Trump 35: Still an Asshole to Everyone but Ivanka

[AmazonGrace]

White House aides leaked it huh

 

 

[fraurosena]

Desperately trying to appease the minority voters today.

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

 

Somebody has a bit of a persecution complex, don't they?

[WiseGirl]

Not sure where to post this, but I want to make sure everyone knows! I can't wait for dessert. ?

 

[AnywhereButHere]

Oh, would that it were true...

[JMarie]

On 9/1/2018 at 11:22 AM, fraurosena said:

Sweet Rufus, he's having a complete terrible toddler tantrum. He's now at loggerheads with his own Congress. Could it be because they're all at McCain's funeral and he's not welcome?

 

 

So he wants to exclude Canada from the new NAFTA deal?  He does know who's in NAFTA, right?  It's us, Canada, and Mexico.  We all know how he feels about Mexico.  So without Canada, it's just the United States.  Are we supposed to have a trade deal with ourselves??

[fraurosena]

22 minutes ago, JMarie said:

So he wants to exclude Canada from the new NAFTA deal?  He does know who's in NAFTA, right?  It's us, Canada, and Mexico.  We all know how he feels about Mexico.  So without Canada, it's just the United States.  Are we supposed to have a trade deal with ourselves??

Haven’t you heard? Apparently he thinks he’s made a trade deal with Mexico already (never mind that it’s only an agreement about auto parts or something and not an actual deal in any sense of the word) and now he believes he can do away with NAFTA. Because who needs Canada? Also, Canada is being nasty with his other besties, the Saudi’s, so he’ll show them they shouldn’t mess with his blackmailers friends! So there, stupid Canada!

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin: "What could possibly go wrong when Trump goes to Texas?"

Spoiler

President Trump, riding to the rescue of the underperforming campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), tweeted on Friday: “I will be doing a major rally for Senator Ted Cruz in October. I’m picking the biggest stadium in Texas we can find.” Hmm. According to World Atlas, Kyle Field at Texas A&M University sits 102,512. Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, where the University of Texas at Austin Longhorns football team plays, sits 100,119 but somehow crammed in 102,315 for a game in 2016. AT&T Stadium, home to the Dallas Cowboys, has “a seating capacity of 80,000, but can be expanded to 100,000 when necessary. The maximum capacity of the stadium, including standing room, is 105,000. A record attendance of 108,713 was reached on February 14, 2010, during the 2010 NBA All-Star Game.”

So if Trump wants to keep his promise and show Texas is still deep red, he’ll need to fill a stadium with 100,000-plus seats. If not, expect a lot of shots of empty seats, or graphs comparing whatever small facility he manages to fill. (He’s very sensitive about crowd size, you know.) That sort of mishap is only one of the problems that might afflict a Trump-Cruz rally.

Trump might insult the recently deceased Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). However, in Texas, they consider POWs who underwent torture to be heroes.

Trump might brag about his zero-tolerance policy. That might not sit well with Texans, who according to a June poll oppose the administration’s separation of families at the border by an overwhelming margin. (“Overall, 28 percent of Texas voters support the practice — 16 percent strongly so — while 57 percent oppose it — 44 percent strongly so.”)

Trump could thump his chest about rescinding the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals. Then again, a federal judge in Texas refused to allow the administration to suspend DACA. Moreover, past polling shows that about 60 percent of Texans support extending DACA.

Trump’s presence might give local media the excuse to run all those clips of Trump calling Cruz “Lyin’ Ted,” or of Cruz calling Trump a “pathological liar.”

Trump also might let the cat out of the bag, telling voters that a new Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh would reverse Roe v. Wade. Because Cruz opposes abortions in the case of rape, Cruz’s opponent Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.) would be able to remind voters that the Trump-Cruz formula would have pregnant rape victims driving hundreds of miles to obtain a legal abortion.

In addition, Trump might tout his trade war. That’s a problem in Texas. “Tens of billions of dollars of goods are traded between China and Texas each year. Texas imported over $42 billion in goods from the country in 2017, second only to Mexico,” the Texas Tribune reported in July. “It exported about $16 billion in goods to China, placing it behind only Mexico and Canada.” Moreover: “Cotton is the state’s 10th largest export. Nearly half of the U.S. cotton exported to China comes from Texas. Soy is a smaller market for Texas, but China is the state’s largest international soy customer. Texas exports about $157 million worth of corn a year, making it the 13th largest exporter of the crop in the country, though U.S. corn exports to China have dropped precipitously over the past few years due to increased regulations on the Chinese side.” You get the idea.

