Trump 23: The Death Eaters Have Taken the Fucking Country

[fraurosena]

Oh... OH! 

James Murdoch, Rebuking Trump, Pledges $1 Million to Anti-Defamation League

Spoiler

James Murdoch, the chief executive of 21st Century Fox and the son of a frequent ally of President Trump’s, condemned the president’s performance after the violence in Charlottesville, Va., and pledged to donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League.

In an email on Thursday, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times and confirmed as authentic by a spokesman for Mr. Murdoch’s company, the Fox scion gave an extraordinarily candid statement against the white supremacist sentiment that swept through Virginia last weekend. It was also the most outspoken that a member of the Murdoch family has been in response to the week’s events.

Mr. Murdoch’s father, Rupert Murdoch, is a conservative media mogul who has become an informal adviser to Mr. Trump, recently dining with the president in the White House residence. The younger Mr. Murdoch has been less outspoken about his political views, making the email even more surprising.

With a subject line reading, “Subject: Personal note from James Murdoch re: ADL,” Mr. Murdoch addressed the note to “friends.”

“I’m writing to you in a personal capacity, as a concerned citizen and a father. It has not been my habit to widely offer running commentary on current affairs, nor to presume to weigh in on the events of a given day save those that might be of particular or specific concern to 21CF and my colleagues,” he wrote. “But what we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people.”

He added: “These events remind us all why vigilance against hate and bigotry is an eternal obligation — a necessary discipline for the preservation of our way of life and our ideals. The presence of hate in our society was appallingly laid bare as we watched swastikas brandished on the streets of Charlottesville and acts of brutal terrorism and violence perpetrated by a racist mob. I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists. Democrats, Republicans, and others must all agree on this, and it compromises nothing for them to do so.”

Mr. Murdoch said that he and his wife, Kathryn, plan to donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, urging others to follow suit.

“We hardly ever talk about our charitable giving, but in this case I wanted to tell you and encourage you to be generous too. Many of you are supporters of the Anti-Defamation League already — now is a great time to give more,” he wrote.

The Anti-Defamation League has been outspoken against Mr. Trump since early in his campaign, including tracking an uptick in white supremacists supporting him as he declined repeatedly to forcefully denounce them or disavow their support.

Here's the Text of James Murdoch’s Email Condemning Trump’s Response to Charlottesville

Spoiler

The following is the text of an email that was sent Thursday by James Murdoch, the chief executive of 21st Century Fox and the son of Rupert Murdoch, a frequent ally of President Trump’s. The email was confirmed as authentic by a spokesman for his company.

Friends,

I’m writing to you in a personal capacity, as a concerned citizen and a father. It has not been my habit to widely offer running commentary on current affairs, nor to presume to weigh in on the events of a given day save those that might be of particular or specific concern to 21CF and my colleagues. But what we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people.

These events remind us all why vigilance against hate and bigotry is an eternal obligation — a necessary discipline for the preservation of our way of life and our ideals. The presence of hate in our society was appallingly laid bare as we watched swastikas brandished on the streets of Charlottesville and acts of brutal terrorism and violence perpetrated by a racist mob. I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists. Democrats, Republicans, and others must all agree on this, and it compromises nothing for them to do so.

Diverse storytellers, and stories, can make a difference, and that diversity, around the world, is a crucial strength and an animating force in my business. Often times not everyone agrees with the stories and positions that emerge from this, and that can be difficult. Certainly no company can be perfect. But I’m proud of the powerful art that can emerge, and I’m grateful to all of my colleagues who make this happen. From the potent and compelling narrative of “12 Years a Slave”, to the streets of Pakistan and the bravery of an extraordinary young woman that we saw in “He Named Me Malala”, to name just a few, we’ve never been afraid to help storytellers and artists say important things – hard things, too.

To further demonstrate our commitment, Kathryn and I are donating 1 million dollars to the Anti-Defamation League, and I encourage you to give what you think is right as well. We hardly ever talk about our charitable giving, but in this case I wanted to tell you and encourage you to be generous too. Many of you are supporters of the Anti-Defamation League already – now is a great time to give more. The ADL is an extraordinary force for vigilance and strength in the face of bigotry – you can learn more here: https://www.adl.org. My very best to you and with all my gratitude,

JRM

I know this is the son speaking, and not the father, but... will  we see a difference in Faux News coverage now? One that is more critical of the presidunce? 

Oh, I hope so. I hope so...   

[JMarie]

3 hours ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

What gets me is the sheer numbers of people who just don't pay attention.  They like Trump so what ever, but they aren't watching the news or reading anything about it.  So they can just keep on.  How can you go for weeks without watching the news? Is my family that strange that we try to keep ourselves informed 90% of the time? I know 2 people off the top of my head who had no idea about what happened last Saturday, they believe the "both sides did it" I'm like you are siding with LITERAL Nazi's here, you do realize this. And they just shrug their shoulders and go meh.

If they only watch Fox News, or the only 24 hour news channel they get is Fox News, they've been hearing about the "violent Alt Left" for the past few days. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting perspective from Callum Borchers: "Ousting Bannon is a risky move for Trump"

Spoiler

Stephen K. Bannon caused trouble in the White House. He could have even more of an impact on the outside.

President Trump has decided to remove his chief strategist following a tumultuous week, even by the standards of this White House. Trump drew criticism from within his party for a take on violence in Charlottesville that bore the fingerprints of Bannon and Breitbart News, the website Bannon once chaired and called “the platform for the alt-right.”

On top of that episode, Bannon phoned a journalist at the American Prospect, unsolicited, and undercut the president's public stance that all options are on the table in a standoff with North Korea. “There’s no military solution,” Bannon said. “Forget it.”

Under different circumstances, the latter might have been a fireable offense, automatically. Trump rails against leaks that reveal internal disagreements, and here was Bannon going on the record about national security deliberations and contradicting the commander in chief.

But Bannon came to the White House marked “handle with care.” He represents the cornerstone of Trump's base — the populist, nationalist wing of the Republican Party that latched on to the fiery billionaire long before others in the GOP.

