Trump 22: Not Even Poe Could Make This Shit Up

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting article from the NYT about how some Repugs are hedging their bets: "Republican Shadow Campaign for 2020 Takes Shape as Trump Doubts Grow"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — Senators Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse have already been to Iowa this year, Gov. John Kasich is eyeing a return visit to New Hampshire, and Mike Pence’s schedule is so full of political events that Republicans joke that he is acting more like a second-term vice president hoping to clear the field than a No. 2 sworn in a little over six months ago.

President Trump’s first term is ostensibly just warming up, but luminaries in his own party have begun what amounts to a shadow campaign for 2020 — as if the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue weren’t involved.

The would-be candidates are cultivating some of the party’s most prominent donors, courting conservative interest groups and carefully enhancing their profiles. Mr. Trump has given no indication that he will decline to seek a second term.

But the sheer disarray surrounding this presidency— the intensifying investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the plain uncertainty about what Mr. Trump will do in the next week, let alone in the next election—have prompted Republican officeholders to take political steps that are unheard-of so soon into a new administration.

Asked about those Republicans who seem to be eyeing 2020, a White House spokeswoman, Lindsay Walter, fired a warning shot: “The president is as strong as he’s ever been in Iowa, and every potentially ambitious Republican knows that.”

But in interviews with more than 75 Republicans at every level of the party, elected officials, donors and strategists expressed widespread uncertainty about whether Mr. Trump would be on the ballot in 2020 and little doubt that others in the party are engaged in barely veiled contingency planning.

“They see weakness in this president,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “Look, it’s not a nice business we’re in.”

Mr. Trump changed the rules of intraparty politics last year when he took down some of the leading lights of the Republican Party to seize the nomination. Now a handful of hopefuls are quietly discarding traditions that would have dictated, for instance, the respectful abstention from speaking at Republican dinners in the states that kick off the presidential nomination process.

In most cases, the shadow candidates and their operatives have signaled that they are preparing only in case Mr. Trump is not available in 2020. Most significant, multiple advisers to Mr. Pence have already intimated to party donors that he would plan to run if Mr. Trump did not.

Mr. Kasich has been more defiant: The Ohio governor, who ran unsuccessfully in 2016, has declined to rule out a 2020 campaign in multiple television interviews, and has indicated to associates that he may run again, even if Mr. Trump seeks another term.

Mr. Kasich, who was a sharp critic of the Republicans’ failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act with deep Medicaid cuts, intends to step up his advocacy by convening a series of policy forums, in Ohio and around the country.

“He’ll continue to speak out and lead on health care and on national security issues, trade policy, economic expansion and poverty,” John Weaver, a political adviser of Mr. Kasich’s, said.

In the wider world of conservative Trump opponents, William Kristol, editor at large of The Weekly Standard, said he had begun informal conversations about creating a “Committee Not to Renominate the President.”

“We need to take one shot at liberating the Republican Party from Trump, and conservatism from Trumpism,” Mr. Kristol said.

It may get worse, said Jay Bergman, an Illinois petroleum executive and a leading Republican donor. Grievous setbacks in the midterm elections of 2018 could bolster challengers in the party.

“If the Republicans have lost a lot of seats in the Congress and they blame Trump for it, then there are going to be people who emerge who are political opportunists,” Mr. Bergman said.

Mr. Pence has been the pacesetter. Though it is customary for vice presidents to keep a full political calendar, he has gone a step further, creating an independent power base, cementing his status as Mr. Trump’s heir apparent and promoting himself as the main conduit between the Republican donor class and the administration.

The vice president created his own political fund-raising committee, Great America Committee, shrugging off warnings from some high-profile Republicans that it would create speculation about his intentions. The group, set up with help from Jack Oliver, a former fund-raiser for George W. Bush, has overshadowed Mr. Trump’s own primary outside political group, America First Action, even raising more in disclosed donations.

Mr. Pence also installed Nick Ayers, a sharp-elbowed political operative, as his new chief of staff last month — a striking departure from vice presidents’ long history of elevating a government veteran to be their top staff member. Mr. Ayers had worked on many campaigns but never in the federal government.

Some in the party’s establishment wing are remarkably open about their wish that Mr. Pence would be the Republican standard-bearer in 2020, Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said.

“For some, it is for ideological reasons, and for others it is for stylistic reasons,” Mr. Dent said, complaining of the “exhausting” amount of “instability, chaos and dysfunction” surrounding Mr. Trump.

Mr. Pence has made no overt efforts to separate himself from the beleaguered president. He has kept up his relentless public praise and even in private is careful to bow to the president.

Mr. Pence’s aides, however, have been less restrained in private, according to two people briefed on the conversations. In a June meeting with Al Hubbard, an Indiana Republican who was a top economic official in Mr. Bush’s White House, an aide to the vice president, Marty Obst, said that they wanted to be prepared to run in case there was an opening in 2020 and that Mr. Pence would need Mr. Hubbard’s help, according to a Republican briefed on the meeting. Reached on the phone, Mr. Hubbard declined to comment.

Mr. Ayers has signaled to multiple major Republican donors that Mr. Pence wants to be ready.

Mr. Obst denied that he and Mr. Ayers had made any private insinuations and called suggestions that the vice president wass positioning himself for 2020 “beyond ridiculous.”

For his part, Mr. Pence is methodically establishing his own identity and bestowing personal touches on people who could pay dividends in the future. He not only spoke in June at one of the most important yearly events for Iowa Republicans, Senator Joni Ernst’s pig roast, but he also held a separate, more intimate gathering for donors afterward.