Trump could boast about denying federal workers a raise. However, according to the Labor Department, as of June 2017 there were 199,760 federal employees in the state. When they hear Trump boast about indexing capital gains, they might get really mad. As the Tax Policy Center pointed out, “The 3 percent of returns with [adjusted gross income] over $200,000 reported 31 percent of AGI and 83 percent of capital gains; the 0.3 percent with AGI over $1,000,000 reported 15 percent of AGI and 61 percent of capital gains.” Cruz could then have to explain how he can be for the “little guy.”

Finally, Trump might brag about wanting to repeal Obamacare and refusing to defend the protection for people with preexisting conditions. It’s estimated that 27 percent of Texans under 65 — more than 4.5 million people  — have preexisting conditions. Good luck explaining that one.

Don’t underestimate Trump’s ability to gin up the base. By the same token, his presence also amounts to waving a red flag in front of those outside his base who’ll be equally if not more fired up. And it just so happens that Trump’s views on the issue I’ve noted above don’t even pull support from a majority of Texans. Cruz may still win by virtue of the sheer number of Republicans in the state. It’s nevertheless sort of remarkable that he needs to come crawling to Trump to help win what should be a slam-dunk race.

 

[WiseGirl]

Apologies if posted previously or elsewhere. But it makes my little heart sing.

A summary of the multiple investigations into Trump.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-investigations_us_5b85861de4b0511db3d229d7

*dances off to make the gluten-free version of Fuck Trump Fudge Cake - yes, I love that name.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Nothing to see here, just a president getting upset that his attorney general didn't squash an investigation into political allies.

 

[AmazonGrace]

The president is angry that the FBI investigates Russian spies, even if it's got nothing to do with him.

 

[seraaa]

I honestly didn't know which thread to put this in, but, well, the President has tweeted about it before so...

 

1 minute ago, AmazonGrace said:

The president is angry that the FBI investigates Russian spies, even if it's got nothing to do with him.

 

He's really outdoing himself on the ol' twitter today

[GreyhoundFan]

Excellent piece from Eugene Robinson: "Why Trump is so frantic right now"

Spoiler

President Trump’s incoherence grows to keep pace with his desperation. These days, he makes less sense than ever — a sign that this malignant presidency has entered a new, more dangerous phase.

I can’t be the only one who thinks he sounds less like an elected official than like the leader of some apocalyptic cult. Look at the way he rails against the news media at his revival-style campaign rallies. In Indiana on Thursday night, he seemed obsessed with news stories that had described empty seats and a subdued crowd at a West Virginia rally several days earlier. He claimed those reports were “fake news,” although they were demonstrably true.

Trump also said that “when I start screaming ‘fake news,’ you see those red lights go off for a little while,” referring to the television news cameras. The suggestion was that the news media do not want the public to know of his “fake news” attacks, which is insanely untrue — if anything, we give far too much coverage to that dangerous nonsense. And as all at the rally could see, the little red lights stayed on.

But although Trump’s rant was divorced from reality, it was also coldly calculated. He has waged a relentless campaign to persuade his staunch supporters to believe his words over the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

This is an astonishing thing to have to say about an American president, but Trump is taking a page from the playbook of totalitarian dictators: Believe only me. Reality is what I say it is. Anyone who claims otherwise is an Enemy of the People .

Is it working? For some Trump supporters, all too well. On Thursday, a California man was arrested on federal charges of making death threats against journalists at the Boston Globe, which had led some 200 newspapers in making a coordinated response to Trump’s attacks against the media. The man, who allegedly said he planned to shoot Globe reporters “in the head,” reportedly owned 20 guns. In one threatening call, he denounced the newspaper’s employees as an “enemy of the people.”

But a Post poll published Friday showed Trump’s approval rating having fallen to 36 percent, with disapproval at 60 percent. More significantly, more than half of those polled — an incredible 53 percent — said they “strongly” disapproved of Trump’s performance.

That number points to one reason Trump is so frantic right now. Such intensity of feeling against him suggests there may indeed be a “blue wave” in the November elections that gives Democrats control of the House and perhaps even threatens a few surprises in the Senate.

