Judge Sullivan just made Mike Flynn take back, under oath, the core of his last court filing — which argued maybe he’s not that guilty because the FBI was mean to him. https://t.co/FfmtaqnYlb
— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) December 18, 2018
Good. I found that “But the FBI agents TRICKED me into lying to them” dreck from Flynn intensely annoying, especially in light of “LOCK HER UP.”
The judge is the same judge who said “Turn that plane around,” I learned via Twitter.
Also, Flynn.
Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, got a harsh warning from a federal judge on Tuesday that he could face prison for lying to federal investigators about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition and his role lobbying for Turkey.
At Mr. Flynn’s sentencing hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan called Mr. Flynn’s crimes “a very serious offense” and said he was not hiding his “disgust” at what Mr. Flynn had done.
“All along you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser,” the judge told Mr. Flynn. “Arguably that undermines everything that this flag over here stands for. Arguably you sold your country out.”
And not even arguably, he doesn’t get to pretend he just had no idea what the rules are.
During the sentencing hearing, Judge Sullivan questioned Mr. Flynn and his lawyer about their earlier suggestion that F.B.I. agents might have tricked Mr. Flynn by failing to inform him before they interviewed him nearly two years ago that lying to them would constitute a federal crime.
Mr. Flynn told the court that he was not challenging the circumstances of the interview and that he knew lying to the F.B.I. was a crime.
If someone in his job with his job history doesn’t know that…something is very fishy.
Prosecutors dismissed the claims that Mr. Flynn had been tricked as a poor excuse, saying that as a high-ranking White House official and the former director of an intelligence agency, he was well aware that misleading federal authorities was a felony offense.
This is what I’m saying. It’s a bad excuse and it’s absurd.
Bam.
The Donald J. Trump Foundation will close and give away all its remaining funds under judicial supervision amid a lawsuit accusing the charity and the Trump family of using it illegally for self-dealing and political gain, the New York attorney general’s office announced Tuesday.
The attorney general, Barbara Underwood, accused the foundation of “a shocking pattern of illegality” that was “willful and repeated” and included unlawfully coordinating with Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests,” Ms. Underwood said.
In short, he’s a crook and a liar and a fraud and a thief…and he’s also the president of the United States.
His kids are also crooks, liars, frauds, thieves.
The closure of the foundation is a milestone in the investigation. But the broader lawsuit, which also seeks millions in restitution and penalties and a bar on President Trump and his three oldest children from serving on the boards of other New York charities, is proceeding.
While he continues to squat in the Oval Office, doing his best to destroy the country as he goes down.
Ms. Underwood’s office sued the Trump Foundation in June, charging it with “improper and extensive political activity, repeated and willful self-dealing transactions, and failure to follow basic fiduciary obligations or to implement even elementary corporate formalities required by law.”
Nonprofit foundations are supposed to be devoted to charitable activities, but the attorney general’s office, following a two-year investigation, accused the Trump Foundation of being used to win political favor and even purchase a $10,000 portrait of Mr. Trump that was displayed at one of his golf clubs. The existence of the portrait was first reported by The Washington Post.
The lawsuit accused the foundation of virtually becoming an arm of the Trump campaign, with its campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, directing the foundation to make disbursements in Iowa only days before the state held its presidential nominating caucuses.
So you’re not supposed to use a charitable foundation to bribe voters? Who knew?
The foundation lawsuit follows years of scrutiny of President Trump’s charitable activities and adds to his extensive legal challenges, amid a continuing investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Tick tock tick tock.
There’s one.
https://twitter.com/NewYorkStateAG/status/1075057547072233473
https://twitter.com/NewYorkStateAG/status/1075058113148002305
Don’t worry, it’s just kink, just BDSM, just “rough sex.” Don’t kink-shame the nice man.
A multi-millionaire who left his injured and bleeding partner to die after “rough sex” has been jailed for three years and eight months.
Seeing as how she died, “rough sex” seems just a tad euphemistic.
Natalie Connolly had suffered more than 40 separate injuries, the court heard.
Broadhurst, 40, told a 999 operator he found his partner “dead as a doughnut” at their home in Kinver, Staffordshire, in December 2016.
At least he kept his sense of humor.
Ms Connolly was pronounced dead on 18 December 2016 after Broadhurst called paramedics to their rented home. She died from acute alcohol intoxication and blunt force injuries.
