Y’all have to go read this right now. A “senior official in the Trump Administration” wrote an op-ed that was just published in The Times. An excerpt:
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making…
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
What the actual fuck, fellow citizens? Spanky’s gonna blow a gasket. I hope to Christ that person has bundled old shoes and newspaper clippings into the “nuclear football” and given the real codes to someone responsible, like Justice Sotomayor. We’re in Cloud CuckooLand.
Jeffro
Nikki Haley. HAS to be!
sigaba
What a shitstorm.
dmsilev
I heard from a source that the op-ed was written by Judge Kavanaugh. Pass it along!
Chyron HR
Burn that source, NYT.
lollipopguild
I love the part about “many of his policies have made America safer and more prosperous”. REALLY?
David Anderson
Best case scenario, we’re Wilson after his stroke
Worst case scenario, there is one authorized individual who can launch nukes at anyone and he is getting humiliated in public today.
MCA1
Holy mother forking shirtballs. An open letter in the paper of record from an insider admitting to a soft coup in the White House. That is…wow. It’s basically: “I and others are affirmatively sabotaging the President of the United States because he’s an insane moral degenerate and a danger to the Republic.”
So, so far off the map.
dmsilev
The Onion earlier today: “John Kelly Relieved Trump So Fucking Stupid He’ll Believe Woodward Made Up Disparaging Quotes”
Hmmmm….
MattF
It’s pretty clear (IMO) that Trump’s hands have been tied wrt foreign policy. We shall see what happens with NK, but it’s all significantly less bad than it might be.
I do wish that Congressional Republicans weren’t such feckless, lickspittle cowards, but I don’t see how that change is going to happen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jeffro: Ooh, good guess.
My frustration with this kind of passive-aggressive, half-assed 25th amendment coup aside, this may put The Beast in a straight-jacket. Now off to read this very peculiar bit of… self-important cowardice? I’m not even sure how to describe it
Litlebritdifrnt
Twitler has already started a witch hunt inside the Whitehouse, it is going to get insane now. His tweets tomorrow morning are going to be epic.
BGinCHI
Can’t be Pence. Too many big words and no mention of Jesus.
Betty Cracker
@Chyron HR & @lollipopguild: Agreed and agreed, but gott-damn! Do y’all think everything carries on as normal with this out there? Serious question — I don’t know what the fuck to think any more.
ruemara
lol. fuck them. They get no benefit of the doubt. This is ass-covering of the highest order.
Jeffro
Haley working in concert with Pence. Mike moves up, Nikki becomes VP. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
25th amendment conference call coming up in 3, 2, 1…
TenguPhule
Fuck you, eat shit and die horribly.
Barbara
Steve Mnuchin or James Mattis. I don’t really see any other credible candidates. Okay, maybe John Kelly, although I don’t think he counts as a cabinet level official.
Shell
Publicly, therell just be more tweets ranting about fake news from the ‘failing’ NYTs.
But privately, we can only hope.
Gravenstone
@Chyron HR: Yup. The “we’re in the right, just saddled with this ignoramus actually holding the title of president ” attitude needs to lead to a very public outing and all the pain that will follow.
p.a.
Ooooohhhhh WH Witch Hunt 2. Video game out for xmas! No protagonists. All antagonists. WH populated by orcs, balrogs, and President Gollum.
dr. bloor
Apparently, then, these heroes are OK with tearing kids from their parents and putting them in cages.
They can all die in the same fire, AFAIC.
RedDirtGirl
@Chyron HR: Exactly! Fuck that fucker!
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: Serious question: the shit is about to GET REAL!
(Mueller will make it REAL-ER)
But this is what a coup and/or a preface to a 25th amendment scenario looks like, no doubt.
TenguPhule
@David Anderson:
Worst then that. Multiple individuals could give the order instead of Trump and the military might actually believe them.
Mandarama
The nerve of these fuckers, calling themselves “unsung heroes.”
TenguPhule
@MCA1: We’re inventing new Constitutional Crisis by the hour.
MattF
@BGinCHI: Not to mention that there’s no sign of Mother.
RedDirtGirl
@MCA1: Nice use of The Good Place lingo!
hueyplong
@ruemara: Amen. Yet another rodent looking to avoid accountability when the fecal matter starts flying off the fan blades.
Fuck ’em all, and let God sort out his own. I’ve got no time for darling tales of one person’s little, secret battles on behalf of the republic.Tell your tale from the dock.
TenguPhule
@p.a.:
Take that back. Gollum was sympathetic at points in the movies.
Keith P.
These aren’t too hard to track down…you just find interesting phrasings and search email for those phrasings. There’s only going to be one person with 3 or more of them in his/her Sent Items. I’d start with “free minds, free markets and free people” and someone who uses “exasperated” a lot.
I’d say “Put Jared on the case” (and unironically, even!), but it could very well *be* Jared.
TenguPhule
@Keith P.:
Its Kudlow.
RedDirtGirl
@MattF: My thought, as well, also, too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: Mnuchin maybe, but I doubt Mattis or anyone with a military background. This:
makes me think it’s someone from the Wall St/ Randian wing. I doubt– Dr Silverman, if you’re reading– that anyone from Mattis’s following would put the military last, or so vaguely. A Wall St type who wants to polish their own… apple with The NYT? Mnuchin is a very, very good guess.
tobie
Oh my. We’re living through unprecedented times. The would-be King is a loon and everyone knows it.
Haydnseek
@Betty Cracker: If this is anything like the last year and a half, it’ll be a two-day story. It will be overshadowed by the next ridiculous outrage, and then the next. I hope I’m wrong.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
Well they do need asscover of the highest order.
Mostly because they are all highest order asses.
Doug R
So they admit they should be using the 25th amendment but they’re too chicken $hit to pull the trigger?
Mueller should indict trump NOW.
Chet
“But please, don’t let this interrupt your regularly scheduled Kavanaugh Kabuki.”
JPL
@dmsilev: haha That would be a sure way to end his nomination. Time to pass it on.
Also the Washington Post published a list of replacements for when Mattis leaves. Sen Cotton is on the list.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2018/09/05/the-white-house-is-discussing-potential-replacements-for-jim-mattis/?utm_term=.1dadcc3ebd42
The Moar You Know
Well. This is terrifying.
Jeffro
@Barbara: Mnunchin doesn’t have the guts to do this. Mattis wouldn’t do this. I swear I’m 99% convinced it’s Haley.
MCA1
@Keith P.: The phrase “not moored to any discernible first principles” caught my eye. Sounds like something a high ranking military officer might say.
SFAW
@lollipopguild:
Yes, really. What he/she left out was that America is “more prosperous” in much the same way as the apocryphal bar patrons did when Bill Gates walked in. [“Hey, on average, we all just became millionaires!!!”]
JPL
@BGinCHI: Pence did defend Sessions today, but I agree. Could it be mother?
Tim C.
Um…. the morality of the person who wrote this is pretty much in tatters. So is the rest of the GOP electorate. Imagine if this dude had the stones to say it publicly and take the consequences. This is Flake and Corker territory of trying to have your cake and eat it too. Someone thinks it’s going to crash soon and wants to establish cred, but is so chickenpoop scared they won’t walk out on their own.
LesGS
I think we had hints all along that this sort of thing was happening. Then Woodward’s book made it more explicit. But, wow, this pretty much lays it all out. It’s possible that the intent is to reassure the public that there are some adults in the room. But I find it quite discombobulating. I’m having a hard time processing it.
John Revolta
@Betty Cracker:
Carries on what now?
