Trump 33: Making Norman Bates Look Like a Choir Boy

[fraurosena]

I thought the EU were foes... Silly me. That was last week. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Jennifer Rubin: "The emoluments case is the nightmare Trump has long feared"

Spoiler

The Post reports:

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected President Trump’s latest effort to stop a lawsuit that alleges Trump is violating the Constitution by continuing to do business with foreign governments.

The ruling, from U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte in Greenbelt, Md., will allow the plaintiffs in the case — the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia — to proceed with their case, which says Trump has violated the Constitution’s little-used emoluments clause.

The plaintiffs now want to interview Trump Organization employees and search company records to determine which foreign countries have spent money at Trump’s hotel in downtown Washington.

This is the nightmare — or one of them — that Trump has long feared, namely litigation in which his business operations, perhaps even his tax returns, are laid bare. Norman Eisen, who is co-counsel with the District and Maryland, tells me, “It is another major crack in the dam that has so far been holding back accountability. [Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III] is closing in; [Michael] Cohen is about to cut a deal; and now we have taken another leap forward in being able to understand how Trump is profiting off the presidency, including possibly from Russia.” He adds, “‘Follow the money,’ the old adage goes, and we are going to do exactly that thanks to this decision.”

The decision, running over 50 pages, is an impressive, detailed analysis of the Constitution and 18th century language. This is a judge who did his homework. The ruling is the inevitable result of Trump’s decision to maintain ownership of his far-flung business operations and to continue to reap the benefits, foreign and domestic, resulting from his presidency. (Ivanka Trump sure seems prescient in her decision to dump her clothing business, which raises many of the same issues of conflicts of interest and foreign emoluments as her father faces.) The court held: “Plaintiffs have convincingly argued that the term ’emolument’ in both the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses, with slight refinements that the Court will address, means any ‘profit,’ ‘gain,’ or ‘advantage’ and that accordingly they have stated claims to the effect that the President, in certain instances, has violated both the Foreign and Domestic Clauses.” In doing so, the court rejected Trump’s argument that an emolument is only an emolument if the president gives the foreign government something in return. The court explained:

The text of both Clauses strongly indicates that the broader meaning of “emolument” advanced by Plaintiffs was meant to apply. As Plaintiffs point out, the Foreign Clause bans, without Congressional approval, “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8 (emphasis added). Use of such expansive modifiers significantly undermines the President’s argument that this Clause was meant to prohibit only payment for official services rendered in an employment-type relationship. If there were any doubt as to the limits of the Foreign Clause, the Framers used the word “any” twice, ensuring a broad and expansive reach. The President’s argument that these modifiers merely ensure that the Foreign Clause bans receipt of every type of “present,” “emolument,” “office,” or “title” is unconvincing. Even without the inclusion of the modifier “of any kind whatever” in the Foreign Clause, it would still ban every type of prohibited category because it provides no exceptions. If “no word was unnecessarily used,” as the President argues … his own position runs aground. The more logical conclusion is the one that Plaintiffs urge: The use of “any kind whatever” was intended to ensure the broader meaning of the term “emolument.”

The court cited approvingly Maryland and D.C.’s argument that “the purpose of the Clause was to prevent the least possibility of undue influence and corruption being exerted upon the President by foreign governments. … That is, the Framers created a prophylactic rule to prevent the slightest chance of such influence.”

Likely included in the broad definition endorsed by the court would be hotel room rentals, trademarks, licensing deals and other benefits afforded to Trump businesses. While the Constitution allows Congress to approve emoluments, the emoluments have to be identified. If Democrats take one or both houses in the midterms, you can be sure they will not approve any foreign receipts, but rather, will dig to find Trump’s foreign monies and perhaps even make him cough them up. Trump might finally face the prospect of choosing between his business interests and his presidency.

Laurence Tribe, who along with Eisen has been making the emoluments argument in court and in the court of public opinion, says, “It’s an extremely significant ruling, the first federal judicial decision addressing — and endorsing — the theory we have been advancing on the Emoluments Clause ever since the start of the Trump administration.” On that, Trump would no doubt agree. You can be sure Trump will try to appeal the ruling.

