Trump says nah he didn’t.

Who could fail to believe that?

Donald Trump has denied a report alleging he made a promise to a foreign leader, which sparked a whistleblower’s formal complaint.

The complaint is reported to relate to a July phone call with Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Washington Post said an intelligence official found the comment “so troubling” they went to the department’s inspector general.

One guess is that it has to do with trying to steal the next presidential election with the help of the military.

Democrats are trying to get the complaint turned over to Congress, with the details still unknown.

However, some reports allege that Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky to investigate Joe

Astonishing.

President Donald Trump is considering revoking security clearances from ex-officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday.

Sanders said Trump believed that the former officials “politicized” their positions by accusing Trump of inappropriate contact with Russia, and she said in that some cases they “monetized their clearances,” without clarifying what she meant.

“The fact that people with security clearances are making baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence,” Sanders said. She also said Trump was eyeing clearances held by former NSA Director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser Susan Rice and former FBI Deputy

More lies.

Is Russia still targeting the US? Trump says, "No." pic.twitter.com/L5ZY9DE4r1

— Meg Wagner (@megwagner) July 18, 2018

“There’s been no president ever as tough as I have been on Russhah.”… Read the rest

Oh come on.

Reuters:

U.S. President Donald Trump tried on Tuesday to calm a storm over his failure to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, saying he misspoke in a joint news conference in Helsinki.

…

“I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t,’” Trump told reporters at the White House, more than 24 hours after his appearance with Putin. “The sentence should have been, ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.’”

Well of course it should have been, but it wasn’t.

Although he faced pressure from critics, allied countries and even his own staff to take a tough line, Trump said not a single disparaging word

Guest post by Robert Ahrens.

I wish I had some pithy, cool, smartass remarks to make about this week’s news.

From the indictment of Russia’s intelligence operatives and the astonishing details of their actions coupled with those of the Trump campaign, including Trump himself, to the events of today, where the President of the United States stood up before the world, on live TV and told us he trusts the leader of our most powerful enemy more than he does our own Intelligence services, I am numb.

I should be angry.

I should be virtually speechless with anger, with enraged disgust, and with outraged fury at both the actions and words of the traitor who inhabits the White House AND … Read the rest

The choreography of the whole thing was interesting. Trump went bopping off to Europe to insult more allies and fantasize aloud about his future friendship with Putin…when all the time he knew about the indictments that were in the pipeline.

President Trump had been aware all along about the charges against Russian actors, and had been briefed on them by the Justice Department even before he left for Europe. “The President is fully aware of the department’s actions today,” Rosenstein told reporters as he announced the indictments, which lay out in methodical detail the ways in which agents of the Russian government systematically worked to infiltrate the Democrats’ 2016 campaign with the apparent goal of helping Trump win

Ohhhhhh god.

The Post, minutes ago – 8 p.m. their time, so it’s another one of these end-of-the-day booms that cause Maddow to tear up the show she and her people just spent the day writing and producing.

This one though…

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin — apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter.

Urk.

So it’s all true. Tillerson, and his demolition of the State Department and our ability to conduct a reasonable foreign … Read the rest

The Times has a transcript via the White House of Trump’s treasonous lies about Putin.

As you know, we saw each other last night just for a picture, and that was the first time. And then today we had a round table with numerous countries. You have a list of the countries, obviously. Right? You have a list.

And we spoke intermittently during that round table. We seem to have a very good feeling for each other and a good relationship considering we don’t know each other well. I think it’s a very good relationship.

This is the guy who said Obama liked him after they had that get-together after the election – the guy who told a disgusting racist … Read the rest

Trump updated his diary on Twitter for us. Apparently he was brilliant at the G20 meeting, and he awed everyone, and the whole world fell to its knees in admiration of American and its Shining Golden Prince.

The G 20 Summit was a great success for the U.S. – Explained that the U.S. must fix the many bad trade deals it has made. Will get done!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

Mansplaining at its finest.

He’s so clueless and so narcissistic and so passionately in love with himself that he thinks he can Explain things to the rest of the world, and the rest of the world will listen and nod and understand. He fails to consider … Read the rest

So Trump took Comey aside and asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn.

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

You see he was being nice about it. He asked him nicely, in a nice way. He must be such a nice man.

The existence of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I.

Glenn Thrush and Peter Baker on Trump’s gymnastics:

In a series of early-morning posts on Twitter, Mr. Trump did not dispute reports that he might have provided enough details to reveal the source of the information and the manner in which it had been collected. The information about the Islamic State plot came from a Middle Eastern ally and was considered so sensitive that American officials had not shared it widely within their own government or among allies.

I think it’s probably obvious what Middle Eastern ally that is. What’s not obvious is whether or not Trump ever grasped that it doesn’t want the US blabbing what it shares, and why it doesn’t (angry mullahs would be one big … Read the rest