Betty Cracker
@Keith P.: I was just thinking that. Every expert on that sort of thing is Googling furiously right now. This person will almost certainly not be able to remain anonymous and when revealed, he or she will be pressured to name co-conspirators. This is fucking nuts, y’all.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: I’m streaming MSNBC and Wallace is reading the oped.
coloradoblue
…preserve our democratic institutions…
Like the Supreme Court?
Eat shit and die, can’t say it enough.
Mezz
TUMBRELS FOR THE LOT OF THEM WHEN THIS IS OVER.
NOBODY ELECTED YOU ASSHOLES – this is NOT your job. Denounce him publicly or STFU.
(Of course, nobody elected the Giant Orange Asshole either; Putin put him in power.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jeffro: @Barbara: Mnunchin doesn’t have the guts to do this.
I think you underestimate his MOTU arrogance and smug confidence that The NYT– his sort of people, you know– will protect him. Not that it’s a sure thing, but this is a guy who wanted a government plane to fly him around to see the eclipse and posed for that picture with his trophy wife. He doesn’t understand how normal people do things, or consequences.
I’m sure this admin is lousy with Wall St “Executive Vice President” types, or people from the extraction industries or Koch-like companies— “deregulation” comes even before tax reform. But it’s somebody big enough that the NYT agreed to publish it…..
And if we’re playing this game, trump is going to be smashing furniture like Charles Foster Kane. Keep him out of the ceremonial rooms.
Keith P.
@TenguPhule: Does he write that academically? I have only seen him on TV as a sycophant. Reading it, with its foreign policy focus and adult sentence construction, I was thinking it was Nikki Haley.
catclub
@MattF:
how about voting them out of office? Leaving office seems to do it for them.
David Fud
The eunuchs have surrounded the emperor and cossetted him with BS. It seems that we don’t even live in a democracy. We live in a cockless authoritarian Cloud Coo-Coo Land. This is exactly what impeachment is for and yet, here we are, without any effective check or balance on an executive completely off his rocker and underlings who simply ignore him and do whatever in the F they want. I am finally to the point I believe the founders screwed the pooch: they made the executive too strong. We didn’t know for 250 years, but now we know. What a crazy discovery.
Gin & Tonic
It would probably be rude and impolitic to hope that reading this gives Il Donaldo a stroke.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Mnuchin loves the tax cuts and deregulation, so that would make sense. Not unsurprising, but I heard through the grapevine that both Prices’s detest him. Since he was fired, not him.
Ruckus
@Haydnseek:
Well……
We are in a political hurricane, we know that the winds are building and it will be the biggest political hurricane for anyone born since WWII, so you have to think, it’s going to be worse before it gets better.
Barbara
@Jeffro: Would bet Mnuchin over Haley any day. Haley does not have a vast personal fortune and really wants a political future. Mnuchin is indifferent to those kinds of things. At any rate, I really doubt it’s Haley even if it’s not Mnuchin. She’s just too much of an opportunist to risk doing something like this.
The Moar You Know
I will also say this: this is the most craven, cowardly bullshit I have ever read in my life. Trump’s unfit? 25th Amendment. Otherwise these people are taking part in a legitimate coup against the elected government of the United States.
Tim C.
Second Take, could this be a rat-fornication from one faction of white house staffers on another? The use of specific phrases could be a way to direct the retribution at specific targets. Can the team famous for playing Hungry Hungry hippos actually be doing some strategy?
Gin & Tonic
@Keith P.: I doubt Kudlow could put together more than a paragraph at a high-school AP Gov level. There’s no there there.
geg6
Other than the hilarity factor of imagining how Cheetolini is blowing up the place over this, fuck this asshole. If you were a real patriot, you’d step up and take credit and blow up this entire farce. You are an enabler and I am not comforted at the thought that you are there to take credit for being some sort of hero or as a part of the resistance. If you actually gave a damn, you and your co-conspirators would come out with the truth of everything that orange mother fucker and his minions have done and fall on the mercy of the American people. But you, too, are cowards, just like your disgusting boss. I hate you all and I hope you never have a happy moment for the rest of your lives.
catclub
@JPL:
Pence is the one guy in the Executive branch that Trump cannot fire.
Jeffro
@Barbara:
She’s…too much of an opportunist…to do this?
Isn’t this exactly what an opportunist would do?
Well, the good news is, we should know within 24 hours who dropped this bad boy…maybe not even 12…
John PM
If the author is going to be anonymous, should he/she/it at least come up with a pseudonym? I suggest “Chickenshit.”
Also, I’m usually a big believer in a newspaper protecting its sources, but I don’t consider Chickenshit to be a source, so identify this coward already!
John Revolta
@Haydnseek: This. The Gish Gallop will continue until they got all the monies, or they’re tossed out on their asses.
feebog
From the OpEd:
Quite the opposite is true. If you know Trump is mentally unfit for office, it is your obligation to invoke the 25th amendment. Failing to do so is the constitutional crisis.
Brachiator
A palace coup ain’t preserving “our democratic institutions.”
Applying the 25th Amendment if necessary ain’t a constitutional crisis. It is using the Constitution to resolve a crisis.
The arrogance of King Trump is outweighed only by the arrogance of his courtiers.
And consider this.
Would these misguided courtiers work for his re-election?
schrodingers_cat
Well but we are saved from HER EMAILZ
Thanks, Vichy Times.
polyorchnid octopunch
Gonna ask any non-white US jackals a favour here to unfuck a friend of mine; a reverse rectocraniotomy as it were. Start here: https://twitter.com/partialtomusic/status/1037432365184737280?s=21 and point out the home truths on this.
smintheus
So many bad consequences result from publishing this – it signals to other countries that Trump cannot control policy hence the US is officially adrift in the world; it drives Trump around the bend trying to identify the author and conspirators; it undercuts Republican allies/cronies/minions in Congress; etc.
So there had to be an ulterior motive for publishing. Several obvious possibilities, like a desire to hand one or both Houses of Congress to the Democrats. More likely, in my opinion, the author wanted to build for himself a nest in which to perch if/when he’s cashiered by Trump. I think this is virtue signalling in advance: “Don’t blame me for taking part in Trump’s conspiracy against the US, I was actually part of the loyal (i.e. Republican) resistance.”
JPL
@catclub: We need to read excerpts of statements from Chao, and Haley, and see if the style matches.
Bruce K
…I think I get it.
They’re trying to disassociate the Republicans from Trump, painting the policies as good and the man as an aberration, rather than the goddamned end point of the Southern Strategy and their embrace of racists and white supremacists and know-nothingers and the goddamn neo-Nazis and the fbeeping Ku Klux Klan.
Let ’em end up like Keitel or Jodl or even Rudolf Hess. Let ’em all burn.
TenguPhule
@Keith P.: Nikki is an idiot when it comes to foreign policy. That’s why she’s at the UN.
MCA1
@Tim C.: I get that perspective, but then again if we just put aside the character judgment on anyone who would take a job in this administration in the first place (not a glowing judgment) and think about the mechanics of this once they’re inside, there might be some strategic thinking behind it.
Say it’s Mattis, for example. He’s concerned that TOTUS is loco, and if he’s not there to steer him and disregard his orders we’ll end up in WWIII. So, what to do? If you get canned or walk out, you have no control over your replacement and they could be even more morally and ethically stunted than you were to take the job in the first place. They might be as deranged and degenerate as Trump himself.