If a bitter Bannon were to return to the media and spread disillusionment among Trump's followers, he could become a problem for the president. But Trump does have a knack for keeping former aides on his side. Roger Stone and Corey Lewandowski are prime examples of people who have devoted themselves to boosting the president in the media after leaving his service.

If Trump can manage another amiable split, perhaps Bannon will remain a valuable ally. The Washington Post's Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Damian Paletta reported Friday that “Bannon had been expecting to be cut loose from the White House, people close to him said, with one of them explaining that Bannon was resigned to that fate and is determined to continue to advocate for Trump’s agenda on the outside.”

Bannon wouldn't necessarily have to pull a complete reversal to give Trump a headache, however. He could focus his fury on former White House rivals who pulled the president in different directions. Even that kind of narrative would crack Trump's image as a swashbuckling Washington outsider determined to “drain the swamp.”

Bannon certainly would have plenty to complain about. As Trump's posture on North Korea illustrates, the president is not governing as the noninterventionist he played on the campaign trail. He has supported Republican health-care plans that fall short of the full Obamacare repeal he promised as a candidate, and he has made little tangible progress on a Southern border wall.

Breitbart News, though loyal to Trump, has criticized him on these issues.

Although it is possible that Bannon could return to Breitbart, he also could launch a new venture. That's what media entrepreneur Jim VandeHei predicted before news of Bannon's departure broke.

...

One other potential drawback for Trump: Bannon was useful, at times, as a shield. The president's critics sometimes suggested that Bannon, not Trump alone, was responsible for political missteps.

Bannon himself seemed to embrace the role, telling the Daily Mail on Thursday that his call to the American Prospect “drew fire away” from Trump.

 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

1 hour ago, Palimpsest said:

@allthegoodnamesrgone, we knew the cancer was there, barely controlled by what we thought was the chemotherapy of decent thinking people, and the odd dose of radiation from legislation by previous administrations.  Trump is the gasoline on the deadly fire of of the cancer.

We is a small group of people. There are many more that had no idea, either because of blind indifference, completely stupidity, or just stubborn refusal to admit the truth, their is a big population that had no idea the GOP had gotten this bad, like pretty much the entirety of the GOP.  My family members will swear up and down that racism was history, and that Obama really is to blame for all of our ills.  They had no clue that the GOP has been stonewalling America for their own personal agenda  for the last decade or 2, because they only get their news from ONE place, Fox. They believe nothing else, even if the truth is in front of them they will claim hocus pocus fooling their eyes, if Fox told them otherwise. It was what led to the utter shocking stunned defeat of Mitt in 2012 they honestly thought he had it, and were blindsided by reality. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump doesn’t seem to like being president. So why not quit?"

Spoiler

Evidence is piling up that Donald Trump does not really want to be president of the United States.

He certainly doesn’t look happy in the job. In his previous life, Trump met whomever he wanted to meet and said whatever he wanted to say. But like all presidents, he finds himself ever more isolated, and his displeasure shows on his face. The loneliness of the job — which so many of his predecessors have ruefully reported — is wearing on him.

And it’s more than that. Past presidents also tell us that no one can fully appreciate the dimensions of the job in advance. With no previous political experience, Trump’s learning curve has been even steeper than usual, and the more he sees of the job, the less he wants to do it. He balks at the briefings, the talking points, the follow-through.

He was drawn to the fame of it, as he once told me aboard his private jet. “It’s the ratings . . . that gives you power,” then-candidate Trump explained. “It’s not the polls. It’s the ratings.” He loves being the most talked-about man on Earth.

But unlike reality TV stars, presidents aren’t famous for being famous. They command the world’s attention because they are the temporary embodiments of America’s strength, aspirations and responsibilities.

It is a paradoxically self-effacing fame. The job demands that hugely competitive, driven, ambitious individuals — for that’s what it takes to win the job — inhabit a role that requires them to be something other than nakedly themselves.

As some Trump associates tell it, he never intended to be elected. But having won the part, he doesn’t want to play it, a fact irrefutable after Charlottesville. Rather than speak for the nation — the president’s job — he spoke for Trump. Rather than apply shared values, he apportioned blame.

The presidency calls for care and cunning. All successful presidents have known when to say less rather than more. George Washington’s second inaugural address was 135 words long. President Abraham Lincoln often disappointed clamoring crowds, telling them that the risk of a wrong word made it too dangerous for him to deliver a speech. President Ronald Reagan was famous for cupping his ear and shrugging as he pretended not to hear an untimely question.

Did these men ever itch to win an argument, as Trump did in his Tuesday news conference, with such disastrous results? Of course they did. But a president can’t indulge such impulses.

Discipline in thought and speech is the machinery by which a president leads a free people. He hasn’t the power to purge his enemies or censor the press. His strength rests on his ability to persuade. His power grows through a record of hard-won results. He seeks friends and respect, not enemies and outrage. Between fired aides (strategist Stephen K. Bannon got the boot Friday) and fleeing allies, Trump is losing friends faster than a bully at a birthday party.

Reflecting more and reacting less: That’s how a president gets through all seven days of a week supposedly focused on infrastructure without having his advisory council on infrastructure implode. With enough of that focus and discipline, a president might eventually foster an infrastructure bill — an actual law with real money behind it, something more than bluster — that creates jobs and feeds progress and raises spirits.

It’s hard work. As shareholders in this enterprise, Americans are asking what disciplined, focused labor Trump performed to pass a health-care bill. What hard ground has he plowed, what water has he carried, to grow the seeds of tax reform?

The president’s job is to understand that the world has plenty of troubles in store for this nation. His role is not to add to their number. There will be moments when the president must stir us up, so in the meantime, his task is to keep us calm.

If Trump were still in private business, he would have no trouble diagnosing this situation. A serial entrepreneur like Trump learns to recognize when a venture isn’t panning out. Over the years, he splashed, then crashed, in businesses as diverse as casinos, an airline and for-profit seminars. His willingness to fish has always been matched by a willingness to cut bait.

