A phenomenon of Trumpland caused by corrosive dishonesty means that all kinds of things are believable as having taken place, and/but advisers sometimes attribute their interpretation of what he’s thinking/wished-for outcomes to him instead of to themselves.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 28, 2018
One might be vaguely sympathetic, Maggie, if only those poor sad souls hadn’t fought so hard to get exactly where they are now!… or if the GOP collapse wasn’t hurting so many innocents outside the Golden Tent. Gabriel Sherman, at Vanity Fair, ““Trump Is Nuts. This Time Really Feels Different””:
After Michael Cohen’s plea deal last week, Donald Trump spiraled out of control, firing wildly in all directions. He railed against “flippers” in a rambling Fox & Friends interview, and lashed out on Twitter at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department, and Robert Mueller. In the wake of his outbursts, White House officials have discussed whether Trump would listen to his closest New York City friends in an effort to rein him in. Two sources briefed on the matter told me that senior officials talked about inviting Rudy Giuliani and a group of Trump’s New York real-estate friends including Tom Barrack, Richard LeFrak, and Howard Lorber to the White House to stage an “intervention” last week. “It was supposed to be a war council,” one source explained. But Trump refused to take the meeting, sources said. “You know Trump—he hates being lectured to,” the source added. (Spokespeople for LeFrak and Lorber say they have no knowledge of a meeting. A spokesperson for Barrack didn’t comment.)
More than ever, Trump is acting by feeling and instinct. “Trump is nuts,” said one former West Wing official. “This time really feels different.” Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Shine has privately expressed concern, a source said, telling a friend that Trump’s emotional state is “very tender.” Even Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are unsettled that Trump is so gleefully acting on his most self-destructive impulses as his legal peril grows. According to a source, Jared and Ivanka told Trump that stripping security clearances from former intelligence officials would backfire, but Trump ignored them. Kushner later told a friend Trump “got joy” out of taking away John Brennan’s clearance. His reaction to the death of John McCain—quashing a White House statement in praise of the senator, and restoring White House flags to full staff—falls into the same self-indulgent category…
… “He spent the weekend calling people and screaming,” one former White House official said. According to sources, the president feels cornered with no clear way out. His months-long campaign to get Sessions to resign—so that Trump could appoint a new A.G. who would shut down the Russia probe—not only failed to get Sessions to step down, but it’s caused him to dig in, as evidenced by Sessions’s rare statement asserting the independence of the Justice Department. “Trump knows at least through the midterms he won’t get another A.G.,” a former White House official said…
Inside the West Wing, a sense of numbness and dread has set in among senior advisers as they gird for what Trump will do next. “It’s a return to the abyss,” said one former official who’s in frequent contact with the White House. “This is back to being a one-man show, and everyone is on the outside looking in.”…
Hey, GOP, remember the proverb about “falling into the pit one had dug for another?”...
There's this! Trump surrounds himself with yes people who are enablers. I had him pegged from the beginning. ? pic.twitter.com/0eaDbmnGKB
— Kimberly (@KimmyLou7) August 28, 2018
Adam L Silverman
If Sherman’s sources are correct, then the President is now, because of his mental and emotional state, a clear and present danger to the Republic.
Platonailedit
Fuck the fawning courtier and her ‘hot takes’.
jl
I thought she quit twitter. Was that a joke?
randy khan
I don’t know that I’d say he surrounded himself with yes men, so much as that he surrounded himself with people who thought they could control him and are finding out they’re wrong.
hells littlest angel
@Adam L Silverman: Cue Paul Ryan scoffing — “He’s new at this!”
burnspbesq
Trump is Cartaggia, the whack-job Centauri emperor from Season 3 of “Babylon 5.”
Brachiator
Jesus. Haberman is almost as incoherent as Trump.
The Republicans could deal with this if they wanted. They still think that Trump will be useful. The rest of us have to suffer.
Anne Laurie
@jl:
She did, but her bosses at the FTNYT decided to pull reporters’ bylines off their website. So the only way Habermann’s articles can be promoted is if she posts her own links to social media — and Twitter, I am told, is *the* best link-farm for political social media.