It’s a prisoner’s dilemma to be the first ones to start pushing actively for 25th Amendment resolution. If you take a shot and fail, you’re all gone. If you try to recruit the wrong person, you’re all gone. This could be simply an S.O.S. signal to the world from on board the Bounty that they need help with this mutiny because there are enough flying monkeys around that they can’t safely decapitate the king. If anyone gets fired in the next 2 weeks we’ll know why, it will be viewed with great suspicion and it might (not likely, I know, but maybe we can hope) be the sort of thing that wakes up Congressional Republicans.
The Dangerman
@Jeffro:
Yeah, Pence is involved somehow. Not sure about Haley. Could be Pence alone with help from Mother for the bigger words.
Mary G
Yeah, wowser, but what a lily-livered coward who is hoping to have his cake and eat it too by claiming after Twitler is purged that he or she is the savior of the republic because they wrote an anonymous column. Own your words or GTFO.
This is standard Republican boilerplate with “the president is crazy pants tacked on” and I am not impressed.
It will be entertaining to watch the meltdown, though, also too.
TenguPhule
@David Fud:
They didn’t. Executive branch got stronger due to WW I, Depression, WW II and the Cold War.
Congress basically gave away most of its power through lack of enforcement.
schrodingers_cat
OT good news, the write-in candidate for state senate seat who I canvased for won her race. And my favorite candidate of the 7 running for the state rep won hers and I know both of them personally!
catclub
@Tim C.:
third take, NYT has made it up just to drive Trump crazy looking for the mole. Trump as James Jesus Angleton is amusing me.
Chip Daniels
So once the praetorian guard do their duty and shiv the mad emperor, slow, stupid, imbecilic Mike Pence will be our Claudius after all.
Haydnseek
@Ruckus: I agree. I just think it will be the cumulative weight of all this that will precipitate the final collapse. I don’t think this particular meteor will trigger the extinction event. Things will get worse, and then worse still. The deluge will come. Just not next week. Tick Tock motherfuckers indeed.
TenguPhule
@smintheus:
Worse. It signals that there are other people who have effective controls of the levers of power and that they can be bribed. Because if they couldn’t they wouldn’t be working there.
smintheus
@MCA1: Or Jesuit trained.
Ruckus
@David Fud:
A lot of the executive getting stronger was Congress abdicating their duties. Someone had to run the country. And Congress, not wanting to look weak, has been trying to find something else to do. I think conservatives found fuciking with us to be an alternative.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Honestly, if these people were purposely staging a farce, they couldn’t do any better.
zhena gogolia
Haven’t read the thread, but this article makes me sick to my stomach. I’m hearing it in Burt Lancaster’s voice.
JPL
The authors among us should read excerpt from writings from a few cabinet members. I bet they can figure it out.
TenguPhule
@Gin & Tonic:
We need him to shoot Pence on 5th avenue first.
low-tech cyclist
@Brachiator:
Bingo.
Ditto their stupidity and obliviousness.
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara: This.
dexwood
Fucking hell?! Unsung heroes?! What a load of bullshit. Sounds like they’ll do anything to further their agenda, including a palace coup of sorts that props up a demented traitor to advance their goals.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
Legitimate?
Uncle Cosmo
@Jeffro: “Not so fast, Schwartz!”: The 25th Amendment provides for VPOTUS to become “Acting POTUS” under certain circumstances, & to continue in that role if sanctioned by a 2/3 vote of both Houses of Congress –
BUT there is no provision for the installation of an “Acting VPOTUS”. Among other things, it is unclear whether the office of VPOTUS would in fact be vacant under such circumstances. Section 3 says that “such powers and duties [of POTUS] shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President,” & the 2/3 votes of both Houses merely enables VPOTUS to continue as Acting President until & unless the deactivated POTUS dies, resigns, or is impeached & removed.
My head hurts…
Another Scott
@Jeffro: Something like 4000 people work in the Executive Office of the President. I wouldn’t be surprised if 1000 of them were classed as “Senior Official”.
It could be almost anyone there, really.
Cheers,
Scott.
Calouste
I don’t think the writer of this op-ed is cabinet level. One, maybe even two ranks below that seems more likely. Someone the shitgibbon doesn’t even know the name off.
trollhattan
Going with Mrs. Turtle. Hubby got her into the cabinet as his mole and we never, ever hear a peep about or from her. Except during Infrastructure Week, of course.
zhena gogolia
@BGinCHI:
It ain’t Pence.
schrodingers_cat
I hope special counsel Mueller is delving into NYT’s finances, since they have taken it upon themselves to be the mouth of Sauron, before and after the elections. How many Russkie oligarchs are propping up the Grey Lady.
Miss Bianca
Jesus Chicken-Fried Christ (to use the immortal words of Betty C.) We have this supremely delusional paragraph:
And then we get:
Which is it, you wizened umbilical stump? (h/t Dr. Bloor). You either believe that this administration is capable of making decisions to keep “America safe and prosperous”, or you don’t. If you believe it, you should be working towards its goals, not undermining them. And if you don’t…you STILL shouldn’t be operating in secret to undermine it, you should be OUT LOUD AND PROUD about invoking the 25th Amendment!
What the everlasting FUCK??
Guy (or gal) is getting reamed in the NYT Reader comments. And rightly so.
zhena gogolia
I’m also expecting the Untergang parodies to get dusted off. blech.
wjs
It reads like it was written by a committee that consists of people who are trying to revise their resumes to play up their conservative bona fides and hide the fact that they had to take a job working for Trump or move back to Indiana and suck dicks for change down at the Chamber of Commerce again.
jimmiraybob
So, Pence and his people are making their move.
Crazytown man, Crazytown.
wvng
@Jeffro: can’t be Haley because she isn’t there often enough. Has to be someone closer to the WH.
Betty Cracker
@smintheus: Sounds plausible.
O. Felix Culpa
How exactly is using a constitutional remedy via the 25th Amendment equal to precipitating a constitutional crisis? Isn’t that what the provision is there for? And isn’t not using it in this instance a constitutional crisis in and of itself?
Gin & Tonic
@Calouste: Bingo.
zhena gogolia
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvqJ1mTkEuY
David Anderson
@Keith P.: That is a Wall Street Journal phrasing
“free minds, free markets and free people”
Rommie
Somebody(s) want President Pence sooner than later. Hmmm, wonder why?
The Saturday Night Massacre is coming from inside the house!
To be serious, I agree with everyone calling the source a chickenshit. More like Big Dummy, trusting the NYT to guard their identity. Clark Kent wearing glasses is more secure identity protection.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Calouste: that’s what the too-good-to-be-true rule would suggest, but would the NYT do this for a first assistant undersecretary at Treasury?
randy khan
So, first, if Trump implodes or gets crushed in 2020, and the author is not yet revealed, I predict that there will be a couple of dozen people claiming to be Spartacus (so to speak).
But the real gist of this is that the person who wrote this is fine working for an incompetent loon so long as he (and you know it’s a he) gets his Republican cookies. And, indeed, the Republican cookies are *more* important to him than the possibility that a madman will do something catastrophic before he can be stopped. And he’s entirely comfortable with a soft coup in the meantime.
I am put to mind of Toby Ziegler: There was coup d’état that night
stan
There are elaborate systems in place to prevent that.
catclub
@Another Scott:
Somebody wanted their 2.1% cost of living raise next year, and is pissed.
Frankensteinbeck
Do not take this as straightforward. Trump isn’t smart enough to tie his own shoes, but many of the people working for him are merely stupid. This is Court Of The Sun King shit. You know what you get when you have an absolute monarch who is more interested in his own ego than ruling anything? Dueling courtiers. The Woodward snippets imply the White House is full of factions manipulating Trump like a toddler to get their own priorities followed.
