Trump 23: The Death Eaters Have Taken the Fucking Country

[Penny]

With Harvey now a category 4, this will be a big test of TT and the Republicans. If TT ignores our downplays it, it will be a good showing of his character. I imagine he could care less about the hurricane unless he has hotels in the area.

[Destiny]

Trump just pardoned Arpaio. He's doing all kinds of shady shit while people are distracted by hurricane. Asshole.

[AnywhereButHere]

 

Quote

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump has pardoned controversial sheriff Joe Arpaio of his conviction for criminal contempt, the White House said Friday night.

CNN reported Wednesday that the White House had prepared the papers for Trump's final decision.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/25/politics/sheriff-joe-arpaio-donald-trump-pardon/index.html

Well, there's a shock. 

[nvmbr02]

2 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/25/politics/sheriff-joe-arpaio-donald-trump-pardon/index.html

Well, there's a shock. 

Not shocking but disgusting all the same. 

[apple1]

12 minutes ago, Destiny said:

Trump just pardoned Arpaio. He's doing all kinds of shady shit while people are distracted by hurricane. Asshole.

... plus Jared and Ivanka are observing the Sabbath...

[WiseGirl]

While watching the hurricane update TT has been busy....http://www.npr.org/2017/08/25/545282459/president-trump-pardons-former-sheriff-joe-arpaio

Nice of him to notice the problem in Texas in such a meaningful way. "President Donald Trump wishes Texans "good luck" as the potentially devastating Hurricane Harvey approaches the state." https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/25/hurricane-harvey-trump-tells-texans-good-luck.html

Ffs can't he get anything..... nevermind....and is it a good or bad thing that my device recognizes Ffs as a word now?....

Making another deposit to the swear jar.

[GreyhoundFan]

With all the crap going on, it's good to see Alexandra Petri back in comic form: "My letter of not quite resignation from the Trump White House"

Spoiler

Dear Mr. President,

I can say it in no uncertain terms: Everything this administration does makes me sick.

I am absolutely disgusted with everything going on the White House right now. Several times daily, I must run out of a meeting of the National Economic Council to vomit into a wastepaper basket. (Sometimes, weeks later, I am chagrined to discover one of these papers being presented as a policy proposal.) This cannot go on any longer.

Everyone has told me that I should resign. Random members of the media. My wife. People whom I did not even realize knew my name.

I am under tremendous pressure. I have done everything I can. I have privately described myself off the record as sickened and appalled. What more do you want from me? An actual letter of resignation? Well, I have certainly drafted one. I can draft another. Really I can do anything with a letter of resignation other than send one.

There are some principles, they tell me, that should not be sacrificed. But there are things more important than principles. There is also, of course, principal.

How can anyone weigh these things? On the one hand, the president continually equates the KKK, white supremacists and neo-Nazis with those who protest against them. This is harmful and outrageous, and I have already denounced it in no uncertain terms, on background, to members of the media, through third parties!

But then, on the other hand, there is the theoretical possibility of passing tax reforms that might lower the base tax rate for corporations. They say, you can’t stand by while they attack your people and President Trump defends them. I say: Corporations are my people, too.

We must protect the most fragile and vulnerable among us. And if there is anything I have learned from the past decade of Supreme Court decisions, it is that the most fragile and vulnerable among us are corporations, whether national or multinational.

Charlottesville and the events of the past two weeks have been harrowing, certainly. But when I think of that little corporate tax cut, alone and friendless and just starting out in the world, my heart breaks a little. We have agreed to such a good policy skeleton, and not the kind of skeleton that you see on the helmets of neo-Nazis.

Think of all the corporation headquarters, lost and alone, on a hostile shore, when they could be here. I have to protect them from BATs and all other dark, unseemly things that fly in the night and steal away their profits. Who will protect the three big deductions? Who will kill the estate tax? Who will remove the death tax? If not me, then who? (Other, non-me people, probably. Fine.)

I go home to my family, and they hiss at me, audibly. I tell myself that they are just excited for the new Taylor Swift album, but in my heart I know they are not.

I don’t like what I see when I look in the mirror. So I have covered all the mirrors in my house.

There is a reason I have let every media outlet know — secondhand — that I am “disgusted” and “frantically unhappy” and, at this moment, drafting a stern and strongly worded letter of resignation. Because I intend to do nothing. Also, I love drafting letters and never sending them. It is very cathartic. You get to feel as though you’ve made a beautifully worded statement of moral principle, but then in actual reality you haven’t.

People say, there is no reason to remain in this administration. People say, you are complicit. People say, this tax cut for corporations is not worth standing by and letting Trump give cover and support to hate groups. Those people are right, but when I see that little tax cut so friendless and alone, something stirs within me. You have to weigh the definite losses against the hypothetical good that these things will probably do in an imaginary future. It’s called dynamic scoring, people!

