His inability to take himself out of the equation

Jan 7th, 2018 11:26 am | By

Jennifer Rubin finds Trump’s genius not all that stable, or genius, after yesterday’s eruptions.

Both his desire to prevent criticism and his ridiculous “cease and desist” letters sent by his lawyers to Wolff and his publisher betray his contempt for the First Amendment and his inability to take himself out of the equation and recognize the pillars of democracy, a democracy he took an oath to defend.

Himself is all he really ever talks about. Even when he’s announcing the latest move to drill for oil in the Grand Canyon or open the oceans for toxic waste dumping, it’s always because the punch line is “and I did all this look how awesome I am.”

Policy isn’t being made or even understood by the president. What comes from his fears and impulses is whatever aides are able to piece together that might satisfy his emotional spasm of the moment without endangering the country.

Or with endangering the country. Whatever.

Anyone who listens to him speak off the cuff about health care or tax legislation knows he will not raise any specifics or make a logical argument for this or that provision. It’s all “great,” “fabulous,” “the biggest,” etc. It’s not a sophisticated marketing ploy; it’s evidence of a total lack of understanding or concern about what is in any given piece of legislation.

…

We cannot accept, let alone applaud, courtiers scurrying around to create the appearance of a functioning government. He, not they, is the chief executive and commander in chief. We have a vice president elected specifically to take over if the president is incapable of serving; the 25th Amendment does not say “but in a pinch, let the secretaries of defense and treasury run the show.” What we have is a type of coup in which the great leader is disabled. He is propped up, sent out to read lines written by others and kept safely away from disastrous situations. This is not how our system works, however.

It is now. Of course it’s not actually working, but it’s working for them, and that’s clearly all they care about.

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The lizard-brained and misogynistic argument

Jan 7th, 2018 10:14 am | By

Uh oh – emergency emergency – a woman appears to have ambition. DANGER.

In recent months, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand seems to have begun positioning herself for a presidential run in 2020. She’s been a vocal supporter of the #MeToo movement, pushed for Al Franken’s resignation, and endured a gross Twitter feud with the president. But despite her rising celebrity, a new op-ed in the Daily Beast suggests Gillibrand is too “too transparently opportunistic to be a viable candidate.”

Yeah. She’s supposed to be flirtatious about it, not just walk right up and say she wants it. Directness is great in a man but in a woman it’s gross and scary and emasculating.

In an essay published on Friday, writer and editor Ciro Scotti compares Gillibrand to “another New York politician criticized for basing her positions on supposedly canny calculations rather than on from-the-gut convictions,” and says she doesn’t appear “genuine” enough to run against Trump.

Ah what a funny coincidence that they both happen to be women. What are the odds, eh? Especially when female politicians are so outnumbered by the male kind?

All politicians are opportunistic; it’s practically a job requirement. But Scotti falls back on the same old, tired, lizard-brained and misogynistic argument that people used against Hillary Clinton: That ambitious women are off-putting. Not only that, he seems to say, Gillibrand is especially unappealing, because she seized political opportunities at the expense of men. The horror!

There are valid criticisms to be made about Gillibrand as a candidate, and I’m sure they will be over the course of the next three years. As Scotti’s op-ed confirms though, the road to 2020 will be long, tiresome, and full of sexist garbage — not that you’d thought otherwise.

Backward and in high heels, I tell you.

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Trump laments our feeble libel laws

Jan 6th, 2018 5:00 pm | By

Trump did a press conference at Camp David today. Wolff’s book came up a time or two.

During the press conference, Trump called the book a “work of fiction” and said it was a “disgrace” that Wolff could “do something like this.”

“Libel laws are very weak in this country,” Trump said. “If they were stronger, hopefully, you would not have something like that happen.”

But if libel laws were stronger, think of all the people who could sue Trump. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Elizabeth Warner, Kim Jong Un, Chuck Schumer, Steve Bannon, Rosie O’Donnell, Jeff Sessions, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Native Americans, Mexicans, Mexico, Muslims, atheists, Chicago, New York, women – it would never end and it would bankrupt him.

He added that Wolff did not know him at all and did not interview him, though he then said Wolff interviewed him once “a long time ago” for a magazine story.

“I guess ‘Sloppy Steve’ [Bannon] brought him into the White House a lot,” Trump said. “That’s why ‘Sloppy Steve’ is looking for a job.”

Said Dumbshit Don.