Adam L Silverman
@hells littlest angel: It goes beyond that. Whether they’re elected GOP officials in Congress or officials he himself appointed, they have a duty under their oaths of service to actually do something. They won’t, but they still have that responsibility.
jl
The linked story said that Trump rejected the defense that he paid off so many mistresses over the years that they should be considered regular business practice for the Trump Org. Said it was rejected, with cryptic explanation “It was because of Melania,” I assume that meant Trump is afraid of FLOTUS’ reaction, but with this bunch, who knows? She might be the smartest of the bunch and thinks it is a bad idea.
Adam L Silverman
@burnspbesq: That’s unfair to Cartaggia.
Ruckus
@randy khan:
The only way to control him is to give him everything he wants. This is why you don’t negotiate with a narcissist. And one with his level and with power?
jl
@Anne Laurie: thanks. She should just tweet announcements of her articles then.
Gin & Tonic
If I had a dollar for every time “this feels different” I’d be a rich man. Yet nothing has changed – he’s still POTUS and I still have to work to pay the bills.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator:
Anyone who misuses the slash like that should not be writing for any reputable newspaper. But I guess it’s okay, she writes for the NYT.
Gex
Few know “corrosive dishonesty” like Maggie.
Gin & Tonic
Anyway, what the fuck does “and/but” mean? Other than the fact you can’t write a coherent sentence.
Anne Laurie
@jl:
Think of how knotted up some of us jackals get over blog spats and angry trolls. Trump’s implosion and the pending GOP collapse are very personal to Ms. Habermann, so her character-limited comments are not always going to seem coherent to those of us on the outside… but in context, the one at the top is perfectly clear.
randy khan
@Ruckus:
Yep. And you aren’t controlling him if you give him what he wants.
Luthe
@burnspbesq: These are strange times we live in when the question is “Where’s Londo when you need him?”
P. S. Cartaggia had better hair.
encephalopath
I’m somewhat willing to believe that some of them are surprised by what they got themselves into. You pick your horse in the primary on the long odds that he might win and you become a hanger on, hoping for the big payoff if your horse takes the win.
Your horse wins… woo-hoo! The Republicans have taken the White House. This is your big chance. You go to the window to collect your winnings. You’re going to be a player. You jump in with both feet. You’re not going to get another opportunity like this in your lifetime. You ingratiated yourself to the person who won the presidency. This the the big payoff like no other.
On the other hand you knew who he was when you signed up. You knew who he was during the campaign. And now it’s all going south as anyone with half an eye on the weather would have been able to predict. It’s hard to feel sorry for these people who got sold out by the gang leader after the big score.
I’d like to mash up some more metaphors. but I can’t think of any.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: She’s saying you can read it with either ‘and’ or ‘but’ there, each having a different nuance, and each being accurate. But she isn’t doing it very well.
Duane
The Republican party signed a deal with the devil. Now the devil is here to collect. Welcome to hell minions. Thoughts and prayers for the damned.
hilts
@Adam L Silverman:
“the President is now, because of his mental and emotional state, a clear and present danger to the Republic’
Somewhere there’s a gold lamé straitjacket with Trump’s name emblazoned on it.
hilts
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s some seriously incoherent drivel from Haberman. She needs to take a vacation.
James E Powell
Haberman’s tweet – if I understand it correctly – sounds like a description of herself.
Ruckus
@randy khan:
Efuckingxactly.
Which goes back to my second sentence. Never negotiate with a narcissist. People think they can but one anywhere near shitgibbon’s level is out of the question. All you’ll do is piss them off. And a pissed off narcissist with power? Yeah that’s a combination that always works out well.
Ken
@jl:
My sister’s an accountant, I’ll have to ask her how that’s covered under GAAP. Despite what “Mayhew on Insurance” used to say, I don’t think they’d actually put in a budget line for “hookers and blow”.
Gravenstone
Resign, you fucking shitbird. That certainly qualifies as a way out. For us as well as you.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman: How much do you get the feeling this is the GOP signalling “Hey, Democrats — we’ve done *our* share, now you have to come rescue us from ourselves again!”?
(Because, in case it isn’t obvious, I’m not feeling very sympathetic. Since I assume Trump doesn’t actually have control of the nuclear codes, let the Repubs clean up their own shite for once in their lives!)
NotMax
Open thread? At the risk of bessing the place up,
Adam L Silverman
@hilts: That’s a lot of lame!
hells littlest angel
@Adam L Silverman: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwih3pfC447dAhUJXKwKHYwVBvcQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msnbc.com%2Frachel-maddow-show%2Fnew-republican-health-care-blueprint-falls-far-short&psig=AOvVaw0TtXYnsxFDMLcbjByGf7Mc&ust=1535512381610176
satby
@Adam L Silverman: he has been for the entire time since Nov 2016. It just gets more obvious.
hells littlest angel
@hells littlest angel: Some day I’ll figure out how to properly insert an image…
Ruckus
@encephalopath:
QFT.
