Trump 22: Not Even Poe Could Make This Shit Up

[Bethella]

3 hours ago, Childless said:

Melania and Barron are gone now.  Why the hell is secret service still there?

My understanding is that the president's permanent residence is always protected whether he's in residence or not. Probably so no one can sneak in and plant a bomb (or a listening) device while he's not there. The same would have been true of the Obamas' house in Chicago and the Bushes' ranch in Crawford.

[Childless]

3 hours ago, Bethella said:

My understanding is that the president's permanent residence is always protected whether he's in residence or not. Probably so no one can sneak in and plant a bomb (or a listening) device while he's not there. The same would have been true of the Obamas' house in Chicago and the Bushes' ranch in Crawford.

Which is kind of silly in my opinion.  I can see why they did it for Bush's ranch.  He actually vacationed there.  The Obamas never went to their house in Chicago the entire time he was in office.  Hell, they still haven't been back in the months he's been out of office.  And there's no point in targeting him now, he's no longer the president.  Plus, it should only take a couple of guys monitoring the place.  No need for a command center unless the president is actually there.

It's one thing for the secret service to have to do this for a remote ranch or a suburban home.  But a building in the middle of Manhattan?  Ugh, what a mess!

[GreyhoundFan]

"This Trump real estate deal looks awfully like criminal tax fraud"

Spoiler

President Trump clearly doesn’t want to release his income tax returns to the public. Members of the public and commentators have progressed through stages of outrage, speculation and acceptance that they’ll never see the goods, while others have made attempts to pry the documents free (such as proposed legislation in New York and other states that would require presidential candidates to release their returns). But Trump’s most pressing tax problem may come from somewhere else entirely: a pre-election transfer of property to a company controlled by his son that could run afoul of the IRS.

According to a recent story by ProPublica and the Real Deal, in April 2016 a limited liability company managed by Trump sold two condominium apartments to a limited liability company managed by Eric Trump. They were on the 13th and 14th floors of a 14-story, full-service, doorman building at 100 Central Park South in Manhattan. This is a prime Midtown neighborhood, yet the sale price for each condo was just $350,000. Although the condition and square footage of apartments 13G and 14G are not readily known, a popular real estate website shows that G-line apartments on both the fifth and eighth floors are one-bedroom, one-bath units of just over 500 square feet. Two years before the Trump transaction, apartment 5G sold for $690,000. Maybe the two units in question were in terrible shape, but two months before the sale to Eric Trump’s LLC, they were advertised for $790,000 (on the 13th floor) and $800,000 (on the 14th floor), according to ProPublica.

If a sale between a parent and child is for fair market value, it does not trigger a gift tax. But if a parent sells two expensive condominiums to his son at a highly discounted price, for example, then the parent makes a taxable gift in part. In that case, the seller must pay a gift tax of up to 40 percent. (In this case, that might have run the president somewhere in the neighborhood of $350,000.)

Each taxpayer has a $5.49 million lifetime exemption (a married couple has a combined $10.98 million exemption), meaning you can give away that much money without incurring the tax. To claim that a transaction is covered by the exemption, though, you must file a gift tax return. Well-advised wealthy individuals typically fully use their $5.49 million exemption by making gifts to family members as soon as they have the assets to do so.

So if Donald Trump sold the apartments to his son’s company for less than fair market value, he needed to file a gift tax return, even if he wanted to claim that the sale was not taxable because of the exemption. The government wants to know what gifts people make, because gifts are taken into account when determining the value of a person’s taxable estate at death. If Trump had already used his exemption, he would owe gift tax on the difference between the fair market value of the apartments and the amount paid by Eric Trump.

It’s possible the president filed the right paperwork. But without a full release of his tax returns, the available evidence suggests he hasn’t. According to New York City property records, Trump paid $13,000 in state and local transfer taxes for these two sales. That is the correct amount for a sale between strangers. But if he paid state and local transfer taxes, that means he didn’t treat the transfers as gifts. And on the real estate forms filed in New York, Trump didn’t check any of the boxes indicating that these were sales between relatives or sales of less than the entire property. It would seem, then, that he treated the transactions as if they were sales for fair market value to a stranger.

Since Trump did not cast the transactions as gifts for state and local tax purposes, it is almost certain that he did not do so for federal gift tax purposes, either. In our combined 40 years of experience as tax lawyers, we are unaware of a situation in which a taxpayer would report a transaction as a fair market value between strangers on the state level (and thus incur real estate taxes) but treat it as a gift at the federal level (and thus incur an additional tax). It’s fair to infer that Trump didn’t follow the rules.

Willful failure to file a tax return, including a gift tax return, is a misdemeanor , punishable by a $25,000 fine, imprisonment of up to one year or both. Fraudulent failure to file — meaning an overt act of evasion — may elevate willful failure to a felony . That carries a fine of up to $100,000, imprisonment of up to five years or both, along with the costs of prosecution. According to internal guidance provided by the IRS to its agents, factors indicating potential fraud include repeated contacts by the IRS, failure to cooperate with IRS agents or employees, knowledge of the filing requirements, offering implausible or inconsistent explanations, substantial tax liability, and refusal or inability to explain failure to file.