Asked during the press conference why he tweeted about his mental stability, Trump replied, “Only because I went to the best colleges, or college. I went to a — I had a situation where I was a very excellent student, came out and made billions and billions of dollars.”

No, he was never a very excellent student. Also, he nearly went bankrupt in the 90s.

Reporters also touched on a recent New York Times report that said Trump asked White House counsel Don McGahn to convince Attorney General not to recuse himself from the FBI’s Russia investigation last year…

Calling the Times story “way off,” Trump said, “Everything I’ve done is 100% proper. That’s what I do is I do things proper.”

Hmm gotta disagree with you there Dumbshit Don. That’s not what you do is. What you do is you do most things highly improper, and often downright illegal.

“Collusion now is dead,” he added. “Because everybody found out after a year of study there has been absolutely no collusion.”

No. Apparently his people have been telling him that in hopes of keeping him from dousing the White House in lighter fluid and setting it ablaze, but if so they’ve been lying to him.

Trump said Saturday that he and the White House have been “very open” in cooperating with Mueller’s team. “We could have done it two ways. We could have been very closed and it would have taken years. But you know, sort of, like, when you’ve done nothing wrong, let’s be open and get it over with, because honestly, it’s very, very bad for our country and it’s making us look foolish.”

He added that “this is a country that I don’t want looking foolish, and it’s not going to look foolish as long as I’m here. So we’ve been very open and we just want to get that over with.”

God, he is so out of touch with reality. He’s got it exactly backward. The country is going to look foolish as long as he’s here; it’s only if he leaves that we have a hope of eventually, after decades, looking not so foolish any more.

 

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He went to the best colleges, or college

Jan 6th, 2018 10:27 am | By

After Dim Donald’s shy confession of genius on Twitter this morning he expanded on his explanation to reporters.

Elaborating during a meeting with reporters at Camp David later in the day, Mr. Trump again ticked off what he called a high-achieving academic and career record. He raised the matter “only because I went to the best colleges, or college,” he said. Referring to a new book citing concerns about his fitness, he said, “I consider it a work of fiction and I consider it a disgrace.”

Translation: I hate it I hate it I hate it.

The president’s engagement on the issue is likely to fuel the long-simmering argument about his state of mind that has roiled the political and psychiatric worlds and thrust the country into uncharted territory. Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to force the president to submit to psychological evaluation. Mental health professionals have signed a petition calling for his removal from office. Others call armchair diagnoses a dangerous precedent or even a cover for partisan attacks.

What are we supposed to do, ignore how abnormal and crazed and unbefitting a head of state his behavior is? Seeing as how he can start a nuclear war, that would be grotesquely irresponsible. If his brain is melting as we watch, we need to know about it.

In the past week alone, a new book resurfaced previously reported concerns among the president’s own advisers about his fitness for office, the question of his mental state came up at two White House briefings and the secretary of state was asked if Mr. Trump was mentally fit. After the president boasted that his “nuclear button” was bigger than Kim Jong-un’s in North Korea, Richard W. Painter, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, described the claim as proof that Mr. Trump is “psychologically unfit” and should have his powers transferred to Vice President Mike Pence under the Constitution’s 25th Amendment.

Mr. Trump’s self-absorption, impulsiveness, lack of empathy, obsessive focus on slights, tenuous grasp of facts and penchant for sometimes far-fetched conspiracy theories have generated endless op-ed columns, magazine articles, books, professional panel discussions and cable television speculation.

And that’s not even an exhaustive list of what’s wrong with him.

Still, in private, advisers to the president have at times expressed concerns. In private conversations over the last year, people who were new to Mr. Trump in the White House, which was most of the West Wing staff, have tried to process the president’s speaking style, his temper, his disinterest in formal briefings, his obsession with physical appearances and his concern about the theatrics and excitement of his job.

And that’s still not an exhaustive list. So far they haven’t mentioned the relentless bullying, for instance.

“These amateurs shouldn’t be diagnosing at a distance, and they don’t know what they’re talking about,” said Allen Frances, a former psychiatry department chairman at Duke University School of Medicine who helped develop the profession’s diagnostic standards for mental disorders.

Dr. Frances, author of “Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump,” said the president’s bad behavior should not be blamed on mental illness. “He is definitely unstable,” Dr. Frances said. “He is definitely impulsive. He is world-class narcissistic not just for our day but for the ages. You can’t say enough about how incompetent and unqualified he is to be leader of the free world. But that does not make him mentally ill.”

No, it makes him a shit.

