Trump 23: The Death Eaters Have Taken the Fucking Country

[fraurosena]

Time for some good news then. 

I can just imagine the terrible tantrum the tangerine toddler throws when he gets wind of this!

The article linked in the tweet also contains the full text of the bill.

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Destiny said:

I thought he was the fucking rule of law president? 

He's only the rule of law president when the rule of law benefits him, his family, or his scum friends.

 

Good one from the NYT: "President Trump and the Baby-Sitters Club"

Spoiler

“You treat me like a baby! Am I like a baby to you? I sit there like a little baby and watch TV and you talk to me?”

— Donald Trump to Paul Manafort in “Devil’s Bargain,” by Joshua Green.

Why does Mr. Trump’s team treat him like a kid? He is the president of the United States and, as he says, “you’re not.” He lives in the White House, where he gets two scoops of ice cream instead of one for dessert. He is commander in chief, eating “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake” with the Chinese president while he fires missiles at Syria. As he told the Russians, “people brief me on great intel every day,” with lots of pictures and “tweet-length sentences.” He has a “beautiful Twitter account.” Uh-oh!

Mr. Trump’s staff can’t control him, so they coddle him. They make sure he starts his day with a packet of good news about himself, compiled by Republicans who get up early to search for positive stories, headlines, tweets or, failing those, flattering photos. “Maybe it’s good for the country that the president is in a good mood in the morning,” one of the Republicans said.

Mr. Trump likes “unstructured time” to watch TV. His favorite station is Fox News Channel but he’ll watch any show where they talk about him. If they say something bad about him, he tweets. That makes everyone nervous. His staffers try to limit his screen time during the day and keep him from “calling old friends and then tweeting about it.” But then it’s off to bed with his phone, and “once he goes upstairs, there’s no managing him.” Uh-oh!

Mr. Trump says being president is harder than being a real estate tycoon, because, “These are heavy decisions,” and when you’re the president, “people want more and more.” They also try to stop you from doing things you want to do. Boo!

Failing to pass any big legislation, tangling with the courts on his executive orders, worrying about the F.B.I. investigation into his team’s contacts with Russia makes Mr. Trump grouchy. He screams at the television, at staffers, and at Republican legislators, demanding that somebody make it stop. But when Mr. Trump’s advisers tell him what he might do, he likes doing the opposite — like when he fired James Comey, the director of the F.B.I., or stared at the solar eclipse. After he blurted out secrets to Russian officials in the Oval Office, his team worried about “leaving him alone in meetings with foreign leaders.” H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, tries to correct the president and keep him out of trouble. The president calls General McMaster “a pain.”

When Mr. Trump has one of those “moods where sometimes he wants to blow everything up,” his staff takes him outside. He sat in an 18-wheeler in the White House driveway one time. “Honk, honk!” went the horn. He sat in a red fire truck, too. “Where’s the fire?” Mr. Trump asked Vice President Mike Pence. “Put it out fast!” Mr. Trump went to Saudi Arabia, where they gave him steak and ketchup and put his photo on the side of a building. But most of all Mr. Trump likes when his staff plans field trips to rallies in red states, where he can campaign for president again.

Those rallies are fun, but back at the White House, nothing gets done and the president’s worn-out minders are warring among themselves.

So they got John Kelly to be the White House chief of staff and enforce new house rules. Mr. Kelly makes sure the Oval Office door stays closed, keeping the president inside and the staff and random buddies out. No more visiting Mr. Trump without an appointment — that means you, too, Ivanka! No more back-stabbing. No more slipping the president goofy website stories that he confuses with facts. No more secretive executive orders, and no official phone calls without Mr. Kelly on the line. No more impromptu events. No more Mooch. And no more Bannon.

But Mr. Trump keeps getting into trouble. He says the wrong things about neo-Nazis, and threatens to shut down the government unless Congress gives him money for the border wall that he said Mexico would pay for. He is bullying his allies and stomping all over his agenda. And, oh, does he tweet and yell.

Mr. Kelly is a tough guy. He was a general in the Marine Corps and commanded American troops in Iraq. He has gotten the White House staff under control, but not the president. A few days ago, he said he wouldn’t even try. Uh-oh!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

To go along with the last article: "Behold Our ‘Child King’'

Spoiler

REPUBLICAN lawmakers have seen the Trump disaster coming for a while now. They simply have no clue what to do about it.

A couple of months ago — before we learned that Donald Trump Jr. wanted to spend quality time with people he believed represented the Russian government, before the president publicly humiliated his attorney general and was abandoned by top business executives, before he claimed “some very fine people” were marching in Charlottesville, Va., alongside neo-Nazis and white supremacists — a Republican member of Congress I spoke with called the president a “child king,” a “self-pitying fool.”

