Dana Milbank at the Post says Trump had a bad day. Really bad.

The House on Wednesday condemned his sudden Syria pullout in a lopsided 354-to-60 vote. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) repeatedly branded Trump’s actions “a mistake.” The Italian president visited the White House with rebukes from Europe on Syria, NATO and trade. U.S. officials, defying Trump, continued their damaging testimony to the congressional impeachment inquiry. Authorities arrested a fourth associate of Rudy Giuliani.

So he sprayed rage in all directions.

He attacked the media and the Democrats, of course, and James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan and “the two great lovers,” Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. But he also attacked NATO members and the

Also today: a Fox reporter tweeted Trump’s letter to Erdoğan, and the White House confirmed it’s the real thing. It’s…shockingly stupid. I’ve always assumed they have grownups translating the trumpese into semi-appropriate language, but this one has been only minimally adulted up. Short stupid exclamatory sentences that don’t lead into following sentences – that’s a genuine illiterate right there.

Let’s work out a good deal!

Let’s put on a show! Let’s go to the mall! Let’s take your dad’s car!

I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy – and I will.

I guess “and I will” is trumpese for “but I will if I have to” or “but I can.” As it is it’s not … Read the rest

Trump acted like an angry toddler in a meeting with Democrats today, so some of the Dems got up and left.

“What we witnessed on the part of the president was a meltdown. Sad to say,” Pelosi told reporters outside the White House with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The President started the meeting with a lengthy bombastic monologue, according to a senior Democratic aide. He bragged about the “nasty” letter he sent to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the Turkish leader’s decision to invade northern Syria, the aide said.

Then they talked about Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria and he started flipping out.

The Democratic leaders said that

Trump explains it all:

President Trump is defending his decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, saying, “It’s not our problem,” and that “they’ve got a lot of sand over there. There’s a lot of sand they can play with.”

He said the Kurds, longtime U.S. allies, are “much safer right now,” and added, “They’re not angels.”

Ah. Okay then. They’re not angels, and they have a lot of sand they can play with. Why didn’t he tell us that sooner?… Read the rest

It was too much even for John Bolton, which is saying something. (When John Bolton is the voice of sanity in the room, you know you’re in deep shit.)

The former US national security adviser, John Bolton, was reportedly so alarmed at a back-channel effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Donald Trump’s political rivals that he told a senior aide to report it to White House lawyers.

The revelation of Bolton’s involvement in the effort to block a shadow foreign policy aimed at Trump’s political benefit emerged from congressional testimony given by his former aide, Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert in the White House.

She talked to them yesterday for ten hours.

According to the New York

Trump has a sad about his old buddy Fox.

Fed up with the coverage on his favorite cable news station, President Trump decided late this summer that a direct intervention was needed. So he telephoned the chief executive of Fox News, Suzanne Scott, and let loose.

In a lengthy conversation, Mr. Trump complained that Fox News was not covering him fairly, according to three people with knowledge of the call.

By “fairly” he must mean “adoringly.”

Irked by their reporting, he taunted the Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, who resigned from the network on Friday, and its chief national correspondent, Ed Henry. He declared that the Fox News pollsters “suck” after they found majority support for impeachment and openly

Joyce Vance:

Kurdish journalists report that a Kurdish politician, a 35-year old woman, was raped & stoned to death by advancing Turkish forces. What’s happening in Syria is due to Trump taking an unstaffed call with Erdogan & caving to his Turkish business allies.

And, because it’s always important to understand context, this 2012 tweet from Ivanka Trump.

If mental health professionals can’t tell us that Trump is mentally unfit to serve, then who can? It’s not as if we don’t need to know. One mental health professional explains:

I am not a political person but a medical professional. Yet because of my field of expertise, I unexpectedly became an academic whistleblower. I have been compelled to blow two whistles: first, by publishing a book to alert the public that Donald Trump was more dangerous than perhaps any president in history, for psychological reasons; and second, on the American Psychiatric Association’s actions that have effectively silenced those of us trying to fulfill our professional responsibility to society as outlined in its own code of ethics.

Politics never

CNN stitches together all the bad things that happened to Trump yesterday.