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Stable genius meets happy toast

Jan 6th, 2018 9:24 am | By

This is a nice antidote:

Two scoops!

“WHO INVITED ALL THE EMPTY SEATS?” – classic.

All praise to HappyToast.

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Trump serenely rises above the Wolff book

Jan 6th, 2018 8:58 am | By

The Friday night-Saturday morning installment:

Dumped like a dog? Does Trump have a habit of dumping dogs? Where, by the roadside? In Central Park? In the East River? Or maybe he means “dog” aka “ugly woman” who gets dumped because ugly. Anyway, all very dignified and presidential, announcing that a book he hasn’t read is boring and that it’s untruthful when it isn’t and when he’s the world’s biggest liar, plus abusing Bannon who used to be his bestie.

He might as well tweet “I’m so pissed off about this book I’m ready to burn everything down I hate you all you make me sick!!!”

Well, no. I can see why he’d think that, certainly, but no. Tragically the very fact that he is so stupid and childish is a very big part of why he was able to get elected. Tragically, a lot of people like aggressive conceited stupidity. It’s his popularity that got him elected, not his being like, really smart. His popularity is very much entangled with his stupidity (as well as his ignorance).

Updating to add (h/t Stewart):

The Facebook version:

Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling

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The irony was lost on many

Jan 5th, 2018 4:12 pm | By

If tweets can get tenured academics bullied out of their jobs then why can’t they get presidents scolded out of theirs?

The last 12 months have seen one controversy after another over the tweets of George Ciccariello-Maher, an associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University. In a series of incidents, he has made statements that led to calls for his dismissal. In several instances, the university has criticized him. Ciccariello-Maher and his supporters have said that his comments have been distorted and that his academic freedom has been attacked.

On Thursday, he announced on Twitter that he was leaving his tenured job at Drexel. “After nearly a year of harassment by right-wing, white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs, after death threats and threats of violence directed against me and my family, my situation has become unsustainable,” he wrote on Twitter. “Staying at Drexel in the eye of this storm has become detrimental to my own writing, speaking and organizing.”

He pointed out that tenure isn’t much protection against that kind of thing.

He added, “In the past year, the forces of resurgent white supremacy have tasted blood and are howling for more. Given the pressure they will continue to apply, university communities must form a common front against the most reprehensible forces in society and refuse to bow to their pressure, intimidation and threats. Only then will universities stand any chance of survival.”

Crap writer though, isn’t he. Way too many stale off-the-shelf phrases in that passage. C minus.

The controversy over the professor started Dec. 24, 2016, when Ciccariello-Maher tweeted, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” The tweet went viral, with many conservative websites calling for Drexel to fire Ciccariello-Maher. Drexel condemned the tweet but didn’t fire him.

Ciccariello-Maher and his supporters said that the irony and purpose of his tweet were lost on many. Ciccariello-Maher argues that white genocide doesn’t exist, and is a false image used by the far right to scare white people. So he says he was making a point, not calling for anyone to be hurt.

In April, Ciccariello-Maher was again in the news when he tweeted about his reaction when he saw a passenger in first class give up his seat on a flight. “Some guy in first class gave up his seat for a uniformed soldier. People are thanking him. I’m trying not to vomit or yell about Mosul.”

Not a very thoughtful remark. Mosul was Trump’s doing, not a random soldier’s. Then again I suspect everyone (except perhaps the soldier) was all too quietly self-congratulatory about it, and being on a plane is bad enough as it is – and besides it’s not something that should get him hounded out of his job. Now about that guy in the Oval Office…

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Abuse of power and obstruction of justice

Jan 5th, 2018 3:10 pm | By

Jennifer Rubin at the Post says it’s a stunt.

The move by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) marks a major escalation in conservatives’ challenges to the FBI’s credibility as the agency investigates whether any Trump associates committed crimes. Another Republican, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), joined in the letter to the Justice Department.

Their letter makes what is called a criminal referral to the Justice Department, suggesting it investigate the dossier author, former British spy Christopher Steele, for possibly lying to the FBI. It is a crime to lie to FBI agents about a material fact relevant to an ongoing investigation.

This is an outrageous political stunt, one with no legal ramifications and obviously designed to take the heat off the White House as damning reports bolstering an obstruction-of-justice claim and questioning the president’s mental fitness have sent the White House spinning.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a member of the Judiciary Committee and a former prosecutor, tells me, “I cannot understand why it would be necessary for members of Congress to make a criminal referral to the FBI concerning information we know the FBI already has.”

