Another woman reports another sexual assault by the current president of the US – this one a full-on rape as opposed to a mere grab her by the pussy.

The woman is E. Jean Carroll, advice columnist for Elle magazine.

25 years ago she ran into Trump at Bergdorf’s, and he enlisted her to help him shop for “a girl.” She suggested a hat, a purse, he said underwear. He finds a filmy item and tells her to try it on, she says you try it on, they go back and forth with her thinking he’s bantering.

“But it’s your size,” I say, laughing and trying to slap him back with one of the boxes on the counter.

“Come on,”

Historian Heather Cox Richardson on the current mess:

Since Richard Nixon, Republican presidents have pushed the envelope of acceptable behavior under the guise of patriotism, and Democrats have permitted their encroaching lawlessness on the grounds of civility, constantly convincing themselves that Republicans have reached a limit beyond which they won’t go. Each time they’ve been proven wrong.

Nixon obstructed justice. Ford pardoned him.

When Ronald Reagan’s administration was exposed for having illegally sold arms to Iran to raise money covertly for the Contra rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government, Reagan acknowledged that the evidence was damning – yet defended the principle behind the scheme. Reagan’s successor, George HW Bush, pardoned the six leading figures of the Iran-Contra affair because, he

“Dreyfuss était coupable!”

Trump says “You have people on both sides of that” when asked if he has any plans to apologize for trying to get the Central Park 5 executed.

WATCH: President Trump declines to apologize to the exonerated Central Park Five, and asserts that “you have people on both sides” of their exoneration.

The case has received renewed attention in light of Ava DuVernay’s ‘When They See Us’. https://t.co/Sk2vHNmWsT pic.twitter.com/UFX7GIbF5D

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 18, 2019

H/t Acolyte of Sagan… Read the rest

The BBC pulls out a few items from Trump’s 30 hours of talking.

Mr Trump argued that no president has ever been as mistreated as himself, including Abe Lincoln, who was shot dead.

“If you can believe it, Abraham Lincoln was treated supposedly very badly,” he said. “But nobody’s been treated badly like me.”

Mr Trump, who calls himself a student of history, has previously drawn comparisons with the 16th president. During a rally last September in Montana, Mr Trump said Lincoln’s legendary Gettysburg Address “was excoriated by the fake news”.

And during his first election campaign, Mr Trump claimed: “With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that’s ever held

Interesting.

Blockbuster story buried in this NYT report.

Pentagon, intelligence officials fear they cannot trust Trump enough to brief him fully on new US cyber operation against Russia for fear he will "countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials" as he did before with Russians. pic.twitter.com/BgSF3zi8nm

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) June 15, 2019

It turns out there are drawbacks to having a president who is too childish and reckless and self-serving to be trusted with…anything, basically.

The US military is not briefing the US president on major cyber warfare operations against a hostile foreign power because they do not trust the president not to betray those operations to that hostile foreign power.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 16, 2019

pic.twitter.com/c40BQpZFtW

— The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45) June 14, 2019

… Read the rest

Oh good, another official ruling for Trump to flout and mock and disparage:

White House Deputy Press Secretary Steven Groves responds: pic.twitter.com/k6aU0nTxjn

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) June 13, 2019

Talking Points Memo summarizes:

A report attached to the statement labels Conway a “repeat offender,” and says that her violations, “if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions.”

The Hatch Act bans federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. The Office of Special Counsel is a federal watchdog agency that monitors federal employees.

The OSC report states that “If Ms. Conway were any other federal employee, her multiple violations of the law would almost certainly result

Trump still doesn’t get it.

In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, the president admitted that he would accept information on a political opponent from a foreign government.

“It’s not an interference, they have information – I think I’d take it,” President Trump said. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI – if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s

We can actually watch him say it. We can watch, and we can hear reporters erupt with questions when he says it, and we can see him make the “shutupImtalking” gesture at them. We can watch him say that he too would murder a brother who was talking to the CIA. We can watch him drivel about what a warm letter Kim sent him. We can watch him exclaim about how much better he’s made everything. We can watch his hair flap jump up and down in the wind.