This is a bog standard, courtier favorite, high-school mean girl ‘Write a nasty letter and set up your enemy to take the blame’ tactic.
James E Powell
@Haydnseek:
Normally, I’d agree. I take a back seat to no one when it comes to bitter cynicism. But people are going to want to know who the anonymous writer is and who else he or she is referring to as the protectors of the realm. It’s exactly the kind of insider savvy political soap opera shit that the Village actually cares about. It’s going to be all they talk about at dinner parties.
Wumpus
Invoking the 25th Amendment would not “precipitate a constitutional crisis.” It would be the Constitution working as intended. Someone like Trump is exactly what it’s there for.
Instead, the ongoing state of anarchy we have now is a genuine constitutional crisis: the people who are pledged to uphold the Constitution and implement its checks and balances have simply abandoned their duty.
sgrAstar
@Keith P.: Nikki Haley isn’t a WH insider. She doesn’t work there and she’s not a part of daily decision making. It sounds like Mnuchin…but a Mnuchin with guts. I wonder who that could possibly be. The “ free markets” comment is sheer rw propaganda. Clue? This op-ed does suggest that everyone in the WH is a craven, deluded fool. This guy actually claims to be saving the republic. He’s blinded by his own self-regard. Tumbrel drivers to the white courtesy phone….
TenguPhule
No good donation goes unstolen
Who should we believe?
p.a.
That sounds military to me, not Wall St. But the talking up of decades old Reaganomics…
Maybe it’s really a joint authorship?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Of course we’re all overlooking the obvious.
Tiffany
TenguPhule
@stan:
Electoral College. Executive Cellphones. North Korea & Russian meetings.
zhena gogolia
@Mandarama:
quoted for truth
Immanentize
I’m guessing Sessions. It’s a message to the Senate and others to get buckled in.
First principles is Sessions speak. And the odd way of talking about 25th amendment process sounds like Sessions too. And he certainly believes what he does is making the country safer….
Did Woodward spend much time with Ol’ Jefferson Beauregard?
sm*t cl*de
@MattF:
Do they make handcuffs that small?
jimmiraybob
@lollipopguild:
…wrote a deliriously manic Mike Pence, with a copy of the 25th Amendment tightly clutched to his bosom. It was a dark and stormy night. And then the murders began.
p.a.
Very different situations, but how did the post-stroke Wilson WH work?
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: Trump was elected as per the process outlined in the Constitution. That the process was tampered with eight ways from Sunday by foreign and domestic powers doesn’t change that. He was elected president.
I didn’t vote for him, but oddly enough, nobody in America voted for Mattis, or Kelly, or Haley, or Mnuchin, or Sessions. And this piece implies that these unelected people are acting as president, in a manner that they consider fit, with no legal authority or oversight whatsoever. That is a fucking coup.
They have two choices: 25th Amendment or do their jobs. They chose to take power instead. That is treason, full stop.
The Dangerman
@trollhattan:
After reading, I’m with you. It’s someone with connections to the Senate.
Haley’s a good second choice … but I’m down with Mrs. Turtle.
CaseyL
I’ve called both my Senators – both Dems already opposed to Kavanaugh but neither, alas, on the Judiciary Committee – and asked them why someone who his own staff says is immoral, crazy, and a danger to the country is allowed to nominate Supreme Court Justices. Hopefully they can pass that question on to their colleagues on the Committee. (And I will try calling the Dems who are, even though I’m not in their state(s).)
Gravenstone
@JPL: Missus McTurtle propping up yet sidelining
Trump while her husband officiates over the continued looting of the country shouldn’t come across as surprising in retrospect. Doubt she’s the author of the oped but might well be participating in the actions described.
Uncle Cosmo
@zhena gogolia: Sounds like the Unter Gang is already
runningruining the show…Kdaug
@Haydnseek: Doubtful. “The calls are coming from inside the house” is going to set Trump’s hair on fire and he’s going to be running into walls for months
TenguPhule
@sm*t cl*de:
Chinese finger traps.
Miss Bianca
@Chip Daniels:
This sentence is as poetic as it is horrifying. Well done! Tho’ I think Graves would argue that there’s little evidence that Pence will suddenly be revealed as a wise, sane man – only relatively so, perhaps.
JMG
Every non-Times reporter in DC has had orders since this piece hit the Internet to find out who the author is. I’d bet they’re outed before the print edition hits the stands late tonight.
PS: Boy I hope it’s Ivanka.
Betty Cracker
@James E Powell: Exactly.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of course!
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know: Actually I was wondering if you’d placed the word in the wrong spot.
Kay
Remember- every single GOP member of Congress had the actual power to do something about this- and every single one of them failed.
They aren’t going to be able to remain blameless in this. They had real power under the constitution to protect the people from this crazed nutjob in the White House and they were too cowardly to use it.
They should all lose their seats. This was the test. They all failed.
TenguPhule
@p.a.:
Badly.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Unfortunately voters grade on a curve.
jimmiraybob
PS, I’m open to a Pence-Tyffany-Jefferson Beauregard pact.
Jay
@smintheus:
Yup, begging the Beltway for Good Conduct Medals for service when the tumbrel is deserved,
And further “normalization” of The Insane Clown POSus and his Minions.
Fuck the Author and FTFNYT for publishing this with out clarion calls for removal of this whole Administration.
Another Scott
@JMG: Jennifer Baty is on the case!
rofl.
(via Popehat on Twitter)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think somebody with more Beltway ties would’ve done a “deep background” interview with somebody like David Ignatius, Sessions would’ve gone with whatever anti-trump is left at The Federalist or wherever the hell Pat Buchanan is decomposing behind a desk.
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
Amen.
cain
@BGinCHI:
I was thinking it was Pence too. But it’s probably Stephen Miller ;)
Jeff
TLDR: I am really just in it for the budget-busting tax cuts, reckless deregulation, and massive military spending, and while I feel secure in the Republican Party’s long track record of avoiding political consequences for enacting that particular set of policies at every opportunity, I would like to preemptively insulate myself and my friends from blame for whatever else the administration might do while we’re part of it.
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.: Doesn’t sound military to me.
eemom
Don’t think it is Mnooch. Too much of a pure lickspittle.
Nobody’s mentioned Goebbels Miller….but nah.
Is McGahn still there? If so I’d say it’s him.
JPL
@sgrAstar: Because she works with the UN, she does have the views of our allies. A friend who lives on the GA side of Lake Hartwell thinks it could be. The friend watches local Carolina stattions.
Chet
@feebog: this. It’s not a Constitutional crisis if the Constitution has been amended to address this very situation.
O. Felix Culpa
@O. Felix Culpa: @feebog: Or what feebog said.
randal m sexton
mattis uses ‘first principles’ a lot
https://twitter.com/JohnWSmith/status/1037437369786527747
ruemara
@polyorchnid octopunch: OH, I don’t think you can unfuck that without a cranio-rectotomy.
Redshift
If you believe the president is harming the country, and your supposed “duty to this country” doesn’t lead you to try to end this administration (because tax cuts and deregulation, yo!), then you’re not any sort of hero.
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize: Oooh…SESSIONS!! *That’s* a guess! Oh, God…I could almost, almost hug the little fucker for it, if so. That would be the most perfect instance of two scorpions stinging each other to death I’ve ever heard of. And the fact that it threatens to tear the country apart and signal fatal weakness to our allies and enemies alike, is just *so* fucking worthy of Sessions. As in, the most supremely unworthy way to act ever.
