or have expensive policies. A program that has healthier people paying in can help keep costs down for those who need it. Healthy people don’t always want to buy insurance, though, which is why Obamacare has a mandate: have insurance or pay a tax penalty.

Trump’s right: Setting aside a few billion dollars of government money to help cover the costs of those with preexisting conditions in lieu of expanding the pool of participants is not the way it’s supposed to work. But he also doesn’t like the individual mandate, telling those senators that “[p]remiums are so high that 6.5 million Americans chose to pay a fine to the IRS instead of buying insurance, the famous mandate.” The GOP bill, he pledged, would “repeal the individual mandate,” which he hailed as a good thing.

Which doesn’t make much sense, given his $12/$15-a-year argument. If the ideal system in his eyes is one in which people pay in over the course of their lives, you’re either going to have to mandate that a young person have that coverage or hope that somehow, magically, they’ll decide to do so on their own, despite not being ill. That’s why you end up needing a pool of $8 billion to (partially) offset the difference.

Oh, also, health insurance costs a smidgen more than $1 a month. Maybe it would ideally by that inexpensive, and Trump’s making a tacit argument about dramatically gutting the costs of medical care. Or maybe he’s proposing a massive investment on the part of government that can absorb nearly all of the cost of coverage for all Americans. Sen. Bernie Sanders would be thrilled.

Or maybe he’s seen too many commercials on cable news channels about having life insurance for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day.

That's even more clueless than Tomi's dumbass comments about the price of birth control pills.

Babbling idiot. It's obvious that he has never in his life been presented with a bill for any kind of health care. I guess he goes to the doctor, rarely, and the bill ends up in someone's office and they pay it. I'm sure his employees have health care, something set up by the HR department but he has always been blissfully unaware of how it works. What a wonderful choice to lead a charge for health care reform.

And he's really starting to burn bridges.  He bitches about leaks but sets up an environment that tempts everyone around him to leak as revenge.

[fraurosena]

And here we have the real reason for his off the charts ranting and railing against everyone involved in the Russia investigation:

Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions

Spoiler

The U.S. special counsel investigating possible ties between the Donald Trumpcampaign and Russia in last year’s election is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses as well as those of his associates, according to a person familiar with the probe.

FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said.

The investigation also has absorbed a money-laundering probe begun by federal prosecutors in New York into Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

John Dowd, one of Trump’s lawyers, said on Thursday that he was unaware of the inquiry into Trump’s businesses by the two-months-old investigation and considered it beyond the scope of what Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be examining.

“Those transactions are in my view well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel; are unrelated to the election of 2016 or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and most importantly, are well beyond any Statute of Limitation imposed by the United States Code,” he wrote in an email.

Major U.S. stock indices, which had been trading higher in the morning, fell as traders worried that the probe could derail Trump’s growth agenda. The dollar fell against the euro and U.S. government bonds rose.

The president told the New York Times on Wednesday that any digging into matters beyond Russia would be out of bounds. Trump’s businesses have involved Russians for years, however, making the boundaries fuzzy.

The Justice Department’s May 17 order to Mueller instructs him to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,” suggesting a relatively broad mandate.

Agents are interested in dealings with the Bank of Cyprus, where Wilbur Ross served as vice chairman before he became commerce secretary. In addition, they are examining the efforts of Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and senior aide, to secure financing for some of his family’s real-estate properties. The information about the investigation was provided by someone familiar with the developing inquiry but not authorized to speak publicly.

The roots of Mueller’s follow-the-money investigation lie partly in a wide-ranging money-laundering probe launched by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara last year, according to the person.

FBI agents already had been gathering information about Manafort, according to two people with knowledge of that probe. Prosecutors hadn’t yet begun presenting evidence to a grand jury. Trump fired Bharara in March.

The Manafort inquiry initially focused on actions involving a real-estate company he launched with money from Ukraine in 2008. By the time Bharara was fired, his office’s investigation of possible money laundering extended well beyond that, according to the person briefed on the Mueller probe.

The Bharara investigation was consolidated into Mueller’s inquiry, showing that the special counsel is taking an overarching approach. The various financial examinations constitute one thread of Mueller’s inquiry, which encompasses computer hacking and the dissemination of stolen campaign and voter information as well as the actions of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Joshua Stueve, Mueller’s spokesman, declined to comment, as did a Manafort spokesman and Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner.

Spokesmen for the White House, Trump Organization and Ross didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mueller’s team is looking at the Trump SoHo hotel condominium development, which was a licensing deal with Bayrock Capital LLC. In 2010, the former finance director of Bayrock filed a lawsuit claiming the firm structured transactions in fraudulent ways to evade taxes. Bayrock was a key source of capital for Trump projects, including Trump SoHo.

The 2013 Miss Universe pageant is of interest because a prominent Moscow developer, Aras Agalarov, paid $20 million to bring the beauty spectacle there. About a third of that sum went to Trump in the form of a licensing fee, according to Forbes magazine. At the event, Trump met Herman Gref, chief executive of Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank PJSC. Agalarov’s son, Emin, helped broker a meeting last year between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who was said to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton and her campaign.

Another significant financial transaction involved a Palm Beach, Florida, estate Trump purchased in 2004 for $41 million, after its previous owner lost it in bankruptcy. In March of 2008, after the real-estate bubble had begun losing air, Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the property for $95 million.

As part of their investigation, Mueller’s team has issued subpoenas to banks and filed requests for bank records to foreign lenders under mutual legal-assistance treaties, according to two of the people familiar with the matter.

 

So the investigation is following the money and has consolidated not only the Manafort and Flynn investigations but also Preet Bharara's investigation. In addition to all that, they are also looking into the toddler's own business dealings, and those of his sons, son-in-law, and daughter. 

The presidunce is simply scared shitless of what they will find. 

[AmazonGrace]

On 19.7.2017 at 10:26 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

OMFG, they are just not giving up: "Trump challenges senators to resurrect Obamacare repeal effort: ‘We’re close’"

  Hide contents

Yeah, nothing like a little threat to make people want to work with you. <end sarcasm>

Nice little senatorship you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it. 

[onekidanddone]

5 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Nice little senatorship you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it. 

Next he is going to give them an offer they can't refuse.  I hope none of them owns any horses.

[Gobsmacked]

On 17 July 2017 at 3:06 AM, 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.

I'm from the UK. I hate sprouts full stop. Once had a horrible weekend removing lice from 2 primary school age heads, BUT I will gladly join you in this endeavour if it results in him disappearing in a cloud of sulphurous green smoke.  Copious amounts of white wine would be required wash everything down with.