Presidential income tax returns are subject to mandatory audit . The IRS can decide whether Trump’s transfers were truly gifts. If they were, which seems likely, Trump’s failure to file a gift tax return opens him up to penalties and fines, or even criminal charges. Perhaps such a charge wouldn’t go anywhere, since the president must consent to being indicted by a federal prosecutor. But tax law would permit them.

This morning, I caught a bit of Morning Joe. I normally can't watch it because Joe and MIka are just too cutesy together, but they were pretty low-key today. The interview that caught my ear was one where they discussed how Mueller's investigation started with Russian interference into the election, but would likely go way, way further. They cited how the Whitewater investigation during Clinton's administration started as an investigation into a real estate deal, but ended up with sexual harassment. If Agent Orange had more than two functioning brain cells, he would be terrified of where this investigation will end up and what will be exposed.

[Howl]

Oh my.  At least some of the wheels are coming off the train.  Trump's hard core base still seems unfazed, though. 

The Mueller grand jury should be unsettling everybody. Heh.  Has there been a sudden spike in Ambien prescriptions in the DC area? 

35 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This morning, I caught a bit of Morning Joe. I normally can't watch it because Joe and Mika are just too cutesy together

Hubs watches Morning Joe these days.  I can't stand to watch because Joe continually interrupts and talks over Mika, which drives me absolutely nuts. They do have a lot of excellent panelists and commentators, though, and many of them are women.  The women tend to not interrupt each other. 

[GreyhoundFan]

45 minutes ago, Howl said:

The Mueller grand jury should be unsettling everybody. Heh.  Has there been a sudden spike in Ambien prescriptions in the DC area? 

I was thinking Xanax would have a record sales year inside the Beltway.

[AnywhereButHere]

I have a mental image of all WH/House/Senate members and staff wandering aimlessly around DC, in their bathrobes, hair standing on end, muttering to themselves (must stay stable- must stay stable...), and starting at loud noises.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[PsyD2013]

Relax everyone, Trump is the most innocent person in the history of the world, ever!  https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/46a4f1b3-3b7e-3fa4-a2e4-c3f057deef26/ss_trump-says-mueller-just.html

TT says that Mueller just called him to say it was so.  Another "fake" phone call.

[AmazonGrace]

6 minutes ago, PsyD2013 said:

Relax everyone, Trump is the most innocent person in the history of the world, ever!  https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/46a4f1b3-3b7e-3fa4-a2e4-c3f057deef26/ss_trump-says-mueller-just.html

TT says that Mueller just called him to say it was so.  Another "fake" phone call.

Mind you it's satire from the Borowitz report. 

I would totally believe Trump would make up such a phone call though. 

[PsyD2013]

40 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Mind you it's satire from the Borowitz report. 

I would totally believe Trump would make up such a phone call though. 

 

True, however TT behavior is so over the top WTF that it is becoming increasingly difficult to parody him.  Real life satire.

[GreyhoundFan]

You could take the "about his popularity" off this title and it would still be correct: "Trump is delusional about his popularity"

Spoiler

Enough, already, with all the takeouts and think pieces about how President Trump’s loyal base continues to support him. That’s neither surprising nor impressive — and it’s certainly not the point about this shameful and appalling presidency.

Also, it’s not entirely true. Trump won 47 percent of the popular vote in November’s election. That’s less than Hillary Clinton’s 48 percent but means nevertheless that nearly half the country put its trust in a man who had already shown himself to be a liar, a buffoon, a demagogue and a self-proclaimed sexual harasser.

This week, Gallup reported Trump’s approval rating at 36 percent, with 60 percent of those polled disapproving of the job he’s doing. Since the advent of polling, no president has been so unpopular at this point in his tenure. Clearly, some who voted for Trump have had second thoughts. But most have not, and why, at this point, should anyone expect otherwise?

It might feel like six years, but it’s only been six months and change since Inauguration Day — far too soon for even Trump to have alienated everyone who trusted him with their hopes and dreams. Give him time. He’s working on it.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Trump has a solid base of about 35 percent of voters who will stick with him no matter what. Much of his base lives in small towns, rural areas, the South and the Rust Belt — which has inspired countless lazy op-eds about how the jaded sophisticates of the East and West Coasts are too smug and insular to have a clue about the “real America.”

Please. Just stop.

This country is riven by many fault lines, race and educational attainment being perhaps the most important. But no citizen’s America is any more “real” than anyone else’s. The voice of a laid-off West Virginia coal miner is no more authentic than that of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, a Hollywood production assistant, an Upper West Side advertising executive or — and this may be shocking — an opinion writer for a mainstream news outlet. If people such as me live in an elite, progressive “bubble,” it must be an awfully big one; indicators such as the popular vote suggest there are more Americans inside than out.

I accept that most Trump voters — those who were not heeding his campaign’s dog-whistle appeals to white supremacy and racial grievance — had an understandable motive: Frustrated with a political system that seems incapable of getting much of anything accomplished, they decided to lob in a grenade, blow it to smithereens and start over.