But especially because they knew before they climbed into bed with him, that he’d fuck up everything, just as he’s always done his entire fucking life. He got them pregers and is getting them to pay the hospital bills and child support and he doesn’t have to do shit, like even acknowledge he fucked them.
satby
@NotMax: Beatlejuice!
Adam L Silverman
@Anne Laurie: I don’t know. My impression is much more along the lines of these folks are virtue signaling that they have been and continue to be holding back the worse and both protecting and preserving the Republic and the world from the President. And they should be given credit for that and thought well of because of it. My view is that with one or two rare exceptions (only one of whom is left), they went all in in pursuit of access and power and to achieve their own ideological and political goals even though they knew this was the likely outcome. As such they don’t deserve any credit and they do deserve a lot of opprobrium.
Calouste
@NotMax: That’s going to be the most expensive tweet in history.
burnspbesq
@Luthe:
No shit.
Ruckus
@hilts:
How about time for aiding and abetting?
Adam L Silverman
@hells littlest angel: Not sure I get your point here.
NotMax
@satby
Whaddaya get if you put John, Paul, George and Ringo into a Veg-O-Matic?
:)
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s cattle prod to the balls level that is.
No I’m not going there.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I think the response was showing you some GOPers laughing their asses off after committing evil deeds. But we mere commenters still can’t embed anything, right ( even though this is supposed to be a Full Service Blog)
hilts
@Adam L Silverman:
Trump is approximately infinite lame, but my question is when will his poll numbers reflect what a truly disgusting, corrupt, incompetent person he is? When will his approval rating drop below 30%?
satby
@NotMax: ?
Ruckus
@Anne Laurie:
Do you really think they are capable of any house cleaning?
I don’t. I expect them all turn out to be Duncan Hunter clones. Worthless, useless slabs of shit.
Suzanne
@Gravenstone:
I never thought I’d say this, but I want him to stay in the job long enough to just completely shit his pants. I want it to be an undeniable flameout, the kind of this that makes his supporters completely humiliated and demoralized.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Like this? Also, I got nothing…
Adam L Silverman
@jl: I can’t figure out how to embed images as just images. I can do tweets and videos and that’s it.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman:
On that, I believe we can all agree!
hilts
@Ruckus:
I wish it were possible for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to be convened to address the horrific performance of Haberman and many of her colleagues during the 2016 campaign..They thoroughly disgraced their profession..
hells littlest angel
@Adam L Silverman: Republicans find the very idea of behaving responsibly to be laughable.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Well not exactly like that…….
Ruckus
To be honest boys and girls, I find not having an edit function is rather liberating.
Delia
It’s been so long since I watched Babylon 5 I don’t remember off-hand what Cartaggia looks like. I was going to say Trump reminds me of Caligula. Although I must say the Praetorian Guard found a satisfactory way of negotiating with that particular narcissist.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman: You have to save them to the BJ WordPress ‘archive’. Only way I’ve found to do this is by saving the jpegs to a fake ‘post’ (which can be deleted after saving the image to the ‘library’). But ya gotta really wanna share a pic to make that effort worth the trouble!
hells littlest angel
@Adam L Silverman: When Cohen is funny, he’s hilarious!
NotMax
@Ruckus
Never having had it (due to my choice of browser settings) don’t miss it at all.
hitchhiker
I mean … this is of course true, right? Could he show the evidence without damaging himself further? Would he have to name names and provide receipts? Would there be women with abortion stories to tell (for $$, of course) if his disclosure made their NDAs invalid?
Trump’s a pig in his personal life, and an ignoramus in his policy and governing responsibilities. If he manages to slink out of DC with his marriage intact, his business still afloat, his children unindicted, and no proof that he cheated in every possible way to get himself elected, the major lesson of our time will really be that there’s no such thing as accountability in public life.
Which is ironic, given that one of his cons was and still is about how HRC got away with massive corruption.
Luthe
@Suzanne: They’ll just claim they never supported him in the first place like they did with Dubya. And then they’ll form Tea Party 2.0, now with more overt racism!
