I’m still in a rage about the gag orders, but there are still other matters to follow. There’s Eric Levitz on Trump staffers’ eagerness to report what a car crash their boss is.

The president is a 70-year-old child whose TV time must be closely monitored — because any news story that upsets his ego will trigger a temper tantrum followed by irrational demands that his indulgent, overwhelmed guardians will be helpless to refuse.

Or so Donald Trump’s aides keep confiding to the nearest available reporter.

On Sunday, one of the president’s confidantes told Politico that his staffers have to “control information that may infuriate him,” a task made difficult by the fact that the leader of the free world “gets bored and likes to watch TV.”

Couldn’t they get him to watch one of those Kardashian shows, or one of those “Real Housewives” shows, or wrestling, or something about tiny houses?

That same day, some Trump aides provided the New York Times with a portrait of the president as a moody adolescent.

Mr. Trump grew increasingly angry on Inauguration Day after reading a series of Twitter messages pointing out that the size of his inaugural crowd did not rival that of Mr. Obama’s in 2009. But he spent his Friday night in a whirlwind of celebration and affirmation. When he awoke on Saturday morning, after his first night in the Executive Mansion, the glow was gone, several people close to him said, and the new president was filled anew with a sense of injury.

“The lack of discipline troubled even senior members of Mr. Trump’s circle,” the paper wrote, “some of whom had urged him not to indulge his simmering resentment at what he saw as unfair news coverage.”

Didn’t they know he’s like that? I knew he’s like that just from checking his Twitter every day. That’s what he’s like. He gets in a huge snit if anyone disses him.

Ultimately, though, the most astounding sentence in the Post’s write-up might be the following:

This account of Trump’s tumultuous first days in office comes from interviews with nearly a dozen senior White House officials and other Trump advisers and confidants, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations and moments.

Nearly a dozen of Trump’s closest confidantes helped plant an embarrassing news story about how their boss can’t handle embarrassing news stories. Which is to say: A president who prizes loyalty in his subordinates has already been betrayed by a huge swath of his inner circle.

It isn’t hard to understand why Trump’s aides would want to distance themselves from the mogul’s decision to begin his presidency by shouting self-aggrandizing delusions at CIA employees, congressional leaders, and the Fourth Estate. But we aren’t in the late days of a losing campaign, when it’s normal for advisers to start leaking dirt on the boss to save their reputations. We’re less than four full days into the Trump presidency, with (barring death, impeachment, resignation, or coup) at least 1,461 to go.

Yes I was marveling at that this morning when I read the Post story – his gang are ratting him out already.

Trump the lying silencing liar claims to “believe” millions of people voted illegally, but since he’s a chronic liar, that’s not very plausible – and it’s also beside the point.

President Donald Trump believes millions of votes were cast illegally in last year’s election, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday, but he wouldn’t provide any concrete evidence for the claim, which has long been debunked.

“The President does believe that, I think he’s stated that before, and stated his concern of voter fraud and people voting illegally during the campaign and continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence people have brought to him,” Spicer said.

Pressed for what evidence exists, Spicer would say only that Trump “has believed that for a while based on studies and information he has.”

In other words somebody wrote it down on a yellow pad and showed it to him.

A number of studies have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

The Truth About Voter Fraud, a report written by experts at The Brennan Center for Justice, found voter fraud rates were between 0.00004% and 0.0009%.

That’s…not 3 million people.

This is the worst yet. He’s imposing a gag order on federal agencies.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to curb the flow of information from several government agencies whose mandate impacts environmental issues since last week, in actions that appeared designed to tighten control and discourage dissenting views.

Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have seen directives from the newly minted leadership seeking to limit how they communicate to the public, according to multiple sources.

Who the FUCK does he think he is? What makes him think he gets to do that? What makes him think he has a mandate to do that? What makes him think he gets to make himself a dictator?

On Tuesday, a source at the EPA said that staff had been told by members of the Trump administration not to speak to reporters or publish any press releases or blog posts on social media. EPA staff have also been asked not to publicize any talks, conferences, or webinars that had been planned for the next 60 days, the staffer said, asking not to be named.