Reason not the need; maybe they did it for the sheer joy of the thing.

Moreover, the statute that Grassley and Graham cite — 18. U.S.C. 1001 — requires that a misstatement be intentionally wrong and material. It is ironic that the Justice Committee chairman who witnessed now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions repeatedly make false statements under oath would ignore these misstatements of fact and choose instead to vaguely point to ones apparently made to other people.

Her emails! Clinton Foundation! Comey leaked his own memos! Squawwwwwwk!

Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, tells me: “Just once, I’d like to see the Chairman express concern about the link between the sitting President’s campaign and a hostile foreign government, rather than calling for investigations either of people looking into that link or of a woman who may be the world’s most investigated human, hasn’t been in government for 5 years, and isn’t running for anything.”

…

“I know of no basis for believing that Steele may have lied to the FBI and thus no basis for the Grassley/Graham referral.,” says constitutional lawyer Laurence H. Tribe. “I’ve been following this closely and am also unaware of any basis for Senators Grassley or Graham to suspect such lying. Thus it’s hard not to view this referral as an abuse of power designed to undermine and thus obstruct the Mueller investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia in last year’s presidential election.”

Trump is dragging them down with him.

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Arrest that man!

Jan 5th, 2018 2:23 pm | By

In case we still haven’t had enough farcical distraction yet, here’s another installment:

More than a year after Republican leaders promised to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, two influential Republicans on Friday made the first known congressional criminal referral in connection with the meddling — against one of the people who sought to expose it.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior committee member, told the Justice Department they had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in the dossier, and they urged the department to investigate. The committee is running one of three congressional investigations into Russian election meddling, and its inquiry has come to focus, in part, on Mr. Steele’s explosive dossier that purported to detail Russia’s interference and the Trump campaign’s complicity.

That’s the ticket! Never mind the Russian role in the election, never mind Trump and Gang’s collusion, go after a guy who pointed it out! Public spirit at its finest.

The decision by Mr. Grassley and Mr. Graham to single out the former intelligence officer behind the dossier — and not anyone who may have taken part in the Russian interference — infuriated Democrats and raised the stakes in the growing partisan battle over the investigations into Mr. Trump, his campaign team and Russia.

Oh no, I’m sure their motives are far above any kind of partisan bias.

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What good are coasts anyway?

Jan 5th, 2018 10:36 am | By

Don is universally agreed to be an idiot but hey, he can still destroy all the coasts.

The Trump administration said Thursday it would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all United States coastal waters, giving energy companies access to leases off California for the first time in decades and opening more than a billion acres in the Arctic and along the Eastern Seaboard.

The proposal lifts a ban on such drilling imposed by President Barack Obama near the end of his term and would deal a serious blow to his environmental legacy. It would also signal that the Trump administration is not done unraveling environmental restrictions in an effort to promote energy production.

Many states are not pleased, including some with Republican governors…

…like Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, where the tourism industry was hit hard by the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster in 2010 that killed 11 people and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Governor Scott vowed on Thursday to protect his state’s coast from drilling, saying he would raise the issue with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

It might help to mention that Mar-a-Lago is in Florida.

The governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, Oregon and Washington have all opposed offshore drilling plans.

Notice that’s the entire west coast (of the lower 48). The east coast is much spottier.

Oil industry leaders cheered the reversal, calling it long overdue.

“I think the default should be that all of our offshore areas should be available,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance. “These are our lands. They’re taxpayer-owned and they should be made available.”

Interesting idea of “our” and “owned” and “available.” There are of course many of us who think it can mean ours to enjoy and cherish in their natural state complete with resident wildlife, as opposed to ours to exploit and ravage in order to make global warming worse.

[F]or now, Republicans’ efforts to roll back restrictions on energy production are winning the day. Last month Congress opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil and gas drilling as part of the tax overhaul. And last week the Interior Department rescinded an Obama-era rule that would have added regulations for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on federal and tribal lands. It also repealed offshore drilling safety regulations that were put in place after the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Oh, brilliant. Make sure there are fewer safety regulations when it comes to drilling for oil off the coast, because who doesn’t want another Deepwater Horizon spill?

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What me worry?

Jan 5th, 2018 9:39 am | By

People in Europe are somewhat rattled by the whole thing.

“Is Trump still sane?” asked the Friday lead headline on the site of Germany’s most respected conservative paper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The piece was published under the topic “mental health.”

