David Leonhardt on Trump’s contempt for the rule of law.

Even amid bitter fights over what the law should say, both Democrats and Republicans have generally accepted the rule of law.

President Trump does not. His rejection of it distinguishes him from any other modern American leader. He has instead flirted with Louis XIV’s notion of “L’état, c’est moi”: The state is me — and I’ll decide which laws to follow.

How does Trump scorn the law? Let Leonhardt count the ways.

LAW ENFORCEMENT, POLITICIZED. People in federal law enforcement take pride in trying to remain apart from politics. I’ve been talking lately with past Justice Department appointees, from both parties, and they speak in almost identical terms.

They

Greg Sargent at the Post points out the Trump’s rages at people in his own branch of government have a strong whiff of authoritarianism.

Trump appears worryingly unable to contemplate his own role in bringing about the special counsel. The firing of FBI Director James B. Comey led to reports that Trump allegedly demanded Comey’s loyalty and to Trump’s admission that he fired Comey over the Russia probe. This revealed that the Justice Department’s memo providing Trump his initial rationale for the firing (Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton probe) was bogus. Which led to the special counsel.

No no, it was a Stab in the Back.

Both Comey and Sessions enraged Trump because in some manner or

Furthermore, Trump is mad at his racist Attorney General. Aw. Not because he’s racist, of course, but because he didn’t lie down in front of the nearest approaching locomotive for Trump’s sake.

Those tweets yesterday made this visible to the public.

In private, the president’s exasperation has been even sharper. He has intermittently fumed for months over Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election, according to people close to Mr. Trump who insisted on anonymity to describe internal conversations. In Mr. Trump’s view, they said, it was that recusal that eventually led to the appointment of a special counsel who took over the investigation.

He expects people who work for … Read the rest

Adam Liptak and Peter Baker at the Times spare a thought for Trump’s lawyers.

In a series of Twitter posts Monday that continued into the evening, Mr. Trump may have irretrievably undermined his lawyers’ efforts to persuade the Supreme Court to reinstate his executive order limiting travel from six predominantly Muslim countries, according to legal experts.

Saying he preferred “the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version” he had issued in March, Mr. Trump attacked both the Justice Department and the federal courts. He also contradicted his own aides, who have suggested he was causing a pause in travel, by calling the order “what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!” He said it

The latest in Donnie.

Yesterday everyone was pointing and laughing at his tweets screaming that what he wants is a BAN god damn it not some politically correct intermediate step but A BAN A BAN A BAN. People were laughing because now the courts can just point at his tweets and say “unconstitutional”; job done.

So of course he said it again, to make sure.

That's right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain DANGEROUS countries, not some politically correct term that won't help us protect our people!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017

Good job, Don. You’re awesome at this.

The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media.

Trump’s people, saving face, are saying he has decided not to invoke executive privilege to stop Comey testifying. Ha. He can’t, so they’re saying he decided not to. We can see you, Donnie.

“The president’s power to assert executive privilege is well established,” principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters during the daily press briefing. “However, in order to facilitate a swift and thorough examination of the facts sought by the Senate Intelligence Committee, President Trump will not assert executive privilege regarding James Comey’s scheduled testimony.”

Which being interpreted is, in order to not look like a hapless fool when he invokes executive privilege and everyone laughs, Donnie won’t assert executive privilege regarding Comey’s tell-all.

Earlier, the

The Toronto Star is keeping a tally of all Trump’s falsehoods. He made 19 of them in the speech on withdrawing from the Paris Accord.

“And exiting the agreement protects the United States from future intrusions on the United States’ sovereignty and massive future legal liability. Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in.”

Source: Speech on Paris climate accord

In fact: The agreement does not create any legal liability, independent experts in environmental law have told various publications.

“Of course, the world’s top polluters have no affirmative obligations under the Green Fund, which we terminated.”

Source: Speech on Paris climate accord

In fact: This is so misleading that we’re calling it false. The U.S. itself

Politico reports in that monster-Trump piece that the failed casino tycoon ignored what his own National Security people urged him to say at NATO in favor of bullying them the way he’d always wanted to.

[T]he president also disappointed—and surprised—his own top national security officials by failing to include the language reaffirming the so-called Article 5 provision in his speech. National security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson all supported Trump doing so and had worked in the weeks leading up to the trip to make sure it was included in the speech, according to five sources familiar with the episode…

It was not until the next day, Thursday, May 25, when Trump

This may be the worst photo of Trump as prez that I’ve seen so far – it’s like something out of a nightmare.

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

It’s interesting and I think meaningful that there are so many photos of him of that kind. It’s interesting that his face so readily and often takes up that enraged hostile belligerent expression – that hideous anti-human hate-engorged snarl.