I get that. I get how Trump’s outrageous statements on Twitter and in campaign-style rallies sound fresh and encouraging to his die-hard supporters, not vicious and loopy. Trump gets it, too, and that’s why I doubt anyone will ever be able to pry his smartphone from his dainty clutches. Some of his tweetstorms are primal screams from an insecure man who is in way over his head, but others are carefully crafted to show that he is keeping the faith with those who elected him to break the rules.

But Trump is genuinely delusional about both his talents and his popularity. On Thursday, a day after he grudgingly signed the Russia sanctions bill, he tweeted, “Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can’t even give us HCare!”

Apparently he’s never heard of the Cuban missile crisis, in which Washington and Moscow came close to nuclear war. But why is he going out of his way to attack a Congress led by his own party? Senators, especially, do not take kindly to such abuse, as Trump should have learned from the health-care vote. It might be different if he were a popular president. But he is not.

How long will Trump’s base stay with him? I don’t know, but clearly he’s worried. Even Rasmussen, the generally conservative survey that usually shows him as having more support than other pollsters detect, released a poll this week showing Trump’s approval below 40 percent for the first time. He makes laughable claims about having accomplished more than any other president in his first months because he knows his support will slowly leak away if he fails at his central promise, which is to get stuff done. Thus far he has been a failure.

Trump voters are not blind to that fact. And their patience won’t last forever.

 

[fraurosena]

Remember back when you guys still had a President? It's his birthday today.

https://www.obama.org/updates/birthday/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=bday&source=social_twitter_bday

Quote

In honor of President Obama’s birthday today, Mrs. Obama has a special message to share:

On the last full day of his presidency, Barack wrote a letter to the American people. In closing, he wrote:

“I’ve seen you, the American people, in all your decency, determination, good humor, and kindness. And in your daily acts of citizenship, I’ve seen our future unfolding.”

Daily acts of citizenship. For Barack—and for me—that’s about as American as it gets.

Today is Barack’s birthday, and this year, I want to do something a little different for him.

I don’t have a card for you to sign. Instead, I have something that I know would mean even more to Barack than your well-wishes (and that’s saying something):

I’m asking you to share with Barack, right now, how you’re stepping up to be a better citizen in your community. I’m asking you to share your own “daily act of citizenship.”

Maybe that means attending a town or city council meeting. Maybe it means contacting one of your elected officials and speaking out about an issue that matters to you. Maybe it means helping to clean up a local park, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or tutoring in an after-school program.

This work—these personal, local, daily acts of citizenship—is what the Obama Foundation is all about.

This work is what my husband is all about.

It continues to be the honor of our lives to work alongside you. Thank you so much for everything you do.

-Michelle

Happy birthday, Mr. President! Wish you were still in office...

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Business 101 lesson that stumps Trump still"

Spoiler

Donald Trump is making the same mistake now that he made in the 1980s and ’90s. Back then, the mistake — surrounding himself with enablers rather than with strong subordinates — led to trouble for his real estate and casino empire, which wasn’t a big deal except to Trump and his creditors. But now, Trump’s mistake threatens to do serious damage to our country, which is a very big deal.

Let me explain. If you’re a chief executive running a complicated enterprise, you want to surround yourself with strong, competent subordinates who will tell you if they think you’re making a mistake and will argue with you.

That’s what you learn not only in Management 101 but also in the School of Common Sense.

Even better, you occasionally put your top-ranking strong subordinates in a room and let them duke it out with one another. And with you, if need be. And you accept the fact that even though you’re the boss, some of your subordinates are probably better at certain things than you are. They might be right, and you might be wrong.

Compare this with the way Trump has behaved since becoming president. He is not surrounding himself with strong subordinates and doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to the few strong ones he has.

Rather, Trump is surrounding himself with flunkies whose main function seems to be to kiss his behind (metaphorically) in public and private and with family members whose qualifications to play a serious role in running our country aren’t apparent. At least, they’re not apparent to me.

Take the sudden rise and fall of the Mooch, a.k.a. Anthony Scaramucci, who kept publicly professing his love for Trump. After the Mooch moronically ran his mouth — on the record! — during an interview with the New Yorker, Trump is said to have been pleased with the colorful remarks. Then he backtracked and fired the Mooch 10 days into his tenure. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, to see Scaramucci return to favor one of these days.

Trump, as I wrote a year ago, is notably short on impulse control. That’s not armchair psychology; it’s an observation based on years of watching him and occasionally writing about him.

This makes Trump exactly the kind of person who needs to surround himself with smart people who will help save him from himself. The kind of people who will tell him about his blind spots, whether he asks or not, and will stand up to him.

Trump got into trouble in the go-go 1980s because he got carried away. Money was easy to borrow. The advent of junk bonds — known euphemistically as high-yield bonds — made it possible to buy pretty much anything if you were willing to fork over big enough bucks and sign big enough IOUs, some of which Trump foolishly guaranteed personally.

Trump, heir to a family fortune built on low-profile real estate but determined to become a star, grabbed two casinos in Atlantic City, N.J., because he could. He bought them knowing that there was a bigger, glitzier casino called Taj Mahal in the works that would cannibalize them. So he ended up buying the Taj with junk bonds on which he rapidly defaulted.

