Trump has gone to Texas, even though he didn’t want to, so that he can…look studly on the border? Or something?

He does look hawt, you gotta admit.

CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump arrived in this border town Thursday on a trip that he did not want to take to discuss a crisis that Democrats say does not exist.

He’s helpless. If they tell him to go to this border town in Texas, he has to go.

But as the government shutdown neared the end of its third week, the president left Washington with no additional negotiations scheduled with congressional leaders. In remarks to reporters on Thursday, Mr. Trump left open the possibility of

This one will lose him some MAGA fans, because he’s playing them for suckers.

President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that his oft-made 2016 campaign promise that he would build a wall and Mexico would pay for it didn’t mean it would be a direct payment, despite outlining just that scenario during his campaign.

Yeah, they’re not going to like that, because he said it to them and they know that and nobody likes being played for a sucker.

“When during the campaign, I would say ‘Mexico is going to pay for it,’ obviously, I never said this, and I never meant they’re gonna write out a check, I said they’re going to pay for it. They are,” he said

More lies pointed out.

We fact checked Trump's speech on immigration — he averaged one false claim every 34 seconds pic.twitter.com/slTm8lpapL

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) January 9, 2019

… Read the rest

This is a critical moment for the rule of law. If there is a legal justification for a declaration of emergency, the Office of Legal Counsel should publicly release a full legal opinion before any action is taken. Or resign. https://t.co/bDlysbHhLY

— walter dellinger (@walterdellinger) January 8, 2019

Secretary of State Pompeo tells King Abdullah of Jordan he saw an early draft of the president's address to the nation tonight: "He'll make a lot of news," and then laughed. pic.twitter.com/dEgRIklvYm

— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) January 8, 2019

Hahahaha national emergency hahahahahahaha this is all so hilarious.

Now would be a really good time for @MittRomney to round up a few R's and step forward to say a declaration of

The damn fools at the major US tv networks have agreed to air Trump’s stupid EMERGENCY DANGER DANGER LOOK OUT speech.

Mr. Trump’s request that the major networks broadcast his speech live set off a day of tense deliberations at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. By Monday evening, they had all agreed to broadcast the president’s address live at 9 p.m. Eastern. Cable news channels, including CNN and Fox News, will also carry the speech.

Some journalists worry that handing Mr. Trump a chunk of network prime time could allow the president to assert falsehoods to tens of millions of viewers. But several network producers said privately on Monday that they were uncomfortable turning down the president amid a

Can Trump give himself emergency powers if there’s no emergency?

“We are looking at it very strongly,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “We’re looking at a national emergency, because we have a national emergency.”

How do you look at something “very strongly”? He can’t even word, and he wants emergency powers.

Also, we don’t have a national emergency of the kind he means. We have a national emergency that Trump is president.

Congress could reject the president’s emergency declaration with a vote in both the House and Senate. But the Republican-controlled Senate seems unlikely to take that step. Instead, critics would very likely pursue a legal challenge.

“I think the president would be wide open to a court challenge saying,

The LA Times has some questions:

Trump railed as a candidate and as president about people living in the country without permission, calling them rapists and violent gang members.

Last year, in a White House meeting discussing so-called sanctuary cities and states with sheriffs and other local California officials, the president said:

“We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them, but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.”

If immigrants in the U.S. illegally are so violent and such a danger to society, why did managers of Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster,

Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law at Yale, explains how illegal Trump’s plan to use emergency powers to build Wall would be. Trump’s plan is to take military funding to pay for Wall, and use the military to build it.

While it is hard to know exactly what the president has in mind, or whether he has any conception about what it would entail, one thing is clear: Not only would such an action be illegal, but if members of the armed forces obeyed his command, they would be committing a federal crime.

There are laws against it.

In response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, Congress created an express exception to the rules, and authorized the

Terry Glavin on Trump’s Putin-based explanation of the Russian role in Afghanistan:

We’re now at the half-way mark of Donald Trump’s term in the White House, and the relentless hum of his casual imbecilities, obscenities, banalities and outright fabrications has become so routine to the world’s daily dread that it is now just background noise in the ever-louder bedlam of America’s dystopian, freak-show political culture.