Meanwhile, British readers woke up to the Times of London’s main front page headline that also wondered about the president’s stability: “Trump’s mental health questioned by top aide.”

“Donald Trump’s right-hand man openly questioned his fitness to serve and predicted that he would resign to avoid being removed by his own cabinet, according to a book that the US president tried to block yesterday,” wrote the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Times of London.

Well at least they found a dignified photo to go with the story.

Some of the United States’ closest international allies, including Britain, Germany and France, are now openly debating whether the most powerful man in the world and de facto leader of NATO — an alliance on which their entire military strategies are based — can still be trusted.

Oh, I know the answer to that one. No, of course not.

“In many European capitals, the prevailing sentiment is helplessness and frustration that Trump won’t engage in a rational dialogue,” argued Stephan Bierling, a professor for transatlantic relations in Germany, who said that he had long admired the United States but that his beliefs were now “shaken to the core.”

He won’t, but he also can’t. If he suddenly decided he ought to and wanted to do that, he’d be at a loss as to how to go about it. Rational dialogue is way beyond his powers.

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How to quantify credibility

Jan 5th, 2018 9:06 am | By

Don’s attempts to make that Wolff guy go away aren’t working out for him.

The author of a scathing new book about President Trump said on Friday that the president’s attempt to block its publication would not only help with sales but would also confirm the book’s key finding: Mr. Trump is unfit for office.

Speaking on the “Today” show, Michael Wolff, the author of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” called the administration’s attempt to block the book “extraordinary” and dismissed the president’s criticisms of him out of hand.

“My credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than, perhaps, anyone who has ever walked on earth at this point,” Mr. Wolff said.

Or to put it another way, more negative credibility – more confidence that he is not credible. That’s easier to argue, because now with more billions of people and far more ways of spreading information all over the globe instantaneously, Don probably does have more negative credibility than any one person has ever had before.

Mr. Wolff characterized the book as an investigation of what it was like to work with Mr. Trump. He wrote that the president’s associates called him a “moron” and an “idiot,” and almost unanimously described him as being “like a child.”

“What they mean by that is he has a need for immediate gratification,” Mr. Wolff said. “It’s all about him.”

We can see that ourselves without even working with him; he illustrates it on Twitter several times a day.

On Thursday, a lawyer for the president sent an 11-page letter to the book’s publisher, Henry Holt and Co., saying that it included false statements about the president that “give rise to claims of libel.”

In reaction, the publisher moved up the release date. Originally scheduled for a Tuesday debut, “Fire and Fury” was made available early Friday morning.

“We see ‘Fire and Fury’ as an extraordinary contribution to our national discourse, and are proceeding with the publication of the book,” the publisher said in a statement.

So that went well.

There are people who say Wolff is not notable for accuracy.

Others have said that the book, while filled with new and lurid details, corroborates previous reporting about the Trump White House. Writing in The Atlantic on Thursday, James Fallows, a former Carter administration official and prominent critic of Mr. Trump, called the book’s details “unforgettable and potentially historic.”

“We’ll see how many of them fully stand up, and in what particulars, but even at a heavy discount, it’s a remarkable tale,” he said.

Is Trump batshit crazy cubed, or only squared? Time will tell, or not.

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Ethics boffin explains

Jan 5th, 2018 8:32 am | By

Walter Shaub, former Director of the Office of Government Ethics, on Twitter this morning:

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/949260106314772480

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/949260595857158144

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/949260905174401024

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/949261034392641536

Then he went on CNN to talk about it.

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Boom boom boom

Jan 4th, 2018 5:38 pm | By

Boom, as Benjamin Wittes says when one of these appears. Trump tried to order Sessions not to recuse himself.

President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election.

Public pressure was building for Mr. Sessions, who had been a senior member of the Trump campaign, to step aside. But the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.

Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. Mr. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama.

He thought the head of the Justice Department was supposed to be his personal consigliere. (Mind you, this mess does highlight what a terrible move it was for Kennedy to give his brother the job. Trump has been teaching us about how particularly independent the DOJ is supposed to be.)

The lobbying of Mr. Sessions is one of several previously unreported episodes that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has learned about as he investigates whether Mr. Trump obstructed the F.B.I.’s Russia inquiry.

Is this the first leak from the Mueller investigation? Reporters are always underlining how under wraps it all is.

The events occurred during a two-month period — from when Mr. Sessions recused himself in March until the appointment of Mr. Mueller in May — when Mr. Trump believed he was losing control over the investigation.