Ultimately, all three of Trump’s casinos went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, making Trump what Wall Street-types call a 33 — you know, three times 11. Throw in the bankruptcy of another impulsive, overpriced purchase, the Plaza Hotel in New York City, and two bankruptcies of the public company (stock symbol: DJT) onto which Trump unloaded his post-bankruptcy casinos, and you have 66. Which is why I call him Donald “66” Trump rather than Donald J. Trump.

Trump wouldn’t have become a 66 if he had surrounded himself with people who could challenge him, slow him down and make him look before he took financial leaps. But he didn’t.

Contrast Trump’s wretched performance with the way Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase made their way through the financial crisis of 2008-09.

In the case of Goldman, the firm realized in mid-2007, as a result of top people duking it out with one another, that securities backed by junk mortgages were a looming disaster. The firm switched almost overnight from owning tons of them to betting on their demise.

I came upon this when I was at Fortune working with my then-colleague Doris Burke on a 2007 article that dissected a particularly dreadful issue of Goldman mortgage-backed securities.

JPMorgan also handily survived the crisis, occasional large embarrassments such as the London Whale multibillion-dollar loss notwithstanding. That’s because JPMorgan had an internal-confrontation culture, where top executives would duke it out together and with chief executive Jamie Dimon. Unlike Trump, Dimon seems to have gotten more mature as he got older.

Contrast these successful institutions, whatever you may think of them, with the Trump administration. He puts ill-suited and unqualified people into high positions and often undermines them with the tweets du jour. The turnover rate is high, which discourages people who aren’t power-mad or Trump-suck-up wannabes from taking these positions. It’s a vicious cycle that feeds on itself.

Trump’s management style and impulsive behavior made for an entertaining reality TV show that’s a major reason he now sits in the White House. But it’s not a way to run a successful company. And as the spreading chaos and paralysis in Washington show, it’s sure not a way to run a country.

I can't imagine he listened in school any more than he listens now.

[Bethella]

13 hours ago, Childless said:

The Obamas never went to their house in Chicago the entire time he was in office.  

It was really, really infrequent but they did stay in their Chicago house during his presidency. According to this article 2-3 nights a year. 

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170109/kenwood/barack-obama-visit-chicago-how-many-times-19-kenwood-as-president

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump still has the bully pulpit, but is facing more challenges to his authority"

Spoiler

Six months into his chaotic tenure, President Trump faces mounting challenges to his authority and influence, a downward slide that his allies hope newly installed Chief of Staff John F. Kelly can help to halt.

In recent weeks, Congress has moved on a number of fronts to curtail the president’s authority. Lawmakers passed legislation limiting his ability to lift sanctions on Russia and the Republican-controlled Senate will not formally adjourn this month to prevent Trump from making any recess appointments, a tactic usually employed when the president is from the opposite party. Amid increasing concerns about Trump’s attitude toward the federal investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation this week aimed at preventing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III from being fired.

Trump is also facing the reality that his words — or tweets — are often not having their desired impact. Three Republican senators defied him and congressional leadership in opposing efforts to move the Republican health-care bill forward. His entreaties to lawmakers to delay their summer break and stay in Washington to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act were summarily ignored.

His unexpected announcement on Twitter that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military has been denounced by members of Congress in both parties and largely ignored by the military — for now. And this week, Trump was publicly chided for apparently inventing congratulatory calls from the leader of the Boy Scouts of America and the president of Mexico that never occurred.

“What we’re seeing today is that that system of checks and balances is now in total response to the Trump presidency and it’s coming from a lot of different directions — it’s coming from Congress, from people in the administration and others who are more openly rejecting what the president is doing,” said former defense secretary Leon Panetta, who was also White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. “The concern about that is that it weakens the power of the commander in chief as president.”

The next few weeks could afford the White House an opportunity to regroup, with a calmer political environment expected. Congress is on recess for the remainder of the month and the president is spending a couple of weeks at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

With the arrival of Kelly, there is hope among Trump’s supporters and aides that the retired Marine general can establish a sense of discipline and professionalism in the White House that could help halt a potentially dangerous slide in Trump’s influence.

“This is a potential turning point,” said one Republican adviser to the administration, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the White House. “And if it doesn’t work — if nothing really changes with the arrival of Kelly — then it seems to me that the spiral downward will continue, and it’s hard to see what will stop it.”

Other Trump allies maintain that the president, who ran as an outsider candidate, will ultimately be an outsider president. They have publicly and privately complained about the persistence of the “deep state” six months into Trump’s administration, even as Trump has grown more vocal in his criticism of his own party for failing to repeal and replace Obamacare and restricting his ability to alter sanctions aimed at Russia.

“You have to start with the idea that Trump won a hostile takeover of the Republican Party by beating 16 other candidates,” said former house speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), an informal adviser to Trump. “Then he won a hostile takeover of government by beating Hillary Clinton, and on both fronts there are people who have not accepted the outcome. He'll spend all eight years of his administration dealing with that kind of hostility.”