VeniceRiley
Some wag on twitter pointing to all the times Mattis has used the phrase “first principles”
Archon
This is all crazy although I do disagree with the comments that suggest invoking the 25th amendment is the only action to take at this point. Invoking that with a President who most in this country feel was duly elected and who still has 40 percent approval, and most importantly before any election that could be pointed too as a referendum on his leadership would be a disaster for this county and lead to civil unrest.
Best for people in the administration to contain the damage until the midterms. If the Republicans get blasted in November I suspect the electoral and institutional walls protecting Trump will quickly collapse.
Duke of Clay
Someone may already have said this, and, If so, I’m saying it again. I get so fucking tired of people describing the invocation of a constitutional process as precipitating a “CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS!!!!!” NO, that is the Constitution working, you idiot!
Mary G
Really Excellent Thread:
Took out a link to George Lakoff’s Twitter to stay under the limit, I hope.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The 2018 GOP platform
Gelfling 545
@lollipopguild: So we already know this guy is a liar. Just feathering his nest for when the bottom drops out entirely.
hueyplong
My guesses (in order)
1. Someone lower than the famous names– some of you will have heard of that person, but I haven’t.
2. Mnuchin
3. Mrs Turtle
I am fascinated by the timing (the day after Woodward’s book blew up) and think the sole good this sniveling ass-coverer can do is to precipitate the long-anticipated presidential stroke. Sorry to be kind of Tenguphule-y, but that’s how I feel about it at this point.
sm*t cl*de
“Moored to discernible principles” makes sense. “First principles” makes sense in Aristotelian philosophy, as the axioms one uses as a starting-point for deduction.
“Moored to first principles” makes no sense and is the kind of lazy mash-up that falls out of the head of a dumb person trying to write with gravitas while armed only with a dim recollection of things said by smarter people.
Mary G
@Mary G: One more:
zhena gogolia
@p.a.:
His wife ran the country.
Barbara
@eemom: Still there but on the way out. He’s too much of a loyalist IMO.
sm*t cl*de
@VeniceRiley:
I rest my case.
Princess
I have to salute the staffer who was smart enough to write this piece of CYA. Keep your job then when it’s all over, come out and claim authorship? Nice way to save what’s left of your career.
That being said, it highlights once again the criminal negligence of the GOP who know all of this too and could end this at any time, and choose not to.
Kdaug
@Brachiator:
Correct. It is, however, a grave political crisis. A crisis that could, in fact, destroy the two party system.
And nobody with a vested interest wants that.
Gelfling 545
@Mandarama: I think they should completely be sung! A nice requiem mass, perhaps.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: hard to believe a careful lawyer and Republican who wants a future would do this
But then, these are all people who agreed to work for trump so who the fuck knows?
Kent
I honestly think this is about 2020. The Republicans want a do-over and the best way to do that is flush out Trump before 2020.
The only things that really matter at this point are the 2018 midterms and the 2020 general election. If Dem’s take one or both houses this November then the Trump Administration is looking forward to 2-years of endless rectal exams by Dems with subpoena power and the blocking of any legislation they still want to pass (repealing the ACA, more permanent tax cuts? repealing environmental laws?). Personally I think it will be easier to defeat a neutered, unpopular, and increasingly senile Trump than it will be to defeat a new Pence Administration.
I think the Republicans would like nothing more than a do-over in the form of a new Pence Administration in 2019 that will “put the growups back in charge”. They want him to pull a Palin and walk away. The media will wet its pants and write endless puff pieces about the new “adult” Republicans and how we should give them a chance to turn things around. All that corruption and mess from the last Trump Administration? That’s old news. Bygones don’t you know?
Don’t fall for it. Make them own Trump for the next 2 years and then we can start fresh. That’s why I’m actually of mixed opinion about impeachment. Yes I want Trump gone but I also want the White House back in 2020. I’m not sure that impeachment followed by a new Pence Administration is the best way to get there.
hueyplong
@sm*t cl*de: If I were truly trying to be anonymous, I’d use someone else’s favorite phrase and not my own.
NotMax
An anonymous op-ed?
Gray Lady down.
Redshift
@TenguPhule:
Or by explicitly delegating it. All this crap Trump is doing with tariffs is because Congress have away that power to the executive.
Gelfling 545
@Betty Cracker: If it weren’t in complete, mostly intelligible sentences I’d suspect Trump Himself.
Gravenstone
@Mary G: I fail to see how an argument of “the adults are too actually in charge ” in the face of all the shit and misery perpetrated by this administration doesn’t strike me as a winner. And as a tool to demotivate the Democrats? Yeah, good luck with that!
sgrAstar
@geg6: Preach it, geg6!
Jay
@Mary G:
Yup, that too.
JGabriel
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“We’re enabling Trump to disable him.”
They’re grieving for their self-esteem. And this guy just reached the bargaining stage: he’s trying to get the rest of us to give him a moral pass on his double treachery – to the country and Trump – in order to feel better about himself, to convince himself he’s doing the right thing. Even though it’s clear that he’s not. He’s just making excuses for his own behavior to preserve his political beliefs, refusing to understand that the GOP’s political precepts are what led them to Trump in the first place.
It’s all over the op-ed. Notice how he keeps talking about Conservatism/Republicanism as if it’s something separate from Trumpism, instead of the foundation Trumpism is built on.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
F you mister Orwellian idiot, those three paragraphs are impossible.
Aleta
To Republicans: We are on your side !
To Democrats: We are a lot like you !
We are heroes bravely staying at our posts to save the country !!
Help, help !!!
We’re all in this together! We all allowed him to do this to us !
Everyone loves McCain right ? Heed his words !
Don’t go low ! Aim high ! (Stolen from Michelle w/o credit)
Unite through our shared values and love of this great nation ! (Stolen from Barak w/o credit)
everyday citizens / rising above politics / reaching across the aisle / shed labels /we’re all Americans
(Barak, Barak, Barak, Barak, Barak)
Questions for senior official:
In what ways are you personally responsible for this situation?
Whom did you vote for?
What public support have you given President Obama? Hilary Clinton?
Are you responsible for perpetuating lies about: HRC, immigrants, Black Lives Matter, Trump’s abuse of women, Pres and FL Obama?
Are you willing to answer questions under oath in public to help the country?
Assignment:
Expand these answers in an op-ed.
Read it on Fox news.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
zhena gogolia
@Mary G:
How could anyone be reassured by this piece? It’s gut-wrenchingly terrifying.
Mary G
Thread from a detective who think’s it’s Pence, because of the word “lodestar,” FFS.
Omnes Omnibus
@sm*t cl*de: So, Mnuchin then
TenguPhule
More details leaking.
TenguPhule
@Aleta:
I don’t see how this relates to John Fucking McCain. Who is still dead, thankfully.
MoxieM
@TenguPhule: I’d say, can’t one of you professor types out there in Jackal-land use some of the anti-plagiarism software that was coming along (just about when I left academia and saved my own personal sanity). Shouldn’t be that hard to get a hit. Of course, knowing these snakes, one of ’em got some underling to write it just so it wasn’t directly traceable. Or not, giant egos and all.
The honky-tonk Patsy Cline I cranked on just before dialing up Balloon-Juice is somehow very fitting background music.
Jay
@Gravenstone:
ReThugs are down to projection. They’ve been unmoored so long from reality, that they think their Daddy Issues also are in play with Democrats.
eemom
I got it! It’s Zombie McCain ghost writing! ???
TenguPhule
@Redshift:
not true. Trump is exploiting a specific exception that Congress gave the executive branch and is not being used as intended.