Even then, the words that came to mind when some congressional Republicans described the president were “incompetent” and “unfit.” There were concerns about his emotional stability. “There’s now a realization this isn’t going to change,” one top Republican aide on Capitol Hill said. Yet there is the simultaneous realization, as a House member told me when talking about Republicans in their home districts, that “we’re never going to have a majority of people against him.”

Maybe, but for now this presents Republican members of Congress who are privately alarmed by Mr. Trump with a predicament. Regardless of what he does, a vast majority of his core supporters are sticking with him. A recent Monmouth University poll found that of the 41 percent of Americans who currently approve of the job he’s doing, 61 percent said they cannot see Mr. Trump doing anything that would make them disapprove of him. Mr. Trump was on to something when he said in January 2016, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

The political problem facing Republicans is that Mr. Trump’s presidency is a wreck. His agenda is dead in the water. A special counsel is overseeing an investigation of his campaign. The West Wing is dysfunctional. And President Trump is deeply unpopular with most Americans.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll illustrates the dilemma Republican politicians face. It found that 28 percent of polled voters say they approved of Mr. Trump’s response to Charlottesville. But among Republican voters, the figure was 62 percent, while 72 percent of conservative Republicans approved.

The more offensive Mr. Trump is to the rest of America, the more popular he becomes with his core supporters. One policy example: At a recent rally in Phoenix, the president said he was willing to shut down the government over the question of funding for a border wall, which most of his base favors but only about a third of all Americans want.

Much of this mess is of the Republican Party’s own making. Let’s not forget that Mr. Trump’s political rise began with his promulgation of the racist conspiracy theory that President Obama was not a natural-born American citizen. The Trump presidency is the result of years of destructive mental habits and moral decay. So there’s no easy solution for responsible Republicans. But there is a step they have to take.

They need to accept, finally, the reality — evident from the moment he declared his candidacy — that Mr. Trump is unfit to govern. He will prove unable to salvage his presidency. As the failures pile up, he’ll act in an even more erratic fashion.

The mental hurdle Republicans have to clear is that in important respects the interests of the Republican Party and those of Donald Trump no longer align. The party has to highlight ways in which it can separate itself from the president.

So far the response of many Republican leaders to Mr. Trump’s offenses has been silence or at most veiled, timid criticism. The effect is to rile up Trump supporters and Mr. Trump himself without rallying opposition to him. It’s the worst of all worlds.

What’s required now is a comprehensive, consistent case by Republican leaders at the state and national levels that signals their opposition to the moral ugliness and intellectual incoherence of Mr. Trump. Rather than standing by the president, they should consider themselves liberated and offer a constructive, humane and appealing alternative to him. They need to think in terms of a shadow government during the Trump era, with the elevation of alternative leaders on a range of matters.

This approach involves risk and may not work. It will certainly provoke an angry response from the Breitbart-alt-right-talk-radio part of the party. So be it. Republicans who don’t share Mr. Trump’s approach have to hope that his imploding presidency has created an opening to offer a profoundly different vision of America, one that is based on opportunity, openness, mobility and inclusion.

This requires a new intellectual infrastructure to address what may prove to be one of the largest economic disruptions in history. People in positions of influence need to make arguments on behalf of principles and ideas that have for too long gone undefended. They must appeal to moral idealism. And the party needs leaders who will fight with as much passionate intensity for their cause as Mr. Trump fights for his — which is simply himself. There’s no shortcut to forging a separate Republican identity during the Trump presidency. Half-measures and fainthearted opposition are certain to fail.

If Republicans need more encouragement to break with Mr. Trump, they might note that the president, who has no institutional or party loyalty, is positioning himself as a critic not just of Democrats but also of Republicans. During his rally in Arizona, he went out of his way to attack both of that state’s Republican senators, including one battling brain cancer. He followed that up with tweets attacking the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and other Republican lawmakers.

A confrontation is inevitable. The alternative is to continue to further tie the fate and the reputation of the Republican Party to a president who seems destined for epic failure and whose words stir the hearts of white supremacists.

We are well past the point where equivocations are defensible, and we’re nearly past the point where a moral reconstitution is possible. The damage Mr. Trump has inflicted on the Republican Party is already enormous. If the party doesn’t make a clean break with him, it will be generational.

Sadly, I can't see any of the Repug leadership taking this advice.

[fraurosena]

I'm genuinely surprised it took them so long.