Among the problems Kelly is focused on fixing is the way Trump makes decisions on key issues, including by better policing access to the Oval Office. Already, it has had some impact as aides have now taken to giving Kelly control over paperwork and advice before it reaches the president, according to a person who is in regular touch with the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“He knows the problems. He knows how difficult it’s going to be,” said Panetta, who has spoken with Kelly this week. “It’s like being dropped into the middle of a combat zone.”

More difficult will be reining in the infighting among staff, and there is little expectation that Kelly will try to temper the impulse of the president to lash out at his perceived enemies, a pattern of behavior that has fueled the perception among some Republicans that the White House is spiraling out of control.

In Congress, the willingness to defy Trump has grown as lawmakers get closer to grappling with their own reelection prospects.

In an essay this week, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a frequent Trump critic who is up for reelection in 2018, issued a call for his colleagues in the Senate to do more to stand up to Trump.

“Under our Constitution, there simply are not that many people who are in a position to do something about an executive branch in chaos,” Flake wrote. “Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, ‘Someone should do something!’ without seeming to realize that that someone is us.”

While there is little evidence that Flake’s colleagues are ready to heed his advice and speak out more forcefully against Trump, the Republican Congress is steadily chipping away at Trump’s discretion on some issues involving defense and foreign policy. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week, for instance, approved the Taylor Force Act, a bipartisan bill that would reduce aid to the Palestinian Authority as long as it continued to make payments to the families of terrorists. But the bill would not allow the president to use a national-security waiver on this issue if he felt it would help negotiations in the Middle East, which one foreign-policy expert described as a “boilerplate escape hatch” that is typically given to presidents.

Some Republicans have simply resorted to openly defying or brushing off the president, despite his warning that there might be repercussions for resisting his agenda. After Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke warned Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that her state’s interests would suffer if she didn’t fall in line, she voted against the Republicans’ “skinny” health-care repeal bill anyway and shrugged off the threat of “a tweet from the president” in an interview with CNN this week.

Meanwhile, the rest of Trump’s legislative agenda remains in limbo, including proposals on tax reform and infrastructure.

“They have so squandered the bully pulpit the first six months of his presidency that he has little influence left,” said John Weaver, a Republican strategist and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. “When he has roughly 35 percent approval rating he's under active FBI and special prosecutor investigation and he can't get anything through a Republican Congress, none of this should be surprising.”

Okay, we need to tweet and email Pope Francis to ask him to have any forms of communication removed from the ambassador's residence before Newt and Calista move there. I'm so very sick of Newt.

[AnywhereButHere]

6 hours ago, PsyD2013 said:

True, however TT behavior is so over the top WTF that it is becoming increasingly difficult to parody him.  Real life satire.

No kidding! I frequently have to double check headlines to see if they're from actual news sources or The Onion/Borowitz. Real life is getting downright ridiculous. This should not be a "grownup" country problem to have. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good one from the WaPo. ‘Drug-infested den’ and ‘true American patriots’: Donald Trump’s map of America I can't quote as it's a series of links and pictures, but it's a good read.

 

Isn't this the truth? 'Trump is a one-man assault on the rule of law'

Spoiler

Scary question of the day: If this is how President Trump reacts to news of a federal grand jury being employed in the Russia investigation, what happens if things turn really serious?

Reports that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is using a grand jury to collect evidence reaffirmed what was already obvious to legal observers: This probe — and for the president, this problem — is not going away anytime soon.

Mueller is beefing up his staff, bringing in former federal prosecutors with experience in complex financial investigations. Of course there is a grand jury.

That’s how prosecutors do their work, unless they have come to the quick conclusion that the subject is a dry hole. This was never likely in Mueller’s case, and every week seems to open a new and potentially productive avenue for him to follow.

So White House special counsel Ty Cobb had the right response to the grand jury news. “The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly,” he said in a statement. “The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller.”

Restrained. Appropriate. Normal.

Not so the president.

Once again, he diminished the significance of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and demeaned the findings of the U.S. intelligence community: “The Russia story is a total fabrication. It is just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics.”

Once again — as the West Virginia crowd chanted “Lock her up!” — he said the focus should be on his vanquished opponent, not him: “What the prosecutor should be looking at are Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails. And they should be looking at the paid Russian speeches. And the owned Russian companies. Or let them look at the uranium she sold that is now in the hands of very angry Russians.”

Even leaving aside the factual flimsiness of Trump’s accusations, the inappropriateness of a sitting president making this argument is impossible to overstate. As his still-Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, “This country does not punish its political enemies.”

This country also has mechanisms, well-honed and well-tested, for dealing with situations where criminal investigations are warranted. They require recusal in cases that pose a clear conflict of interest, as Sessions recognized in immediately walling himself off from any Clinton investigation and eventually accepted in recusing himself from the Russia probe.

They set out procedures for the White House to follow in dealings with the Justice Department involving criminal proceedings, designed, as then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. explained, to ensure that prosecutors are “impartial and insulated from political influence.”