Or, as a veteran boss, he might see his predicament as a personnel move that hasn’t clicked. Trump has made many, many hires over his career, and some (as recently as Bannon’s) don’t work out. “Not a good fit,” the saying goes.

The presidency is not a good fit for Trump. It’s a scripted role; he’s an improviser. It’s an accountable position; he’s a free spirit. Yes, the employment contract normally runs four years. But at his age and station, what’s the point of staying in a job he doesn’t want?

I agree, he is not looking happy.

[SusanDelgado]

Not surprising, as he was griping about how hard the job was only weeks in, if I recall correctly. Because no one could have foretold that being the GD president of the united states is like,  hard and stuff. 

[sawasdee]

I'm truly scared for next Tuesday in Phoenix. Emotions are so inflamed that I think trouble is inevitable at the TT's rally.

The (D) mayor has begged him not to come, but he is not only determined to do so, but is dropping massive hints that he will announce a pardon for Joe Arpiao. Bikers from California have announced they are coming to support him, and we can be sure the alt right will be out in force. A pardon for Arpiao will infuriate the Latin community, and unless there is a huge show of force by law enforcement, the city will explode - and maybe even despite that.

His intentional deafness to the needs of the nation, and their subjugation to HIS need for uncritical approval from his mob, may very well lead to more deaths, and increasing racial tensions nationwide.

I keep thinking 'he can't get worse' - and he promptly does. He is now endangering the long term internal peace and stability of the US, and the Congress still sits on its hands, with its mouth shut.

I'm close to despair.

ETA What's that bit in the oath all members of Congress take, about defending from all enemies 'foreign or domestic'?  He is, at the moment, personifying a domestic enemy.

[GreyhoundFan]

The Kennedy Center Honors is a big event here. It is always attended by the president and FL. Because the orange menace is, well, the orange menace,Melania and he won't attend. Personally, I think they aren't attending because he has no desire to sit at a celebration of the arts. He only wants to go to events where the participants celebrate him. "Trump, first lady to skip Kennedy Center Honors over concerns of ‘political distraction’"

Spoiler

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump have elected not to attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors in December amid a political backlash among those who will be feted at the event.

The first family will not participate “to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Saturday morning.

The announcement comes as three of the five honorees — television producer Norman Lear, singer Lionel Richie and dancer Carmen de Lavallade — said they would boycott the traditional White House reception related to the celebration. As for the other two, rapper LL Cool J had not said whether he would attend, and Cuban American singer Gloria Estefan said she would go to try to influence the president on immigration issues.

In a statement Saturday, Kennedy Center chairman David M. Rubenstein and president Deborah F. Rutter said they respected Trump's decision and were “grateful” the spotlight would be focused on this year's honorees at the Dec. 3 gala.

“In choosing not to participate in this year's Honors activities, the Administration has graciously signaled its respect for the Kennedy Center and ensures the Honors gala remains a deservingly special moment for the Honorees,” the statement read. “We are grateful for this gesture.”

In addition to the Kennedy Center gala, honorees and about 300 guests traditionally are invited to hear the president offer remarks about each of the recipients at a White House reception just prior to the show. That reception will no longer take place this year, the Kennedy Center said. This is the first time in the awards' history that the White House portion of the festivities has been canceled.

Since 1978, the Kennedy Center Honors have been awarded each year to recognize those in a variety of artistic fields — including dance, music, opera, theater, film and television — for “their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts.” Although both the president and first lady usually attend the ceremony, there have been years when this was not the case. Rosalynn Carter attended in the place of Jimmy Carter during the 1979 hostage crisis, and Hillary Rodham Clinton sat in for the president, who was attending a European conference, in 1994.

But the backlash against Trump by some of this year's honorees was prompted by his handling of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville last weekend, which ended in the death of a counter-protester.

The president belatedly condemned the hate groups that planned the event and equated counterprotesters with the white nationalists, saying “both sides” were to blame.

In a statement Thursday, de Lavallade said: “In light of the socially divisive and morally caustic narrative that our current leadership is choosing to engage in, and in keeping with the principles that I and so many others have fought for, I will be declining the invitation to attend the reception at the White House.”

In the White House statement, Sanders said the Trumps “extend their sincerest congratulations and well wishes to all of this year's award recipients for their many accomplishments.”

The awards program will take place Dec. 3 and will be broadcast Dec. 26.

Trump’s initial public remarks on the violence in Charlottesville were criticized by many, including members of his own political party, for being insufficient and vague. On Monday, the president specifically called out “the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups” in unscheduled remarks at the White House, though some criticized Trump's comments as too little, too late. However, on Tuesday, Trump seemed to revert to his original sentiments in a terse exchange with reporters at what was supposed to be a news conference about infrastructure.

As a result, Trump lost support this week from a slew of business leaders and Hollywood performers who resigned from various presidential advisory groups.

On Monday, Kenneth C. Frazier, the chief executive of Merck Pharma, was the first member to quit the president’s American Manufacturing Council, citing “a matter of personal conscience” and “a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” Trump quickly rebuked him on Twitter.

Over the next few days, several more executives would follow Frazier's lead, prompting Trump to lash out at them as “grandstanders” would could easily be replaced. By Thursday, both the manufacturing council and the president's Strategy & Policy Forum had been disbanded. Though Trump announced publicly it was his decision to end both councils, those close to the process, including JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, said the groups already had decided to disband earlier.

...

On Friday, the members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities announced they were resigning en masse in a fiery letter.

“Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions..." the letter stated. “Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.”

...

Trump's sudden announcement that he would be skipping the Kennedy Center Honors — months before the event is scheduled to take place — is reminiscent of his decision (tweeted in February) to forego the White House Correspondents' Association dinner (in April).

...

At the time, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged on ABC’s “This Week” that there had been tensions between the president and the media.