Trump Cybersecurity Advisors Resign, Citing His ‘Insufficient Attention’ to Threats

Spoiler

A quarter of the members of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, whose purview includes national cybersecurity, have resigned. In a group resignation letter, they cited both specific shortfalls in the administration’s approach to cybersecurity, and broader concerns that Trump and his administration have undermined the “moral infrastructure” of the U.S.

The resignations came Monday and were acknowledged by the White House on Tuesday. Nextgov has recently published the resignation letter that the departing councilors submitted. According to Roll Call, seven members resigned from the 27-member Council.

Several of those resigning were Obama-era appointees, including former U.S. Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil and former Office of Science and Technology Policy Chief of Staff Cristin Dorgelo. Not surprisingly, then, structure-focthe issues outlined in the resignation letter were broad, faulting both Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords and his inflammatory statements after the Charlottesville attacks, some of which came during what was intended to be an infraused event.

“The moral infrastructure of our Nation is the foundation on which our physical infrastructure is built,” reads the letter in part. “The Administration’s actions undermine that foundation.”

But the resigning advisors also said the Administration was not “adequately attentive to the pressing national security matters within the NIAC’s purview, or responsive to sound advice received from experts and advisors.” The letter also zeroed in on “insufficient attention to the growing threats to the cybersecurity of the critical systems upon which all Americans depend,” including election systems.

While he has ordered better security for government networks, Trump has shown little understanding or seriousness when it comes to the broader issues surrounding, in his words, “the cyber.” Most notably, he has refused to accept the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia engineered a hacking and propaganda campaign meant to subvert the 2016 presidential election, and even floated the idea of forming a cybersecurity task force with Russia. The administration also missed a self-imposed deadline for presenting a comprehensive cybersecurity plan.

In a report issued just after the mass resignations, the NIAC issued a report saying that dramatic steps were required to prevent a possible "9/11-level cyberattack."

 

[Cartmann99]

Trump is starting to get bored with just tweeting about Harvey:

 

[Audrey2]

@Cartmann99, thank you for the tweets. Based on this article and others I've read, guess Trump's too dumb to realize if we build the wall, they'll just build the tunnels. I know this has been going on for years. 

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/border-agents-discover-hidden-tunnel-near-us-mexico-074304879--abc-news-topstories.html

Quote

U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered on Saturday morning a tunnel near the Mexican border near San Diego that was used to smuggle people into the country, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.

The discovery was made after CBP agents arrested 30 people who were in the U.S. illegally near the Otay Mesa port of entry.

Quote

There were a total of 23 Chinese nationals (21 men, 2 women) and 7 Mexican nationals (4 men and 3 women), CBP said.

Hmmm…. not all Hispanic or Mexicans. How does this fit with Trump's dialogue?

(Differentiated because people from Central America are considered Hispanic but aren't the Scary Mexicans Trump is always talking about, although he doesn't like them either.)

[Howl]

From the Fortune article posted by @fraurosena

Quote

Trump has shown little understanding or seriousness when it comes to the broader issues surrounding...

...anything!  

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

I guess Pakistan isn't impressed with the presidunce's speech last week.

Pakistan postpones U.S. visit after Trump speech

Quote

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan postponed a visit by a U.S. acting Assistant Secretary of State, officials said, as small protests broke out against President Donald Trump’s accusations that Islamabad was prolonging the war in Afghanistan.

The visit of Alice Wells, acting assistant Secretary of State for South and Asian Affairs, scheduled for Monday, would have been the first high-profile visit by a U.S. official since Trump’s Afghan policy speech on Aug. 21.

“At the request of the Government of Pakistan, Acting Assistant Secretary Wells’ trip has been postponed until a mutually convenient time,” a U.S. Embassy spokesperson told Reuters in Islamabad on Sunday.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry released a statement with similar wording.

Neither side gave a reason for the postponement, but U.S. officials working in Pakistan have been on high-alert since Monday’s speech. 

Trump accused Pakistan of harboring “agents of chaos” and providing safe havens to militant groups waging an insurgency against a U.S.-backed government in Kabul.

Pakistani officials responded by saying the U.S. should not “scapegoat” Pakistan and accused the American military of failing to eliminate militant sanctuaries inside Afghanistan.

In the southern metropolis of Karachi, police fired teargas at protesters from a religious student group as they began moving toward the U.S. consulate building.

Between 100 and 150 protesters carrying placards bearing pictures of President Trump and chanting anti-U.S. slogans were kept at bay by police and not allowed within 3 km (2 miles) of the consulate.

On Friday, banned Islamist organization Jamaat-ud-Dawa, held responsible by Washington and New Delhi for a series of coordinated attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, staged nationwide protests but also failed to draw large numbers.

