Originally a comment by Omar on As the police leaders laughed.

Trump does not need a speechwriter. He just needs a blank form in which he can fill in the spaces, and maybe the odd picture he can colour in in primary colours in case he gets restless and bored. I humbly offer this as a first draft.

It must give you all here at ………………………………. to have me, Donald Trump, President of the United States and the greatest genius in the world, no make that the Universe, present here with you at …………………………………….. on this raised dais above you so you can all see me, and with the TV coverage from all the networks that matter, which does … Read the rest

John Kelly and the yes-man warning and the handling a genius failure:

Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, made the comments during an interview at the Sea Island Summit political conference hosted by the Washington Examiner this weekend.

Kelly said if he had stayed on as chief of staff Trump wouldn’t be in the midst of the current impeachment inquiry, implying that White House advisers could have prevented it.

“I said, whatever you do — and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place — I said whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man,’ someone who won’t tell you the truth — don’t do that,” Kelly said. “Because if you do,

Trump did a talk to police chiefs in Chicago today, and used the opportunity to attack the Chicago chief of police.

Speaking at the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention at McCormick Place, Trump noted Johnson snubbed his address because he said it didn’t align with his and the city’s values.

“There is one person who is not here today. We’re in Chicago. I said, ‘Where is he? I want to talk to him.’ In fact, more than anyone else, he should be here, because maybe he could learn something,” Trump said of Johnson before several hundred convention attendees.

Trump called Johnson’s rationale for avoiding his address “a very insulting statement after all I’ve done for the

The gloating emphasis Trump put on Baghdadi’s “whimpering” and fear disgusted me from the outset – I hate that kind of thing. I hate it anyway and I hate it x a billion in Trump, who has never in his life demonstrated any kind of courage, including moral courage. I suspected it was bullshit anyway because how would he know that and was it likely? (Not least, Baghdadi probably thought he was achieving a martyr’s death, with all those juicy virgins waiting.) The Guardian confirms he couldn’t know that.

Footage of the US special forces raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Syrian compound reportedly consisted of overhead surveillance footage and no audio, prompting questions over the extent of the dramatic

Of course he did.

President Donald Trump’s announcement of the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi revealed a slew of sensitive details about the secret military operation that could imperil future raids, special operations and intelligence, veterans fear.

Trump, who spoke for a full 48 minutes and took a series of questions at the White House, went into unusual detail about the mission inside hostile territory in Syria that he said he watched in real time “as though you were watching a movie.”

Among the most striking were his descriptions of how the Army Delta Force was inserted into the heavily fortified compound, breached its walls to avoid booby-trapped doors and pursued the terrorist kingpin into a network

Trump hates DC, because he knows he is widely despised there. He usually avoids it but for some reason yesterday he ventured out to a baseball game. Big mistake.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump made a rare public appearance at Game 5 of the World Series to root for the home team, the Washington Nationals. Trump’s attendance, his very first Major League Baseball game since taking office, proved instantly regrettable, as a wave of sustained boos and chants of “lock him up” met his jumbotron introduction.

Whole goddam town’s fulla libbruls.

… Read the rest

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The White House is planning to instruct federal agencies to not renew their subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post, administration officials said, escalating President Trump’s attacks on the media outlets.

“Not renewing subscriptions across all federal agencies will be a significant cost saving—hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars will be saved,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email Thursday.

Hm. Well, they could also save a lot of money by getting rid of the CIA and all other intelligence-gathering government agencies. They could save a lot of money by closing the whole government down and going home, but there are some drawbacks to that way of doing … Read the rest

Trump says aw yeah we’re building that wall in Colorado we are.

The Guardian has the transcript:

“You know why we’re going to win New Mexico?” Trump told the crowd on Wednesday, talking about a bona fide border state, which he lost in 2016. “Because they want safety on their border. And they didn’t have it. And we’re building a wall on the border of New Mexico, and we’re building a wall in Colorado. We’re building a beautiful wall. A big one that really works, that you can’t get over, that you can’t get under.”

There’s more though. He stops for applause and to gather his thoughts, and he comes up with a solution.

