Poor Don. No sooner does the Post report that he’s hoping to add an actual grown-up lawyer to his legal team than it has to update with the news that no he won’t, because the actual grown-up lawyer said hell no.

President Trump’s legal team has at times rivaled its client when it comes to unforced errors and strange behavior. And the team became even more colorful Monday when it added Joseph E. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney who has spent recent months detailing a deep-state conspiracy against Trump on Fox.

But the latest potential addition to Trump’s team could take things in a totally different — and more disciplined — direction.

The Washington Post’s Robert Costa and Carol

Trump decides to hire another wack job for his legal team, because things aren’t weird enough yet.

President Trump has decided to hire the longtime Washington lawyer Joseph E. diGenova, who has pushed the theory on television that Mr. Trump was framed by F.B.I. and Justice Department officials, to bolster his legal team, according to three people told of the decision.

Good idea; that’s what Don needs: more wack jobs on his “legal team.”

Mr. diGenova is not expected to take a lead role but will instead serve as a more aggressive player on the president’s legal team. Mr. Trump broke over the weekend from the longstanding advice of some of his lawyers that he refrain from directly attacking the

Trump plans to kill more people.

President Donald Trump will roll out new plans to tackle the country’s opioid epidemic on Monday in New Hampshire, the White House said Sunday. The plan will include stiffer penalties for high-intensity drug traffickers, including the death penalty for some dealers, Andrew Bremberg, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, told reporters Sunday.

The concept of the death penalty for certain drug traffickers is something Trump has been outspoken about, but this will be the first time it will be part of an official administration plan.

“The Department of Justice will seek the death penalty against drug traffickers when it’s appropriate under current law,” Bremberg told reporters during a phone call Sunday

Ruth Marcus on Trump’s efforts to control what people say about him:

[Robert] Costa [in April 2016]: “One thing I always wondered, are you going to make employees of the federal government sign nondisclosure agreements?”

Trump: “I think they should. . . . And I don’t know, there could be some kind of a law that you can’t do this. But when people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I don’t like that. I mean, I’ll be honest. And people would say, oh, that’s terrible, you’re taking away

The Post sums up the state of play:

McCabe’s firing — coupled with the comments from Trump and his personal attorney, John Dowd on Saturday — marked an extraordinary acceleration of the battle between the president and the special counsel, whose probe Trump has long dismissed as a politically motivated witch hunt.

Or to put it another way, an extraordinary acceleration of the battle between Trump and the rule of law.

[Trump’s personal lawyer John] Dowd said in a Saturday morning statement, “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s

Trump is trying hard to lay the groundwork for firing Mueller.

Wow, watch Comey lie under oath to Senator G when asked “have you ever been an anonymous source…or known someone else to be an anonymous source…?” He said strongly “never, no.” He lied as shown clearly on @foxandfriends.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

Fox and Friends…a show on a network that’s notorious for Just Plain Making Shit Up and for being ardent, immovable fans of President Pussygrabber.

Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James

The Post did a big story on the chaotic, frenzied, giggling-terrified atmosphere in Trump’s White House. Who will go next? Who will be marched out by security without a jacket?? Who will be fired on Twitter next?! What Fox News “personality” will get the next key national security gig?!?

Trump has decided to fire McMaster, but he’s dawdling over it partly to spare McMaster embarrassment (right because it’s not at all embarrassing to be fired-but-not-quite-yet) and partly because he wants to find a replacement first. Good luck with that! Who wouldn’t want to work for a guy who takes pleasure in abruptly firing people via Twitter? Besides everyone?

The turbulence is part of a broader potential shake-up under consideration

Mueller issues a subpoena.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has subpoenaed the Trump Organization to turn over documents, including some related to Russia, according to two people briefed on the matter. The order is the first known instance of the special counsel demanding records directly related to President Trump’s businesses, bringing the investigation closer to the president.

It was delivered “in recent weeks,” Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman say vaguely. It orders the Trump Organization to hand over all records related to Russia and other topics of the investigation.

Word of the subpoena comes as Mr. Mueller appears to be broadening his investigation to examine the role foreign money may have played in funding Mr. Trump’s political

Trump in Missouri yesterday – each day crazier than the last.

The lede is that he lied to Justin Trudeau.

President Trump boasted in a fundraising speech Wednesday that he made up information in a meeting with the leader of a top U.S. ally, saying he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the United States runs a trade deficit with its neighbor to the north without knowing whether that was true.

“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’ ” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio of the private event in Missouri obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy,

More about Trump’s nice little earner: spending most weekends at one of his clubs or resorts and pocketing the $$$ spent by all the government people who have to go with him.

Defense Department employees charged just over $138,000 at Trump branded properties in the first eight months of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to a CNN review of hundreds of records.

