Trump 34: Leading the Alternate Reality

[fraurosena]

Ok, I'm back on the Seth Abramson train. Not only high crimes and misdemeanor then, but also witness tampering. 

 

[AmericanRose]

If nothing else, I hope they can get Trump on obstruction. It's just so in your face...!

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Apart from all the unforseen legal implications, it looks like the retaliatory effort has not had the desired effect of shutting up a vocal critic. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmericanRose]

Another manufacturer is closing up shop and moving to Mexico because of tariffs. #maga Are we tired of winning yet??

Just for kicks I asked mom what she thought of the tariffs, and this is her response: "First he's busy draining the swamp as he was asked to do from the American people and yes I agree with the tariffs he is doing what is right for the American people, we are tired of being sold out."
Now I'm tempted to ask how she sees this playing out! I'm pretty sure those losing their jobs aren't feeling particularly grateful.* And though she could claim 'fake news', I manage a gas station/c-store combo, and prices have risen over the summer -- we even got a letter from Pepsi stating their intention to raise prices, and they site the unforeseen aluminum tariffs as a reason.

*My dad is essentially retired and my mom hasn't worked in 20 years, so they don't have much skin in the employment game.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/chicago-area-manufacturer-to-lay-off-150-people-as-it-moves-operations-to-mexico-in-part-to-avoid-tariffs-on-chinese-metal/ar-BBLWowg?ocid=spartandhp

[Alisamer]

9 hours ago, AmericanRose said:

Another manufacturer is closing up shop and moving to Mexico because of tariffs. #maga Are we tired of winning yet??

One of the things on my to-do list today is to see what printer supplies we have that come from China, because one of our suppliers is eating tariff costs until September first, and will then be raising prices to cover them. (And we just spent a few thousand on supplies a couple weeks ago...) Some of our material costs have already doubled, and paper prices are rising so quickly we can no longer guarantee pricing for 30 days - any quote older than a week has to be re-quoted to cover paper costs. 

Yay, winning. 

[CTRLZero]

9 hours ago, AmericanRose said:

prices have risen over the summer

I've been keeping my eye on prices, especially since we help shop for my mother-in-law, who is on a very limited income.  The soup she likes has risen over 50 cents per can.  Any back-patting that this administration is giving itself in the way of tax cuts, occasional employee bonuses, stock market increases, etc., is going to be taken back by inflation and the increasing deficit.  This is going to be very tough on most folks (you know, the ones who actually buy their own groceries--looking at you, Trump).

I can almost hear a recession coming our way...

[AmazonGrace]

 

RIP Aretha...

But wut?!?! 

 

[fraurosena]

Lol, it seems somebody whispered something in his ear about the First Amendment, so now he's trying to justify his attacks on the press.

Oh, and I wholeheartedly agree that HONESTY WINS.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Once again, Trump blows up his own lies"

Spoiler

An intriguing pattern is developing: President Trump resolves to strike a blow against the Russia investigation. He enlists his people in developing a rationale for his pending action that disguises its real motive. He carries out the act. He releases a carefully vetted statement elaborating that fake rationale. He then blows up the fake rationale by forthrightly declaring in a freewheeling interview that the act was really about the Russia probe all along.

The latest example of this: In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday night, Trump openly declared that his revocation of former CIA director John Brennan’s security clearance was actually about the Russia investigation.

The detailed statement that the White House released Wednesday to justify this act only referred obliquely to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe, insisting Brennan had misrepresented the importance of the “Steele dossier” to the investigation. (This was the latest in a dishonest effort to spin that dossier as proof the probe is tainted. In fact, independent reporting confirmed its genesis was legitimately based on other information.) The statement’s reasons were that Brennan publicly criticized the administration — this was stated openly — but also, absurdly, that this fact helps our “adversaries” to “sow division.” The statement also argued that Brennan’s “erratic” behavior poses “risks” that disqualify him from holding clearance.