Charlottesville was a wake-up call, sure. But the thing to do with wake-up calls, as I have learned over the course of years of business travel, is to mutter something vague and then go back to sleep.

One day, Trump will do something really awful. And on that day, I will also draft a very stern letter, which I will place into a drawer and not send.

My job needs me. My baby tax reform needs me. I understand Trump has already said and done a number of things that would have prompted prompt resignations from most people. But — I am not most people. And that is exactly who will benefit from my tax reforms: not most people.

Please, you have to understand: I don’t want to resign because of the awful things those neo-Nazis chanted. Or, more relevantly, because of the awful things the president said afterward. I don’t want to resign, in general.

Look, what would you like me to do?

I have done all the things you can do with a resignation letter, as I keep telling the media. I have drafted it. I have even printed it out one or two times. I have signed it. I have placed it on a desk.

Can you blame me? Yes. But you cannot blame me now. Today, I turn over a new leaf.

I am announcing that I am resigned. Not from the Trump administration, though.

To it.

 

[MarblesMom]

Now Gorka resigned.

Someone must have installed a revolving door in the WH at some point.

[WiseGirl]

Just coming to post it, @MarblesMom beat me to it. Can't keep up with the revolving door. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-adviser-sebastian-gorka-fired_us_599dc73ee4b0d97c4000f59e

[GreyhoundFan]

I am so thrilled about Gorka. Best news of the day.

[Cartmann99]

11 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I am so thrilled about Gorka. Best news of the day.

You didn't call him Dr. Gorka, so he'll be on your doorstep screaming like a nutjob within the hour.  

[Howl]

All y'all beat me to it.  Apparently, (Fake) Dr. Gorka could never get security clearance.  From HuffPo: 

Quote

Gorka’s official title at the White House was deputy assistant to the president, but it was never clear what his actual duties entailed. He regularly appeared on television as a vociferous defender of Trump’s national security agenda and worldview. But he reportedly wasn’t able to get security clearance that would have allowed him to sit in on the most high-level national security meetings or read classified information.

Irony much? 

Starting the count down to Stephen Miller's departure in 3, 2....

[GreyhoundFan]

27 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

You didn't call him Dr. Gorka, so he'll be on your doorstep screaming like a nutjob within the hour.  

LOL, actually I believe he lives fairly close to me. If he knocked on my door, my 80 pound dog would knock him over. Oh, and I'd read him the riot act. He'd run away screaming.

[Palimpsest]

1 hour ago, Destiny said:

Trump just pardoned Arpaio

Totally predicted.  

Trump always supports the lowest of the low.  It is a given.  Slugs support slugs.  (My apologies to shell-less terrestrial gastropod molluscs everywhere because they are so much better than Trump but I am out of vocabulary.)

Trumpie is the wussiest wuss that ever wussed for not announcing the pardon at his "rally" in Phoenix.  We all knew it was coming. 

[sawasdee]

And to bury the announcement in the Hurricane Harvey news.

6 hours ago, Howl said:

Starting the count down to Stephen Miller's departure in 3, 2....

Please, Rufus, please....

[fraurosena]

America, I'm sorry, but you're doomed...

What the hell is wrong with people in American government, that they feel compelled to prop up this... this... incompetent, asinine, insecure and frighteningly dangerous and bigotted bully?

[fraurosena]

Yet, even knowing this, they still thought Hillary was the worst choice. 

Nobody, and I mean nobody, could say they didn't know just exactly what they were putting in the White House. Any so-called surprise at his reaction to Charlottesville, or now the pardoning of Arpaio, is ludicrous.

"Wir haben es nicht gewußt" will not cut it this time around.

[SilverBeach]

16 hours ago, Destiny said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/us/politics/trump-mattis-transgender-ban.html?action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=65747566&pgtype=Homepage&_r=0

DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT.

One step closer to Gilead.

[GrumpyGran]

15 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

You didn't call him Dr. Gorka, so he'll be on your doorstep screaming like a nutjob within the hour.  

oooohhhh! Please, please, please! I have a right to stand my ground. And he would be on my property. You know how I roll...

[GreyhoundFan]

A disturbing thought: "If he’ll pardon Arpaio, why wouldn’t Trump pardon those who ignore Robert Mueller?"

Spoiler

That President Trump pardoned former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio surprised no one who had been paying attention. On Tuesday, he had all but said that he was going to do so, soaking up the applause from a friendly audience at a rally in Phoenix when he broached the subject.

It being expected, though, didn’t do much to lessen the surprise at its occurrence. That was in part because of the timing: dropping the news right as the most serious hurricane in half a century was making landfall in Texas on a Friday evening. But even more because of what Arpaio was being pardoned for. Arpaio was convicted of contempt of court after being told to stop racially profiling Hispanics in his county but continuing to do so anyway, in part to bolster his reelection bid. This was a law enforcement official who was ignoring a federal court order and, as a result, was convicted of a misdemeanor.