When he arrived in Des Moines on Air Force Two, Mr. Pence was greeted by an Iowan who had complained about his experience with the Affordable Care Act — and who happened to be a member of the state Republican central committee.

The vice president has also turned his residence at the Naval Observatory into a hub for relationship building. In June, he opened the mansion to social conservative activists like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and representatives of the billionaire kingmakers Charles G. and David H. Koch.

At large gatherings for contributors, Mr. Pence keeps a chair free at each table so he can work his way around the room. At smaller events for some of the party’s biggest donors, he lays on the charm. Last month, Mr. Pence hosted the Kentucky coal barons Kelly and Joe Craft, along with the University of Kentucky men’s basketball coach, John Calipari, for a dinner a few hours after Ms. Craft appeared before the Senate for her hearing as nominee to become ambassador to Canada.

Other Republicans eyeing the White House have taken note.

“They see him moving around, having big donors at the house for dinner,” said Charles R. Black Jr., a veteran of Republican presidential politics. “And they’ve got to try to keep up.”

Mr. Cotton, for example, is planning a two-day, $5,000-per-person fund-raiser in New York next month, ostensibly for Senate Republicans (and his own eventual re-election campaign). The gathering will include a dinner and a series of events at the Harvard Club, featuring figures well known in hawkish foreign policy circles such as Stephen Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser.

Mr. Cotton, 40, a first-term Arkansas senator, made headlines for going to Iowa last year during the campaign. He was back just after the election for a birthday party in Des Moines for former Gov. Terry E. Branstad and returned in May to give the keynote speech at a county Republican dinner in Council Bluffs.

Mr. Sasse, among the sharpest Senate Republican critics of Mr. Trump, has quietly introduced himself to political donors in language that several Republicans have found highly suggestive, describing himself as an independent-minded conservative who happens to caucus with Republicans in the Senate. Advisers to Mr. Sasse, of Nebraska, have discussed creating an advocacy group to help promote his agenda nationally.

He held a private meet-and-greet last month with local Republican leaders in Iowa, where he lamented the plodding pace of Capitol Hill and declined to recant his past criticism of Mr. Trump.

Jennifer Horn, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party who hosted Mr. Sasse in the first primary state last year, said she saw the senator as speaking for conservatives who felt that Republicans in Washington had not been delivering on their promises.

“There are a lot of people in New Hampshire who have developed a lot of respect for him, and I’m one of them,” she said.

James Wegmann, a spokesman for Mr. Sasse, said the only future date that Mr. Sasse had in mind was Nov. 24, 2017, when the University of Iowa meets the University of Nebraska on the football field.

“Huskers-Hawkeyes rematch,” Mr. Wegmann said, “and like every Nebraskan, he’s betting on the side of righteousness.”

Beyond Washington, other up-and-coming Republicans are making moves should there be an opening in 2020. Nikki Haley, the ambassador to the United Nations and a former governor of South Carolina, put her longtime pollster on the payroll, has gotten better acquainted with some of New York’s financiers and carved out a far more muscular foreign policy niche than Mr. Trump.

“She sounds more like me than Trump,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Republican from South Carolina.

 

[fraurosena]

So much for not being a laughingstock anymore, eh, presidunce?

 

[fraurosena]

So the predsidunce has heard all the disparaging comments about his tweets that if you love your job you don't need vacations. Of course he jumped right on twitter with a sorry attempt of an explanation.

Too bad no one is buying it...

[47of74]

7 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

So the predsidunce has heard all the disparaging comments about his tweets that if you love your job you don't need vacations. Of course he jumped right on twitter with a sorry attempt of an explanation.

Too bad no one is buying it...

Yeah, I have the following for sale for anyone who believes Fornicate Face about anything.

And as always, I can do cash or paypal.

[Childless]

I really don't understand why Trump even ran for president.  He was rich and didn't have to work very hard for it.  He was famous and had his own TV show.  He lived in a gilded tower.  He spent winter at his resort in Florida.  He had loyal kids, beautiful grandkids, and a wife who doesn't seem to mind his extra marital affairs.  Per his own standards, he had a pretty sweet life.  Why ruin it by running for a job that comes with ridicule from half the country, a lack of freedom, stress, hard work, and back stabbing?  It makes no sense.

[Bethella]

2 hours ago, Childless said:

I really don't understand why Trump even ran for president.

Ego. He wanted to be the most important man in the world.

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, Childless said:

I really don't understand why Trump even ran for president.  He was rich and didn't have to work very hard for it.  He was famous and had his own TV show.  He lived in a gilded tower.  He spent winter at his resort in Florida.  He had loyal kids, beautiful grandkids, and a wife who doesn't seem to mind his extra marital affairs.  Per his own standards, he had a pretty sweet life.  Why ruin it by running for a job that comes with ridicule from half the country, a lack of freedom, stress, hard work, and back stabbing?  It makes no sense.

But @Childless, Putin said he had to. So he dutifully did what his master told him. He's a good little puppet after all.

[AmazonGrace]

8 hours ago, fraurosena said:

So the predsidunce has heard all the disparaging comments about his tweets that if you love your job you don't need vacations. Of course he jumped right on twitter with a sorry attempt of an explanation.

Too bad no one is buying it...

 

[JMarie]

15 hours ago, fraurosena said:

So the predsidunce has heard all the disparaging comments about his tweets that if you love your job you don't need vacations. Of course he jumped right on twitter with a sorry attempt of an explanation.