 

[JMarie]

5 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Based on this article and others I've read, guess Trump's too dumb to realize if we build the wall, they'll just build the tunnels. I know this has been going on for years. 

Or just zip across the Gulf of Mexico in a boat.

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting analysis: "What if Trump ditched the GOP?"

Spoiler

After attacking pretty much everybody else, President Trump is now battling his own party. In recent days, Trump has upped the infighting ante, openly tangling with the GOP leaders of the House and Senate, along with vulnerable Sen. Jeff Flake and now Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, who had questioned Trump's “stability” as president last week.

...

Trump's most significant feud, for the moment, is with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The New York Times described it in detail last week — complete with Trump having “berated” McConnell and McConnell doubting whether Trump's presidency is salvageable. Trump previously even suggested McConnell might have to resign if he can't whip the Senate into shape. Now he's blaming him for both failing to replace Obamacare and the current budgetary “mess.”

I wouldn't be the first to note that it seems, well, counterproductive to attack your own party's leaders. It's entirely possible that this is Trump simply trying to motivate his team in his own divisive, Trump-ian way. It's also possible he's just lashing out and doesn't actually have a plan.

But there's also an Option C here. What if Trump, fed up by a lack of progress and fealty, is ready to take on his own party? What if, having systematically attacked what seems like every other institution involved in American government — the judiciary, the intelligence community, the press, the election process, law enforcement, Congress — he's now set to attack and undermine the institution whose nomination he commandeered to obtain the presidency? What if he simply ditched the Republican Party, either officially or in spirit?

It's not entirely far-fetched. This is a guy who has changed his party affiliations repeatedly, after all. And while Trump would seem to be throwing in the towel on his and the GOP's agenda — with Republican congressional majorities, no less — this is a man who doesn't lack for self-confidence and isn't afraid to fire people when things go wrong. Why should the GOP be immune to being fired?

“I've seen this as the inevitable outcome for some time now,” said Rick Wilson, a Trump-antagonizing GOP consultant based in Florida. “Trump was never a Republican to begin with; the GOP was a flag of convenience.”

The biggest question in the near term, from Trump's perspective, would be what it does to his legislative agenda. But if the GOP-controlled Congress isn't getting things done anyway — and if McConnell refuses to do what Trump asks and nuke the 60-vote threshold for legislation — Trump could decide: What's the difference? The official GOP tried to stand in his way during the 2016 campaign, and he won anyway. Why couldn't he just go it alone again? And what good are they to him if they can't pass his agenda?

But then we get into his reelection hopes. Assuming Trump plans to run again in 2020, ditching the GOP officially would mean he would have to run in what would likely be a three-way contest — a three-way contest that would risk creating chasms in the Republican Party and giving Democrats a much easier path to victory. That would seem to work against both his and the party's interests in a big way.

“If Trump were to leave the party, the immediate impact would be very problematic for fundraising efforts at the RNC — and dry up his fundraising for his super PAC,” said one national GOP operative granted anonymity for a candid take.

Another GOP consultant said, while he viewed this situation as unlikely, it would be “cataclysmic” and would split the party in three. “Thirty percent would be pissed as hell and mad at him, 30 percent would go with him,” and the rest would be up for grabs, the consultant said.

Those divisions already lie somewhat beneath the surface, but there are cracks starting to show in Trump's base (as Trump's own pollster has confirmed). Polls show between 75 and 80 percent of Republicans still approve of Trump, but some of that approval is soft, with slightly more than half of Republicans “strongly approving” — 53 percent in one poll and 61 percent in another. That seems about as good a measure of who might stick by Trump if he went the independent route, at least initially.

Beyond that, Trump's decision to actually leave the GOP could alienate longtime Republican voters who would begin to doubt his conservatism in a way they previously hadn't — as could months and years of a lack of progress on conservative agenda items. Trump's conservative bona fides have never been great, and without the GOP label or major conservative accomplishments to speak of, that may be driven home.

“The conservatives — ideological ones, especially those within the Christian conservative movement — would fall in line behind the GOP,” said the national GOP operative. “The 'alliance' with Trump was never a comfortable one; the biggest split would be between those activists more motivated by rhetoric than substance.”

However the party fractures, we're already seeing how deep those fractures could be. Recent polling from Democratic-leaning automated pollster Public Policy Polling has shown more than 60 percent of Trump's base turning on both Flake and McConnell in Arizona and Kentucky, respectively. We'll have to see if other polling confirms it, but these data suggest huge peril in Trump pitting his supporters against Republicans in Congress.