In mitigation, defence Stephen Vullo QC, said Broadhurst, of Wolverley, knew his partner was bleeding but did not think she would come to any harm.
Sure; blunt force trauma never harmed anyone.
Laurence Tribe is profoundly aghast at the notion that a crook can crook his way into the presidency and then be untouchable on account of how the Justice Department Has Ruled that a sitting president can’t be indicted. The problem with that is obvious. If he got the position by committing crimes, how can it make sense to then make the very position he got by criminal means the thing that protects him from law enforcement? It’s absurd and it’s also…you know…a fucking disaster.
Pinned tweet:
NEW RULE:
Cheat & lie & commit enough felonies to become president — and you’ll get not just the office with all its powers, but a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card!
Retweet if you doubt Madison and Hamilton were dumb enough to put that incentive scheme in place.
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) December 13, 2018
State constitutions like Michigan’s and Wisconsin’s build in protections against these anti-democratic power plays. New Jersey’s too, where the Democrats may be trying the same play.https://t.co/aFWyT3MmzX
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) December 18, 2018
This is starting to feel like an echo chamber. Until this “A-SITTING-PRESIDENT-CAN-BE-INDICTED-FOR-CHEATING-HIS-WAY-INTO-THE-PRESIDENCY” view breaks out of the silo, it won’t cause the necessary waves. If you think retweeting might help, please do that!https://t.co/fOQAYGxD1S
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) December 17, 2018
That Truthout piece has Neil Katyal agreeing with Tribe’s view.
The Office of Legal Counsel memos stating that a sitting president is immune from criminal prosecution do not necessarily protect Trump, according to some legal experts.
“The justifications underlying the general practice of treating [Office of Legal Counsel] opinions as binding on executive branch officials do not necessarily apply to the Office of Special Counsel, which is supposed to be insulated from the influence of political appointees when assessing the president’s exposure to criminal liability,” Harvard law professor Andrew Crespo wrote at Lawfare blog. The Office of Legal Counsel memos, Crespo noted, were written by presidential appointees beholden to the president.
Neal Katyal, solicitor general in the Obama administration, says the Office of Legal Counsel opinions may not prevent Trump from being indicted because they “don’t necessarily apply to a circumstance in which the actual crime may have involved him obtaining the presidency in the first place.”
One would certainly hope so.
Russia isn’t messing around with the disinformation campaign.
Our report, announced by the committee on Monday, concludes that Russia was able to masquerade successfully as a collection of American media entities, managing fake personas and developing communities of hundreds of thousands, building influence over a period of years and using it to manipulate and exploit existing political and societal divisions.
…
In official statements to Congress, tech executives have said that they found it beyond their capabilities to assess whether Russia created content intended to discourage anyone from voting. We have determined that Russia did create such content. It propagated lies about voting rules and processes, attempted to steer voters toward third-party candidates[,] and created stories that advocated not voting.
I wonder how much of trans activism is shaped by Russian efforts.
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on There must be reprisals.
Questioning their claims is not questioning their existence.
But refuting their claims to womanhood, allowing questions to even be asked, is tantamount to saying the Emperor is naked. The charade ends, the parade is over and those who praised the elegance and refinement of His Majesty’s raiment are shown to be a frauds and liars The little boy in the story who did not get the memo to bow and scrape and oooh and aaah is not to blame for the monarch’s nudity or embarassment. He only pointed out the truth as he saw it, the facts on the ground. Trans extremists’ claim to womanhood disappears in a puff of logic if their claim to it is not unquestioningly accepted and affirmed. To even question the assertion shows its weakness and dependence upon bluff and intimidation. Hackneyed formulae and magical thinking will only take you so far in the face of embarrassing, unyielding facts on the ground. Without some sort of reprisal, punishment or penalty, those who are silenced by fear rather than agreement may peel away from compliance with the demand for obedience to the asserted truth, as their going along with the demand in the first place was not out of any heartfelt loyalty or assent. While in the thrall of intimidation, they may however fetishize and display their own, superior wokeness by pointing out the lack of enthusiasm in others. (Reminding me of the tale told of the spontaneous, enthusiastic, thunderous applause with which a speech of Stalin was always greeted. Starting to clap was a no-brainer. The problem arose once one’s hands became sore. Sore hands or no, nobody wanted to be the guy who stopped clapping first…)
It’s a much more extreme example, but the assassination of atheists in Bangladesh I think, also springs from a similar desire to remove from consideration completely any hint of doubt or questioning of unevidenced assertions of fact, in this case the existence of a particular god. In this case the secret being guarded at all costs is not that The Emperor has no clothes, but that there is no Emperor at all. Allowing the brazen expression of blasphemy to go unpunished is seen as a sign of weakness, and represents a chink in the armour that protects the whole empty construct. It then becomes a competition amongst True Believers to demonstrate the depth of zeal and fervour with which one deals with or eliminates the doubters, blasphemers and apostates, both as a demonstration of the solidity, strength and orthodoxy of their own belief as well as a warning to others to keep silent.