“I think it’s … kind of naive of us to think that we can all walk into a room for a couple of hours and pretend that some of that tension isn’t there,” Sanders told “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos in February.

Trump ended up holding a rally in Pennsylvania the night of the dinner.

“I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from Washington swamp spending my evening with all of you and with a much, much larger crowd, and much better people,” Trump told the crowd then.

 

[sawasdee]

And all the honorees bar one are people from ethnic minorities.

And he's scared of being booed.....poor little snowflake.

Never mind, maybe President and Mrs Pence will attend.

[GreyhoundFan]

3 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

Never mind, maybe President and Mrs Pence will attend.

If mother lets Pency out after his bedtime.

 

[sawasdee]

And some of those ladies WON'T be modestly dressed.....

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Politico: "Trump just had his 'worst week' — again"

Spoiler

President Donald Trump is coming off his “worst week” in the White House — that is, if you’re not counting at least the nine other weeks since his January inauguration when the media has also declared the Republican to have hit rock bottom.

The “worst week” cliché has its reasons: this time it’s Trump’s controversial response to violent white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia. But for the reporters and political analysts who make their living covering Trump, there’s always something (or many things) to merit such a categorical description for such a chaotic president.

It’s a subjective measurement by any definition. Nonetheless, here’s a POLITICO review of the 10 weeks (out of 30 so far) where journalists have dubbed Trump as having his “worst week” in office.

1. August 14-20

What happened: Trump started the week condemning the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists for the fatal violence in Charlottesville but then reversed course and doubled down on his earlier argument that “many sides” were to blame for the weekend’s events spinning out of control. Republicans and Democrats alike criticized him, as did corporate leaders who forced the White House to shutter several of its business advisory panels. White House senior adviser Steve Bannon was fired.

Who called it: NBC reporters including “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd wrote that the president is “more isolated than ever after worst week yet” — and that was hours before the news broke that Bannon was ousted. FOX News’ Brett Baier said that Bannon’s departure made it “clearly the worst week” yet. ABC News political analyst Matt Dowd had this to say of the Bannon news, “Worst blow so far of his presidency, coming at the tail end of probably his worst week as president.” MSNBC, meantime, noted the number of times the “worst week” description had been used in recent weeks and made a comparison to a scene from the 1999 film, “Office Space.”

2. August 7-13

What happened: The Charlottesville melee was in its first 24 hours when Trump gave his first stumbling response, blaming “many sides” for the violence. He improvised on the nuclear threat from North Korea, warning that the country would face “fire and fury” if it attacked the U.S. or its allies. Speaking from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club where he was on a working vacation, the president told reporters a “military operation, a military option, is certainly something we could pursue” in Venezuela. He also jokingly thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for booting more than 750 U.S. diplomats from Russia. Trump carried on a feud with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not passing an Obamacare repeal bill.

Who called it: Helene Cooper, a Pentagon correspondent for the New York Times, said on “Meet the Press” in the immediate aftermath of Charlottesville that Trump may have just had his “worst week” because he’s not been “able to detach himself from these white supremacists who got him elected and who he has put in his government and in the White House.” She also called him out for his North Korea response. Max Boot, writing for Foreign Policy, called Trump the “WWE president” — as in the "worst week ever" — adding, "that has become even more of a leitmotif for his administration.”

3. July 24-30

What happened: The Senate by one vote killed a Republican bill to repeal Obamacare. The military was caught unprepared when Trump tweeted out his plans to ban transgender troops. The Boy Scouts of America apologized after Trump gave an explicitly political speech at their annual jamboree. Trump publicly humiliated Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Senate Republicans came to Sessions' defense. White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci gave a scathing, expletive-laden interview to the New Yorker criticizing Bannon and then Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Priebus was fired and John Kelly was named as his replacement.

Who called it: Washington Post opinion writer Kathleen Parker opened a column this way, “Donald Trump had his worst day since he was elected president – we’ll just call it Friday – and his worst week since the last one.” In the same newspaper, Charles Krauthammer pointed out the checks and balances that had pushed back at Trump, noting his “worst week proved a particularly fine hour for American democracy.” Dowd, appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” said Kelly began as chief of staff “probably after the worst week of Donald Trump’s presidency.” The Australian Financial Review reported that Trump faced skepticism in Washington “that he can recover from arguably his work week on Capitol Hill.”

4. July 10-16

What happened: The New York Times over several days reported on a June 2016 meeting between Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., senior campaign aides, and a Kremlin-linked lawyer who had promised them dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Who called it: Times’ reporters Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman described Trump as being in a “buoyant mood” during a visit to the press cabin on Air Force One, following a quick trip to Paris that came while he was “suffering one of the worst weeks of his political career.”

5. June 12-18

What happened: The Washington Post reported that special counsel Robert Mueller had expanded his investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election into an examination of whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice. Trump himself seemed to confirm the news on Twitter, with a Friday morning missive that launched a wave of speculation he may be getting ready to order the firing of Mueller: “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt.”

Who called it: CNN’s Chris Cillizza, author of a weekly column awarding an unlucky pol for having the “worst week in Washington,” bestowed the honor on the president. “Donald Trump hasn’t had a lot of good weeks since being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. But this was his worst one yet,” he wrote. “This was the week the investigation of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election reached the Oval Office – and Trump himself.”

6. June 5-11

What happened: The cable networks go wall-to-wall with coverage of former FBI Director James Comey testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he confirmed reports the president demanded his loyalty and pressured him to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Who called it: The Daily Show had some fun with this one. Opening his Monday broadcast with a look back at the Comey hearing, Trevor Noah, the Comedy Central host said, “Last week was probably one of the worst weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, which, by the way, is something we say every week now. Yeah. Trump’s presidency is basically like global warming. Every week is the worst week on record, and the Republicans are also trying hard to deny it.”

