In case the summit wasn’t going to be acrimonious enough, Trump poured in a new ingredient:

President Trump on Friday said Russia should be readmitted to the Group of Seven leading economies, breaking with other world leaders who have insisted that Moscow remain ostracized after its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

“Now, I love our country. I have been Russia’s worst nightmare . . . . But with that being said, Russia should be in this meeting,” Trump said Friday as he left the White House. “Whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run . . . . They should let Russia come back in.”

Yes, it’s just … Read the rest

The CBC reports a slight disagreement between Trudeau and Macron on the one hand and Trump on the other.

Canada and France plan to take what their leaders describe as a polite, persuasive but firm approach to Donald Trump at the G7 summit, warning the U.S. president that his punishing trade tariffs will backfire and harm America’s economy and workforce.

But as he prepared to travel to Canada, Trump’s Twitter feed suggested Thursday night that the president is in a mood to push back.

“Prime Minister Trudeau is being so indignant, bringing up the relationship that the U.S. and Canada had over the many years and all sorts of other things,” Trump tweeted.

Ah oui, so indignant, so unlike … Read the rest

Yes sure enough – Trump is supposed to be “preparing” for his meeting with Kim, and he doesn’t want to go to Canada for the G 7 because it will take time away from his “preparation,” but if you ask him he will promptly say that he doesn’t need to prepare because it’s not about preparation, it’s about attitude.

During a White House pool spray with Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe on Thursday, President Trump said he doesn’t think he has a lot of preparation to do ahead of a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in which the two leaders will discuss North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

“I think I’m very well prepared. I don’t think

Trump is having a sulk about his boring homework of going to stinky old CANADA when he hates Canada and would much rather watch tv and eat ice cream.

The president has vented privately about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as their trade tensions have spilled into public view. He has mused about finding new ways to punish the United States’ northern neighbor in recent days, frustrated with the country’s retaliatory trade moves.

To…punish Canada? For what? For Trudeau not saying “how high?” when Trump says “jump”?

And Trump has complained to aides about spending two days in Canada for a summit of world leaders, believing the trip is a distraction from his upcoming Singapore summit with North Korean

Today:

The Fake News Media has been so unfair, and vicious, to my wife and our great First Lady, Melania. During her recovery from surgery they reported everything from near death, to facelift, to left the W.H. (and me) for N.Y. or Virginia, to abuse. All Fake, she is doing really well!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2018

A year ago:

I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017

…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said

Chris Cillizza itemizes the wrongs in Trump’s idiotic “statement” yesterday on why he was telling a football team that they can’t come to his our house.

2. Trump doesn’t own the White House. Trump seems to be treating 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue like one of his Trump properties. If only you had done things the way I wanted them done, then maybe you could be reclining in one of my 5-star hotels right now — or playing golf at one of my award-winning courses. That is how Trump thinks.

But it’s not his, and he’s not supposed to brandish it to punish people for dissent. He’s not supposed to punish people for dissent at all.

3. Trump’s definition of

Michelle Goldberg cites a disquieting statistic:

Whatever Trump does, most Republicans will probably go along with it. In 500 days, Trump has managed to turn much of what remains of his party into an authoritarian cult. Among Republicans, he has an 87 percent approval rating; the only modern Republican president who was more popular with his own party at this point in his term was George W. Bush, and that was mere months after Sept. 11. A recent poll of voters in congressional swing districts found that 71 percent of Republicans “mostly like” Trump’s handling of F.B.I. and criminal justice officials.

Among Republicans he has an exceptionally high approval rating.

That’s appalling. That terrible mean bullying venomous vindictive … Read the rest

Matt Yglesias underlines the dangers in what Trump’s legal muscle says.

The key passage in the memo is one in which Trump’s lawyers argue that not only was there nothing shady going on when FBI Director James Comey got fired there isn’t even any potential shadiness to investigate because the president is allowed to be as shady as he wants to be when it comes to overseeing federal law enforcement. He can fire whoever he wants. Shut down any investigation or open up a new one.

Indeed, the President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of

The Times published the whole letter with annotations. It’s a lot.

To take one item at random…

It is also worth responding to the popular suggestion that the President’s public criticism of the FBI either constitutes obstruction or serves as evidence of obstruction. Such criticism ignores the sacred responsibility of the President to hold his subordinates accountable — a function not unlike public Congressional oversight hearings. After all, the FBI is not above the law and we are now learning of the disappointing results of a lack of accountability in both the DOJ and FBI.

And that’s what Trump is doing, is it? Performing his sacred responsibility to hold his subordinates accountable? By screaming insults at them on Twitter … Read the rest

Trump’s lawyers are seriously arguing, in a long memo to Mueller, that Trump can’t obstruct justice because as president he is justice himself.

President Trump’s lawyers have for months quietly waged a campaign to keep the special counsel from trying to force him to answer questions in the investigation into whether he obstructed justice, asserting that he cannot be compelled to testify and arguing in a confidential letter that he could not possibly have committed obstruction because he has unfettered authority over all federal investigations.

Including federal investigations into his own crimes. So a president can do anything at all and then simply shut down or forbid all federal investigations because his authority is that absolute.

So they’re saying … Read the rest

Tom McCarthy at the Guardian talks to a couple of legal boffins about Trump’s erosion of democratic and legal norms.

“We’ve never had a president attack the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that work for him in this way,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former assistant attorney general under George W Bush, said in an email. “He’s attacking them in order to discredit the Mueller investigation. But the baleful impact on those agencies’ morale and on public trust in them unfortunately extends far beyond that investigation.”

While whispers of a “constitutional crisis” are in the air, many mainstream analyses reject that idea, pointing out among other things that the Mueller investigation continues full steam ahead, no

Trump loves Kim again.

.@realDonaldTrump is smiling next to a man who runs a gulag jailing some 200,000 North Koreans and who oversaw the sinking of a South Korean Navy ship killing 46 & the hacking of Sony North America. pic.twitter.com/1sH5S9LbVa

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) June 2, 2018

https://twitter.com/RonanFarrow/status/1002708327552385024

Trump has agreed to meet with the North Koreans — something they’ve been dying to do for years — in exchange for nothing

Also, we have to figure out how to pay for luxury hotel rooms for Kim Jung Un and his entourage

World’s Greatest Negotiator

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 2, 2018

… Read the rest