Charles Pierce at Esquire writes that Trump’s conversation with the Times reporter shows that he (Trump) is falling off a cognitive cliff.

In my view, the interview is a clinical study of a man in severe cognitive decline, if not the early stages of outright dementia.

Over the past 30 years, I’ve seen my father and all of his siblings slide into the shadows and fog of Alzheimer’s Disease. (the president’s father developed Alzheimer’s in his 80s.) In 1984, Ronald Reagan debated Walter Mondale in Louisville and plainly had no idea where he was. (Would that someone on the panel had asked him. He’d have been stumped.) Not long afterwards, I was interviewing a prominent Alzheimer’s researcher for a

This is a small thing, but telling.

Photo and video crews were stymied in their attempts to film President Trump on a golf course Wednesday, an apparent response to CNN’s recent footage of the commander-in-chief on the links.

As the president completed another round at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, a large white truck obscured nearby journalists — who were positioned on public property — from getting a shot of Trump on their cameras.

When CNN’s photojournalist moved his camera, the truck likewise moved, blocking the picture.

On Tuesday, CNN recorded a shot of the president on the course in West Palm Beach. The network did the same on Saturday and Sunday, shooting the footage

With all its faults, Twitter can produce interesting conversations, like this one in which a lot of people press Maggie Haberman on the question of why the Times does such softball interviews with Trump, why Times reporters don’t ask for detail or source or evidence when Trump makes a wild claim, why they simply transcribe instead of interviewing.

Hslf of Twitter thinks the Schmidt interview was revealing about the POTUS because it was his unfiltered thoughts. The other half is angry that @nytmike did not audition as an extra for the courtroom remake of "A Few Good Men" and interrupt him constantly.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 29, 2017

As at least one person rejoined, it’s funny that she frames … Read the rest

So yesterday a couple of New York Times reporters were hanging around Mar-a-Lago and Donald “president” Trump finished lunch and sat down to chat with them. He was as modest, cogent, and informed as ever.

During an impromptu 30-minute interview with The New York Times at his golf club in West Palm Beach, the president did not demand an end to the Russia investigations swirling around his administration, but insisted 16 times that there has been “no collusion” discovered by the inquiry.

“It makes the country look very bad, and it puts the country in a very bad position,” Mr. Trump said of the investigation. “So the sooner it’s worked out, the better it is for the country.”

Hm. … Read the rest

Trump decided to remind us again how stupid and uninformed he is. (Does he think we don’t realize?)

As severe cold and record amounts of snow swept across the US east coast, Trump wrote on Twitter that his people “could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against”.

“Bundle up!” he added.

The president was reheating two favourite tropes: the conflation of weather with climate to pour scepticism on global warming, and the supposed cost to the American taxpayer of the Paris climate accord, from which he has confirmed the US will withdraw.

Bundle up.

On Friday, Anthony Leiserowitz,

I’m reading a big long Times piece about Trump’s new and different (i.e. crazy and reckless) foreign policy, and something jumped out at me. Not a good something.

Few countries have struggled more to adapt to Mr. Trump than Germany, and few leaders seem less personally in sync with him than its leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, the physicist-turned-politician. After she won a fourth term, their relationship took on weighty symbolism: the great disrupter versus the last defender of the liberal world order.

In one of their first phone calls, the chancellor explained to the president why Ukraine was a vital part of the trans-Atlantic relationship. Mr. Trump, officials recalled, had little idea of Ukraine’s importance, its history of

Trump’s legal team have come up with a genius plan to make this whole thing go away.

President Trump’s legal team plans to cast former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn as a liar seeking to protect himself if he accuses the president or his senior aides of any wrongdoing, according to three people familiar with the strategy.

Zowie! No wonder they make the big bucks! Who could possibly have thought of a cunning scheme like that? Those fools at the FBI certainly won’t have thought of it, so this is going to throw their whole case into disarray. I expect they’ll be calling the whole thing off by the end of today.

Attorneys for Trump and his top advisers

Ermmmmmmmmm

Churchill was hated by his own party, opposition party, and press. Feared by King as reckless, and despised for his bluntness. But unlike Neville Chamberlain, he didn't retreat. We had a Chamberlain for 8 yrs; in @realDonaldTrump we have a Churchill.

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) December 26, 2017

No. Just being hated and despised by all and sundry does not make you a Churchill or Beethoven or Michelangelo or anyone else who was looked at askance for a time and then recognized as OMIGOD A GENIUS.

It’s entirely possible to be seen as a worthless fool by everyone who has an opinion on the subject and actually be a worthless fool. It’s not only possible, it’s dead easy. … Read the rest

The cat escaped the bag.

President Trump kicked off his holiday weekend at Mar-a-Lago Friday night at a dinner where he told friends, “You all just got a lot richer,” referencing the sweeping tax overhaul he signed into law hours earlier. Mr. Trump directed those comments to friends dining nearby at the exclusive club — including to two friends at a table near the president’s who described the remark to CBS News — as he began his final days of his first year in office in what has become known as the “Winter White House.”

No, it hasn’t “become known” as that. Trump calls it that. Trump also spends our money to go there and profits further by … Read the rest

Twitter’s algorithm has a sense of humor. Today the first things I saw in my feed were John Lewis, Adam Schiff, and Barack Obama telling us to have a merry or happy Christmas.