Trump has been able to get away with the political equivalent of murder largely because the Republican-led Congress protects him, refusing to do its constitutional duty. It won’t call him on his many lies; it won’t investigate his financial conflicts of interest; it won’t hold his Cabinet members accountable; and with the exception thus far of the Senate Intelligence Committee, it won’t even seriously investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

House committees led by Democrats would do all of these things and more. The most immediate threat to Trump from the election is not impeachment, though we may eventually reach that point. Rather, it is the prospect of genuine oversight and serious investigation. Scrutiny is Trump’s kryptonite.

The other thing Trump fears, of course, is the Robert S. Mueller III investigation writ large. The probe by the special counsel has now metastasized to involve the Southern District of New York, the New York state attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney. Trump’s former campaign chairman was convicted on eight felony counts, and his former personal lawyer pleaded guilty to eight felonies — on the same day. Trump’s longtime accountant and a tabloid publisher who kept Trump’s secrets locked in a safe are talking to prosecutors under grants of immunity.

Nothing in Trump’s history suggests he is going to sit back and let this process unfold — and perhaps destroy him. Everyone should assume this will get ugly.

Trump desperately wants an attorney general who will shut Mueller down. The incumbent, Jeff Sessions, cannot do so because he is recused from the matter. Republican senators who once warned Trump not to dare fire Sessions now seem resigned to the fact that Trump will do just that.

It makes sense for Trump to make his move after the election. If Republicans still control Congress, he’ll get away with it. If Democrats take charge, he won’t. If anyone asks you what’s at stake in November, tell them democracy and justice.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

This puts a whole lot of things in a totally different light.

Donald Trump Considered Path to Presidency Starting at Governor’s Mansion in New York

Quote

In late December 2013, after Donald J. Trump had met with a number of Republicans to discuss a possible run for governor of New York, he received a memo from an attendee, a freshman assemblyman from upstate.

The four-page briefing outlined the challenges that most first-time political candidates face, including “endless chicken dinners” and a high probability of a “loss of income from serving in government.”

But the document also had the particular interests of Mr. Trump in mind: It was titled “Springboards to the Presidency.”

Mr. Trump has a long history of musing about running for office, and then abandoning the idea. His flirtation with the 2014 race for governor was viewed then as another headline-grabbing stunt, much as his current presidential bid had been initially dismissed.

But unlike previous dalliances, Mr. Trump’s deliberation on whether to challenge Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, would be far more than a public-relations trifle.

An examination by The New York Times of contemporaneous documents and emails, as well as interviews with people who met with Mr. Trump during that period, found how he carefully weighed a run, measuring whether the governor’s office was a necessary steppingstone to his long-held goal: the White House. His calculations at the time run contrary to the seat-of-the-pants image he projects on the campaign trail, and offer a look at a formative stage of his presidential ambitions.

He discussed with state Republican leaders the idea of using the governorship as a platform to run for president, a situation in which he would serve for a year or so and be succeeded by his lieutenant governor.

Mr. Trump also foreshadowed themes that have surfaced on the campaign trail, giving a blunt assessment of what he felt was ailing New York State and the country: jobs going overseas, crushing taxes, restrictive gun laws.

During another meeting with state Republican leaders at Trump Tower in Manhattan, the conversation migrated to the nation’s future. Mr. Trump told them he did not think the country could withstand eight years of Hillary Clinton after eight years of President Obama, according to a document summarizing the meeting. Mr. Trump added that he wanted to “save the country” from debt and felt the political left was going to destroy the American work ethic.

“He made it clear he wanted to run for president,” said Daniel W. Isaacs, then the Republican Party chairman in Manhattan, who attended the meeting. “Our pitch was if he runs for governor and makes it, he would be the presumptive front-runner.”

For his supporters, the recruitment drive offered an unexpected look at Mr. Trump’s budding strategy to capture the White House, which he predicted he would begin in 2015. As such, they tailored their local pitch to his national ambitions, saying that his road to Washington almost certainly ran through Albany.

“The most common path to the presidency is through a governor’s office (19 out of 43) and the most common governor’s office to hold is New York (4 out of 19),” Assemblyman Bill Nojay, the freshman legislator who represents the Rochester area, wrote in the memo given to Mr. Trump and a small group of Republicans.

Mr. Trump hosted numerous meetings with state Republican leaders at his office in Trump Tower, used his private jet to attend upstate rallies and even tried to secure the support of another voting bloc, the Conservative Party.