In addition, a poll released Thursday showed 53 percent of GOP voters in Republican districts said their members hadn't been supportive enough of Trump. If Trump says the GOP is failing him, plenty will believe it.

...

And you can pretty much guarantee that plenty of Republicans would stick with Trump no matter what, not least because he would be the incumbent president running for reelection. The question would be whether Trump or the GOP nominee would have any real shot against a Democrat who could pull 40-45 percent of the vote without really breaking a sweat.

But even if the GOP split 75/25 in Trump's favor or 75/25 against him, that's still very bad for the general election. Seventy-five percent of the 46 percent that Trump took in the 2016 election is nowhere close to enough to win the presidency.

Which is to say that leaving the GOP wouldn't seem to be a rational move when it comes to Trump's hopes for reelection. But all that's assuming that he's thinking rationally about running again — and that he's thinking about running again, at all.

“For him to run as an independent would require creating a massive financial and political infrastructure, but his ego is such that he'd shrug and laugh,” Wilson said. “It would destroy the GOP, but he's well on the way to doing that already.”

Frankly, if he did do it, effectively killing the Repug party, I wouldn't shed a tear.

[onekidanddone]

The filthy sack of orange crap is going to Texas on Tuesday. Of course he boasted about going to Missouri next week as well. Had to throw in how much he won the state. People are drowning and he only sees a chance for another rally. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump looks to 2020 but a more immediate peril looms: Democratic control, and impeachment power, in the House"

Spoiler

Some of President Trump’s advisers want him to bet his political future on a strategy that was most recently used by one of his most bitter rivals: President Bill Clinton.

As he picks fights with his own party’s congressional leaders, Trump is adopting his own version of “triangulation,” trying to forge a separate and distinct identity from both Republicans and Democrats. These advisers believe that dysfunction on Capitol Hill is likely to continue and that the further away Trump is positioned from the gridlock, the better his political standing will be heading toward his own reelection campaign in 2020.

“It’s right out of the Bill Clinton playbook. Triangulation is something that he perfected,” Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser, told The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker this week.

The key difference is timing, and that’s what makes Trump’s bid, for now, so much more risky than what Clinton did as he prepared for his 1996 reelection campaign. Clinton’s move away from congressional Democrats came after a brutal 1994 midterm election that gave Republicans full control of the Capitol.

Trump is making a preemptive break with his would-be congressional allies barely seven months into office. This comes more than a year ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and at a moment when his party has control of both the House and Senate.

And he’s doing it in a scathingly personal manner, attacking congressional Republicans nearly daily through social media and at public rallies.

Trump’s advisers contend that the strategy will inoculate him from blame if Republicans lose big-time next year. But what they don’t seem to take into account is that constantly blaming GOP leaders for their failures could depress conservative turnout next year and ensure a Democratic takeover, at least in the House, which current election ratings place within closer reach of Democratic control than the Senate.

And that scenario presents far greater peril for Trump than mere blame for electoral losses. A Democratic House majority would have the power to move on impeachment proceedings. The gavel of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee would go to Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), a shrewd operator who would have subpoena power to go after the president’s personal taxes and peruse how much the Trump Organization is benefiting from foreign governments staying at his hotel properties.

And forget about funding for a wall along the Mexican border: Democrats running the House Appropriations Committee would not even entertain that idea.

Some of Trump’s advisers have cautioned him about the possibility of impeachment proceedings. But others view this internecine fighting with Republicans as the best course.

“No one likes the Congress. No one likes the Republican or Democratic leadership. He puts the blame for inaction where it belongs,” Roger Stone, an outside agitator who remains close to Trump, told Rucker.

Trump has put that strategy to work almost every morning during the past couple of weeks by using his Twitter account to attack Republicans on Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been the most frequent target lately, after coming up one vote short of extending the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Over the past few days, he found a new foil in Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), lashing out at the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his comments questioning whether Trump could ever succeed.

There is some evidence that the public distinguishes Trump from both parties. In late spring, just 38 percent of the public believed that Trump is “in touch with the concerns of most people,” according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

But for the Republican Party, that number drops to 32 percent, and just 28 percent of Americans believe that the Democratic Party is “in touch” with average citizens.

“They are equally hated in the country,” Stone said.

The irony of Trump adopting a Bill Clinton strategy is rich. At his lowest moment in the 2016 campaign, after The Post revealed Trump’s 2005 comments bragging about unwanted sexual advances, Trump pointed the finger at Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs and brought some of Clinton’s accusers to one of his debates against Hillary Clinton.