…

The agency also was asked by the White House on Monday to temporarily halt all contracts and grants pending a review, according to multiple sources. The EPA awards billions of dollars worth of grants and contracts every year to support programs around environmental testing, cleanups and research.

Environmental groups reacted with outrage. New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, said in reaction to the freeze that his office “will examine all legal options to ensure the EPA meets its obligations to keep our state’s air and water safe.”

The Department of Agriculture also has seen efforts to curb communication. On Tuesday, employees were informed in a memo seen by Reuters that all communications with the media should be approved by the administration, and social media posts should be reviewed by managers “to remove references to policy priorities and initiatives of the previous Administration.”

The department, meanwhile, disavowed an email sent on Monday to its scientific research unit ordering the suspension of releasing “any public-facing documents,” including news releases and photos, saying it was sent without permission and should not include a ban on publication of peer-reviewed scientific papers.

Officials at HHS also received a memo ordering them not to send “any correspondence” to other public officials.

Instead, they must refer any requests for information to senior leaders, who are not to do anything until they have received instructions from the White House staff on its policies, according to a source who read the memo.

He thinks he’s been given absolute powers.

On Tuesday, Badlands National Park, part of the Department of Interior, posted a series of Tweets about climate change: “Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate,” one of the tweets read. By Tuesday afternoon, the tweets were gone.

So everybody on Twitter should be sharing the content of that tweet.

Also the Trump gang needs to hurry up with the renaming, now that it’s the Environmental Destruction Agency.

Another bad news:

The Trump administration has instructed officials at the Environmental Protection Agency to freeze its grants and contracts, a move that could affect everything from state-led climate research to localized efforts to improve air and water quality to environmental justice projects aimed at helping poor communities.

An email went out to employees in the agency’s Office of Acquisition Management within hours of President Trump’s swearing-in on Friday.

“New EPA administration has asked that all contract and grant awards be temporarily suspended, effective immediately,” read the email, which was shared with The Washington Post. “Until we receive further clarification, which we hope to have soon, please construe this to include task orders and work assignments.”

In other words all EPA-funded research is stopped.

Myron Ebell, who oversaw the EPA transition for the new administration, told ProPublica on Monday that the freezing of grants and contracts was not unprecedented.

“They’re trying to freeze things to make sure nothing happens they don’t want to have happen, so any regulations going forward, contracts, grants, hires, they want to make sure to look at them first,” said Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-backed group that has long sought to slash the authority of the EPA.

Of course it has. The name of the “institute” says it all – “competitive enterprise” is the enemy of any kind of program or policy or activity that would interfere with “the free market.”

But not in recent history has such a blanket freeze taken place, and one employee told ProPublica he did not recall anything like it in nearly a decade with the agency.

The move is likely to increase anxieties inside an already tense agency. Ebell and other transition officials have made little secret about their goal of greatly reducing the EPA’s footprint and regulatory reach. Trump has repeatedly criticized the EPA for what he calls a string of onerous, expensive regulations that are hampering businesses. And his nominee to run the agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has repeatedly sued the EPA over the years, challenging its legal authority to regulate everything from mercury pollution to various wetlands and waterways to carbon emissions from power plants.

Because obviously we should just destroy everything so that people like Trump can make more and more and more and more money.

An item from a segment on NPR yesterday about Trump’s visit to the CIA.

STEVE INSKEEP: So how awkward is it that the new president has taken office – the new administration has come in – and there is still, so far as we know, an investigation of the president’s ties to Russia?

MARY LOUISE KELLY: It is awkward. And the latest twist is The Wall Street Journal reporting this morning that Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Flynn, is under a counter intelligence investigation because of suspected ties to Russia. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also investigating that very question.

So here – here is the question that another CIA veteran put to me after watching Trump’s speech this weekend. This is Steve Hall. He was CIA chief of Russia operations. And he asked, what happens when the CIA collects a stellar piece of intelligence that maybe puts Vladimir Putin in a bad light? Steve Hall said, what happens when the CIA briefs Trump, and he wants to know the source? And Hall’s quote directly to me was, how can you say, no, we don’t trust you with the sourcing of that information? That is a live question today at Langley.