Gravenstone
@TenguPhule: Why the fuck would it take fifteen minutes to detect an NK ICBM launch? There’s a reason we have a constellation of IR satellites in orbit that point earthward!
Betty Cracker
My best guess is that it’s a joint effort by Mattis, McMaster and Pompeo — maybe Kelly too. Pompeo was the latest recruit to the coup plotters club after he got an up-close and personal view of Spanky’s cray-cray during the North Korea fiasco. On the other hand, it may be some self-important cockwaffle under one of those four.
Raoul
I think publishing this is rather disgraceful. Yet again, we have so called grownups who can’t pull their fucking pants on and actually be seen and named as they tell the truth.
It’s like I don’t give a shit each time some high level staffer or even member of Congress privately tells Rick Wilson how useless and terrible Trump is. Anonymously. OK, whatevs, you all are cowards and dismantling our system of governance. But you don’t like it. Ohhh.
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
Lie back and think of the Greenbacks.
oatler.
They shake your hand and they smile
And they buy you a drink
They say we’ll be your friends
We’ll stick with you till the end
Ah but everybody’s only
Looking out for themselves
And you say well who can you trust
I’ll tell you it’s just
Nobody else’s money
Redshift
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ah yes, the catechism of St. Ronnie, cutting regulations to “help” businesses that don’t need it, regardless of the harm, cutting taxes for the rich “to boist the economy” that they claim was already breaking records, and spending more on the military whether they want it or not.
Can’t imagine why they aren’t getting positive coverage for their retread policies that have failed for decades. Sad!
TenguPhule
@Gravenstone:
I presume the orbital time was the 15 minutes part.
Gex
I like this version better.
Immanentize
I don’t think Mattis would ever identify/align himself as a Republican like the author does.
El Caganer
@David Fud: The eunuchs? The self-described ‘unhung zeroes?”
TenguPhule
@Kent:
Never again.
Republicans get no penance or credit for time served.
Death Sentences or Exile for life. Nothing less.
Amir Khalid
@zhena gogolia:
The downfall of tne Trumpenreich would be, not a parody of Der Untergang, but a re-enactment.
The Moar You Know
Actually I was wondering if you’d placed the word in the wrong spot.
@TenguPhule: I did! No edit function and it didn’t seem worth the effort to fix.
JGabriel
@Kent:
Pence would not be any more likely to win in 2020 than Ford was in 1976.
In fact, Pence would be a great deal less likely, simply on the basis that he’s been part of the Trump maladministration from the get-go, and wouldn’t be able to portray himself as an outsider and a new start, the way Ford could with respect to Nixon.
karensky
I am not down with this “anonymous op ed” concept. Publishing it is enabling this creep. Quit and leave, anonymouse, if you have a soul. If not, shut yer pie hole.
Jay
@Gravenstone:
It’s not about detecting a NORK rocket launch, it’s about establishing the trajectory enough to know it’s a shot at US targets rather than a test launch.
marian
We have mechanisms to deal with an unfit President, but they don’t work when officials try to cover up his unfitness. They weren’t elected to decide which policies to implement, for our sins HE was. They need to step up and tell the public what’s going on so we can get him out of there
A ‘constitutional crisis’ happens when you DON’T obey the constitution, not when you do.
catclub
@Kent:
you seem to not remember how Dick Cheney resisted such subpoenas, then got the courts to not side too strenuously with the House.
Two years of stalling seems easy enough. they have practice.
Raven Onthill
There is a deep state and this is its manifesto.
JPL
@karensky: They think they are saving the country by staying. yadda yadda yadda
James E Powell
@catclub:
Debt ceiling?
chopper
@Mary G:
if i were the one who wrote this, i’d make sure to use language that implicated someone other than myself as the author. then again, i don’t think anyone in the WH is even that clever, so who knows.
JGabriel
Via TenguPhule:
Forehead -> Desk.
This is what you get when you give power to a party and a president educated by Fox News.
Brachiator
@Kdaug:
The Republicans are already trying to destroy the two party system. They operate on the assumption that the GOP is the only party, ordained by God and dipped in patriotism, that has the right to govern the country.
Still, using the 25th Amendment would only remove Trump, not all Republicans. And a new party forming from the remnants of an older party is not new, and is part of the US system of government.
hueyplong
Now that I have an adult beverage, I’m kind of chuckling at the thought of what will go down when Trump figures out who AnonOpEd is.
And the surge of “bravery” that erupts among others in the room/wing/whatever while it’s happening. Night of the geschissene Hosen
Jeffro
@Another Scott: oh OK
feebog
@eemom:
I was thinking McGhan as well. In the west wing, in the know in terms of a lot of policy decisions, and with one foot out the door already.
Baud
I’m going with Melania. I think Obama making her smile won her over.
Aleta
@Aleta: Sorry I misspelled Barack. I’m sorry, Mr. President. (I was writing some stuff with Arabic names and I blame autocorrect I am innocent.)
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: nope
piratedan
and you can’t tell me that the GOP leadership in both the House and the Senate aren’t aware of the political situation as it exists and are simply going along because it suits their agenda….
Calouste
@JGabriel: It’s like arguing that the supermarket is stealing from you because you have to pay them for food.
MazeDancer
No courage cookies for martyr/savior types who.just love the judges and tax cuts but won’t do the right thing.
phantomist
I think it’s Steven Moore.(economic advisor)
From an op-ed in the Winnetka Current in 2011:
https://archive.li/NdRSq
“In most newspapers, the least read part of the paper is the editorial page,” said Moore, who is also a regular contributor on CNN, Fox and numerous other media outlets. “The Wall Street Journal may be the only one in the country in which it is the most read. I think even Ben Bernanke is reading it every day.”
The Journal’s editorial page is steadfast in its championship of free market capitalism.
“‘Free minds. Free markets. Free people.’ That is the current that goes through every editorial,” Moore told The Wilmette Beacon in a recent interview.
It is also the current that runs through Moore.
“I’ve always been an individualist,” he said. “Someone who believes you should get rewarded for your own work.”
Moore, 51, attended Winnetka’s Saints Faith Hope & Charity School (He had “a great time” at his 35th anniversary class reunion.) and graduated from New Trier East in 1978. He still has family in the area, including sister Kathy Dodd in Wilmette.
_______
Stole this from a commenter at Deadspin.
Calouste
This whole thing must blow up, right? And the author must have known that. I think that at the moment the shitgibbon just doesn’t want the author caught and sacked, he literally wants to have them shot.
Mike in DC
It will be fun to see testimony from the 50 or 60 cabinet secretaries and undersecretaries regarding the alleged 25th amendment debate. Once a Dem committee subpoenas them next year.
TenguPhule
There’s Trump’s fifth vote to overturn the ACA.
Uncle Cosmo
@eemom: “Ghost writers in disguise….”
TenguPhule
@Calouste: If this is an IC decoy operation, its well thought out.
Ohio Mom
I’m casting my vote for the theory this was written by a group.
What they actually hope to accomplish by publishing this I can’t tell: Are they sending out an SOS? Trying to save their own asses or those of the GOP by distancing one and all from Trump? Looking to be named heros? Something else?
But I’m guessing they are going to be very surprised when they hear others think they have, in effect, committed a coup. I don’t think any of them have it in them to see things from that angle.
hueyplong
Kinda wish Omarosa were around to record the upcoming fecal spray event.