Too bad no one is buying it...

Crashing a wedding isn't in his job description.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vacationing-trump-greets-wedding-guests-jersey-golf-club/story?id=49058854

Quote

Guests attending a wedding Saturday at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey bumped into one of the club's most notable members: President Trump, who is spending his 17-day working vacation at the Bedminster property.

"Everyone having a good time?" Trump, flashing a thumbs up, asked a group of guests as he posed for selfies, as seen in the video above.

After snapping selfies, the president -- wearing his signature "Make America Great Again" red baseball cap, then heads toward a golf cart.

Earlier on Saturday, Trump defended his time at Bedminster, tweeting, "Working in Bedminster, N.J., as long planned construction is being done at the White House. This is not a vacation -- meetings and calls!"

 

[GrumpyGran]

18 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

In most cases, the shadow candidates and their operatives have signaled that they are preparing only in case Mr. Trump is not available in 2020.

  I'd like them to be more transparent about how this would happen. "not available." 

9 hours ago, Bethella said:

Ego. He wanted to be the most important man in the world.

He's also delusional. He has always surrounded himself with sycophants. He truly believed that everyone would love him. A much bigger group of worshipers.

[AmazonGrace]

19 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is an interesting article from the NYT about how some Repugs are hedging their bets: "Republican Shadow Campaign for 2020 Takes Shape as Trump Doubts Grow"

  Reveal hidden contents

WASHINGTON — Senators Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse have already been to Iowa this year, Gov. John Kasich is eyeing a return visit to New Hampshire, and Mike Pence’s schedule is so full of political events that Republicans joke that he is acting more like a second-term vice president hoping to clear the field than a No. 2 sworn in a little over six months ago.

President Trump’s first term is ostensibly just warming up, but luminaries in his own party have begun what amounts to a shadow campaign for 2020 — as if the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue weren’t involved.

The would-be candidates are cultivating some of the party’s most prominent donors, courting conservative interest groups and carefully enhancing their profiles. Mr. Trump has given no indication that he will decline to seek a second term.

But the sheer disarray surrounding this presidency— the intensifying investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the plain uncertainty about what Mr. Trump will do in the next week, let alone in the next election—have prompted Republican officeholders to take political steps that are unheard-of so soon into a new administration.

Asked about those Republicans who seem to be eyeing 2020, a White House spokeswoman, Lindsay Walter, fired a warning shot: “The president is as strong as he’s ever been in Iowa, and every potentially ambitious Republican knows that.”

But in interviews with more than 75 Republicans at every level of the party, elected officials, donors and strategists expressed widespread uncertainty about whether Mr. Trump would be on the ballot in 2020 and little doubt that others in the party are engaged in barely veiled contingency planning.

“They see weakness in this president,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “Look, it’s not a nice business we’re in.”

Mr. Trump changed the rules of intraparty politics last year when he took down some of the leading lights of the Republican Party to seize the nomination. Now a handful of hopefuls are quietly discarding traditions that would have dictated, for instance, the respectful abstention from speaking at Republican dinners in the states that kick off the presidential nomination process.

In most cases, the shadow candidates and their operatives have signaled that they are preparing only in case Mr. Trump is not available in 2020. Most significant, multiple advisers to Mr. Pence have already intimated to party donors that he would plan to run if Mr. Trump did not.

Mr. Kasich has been more defiant: The Ohio governor, who ran unsuccessfully in 2016, has declined to rule out a 2020 campaign in multiple television interviews, and has indicated to associates that he may run again, even if Mr. Trump seeks another term.

Mr. Kasich, who was a sharp critic of the Republicans’ failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act with deep Medicaid cuts, intends to step up his advocacy by convening a series of policy forums, in Ohio and around the country.

“He’ll continue to speak out and lead on health care and on national security issues, trade policy, economic expansion and poverty,” John Weaver, a political adviser of Mr. Kasich’s, said.

In the wider world of conservative Trump opponents, William Kristol, editor at large of The Weekly Standard, said he had begun informal conversations about creating a “Committee Not to Renominate the President.”

“We need to take one shot at liberating the Republican Party from Trump, and conservatism from Trumpism,” Mr. Kristol said.

It may get worse, said Jay Bergman, an Illinois petroleum executive and a leading Republican donor. Grievous setbacks in the midterm elections of 2018 could bolster challengers in the party.

“If the Republicans have lost a lot of seats in the Congress and they blame Trump for it, then there are going to be people who emerge who are political opportunists,” Mr. Bergman said.

Mr. Pence has been the pacesetter. Though it is customary for vice presidents to keep a full political calendar, he has gone a step further, creating an independent power base, cementing his status as Mr. Trump’s heir apparent and promoting himself as the main conduit between the Republican donor class and the administration.

The vice president created his own political fund-raising committee, Great America Committee, shrugging off warnings from some high-profile Republicans that it would create speculation about his intentions. The group, set up with help from Jack Oliver, a former fund-raiser for George W. Bush, has overshadowed Mr. Trump’s own primary outside political group, America First Action, even raising more in disclosed donations.

Mr. Pence also installed Nick Ayers, a sharp-elbowed political operative, as his new chief of staff last month — a striking departure from vice presidents’ long history of elevating a government veteran to be their top staff member. Mr. Ayers had worked on many campaigns but never in the federal government.

Some in the party’s establishment wing are remarkably open about their wish that Mr. Pence would be the Republican standard-bearer in 2020, Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said.

