Aw. He mad.

Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named “Man (Person) of the Year,” like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

… Read the rest

That interview Terry Gross did with Luke Harding about his book on Trump and Russia.

The new book “Collusion” is about what the author, my guest Luke Harding, says appears to be an emerging pattern of collusion between Russia, Donald Trump and his campaign. Harding also writes about how Russia appears to have started cultivating Trump back in 1987. The book is based on original reporting as well as on the Trump-Russia dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Harding met with Steele twice, once before and once after the dossier became public. Harding had a lot of good contacts to draw on for this book because he spent four years as the Moscow bureau chief for

Howard Blum at Vanity Fair has new reporting on just what Trump said in that private meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov right after he fired Comey last May.

They start with the relationship between US spies and Israeli spies: the US is the hulking senior partner but at the same time Israel shares valuable intel. Israel had been doing a good job of that in the months before Trump was elected.

It was against this reassuring backdrop of recent successes and shared history, an Israeli source told Vanity Fair, that a small group of Mossad officers and other Israeli intelligence officials took their seats in a Langley conference room on a January morning just weeks before the inauguration of Donald

Trump this morning:

It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence – IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair. Just think..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2017

…LaVar, you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you. But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2017

The NFL is

Another steep downward plunge for President Tweety.

Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2017

Yeah, he should have left them in jail for not kissing his bum – or rather, because the father of one of them didn’t kiss his bum; the players themselves all thanked him.

Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite

It’s like Bernie Madoff accusing someone else of being a lying cheating fraudulent thief:

President Trump, who was dogged by sexual misconduct allegations during his 2016 campaign, took aim at longtime critic Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on Thursday night, after Franken was accused of forcibly kissing and groping a woman 11 years ago.

“The Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words,” Trump wrote on Twitter, misspelling the apparent reference to the 19th-century novel “Frankenstein.”

Novel? Oh don’t be silly, he has no idea there’s any such novel. He thinks it’s a movie.

Eleven women came forward during Trump’s presidential campaign to accuse him of unwanted touching or kissing over several decades. Trump called the charges “pure

Trump shyly confesses that he doesn’t watch much tv, he’s too much of a bookworm.

Over the weekend, as Air Force One made its way to Vietnam, President Trump was questioned about Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. Wasn’t it time, Trump was asked, for the president to cut his support of Moore, given a spate of allegations about his behavior with teenage girls several decades ago?

“Well, again,” Trump replied, “I’ve been with you folks, so I haven’t gotten to see too much. And believe it or not, even when I’m in Washington and New York, I do not watch much television. I know they like to say — people that don’t know me — they like to

So now Trump is in a snit because everyone isn’t running around squawking about what a brilliant job he did of making “Asia” our new best friend. He channeled his rage into giving a long speech to instruct us about how awesome he was and how deeply “Asia” now adores us thanks to his awesome amazing very very tremendous work.

This was Trump playing his own hype man. He felt like the Asia trip went well and he wasn’t getting enough credit for exactly how well it went. So, why not give a speech and force the “fake news” to cover it?

From his opening statement onward, it was clear that Trump’s lone goal with the speech was to pat

Nothing corrupt and sleazy about this, oh hell no.

The Justice Department said Monday that prosecutors were looking into whether a special counsel should be appointed to investigate political rivals President Trump has singled out for scrutiny, including Hillary Clinton.

The department, in a letter sent to the House Judiciary Committee, said the prosecutors would examine allegations that donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to a 2010 decision by the Obama administration to allow a Russian nuclear agency to buy Uranium One, a company that owned access to uranium in the United States, and other issues.

The letter appeared to be a direct response to Mr. Trump’s statement on Nov. 3, when he said he was disappointed

Trump does love human rights violators.

President Trump said on Monday that he had a “great relationship” with President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, making little mention of human rights at his first face-to-face meeting with an authoritarian leader accused of carrying out a campaign of extrajudicial killings in his nation’s war on drugs.

In a stark break from past practice by American presidents, who have pressed foreign leaders publicly and privately about allegations of human rights abuses, Mr. Trump instead pursued his own transactional style of diplomacy, dwelling mostly on areas of common ground during his meeting with Mr. Duterte. On the sideline of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit meeting, Mr. Trump focused on combating the

To the surprise of no one, Brennan and Clapper say Trump is being played by his BFF Puteekins.