Dan B
@lollipopguild: Yeah, it really bothers me that terrorizing refugees, people of color, and Muslim Americans has made America safer. The MSM and much of the internet is averse to mentioning that there are himan beings living in fear because of the policies of the Trump wing of the GOP.
As a gay man I’m fearful of what will happen with Kavanaugh and what would happen with Pence. I’m afraid for what horrors will be visited upon all minorities (except billionaires) when global warming becomes severe. The csmpaign is already underway to dehumanize us.
Baud
@TenguPhule: You can’t count. He would replace Kennedy, who had already voted to overturn the ACA. It’s Roberts who was the 5th vote to save it.
pat
I went to the nytimes and read the article and tried to download the 1384 comments and they are not coming. Still loading…….
Bet the servers are overwhelmed?
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: Kennedy voted against the ACA.
Miss Bianca
@Amir Khalid: Oh, btw…completely o/t, but re your guitar geek question, my expert source says: “Fender champ 100 is too loud. Blackstar for the traditionalist. Marshall for the modernist.” Hope that helps!
Jeffro
@sm*t cl*de: like I said, Nikki Haley
TenguPhule
@Baud: Roberts upheld it on the power of Congress to tax, not on the pre-existing condition requirement. Strip that out and the ACA is effectively a hollowed out zombie.
Ohio Mom
@pat: I just tried the same thing. Up to over 1,400 comments. I wonder if they will pull out the most interesting for the print edition.
Baud
@TenguPhule: The pre-existing condition requirement is already hollowed out because there’s no penalty any more. The issue is whether the other parts of the ACA are severable from it. Admittedly a new question, but it’s still Roberts who would have to switch sides and go crazy.
Aleta
@TenguPhule:This lodestar gave in to pressure from Bush and weakened his Congressional act against torture to exclude the CIA. Today in a daydream it crossed my mind whether Kavanaugh could be softened up before tomorrow. This is an example of what “we as a nation have allowed the Republicans to do to (some of) us,” like me.
Miss Bianca
@pat: Server blow-up – that’s what I am betting. I got to read a few of them before they stopped loading, and the comments were as scathing and on-point as anything any jackal could have come up with. Made this little old fictional mouse feel proud, it did. A lot of intelligent people are completely fucking outraged out there, and they are giving Mr(s). Unhung Zero (love that phrase – stealing from above!) no quarter.
O. Felix Culpa
@eemom:
Ok, that’s genuinely funny. Whistling past the graveyard, as it were.
oatler.
@Uncle Cosmo: A pun worthy of the death penalty.
Ohio Mom
@Ohio Mom: Considering the Times moderates their comments, they
must have a veritable army of reviewers working today. How else could there be 1,400+ comments ready to go?
Nettoyeur
@sm*t cl*de: Trump has a Simple Principle: It’s good to be King.
VeniceRiley
In what universe is a constitutional crisis precipitated by using the remedy provided for in the constitution? Instead, they made one up that makes these unelected staffers shadow presidents. Good lord! They do suffer from Republican Rationalization Disease.
Frank Wilhoit
@The Moar You Know: No, there is a third choice, which is really the only possible choice:
Acknowledge (as everyone already knows but no one will say) that the 1787 Constitution has been abrogated and is no longer in force.
Elizabelle
@Miss Bianca: Good to hear. I could not get the NY Times reader comments to load.
What crazy train days we are living through. Would you ever have seen an op ed like this from any previous administration?
Also, you can see the attempt to insulate Republicans from Trump. Uh, no. We can see you.
O. Felix Culpa
Steve Benen’s perspective:
Baud
@Frank Wilhoit: There’s a fourth choice. Acknowledge that we can’t govern ourselves and abrogate the Declaration of Independence and have QE II take over.
randy khan
@hueyplong:
I’m more amused by the thought that he will spend a lot of effort trying to figure out who it is and railing against everyone when he can’t. (I really hope that nobody does a definitive piece figuring out who it is – that would spoil the fun.)
Citizen_X
@eemom: Maybe it’s something the dying McCain plotted (with his daughter?) so he could reach up and strike from beyond the grave. (I mean, it’s not, but it would be fun, no?)
“Now we gotta make it sound convincing, so that people believe it.”
“Dad, I don’t know, are you sure about this?”
“Come on, honey, get in the spirit! Fuck those guys! We get this right, and those assholes will all be stabbing each other in the back to prove they’re not the perpetrator!”
Barbara
@Jeffro: No, an opportunist like Haley is not going to piss off the base. I would bet this is somebody really well-connected to financial industry donors, and my wild card candidate would be Jeff Sessions. There are things that he has done that have made no sense to me, and he would be the one who would focus on making the nation safer (safer for whom?). His job is also in danger so he might not feel he has a lot to lose at this point.
Miss Bianca
@Citizen_X: OK, for some reason, I’m enjoying that scenario way, way more than I think I ought to be…
Mnemosyne
@phantomist:
That explains it.
/old high school rivalries
Quinerly
Forum’s piece in The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/this-is-a-constitutional-crisis/569443/
MoxieM
@Baud: Or, Hey! we could get Harry–he’s already got an American wife. Competing monarchies of dunderheads.
Quinerly
@Quinerly: Frum”s piece.
Autocorrect and the lack of an edit button….
eemom
@Citizen_X:
Zacktly. One last delicious fuck you from him to trump from beyond the grave. Hell, he apparently spent the entire last week of his life painstakingly planning his various fuck yous to trump.
Elizabelle
Finally, the NY Times reader comments will load. Here is a good one.
JPL
@Baud: She would only do it because she felt she was snubbed by not being invited to the
funeral.
debbie
@TenguPhule:
I’d like him to explain his thinking as to why there should be disparate treatment for people who have existing conditions. Why is it health insurers should be protected from the kinds of risks other businesses/corporations take?
debbie
Pity not to see a word about immigration.
I too think it’s McGahn. He seems like the kind of guy that would leave in disgust, but still try to stand up for SHS et al.
Jay C
SRSLY? What “policies”? and HOW? Outside of the Republican-originated tax windfall for billionaires that Trump signed off on, how are “we” any more prosperous than “we” might be if Trump weren’t President? And “safer”? Why? Because all those Central American toddlers have been separated from their parents and tossed into cages?
Wow. MAGA…..
Enhanced Voting Techniques
According to the Talking Points Memo over this intertubes thingy Trump was in full today over this and his staffers are taking turns denying they are the source. Sounds like some high quality trolling there. Hopefully the Dem candidate for 2020 will take note “Well that guy’s own staff publicly calls him an idiot and refuses to follow his orders.”
Seanly
@TenguPhule:
Concur 100% with that sentiment, TenguPhule.
Their terrible agenda is still terrible. The Democratic Party needs to take back the House, maybe Senate, along with gains in state & local governments. We have to position now to regain the Senate & Presidency in 2020. I still have my doubts about Trump being President after Feb 2019, but Pence will be just as bad policy-wise.
SiubhanDuinne
Haven’t read the (270 and counting!) comments yet, so apologies if someone already posted this, but Mr. Charles P. Pierce is en fuego over this.
SFAW
@oatler.:
You are just pissed that he thought of it first.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ohio Mom:
Deriai that Supreme Court nominee, enough of this and even the Republicans will start wonder why Trump really chose that guy. At the very lest this op ed and the book make the Republican look like petty, spiteful, a-holes even in victory right before the midterms.
veniceriley
Pence, it is pointed out, uses the word “lodestar” in speeches A LOT. And other suspects do not.
Bill Arnold
@BGinCHI:
I’m more than half tempted to spend the evening playing with stylometry, e.g. Introduction to stylometry with Python (2018-04-21)
With some effort (even manual) one can disguise their authorship against some (probably all) of these techniques; presumably the op-ed author has tried a bit at least.