Very live indeed, I should think.

Last night the Post confided in us about what’s going on in Donnie’s office. He’s not happy. He’s surprised and upset that some of us think he’s terrible.  He’s surprised and upset that a lot of us think he’s terrible.

When he came back to the White House on Saturday after a nice soothing prayer meeting, he turned on the tv only to see news about the protests and the scanty turnout for his sacred inauguration.

As his press secretary, Sean Spicer, was still unpacking boxes in his spacious new West Wing office, Trump grew increasingly and visibly enraged.

Really?! How astonishing. He always seemed like such a reasonable, even-keeled, good-natured guy, one who would naturally expect to see some people unhappy with his presidency, and would take it in his stride and focus on the important stuff.

Trump’s advisers suggested that he could push back in a simple tweet. Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Trump confidant and the chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, offered to deliver a statement addressing the crowd size.

But Trump was adamant, aides said. Over the objections of his aides and advisers — who urged him to focus on policy and the broader goals of his presidency — the new president issued a decree: He wanted a fiery public response, and he wanted it to come from his press secretary.

Ok that’s interesting – it’s interesting to know they were urging him not to.

But it’s also slightly perplexing. They must know him and know what he’s like. If they think it’s a bad idea to explode in rage at the citizenry on the slightest provocation, then why are they working for him?

Spicer’s resulting statement — delivered in an extended shout and brimming with falsehoods — underscores the extent to which the turbulence and competing factions that were a hallmark of Trump’s campaign have been transported to the White House.

The broader power struggles within the Trump operation have touched everything from the new administration’s communications shop to the expansive role of the president’s son-in-law to the formation of Trump’s political organization. At the center, as always, is Trump himself, whose ascent to the White House seems to have only heightened his acute sensitivity to criticism.

That’s our only consolation, I think, at least for now. It’s the straw I’ve been clinging to for weeks – the fact that his election was going to mean he’ll be faced with more and harsher opposition and contempt than he’s ever had to deal with before. It’s a vindictive consolation, but it’s all we have.

By most standards, Spicer’s statement Saturday did not go well. He appeared tired and nervous in an ill-fitting gray pinstripe suit. He publicly gave faulty facts and figures — which he said were provided to him by the Presidential Inaugural Committee — that prompted a new round of media scrutiny.

Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.

The president himself, of course, can’t utter a coherent sentence unless it’s composed and written down by someone else.

Trump has been resentful, even furious, at what he views as the media’s failure to reflect the magnitude of his achievements, and he feels demoralized that the public’s perception of his presidency so far does not necessarily align with his own sense of accomplishment.

Good. Excellent. More of that. Maybe he’ll get so demoralized that he’ll leave. I know Pence is even worse on policy, but I want Trump gone.

Trump watched Sunday as Conway sparred with NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” Some Trump allies were unsettled by her performance, but not the president, according to one official. He called Vice President Pence to rave about how she handled questions from Todd, whom Trump mocked on Twitter as “Sleepy Eyes,” and called Conway to offer his congratulations. Trump was perturbed that the media focused on two words from Conway’s interview: “alternative facts.”

So he’s still calling people names in public. Even as president.

Tiny Hands. Sleepy Brain. Alternative Hair.

Of course he did.

President Trump signed executive orders Tuesday clearing the way for the controversial Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines to move forward.

He also signed an executive order to expedite environmental reviews of other infrastructure projects, lamenting the existing “incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process.”

Yes indeed – we mustn’t take the time necessary to investigate the environmental impacts of what we do, even at this time when we know for sure that we’ve already made the world a much more difficult place for future generations. Hell no, we must barge ahead regardless, because we’re just that greedy and selfish.

The orders will have an immediate impact in North Dakota, where the pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners wants to complete the final 1,100-foot piece of the 1,172-mile pipeline route that runs under Lake Oahe. The pipeline would carry oil from the booming shale oil reserves in North Dakota to refineries and pipeline networks in Illinois.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other Native American groups have been protesting the project, which they say would imperil their water supplies and disturb sacred burial and archaeological sites. The Army Corp of Engineers called a halt to the project in December to consider alternative routes.