The same goes for the violent response to the cartoon depictions of Muhammad; being able to coerce others into accepting your beliefs and to impose your rules and proscriptions is an exercise in power and, for a short time at least, a method of attempting to create a reality out of nothing but sheer will (and threats or acts of violence). Getting everyone else to go along with it is the tricky part, requiring silence from those who would oppose or criticize. But fear doesn’t always work, or if it sometimes does, not forever.
Criticism is not violence. Speech is not genocide. Baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire are not rhetorical devices.Calling for the death of TERFs is not reasoned argument.
https://youtu.be/GaB5AVNg14c
H/t Sackbut
Another Elinor Lipman gem:
It rained all weekend—very SAD!
When I can’t golf, I’m boiling mad.
No Caesar salad; no parade.
Plus ICE removed my favorite maid.
Hate-tweeting while I watched TV,
…And wondered “Can I pardon me?”— Elinor Lipman (@ElinorLipman) December 17, 2018
Luciano Guerra voted for Trump and now he’s surprised and sad that Trump is shoving a border wall right down the middle of the wildlife center where Guerra works.
I work at the National Butterfly Center — which is along the U.S.-Mexico border — documenting wildlife and leading educational tours. Many of our visitors are young students from the Rio Grande Valley. When they first arrive, some of the children are scared of everything, from the snakes to the pill bugs. Here, we can show them animals that roam free and teach them not to be afraid. We talk about how we planted native vines, shrubs and trees to attract some 240 species of butterflies, as well as dragonflies, grasshoppers and other insects. The bugs brought the birds — including some you can’t see anywhere else in America, like Green Jays and Chachalacas — and from there, the bobcats and coyotes. We want to teach kids what it takes to create a home for all kinds of animals.
President Trump’s new border wall — which he has threatened to shut down the government to fund — will teach them what it takes to destroy it.
The first section, funded by Congress in 2018 for construction starting early next year, will cut right through our 100-acre refuge, sealing off 70 acres bordering the banks of the Rio Grande. The plan that we’ve seen calls for 18 feet of concrete and 18 feet of steel bollards, with a 150-foot paved enforcement zone for cameras, sensors, lighting and Border Patrol traffic.
There will be flooding. The animals won’t be able to range the way they did. Lights will be on all night. Bulldozers will bulldoze.
We’re not the only ones standing in the wall’s path. It will also slice through the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, and in Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — which draws birdwatchers from all over the country and has hosted countless picnics and barbecues for local families like mine. The wall will cut through the park’s land that is behind its parking lot and visitor center. There isn’t much public open space in the Rio Grande Valley. What’s there is fragmented and precious to all of us: According to a 2011 estimate, ecotourism brings $463 million a year to our economy and supports more than 6,600 jobs.
I’m a lifelong Republican who voted for Donald Trump for president in 2016.
Thinking what? That he’s a lover of butterflies and wildlife and fragile ecosystems? That he would leave big holes in his Wall for the National Butterfly Center and the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge and the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park? That he would do the right thing?
I have little if any sympathy. Trump is plain about what he is and he is not given to self-reform.
People have asked me, “Didn’t you listen to Trump when he said that he would build a wall?” I didn’t take the idea seriously during the campaign. I knew he couldn’t get Mexico to pay it — that’d be like asking Hurricane Harvey to foot the bill for rebuilding Houston — and thought it was just talk: another candidate making big promises he couldn’t keep. I never thought it would actually happen.