UPDATE: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington released a statement, which read in part: “This is a historic day for the Constitution. We are honored and proud to represent the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia alongside Attorneys General Brian Frosh and Karl Racine as a federal court considers evidence of presidential violations of the Emoluments Clauses for the first time. ” CREW continued, “Americans need to know that their president is acting in their interest and not in the interest of his private businesses. President Trump has refused again and again to separate himself from his business empire to avoid pervasive conflicts of interest and constitutional violations. A court has now decided that the Emoluments Clauses, put in place by the framers of the Constitution to protect against corruption, are broad and can be enforced in court.” CREW concluded, “We look forward to working with Maryland and the District of Columbia to prove their case and stop these insidious violations.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"America First or Trump First?"

Spoiler

The second I finished watching President Trump fawning over Vladimir Putin in Helsinki — refusing to defend the conclusions of his own intelligence services about Russia’s interference in our 2016 elections — I knew I was seeing something I’d never seen before. It took a few days to figure it out, but now it’s obvious: I was seeing a U.S. president put Russia first, not America first.

On each key question — how much Russian agents were involved in trying to tip our elections, how that issue should be further investigated, and Putin’s behavior on the world stage generally (like his government’s involvement in the downing of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, the murder of Russian journalists and the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the U.K.) — Trump embraced Putin’s explanations and excuses over the judgments of his own spy agencies, Justice Department, European allies and bedrock American values.

I like what Arnold Schwarzenegger said to Trump afterward: “You’re the president of the United States. You shouldn’t do that. What’s the matter with you?”

What’s the matter with you? I don’t know the definitive answer to that question, but I know that it will be an increasing problem as we enter Phase 3 of the Trump presidency.

Phase 1 saw Trump unhinged but bound — bound by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Economic Adviser Gary Cohn. In Phase 1 Trump said and did plenty of crazy stuff, but these key aides limited the damage.

Phase 2 has seen Trump unhinged and unbound. Trump has neutered Kelly, distanced himself from Mattis and sacked Tillerson, McMaster and Cohen. He replaced the last three with men so hungry for their jobs that they were ready to step over the bodies of their predecessors, who, they knew, were pushed out for standing up to Trump on policies and principles.

Watching longtime anti-Russia hawks — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton — shucking off everything they’ve said over the years and ignoring Trump’s coddling of Putin and his trashing of the F.B.I. in order to grab jobs they’d long coveted is witnessing careerism, sycophancy and cynicism on an industrial scale.

But that sets up Trump Phase 3: unhinged and unbound and unintended.

What are the unintended consequences of a U.S. president simultaneously starting trade wars with China, the European Union and Canada, putting Russia first over America first, preferring Putin and other autocrats over our traditional democratic allies, slashing corporate taxes and supercharging the national debt — without any compensating tax increases or spending cuts, thereby putting pressure on interest rates and the trade deficit — ignoring climate change and eliminating all restraints on the exploitation of fossil fuels, breaking the Iran nuclear deal and now threatening war with Iran, limiting immigration into our already tight labor markets, steadily eroding Obamacare and violating so many norms of how a president should behave toward his staff, allies and Americans not from his own party?

What are the unintended consequences of all of these at once — none of which have been the product of traditional interagency analyses or expert hearings in Congress, but simply the crude fulfillment of campaign promises that emerged from Trump’s gut?

Who knows? Maybe there will be some good consequences — maybe China and Iran will cave to Trump’s demands; maybe the economy and stock market will continue to surge; maybe the early promising signs from Trump’s impulsive outreach to North Korea will bear fruit.

What I know for sure, though, is that no U.S. president can break so many longstanding relationships, ignore so much basic science and economics and violate so many norms of presidential behavior without unintended consequences. But they will take time to play out.

For instance, as Nader Mousavizadeh, co-founder of Macro Advisory Partners, a geopolitical consulting firm based in London, put it to me: “What America’s allies in Europe learned from Trump’s recent visit is that the United States, at his direction, is acting more like predator than partner. They are concluding that Trump is not looking for a better deal with the European Union. He’s looking to destroy the European Union. And even though they understand the difference between the president and the government he leads, they know the West may never be the same again.”

So, with the G.O.P. having completely folded and with the few Trump advisers with spine neutered or fired, is there any restraint left around him?

There is one critical defense line left — that formed by F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. By coincidence, two days after Helsinki, all four spoke at the Aspen Security Forum, which I attended.

Wray, Coats and Rosenstein all rose to the occasion. They knew Helsinki was a test of their institutions and themselves, and they passed it with flying colors — always putting America first and not Trump first when it really mattered.