Charges on the department-issued Visa cards, which span from Honolulu to Washington, DC, are the most recent evidence that taxpayer money flows to Trump’s company, once again emboldening critics who say these payments violate ethical norms and possibly the US Constitution.

The CNN analysis found military personnel spent more than a third of the total amount, or $58,875.69,

Trump is in an awkward spot with this whole Putin poisoning people in the UK thing. Britain is supposed to be an ally but Putin is his beloved; what to do?

As little as possible.

Mr. Trump, who was visiting California before heading to Missouri on Wednesday, has not personally addressed the attack since London assigned blame to Russia. Aides released a statement in his name on Tuesday evening after he spoke with Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain by telephone expressing his solidarity.

“President Trump agreed with Prime Minister May that the government of the Russian Federation must provide unambiguous answers regarding how this chemical weapon, developed in Russia, came to be used in the United Kingdom,” the

Scary. Trump is now acting on his impulses more than before.

In the past two weeks, Trump has ordered tariffs on steel and aluminum imports over the fierce objections of his top economic adviser and agreed to an unprecedented meeting with North Korea’s dictator despite concerns from national security aides. On Tuesday, Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had forged a tight working relationship with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to try to rein in some of Trump’s most impetuous decisions.

“I made that decision by myself,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. Though he was talking about North Korea, it is a mantra that has never rung truer in his nearly 14 months as

Next up in the Don-Rex news is the meta-story of how the firing really went down.

President Donald Trump unceremoniously dumped Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by tweet on Tuesday and picked CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take his place, abruptly ending Tillerson’s turbulent tenure as America’s top diplomat and escalating the administration’s chaotic second-year shake-up.

Tillerson was ousted barely four hours after he returned from an Africa mission and with no face-to-face conversation with the president, the latest casualty of an unruly White House that has seen multiple top officials depart in recent weeks.

And, apparently, with no official notification: no letter, no phone call, no message sent by courier – only a tweet declaring the fact. A tweet. … Read the rest

Good morning Chaos.

Trump fired Tillerson.

As is typical of His Rudeness, he told the world without telling Tillerson.

Mr. Tillerson learned he had been fired on Tuesday morning when a top aide showed him a tweet from Mr. Trump announcing the change, according to a senior State Department official.

Well at least His Rudeness didn’t wait until Rex was in Ulan Bator and then expect him to make his own way home.

Oh wait, yes he did.

But he had gotten an oblique warning of what was coming the previous Friday from the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who called to tell him to cut short a trip to Africa and advised him “you may

Well this is appalling. NBC reports:

Qatari officials gathered evidence of what they claim is illicit influence by the United Arab Emirates on Jared Kushner and other Trump associates, including details of secret meetings, but decided not to give the information to special counsel Robert Mueller for fear of harming relations with the Trump administration, say three sources familiar with the Qatari discussions.

Kushner and other Trump minions did corrupt things but Qatari officials opted not to tell Mueller because they want to have good relations with the corrupt administration and its corrupt family members and their corrupt minions. Corrupt enough yet?

Lebanese-American businessman George Nader and Republican donor Elliott Broidy, who participated in the meetings, have both been

Trump’s stupid childish greedy “military parade” is planned for November. Newsweek points out that it will cost many dollars.

President Donald Trump’s military parade is set to kick off on Veterans Day, but at a cost that even conservative estimates show could feed every homeless veteran for at least two weeks, a Newsweek analysis found.

…

Using the most conservative estimates available from federal agencies and non-profit organizations, Newsweek found Trump could completely eliminate hunger among homeless veterans, serving them three meals a day, for at least 14 days.

But Trump wants a show. Providing meals to homeless veterans across the country isn’t a show.

In February, Trump told Fox News he wouldn’t hold the parade if the cost

Steve Mnuchin has no problem with Trump’s calling Maxine Waters “low IQ” or Chuck Todd a “son of a bitch.” It’s just his adorable sense of fun.

On Saturday, the president attacked Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), a veteran African American congresswoman and outspoken Trump critic, saying, she’s a “a very low IQ individual — you ever see her?” On Sunday, his Treasury Secretary dismissed this and other attacks made by Trump at a Pennsylvania event as irrelevant “campaign rally issues.”

“You know I’ve been with the president and at campaigns,” Steve Mnuchin told NBC’s Meet the Press. “He likes to put names on people.”

“The president likes making funny names,” he added.

The president likes making sexist, racist, … Read the rest

Trump did one of his campaign rallies last night and was his usual reasonable thoughtful self.

Trump said that allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty for drug dealers — an idea he said he got from Chinese President Xi Jinping — is “a discussion we have to start thinking about. I don’t know if this country’s ready for it.”

“Do you think the drug dealers who kill thousands of people during their lifetime, do you think they care who’s on a blue-ribbon committee?” Trump asked. “The only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness. When you catch a drug dealer, you’ve got to put him away for a long time.”

As if we didn’t put enough people … Read the rest