That’s not a good human being.… Read the rest

Sasha Abramsky at The Nation thinks Trump is not quite but almost plagiarizing Hitler.

 On September 30, 1942, shortly after the death camps began gassing Jews, Hitler declared, “In Germany too the Jews once laughed at my prophecies. I don’t know whether they are still laughing, or whether they have already lost the inclination to laugh, but I can assure you that everywhere they will stop laughing. With these prophecies I shall prove to be right.”

Five weeks later, he declared, “Today countless numbers of those who laughed at that time, laugh no longer. Those who are still laughing now, also will perhaps laugh no longer after a while.”

On June 1, 2017, Donald Trump announced

The Beeb on Trump’s horrific behavior:

Mr Trump’s attacks on Mr Khan have drawn condemnation from both sides of the Atlantic.

His critics have accused him of being insensitive and twisting the mayor’s words.

Politicians in the UK on Monday called on the prime minister to withdraw the invitation for Mr Trump’s state visit later this year.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, said: “This is a man insulting our national values at a time of introspection and mourning.”

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Theresa May refused to criticise Mr Trump, simply saying that Mr Khan was doing a “good job”.

I suppose she doesn’t want to inspire him to start insulting her on Twitter. You know … Read the rest

Trump three hours ago:

Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his "no reason to be alarmed" statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

People who are not Trump:

The response from emergency services, law enforcement & officials in Ldn–as well as ordinary Londoners–has been extraordinary. – LLukens 2/3

— U.S. Embassy London (@USAinUK) June 4, 2017

I commend the strong leadership of the @MayorofLondon as he leads the city forward after this heinous attack. – LLukens 3/3 https://t.co/p4dDZuCpyO

— U.S. Embassy London (@USAinUK) June 4, 2017

Mayor Sadiq Khan is doing an extraordinary job supporting Londoners in a time of pain. President Trump's attack

Philip Rucker at the Post underlines how disgustingly out of control and malevolent Trump is.

A traditional president would have reacted carefully to the London Bridge terrorist attack by instilling calm, being judicious about facts and appealing to the country’s better angels.

Donald Trump, of course, is no traditional president. He reacted impulsively to Saturday night’s carnage by stoking panic and fear, being indiscreet with details of the event and capitalizing on it to advocate for one of his more polarizing policies and to advance a personal feud.

He started by retweeting a brainless headline from the Drudge Report.

Before offering his condolences to the British people, the victims of three gruesome attacks in as many months, Trump pecked

Trump of course made everything worse by being an asshole on Twitter.

At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2017

Not what a decent head of state is supposed to do.

Naturally people in the UK – once our closest ally, would you believe it?! – are not much pleased.

Donald Trump has sparked fury after hitting out at Sadiq Khan over his response to the London terror attack.

…

 

Following the atrocity, Sadiq Khan said he was “grieving” for the victims and said the terrorists “would not win”.

But the US President slammed that

Trump doesn’t have time to fill vacancies at FEMA and NOAA because he’s so dang busy planning things like a “Pittsburgh not Paris” rally in Lafayette Park. (Wait, Lafayette? Isn’t that some damn frog name? Couldn’t they have found a good Murikan-name park to hold a rally at?)

President Donald Trump’s campaign announced a “Pittsburgh, not Paris” rally across from the White House on Saturday to celebrate the United States’ withdrawal from a global climate agreement.

The Fairfax County Republican Committee and the Republican Party of Virginia are sponsoring the rally in Lafayette Square, which is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, according to an announcement from the Trump campaign.

Yeeah! And while we’re at it, Detroit not … Read the rest

Trump has found another Obama action to reverse.

President Trump is considering reversing major pieces of the Obama administration’s opening with Cuba and reinstating limits on travel and commerce, citing human rights abuses by the Castro government as justification for a more punitive approach.

That’s funny, because just the other day he was telling the Saudis that he wasn’t there to “tell them how to live” – by which he meant, to tell them not to imprison, flog, or kill people for being atheist, or to tell them not to treat women as helpless brainless children, or to tell them not to treat foreigners like so much garbage. He went on to all but crawl into their arms and … Read the rest

More bogus “suspense” from the Trump camp. Will he invoke “executive privilege” to stop Comey testifying, or won’t he? Stay tuned to find out.

Legal experts say Trump could invoke a doctrine called executive privilege to try to stop Comey from testifying. But such a maneuver would likely draw a backlash and could be challenged in court, they said.

Just a tad. What would that look like? Trump fires FBI director to prevent him from investigating Trump’s ties to Putin, then invokes “executive privilege” to prevent him from testifying. Self-incriminating much?

Also, checks and balances. What checks and balances are there if a Trump can hide behind executive privilege to protect the very crimes that need to be investigated?… Read the rest