7. May 15-21

What happened: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to investigate Trump campaign ties to Russian tampering in the 2016 election. The New York Times reported Trump told Russian officials visiting him in the Oval Office that Comey was a ‘real nut job’. The Washington Post published an article saying a senior White House official had become a “significant person of interest” in the Russia investigation. Sen. John McCain said the Trump scandals had reached a “Watergate size and scale.” On Twitter, Trump fired back, “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”

Who called it: Reporters outside the U.S. pinpointed Trump’s troubles, with a Toronto Star columnist noting before the week was even over: “At the midway point of Trump’s worst week in office – and that’s saying something – his travelling band of surrogates, liars, bootlickers, enablers, brown-nosers and excuse-makers are in quite a bind.” A Canberra Times editorial in Australia also jumped into the action by suggesting Trump’s “witch hunt” tweet “could even be seen as a successful attempt to divert attention away from his worst week since entering the White House.” Back in the U.S., a CNN report with Jake Tapper sharing the byline said Trump’s tweets appeared to be an attempt by staff to calm “the raging political storm over Russia which has resulted in Trump’s worst week in office so far.” Reuters, meantime, went with this headline to sum up the week’s news: “Donald Trump’s Worst Week as President?”

8. May 8-14

What happened: Trump fired Comey on a Tuesday, citing recommendations from Rosenstein and Sessions. He sat down for an NBC interview on Thursday with Lester Holt and said he’d already made up his mind to fire Comey “regardless of recommendation” from the DOJ officials. Trump started his Friday on Twitter by posting: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

Who called it: Republican strategist Ed Rollins on one of FOX News’ Sunday morning shows called for “some deep thinking in this White House,” and added, “This was the worst week, I think, this president has had, and it’s all self-inflicted.” Cillizza, meantime, awarded Trump the “worst week in Washington” honor for all-things Comey.

9. March 20-26

What happened: Comey, appearing before the House Intelligence Committee, confirmed for the first time publicly that the FBI has an open investigation into potential Trump campaign collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. In a major defeat, House Republicans dropped plans for a floor vote on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Who called it: ABC’s George Stephanopoulos opened his Sunday show this way, “And for all of you who had a rough week, just think about how President Trump must feel after the worst week of his young presidency.”

10. February 13-19

What happened: It was a messy Valentine’s Day in Trump land. The president fired Flynn amid a spate of media reports he’d had undisclosed conversations with Russia’s ambassador during the transition and misled Vice President Mike Pence in the process. The New York Times reported about phone records and intercepted calls suggesting Trump’s campaign and his associates had made “repeated contacts” with senior Russian officials. Two days later, the Wall Street Journal published an article that U.S. intelligence officials were holding back sensitive material from Trump because of concern about leaks.

Who called it: Teasing a video about the news of the week, the U.S. News and World Report declared Trump “has just endured his worst week in Washington yet” and asked who was is in charge of his White House. Over at the Miami Herald, columnist Fabiola Santiago took note of Cuban-Americans in Congress who were silent about “Trump’s Russiagate.” The headline: “On his worst week in office, Trump gets a boost from Cuban-American pals in Congress.”

I don't know, they're all so bad, but this past week takes the cake.

[sawasdee]

@GreyhoundFanIt's all been happening in such quick succession, that I can't remember everything that's gone on.

But in reading that series of events, all I can think is that if it were Hillary.....

The Republicans' heads would have exploded, and there would be eleventy million Special Congressional Committees investigating her.

But we have - crickets.

[JMarie]

4 hours ago, sawasdee said:

I'm truly scared for next Tuesday in Phoenix. Emotions are so inflamed that I think trouble is inevitable at the TT's rally.

 

It doesn't help that Trump's been picking on Arizona's two senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake.

[sawasdee]

I've been reading too much in the Wapo comments lately.

It really is terrifying that ANY story is politicised into left and right - and the politicisation is coming slightly more from the right. A dog is run over? Must be Antifa - or, no, it was the alt right.

The divisions are just getting deeper and more entrenched. (I frequently hate the internet.) I don't know how - or if - these divisions can be healed.

I feel like a spectator at the disintegration of a society, and it scares me to my bones. I don't live in the US, but what becomes of your country affects the world.

Please tell me that these commenters are not representative of the 'silent majority', and that there are still people of sense and judgment, outnumbering the loons? And they are too busy having real lives to crouch over the net?

[Cartmann99]

5 hours ago, sawasdee said:

The (D) mayor has begged him not to come, but he is not only determined to do so, but is dropping massive hints that he will announce a pardon for Joe Arpiao.

I'm torn about what I think Trump will do. There are obviously other red states much closer to Washington D.C. that Trump could hold a rally in, so it makes sense that Trump would go there for Arpaio. On the other hand, Trump's an attention whore, and making everyone think that's what he's going to do, and then not following through with it, would have everybody and their grandma talking about Trump. His fans would babble about how he played the "fake news" media for fools, Trump's obviously playing three dimensional chess, blah, blah, blah,...

I loathe Arpaio, but it sure would be cold as hell for Trump to go to Arizona and not pardon him after everything Arpaio's done to help him. He stabbed Sessions in the back though, so who knows? I guess it all depends on which outcome Trump thinks will get him the highest ratings.

However it all shakes out, I really hope that Governor Ducey and Mayor Stanton have made all the necessary plans for this rally, and are having their people rehearse for what to do if all hell breaks loose. It's better to have a plan like that in place and end up not needing it, than to be scrambling at the last minute.

[sawasdee]

And I misspelt Arpaio - not once, but twice!

But if the TT doesn't pardon him, I would be delighted. Not only would it be morally wrong to do so, , but it might prevent outraged protests if he doesn't.

Unfortunately, I think he WANTS the protests, so he can point at 'alt left' violence.

By the way, when did anyone who opposed Nazism become a leftie? I'm sure that would have surprised Ike, amongst others.

Although thinking about it, Ike would appear a leftie to today's Repug party. He was the last morally responsible and also truly Republican president.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Week 13: Hounded on All Sides, a Cornered President Snarls"

Spoiler

If and when the American Kennel Club gets around to assigning a new breed for dogs that resemble President Donald Trump—portly with short paws and a chow chow mane of Clorox blond?—it should not neglect to single out the breed’s primary behavioral trait: Trump is what dog handlers would call a “fear-biter,” not a naturally fierce or aggressive hound, but one that snaps and chomps when frightened.