Such niceties are not for Trump. No surprise there, but the worst of his West Virginia speech was yet to come. Trump followed by impugning the Mueller investigation as an illegitimate effort to undo the election results: “They can’t beat us at the voting booths, so they’re trying to cheat you out of the . . . future that you want. They’re trying to cheat you out of the leadership that you want with a fake story that is demeaning to all of us, and most importantly demeaning to our country and demeaning to our Constitution.”

Trademark Trump. He takes the very thing that he is doing — in this case, demeaning the Constitution — and flings that accusation back at his opponent. Trump’s campaign and now his presidency have been an unceasing effort to demean the Constitution. From “fake news” to “so-called” judges, from his ill-considered travel ban to encouraging police officers’ roughing up of suspects, Trump is a one-man assault on the rule of law.

Inciting supporters to equate a criminal investigation (and potential prosecution) with a usurpation of their democratic choice is the most chilling yet. What Trump decries as a witch hunt is an authorized investigation being conducted pursuant to Justice Department rules, by an experienced prosecutor, selected for this job by another experienced prosecutor, who was nominated by Trump himself. That Trump and his allies are scheming to undermine Mueller’s legitimacy underscores that their sole goal is retaining power, the law be damned.

Some readers have asked a fair and important question: Why is nearly every column of mine about Trump? The answer is: Trump. His behavior is so extreme and so dangerous that to respond only episodically and occasionally is to risk allowing it to appear acceptable. Outrageous words and outrageous actions require expressions of outrage in return, each and every time. That will continue until the danger subsides.

I agree with the author that the TT takes what he is doing and accuses his opponent of that behavior. "I know you are, but what am I?" taken to a super-childish level.

[GrumpyGran]

20 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

OMG, I can't believe they did this! Also saw that fucking solar eclipse headline, damn solar eclipse. The answer to that question for me is "Absolutely."

9 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

I can pretty much guarantee you he did not know what FEMA stood for an hour before this speech. He still doesn't understand what they do.

[fraurosena]

Not sure which thread to put this, but it's too good not to share, so...

 

[AmazonGrace]

TL; DR; Trump does not make good decisions. 

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/04/trump-john-kelly-challenge-twitter-241343

John Kelly's big challenge: Controlling the tweeter in chief

The new chief of staff is already shaking up the West Wing, but can he bring discipline to the president's Twitter bursts?

By JOSH DAWSEY

 

08/04/2017 06:03 PM EDT

Spoiler

 

President Donald Trump’s White House and Defense Department lawyers had warned him against the transgender military ban for days. They were concerned about the ramifications of the policy, how military officials would respond and what legal backlash it could cause, two West Wing officials familiar with last month’s discussions said. The lawyers thought there would be plenty of time for more discussions and were analyzing arguments.

Frustrated with being “slow-walked,” in the words of one White House official, the president took to Twitter last week — jarring many in the West Wing out of complacency and startling his lawyers, Defense Department officials and West Wing aides, who learned of the change in a series of tweets.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military,” Trump began.

The administration had no plan in place, but Trump told others they would have to “get in gear” if he announced the ban first, one White House adviser who spoke to Trump said. He also said the announcement would stop the lawyers from arguing with him anymore. There is still no plan in place, and Defense Department officials have said they won’t implement the ban until guidance is given.

That is exactly the kind of situation the new White House chief of staff, John Kelly, has told others he wants to avoid.

Kelly, according to West Wing officials, wants to change the organizational structure in the White House, limit access to the Oval Office, give aides clear lines of command and control what ends up on the president’s desk — and who is briefing him.

 

But he knows, these people said, that he cannot stop the president from tweeting and sees a goal of “pushing the tweets in the right direction,” one White House official said, by limiting who encourages them.

Instead, Kelly has said he would like to know what Trump is planning to tweet before he does so and would prefer that big decisions not be announced on Twitter — but has privately conceded there will be late-night or early-morning missives he cannot review.

Kelly is trying to put together a system in which top aides don’t learn of decisions on Twitter, one where policy and personnel decisions are not first tweeted without having procedures in place to make them happen.

“You can't have a president who gets up at 5 a.m. and tweets policy,” said Leon Panetta, a former chief of staff and a friend of Kelly’s. “The best thing would be if the president stopped tweeting, but that’s not going to happen.”

A White House spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

In many ways, Trump’s Twitter feed has caused him more problems than anything else in his administration. He was dragged into weeks of controversy for accusing President Barack Obama — in early-morning tweets, without proof and before setting out to play golf — of tapping his phone; widely decried for attacking a TV host for “bleeding badly” from a face-lift; criticized for lighting into his own attorney general publicly; and discouraged by congressional leaders from damaging legislative discussions with tweets.

“If you can dial back the tweets and the chaos, it is a welcome addition because the chaos has made the first six months a disaster,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.

 

Whether Kelly can keep Trump’s feed from causing damage, as he has largely done since being sworn in on Monday, remains unclear.

Advisers and friends say Trump is more controlled on Twitter when he is getting good advice and has people around him he trusts — instead of people giving him false information. Several people close to him noted a spate of bad news stories Thursday, including that the special counsel had issued subpoenas and was using a grand jury in Washington, that provoked nothing overnight or in the early-morning hours, when the tweets often flow.