The last two of those are straight up falsehoods. If anything, public criticism of Trump’s posture toward Russia makes it politically harder for him to do nothing about the next round of Russian efforts to “sow division” via more electoral sabotage. The “risk” from Brennan, then, is only a political risk to Trump, which isn’t disqualifying.

Regardless, in his interview with the Journal, Trump blurted out what is really going on here:

Mr. Trump cited Mr. Brennan as among those he held responsible for the investigation …

“I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham,” Mr. Trump said in an interview. “And these people led it!”

He added: “So I think it’s something that had to be done.”

In saying this, Trump tied his revocation directly to his claim that Brennan was one of the people behind the investigation that ultimately became the Mueller probe. This is an explicit declaration that the revocation was driven by a desire to strike a blow against the investigation.

Sound familiar? It should. It harkens back to Trump’s admission of the real reason he fired former FBI director James B. Comey. Trump originally floated as his fake rationale the memo authored by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, which criticized Comey’s unfairness to Hillary Clinton during the email investigation. This was absurd — Trump seized on Comey’s public July 2016 criticism of Clinton as ammunition against her — but then Trump admitted on national television that he had actually fired Comey over anger at the Russia investigation.

Why Trump keeps blurting out his real motive

Why does Trump keep admitting to his real motive in such cases? The best answer is that Trump sees nothing whatsoever wrong with trying to derail the investigation.

Trump and the White House have repeatedly described his efforts to scuttle the investigation as “fighting back.” By all indications, Trump’s stated belief that his attorney general’s proper function is to defend him from the probe — and his rage at Jeff Sessions for failing to carry out that task — appear entirely heartfelt. He plainly believes it would be entirely within his rights to remove Mueller if he could get away with it, and he has only backed off his efforts to do this when faced with internal resistance. Trump has told us, over and over, that he views law enforcement as merely an instrument of his political will, and the totality of his behavior underscores that he simply doesn’t believe rules and laws should apply to him.

The most charitable interpretation of Trump’s posture is that he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong and that the probe really is illegitimate, justifying his efforts to scuttle it. But even this would not be exonerating. Trump has openly declared that Donald Trump Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting was just fine. But if Trump actually believes this, it is damning, because there is something wrong with it: Don Jr. was eager to conspire with a hostile foreign power to corrupt our election to help his father. And even if Trump sincerely believes his campaign did nothing wrong, he is still trying to scuttle a full accounting of that adversary’s effort to sabotage our democracy — irrespective of his own campaign’s role in that effort — which makes more sabotage later more likely.

A worrisome endgame

Trump, of course, does not recognize that there are good institutional reasons to refrain from trying to derail the investigation even if he does think he did nothing wrong. That’s why it is so worrisome that Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani has now told The Post that he will fight a subpoena for a Mueller interview all the way to the Supreme Court. This is an extremely important detail:

Giuliani said the Trump legal team, which briefed Trump last week, is mapping out a subpoena battle that could stretch on for months.

“Even if we responded in 10 days to a subpoena, it would have to be decided by a district court judge, and you could appeal it in a circuit court, and then you argue it before the Supreme Court, if it ever got there,” he said.

This timetable raises the possibility that Trump’s team could try to drag this out to the point at which Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh is on the high court when the battle over Mueller’s subpoena reaches it. There is a strong public interest in seeing Trump answer questions about all of these matters. But Trump has no sense of any obligation to the public of any kind. And if Trump sees nothing wrong with hobbling the probe by any means he can get away with, why would he refrain from trying to get away with this, as well?

 

[Rachel333]

Dude is not doing well today.

 

[Destiny]

13 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

Dude is not doing well today.

 

What the actual fucking fuck did I just read? 

[fraurosena]

Dude can spew hate off the top of his head, but needs a prompt and read something somebody else wrote for him off a note when expressing sympathies. And he flubs the sincerity part, of course. He reads without any empathetic inflection in his voice. 