Trump: I just received a beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un. I can't show you the letter obviously, but it was a very personal, very warm, very nice letter.. North Korea

Trump totally gets why Kim Jong Un had his brother murdered. He says he would have done the same.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he had received a very warm letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, calling the correspondence “beautiful.”

…

Trump spoke a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Kim’s slain half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, was a source for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Kim Jong Nam was killed at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2017.

“I did receive a beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un … I appreciated the letter. I saw the information about CIA with respect to his brother, or half-brother. And I will tell him that

John Dean is trolling Trump – who has nothing on his schedule today so is free to watch all the tv.

Richard Nixon’s former White House counsel John Dean just began his testimony with a bang.

He first notes that he last appeared before the House judiciary committee on July 11, 1974, at the impeachment inquiry into president Nixon (who resigned in August, 1974).

Dean says: “I hope I can give a little historical perspective on the Mueller report. In many ways it is to Donald Trump what the ‘Watergate road map’ was to Nixon.”

He’s referring to the evidence Congress used to support its impeachment of Nixon, leading ultimately after the whole Watergate scandal, to the downfall of the

Remember that time Trump went to meet with Obama during the transition period? And came away raving about what a great guy he is and what rapport they had and how much Obama liked him? Now he’s doing it about the queen. He thinks the queen liked him.

Mind you, he hadn’t previously spent years insisting the queen was born in Kenya and shouldn’t even be the queen, so that commonality is missing. But the rest is unpleasantly reminiscent.

The US president, Donald Trump, has boasted about having “automatic chemistry” with the Queen during his state visit to the UK.

Trump, during an interview with Fox News, said people had noticed how well he and the Queen had connected.

And this is a good look too. This is a very good look. Really very very very good look – the vulgar mob boss squatting in sight of a field full of the graves of soldiers who died in the fight to defeat Nazism, and talking smack about the special counsel and the Speaker of the House. Very dignified, very impressive, very somber, very devoted to the public good. I don’t think.

https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1136653145369526272… Read the rest

Oh dear god. At the end he just starts explaining what an election is and what will happen with Brexit and how excellent it will all be, as if anyone had asked him to explain all the things. He is so BIZARRE.

He also explains to Leo Varadkar what a border is and what kind of border there is between Northern Ireland and Ireland. The taoiseach makes a brief attempt to set him straight but Trump just plunges on, talking nonsense as if reading it from The Big Book of Nonsense.

Trump, sitting next to a visibly uncomfortable taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, waded into the Brexit debate minutes after Air Force One touched down at Shannon airport on Wednesday afternoon.

We can watch him saying the unbelievably stupid and ignorant things.

Does the US President believe in climate change?

Trump says he discussed climate change with Prince Charles, who he believes is 'a very good person' who 'wants to have a world that's good for future generations'. pic.twitter.com/QNlXhiS1mO

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) June 5, 2019

At .40 Morgan asks what Choss said to him about climate change. There’s a pause while Trump struggles to engage his brain, and then he manages to think of the word “future.” Ah yes, that will help – future. It’s about the future. “What he really wants,” Don says ponderously, “and what he really feels warmly about, is…the future.” Pause for deep thought … Read the rest

One of Trump’s top annoying habits is attributing his own ignorance to everyone else.

When Donald Trump says, “A lot of people don’t know that” – or its rhetorical cousin, “People don’t realize” – he’s generally referring to things many people already know, but which he only recently learned.

They also tend to be things anyone in his job ought to have learned fifty years ago at least. His lifelong ignorance of just about everything is not a good qualification for that job.

There are, however, occasional exceptions. For example, Trump used the phrasing a couple of years ago to reflect philosophically. “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” the