Among the other episodes, Mr. Trump described the Russia investigation as “fabricated and politically motivated” in a letter that he intended to send to the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, but that White House aides stopped him from sending. Mr. Mueller has also substantiated claims that Mr. Comey made in a series of memos describing troubling interactions with the president before he was fired in May.

Oh he has! That’s interesting. Hardly surprising, but interesting.

The special counsel has received handwritten notes from Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, showing that Mr. Trump talked to Mr. Priebus about how he had called Mr. Comey to urge him to say publicly that he was not under investigation.

Ah. There you go then. It’s no longer just Comey’s memos.

The New York Times has also learned that four days before Mr. Comey was fired, one of Mr. Sessions’s aides asked a congressional staff member whether he had damaging information about Mr. Comey, part of an apparent effort to undermine the F.B.I. director. It was not clear whether Mr. Mueller’s investigators knew about this incident.

Mr. Mueller has also been examining a false statement that the president dictated on Air Force One in July in response to an article in The Times about a meeting that Trump campaign officials had with Russians in 2016. A new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff, says that the president’s lawyers believed that the statement was “an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation’s gears,” and that it led one of Mr. Trump’s spokesmen to quit because he believed it was obstruction of justice.

Is cognitive decline a valid defense?

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How dare anyone say rude things about Trump?

Jan 4th, 2018 12:50 pm | By

Trump is of course firing off threats of lawsuits right and left.

He’s threatening the publisher and the author.

The legal notice, which has been published by the Washington Post, demands that author Michael Wolff and the book’s publisher “immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination of the book”.

It accuses Wolff of making “numerous false and/or baseless statements” about Mr Trump and says lawyers are considering pursuing libel charges.

Considering it. They just might do it! I’m tellin ya, they’ll do it! They will! You better shut up or they will!

He’s threatening Bannon.

A private lawyer representing Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon, arguing he violated an employment agreement with the Trump Organization when he spoke to author Michael Wolff for a new scathing book about the presidency.

With the Trump Organization? Huh, there we were thinking he was working for the government, aka us. Not to mention, can a president really sue people into not saying he’s incompetent and a bozo?

Trump is a public figure. So suing for defamation, as the letter threatens, could require Trump to prove that a statement made by Bannon was false, damaging and delivered with actual malice, meaning that Bannon knew his comments were false and made them anyway.

Suing Bannon for breaking an employment contract would be even more difficult, said Lobel, who described the move as a “desperate” attempt by Trump to silence his former confidant.

…

In the cease-and-desist letter, Trump’s lawyer wrote that Bannon breached three sections of his employment agreement with the Trump Organization by communicating with Wolff, disclosing confidential information and making disparaging statements and in some cases outright defamatory statements about Trump, his family and the campaign.

Bannon has not revealed the exact terms of the contract he signed. But according to Trump’s lawyer, Bannon promised in his employment agreement not to disclose confidential information, not to demean or publicly disparage Trump, his family, or the campaign, and not to communicate with any member of the news media on behalf of, or about the campaign, without express written authorization from the campaign or Trump.

That’s such classic Trump – nobody may disparage Trump but Trump may disparage everyone else in the most vulgar and dishonest terms. One rule for Donald and another rule for every other human being on the planet.

During the presidential campaign, other staffers described how Trump forced their silence through such restrictive agreements, which are highly unusual in political campaigns. One such document, obtained by The Washington Post, includes a “no-disparagement” clause that requires staffers to promise “during the term of your service and at all time thereafter” not to “demean or disparage publicly” Trump, his business ventures or any of his family members or their business ventures “and to prevent your employees from doing so.”

Essentially, he approached his campaign staff much as he did the employees of his business ventures — demanding control over what they can and can’t say. As he transitioned to the White House, some wondered if he would enforce a similar silence from his administration — raising concerns about government transparency.

He’s got the world’s most ravenous ego.

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He reads not, neither does he skim

Jan 4th, 2018 11:38 am | By

John Cassidy at the New Yorker does some more gleaning from Wolff’s book and tosses us the bits of chocolate and almond.

[T]he over-all portrait that Wolff draws of a dysfunctional, bitterly divided White House in the first six months of Trump’s Presidency, before the appointment of John Kelly as chief of staff and the subsequent firing of Bannon, has the whiff of authenticity about it—and it echoes news coverage at the time. Other details are impossible to confirm but damning if true. Such was the animosity between Bannon and “Jarvanka”—Bannon’s dismissive term for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner—Wolff reports, that, during one Oval Office meeting, Bannon called Ivanka “a fucking liar,” to which Trump responded,“I told you this is a tough town, baby.” Wolff also quotes Bannon commenting gleefully after Trump decided to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, a decision that Ivanka opposed: “Score. The bitch is dead.”