I know, it’s like all those earthquakes and hurricanes and wild fires we see predicted; we never think they will actually happen.
People; honestly.
A guy asked this question on Facebook (public post):
I usually run at night so don’t encounter many people. However, when I run during the day (as I did early this morning) I always find walkers to be inconsiderate. Runners coming in the opposite direction will usually move to the left. Walkers rarely do. Pairs of runners change position to free up the pavement. Pairs of walkers don’t – they expect me to get off the pavement.
Why would that be? I don’t think it’s a personality problem. I’m pretty sure that the normal variety of human kindness is present among the individuals I encounter. I am guessing it’s something about the activity, but can’t think what it might be. Any ideas?
I’ve always noticed that a lot of runners are entitled and oblivious like this but I haven’t seen it put down in writing before. “Any ideas?” forsooth. Yes, bozo: you are going faster, in a place that’s intended for people who are walking, so it’s on you to get out of the way and, indeed, ideally to slow down. It’s just physics. If you crash into a walker it’s the walker who is going to hit the sidewalk, not you, therefore you have to get out of the way. It’s not “inconsiderate” for walkers not to try to dodge runners; trying to dodge a runner is likely to be more dangerous – to the walker – than maintaining position. You could dodge only to find that the runner dodged too just in time to slam into you. The runner’s momentum fractures the walker’s skull or neck or arm or pelvis, not the other way around.
People. Especially runners, especially male ones.
UKIP guy is upset.
STOP THIS MADNESS! The Scottish Parliament has banned gingerbread men in case they cause offence, declaring they must be called 'gingerbread people' instead. https://t.co/qiaclO5uPN
— David Kurten (@davidkurten) December 16, 2018
Oh no! Without gingerbread men, who will impregnate the strawberry shortcake?
Trump’s gilt palace overlooking Central Park and his golf resorts and solid gold shoes and all the rest of it comes out of the wallets of poor people. That tax scam meant fraudulently hiked rents.
They were collateral damage as Donald J. Trump and his siblings dodged inheritance taxes and gained control of their father’s fortune: thousands of renters in an empire of unassuming red-brick buildings scattered across Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.
Those buildings have been home to generations of strivers, municipal workers and newly arrived immigrants. When their regulated rents started rising more quickly in the 1990s, many tenants had no idea why. Some heard that the Trump family had spent millions on building improvements, but they remained suspicious.
That’s how it’s done: you claim fake improvements and then you get to hike the rent.
As it turned out, a hidden scam lurked behind the mysterious increases. In October, a New York Times investigation into the origins of Mr. Trump’s wealth revealed, among its findings, that the future president and his siblings set up a phony business to pad the cost of nearly everything their father, the legendary builder Fred C. Trump, purchased for his buildings. The Trump children split that extra money.
Padding the invoices had a secondary benefit for the Trumps, allowing them to inflate rent increases on their father’s rent-regulated apartments.
Steal from the poor to give to the rich, that’s our boy.
Lawyers who specialize in representing tenants say the Trumps’ current and former tenants may have an opening to challenge the decades-old increases, potentially rolling back rents and collecting damages.
Michael Grinthal, supervising lawyer with the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center, a nonprofit legal services and advocacy group, said that the current owners would be held responsible for any damages, but that those owners could have a claim against the president and his siblings.
“If I was talking to those tenants right now, I’d say: ‘Do it. Go,’” Mr. Grinthal said. “This case should be fought.”
Regulations generally allow tenants to challenge rent for the past four years. But the state’s highest court has held that tenants can look back further to show their landlord increased rent through fraud (though damages are still limited).
“If they are making false statements about how much it costs, that would be pretty much dead center of the definition of fraud,” Mr. Grinthal said.
What was that about a “RAT” again?
Trump’s calling Cohen a “RAT” on Twitter is getting some lawyerly attention.