Clinton survived his scandals — and even an impeachment — in part because he maintained strong personal relationships with many congressional Democrats, never openly antagonizing them the way Trump does with fellow Republicans.

In the run-up to the 1996 election, Clinton signed a Republican-drafted bill setting time limits on federal welfare benefits and pushed pet conservative causes such as uniforms in public schools. In his second term, he cinched a stringent budget deal with House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and normalized trade relations with China.

But on some core party issues such as protecting Medicare and Social Security, Clinton fought Republicans and beat them. He campaigned for Democrats when they asked, raised gobs of money for their political committees and did the little personal things including inviting them out to play golf.

Those close bonds paid dividends during the 1998-99 impeachment effort, as Democrats rallied behind Clinton. Not a single Senate Democrat supported any of the articles of impeachment during a trial that ended in deadlock.

It’s too early to know if Democrats would move toward impeachment if they won the House majority next year. But they could wreak havoc on Trump’s agenda and shed light on his personal finances.

Cummings would become a national figure overnight, capable of launching investigations and holding televised hearings that would probably be very damaging. Any bold Trump agenda items would be blocked by House Democrats, who would force legislative compromises that would crush conservative spirits.

Democrats would force Trump into legislative compromises that would dispirit conservatives base voters for the GOP.

Those prospects would seem to compel Trump to work with Republicans now to protect their majorities next year. Yet some advisers believe that Trump should keep training his fire on Republicans, which would be better for his own independent brand. “Run against the elite leadership of both parties,” Stone said.

“If we have a majority in both houses and we can’t cut taxes and we can’t repeal Obamacare, then shame on us,” Bennett said.

The bill for that shame could come due in November 2018.

 

[apple1]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

An interesting analysis: "What if Trump ditched the GOP?"

  Hide contents

“For him to run as an independent would require creating a massive financial and political infrastructure, but his ego is such that he'd shrug and laugh,” Wilson said. “It would destroy the GOP, but he's well on the way to doing that already.”

Frankly, if he did do it, effectively killing the Repug party, I wouldn't shed a tear.

Disclaimer: I don't have a crystal ball, so to speak.

Just off the top of my head - Trump leaving the GOP might be what it would take for the GOP to save itself. :-(

[Cartmann99]

6 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

People are drowning and he only sees a chance for another rally. 

 If he really does hold a rally sometime this coming week, we will be completely through the looking glass. 

[sawasdee]

Well, that clip posted by @AmazonGrace seems to show Tillerson running out of patience...I wonder how long he will stick around, or how long the TT will let him, after that display of less than absolute loyalty!

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

TL,DR: Mexico will not pay for the effing wall, but they would gladly send help for Harvey victims, and they're letting Twitler know that they're not going to renegotiate NAFTA on Twitter.

[AmazonGrace]

21 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

@Cartmann99, thank you for the tweets. Based on this article and others I've read, guess Trump's too dumb to realize if we build the wall, they'll just build the tunnels. I know this has been going on for years. 

 

And do you remember when Twitler worried that someone could throw packets of drugs over the wall? There was just somebody who got arrested because they flew a drone full of drugs over the border fence... 

 

 

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

TL,DR: Mexico will not pay for the effing wall, but they would gladly send help for Harvey victims, and they're letting Twitler know that they're not going to renegotiate NAFTA on Twitter.

He is backing away from "Mexico will absolutely pay for the wall"... to..."Mexico will absolutely reimburse us". Who falls for this BS?

[GrumpyGran]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

An interesting analysis: "What if Trump ditched the GOP?"

  Hide contents

After attacking pretty much everybody else, President Trump is now battling his own party. In recent days, Trump has upped the infighting ante, openly tangling with the GOP leaders of the House and Senate, along with vulnerable Sen. Jeff Flake and now Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, who had questioned Trump's “stability” as president last week.

...

Trump's most significant feud, for the moment, is with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The New York Times described it in detail last week — complete with Trump having “berated” McConnell and McConnell doubting whether Trump's presidency is salvageable. Trump previously even suggested McConnell might have to resign if he can't whip the Senate into shape. Now he's blaming him for both failing to replace Obamacare and the current budgetary “mess.”

I wouldn't be the first to note that it seems, well, counterproductive to attack your own party's leaders. It's entirely possible that this is Trump simply trying to motivate his team in his own divisive, Trump-ian way. It's also possible he's just lashing out and doesn't actually have a plan.

But there's also an Option C here. What if Trump, fed up by a lack of progress and fealty, is ready to take on his own party? What if, having systematically attacked what seems like every other institution involved in American government — the judiciary, the intelligence community, the press, the election process, law enforcement, Congress — he's now set to attack and undermine the institution whose nomination he commandeered to obtain the presidency? What if he simply ditched the Republican Party, either officially or in spirit?