And we’re building a wall

Heather Cox Richardson underlines some things, starting with Bill Taylor’s public statement to the impeachment inquiry:

He confirmed that while the official American policy was to encourage democracy in Ukraine to help it fight off Russia, the Trump administration had a shadow foreign policy team, headed by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Guiliani, and including special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, the Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Trump did not want “to provide any assistance at all” to Ukraine in its struggle against Russia. The president personally withheld money that Congress had appropriated for that struggle until Ukraine leaders promised to state publicly that they were opening an investigation into the

Trump claims he’s being lynched – yes, lynched.

So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!

But it’s not a lynching. It’s not a witch hunt, and it’s not a lynching. Trump is not a woman, and he is not a black man. He is not being burned alive, and he is not being hanged.

Even Republicans don’t like the “lynching” claim…except for Lindsey Graham.

President Donald Trump’s shocking comparison of the ongoing impeachment inquiry against

Here he is saying it (go to 2:20). He says a lot of other stupid shit too.

 … Read the rest

The Guardian says Trump told lie after lie after lie in that Cabinet meeting.

Trump bounced from one falsehood to another while speaking to reporters during his cabinet meeting at the White House.

Here are just a few fact-checks from reporters about the president’s 70-minute meeting:

Toluse Olurunnipa:

Trump’s remarks in the Cabinet room are a stream of exaggerations, boasts and falsehoods….

For example, in his remarks about Doral: “Miami International, one of the biggest airports in the world. Some people say it’s the biggest.”

(MIA is not even in the top 20)

That stupid “some people say” thing, as if simple facts like comparative airport size can be decided by “some people saying.”

Yamiche Alcindor:

President Trump

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Is Taco Bell available?

I know normally the game is “what if Obama had done this,” but I think in this instance it’s more fun to play “what if Hillary had done something even vaguely approaching this?”

Like, let’s say the G-7 summit host contract was awarded to some resort after a thorough bid process pursuant to applicable government procurement regulations. Then some enterprising right wing news site “uncovers” that President Hillary Clinton’s former college roommate’s cousin’s dentist sits on the board of that resort. Scandal! The right wing erupts in fury and outrage! Fox News runs wall to wall coverage. Every conservative legal analyst soberly opines that this is EXACTLY the sort … Read the rest

Trump is currently busy pissing on the Constitution in public.

Even after reversing his decision to hold the June G7 summit at his Florida resort, Trump is still insisting that the property would have been the best place for the multi-nation event.

Reuters White House reporter tweets:

.@realDonaldTrump says during White House cabinet meeting that the G7 at his Doral resort would have been the greatest G7 ever, Democrats went crazy about that plan even though he would have done it for free. (Trump announced Saturday he would no longer hold the G7 at Doral.)

The Guardian continues:

The president is blaming Democrats for forcing his hand on the issue, but a number of reports have surfaced that Trump

The reaction was too much even for “President” Shameless: Doral’s off.

Responding to stinging criticism, President Donald Trump has abruptly reversed his plan to hold the next year’s Group of Seven world leaders’ meeting at his Doral golf resort in Florida.

“I think he knows,” his acting chief of staff said Sunday, “people think it looks lousy.”

Think? Mulvaney thinks he knows? How could he possibly not know? Are they holding him in an empty room and feeding him only the information they want him to have?

And people think it looks lousy? It’s not a matter of opinion and it’s not an appearance – we know for sure it is lousy, very lousy indeed. Also bedbuggy and mosquitoey.… Read the rest

Eric Lipton at the Times

The rules are clear for nearly everyone who works in the executive branch: Officials are prohibited from playing even a minor role in a decision that directly creates a financial benefit for the employee or the employee’s immediate family.

But those rules do not apply to the president and vice president, the only executive branch officials who are exempt from a criminal statute and a separate ethics regulation that govern conflicts of interest.

Exempt…because?

I’ll take a wild guess that it’s the usual bullshit “because the president is so very busy, must not be investigated or prosecuted, much too busy” – the bullshit that is letting this brazen criminal get away with brazen crimes for … Read the rest

Namik Tam, former Turkish ambassador to the US, tweets a cartoon from the New Yorker:

… Read the rest