The bursts often come, advisers say, when Trump is frustrated with his staff or news media coverage — or just wants to buck everyone and do it his way, believing he can send the message better than anyone. Or, they say, he takes to Twitter when he wants to keep a tight circle and announce his news for fear of leaks. He also will marvel at how quickly his tweets appear on the television screen and brag about his followers.

“You saw some of that discipline and structure displayed yesterday regarding all of the fake breaking news, and you saw a disciplined response from the attorney,” Bryan Lanza, a top campaign aide who is now a lobbyist, said Friday. “And then you saw a good message from the president at the rally last night.”

Kelly’s predecessor, Reince Priebus, complained privately about the president’s Twitter tactics and was often blindsided by his pronouncements.

For example, advisers believed for days that Trump was likely to pick John Pistole as FBI director. Inside the administration, three officials said, there was little initial support for Christopher Wray, the former FBI official who was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s attorney in the bridge-closing controversy. “No one really was pushing for Wray,” one senior administration official said.

After talking extensively with Christie, who sold Trump on the former FBI official’s bona fides as a lawyer, Trump decided to go with Wray without telling others on staff, advisers said. White House officials waking up to the tweet were startled, and hurriedly wrote a news release to correspond to it. Much of the president’s inner circle knew little about Wray. Trump was simply tired of the search, these people said.

Earlier this year, Trump sent a tweet criticizing China while U.S. officials were meeting with a Chinese delegation at the State Department. The Chinese officials were startled by the tweet, as were Trump's advisers. For hours, they pinged one another about what Trump could have meant when he said: “While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!”

It turned out, later, that Trump was angry over the death of Otto Warmbier, the American student who died in June after being held in North Korea for 18 months, and that his tweets were nothing more than a form of fuming.

Ironically, the announcement of Kelly’s new role foreshadowed the challenges he faces.

Kelly knew he was going to be named chief of staff, officials said. But he didn’t know that Trump, sitting on the tarmac aboard Air Force One on July 28, would announce it on Twitter. Other senior administration officials first learned of the news through a buzzing phone, several officials said.

“I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff,” Trump said. “He is a great American.”

 

 

[GrumpyGran]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

He also will marvel at how quickly his tweets appear on the television screen and brag about his followers.

“You saw some of that discipline and structure displayed yesterday regarding all of the fake breaking news, and you saw a disciplined response from the attorney,” Bryan Lanza, a top campaign aide who is now a lobbyist, said Friday. “And then you saw a good message from the president at the rally last night.”

No, no. No. Just no. "Good message"? This would be like me saying people look at me and say "Great body!" And does he EVER read the responses to his tweets? He does not understand that most people follow him to mock him. Sad. Bigly sad.

We shouldn't have to hear or read words like "jarring", "startling", "blindsided" and "fuming" with regard to the leader of a country that is/was a world power. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love how his sycophants are calling it a "working vacation" Yeah, driving a golf cart around and watching TV in your gilded palace really seems like work. <end sarcasm> "President Trump settles in for 17-day vacation at his secluded New Jersey club"

Spoiler

BEDMINSTER, N.J. — President Trump, who knocked his predecessor’s work ethic and said he probably wouldn’t take vacations as president, has settled in for 17 days here at his secluded golf club in New Jersey’s fox-hunt and horse country.

Aides are billing Trump’s time at one of his favorite properties as a “working vacation,” a notion bolstered by his arrival on Air Force One on Friday with a retinue of aides, including his newly minted chief of staff, retired Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly.

With the Russia investigation gaining steam and looming crises in North Korea and other hot spots, no one expects a truly quiet couple of weeks.

In fact, within hours of arriving, Trump felt compelled to issue a statement defending his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, who has been under fire from conservative groups for pushing out several hard-liners on the national security staff and renewing the security clearance of former president Barack Obama’s last national security adviser, among other things. Trump was briefed on Saturday morning by Kelly on a Marine Corps helicopter crash off the coast of Australia.

Still, even some close to Trump hope that his time in this 8,200-person township about 45 miles west of New York City will provide as much of an August respite as possible from his first six months in the White House.

It’s good for everyone,” Barry Bennett, a Trump adviser during the campaign, said of the break. “It’s good for the president, and it’s good for Washington. I hope it’s a few hard days of nothingness.”

Trump has no public events scheduled over the weekend and planned to remain on his 535-acre property, where he has already spent four weekends since arriving in office and which some locals have taken to calling “Camp David North.”

Aides said over the coming days, staffers are expected to cycle in and out of town and that the president will be kept fully up to speed on developments at home and abroad.

A series of meetings and phone calls are expected with several lawmakers, who face a weighty agenda next month, including a request from the administration to increase the nation’s debt ceiling, as well as promised action on tax reform. And it’s possible Trump’s time away could include a couple of day trips elsewhere to highlight initiatives or rally supporters.

“The president will continue to work over the next two weeks,” said deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters, who is among the White House staffers on site this weekend.

She attributed Trump’s relocation in part to long-planned renovations taking place in the West Wing, including an overhaul of the 27-year-old heating and air-conditioning system, which have forced staff to temporarily move to another building.