Oh, and did you know?  He knew this person well. And people loved her. (Note that he doesn't say I or we). 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Here's what a real president had to say about Aretha. Gee, doesn't seem prompted or fake, unlike Dumpy.

 

[formergothardite]

1 hour ago, Rachel333 said:

Dude is not doing well today.

 

Prove what? I don't understand. He really isn't doing well today. Rufus help us my great grandchildren will be studying this crap in school because these are official statements. Can you image future generations reading this and having to write reports?

50 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

And he flubs the sincerity part, of course. He reads without any empathetic inflection in his voice. 

Yes, he could be reading a grocery list for all the sympathy that is in his voice. They took him away from Twitter and told him he had to do this. 

[fraurosena]

The plastic trophy wife in the WH now is completely and utterly silent. Thankfully the last real First Lady had something thoughtful to say.

 

[fraurosena]

I'm not surprised but still disgusted.

Tom Arnold: Trump called his son Eric ‘the R-word’ in a tape

Quote

Comedian Tom Arnold said on Wednesday night that he’s seen a tape of President Trump calling his son Eric Trump “the R-word.”

Arnold appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and claimed that he’s seen a compilation video of outtakes from Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice” in which Trump uses racial slurs and calls his son a vulgar term for the mentally disabled.

Washington has been buzzing since former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman accused Trump of being a racist in her new book.

She wrote that she’s heard a tape of Trump using a racial slur while she was a contestant on his show.

Arnold told Kimmel on Wednesday that he’s “absolutely” seen that tape.

He said that producers were required by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to tape all of their interactions with Trump since he was the game show’s host.

A spokesperson for the FCC told The Hill that they could not confirm Arnold's claim, directing questions to its rules that govern contests and lotteries.

“There’s two people who haven’t called me a liar about the N-word tape: Donald Trump and Mark Burnett,” Arnold claimed, referencing the creator of “The Apprentice.”

“Because they know it’s true, they absolutely know it’s true,” Arnold continued.

Trump disputed Manigault Newman’s accusation on Tuesday, claiming Burnett called him to say no such tapes exist.

"I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up," Trump tweeted, deriding his former aide as "Wacky and Deranged Omarosa."

 

Arnold said Burnett threatened him to keep quiet about the tapes.

“Mark Burnett told me ‘do not talk about it because I’m the most powerful man in show business and Donald Trump is my best friend,’” Arnold claimed.

Arnold is promoting his new show, “The Hunt for the Trump Tapes,” which will premiere next month on Viceland.

He has claimed that he has unreleased recordings to Trump similar to the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape released during the 2016 presidential race. 

The comedian is now calling on Burnett and MGM Studio to release tapes from the days when Trump was on set so Americans can see what Trump was really like before “The Apprentice” was edited.

“He’s incompetent, he’s racist, he sexually assaults people —  they edit it into a 20 minute show and 20 minutes of the board room set,” Arnold told Kimmel.

Arnold, the ex-husband of actress and outspoken Trump supporter Roseanne Barr, said his goal is to get Trump to resign “before he really destroys” the country.

Link to Tom Arnold on Jimmy Kimmel Live within quote.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, Rachel333 said:

Dude is not doing well today.

 

Reality is colluding against Donnie.

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

The plastic trophy wife in the WH now is completely and utterly silent. Thankfully the last real First Lady had something thoughtful to say.

 

It's mid-August, so Melania is probably locked in her room with the September issue of Vogue.

[GreyhoundFan]

Two more important thoughts about the security clearance issue:

 

 

 

[formergothardite]

You know his handlers begged him not to go out and say that he did this because of the Russia investigation. At this point the ship to shut down the investigation without causing riots has sailed, Trump just hasn't realized it. The tactics he has used his entire life to make things that annoy him go away are just backfiring. He isn't going to change, though. 

[GreyhoundFan]