Wray was unflinching. Asked about Putin’s denials in Helsinki of involvement in our election, Wray said: “He’s got his view. He’s expressed his view. I can tell you what my view is. The intelligence community’s assessment has not changed, my view has not changed, which is that Russia attempted to interfere with the last election and that it continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day.”

Wray also let lawmakers and other critics know that their conspiracy theories about the F.B.I. and Justice Department’s Russia investigations were not intimidating him: “I’m a low-key, understated guy, but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made out of. I’ll leave it at that.”

Coats had already demonstrated his steel and integrity before coming to the conference. Immediately after Trump’s performance in Helsinki impugning the conclusions of the intelligence agencies, Coats put out a statement defending them. He gave the White House a heads-up that it was coming — but did not ask, “Captain, may I?”

Coats said: “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.”

Rosenstein backed up Coats 100 percent, declaring: “As Director Coats made clear, these [Russian] actions are persistent, they are pervasive, and they are meant to undermine America’s democracy on a daily basis, regardless of whether it is election time or not.”

Unfortunately, the secretary of homeland security showed no such spine. Asked if the Russians had intervened to favor Trump, Nielsen said with a straight face: “I haven’t seen any evidence that the attempts to interfere in our election infrastructure was to favor a particular political party. I think what we’ve seen on the foreign influence side is they were attempting to intervene and cause chaos on both sides.”

That was the sound of a senior national security official putting Trump first, not America first. Nielsen proved to be a shameful coward. I sure hope we do not have a homeland security crisis on her watch.

Which brings me back to Schwarzenegger’s question — “What’s the matter with you?” It applies not just to the president but also all the people enabling him. Why do they so freely sacrifice their own reputations and their own integrity to defend a man with no integrity, a man who would sell each and every one of them down the river the second he decided it was in his interest? It is inexplicable to me.

At least Stormy Daniels got paid.

 

[AmazonGrace]

This might be an aide tweet but it's still odd

[AmazonGrace]

I feel vindicated as Stephen Colbert agrees with me:  Man not smart:

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump lies. And lies. And lies."

Spoiler

“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

When the history of the Trump era is written, this quotation from our president will play a prominent role in explaining the distemper of our moment and the dysfunction of his administration. Trump was talking about media coverage of his trade war, but he was also describing his genuinely novel approach to governing: He believes that reality itself can be denied and that big lies can sow enough confusion to keep the truth from taking hold.

This has advantages for Trump, because it dulls the impact of any new revelation. Old falsehoods simply get buried under new ones. Take the recording of his September 2016 conversation with his onetime lawyer Michael Cohen that was released Tuesday night.

Cohen’s attorney put out the tape, which, as The Post’s Carol D. Leonnig and Robert Costa reported, shows that Trump “appeared familiar with a deal that a Playboy model made to sell the rights to her story of an alleged affair with him.” Karen McDougal sold her tale to the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media. The tabloid never ran her account, which clearly protected Trump from this embarrassing tale before the election, although its management has denied that this was its intention.

Trump’s lawyer and battering ram Rudolph W. Giuliani insisted that the recording portrayed a Trump who “doesn’t seem that familiar with anything” that was discussed. This was, shall we say, an eccentric way of hearing the conversation.

Obfuscated in this back-and-forth is the fact that four days before the 2016 election, Hope Hicks, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, denied the affair altogether and said that the campaign had “no knowledge” of any payoff.

Trump’s behavior would be bad enough if it were only about his personal life and his treatment of women. But the big-lie strategy extends to policy and national security as well.

For example, the Commerce Department, which runs the census, claimed this year that it added a question asking if respondents were citizens in response to the Justice Department’s desire to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The question is a terrible idea. Six former Census Bureau directors under both Republican and Democratic presidents urged Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross not to include it. They warned that doing so “will considerably increase the risks to the 2020 enumeration.”

The fear is that many immigrants, documented and especially undocumented, would be reluctant to answer the census if the question were part of it, leading to an undercounting of places with substantial foreign-born populations.

But for the Trump administration, this is not a problem. It’s the goal. Undercounting immigrants would have the effect of shifting political power — as well as federal money — largely to Republican areas that have lower immigrant populations.