Sir, in mobster lingo, a ‘rat’ is a witness who tells prosecutors real incriminating info. Perhaps a different word? Searches of lawyer’s offices common enough that DOJ has a procedure for them. Here it yielded evidence of crimes you said he should be jailed for. You should stop. https://t.co/EV1txBYrhz
— Andy McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) December 16, 2018
My former colleague Andy McCarthy, one of the President's most steady and articulate defenders, is starting to take the measure of the man he has so vigorously defended. POTUS's language reflects the mentality of an at risk mob boss, not of a President.There is a reason for that. https://t.co/FXTVqt1Rdf
— Michael R. Bromwich (@mrbromwich) December 16, 2018
Wow. Andy is a strong conservative former Federal prosecutor who Trump himself invoked and retweeted earlier to try to bolster his defense. https://t.co/ri4xEaQ6en
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) December 16, 2018
Two tweets in one morning that would lead to calls for impeachment in normal times
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) December 16, 2018
Still not getting it. Aaron Hughes says life is tough for trans and gender nonconforming students at Oxford, then moves on to the more entertaining part about blaming feminist women for the tough life problem.
In spite of its public commitments, Oxford has failed to protect trans people from harassment and discrimination. Its refusal to act when transphobic speakers are invited to talk in its colleges and faculties is damning. Indeed, its willingness to condone the invitation of people who deny the existence of trans people entirely undermines its commitment to trans inclusivity.
Notice the instant and unargued jump from “harassment and discrimination” to “transphobic speakers invited to talk in its colleges and faculties.” That’s a massive jump. We know from experience that people are often called “transphobic” who are not “transphobic” but skeptical of new and counterfactual dogmas laid down about what women are and what we are allowed to say. Is it likely that Oxford would invite someone to speak whose talk would consist simply of abuse of trans people? Hardly. Refusing to sign up to new and counterfactual and peremptory dogmas about what women are is not any kind of “phobic.” Inviting feminist women who don’t agree that anyone who “identifies as” a woman is a woman is not harassment and discrimination. Women have a large stake in beliefs about what women are, and we’re not harassing anyone by disagreeing that men can make themselves women simply by uttering the magic words.
Then there’s the second sentence. We don’t “deny the existence of trans people.” We know very well that trans people exist, not least because some of them never stop yelling at us. What we deny is their peculiar vision of the facts. We deny that men know more about being women than we do, for instance; we deny that we have to step aside and defer to men who say they are women; we deny that men who say they are women get to bully us and bully any institution that invites us to speak or write an essay or attend a meeting.
Next paragraph.
The language we use is shaped by, and shapes, the world we live in. When we give space to transphobic hate speech in our higher education institutions, we normalise violence against trans people.
But it isn’t “transphobic hate speech.” (Note the redundancy. “It’s hatey McHaterson hate speech!!”) It isn’t hatred, it’s argument over truth claims. It isn’t hate speech and it doesn’t “normalise violence against trans people.” That kind of rhetoric is a distasteful appropriation of the real struggles of people who face real exploitation and oppression.
If the university’s silence on the issue of guest speakers is unacceptable, its failure to act when academics within its own institutions endorse transphobic hate speech is indefensible. In recent times, several academics have publicly disputed the validity of trans identities, in particular those of trans women and transfeminine people. At the time of writing, none have been reprimanded by the university.
What is “transfeminine” and how is it different from trans women? At any rate, again: disputing claims about “identities” that contradict material realities is not phobic hate speech. If we buy into the idea that it is, what’s to prevent the next generation from having to agree that their friends are rabbits, cars, pharaohs, whales, daffodils? If we’re not allowed to maintain our ability to distinguish between truth and lies, how can we function at all?
Trans identities are not a subject of debate, academic or otherwise. That members of academic staff can question our existence without reprisal is an indictment of the university’s commitment to trans inclusivity.
Reprisal. The little shit wants actual reprisal now. What will it be? Thumbscrews? The rack? Whipping?
And then at the end there’s a shocker:
Aaron Hughes is a lecturer in French at the University of Oxford’s Balliol College
I thought he was a student, and a first year at that.
Donnie is agitated.
Wow, 19,000 Texts between Lisa Page and her lover, Peter S of the FBI, in charge of the Russia Hoax, were just reported as being wiped clean and gone. Such a big story that will never be covered by the Fake News. Witch Hunt!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2018
A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2018
So where are all the missing Text messages between fired FBI agents Peter S and the lovely Lisa Page, his lover. Just reported that they have been erased and wiped clean. What an outrage as the totally compromised and conflicted Witch Hunt moves ever so slowly forward. Want them!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2018
Remember, Michael Cohen only became a “Rat” after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2018
No they didn’t. He was told no they didn’t at the time. He doesn’t listen if he doesn’t want to hear it.