Worst clubhouse ever.

Equally plausible is Wolff’s portrait of Trump as a one-dimensional figure who had no conception that he could win the 2016 election; little clue what to do after he did emerge victorious from the campaign trail; and virtually no interest in, or aptitude for, acquiring the skills and information needed to fulfill the role of President. “Here was, arguably, the central issue of the Trump presidency,” Wolff writes. The Commander-in-Chief “didn’t process information in any conventional sense—or, in a way, he didn’t process it at all.” He continues,

Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate  . . . . Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he didn’t have to, and that in fact this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was postliterate—total television.

But not only didn’t he read, he didn’t listen. He preferred to be the person talking. And he trusted his own expertise—no matter how paltry or irrelevant—more than anyone else’s. What’s more, he had an extremely short attention span, even when he thought you were worthy of attention.

“He preferred to be the person talking” – yes of course he did. He appears to be profoundly bored by pretty much everything that isn’t himself. His is a narcissism that crowds out everything else.

There are revealing, unconfirmed new anecdotes, too, about Trump’s sexism and narcissism. In one meeting, Wolff says, the President referred to Hope Hicks, his communications director, as “a piece of tail.” In another meeting, he described Sally Yates, the former acting Attorney General, whom he fired early in his term, after she refused to defend his original travel ban, as “such a cunt.”

Tell us again that that word has nothing to do with misogyny.

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Serial misogynist murder

Jan 4th, 2018 11:07 am | By

This is painful to read:

Theodore Johnson first killed a woman in 1981. He tipped his wife Yvonne over the balcony of their ninth-floor flat in Blakenhall Gardens, Wolverhampton, having already hit her with a vase. Well, they had been arguing – a factor that enabled him to plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation. The second woman Johnson killed was Yvonne Bennett, in 1992. He strangled her with a belt while their baby slept. Her “provocation” was that she refused the box of chocolates he had bought to win her back; he was able to plead diminished responsibility and, after a two-year stay in a secure psychiatric unit, was released and again free to form new relationships. Then, in December 2016, Angela Best became the third victim of Johnson, 64, and on Friday he will be sentenced for her murder. Best’s spur to his violence had simply been to end their relationship and start a new one with someone else.

Couldn’t someone have warned Yvonne Bennett and Angela Best? Shouldn’t Johnson have had some sort of large conspicuous non-removable warning label attached to him?

Paula Cocozza, the author, says there are more such cases, as well as the background violence.

According to the Office for National Statistics, one woman in four experiences domestic violence in her lifetime, and two women are killed each week in England and Wales by a current or former partner.

Prof David Wilson is a criminologist with a special interest in serial killers. “When I looked at Theodore Johnson,” he says, “I saw a man who has killed three or more people in a period greater than 30 days. Technically, he’s a serial killer. What is the context in which he has been able to kill, especially after being incarcerated on two separate occasions? That context is misogyny. Women being killed by men who are in a relationship with them is seen as a thing that happens, something that just occurs. Last year, two women a week died at the hands of their partners or ex-partners. That is an extraordinary figure that begins to reveal something not about serial murder but about the phenomenon of everyday murder. There is this unreflective acceptance that violence towards women is normalised.”

Just one of those things, like fires and floods.

This year the government will introduce a domestic violence and abuse act, the specific proposals of which have yet to be announced, but which should help to clarify and unify the police response to domestic violence. The biggest change Jacob would like to see is better sharing of information. She reads a lot of domestic homicide reviews and many disclose that communication could have been better. Agencies such as police, probation, health services, housing, adult social care, child social care and substance abuse services “are holding back information from each other which, if shared, could save lives”.

At some point in the future, she will read the domestic homicide review for the case of Best’s murder by Johnson. What it won’t say is that the context of domestic violence still somehow persuades too many of us that such murders should be valued differently from a random killing by a homicidal stranger.

“It’s somehow seen as not as large a breach of the social contract we all have with each other,” says Liz Kelly, the director of the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University. Nor is the review likely to mention misogyny, a word that is also absent from risk assessment forms. As Kelly says, “Misogyny is not seen as a form of extreme dangerousness … We need to identify these men who hate women and [understand] that they are a danger to all women.”