“For some, it is for ideological reasons, and for others it is for stylistic reasons,” Mr. Dent said, complaining of the “exhausting” amount of “instability, chaos and dysfunction” surrounding Mr. Trump.

Mr. Pence has made no overt efforts to separate himself from the beleaguered president. He has kept up his relentless public praise and even in private is careful to bow to the president.

Mr. Pence’s aides, however, have been less restrained in private, according to two people briefed on the conversations. In a June meeting with Al Hubbard, an Indiana Republican who was a top economic official in Mr. Bush’s White House, an aide to the vice president, Marty Obst, said that they wanted to be prepared to run in case there was an opening in 2020 and that Mr. Pence would need Mr. Hubbard’s help, according to a Republican briefed on the meeting. Reached on the phone, Mr. Hubbard declined to comment.

Mr. Ayers has signaled to multiple major Republican donors that Mr. Pence wants to be ready.

Mr. Obst denied that he and Mr. Ayers had made any private insinuations and called suggestions that the vice president wass positioning himself for 2020 “beyond ridiculous.”

For his part, Mr. Pence is methodically establishing his own identity and bestowing personal touches on people who could pay dividends in the future. He not only spoke in June at one of the most important yearly events for Iowa Republicans, Senator Joni Ernst’s pig roast, but he also held a separate, more intimate gathering for donors afterward.

When he arrived in Des Moines on Air Force Two, Mr. Pence was greeted by an Iowan who had complained about his experience with the Affordable Care Act — and who happened to be a member of the state Republican central committee.

The vice president has also turned his residence at the Naval Observatory into a hub for relationship building. In June, he opened the mansion to social conservative activists like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and representatives of the billionaire kingmakers Charles G. and David H. Koch.

At large gatherings for contributors, Mr. Pence keeps a chair free at each table so he can work his way around the room. At smaller events for some of the party’s biggest donors, he lays on the charm. Last month, Mr. Pence hosted the Kentucky coal barons Kelly and Joe Craft, along with the University of Kentucky men’s basketball coach, John Calipari, for a dinner a few hours after Ms. Craft appeared before the Senate for her hearing as nominee to become ambassador to Canada.

Other Republicans eyeing the White House have taken note.

“They see him moving around, having big donors at the house for dinner,” said Charles R. Black Jr., a veteran of Republican presidential politics. “And they’ve got to try to keep up.”

Mr. Cotton, for example, is planning a two-day, $5,000-per-person fund-raiser in New York next month, ostensibly for Senate Republicans (and his own eventual re-election campaign). The gathering will include a dinner and a series of events at the Harvard Club, featuring figures well known in hawkish foreign policy circles such as Stephen Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser.

Mr. Cotton, 40, a first-term Arkansas senator, made headlines for going to Iowa last year during the campaign. He was back just after the election for a birthday party in Des Moines for former Gov. Terry E. Branstad and returned in May to give the keynote speech at a county Republican dinner in Council Bluffs.

Mr. Sasse, among the sharpest Senate Republican critics of Mr. Trump, has quietly introduced himself to political donors in language that several Republicans have found highly suggestive, describing himself as an independent-minded conservative who happens to caucus with Republicans in the Senate. Advisers to Mr. Sasse, of Nebraska, have discussed creating an advocacy group to help promote his agenda nationally.

He held a private meet-and-greet last month with local Republican leaders in Iowa, where he lamented the plodding pace of Capitol Hill and declined to recant his past criticism of Mr. Trump.

Jennifer Horn, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party who hosted Mr. Sasse in the first primary state last year, said she saw the senator as speaking for conservatives who felt that Republicans in Washington had not been delivering on their promises.

“There are a lot of people in New Hampshire who have developed a lot of respect for him, and I’m one of them,” she said.

James Wegmann, a spokesman for Mr. Sasse, said the only future date that Mr. Sasse had in mind was Nov. 24, 2017, when the University of Iowa meets the University of Nebraska on the football field.

“Huskers-Hawkeyes rematch,” Mr. Wegmann said, “and like every Nebraskan, he’s betting on the side of righteousness.”

Beyond Washington, other up-and-coming Republicans are making moves should there be an opening in 2020. Nikki Haley, the ambassador to the United Nations and a former governor of South Carolina, put her longtime pollster on the payroll, has gotten better acquainted with some of New York’s financiers and carved out a far more muscular foreign policy niche than Mr. Trump.

“She sounds more like me than Trump,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Republican from South Carolina.

 

Mother told Mike to respond: 

 

[fraurosena]

Yesterday, the presidunce tweeted this:

 

Then someone did a little digging. Turns out Nicole is a BOT.

 

It's worth it to also read the previous tweets in the above thread.

[GrumpyGran]

9 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Mother told Mike to respond: 

 

Once again a response that's a little too...vigorous. Raise your hand if you think He did this to keep Trump from going ballistic and turning on him. 

[47of74]

Of course fuck face is so hard at work that he even has time to crash weddings

Quote

President Donald Trump is turning into the wedding crasher in chief as he stopped by yet another couple’s wedding at his New Jersey country club over the weekend. Video posted on Instagram showed the president stepping out of his golf cart to say hello to a group of guests at his golf club in Bedminster. “Oh my God,” guests shrieked as the commander in chief walked toward them wearing typical golf clothes mixed in with a red Make America Great Again hat. "Everyone having a good time?" Trump can be heard asking the group. The president also asked if his staff was doing a good job, if the guests were happy with how things were going at the club, and asked to speak to the bride and groom.