Trump’s trip, nevertheless, is very much in keeping with a tradition of presidents escaping Washington during the late summer.

Martha’s Vineyard, known for its affluence, became the choice summer vacation spot for both President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama. Clinton was also known to make summer trips to Jackson Hole, Wyo., and the Obamas visited several national parks.

President George H. W. Bush spent his vacation time at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. President George W. Bush would usually take breaks on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, famously clearing brush and sometimes drawing criticism for the length of his getaways.

Both as a private citizen and candidate, Trump was merciless in his critique of Obama’s time away.

“@BarackObama played golf yesterday. Now he heads to a 10 day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. Nick work ethic,” Trump said in one 2011 tweet.

There was a time when presidents could truly get away, said presidential historian Robert Dallek, noting that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would go on sea voyages “because he was so stressed and burdened by all the demands on him.”

But for presidents these days, August getaways are “never as relaxing as they hope it will be,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “You may get a few extra rounds of golf in, but there’s no escaping the public eye.”

Still, there’s upside for Trump in getting out of town, Brinkley said. “Being at his properties is really good for his psyche. It reminds him of a previous life of success.”

Trump decamped to Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., on seven occasions in the early months of his presidency before shifting his weekend travels here.

The president has a special fondness for Bedminster, where his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner — now both senior White House aides — were married in 2009. Several family members have homes on the property, and at one point, Trump planned to erect a mausoleum for himself overlooking the golf course.

Bedminster Mayor Steven Parker said Trump’s presidential visits have started to become more routine for the township, which is now getting reimbursed by the federal government for the costs of police overtime and other security-related costs.

For a polarizing president, there have been relatively few and mostly polite protests. An anonymous New Jersey artist carved the word “resist” in a nearby cornfield last month. And there have been caravans of detractors who periodically drive by Trump National Golf Club, which sits off a two-lane road without a shoulder and, like many of the township’s sprawling farms and estates, can’t be seen by motorists.

“Other than honking horns and maybe disturbing some farm animals, I haven’t heard many complaints,” said Parker, a Republican.

Since becoming president, most township residents haven’t seen Trump in person.

“He’s got everything he needs on the premises, and then some,” Parker said. “I haven’t heard about him heading out for a pizza, or anything like that.”

Trump does continue to interact with members of his golf club.

During the transition, Trump held interviews here for several positions in his administration. On an audiotape of Trump interacting with members obtained by The Washington Post, he can be heard soliciting their opinions for some positions.

Earlier this year, The Post spoke to people who had inquired about membership in the club. They were quoted initiation fees between $75,000 and $100,000, in addition to $22,100 in annual dues, according to written correspondence.

Promotional materials for the club tout its “magnificent” 25-meter pool, its “five luxury multi-bedroom cottages,” its 36-hole golf course and its private helipad.

The roughly 425 members of the Bedminster club seem to be drawn largely from the New Jersey suburbs of New York City, including a number of people from the financial-services sector.

William Pigott, an investment manager and resident of nearby Far Hills, N.J., said Trump has always interacted with club members.

“He loves to say ‘hi’ to people,” Pigott said. “Before all this happened, you’d just see him play golf. You’d see him by the pool, getting ice cream. He likes ice cream, from what I can tell.”

The golf club is the second-largest taxpayer in the township, and local businesses have reported an increase in patrons during Trump’s stays. The township is part of Somerset County, regularly ranked among the 10 wealthiest American counties.

The township’s understated pastoral setting obscures its wealth. Households had a median income of $96,644 in 2015, according to federal records, or more than $40,000 above the national average.

Its affluence is in part thanks to the biotechnology and telecommunications companies that are located in and around the town. Two pharmaceutical firms — U.K.-based Mallinckrodt and Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo — launched major operations in the area just this summer.

Local businesses tend to serve the area’s high-income earners.

The otherwise sleepy Bedminster has three limousine companies, a boutique bank and wealth management firm, and roughly as many caterers as restaurants, according to a local business directory.

Nearby, equestrian facilities and multimillion dollar homes lie between the unpaved country lanes and Revolutionary War sites. One house bordering Trump’s club is currently on the market for $2.49 million, offering five bedrooms, an elevator, pool and marble floors.

Bedminster’s politics are friendly to the GOP, if not always to Trump. The town handily went for Republican presidential nominees Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008, but Trump won it by just eight votes in November over Hillary Clinton.

The town, which is 86 percent white, is represented in the House by Rep. Leonard Lance (N.J.), a moderate Republican. He recently earned attention by voting against the GOP health-care plan championed by Trump.

I love how he doesn't speak to the people in town but deigns to speak to club members, who pay a fortune for the 'privilege'.  What a snot.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo did another great video, "Mean Boys II".  I almost got sick from laughing. I especially love at the end when she says that Robert Mueller's grand jury is going to subpoena everyone's burn books.

[Howl]

On 8/4/2017 at 11:34 AM, AmazonGrace said:

 

OK, so I think this isn't satire, but it could so easily be.  Or maybe it really is.  No, I think it's pure Trump. 

[Snowless]

I don't think I've ever seen anybody speak in so many sentence fragments and sound smart.  Trump is no exception.