And documents turned over this week in response to a lawsuit against the addition of the citizenship question showed that Ross lobbied for its inclusion much earlier and more actively than his later sworn testimony had indicated. “Lying to Congress is a serious criminal offense, and Secretary Ross must be held accountable,” said Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Trump’s former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon had also pushed for the question when he was in the White House.

The Justice Department acted months later, a clear sign that the department’s alleged concern for civil rights was simply a pretext for a politically motivated skewing of valuable public information. Distorting data collection is an attack on the truth, too.

And when it comes to creating new and unhinged narratives to displace those rooted in fact, Trump has no equal. Thus did the man who stood next to Vladimir Putin when the Russian leader said he wanted Trump to win in 2016 declare this week — with no evidence whatsoever — that Russia “will be pushing very hard for the Democrats” in this fall’s elections.

Contrary to liberal fears, most of the country doesn’t believe him. Trump’s core support, measured by the proportion in Wednesday’s NPR/“PBS NewsHour”/Marist poll who strongly approve of him, is down to 25 percent.

The bad news is that, among Republicans, his strong-approval number stands at 62 percent. Trump’s hope of clinging to power rests on the assumption that he can continue inventing enough false story lines to keep his party at bay. His theory seems to be that a lie is as good as the truth as long as the right people believe it.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Now they're back where they started, lying about the weather 

 

[47of74]

Fuck face did some whining about twitter

Quote

President Donald Trump accused Twitter on Thursday of "discriminatory and illegal practice," vowing in a tweet to "look into" the matter.

Investors, already unnerved by Facebook's plunge, shed Twitter shares. The stock was down 4.3 percent in early trading Thursday, including a 1 percent additional decline immediately after Trump's comments.

Trump called out a practice commonly called "shadow banning," in which Twitter limits visibility in search results for particular accounts. Trump, following a Vice report about the practice, claimed the company is limiting the reach of "prominent Republicans."

A spokesperson for Twitter declined to comment on Trump's tweet but told CNBC in an email: "As we have said before, we do not 'shadowban.' We are aware that some accounts are not automatically populating in our search box, and shipping a change to address this. The profiles, Tweets and discussions about these accounts do appear when you search for them. To be clear, our behavioral ranking doesn't make judgments based on political views or the substance of Tweets."

 

And fuck face has arrived here in Iowa.

Quote

President Trump has arrived with his daughter Ivanka in Dubuque. 

The President will visit Northeast Iowa Community College in Peosta this morning. 

Thought I smelled something bad in the air around here. 

Of course our branch trumpvidian congress person is orange nosing now over fuck face's visit...

[Cartmann99]

Mueller's watching you, Donnie!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@47of74 -- let us know if you need bail money for flipping off fornicate face.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Good grief. Juncker came prepared with childish cue cards. 

From the article:

Quote

Mr. Juncker grabbed the opportunity to argue that both sides need to refrain from further punitive tariffs or they would foolishly harm themselves.

“If you want to be stupid,” he told Mr. Trump, “I can be stupid, as well.”

Backing up his points, Mr. Juncker flipped through more than a dozen colorful cue cards with simplified explainers, the senior EU official said. Each card had at most three figures about a specific topic, such as trade in cars or standards for medical devices.

“We knew this wasn’t an academic seminar,” the EU official said. “It had to be very simple.”

Juncker came prepared with childish cue cards. How well they know him.

[Cartmann99]

Why do Trump's lawyers seem so gobsmacked that other lawyers actually know how to do their jobs??? 

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Juncker came prepared with childish cue cards. How well they know him.

I wonder if they were mostly pictures, since Dumpy seems to be functionally illiterate.

 

3 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Why do Trump's lawyers seem so gobsmacked that other lawyers actually know how to do their jobs??? 

Because they judge the quality of a lawyer on how loud he or she screams as a guest on Faux News.

[47of74]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@47of74 -- let us know if you need bail money for flipping off fornicate face.

Yeah it would've been so worth it to give that orange fuck my one fingered opinion of him and his groupies.

He was peddling his horseshit and had more hats to pass out.  Probably made in China or somewhere else overseas.  And of course our rather useless Governor and US Rep had to engage in some serious orange nosing.  Oh, and his useless daughter was also there to clap on command.

Probably by now the local reich wingers are all rubbing one out to what Donny and his groupies said.  (Yeah, I know, ewwww)

[Cartmann99]

 

 

[onekidanddone]

1 minute ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

 

Michael Cohen should hire a food taster

[Destiny]

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