His allies commissioned a poll, and in one meeting even presented Mr. Trump with documentation to register an official exploratory committee, with a notary public at the ready.

Many would-be Trump organizers were convinced that he was serious about unseating Mr. Cuomo. “He came to us,” said Sandra King, chairwoman of the Yates County Republican Committee. “He took our phone calls. He listened to what we had to say.”

Mr. Trump ultimately opted not to run, in part because he was irked that party leaders would not clear a path to his nomination. But in hindsight, supporters said, the experience helped inform his presidential bid as a populist with little regard for conventional politics.

Mr. Trump confirmed in a statement that the state Republican Party’s inability to assure an uncontested race was a deal-breaker, though he played down his interest. “I never looked seriously at running for governor,” he said, adding, “If I ran, I would have won.”

He said that “even then, what I really wanted to do was run for president, and obviously, now that I am the substantial front-runner, I made the right decision.”

‘Almost Iconic Figure’

Mr. Trump is no stranger to being the object of political speculation. He hinted at running in the 1988 and 2012 presidential races, and his name was also mentioned as a possible candidate for New York City mayor in 1989 and for governor in 2006.

Perhaps his most sustained effort before now, though, involved his establishing an exploratory committee for a possible run as a Reform Party candidate for president in 2000, when he suggested that Oprah Winfrey would be his vice president.

But when Mr. Trump declared his White House bid last year, this campaign was no fleeting thought.

In 2013, New York Republicans were casting about for a candidate to take on Mr. Cuomo, who had amassed more than $33 million by January 2014 for his re-election campaign and was widely expected to win a second term the following year.

David DiPietro, a Republican lawmaker from the Buffalo area, said he and Mr. Nojay were on the floor of the State Assembly that June, lamenting the corruption in Albany, when they first hit on the idea of encouraging Mr. Trump to run for governor.

“We have to find someone to clean up” this mess, Mr. DiPietro recalled telling Mr. Nojay.

A few months later, Mr. Nojay put their thoughts down on paper.

“In many respects Trump is not considered a Republican — he is his brand, an almost iconic figure of Rockefellerian proportions,” Mr. Nojay wrote in October in a three-page memo, “2014 NY Governor Race Analysis,” which he sent to a small group of party members, including Edward F. Cox, the state’s party chairman and a son-in-law of President Richard M. Nixon.

The conditions for a Trump for governor bid, the analysis continued, were ideal. New York City was about to elect Bill de Blasio, its first “truly radical” mayor, whom the memo referred to as a Marxist who honeymooned in Havana. “By 2014 a pro-business, proven executive will be welcome to offset” a Mayor de Blasio, the memo said.

The memo was leaked to The New York Post, and Mr. Trump used Twitter to tell Mr. Nojay thanks, but no thanks.

Behind the scenes, another story was playing out. A member of Mr. Trump’s inner circle contacted Mr. Nojay, and in early November he and Mr. DiPietro found themselves meeting Mr. Trump for the first time, at Trump Tower in a large conference room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park.

The meeting, scheduled for roughly 30 minutes, stretched beyond two hours. The group denounced the Safe Act, far-reaching gun-control legislation that Mr. Cuomo signed into law, and bemoaned job losses and economic erosion.

Intrigued, Mr. Trump agreed to keep talking about a possible bid for governor. A larger meeting was convened in early December.

Path to the White House

Mr. Nojay, armed with data, ran Mr. Trump through a list of presidents and their résumés. “Going back to George Washington, there has never been a president who has not served in high public office,” he said he told Mr. Trump.

Mr. Nojay recalled that while he was speaking, Mr. Trump asked an aide to bring his daughter Ivanka and sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and additional employees into the conference room.

After they entered, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Nojay to repeat his pitch for their benefit.

“He read the political landscape better than anyone,” said Joseph C. Borelli, a Republican councilman from Staten Island who was an assemblyman when he attended the meeting. “He all but said he would enter the presidential race in the summer of 2015 and he would be first in the polls.”

In late December, Mr. Trump received Mr. Nojay’s “Springboards to the Presidency” memo. It included an exhibit titled “Paths to the Presidency,” again outlining the careers of past presidents, all of whom had previous public service. “This is not an accident of history,” he wrote.