That’s the thing. We’re often told it’s “just talk” (or just trolling or just the internet or just a reaction to the “control left”), but it’s not safe to assume that.

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Attentive to his lapses and repetitions

Jan 4th, 2018 10:33 am | By

Michael Wolff has a summary of his Trump book at the Hollywood Reporter (a fitting place for it).

Most of it is what we’ve already seen via the news: shock-horror, chaos, incompetence, mass departures, how did we get here, what does this even. But toward the end there are some…let’s say noteworthy details.

There was, after the abrupt Scaramucci meltdown, hardly any effort inside the West Wing to disguise the sense of ludicrousness and anger felt by every member of the senior staff toward Trump’s family and Trump himself. It became almost a kind of competition to demystify Trump. For Rex Tillerson, he was a moron. For Gary Cohn, he was dumb as shit. For H.R. McMaster, he was a hopeless idiot. For Steve Bannon, he had lost his mind.

Most succinctly, no one expected him to survive Mueller. Whatever the substance of the Russia “collusion,” Trump, in the estimation of his senior staff, did not have the discipline to navigate a tough investigation, nor the credibility to attract the caliber of lawyers he would need to help him. (At least nine major law firms had turned down an invitation to represent the president.)

There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he’d repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn’t stop saying something.

That. That’s very Alzheimersy, very dementia-indicative.

Hope Hicks, Trump’s 29-year-old personal aide and confidant, became, practically speaking, his most powerful White House advisor. (With Melania a nonpresence, the staff referred to Ivanka as the “real wife” and Hicks as the “real daughter.”) Hicks’ primary function was to tend to the Trump ego, to reassure him, to protect him, to buffer him, to soothe him. It was Hicks who, attentive to his lapses and repetitions, urged him to forgo an interview that was set to open the 60 Minutes fall season.

Ah. In other words she realized that an interview would expose how far gone in dementia he is.

That, by the way, is a reason to invoke the 25th Amendment, not to protect him.

Donald Trump’s small staff of factotums, advisors and family began, on Jan. 20, 2017, an experience that none of them, by any right or logic, thought they would — or, in many cases, should — have, being part of a Trump presidency. Hoping for the best, with their personal futures as well as the country’s future depending on it, my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.

At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.

Oh.

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Your enduring commitment to spreading the word of God for $$$$

Jan 3rd, 2018 5:34 pm | By

Barry Duke at the Freethinker tells us that Donnie sent a mash note to a risible prosperity gospel preacher a few months ago.

[Kenneth] Copeland revealed on Facebook at the end of December 2017 that he received a letter from the deranged Trump in August. Trump wrote:

Melania and I send our warmest wishes as you celebrate 50 years of ministry. For half a century, you have devoted your life to faith and humanity. Your enduring commitment to spreading the word of God has influenced the lives of people across the United States and around the world.

We hope your heart is filled with joy, knowing your efforts to spread a message of hope are an inspiration to people who seek the love and mercy of the Lord. Congratulations on this remarkable achievement.

Copeland, who long drawn criticism for his teachings that God wants Christians to be rich, was among a group of religious leaders who prayed over Trump in 2015 prior to his election.

Yeah Trump didn’t write that, and he didn’t dictate it either. He dictated the thing about Bannon losing his job and also his mind; he didn’t write that tripe about the luv and mursee of the lord.

Copeland and his wife were also among those who agreed to be on Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board, which includes some of the most egregious bigots in America, such as radio host and psychologist Dr James Dobson; Jerry Falwell, President of the Liberty University; and Paula White of the New Destiny Christian Center (who chairs the advisory board and is stated to be Trump’s closest religious advisor).

So they’re cool with the pussygrabber? Interesting.

I wrote about Trump & Xmas for the Freeth last week.

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His eyes are rolling back in his head

Jan 3rd, 2018 4:45 pm | By

One item from the Times story on Bannon and the Wolff book needs to stand on its own.

The book presents Mr. Trump as an ill-informed and thoroughly unserious candidate and president, engaged mainly in satisfying his own ego. It reports that early in the campaign, one aide, Sam Nunberg, was sent to explain the Constitution to the candidate. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment,” it quoted Mr. Nunberg as saying, “before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”

Not a child in school itching to go outside and run around. Not an undergraduate too hungover to pay attention. Not a random asshole on Twitter. A grown-ass adult running for president who couldn’t be bothered to learn about the Constitution.

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