Within moments of each other, a career diplomat began painting a damning portrait of the President’s foreign policy to lawmakers just as Trump lost his appeal in a federal appeals court to stop a House subpoena of his tax documents, which he’s guarded fiercely since refusing to make them public as a candidate.

Then, in rapid succession, judges in New York, Texas, Washington state and California sided against Trump administration initiatives meant to limit immigrants from entering the country — both through a physical barrier and by raising the requirements on migrants seeking legal status.

They will all be appealed, but still, it’s steps. Yovanovitch’s turning up … Read the rest

Aaron Rupar live-tweeted Trump’s rally in Minneapolis last night and wrote it up for Vox:

It wasn’t surprising that Trump attacked one of his most regular targets of abuse, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) while rallying in the heart of her district in downtown Minneapolis. But what was jarring was not only how extreme his attacks were, but also the fact that he went out of his way to demonize the Somali community more broadly in a city that has one of the country’s largest Somali populations.

Citing articles from a fringe right-wing Minnesota-based blog, Trump called Omar “a disgrace to our country” and pushed unfounded conspiracy theories about her marital history. He also attacked the community of Somali

Rebecca Solnit sees Trump as an enraged bear:

The chaos takes so many forms. Innumerable stories have made it clear that even the president’s own aides and cabinet members treat him like a captive bear or a person having a psychotic breakdown – like someone unstable who must be kept from harming himself and others. They have done that by heaping on the flattery, and by warping and limiting the information he receives, and often by doing their best to prevent his directives from being realized.

The New York Times recently reported on a March meeting about the border. According to aides, Trump “suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down”. When he was told

Aw, it looks as if Trump and Fox have quarreled. Donnie two hours ago:

From the day I announced I was running for President, I have NEVER had a good @FoxNews
Poll. Whoever their Pollster is, they suck. But @FoxNews is also much different than it used to be in the good old days. With people like Andrew Napolitano, who wanted to be a Supreme…….Court Justice & I turned him down (he’s been terrible ever since), Shep Smith, @donnabrazile (who gave Crooked Hillary the debate questions & got fired from @CNN), & others, @FoxNews doesn’t deliver for US anymore. It is so different than it used to be. Oh well, I’m President!

First of all, it’s fascinating that he … Read the rest

Trump saying it:

… Read the rest

Trump says it’s cool that he abandoned the Kurds to their fate because hey where were they on D-Day? Did they help save Private Ryan? Were they there next to John Wayne and Arnold Schwarzenegger? I don’t think so.

The US president told reporters that the Kurds “didn’t help us in the second world war, they didn’t help us with Normandy as an example – they mention the names of different battles, they weren’t there”, in a staggering comment following the signing of executive orders on the federal regulation at the White House on Wednesday.

“We have spent a tremendous amount of money helping the Kurds,” the president said. “They’re fighting for their land. When you say they’re fighting with

Better than anybody.

… Read the rest

Trump is generous though. He doesn’t share his views on Biden with Ukraine only – no indeed! China gets to hear his opinions on the subject too.

When Donald Trump suggested today, at a press conference, that China should investigate Joe Biden he said he’d never actually pushed Chinese leader Xi Jinping to investigate his political rivals.

Now CNN reports that Trump discussed Biden and Elizabeth Warren with Xi during a whole call. He also reportedly told Xi he’d keep quiet about the protests in Hong Kong, so long as trade talks between China and the US progressed:

During a phone call with Xi on June 18, Trump raised Biden’s political prospects as well as those of Sen. Elizabeth

More on Trump’s narcissism (it’s a long piece):

[F]rom the perspective of the public at large, the debate over whether Trump meets the clinical diagnostic criteria for NPD—or whether psychiatrists can and should answer that question without directly examining him—is beside the point. The goal of a diagnosis is to help a clinician guide treatment. The question facing the public is very different: Does the president of the United States exhibit a consistent pattern of behavior that suggests he is incapable of properly discharging the duties of his office?

Even Trump’s own allies recognize the degree of his narcissism. When he launched racist attacks on four congresswomen of color, Senator Lindsey Graham explained, “That’s just the way he is.