And Trump pardoned him.

The rationale Trump offered was not complicated. It came down, essentially, to the idea that Arpaio had an honorable career of service — to being the kind of guy that Trump respects.

“Throughout his time as Sheriff,” the alert from the White House read, “Arpaio continued his life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration.” That was the appeal to Trump on Friday and on the campaign trail: Arpaio earned a reputation as brutal and willing to push the boundaries in his opposition to immigrants in his state, and Trump liked that.

The broader question raised by the pardon, then, is where Trump would draw the line. If he’s willing to pardon Joe Arpaio for ignoring a court order in service of a political goal Trump embraces, why wouldn’t he pardon another individual he respects for similarly ignoring a demand from the court. Say, a former employee or a family member who, say, was issued a subpoena to testify before a special prosecutor?

One message from the Arpaio pardon is precisely that Trump sees his evaluation of the boundaries of legality as superior to the boundaries set by the legal system. The Constitution gives him that power. As we’ve noted before the presidential pardon is absolute. He can pardon anyone for any federal crime at any time — even before the person actually faces any charges and even if no crime actually took place. There’s nothing anyone can do about it, except to impeach Trump and remove him from office to prevent him from doing it again. (The president who replaces him might be able to revoke a recent pardon, one expert told us, but it’s far from certain.)

In other words, if any of Trump’s allies decides to tell special counsel Robert Mueller to stick his subpoena in the south side of the National Mall, Mueller can press a court for contempt charges. The person could be convicted of those charges — and then get a pardon identical to Arpaio’s.

Does anyone think that Trump wouldn’t actually do this? His former FBI director testified under oath that Trump tried to get him to drop the criminal investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. If you’re willing to ask the FBI to stop investigating a crime, why wouldn’t you simply pardon the guy who they think committed it?

There’s one catch, that was explored by Eugene Volokh in June. If you are pardoned, you can’t then assert your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, since you don’t face any risk of prosecution. If, for example, I were pardoned for conspiracy to commit murder in Washington, D.C., I can’t then refuse to testify against my partner in that crime, since I can’t be tried for the crime.

That said, though, the protection against self-incrimination also applies to state crimes. So Trump could pardon someone — let’s say Flynn, for the sake of this example — and Flynn could then still assert his Fifth Amendment rights if he thought his testimony might result in criminal charges in the state of Virginia (or wherever).

Again: The pardon power is absolute. There aren’t many powers in the federal government about which that word applies, but pardoning is one of them. With that power, Trump can send a message about how and where he feels the rule of law should apply. Or, more accurately, Trump can shape how and where those rules apply. He can, as long as he has that power, grant immunity to anyone he wishes for any federal crime they commit.

For a person in his position, surrounded by a federal investigation into his campaign and his business, that’s got to be appealing. And his pardon of Arpaio makes quite clear that loyalty to Trump can prevail over loyalty to the law.

 

[Howl]

Only kitty face palm allows me to grok the full meaning of @GreyhoundFan's  post. 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The broader question raised by the pardon, then, is where Trump would draw the line. 

I don't think there is one, and I'm too emotionally exhausted right now to even try to put together a halfway decent rant on the subject. 

[Destiny]

This is only sort of Trump related, but I, for one, needed a laugh today:

 

[Cartmann99]

Reunited, and it feels so good....

Quote

Former White House aide Sebastian Gorka said Saturday he will return to Breitbart News, reuniting him with longtime ally and ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Gorka left his post on Friday as a national security adviser under President Donald Trump — he claimed he resigned, which the White House disputed. While Gorka said his role with Breitbart News hasn't yet been defined, he will be returning to the site where he once served as a national security editor.

“I will be working with you, with Steve, with the Breitbart crew,” Gorka said during an interview with Breitbart Washington editor Matt Boyle on SiriusXM.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2017/08/26/sebastian-gorka-breitbart-return-242066

[Destiny]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-sessions-about-closing-case-against-arpaio-an-ally-since-birtherism/2017/08/26/15e5d7b2-8a7f-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5_story.html?utm_term=.f720147ad4c1&wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-politics%2Bnation&wpmk=1

Quote

As Joseph Arpaio’s federal case headed toward trial this past spring, President Trump wanted to act to help the former Arizona county sheriff who had become a campaign-trail companion and a partner in their crusade against illegal immigration.

The president asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether it would be possible for the government to drop the criminal case against Arpaio, but was advised that would be inappropriate, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation.

WHAT THE SERIOUS FUCKING FUCK? I thought he was the fucking rule of law president? 

Fucking hell, I'm so pissed about this, more so after reading that thread on twitter today. Fuck Arpaio, and fuck Trump for letting him get away with it.