A panicky and snarling Trump toothed his way down to bone this week, even burning chief strategist Steve Bannon in a Farewell Friday pyre. Trump’s ostensible topic of the week was white supremacists, with whom he threw in at a news conference and via a tweet triptych. But the intensity of his fury could not be easily explained. Who could have known he felt this strongly about Southern “heritage” beyond the casual racism he drools from time-to-time? As with canine rage, Trump’s fulmination was probably a matter of transference, with some other trauma setting him off. You’d be swamped with generalized wrath, too, if Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller were slithering through your prodigious paper trail as they are Trump’s.

Mueller’s people called on the White House, the New York Times reported on Sunday, about setting up interviews with current and former administration officials to chat about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller wants notes, transcripts, documents, and other markers of meetings hosted inside the Trump kennel. “Among the matters Mr. Mueller wants to ask the officials about is President Trump’s decision in May to fire the FBI director, James B. Comey,” the paper stated, as it pursues its obstruction of justice angle. Of special interest to Mueller: Fired chief of staff Reince Priebus. He appears to have met with former campaign director Paul Manafort on the same June 2016 day Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner met with all of those Russians to inspect allegedly incriminating evidence against Hillary Clinton.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti intuited the greater meaning of Mueller’s interview request in a Tweetstorm, and it indicates that the investigation has reached ramming speed: “It means that Mueller has already acquired all of the documents he believes he needs to question White House staffers. He wouldn’t want to interview them before gathering evidence because he wants to know exactly what questions to ask and be able to confront them with documents if they contradict what he’s being told.”

Journalists like to call evidential stacks of paper “paper trails.” In Trump’s case, the records of business transactions better resemble a paper superhighway. In the August 21 New Yorker, Adam Davidson published his roadmap to just one sliver of Trump’s financial history. As the Mueller dragnet sweeps through Trump’s shady business arrangements, real-estate deals with partners in former Soviet Georgia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and other places, the special counsel has a good chance of snagging on money-laundering operations, Davidson asserts. One deal in Georgia, which earned Trump a reported million dollars, “involved unorthodox financial practices that several experts described to me as ‘red flags’ for bank fraud and money laundering,” he writes, and “intertwined his company with a Kazakh oligarch who has direct links to Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.”

Trump can’t plead that he knew nothing about crooked money, if it comes to that. As retired IRS special agent John Madinger puts it to Davidson, if you’re part of a deal you must perform due diligence on the source of your money. “You have to care—otherwise, you’re at risk of violating laws against money laundering,” Madinger says.

It’s easier than playing fetch with puppies to find the parallels between Trump’s assessment of the white supremacists as “very fine people” and the ease with which he’s done real-estate deal with dodgy people both in Manhattan and overseas. It speaks to the ethical blind spots—a self-inflicted blindness, I should add—that run through everything he touches. At one time or another, we all look the other way when we shouldn’t. Does Trump look away every time?

One must be mindful of who they do business with. They must also be mindful of who works for them. In the early days of the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy wonk of exceeding greenness volunteered his service to Trump. He repeatedly tried to arrange meetings between the campaign and Russian leaders, as the Washington Post, which had “internal emails read” to it, reported. Papadopoulos’ campaign elders kept slapping his invitations down, but his persistence poses the question of whether the Russians had deployed low-level Trump aides to “penetrate” his campaign. It was only three months after Papadopoulos tried to broker a Trump-Putin meeting that Junior, Manafort and Kushner met with the Russians, as the paper notes.

Were Russians running Papadopoulos? If so, what were they up to? “I think they were doing very basic intelligence work,” retired CIA officer Steven L. Hall told the Post. “Who’s out there? Who’s willing to play ball? And how can we use them?”

Worming his way into the Russia interference story this week was Julian Assange, profiled at length in the New Yorker by Raffi Khatchadourian, and attempting some sort of handoff of “new information” to Representative Dana Rohrabacher, the California Republican known as one of Congress’ most pro-Russia members. Assange has long insisted that the hacks of Democratic National Committee emails, which his WikiLeaks organization published, were not provided by the Russians, not even through a cutout. At the same time, his efforts have earned him the status of a Russian intelligence asset in Washington—a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” as CIA Director Mike Pompeo has said.

Khatchadourian concludes that the Podesta emails, liberated in a separate hack and published by WikiLeaks, “only make the connections between WikiLeaks and Russia appear stronger.” If remotely true, this presumably puts Assange on Mueller’s list as an interview subject as well as a suspect in the criminal hacking of the DNC. Trump has distanced himself from WikiLeaks, but we know it makes his heart beat. In the final two months of the campaign, he lavished love on the organization, mentioning it by name 124 times.

A definitive call on who actually hacked the DNC mails beyond “The Russians” got a nudge this week in an unusually dense piece published in the New York Times: An author of malware, who goes by the alias “Profexer,” has turned FBI witness in Ukraine. It’s still not apparent whether Profexer’s malware—which has been used in other Russian hacks in the United States—was used on the DNC servers. But the story adds another dimension to all of the sleuthing and primes us for a follow-up.

Why do some dogs become fear-biters and some do not? Dog handlers tell us that the beasts can become fear-imprinted by trauma after being beaten with sticks or terrorized by sudden and violent intrusions into what they consider their territory. It’s anybody’s guess what made Trump so enraged. Every president has clashed with the press, but there was something about Trump’s Charlottesville presser that placed him in a special category. Always sensitive to criticism, he now growls and nips at every doubting question, baring his teeth at questioners. If he keeps going mad dog on the press, how sanely will he perform when Mueller asks him questions in depositions?