It's not entirely far-fetched. This is a guy who has changed his party affiliations repeatedly, after all. And while Trump would seem to be throwing in the towel on his and the GOP's agenda — with Republican congressional majorities, no less — this is a man who doesn't lack for self-confidence and isn't afraid to fire people when things go wrong. Why should the GOP be immune to being fired?

“I've seen this as the inevitable outcome for some time now,” said Rick Wilson, a Trump-antagonizing GOP consultant based in Florida. “Trump was never a Republican to begin with; the GOP was a flag of convenience.”

The biggest question in the near term, from Trump's perspective, would be what it does to his legislative agenda. But if the GOP-controlled Congress isn't getting things done anyway — and if McConnell refuses to do what Trump asks and nuke the 60-vote threshold for legislation — Trump could decide: What's the difference? The official GOP tried to stand in his way during the 2016 campaign, and he won anyway. Why couldn't he just go it alone again? And what good are they to him if they can't pass his agenda?

But then we get into his reelection hopes. Assuming Trump plans to run again in 2020, ditching the GOP officially would mean he would have to run in what would likely be a three-way contest — a three-way contest that would risk creating chasms in the Republican Party and giving Democrats a much easier path to victory. That would seem to work against both his and the party's interests in a big way.

“If Trump were to leave the party, the immediate impact would be very problematic for fundraising efforts at the RNC — and dry up his fundraising for his super PAC,” said one national GOP operative granted anonymity for a candid take.

Another GOP consultant said, while he viewed this situation as unlikely, it would be “cataclysmic” and would split the party in three. “Thirty percent would be pissed as hell and mad at him, 30 percent would go with him,” and the rest would be up for grabs, the consultant said.

Those divisions already lie somewhat beneath the surface, but there are cracks starting to show in Trump's base (as Trump's own pollster has confirmed). Polls show between 75 and 80 percent of Republicans still approve of Trump, but some of that approval is soft, with slightly more than half of Republicans “strongly approving” — 53 percent in one poll and 61 percent in another. That seems about as good a measure of who might stick by Trump if he went the independent route, at least initially.

Beyond that, Trump's decision to actually leave the GOP could alienate longtime Republican voters who would begin to doubt his conservatism in a way they previously hadn't — as could months and years of a lack of progress on conservative agenda items. Trump's conservative bona fides have never been great, and without the GOP label or major conservative accomplishments to speak of, that may be driven home.

“The conservatives — ideological ones, especially those within the Christian conservative movement — would fall in line behind the GOP,” said the national GOP operative. “The 'alliance' with Trump was never a comfortable one; the biggest split would be between those activists more motivated by rhetoric than substance.”

However the party fractures, we're already seeing how deep those fractures could be. Recent polling from Democratic-leaning automated pollster Public Policy Polling has shown more than 60 percent of Trump's base turning on both Flake and McConnell in Arizona and Kentucky, respectively. We'll have to see if other polling confirms it, but these data suggest huge peril in Trump pitting his supporters against Republicans in Congress.

In addition, a poll released Thursday showed 53 percent of GOP voters in Republican districts said their members hadn't been supportive enough of Trump. If Trump says the GOP is failing him, plenty will believe it.

...

And you can pretty much guarantee that plenty of Republicans would stick with Trump no matter what, not least because he would be the incumbent president running for reelection. The question would be whether Trump or the GOP nominee would have any real shot against a Democrat who could pull 40-45 percent of the vote without really breaking a sweat.

But even if the GOP split 75/25 in Trump's favor or 75/25 against him, that's still very bad for the general election. Seventy-five percent of the 46 percent that Trump took in the 2016 election is nowhere close to enough to win the presidency.

Which is to say that leaving the GOP wouldn't seem to be a rational move when it comes to Trump's hopes for reelection. But all that's assuming that he's thinking rationally about running again — and that he's thinking about running again, at all.

“For him to run as an independent would require creating a massive financial and political infrastructure, but his ego is such that he'd shrug and laugh,” Wilson said. “It would destroy the GOP, but he's well on the way to doing that already.”

Frankly, if he did do it, effectively killing the Repug party, I wouldn't shed a tear.

Fascinating to ponder. I think he's hoping to get more popular and if he doesn't he won't run again. What will he do with all the money he's raising for his 2020 campaign? Pocket it.

And I don't know what he's calling this week but I'm calling it "Watch Me Make a Natural Disaster All About Me Week!"