And yet, now and again, just when you think the president has scraped his fingers raw in the muck at the bottom of stupidity’s deep barrel, the man somehow manages to out-beclown himself. Such was the case this week, in a ramble of fatuous illiteracy that should drive home the point, to all of us,

You can see him say it.

(Why does he jerk his head back and forth every time he says something? It looks weird.)

Trump has deluded himself into believing that Democrats give a damn whether he builds his fake wall with steel or concrete.

He then claims that "some" of the previous presidents have told him that they should've built walls. pic.twitter.com/TRmFclYTeL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 4, 2019

… Read the rest

Another pratfall lie:

President Donald Trump claimed without evidence on Friday that past presidents have privately confided to him that they regret not building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

But at least three of the four living U.S. presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — did no such thing.

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say that Jimmy Carter didn’t do it either.

Asked if Clinton told Trump that he should have built a border wall, Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said, “He did not. In fact, they’ve not talked since the inauguration.”

Bush spokesman Freddy Ford also said the two men had not discussed the matter. And Obama, for

Yeah.

Genius reporter reminds Trump he can declare emergency powers for himself. “Have you considered?” asks bright spark. Trump answers before he finishes the question.

Yes I have. And I can do it if I want.

That is true, unfortunately.

Reichstag fire.

A few hours [after the fire], on February 28, Hindenburg invoked Article 48 and the cabinet drew up the “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State.” The act abolished freedom of speech, assembly, privacy and the press; legalized phone tapping and interception of correspondence; and suspended the autonomy of federated states, like Bavaria. That night around 4,000 people were arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the SA. Although the

Trump threw a press conference after meeting with legislators.

Trump “said he’d keep the government closed for a very long period of time — months or even years,” according to Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who spoke to reporters in the White House driveway.
“Absolutely I said that,” Trump affirmed from the Rose Garden shortly afterward. “I don’t think it will, but I’m prepared.”

Sure, he’s prepared, because he won’t lose his house or car or credit record or anything else; the fact that hundreds of thousands of government workers will doesn’t matter to him, because he is Trump and they are not.

Trump said he designated a group of aides, including Vice President Mike Pence, Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen

Trump wants the government shutdown to go on for years. That should be grounds for impeachment all by itself.

Emerging from what they called a “sometimes contentious” meeting at the White House, Democratic leaders said Mr. Trump remained adamant that he would not sign spending bills to reopen the shuttered offices unless Congress approved money for his wall on the southern border.

“We told the president we needed the government open,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, told reporters outside the White House. “He resisted. In fact, he said he’d keep the government closed for a very long period of time, months or even years.”

In other words he’s doing a dictator.

On Friday, the president

The White House has the whole transcript of Trump blathering for an hour and a half yesterday. I’m afraid I will have to say more about it, because I just have to.

But the southern border is a very, very high — highly used placed by people that do human trafficking.  How can it get worse than that?

There’s a reason why politicians and wealthy people build walls around their houses and their compounds.  President Obama recently built a wall around his compound.  There’s a reason for it.  And I don’t blame him.

The reasons politicians do it can be different from the reasons rich people do it. One reason Obama needs a lot of security is Donald Trump … Read the rest

This particular two minute segment is quite startlingly idiotic and hence frightening.

There seems to be a frozen silence in the room while he blurts out all this uncomprehending shit.

Following a bizarre rant about the Soviet Union, Trump says this about Afghanistan: "Why isn't Russia there? Why isn't India there? Why isn't Pakistan there? Why are we there? We're 6,000 miles away? But I don't mind… I think I would have been a good general." pic.twitter.com/bQ36x1RSZH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

… Read the rest

Want to watch Matthew Whitaker kissing Trump’s bum at that Cabinet meeting?

Here you go.

Acting AG Whitaker kisses up to Trump for staying in DC over holidays: "Sir, Mr President, I will start by highlighting the fact you stayed in DC over the holidays, giving up Christmas w/your family, New Year's w/your family… you have demonstrated your dedication to delivering" pic.twitter.com/9Lo2pMocgN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

… Read the rest