The executive order from Trump on the Keystone XL pipeline threatens to undo a major decision by President Obama…

And that of course is all the reason President Shithead needs.

Well at least Trump is unhappy about how many people hate him. That’s something. It’s a start.

Sean Spicer explained that to the press today.

Toward the end, Spicer gave an impassioned defense of why Trump dwells so much on things like his inauguration crowd size, arguing that Trump is very frustrated by constant negative coverage and the media minimizing him. He basically said it amounted to a defense mechanism from the president. It was really rather interesting.

Good. Of course it would be better if Trump were ashamed or contrite, but frustration is better than nothing. All he has to do now is figure out that the “constant negative coverage” is because he, Trump, is such a shitty, evil, bullying, horrible human being. And then resign, and retire from all public life, and work on being not so loathsome.

It’s true: toward the end Spicer does get into that. It’s very silly stuff.

QUESTION: But — but in terms of the crowd size issue, why bring that up at the CIA? And why did you come out Saturday afternoon to talk about that? Did he tell you, Sean, I’m upset about this, I want you to come out and —

SPICER: No, I’m not going to get into conversations that I have with the president. But I will tell you that it’s not — it’s not just about a crowd size. It’s about this constant — you know, he’s not going to run. Then if he runs, he’s going to drop out. Then if he runs, he can’t win, there’s no way he can win Pennsylvania, there’s no way he can win Michigan.

SPICER: Then, if won, it’s oh, well he(ph) — there is this constant theme to undercut the enormous support that he has. And I think that it’s just unbelievably frustrating when you’re continually told it’s not big enough, it’s not good enough, you can’t win.

QUESTION: And — and if I may —

SPICER: Hold on — because I — I think it’s important. He’s gone out there and defied the odds over and over and over again. And he keeps getting told what he can’t do by this narrative that’s out there. And he exceeds it every single time. And I think there’s an overall frustration when you — when you turn on the television over and over again and get told that there’s this narrative that you didn’t win. You weren’t going to run. You can’t pick up this state.

Ok there’s a misunderstanding here (or a pretended misunderstanding). It’s true that many in the news media underestimated the recklessness of the voters. But that of course isn’t what frustrates Trump – what Trump is agitated about is that he thinks the news media underestimated him. He thinks that because he thinks he’s hot shit. He isn’t. He’s a worthless empty-headed bully. Yes he won, because too many voters like a worthless empty-headed bully if they’ve seen him on tv enough. But the fact that he won (just barely, and not in terms of the popular vote) does not mean he’s hot shit.

He’s frustrated because we can see that he’s a worthless empty-headed bully. Well that’s his problem – he decided to run for the presidency, so he made it obvious to the world that he’s a worthless empty-headed bully. That’s not the fault of the news media, it’s the fault of Trump himself, for being a worthless empty-headed bully.

QUESTION: Isn’t it a fair criticism that you’ve got bigger fish to fry? Why worry about a couple of tweets about crowd size?

(CROSSTALK)

SPICER: Because it’s not — because that’s what I’m saying, you’re minimizing the point here, Jim. It’s not about one Tweet. It’s not about one picture. It’s about a constant theme. It’s about sitting here every time and being told no. “Well, we don’t think he can do that, he’ll never accomplish that, he can’t win that, it won’t be the biggest, it’s not gonna be that good. The crowds aren’t that big, he’s not that successful.”

The narrative — and the default narrative is always negative and it’s demoralizing. And I think that when you sit here and you realize the sacrifice the guy made, leaving a very, very successful business because he really cares about this country and he wants — despite your partisan differences, he cares about making this country better for everybody. He wants to make it safer for everybody. And so when you wake up everyday and that’s what you’re seeing over and over again and you’re not seeing stories about the Cabinet folks that he’s appointing or the success that he’s having trying to keep American jobs here. Yes, it is a little disappointing.

No. He does not. He does not care about making this country better for everybody. People who care about that do not talk to and about people the way he does. They don’t look at people the way he does. They don’t do the things he does. People like that don’t cheat workers and contractors, they don’t call people names on Twitter, they don’t grab women by the pussy and brag to other men about being able to grab women by the pussy.

No more sob stories please.