The point in the article that Mueller's investigation must be moving faster than we think because they wouldn't start questioning key staffers, like Rancid Penis, unless they already knew quite a bit. I bet anyone in this sham administration with more than two brain cells is shitting a brick. Also, has it really only been 13 weeks? It seems like 13 years.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another hit in the tangerine wallet: "Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club loses its ninth big charity event this week"

Spoiler

Another Palm Beach charity announced Saturday that it was canceling plans to hold a gala at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club — the ninth to cancel a big-ticket charity event at the club this week.

The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, a charity focused on the ritzy island’s architectural landmarks, had planned to hold a dinner dance at Mar-a-Lago next March. The foundation was a new customer for Trump’s club, and a potentially lucrative one: It spent $244,000 on rent and food on a previous gala at another site, according to tax filings.

But on Saturday, the foundation said it would find another venue.

“Given the current environment surrounding Mar-a-Lago, we have made the decision to move our annual dinner dance,” Amanda Skier, the foundation’s executive director, said in a written statement. She did not say which new venue the foundation would use.

That decision meant that Trump’s club had lost nine of the 16 galas or dinner events that it had been scheduled to host during next winter’s social “season” in Palm Beach. At least three other groups have also canceled charity luncheons there this week.

Those losses could reduce the club’s revenue by hundreds of thousands of dollars by each event, and deny President Trump his dual role as president and host to the island’s partying elite. If he returns to the club for weekends next winter, the president could often find its grand ballrooms quiet and empty.

These cancellations all followed the president’s remarks on the march of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, in which the president said their side had included some “fine people.”

On Friday, the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and Susan G. Komen joined the growing exodus of organizations canceling plans to hold fundraising events at the club.

Susan G. Komen, the nation’s largest breast-cancer fundraising group, said it would seek another venue after hosting its “Perfect Pink Party” gala at Mar-a-Lago every year since 2011.

The Salvation Army, which has held a gala at the club every year since 2014, said in a statement that it would not hold its event there “because the conversation has shifted away” from its mission of helping those in need.

And the American Red Cross said it would cancel its annual fundraiser at the club because “it has increasingly become a source of controversy and pain for many of our volunteers, employees and supporters,” the charity said in a statement.

In a letter to staff Friday, chief executive Gail McGovern said, “The Red Cross provides assistance without discrimination to all people in need — regardless of nationality, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or political opinions — and we must be clear and unequivocal in our defense of that principle.”

Trump’s club earned between $100,000 and $275,000 each from similar-sized events in the past.

But the cancellations also reveal a widening vulnerability for Trump, who, unlike past presidents, refused to divest from his business interests when he joined the White House.

The Trump Organization has not responded to requests for comment.

The charitable groups join three other large event cancellations from Thursday: the Cleveland Clinic, the American Friends of Magen David Adom and the American Cancer Society, which cited its “values and commitment to diversity” in its decision to abandon the club.

Some of the club’s most notable local boosters, with long fundraising histories and deep Palm Beach roots, were also in outright rebellion Friday against the club. Lois Pope, a Mar-a-Lago member and philanthropist who heads the Lois Pope Life Foundation and Leaders In Furthering Education, said she had told her foundation’s board to move its well-known December gala from the club.

“The hatred, vitriol and anti-Semitic and racist views being spewed by neo-Nazis and White Supremacists are repugnant and repulsive,” Pope wrote in a statement. “And anyone who would demonstrate even a modicum of support for them by insisting that there are ‘good people’ among them is not deserving of my personal patronage or that of my foundations.”

One of the cancellations cut close to home for the Trumps. Big Dog Ranch Rescue said Friday it would no longer hold an upcoming event at the club and would instead move it to the group’s facility nearby. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was scheduled to co-chair the event.

The Autism Project of Palm Beach County also said Friday that it is not planning on hosting an event at the club, President Richard Busto told The Post Friday. The local group has held “Renaissance Dinner” galas at Mar-a-Lago every year since at least 2008.

The Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation on Friday also announced it had canceled its annual medical briefing luncheon at the club and will move it to another venue.

“We stand with the community,” the foundation’s co-founder, Dusty Sang, told The Post Friday. “I think people are standing up for what they believe.”

Another group, the Unicorn Children’s Foundation, said it is “currently exploring other options” for a previously planned luncheon at Mar-a-Lago and would make its final decision next month.

The groups’ cancellations follow rebukes from business executives this week, who heavily criticized Trump’s comments that white supremacists and counterprotesters equally shared the blame for a deadly weekend in Charlottesville.

 

[JMarie]

12 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

That decision meant that Trump’s club had lost nine of the 16 galas or dinner events that it had been scheduled to host during next winter’s social “season” in Palm Beach. At least three other groups have also canceled charity luncheons there this week.

I wonder how many weddings and other "smaller" events have been cancelled at Trump properties?

[Zola]

I wonder how he's rationalizing in his own mind to shield his ego. He can't very well say that he canceled on them before they canceled on him.

[Audrey2]

So, there was supposed to be a big right wing protest in Boston today, but few showed up. The counter-protesters were out in full force, and they had awesome signs. I can't post them here, but here is the link.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-supremacists-didn-apos-t-170704170.html

[candygirl200413]

I saw on facebook that someone had "make way for ducklings, not nazis!" and my little boston self loved it! Plus the one in the link talking about the yankees.

Thinking that now we're hitting the 7th month mark (again really that long only?) Part of me is really starting to believe that he might actually resign.

[fraurosena]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Week 13: Hounded on All Sides, a Cornered President Snarls"

  Hide contents

If and when the American Kennel Club gets around to assigning a new breed for dogs that resemble President Donald Trump—portly with short paws and a chow chow mane of Clorox blond?—it should not neglect to single out the breed’s primary behavioral trait: Trump is what dog handlers would call a “fear-biter,” not a naturally fierce or aggressive hound, but one that snaps and chomps when frightened.