Updating to add Elie Honig tweet:
I worked mafia cases for years in SDNY, mainly Gambino and Genovese. I usually hesitate to make this comparison but here it is completely warranted. This – calling somebody who provides information to law enforcement a “rat” – is straight up mob boss language. https://t.co/K8w46rVMP5
— Elie Honig (@eliehonig) December 16, 2018
Judge Ken Starr, former Solicitor Generel & Independent Counsel, just stated that, after two years, “there is no evidence or proof of collusion” & further that “there is no evidence that there was a campaign financing violation involving the President.” Thank you Judge. @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2018
Oddly enough, Ken Starr’s saying something on Fox News makes no difference to the Special Counsel investigation.
Intelligence officials are, not surprisingly, frustrated that Trump is too lazy and too stupid to pay attention to what they tell him.
Donald Trump continues to reject the judgments of US spy agencies on major foreign policy fronts, current and former US officials said, creating a dynamic in which intelligence analysts frequently see troubling gaps between the president’s public statements and the facts laid out for him in daily briefings.
The pattern has become a source of mounting concern to senior US intelligence officials who had hoped Mr Trump would become less hostile to their work and more receptive to the information that spy agencies spend billions of dollars and sometimes put lives at risk gathering.
Trump can’t “become” anything. He’s stuck fast as himself, and can’t modify a single atom.
Instead, presidential distrust that once seemed confined mainly to the intelligence community’s assessments about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has spread across a range of global issues.
Among them are North Korea’s willingness to abandon its nuclear weapons program, Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions, the existence and implications of global climate change and the role of the Saudi crown prince in the murder of a dissident journalist.
So just minor stuff then.
US officials involved in interactions with the White House said the disconnect between spy agencies and the president is without precedent and that senior analysts have spent the past year struggling to find ways to adapt to an arrangement they describe as dysfunctional.
…
[F]or every area of agreement, there are examples of significant disparity. Mr Trump, for example, asserted in June that because of his administration’s negotiations with Pyongyang, there is “no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” US intelligence officials said there is no such view among analysts.
Mr Trump accused Iran of violating a 2015 nuclear agreement with the US and other major powers despite assessments by American spy agencies and allies that Tehran was in compliance.
More recently, Mr Trump has claimed his decision to abandon the nuclear deal had forced Iran into regional retreat and led to turnover in the top ranks of its government.
“They’re a much, much different group of leaders,” the president said in June.
But CIA assessments do not describe any such shift, officials said, noting Iran’s religious rulers remain firmly entrenched and that the country continues to uses proxies to fuel conflict across the Middle East.
He just makes it up. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s making it up – he probably thinks that if it’s in his head, that means it’s true. He gives every appearance of not understanding that there is a difference between truth and made-up bullshit, and that it’s not all just a matter of who is sitting in the Big Boy Seat.
One official said CIA employees were staggered by Mr Trump’s performance during a news conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki earlier this year in which Mr Trump treated denials by the Russian president as so “strong and powerful” they offset the conclusions of the CIA.
“There was this gasp” among those watching at CIA, the official said. “You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock.”
…
“I think you definitely do see a bewilderment and a concern over the president’s conduct and relationship to the intelligence community,” said representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the house intelligence committee, who frequently visits with senior CIA officials on overseas trips.
Mr Trump’s disagreements are not driven by “questions about their methodology or differing interpretations of the same facts,” Mr Schiff said. “He wants to tell an alternate narrative.”
That’s what I mean. He thinks it’s just a matter of stories, and the boss’s story gets to prevail, because the boss is the boss. That applies only when he’s the boss of course, but now that he is the boss, that state of affairs has become internal, in his mind.
Mr Trump has frequently noted blunders by US spy agencies, particularly in the run-up to the Iraq War. He has also been dismissive of other experts in his administration, saying his own instincts are superior. “I have a gut,” he said in an interview last month, “and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”
What I’m saying. He thinks it’s true because he says it’s true. It’s magical thinking, and he thinks magic is real.
The state of academic “gender” studies these days.
Very much looking forward to a lovely lazy Xmas break and then to cracking on with my article about why ‘sex’ (as in ‘biological’ not desire) is no longer applicable to contemporary feminist theory and activism.
— Sally Hines (@sally_hines) December 15, 2018