4 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

He is backing away from "Mexico will absolutely pay for the wall"... to..."Mexico will absolutely reimburse us". Who falls for this BS?

Good Lord, I'm he's holding on to that wall like it's his binky!

[onekidanddone]

18 hours ago, JMarie said:

Or just zip across the Gulf of Mexico in a boat.

He is too stupid to get it and so are the TDs. Build the wall people some in by boat while he cuts the coast guard. Yea, that is some good leadership there.  

I swear he has some shifty deal going on with who ever is going to build his build his beautiful wall. Might even be branded "Trump International embarrassment wall.

[BecauseScience]

4 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

 

TL,DR: Mexico will not pay for the effing wall, but they would gladly send help for Harvey victims, and they're letting Twitler know that they're not going to renegotiate NAFTA on Twitter.

Props to Mexico. Though I have seen a few reports questioning if Two Scoop would let Mexican responders in to help Harvey victims. (We'll need all the help we can get.)

[Cartmann99]

Something odd is going on with Orange Foolius. Unless he's been deleting stuff again, he's just rewteeting other people, instead of manufacturing shiny new bullshit today.

Spoiler

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Are some of Trump’s key Cabinet members thinking about abandoning him?"

Spoiler

Two of President Trump's highest-ranking Cabinet officials just took a giant step backward from their boss, raising the question of whether Trump's inner circle is seriously considering abandoning him.

In separate, jaw-dropping comments that made news over the weekend, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to distance themselves from the president on his response to the Charlottesville violence and, perhaps, in general.

Here's Mattis: In a video that surfaced on Facebook over the weekend of Mattis speaking to troops stationed abroad last week, he urged them to “hold the line” and promised the country would “get the power of inspiration back.”

“Our country right now, it’s got problems we don’t have in the military … You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it.”

“The power of inspiration — we’ll get the power of inspiration back,” he later said. It's not clear whom Mattis was speaking to, but he traveled to Jordan, Turkey and Ukraine last week and met with troops stationed there.

Mattis never came out and said: “Your commander in chief is fomenting divisions in this country that the military must rise above,” but it was as close as this disciplined, apolitical former Marine general was going to get.

By the end of the week — as a devastating hurricane was making landfall in Texas — Trump ordered Mattis to ban transgender recruits from the military. Trump was following up on a promise he made suddenly, without Mattis's awareness, on Twitter in July.

It's not clear Mattis knew his comments were being recorded, apparently by someone in the audience, but it also doesn't look like he intended to keep his distaste for the tenor of respect in the country right now secret. Why else would he say something that could remotely be considered a criticism of the commander in chief anywhere in public?

Tillerson's rebuke of Trump was even more direct. In an interview Sunday with Fox News's Chris Wallace, Tillerson was asked if Trump's “both sides” comment in the wake of racially charged Charlottesville violence speaks for American values.

“The president speaks for himself,” Tillerson said flatly.

“Are you separating yourself from the president?” a stunned Wallace followed up.

“I've made my own comment as to our values,” Tillerson said. Earlier in the show, he had said: “We express America's values from the State Department — our commitment to freedom, our commitment to equal treatment of people the world over,” adding, “And that message has never changed.”

This is big news. These aren't GOP members of Congress distancing themselves from a president they've secretly always disliked. These are two of the highest-ranking officials in government — who both agreed to be conduits for Trump's policies and presidency — publicly disagreeing with their boss on whether America is going in the right direction.

They are not the only Trump advisers struggling to stand by him after Charlottesville. Trump's chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, all but told the Financial Times in an interview last week that the president should have handled Charlottesville better:

“This administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities,” Cohn said.

After Charlottesville, Cohn was “mortified” at Trump's comments, The Washington Post reported, and it was an open question if he'd stay on.

Now, can you disagree with your boss on some things and still work with him on others? Sure. Mattis, Tillerson and Cohn wouldn't be the first or last presidential advisers in that position.

But it's also rare for so many advisers to speak out so publicly against their boss, and in such stark terms, on matters of such magnitude.

We aren't talking about policy disagreements or personnel food rights. We're talking about whether some of Trump's highest-ranking staff agrees with him on the most fundamental questions: What are American values? And does the president represent them?

At least three of Trump's top officials are struggling to answer that. And from there it's an easy question to ask whether they are or have considering ditching this president altogether.

I shudder to think who the orange menace would nominate if these three resign or are fired.

[onekidanddone]

48 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Something odd is going on with Orange Foolius. Unless he's been deleting stuff again, he's just rewteeting other people, instead of manufacturing shiny new bullshit today.

Could it be a bot?