The notion of a Trump bid for governor gained more momentum among his supporters when a group that opposed Mr. Cuomo commissioned a private poll, conducted by Kellyanne Conway, a Republican strategist. The poll showed Mr. Cuomo leading Mr. Trump in a head-to-head matchup, Ms. Conway said, but it also highlighted the governor’s vulnerabilities. It suggested that Mr. Trump, with his name recognition and ability to finance a sizable campaign, could be a formidable opponent.

Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers, including Roger Stone, a veteran political consultant, opposed the run for governor, arguing that Mr. Trump did not need Albany to serve as a prelude to his 2016 presidential bid. But as a sign of Mr. Trump’s interest, one of his top lieutenants contacted Michael R. Long, chairman of the state’s Conservative Party, to discuss the possibility of an endorsement and a crucial extra ballot line.

Mr. Long said he went to Trump Tower in December 2013, “under the pretense that Mr. Trump would be there.” Instead, Mr. Long experienced something even more surreal: He arrived at Mr. Trump’s office, only to realize that Mr. Trump was not there and he would be speaking to him by phone.

It was clear, Mr. Long said, that Mr. Trump was “up to speed” on New York issues, and that he had a real animus toward Mr. Cuomo. But Mr. Trump, unwilling to face competition for the nomination, told Mr. Long that one condition for his candidacy would be to get Rob Astorino, the Westchester County executive who was already planning to run, out of the race.

“I made it clear to him, that’s not how politics works,” Mr. Long said. “It isn’t us picking up a phone and telling a candidate you can’t run.”

Around the same time, Mr. Trump reached out directly to Mr. Astorino, whom he knew for many years through his golf club in Briarcliff Manor in Westchester. When they met at Trump Tower, Mr. Astorino said he told Mr. Trump, “Look, my intention is to stay in.”

Eventually, Mr. Astorino recalled, he was asked (though he would not say by whom) to consider joining a “unity ticket” in which Mr. Trump would run for governor and Mr. Astorino for lieutenant governor. Mr. Astorino would become governor after Mr. Trump declared his presidential bid.

“I didn’t think that was fair to me, or the people, or the process,” said Mr. Astorino, who ended up losing to Mr. Cuomo.

Bigger Plans

In January 2014, a small number of political operatives met privately with Mr. Trump in his penthouse at Trump Tower. One participant, Ralph C. Lorigo, the chairman of the Erie County Conservative Party, recalled that he brought the necessary papers for Mr. Trump to form an exploratory committee to run for governor, with a notary stamp in his pocket.

“He toyed with it back and forth,” Mr. Lorigo said. “But I couldn’t convince him.”

Mr. Trump and the group then took the elevator down to his corporate offices, where they huddled with a larger group of dozens of Republicans, including numerous county leaders, who hoped to enlist Mr. Trump.

Not long after these sessions, Mr. Cox, the state’s Republican Party chairman, began to voice his concerns of a Trump candidacy. At a meeting at the University Club in Manhattan, which was attended by some of the same people who had just met with Mr. Trump, Mr. Cox said he told the group, “I am really concerned this is not something he wants to do.”

Mr. Trump’s supporters were livid. “Donald Trump didn’t run for governor because Ed Cox wouldn’t get out of the way,” said Michael Caputo, a political consultant who helped arrange several of the meetings.

Undeterred, Mr. Trump flew to Buffalo and Syracuse, where he headlined local party fund-raisers. In New York City, at a February fund-raising event, Mr. Isaacs unveiled a large blue and red sign that read “Trump For Governor.” The crowd erupted in applause, and many attendees expected Mr. Trump would announce his candidacy that night.

He did not. Several weeks later, over dinner at the mogul’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Cox told Mr. Trump that the New York State Republican Committee could not stop other candidates from competing.

“He made it clear to me that night he wasn’t going to run,” said Mr. Cox, who described Mr. Trump as upset. Mr. Cox would not elaborate further.

A few days later, Mr. Trump ended the speculation via Twitter: “While I won’t be running for governor of New York State, a race I would have won, I have much bigger plans in mind — stay tuned, will happen!”

So, he was already thinking of running for presidunce in 2013, which  was also the year he held the Miss Universe pageant in Moskow. Coincidence? I think not...

[AmazonGrace]

When your lawyer thinks you're a mobster 

 

[Drala]

Some things Trump does offend me more than others.  His tweet excoriating Sessions for DOJ prosecution of partisan cronies just burned me up.  Trump's blatant attacks on the rule of law are beyond the pale.

 

 

[AmazonGrace]