The president crashed the wedding on the same day that he insisted his 17-day “working vacation” isn’t really a vacation at all. “Working in Bedminster, N.J., as long planned construction is being done at the White House,” he tweeted. “This is not a vacation—meetings and calls!”

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

17 hours ago, Childless said:

I really don't understand why Trump even ran for president.  He was rich and didn't have to work very hard for it.  He was famous and had his own TV show.  He lived in a gilded tower.  He spent winter at his resort in Florida.  He had loyal kids, beautiful grandkids, and a wife who doesn't seem to mind his extra marital affairs.  Per his own standards, he had a pretty sweet life.  Why ruin it by running for a job that comes with ridicule from half the country, a lack of freedom, stress, hard work, and back stabbing?  It makes no sense.

I think he thought that it would be easy. He could sit back, watch TV, play on Twitter, attend some rallies, and others would do the actual work. Just like his previous life. I also think he was delusional enough to think that once he won, the media and every person in the US would just adore him blindly.

 

15 hours ago, Bethella said:

Ego. He wanted to be the most important man in the world.

Yeah, that too. He never understood that the real power is in the senate and SCOTUS.

[47of74]

Chicago is standing up to our rather Klannish AG and Orange Ferret Face

Quote

CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chicago will sue the Trump administration on Monday over threats to withhold public safety grant money from so-called sanctuary cities, escalating a pushback against a federal immigration crackdown, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced on Sunday.

The federal lawsuit comes less than two weeks after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the U.S. Justice Department would bar cities from a certain grant program unless they allow immigration authorities unlimited access to local jails and provide 48 hours' notice before releasing anyone wanted for immigration violations.

"Chicago will not let our police officers become political pawns in a debate," Emanuel, a Democrat, said at a news conference. "Chicago will not let our residents have their fundamental rights isolated and violated. And Chicago will never relinquish our status as a welcoming city."

Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants provide money to hundreds of cities, and the Trump administration has requested $380 million in funding next year. Chicago, a regular target of Republican President Donald Trump because of its murder rate, expected to receive $3.2 million this year for purchasing equipment.

 

[onekidanddone]

6 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Once again a response that's a little too...vigorous. Raise your hand if you think He did this to keep Trump from going ballistic and turning on him. 

Seems to me he is doing a little dance with words. Does "disgraceful and offensive" mean the rumors about Mikey running in 2020 a lie or just that hurt his feelings 

[Howl]

We had an awesome, charismatic police chief for a number of years, but then Houston came calling this year and off he went.  Anyway, that police chief made clear, abundantly clear, that police officers are not immigration officers, nor should they be.  The real tragedy is when people who are being beaten, robbed, raped, and otherwise horribly abused are too frightened to come forward to the police, because they are terrified of deportation. 

Quote

@GrumpyGran said "Once again a response that's a little too...vigorous. Raise your hand if you think He did this to keep Trump from going ballistic and turning on him."

Heh, Pence is marking off days on the calendar and bringing Trump plates of cookies and bowls of ice cream laced with the worst hydrogenated fats and high fructose corn syrup.  Eat up, Pence says, Mother wants you to have a little something. 

Methinks Pence doth protest too much. 

[onekidanddone]

28 minutes ago, Howl said:

Heh, Pence is marking off days on the calendar and bringing Trump plates of cookies and bowls of ice cream laced with the worst hydrogenated fats and high fructose corn syrup.  

I read this novel once (I forget the title) about a woman who wanted to rid herself of her abusive father. After he ad a heart attack they lived together. She kept lacing his dinner with butter and salt to finish him off.

[GreyhoundFan]

Great editorial from the NYT: "What’s the Deal, Mr. Trump?'

Spoiler

President Trump promised he’d make so many great deals that we’d all get “tired of winning.” He’s certainly left Americans feeling worn out, but not because of any transactional whirlwind.

In reluctantly signing a bill last week imposing sanctions on Russia that he cannot lift without congressional review, Mr. Trump complained that it “makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people” and that “Congress could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking.”

The legislation is actually proof that Congress has learned not to trust Mr. Trump to strike good deals and has seen quite enough of his negotiating skills.

Six months in, Mr. Trump can’t get legislation passed on anything much bigger than naming a post office. Indifferent to negotiating with Democrats and ham-handed in dealing with Republicans, he’s getting rolled on the major promises of his campaign — health care, infrastructure, taxes and jobs.

The president’s preferred image of himself as a shrewd, hard-nosed negotiator took a hit last week when The Washington Post published transcripts of his phone conversations in January with President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia. Mr. Trump admitted to Mr. Peña Nieto that he couldn’t make Mexico pay for a border wall, as he had promised many times to roaring crowds at his rallies, but he implored Mr. Peña Nieto to maintain the fiction in public, seemingly oblivious that the Mexican president had every reason not to do so. His bullying tone with Mr. Turnbull could not hide his lack of understanding of the refugee pact with which Mr. Turnbull wanted him to comply.

This is the man who opened his 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal,” by boasting: “Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.”

Providing reliable health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans could have been the biggest kick of Mr. Trump’s life.

A week before his inauguration, Mr. Trump said he had a plan “very much formulated down to the final strokes” to provide “insurance for everybody.” In the same interview, he promised to negotiate lower drug prices, “just like” he’d forced Lockheed Martin to produce cheaper F-35 fighter jets.

In fact, Lockheed let Mr. Trump take credit for negotiating F-35 cost savings that were already in the pipeline. He caved on his promise to empower the government to negotiate lower drug prices — an effort Democrats support — after a single meeting with big pharmaceutical makers.