Wishing everyone a happy and safe Christmas holiday.

— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) December 25, 2017

Here’s hoping that you and your family have a very Merry Christmas! Wishing you all a joyful, peaceful day.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 25, 2017

On behalf of the Obama family, Merry Christmas! We wish you joy and peace this holiday season. pic.twitter.com/CNFUZrhrBj

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 25, 2017

So then naturally I had to check out what the current “president” has been up to.

People are proud to be

The Post tells us how the campaign to discredit the FBI in hopes of protecting the most corrupt incompetent mendacious malevolent president we’ve ever had has picked up steam lately.

This is Republicans and “conservatives” trying to discredit the FBI, which is quite a turn-up for the books. Time was, the FBI and the Republicans were best buddies and their common enemy was anyone to the left of Gerald Ford. The FBI has a long long history of treating everyone on the left as suspect and “UnAmerican”…but now suddenly everything is switched, all to defend a guy who is both criminal and hateful in every possible way.

If I were a Republican I would be doing the opposite, because I … Read the rest

There is resistance.

More than 40 former U.S. attorneys and Republican and conservative officials are pushing back against efforts to discredit the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In a pair of letters, the groups say Robert Mueller and his team must be allowed to continue their work, unimpeded.

The 22 former U.S. attorneys, who served under presidents from Richard Nixon through Barack Obama, say it is “critical” to the “interests of justice and public trust to ensure that those charged with conducting complex investigations are allowed to do their jobs free from interference or fear of reprisal.”

Seeking Mueller’s removal “would have severe repercussions for Americans’ sense of justice here at home and for our

No Baby Jesus’s Pretend Birthday truce for Mean Donnie: he’s bullying the deputy director of the FBI now.

The F.B.I.’s embattled deputy director, Andrew G. McCabe, an unlikely lightning rod who has been attacked repeatedly by President Trump and congressional Republicans, is expected to retire after he becomes eligible for his pension early next year, according to people familiar with his decision.

While Mr. McCabe’s plans to leave aren’t unexpected, his decision should take some of the pressure off Christopher A. Wray, who was confirmed as F.B.I. director in August. Mr. Trump has complained to confidantes that Mr. Wray has not moved fast enough to replace the senior leadership that he inherited from his predecessor, James B. Comey, whom 

From Occupy Democrats:

Image: Trump pointing at us in the manner of a recruiting poster, with caption

I LIED TO YOU

BILLIONAIRES COME FIRST

SO YOU LOSE YOUR HEALTHCARE

The Times shares a disgusting little vignette of life with “President” Trump:

Late to his own meeting and waving a sheet of numbers, President Trump stormed into the Oval Office one day in June, plainly enraged.

Five months before, Mr. Trump had dispatched federal officers to the nation’s airports to stop travelers from several Muslim countries from entering the United States in a dramatic demonstration of how he would deliver on his campaign promise to fortify the nation’s borders.

But so many foreigners had flooded into the country since January, he vented to his national security team, that it was making a mockery of his pledge. Friends were calling to say he looked like a fool, Mr. Trump said.

Oh gawd.

There’s such a thing as a presidential coin. Presidents give them out as little presents. Trump decided they weren’t flashy enough so he came up with his own new design.

The presidential seal has been replaced by an eagle bearing President Trump’s signature. The eagle’s head faces right, not left, as on the seal. The 13 arrows representing the original states have disappeared. And the national motto, “E pluribus unum” — a Latin phrase that means “Out of many, one” — is gone.

Instead, both sides of the coin feature Trump’s official campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

The presidential seal has been replaced by an eagle bearing President Trump’s signature. The eagle’s head faces right, not

Yascha Mounk at the NYRB takes a less optimistic view, pointing out how far the Overton window has shifted in the past 11 months.

[W]hile many of the violations of basic democratic norms that President Trump and his collaborators have perpetrated over the past twelve months would not have been foreseeable before he took office, most of them had come to seem all-but-inevitable by the time he actually committed them. Trump’s unwillingness to dissociate himself from his most radical supporters was evident throughout the opening months of his presidency. The firing of FBI Director James Comey was preceded by a series of outrageous attacks. Even Trump’s endorsement of Roy Moore in the Alabama special election seemed inevitable by the

Painter and Eisen on the ways Trump can and cannot impede Mueller.

Mr. Trump could install someone at the Department of Justice to oversee Mr. Mueller’s investigation, a minder who could control (and cut) Mr. Mueller’s budget, eliminate some of his team or curtail the scope of his investigation. Mr. Mueller seems safe as long as his current supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, is in place; Mr. Rosenstein just vouched for the special counsel before Congress. But the president has reportedly grumbled about Mr. Rosenstein and could replace him with a crony who would be more willing to interfere.

As Nixon tried to do. It didn’t work out for Nixon, but he didn’t have a Republican Congress…and Republicans … Read the rest

The UN told Trump to go fuck himself.

The United Nations general assembly has delivered a stinging rebuke to Donald Trump, voting by a huge majority to reject his unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The vote came after a redoubling of threats by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, who said that Washington would remember which countries “disrespected” America by voting against it.

Jesus. Who else talks like that? Bullies, that’s who. “You will respect me or else.”

Despite the warning, 128 members voted on Thursday in favour of the resolution supporting the longstanding international consensus that the status of Jerusalem – which is claimed as a capital by both Israel and the Palestinians –