Elizabelle
@veniceriley: Then maybe the author(s) used “lodestar” to make Trump sleep even less easily, wondering if Pence is in on it too.
Paul in KY
@MCA1: He’s mored to one discernible 1st principle: ‘What do I think is good for Donald, right now, at this point in time, & fuck everybody else’.
Susanna
Keep in mind the Republicans are as anxious to not have a catastrophic loss as much as the Democrats want a largesse win.
Imagine – some(ones) pulls this off, offering reassurance when Trump is visibly wobbling. They later can scoop the roasted egg from the NYT. Big double win from the jaws of defeat.
An election is coming that might well affect the one in 2020. It for sure will provide enormous momentum for whichever side wins in November, and will be worthy of this scam at all cost.
Juju
I think it could be Mnuchin,except I don’t know if he would recognize anything relating to amoral unless it was pasted on a bus heading his way. It could be Alexander Acosta. That’s my second guess.
Paul in KY
@Chip Daniels: You are disparaging the Emperor Claudius, to compare him to Mike Fucking Pence. Jeezus….
Aleta
@Baud: It would be humbling to be saved by a coalition of the willing.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
Theresa May is even dumber and more incompetent then Trump and not as lazy.
So that’s not an option.
MomSense
I don’t even have words left for how angry this makes me. They all know. They all fucking know how dangerously unfit he is and they want us to just trust them that they are adequate babysitters for the man baby in chief.
And of course our media will rent their garments about who it might be since they apparently majored in gossip in journalism school. Why aren’t they fucking getting McConnell and Ryan and the rest of GOP leadership, at a minimum, what they are going to do about this crisis to our country.
Ryan will probably say he hasn’t read it. McConnell will mumble some bullshit and the present will go back to gossiping about who wrote the op-ed.
Am I supposed to feel better that these adults who are protecting us from our president considered the 25th amendment? They haven’t invoked it because they don’t want to cause a crisis? Jesus fucking Christ the 25th amendment is the remedy to a big fucking crisis. We are in crisis!
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: Sessions is a good guess, IMO.
MomSense
@MomSense:
Present should be press. There are more errors but I can’t deal with it now.
debbie
@Immanentize:
The wording just doesn’t sound like how Sessions has sounded over the decades we’ve endured his presence.
TenguPhule
@MomSense:
Worse, they want us to trust these cowards to steer the ship of state.
Mai Naem mobile
I don’t think its Haley. She’s in NY. I think this person is in the. WH more if not most of the time. I also don’t think its Pence. The language is too sophisticated. Its somebody who’s been there since the beginning who’s got some writing skills and possibly a legal education. My guess is McGahn because hes out the door and hes spent time with Mueller. Maybe Pompeo. Outside chance Mnuchin because of the prosperity comment. Its obviously somebody who wants to look good after the shit hits te he fan with Mueller and/or next year if the Dems get some power.
Mai Naem mobile
Can I just bring up another thing for the millionth time? What would the Republicans do if this was Obama or any Democrat?
Bill Arnold
@Jeffro:
For those who don’t recall this from earlier in 2018,
UN ambassador Nikki Haley ‘is as ambitious as Lucifer’ and ‘much smarter than Trump’ say rival aides who fear she is becoming his heir apparent (Daily Mail just for fun, 5 January 2018)
The Woodward book/op-ed are, combined, pretty scary stuff. (As potential bad behavior triggers.) I (seriously) hope/wish that DJTrump’s aides keep him laser-focused on the intra-adminstration-leaker/witch-hunt. (Cats don’t have a nuclear football to play with if they get bored with the other cat toys.)
Shana
@O. Felix Culpa: Ding ding ding!
Brachiator
@Bill Arnold:
A lump of coal is smarter than Trump. I don’t see that Haley has much of a base. And Trump supporters are afraid of wimmins.
Bess
@JPL: Late to the discussion, as usual. Perhaps someone has already covered this –
It may not be a good idea to assume that there are word combinations that would identify the author. I doubt this was written as published and shoved under the editorial door.
There was probably editorial input. “This phrase seems to point to you (the author). What about putting item one in second or third place? What about using a less occupation-identifying term?”
cain
@Princess:
There should be hearings on this too! Drag party officials in front of congress. Senators, Representatives, judges, all of em!
Shana
@JMG: I have seen nothing out of Ivanka to indicate she could have written something this complex and logical. I know it’s not very complex, and the logic is shit, but still.
BruceFromOhio
Ah what a way to start humpday evening. Beat the rain home on the bike to find MrsFromOhio cooking up a couple of sheets of Turkey meatballs and a pot of sauce, peel the monkey suit to relax with a smoke and a Manhattan on the patio while a gentle thunderstorm waters the back 40, and Sweet Fancy Moses! Would you just take a look at this comment thread! Already pumped from another day of KaaaaaavEnoughYet, could be a good night to eat well, get hammered, watch Rachel and plan the invasion of the South before the dumpster fire finally orders a nuclear strike on the White House.
If I live a hundred more lives for a thousand years each, I will never forgive the Republicans for what evil they have visited on this country. Even if The Phantom Of The Op-Ed takes out the orange fartcloud with a butter knife later tonight, may they all rot in hell.
J R in WV
@Keith P.:
Too adult sentence construction!
Plus, is she in the West Wing enough to actually do these things? Doesn’t she have an office at the UN?
Spanky
@Immanentize: Ditto. It’s Sessions. It’s the weasel’s stunted attempt at fighting back.
J R in WV
@feebog:
Absolute true, and a great point. The crisis is now, because the rest of the government is not willing to put the orange monster down.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: Co-signed. Every word.
Kdaug
@Brachiator: Two new parties: Trumpers and never-Trumpers
Kdaug
@Uncle Cosmo: “… their pens were still on fire and their laptops made of steel…”
Shakti
We’re being taunted. I figured that somebody would write that exact op-ed with all the “leaks” that have happened. This is really just If I Did It, the electoral version by Deep Throat, But Dumber!.
jimmiraybob
@Mai Naem mobile:
Gitmo until the gallows could be built.
Bess
Pierce
Bad advice. Their replacement could go along with starting WWIII. The pool of people willing to take a position in this White House must be getting more stagnant every day. The least bad are likely wading out.
Anything that lowers the level of danger should be maintained. If that’s someone who was drinking the Kool Aid when they accepted the job but has come to see things clearer, well, that’s the best roadblock we’ve got in place. Not the roadblock we’d like, but the roadblock we have.
jimmiraybob
@Aleta:
It would be exhilerating to be saved by a coalition of the informed voter.
PaulWartenberg
the person who wrote the Op-Ed is a coward.
as long as trump remains president, the Republicans will profit from his amorality, and from the chaos trump sows across the landscape.
if that Op-Ed writer wants to be a goddamn hero, if the White House administrators and Cabinet members truly believe trump is THAT insane, INVOKE THE 25th AMENDMENT NOW. We have had clear sign of its need ever since DAY ONE when trump lied about his inauguration turnout, for GOD’S SAKE.
J R in WV
@Kdaug:
How long have you been a Russo-Republican operative, sucker? Because you sure aren’t in the Democratic party!
J R in WV
@Kent:
No, no… Indictment of Pence, followed by Impeachment. I’ve been preaching that correct order for months now. Nearly years!!
Procopius
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Who knows? Look what they did for Chalabi.
Tehanu
@dr. bloor:
And the sooner, the better.