And then he kicked the whole “complicated” health care deal to Republicans in Congress. After months of Trump promises of “a beautiful picture” on health care, the seven-year Republican crusade to end Obamacare seems to have come to its own end.

The $1 trillion infrastructure overhaul Mr. Trump promised is another big deal that Democrats like, but he has yet to take their calls. He’s promoting a sweeping package of tax cuts, but there aren’t many details to go on there, either.

“We hope to get taxes and then infrastructure,” he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal not long ago. “And then I’m going to do a very big — we’re doing very big trade deals, and we’re looking forward to that. But we want to do, ideally, this first. You know, a lot of people said you should have started with taxes or you should have started with infrastructure. Well, infrastructure, I’ll actually have bipartisan support, and I can use infrastructure to carry other things along. So I don’t want to waste it at the beginning, if that makes sense.”

No, it didn’t.

Things make more sense if we remember that despite his gilded penthouse and branded country clubs, Mr. Trump has had a business career filled with questionable deals that almost ruined him and led to multiple bankruptcies.

He does deserve credit for one thing: His incompetence and futile bullying seem to have led his own party to begin making deals without him.

With nothing to show for themselves, and with Mr. Trump’s approval ratings in the 30-something range, Republicans have begun working with Democrats on fixing the flaws in Obamacare, on legislation that would protect the special counsel, Robert Mueller, from being fired by the president, and on the sanctions Mr. Trump was practically forced to sign.

They’ve also set up a system that would prevent any recess appointment of a new attorney general, should Mr. Trump sack Jeff Sessions. They might be able to find a way to work on a bipartisan infrastructure plan and immigration reform, too.

Congress is showing signs of understanding what Mr. Trump clearly does not: that politics is not “The Art of the Deal,” but the art of the possible.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Why Is Donald Trump Still So Horribly Witless About the World?

By Robin Wright

August 4, 2017

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-is-donald-trump-still-so-horribly-witless-about-the-world

TL; DR:

Trump knows nothing
 

Spoiler

 

ax Boot, a lifelong conservative who advised three Republican Presidential candidates on foreign policy, keeps a folder labelled “Trump Stupidity File” on his computer. It’s next to his “Trump Lies” file. “Not sure which is larger at this point,” he told me this week. “It’s neck-and-neck.”

Six months into the Trump era, foreign-policy officials from eight past Administrations told me they are aghast that the President is still so witless about the world. “He seems as clueless today as he was on January 20th,” Boot, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. Trump’s painful public gaffes, they warn, indicate that he’s not reading, retaining, or listening to his Presidential briefings. And the newbie excuse no longer flies.

“Trump has an appalling ignorance of the current world, of history, of previous American engagement, of what former Presidents thought and did,” Geoffrey Kemp, who worked at the Pentagon during the Ford Administration and at the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration, reflected. “He has an almost studious rejection of the type of in-depth knowledge that virtually all of his predecessors eventually gained or had views on.”

Criticism of Donald Trump among Democrats who served in senior national-security positions is predictable and rife. But Republicans—who are historically ambitious on foreign policy—are particularly pained by the President’s missteps and misstatements. So are former senior intelligence officials who have avoided publicly criticizing Presidents until now.

“The President has little understanding of the context”—of what’s happening in the world—“and even less interest in hearing the people who want to deliver it,” Michael Hayden, a retired four-star general and former director of both the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, told me. “He’s impatient, decision-oriented, and prone to action. It’s all about the present tense. When he asks, ‘What the hell’s going on in Iraq?’ people around him have learned not to say, ‘Well, in 632 . . . ’ ” (That was the year when the Prophet Muhammad died, prompting the beginning of the Sunni-Shiite split.*)

“He just doesn’t have an interest in the world,” Hayden said.

I asked top Republican and intelligence officials from eight Administrations what they thought was the one thing the President needs to grasp to succeed on the world stage. Their various replies: embrace the fact that the Russians are not America’s friends. Don’t further alienate the Europeans, who are our friends. Encourage human rights—a founding principle of American identity—and don’t make priority visits to governments that curtail them, such as Poland and Saudi Arabia. Understand that North Korea’s nuclear program can’t be outsourced to China, which can’t or won’t singlehandedly fix the problem anyway, and realize that military options are limited. Pulling out of innovative trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, will boost China’s economy and secure its global influence—to America’s disadvantage. Stop bullying his counterparts. And put the Russia case behind him by coöperating with the investigation rather than trying to discredit it.

Trump’s latest blunder was made during an appearance in the Rose Garden with Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, on July 25th. “Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah,” Trump pronounced. He got the basics really wrong. Hezbollah is actually part of the Lebanese government—and has been for a quarter century—with seats in parliament and Cabinet posts. Lebanon’s Christian President, Michel Aoun, has been allied with Hezbollah for a decade. As Trump spoke, Hezbollah’s militia and the Lebanese Army were fighting ISIS and an Al Qaeda affiliate occupying a chunk of eastern Lebanon along its border with Syria. They won.

The list of other Trump blunders is long. In March, he charged that Germany owed “vast sums” to the United States for NATO. It doesn’t. No NATO member pays the United States—and never has—so none is in arrears. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, in April, Trump claimed that Korea “actually used to be part of China.” Not true. After he arrived in Israel from Saudi Arabia, in May, Trump said that he had just come from the Middle East. (Did he even look at a map?) During his trip to France, in July, the President confused Napoleon Bonaparte, the diminutive emperor who invaded Russia and Egypt, with Napoleon III, who was France’s first popularly elected President, oversaw the design of modern Paris, and is still the longest-serving head of state since the French Revolution (albeit partly as an emperor, too). And that’s before delving into his demeaning tweets about other world leaders and flashpoints.