A panicky and snarling Trump toothed his way down to bone this week, even burning chief strategist Steve Bannon in a Farewell Friday pyre. Trump’s ostensible topic of the week was white supremacists, with whom he threw in at a news conference and via a tweet triptych. But the intensity of his fury could not be easily explained. Who could have known he felt this strongly about Southern “heritage” beyond the casual racism he drools from time-to-time? As with canine rage, Trump’s fulmination was probably a matter of transference, with some other trauma setting him off. You’d be swamped with generalized wrath, too, if Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller were slithering through your prodigious paper trail as they are Trump’s.

Mueller’s people called on the White House, the New York Times reported on Sunday, about setting up interviews with current and former administration officials to chat about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller wants notes, transcripts, documents, and other markers of meetings hosted inside the Trump kennel. “Among the matters Mr. Mueller wants to ask the officials about is President Trump’s decision in May to fire the FBI director, James B. Comey,” the paper stated, as it pursues its obstruction of justice angle. Of special interest to Mueller: Fired chief of staff Reince Priebus. He appears to have met with former campaign director Paul Manafort on the same June 2016 day Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner met with all of those Russians to inspect allegedly incriminating evidence against Hillary Clinton.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti intuited the greater meaning of Mueller’s interview request in a Tweetstorm, and it indicates that the investigation has reached ramming speed: “It means that Mueller has already acquired all of the documents he believes he needs to question White House staffers. He wouldn’t want to interview them before gathering evidence because he wants to know exactly what questions to ask and be able to confront them with documents if they contradict what he’s being told.”

Journalists like to call evidential stacks of paper “paper trails.” In Trump’s case, the records of business transactions better resemble a paper superhighway. In the August 21 New Yorker, Adam Davidson published his roadmap to just one sliver of Trump’s financial history. As the Mueller dragnet sweeps through Trump’s shady business arrangements, real-estate deals with partners in former Soviet Georgia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and other places, the special counsel has a good chance of snagging on money-laundering operations, Davidson asserts. One deal in Georgia, which earned Trump a reported million dollars, “involved unorthodox financial practices that several experts described to me as ‘red flags’ for bank fraud and money laundering,” he writes, and “intertwined his company with a Kazakh oligarch who has direct links to Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.”

Trump can’t plead that he knew nothing about crooked money, if it comes to that. As retired IRS special agent John Madinger puts it to Davidson, if you’re part of a deal you must perform due diligence on the source of your money. “You have to care—otherwise, you’re at risk of violating laws against money laundering,” Madinger says.

It’s easier than playing fetch with puppies to find the parallels between Trump’s assessment of the white supremacists as “very fine people” and the ease with which he’s done real-estate deal with dodgy people both in Manhattan and overseas. It speaks to the ethical blind spots—a self-inflicted blindness, I should add—that run through everything he touches. At one time or another, we all look the other way when we shouldn’t. Does Trump look away every time?

One must be mindful of who they do business with. They must also be mindful of who works for them. In the early days of the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy wonk of exceeding greenness volunteered his service to Trump. He repeatedly tried to arrange meetings between the campaign and Russian leaders, as the Washington Post, which had “internal emails read” to it, reported. Papadopoulos’ campaign elders kept slapping his invitations down, but his persistence poses the question of whether the Russians had deployed low-level Trump aides to “penetrate” his campaign. It was only three months after Papadopoulos tried to broker a Trump-Putin meeting that Junior, Manafort and Kushner met with the Russians, as the paper notes.

Were Russians running Papadopoulos? If so, what were they up to? “I think they were doing very basic intelligence work,” retired CIA officer Steven L. Hall told the Post. “Who’s out there? Who’s willing to play ball? And how can we use them?”

Worming his way into the Russia interference story this week was Julian Assange, profiled at length in the New Yorker by Raffi Khatchadourian, and attempting some sort of handoff of “new information” to Representative Dana Rohrabacher, the California Republican known as one of Congress’ most pro-Russia members. Assange has long insisted that the hacks of Democratic National Committee emails, which his WikiLeaks organization published, were not provided by the Russians, not even through a cutout. At the same time, his efforts have earned him the status of a Russian intelligence asset in Washington—a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” as CIA Director Mike Pompeo has said.

Khatchadourian concludes that the Podesta emails, liberated in a separate hack and published by WikiLeaks, “only make the connections between WikiLeaks and Russia appear stronger.” If remotely true, this presumably puts Assange on Mueller’s list as an interview subject as well as a suspect in the criminal hacking of the DNC. Trump has distanced himself from WikiLeaks, but we know it makes his heart beat. In the final two months of the campaign, he lavished love on the organization, mentioning it by name 124 times.

A definitive call on who actually hacked the DNC mails beyond “The Russians” got a nudge this week in an unusually dense piece published in the New York Times: An author of malware, who goes by the alias “Profexer,” has turned FBI witness in Ukraine. It’s still not apparent whether Profexer’s malware—which has been used in other Russian hacks in the United States—was used on the DNC servers. But the story adds another dimension to all of the sleuthing and primes us for a follow-up.

Why do some dogs become fear-biters and some do not? Dog handlers tell us that the beasts can become fear-imprinted by trauma after being beaten with sticks or terrorized by sudden and violent intrusions into what they consider their territory. It’s anybody’s guess what made Trump so enraged. Every president has clashed with the press, but there was something about Trump’s Charlottesville presser that placed him in a special category. Always sensitive to criticism, he now growls and nips at every doubting question, baring his teeth at questioners. If he keeps going mad dog on the press, how sanely will he perform when Mueller asks him questions in depositions?

The point in the article that Mueller's investigation must be moving faster than we think because they wouldn't start questioning key staffers, like Rancid Penis, unless they already knew quite a bit. I bet anyone in this sham administration with more than two brain cells is shitting a brick. Also, has it really only been 13 weeks? It seems like 13 years.

What people seem to forget is that this investigation didn't start when Mueller took it on. Rather he took over the FBI investigation that started last summer. So it's nearly 13 months. 

[CTRLZero]

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Another hit in the tangerine wallet

Didn't he donate his paycheck to the National Park Service?  He'll probably be wanting that back.  Nah, he's probably still got those side deals going with Russia...