“By not confronting the issue directly and not acknowledging to Putin that we know you’re responsible for this, I think he’s giving Putin a pass,” former CIA director John Brennan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think it demonstrates to Mr. Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint.”

Not his insecurities, his narcissism. He doesn’t have any insecurities. What you see is what you get: what looks like immovable conceit and grandiosity … Read the rest

Uh oh he’s found the Twitter again.

When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics – bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017

Yes, that’s the way to work out policy: call everyone names on Twitter.

Does the Fake News Media remember when Crooked Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was begging Russia to be our friend with the misspelled reset button? Obama tried also, but he had zero chemistry with Putin.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2017

Trump says who ya gonna believe, US intelligence people or the former head of the KGB?

Correct answer is the former head of the KGB, of course. Duh.

President Trump said on Saturday that he believed President Vladimir V. Putin was sincere in his denials of interference in the 2016 presidential elections, calling questions about Moscow’s meddling a politically motivated “hit job” that was hindering cooperation with Russia on life-or-death issues.

Speaking after meeting privately with Mr. Putin on the sideline of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Danang, Vietnam, Mr. Trump said that he had again asked whether Russia had meddled in the contest, but that the continued focus on the issue was insulting to Mr.

Trump goes to ForrinLand and tells it how much better the US is than everyone else.

Promising to pursue “mutually beneficial commerce” through bilateral trade agreements, Mr. Trump roundly condemned the kind of multilateral accords his predecessors pursued, reprising a message he brought to China this week that blamed weak American leadership for trade imbalances that he said had stripped jobs, factories and entire industries from the United States.

“What we will no longer do is enter into large agreements that tie our hands, surrender our sovereignty, and make meaningful enforcement practically impossible,” Mr. Trump said.

It was a strikingly hostile message to an audience that included leaders who had tied their fortunes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping

Of course they are.

President Donald Trump’s upscale Mar-a-Lago club received permission from the federal government to temporarily hire 70 foreign housekeepers, waiters and cooks to fill out its staff during its upcoming busy season, with its managers attesting there aren’t enough Americans qualified, willing and available to do the work.

Liars. When Americans apply to do the work Mar-a-Lago doesn’t hire them.

The president’s hiring of foreign workers at the Florida resort over several years was criticized by his opponents during the 2016 campaign after he slammed companies for moving jobs out of the U.S. and others for hiring immigrants in the country illegally. During the Republican primary debates, Trump defended Mar-a-Lago’s hiring practices, saying not enough Americans

Trump in China sounds like Basil Fawlty meeting Lord Melbury (who in fact is a conman).

President Trump heaped praise on President Xi Jinping of China on Thursday, blaming Mr. Trump’s own predecessors for China’s yawning trade surplus with the United States and saying he was confident that Mr. Xi could defuse the threat from North Korea.

Mr. Trump’s warm words, on a state visit to China replete with ceremony but short of tangible results, showed a president doubling down on his gamble that by cultivating a personal connection with Mr. Xi, he can push the Chinese leader to take meaningful steps on North Korea and trade.

In public, Mr. Trump projected an air of deference to China that was

Let’s hope this is spoiling Trump’s fun adventure in Chy-nah: voters said a big Nope.

Republicans awoke Wednesday to a series of aftershocks following Democratic victories across Virginia and other local elections that far exceeded either side’s expectations.

That performance, particularly in key suburban battlegrounds across the nation, validates a strategy that Democrats on Capitol Hill had embraced earlier this year: trying to win back the majority by riding a wave of liberal resentment toward President Trump while also promising rational governance to centrist swing voters.

The resounding victory by Gov.-elect Ralph Northam (D) tells only part of the story of Tuesday’s “old-fashioned thumping,” as former Virginia congressman Tom Davis called it. Beneath the top-of-the-ticket races, in many fundamental

Michael Lewis on Fresh Air yesterday on how Trump appointees in the departments of Energy and Agriculture are “ill-prepared for the jobs they have and uninterested in the work of the departments they’re running” and how bad and dangerous that is.

MICHAEL LEWIS: Well, my mind when Trump was elected was on the subject of risk because I just finished a book, “The Undoing Project,” about people’s – the difficulty people had processing risk, in evaluating risk. And I was wondering what risks Trump brought with him. I then saw that the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump administration basically didn’t happen, (laughter) that – what normally happens after a new president comes in is that the day