“The sheer scale of his lack of knowledge is what has astounded me—and I had low expectations to begin with,” David Gordon, the director of the State Department’s policy-planning staff under Condoleezza Rice, during the Bush Administration, told me.

Trump’s White House has also flubbed basics. It misspelled the name of Britain’s Prime Minister three times in its official schedule of her January visit. After it dropped the “H” in Theresa May, several British papers noted that Teresa May is a soft-porn actress best known for her films “Leather Lust” and “Whitehouse: The Sex Video.” In a statement last month, the White House called Xi Jinping the President of the “Republic of China”—which is the island of Taiwan—rather than the leader of the People’s Republic, the Communist mainland. The two nations have been epic rivals in Asia for more than half a century. The White House also misidentified Shinzo Abe as the President of Japan—he’s the Prime Minister—and called the Prime Minister of Canada “Joe” instead of Justin Trudeau.

Trump’s policy mistakes, large and small, are taking a toll. “American leadership in the world—how do I phrase this, it’s so obvious, but apparently not to him—is critical to our success, and it depends eighty per cent on the credibility of the President’s word,” John McLaughlin, who worked at the C.I.A. under seven Presidents, from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, and ended up as the intelligence agency’s acting director, told me. “Trump thinks having a piece of chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago bought him a relationship with Xi Jinping. He came in as the least prepared President we’ve had on foreign policy," McLaughlin added. “Our leadership in the world is slipping away. It’s slipping through our hands.”

And a world in dramatic flux compounds the stakes. Hayden cited the meltdown in the world order that has prevailed since the Second World War; the changing nature of the state and its power; China’s growing military and economic power; and rogue nations seeking nuclear weapons, among others. “Yet the most disruptive force in the world today is the United States of America,” the former C.I.A. director said.

The closest similarity to the Trump era was the brief Warren G. Harding Administration, in the nineteen-twenties, Philip Zelikow, who worked for the Reagan and two Bush Administrations, and who was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, told me. Harding, who died, of a heart attack, after twenty-eight months in office, was praised because he stood aside and let his Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, lead the way. Hughes had already been governor of New York, a Supreme Court Justice, and the Republican Presidential nominee in 1916, losing narrowly to Woodrow Wilson, who preceded Harding.

Under Trump, the White House has seized control of key foreign-policy issues. The President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a real-estate developer, has been charged with brokering Middle East peace, navigating U.S.-China relations, and the Mexico portfolio. In April, Kushner travelled to Iraq to help chart policy against ISIS. Washington scuttlebutt is consumed with tales of how Trump has stymied his own Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, the former C.E.O. of ExxonMobil.

“The national-security system of the United States has been tested over a period of seventy years,” John Negroponte, the first director of national security and a former U.N. Ambassador, told me. “President Trump disregards the system at his peril.”

Trump’s contempt for the U.S. intelligence community has also sparked alarm. “I wish the President would rely more on, and trust more, the intelligence agencies and the work that is produced, sometimes at great risk to individuals around the world, to inform the Commander-in-Chief,” Mitchell Reiss, who was chief of the State Department’s policy-planning team under Secretary of State Colin Powell, told me.

Republican critics are divided on whether Trump can grow into the job. “Trump is completely irredeemable,” Eliot A. Cohen, who was counselor to Condoleezza Rice at the State Department, told me. “He has a feral instinct for self-survival, but he’s unteachable. The ban on Muslims coming into the country and building a wall, and having the Mexicans pay for it, that was all you needed to know about this guy on foreign affairs. This is a man who is idiotic and bigoted and ignorant of the law.” Cohen was a ringleader of an open letter warning, during the campaign, that Trump’s foreign policy was “wildly inconsistent and unmoored.”

But other Republicans from earlier Administrations still hold out hope. “Whenever Trump begins to learn about an issue—the Middle East conflict or North Korea—he expresses such surprise that it could be so complicated, after saying it wasn’t that difficult,” Gordon, from the Bush Administration, said. “The good news, when he says that, is it means he has a little bit of knowledge.” So far, however, the learning curve has been pitifully—and dangerously—slow.

* This post has been updated to clarify the contextual significance of the year 632.

 

The chocolate cake is still fascinating to me. I suppose it's *possible* that the leaders of China have never had nice dinners before and can be awestruck by effing cake. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an excellent roundup of the crap that happened in the second 100 days of this sham administration. Unfortunately, it's far too long, with many tweets and links, for me to quote, but it's a good read. "President Trump’s second 100 days In his words and ours"

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump says his political base is ‘stronger than ever’ despite polling to the contrary"

Spoiler

President Trump took to Twitter on Monday morning to declare that his political base is “bigger & stronger than ever before” despite recent polling — which he branded “fake” — that shows a drop-off in support.

In a series of tweets from Bedminster, N.J., where Trump is on what aides describe as a 17-day “working vacation,” he ticked off a number of factors that he said have “driven the Trump base even closer together.

Among them: record stock-market numbers, strong jobs reports, his Supreme Court pick earlier this year and a backlash against “the Fake News Russian collusion story.”

“Will never change!” Trump declared about the strength of his base.

...

A poll last week from Quinnipiac University found that just 33 percent of voters overall approve of Trump’s job performance, a new low. Notably, support among white voters without a college degree — a key Trump demographic — had fallen off as well.

Just 43 percent of that group approved of Trump's job performance while 50 percent disapproved, the Quinnipiac poll found. In June, 53 percent of white voters without a college degree approved of the president.

In last year’s election against Democrat Hillary Clinton, 66 percent of whites with no college degree voted for Trump, according to exit polls.

As evidence of his support among his base, Trump in his tweets cited recent campaign rallies he has held in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio and West Virginia. The most recent of those, in Huntington, W.Va., last week, drew thousands of boisterous supporters to a downtown arena.

“Hard to believe that with 24/7 #Fake News on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NYTIMES & WAPO, the Trump base is getting stronger!” he said in one of his morning tweets.

Trump, who is staying at his golf club in Bedminster, where it was pouring rain on Monday morning, has bristled at characterizations of his stay as a “vacation.”

“Working hard from New Jersey while White House goes through long planned renovation,” he tweeted Monday morning, referring to an overhaul of heating and air conditioning system in the West Wing, among other things.

“Going to New York next week for more meetings,” Trump added.

He has no public events scheduled on Monday.

...

Poor baby, it is raining today, so he can't golf.

[GreyhoundFan]

Interesting perspective piece: "August is a dangerous month for Trump"

Spoiler

Monday morning marks the start of the first full week of President Trump’s vacation. After the rockiest first six months of any modern presidency, a new chief of staff has offered a glimmer of hope — just in time for August to provide time to regroup. August: Washington’s quiet month for vacation, reflection and recuperation.

Or not. Veterans of George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s White Houses will tell you: August is the most dangerous month. For a White House such as President Trump’s, already under assault on many fronts, August could be the final straw.

The two most devastating mistakes of Bush’s presidency both came in August. On Aug. 6, 2001, Bush received the now-famous warning in his daily briefing, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”; Bush’s lack of response to that “vacation month” warning drove criticism of his handling of the 9/11 attacks for the rest of his presidency. Four years later, in late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and demolished Bush’s second term.

Ask Obama White House staffers about August, and you will get shell-shocked stares. It was August 2009 when the tea party opposition to health-care reform exploded and turned the Affordable Care Act into political kryptonite. August 2011 saw budget and fiscal talks collapse, cementing the “wasted year” of Obama’s tenure. In August 2014, Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson and the Islamic State wreaked havoc in Erbil and Mosul. During Obama’s final August, the president was slammed for not interrupting his vacation to visit flooded Louisiana.

For Trump, August 2017 is particularly perilous.

Republican senators and House members will get earfuls from constituents back home all month. Sure, Trump can continue to tweet that the stock market is high and the unemployment rate low. But when almost 80 percent of stocks are owned by just 8 percent of the people, and job creation in Trump’s first five months lags Obama’s last five months, presidential tweeting can hardly insulate these members from a blast of August political heat.

Trump’s Hill allies are heading home for August without delivering on health-care reform — and worse, having to defend votes for a failed, unpopular bill. Trump has not even put forward serious plans on tax reform, infrastructure, child care, outsourcing — all “first 100 days” promises, still far from filled. More voters are growing weary of the rising tide of scandals surrounding Trump. Congressional Republicans are going to find angry constituents and local leaders in August. Trump’s sagging fortunes in Congress will sink further.

In addition to this metaphorical tide of unrest, there is the danger of a literal August surge: a hurricane. The perpetual crises swirling around the White House to date have been entirely self-imposed; we have not seen how Team Trump will cope with outside challenge. The risk that the first such challenge will be a hurricane in August is not small. Four of the five most intense hurricanes to make landfall in U.S. history have struck over a 12-day span in late August; virtually every August the past decade has seen some sort of serious storm.

Would the Trump administration respond effectively? The president just stripped the Department of Homeland Security of its leader, was blasted by the outgoing head of hurricane forecasting for how his budget cuts could set back this work, and lacks any experience (as a senator or governor) with navigating a difficult disaster response. As a political matter, a botched hurricane response in the Gulf Coast or Florida would see Trump criticized — not by blue-state leaders he can mock or ignore — but by key members of his own coalition.

And as the administration confronts an array of August dangers — global, political, natural — it will have to do it short-handed. Even well-staffed, well-functioning administrations have trouble in August because key players take vacations, creating a “nobody home” dynamic when flash points erupt. For Trump, badly understaffed at the White House and terribly behind in filling key posts in federal agencies, this risk is intensified. About half the Cabinet departments lack a single Senate-confirmed official to take charge if the secretary is away.

Flashes of this challenge have already been evident. Trump’s health-care bill first floundered in the House when the Kushner family was off skiing for spring break, in March; it suffered serious damage when Jared and Ivanka skipped town during its Senate launch to rub elbows in Sun Valley. What will happen during August’s larger hiatus of high-level personnel, as troubles mount in North Korea, the Middle East and on yet-unknown domestic fronts?

April may be the cruelest month, as T.S. Eliot once claimed. But for Team Trump —  underachieving, underprepared and understaffed — August is the most dangerous.

This is so true: "Team Trump —  underachieving, underprepared and understaffed"

[NotQuiteMotY]

On 8/4/2017 at 6:09 AM, Childless said:

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!

To be honest, I'd think you have a more critical need for monitoring in a Manhattan apartment than in a stand-alone suburban home or a rural ranch. Shared walls, building maintenance, common utilities: all sorts of interesting ways for unscrupulous persons to gain access.

Though, yeah, I'd think a handful of Secret Service could do it.