Platonailedit
@Anne Laurie:
Doesn’t right click/copy image location/paste work for blog ‘elites’?
Suzanne
@Luthe: Ahhh, that’s why you save receipts, aka screenshots and photographs!
God, I want to just absolutely make them feel terrible about it.
FlyingToaster
@Platonailedit: You’ve never worked in WordPress, have you?
Ruckus
@hilts:
They thoroughly disgraced what you think their profession is, but not what they think it is nor what they get paid to do. They are not journalists. They are propagandists. For the rich and rightwing. Nothing more, nothing less.
No need to be confused, they show you who they are every time they get published.
NotMax
@hitchhiker
Speaking of NDAs, members of the student newspaper at Falwell’s college (after a purge there) now have to sign one. (Link is to a conservative religious site which decries what’s happening there.)
Ruckus
@NotMax:
I almost hope it doesn’t come back. And I used it a lot, but trying to correct everything is, well, a waste of time.
Ruckus
@Luthe:
I’m thinking you are correct. Learn anything? Conservatives? Got to be kidding. They already know how to double down, what more do they need to know?
NotMax
@Ruckus
Or a waist of thyme, depending where one stands.
;)
Ruckus
@NotMax:
That’s a lot worse than Adam’s tweet. 40 lashes with a wet noodle.
Anne Laurie
@Ruckus:
Neither do I, really. They’ve gotten too lazy to function as a separate political party, because for at least since the 1940s, they’ve been able to rely on the Democrats to come rescue the country from the GOP’s latest bout of parasitic thuggery. But since they’ve devolved enough to line up under an obvious clown and known (to the Repub leadership, at least, in advance of the 2016 election) Russian catspaw, it’s time and past time for whole rotten structure to be allowed to collapse under the weight of its own crimes.
Given the way American politics works, we need two functioning parties. Right now, we’ve got *one* overburdened party, a wholly parasitic shell group, and a lot of struggling young theory-parties who are more of a(nother) burden on the functioning (Democratic) party than an actual alternative to the decayed Repubs. Once the current GOP is surgically removed from its current suckhold, either some healthy cells from within it ‘reclaim’ the label, or one of the outside groups replaces it.
(Assuming the surgery doesn’t kill both parties — and quite possibly the whole national governing structure with it!)
Adam L Silverman
@hells littlest angel: I’m really only a fan as his work as King Julien.
Anne Laurie
@Platonailedit: Even a tech-idiot like me can save images, but unless there’s a secret workaround, the *only* way to add images to a comment is by saving it ‘backstage’ (on the WP dashboard). That’s one reason I was so pumped to discover Twitter embeds work just fine, for those of us with ‘administrative access’ — much easier way for me to share pics with you guys, like it or not!
(ETA: Yes, I suspect the Twitter embeds work because the creaky antique WP machinery doesn’t recognize that its protocols are being violated… )
NotMax
@Ruckus
“Mr. Christian, break out the ramen.”
:)
Millard Filmore
@NotMax:
Bring back USENET.
Aleta
From the final part of https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-response-to-john-mccains-death-reminds-us-just-how-petty-and-small-he-is
” The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York … already seems to have strong evidence that Trump was part of a conspiracy to evade campaign-finance laws. … Apart from Trump himself, virtually nobody (on his side) seems to be claiming that he didn’t direct the payoffs.
(—)
Here’s a quick reminder of the rap sheet. Turning a blind eye to money laundering at his New Jersey casinos. Operating a bogus university that bilked middle-income seniors out of their retirement savings. Stiffing his suppliers as a matter of course. Selling condos to Russians and other rich foreigners who may well have been looking to launder hot money. Entering franchising deals with Eastern European oligarchs and other shady characters. For decades, Trump has run roughshod over laws and regulations.
To protect himself from whistle-blowers, financial cops, and plaintiffs, Trump relied on nondisclosure agreements, lax enforcement, and his reputation for uncompromising litigiousness. But since May, 2017, when he fired James Comey and opened the door to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel, things have been slowly unravelling for the President. (Indeed, Mueller’s team tipped off the Southern District about Cohen’s alleged misdeeds.) Last week, the unwinding process seemed to speed up.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean Trump is finished. Whatever happens on the investigative front, it is hard to believe that his own Justice Department will approve an indictment of him while he remains in office. And, as long as the vast majority of G.O.P. voters continue to support him, the Party’s leaders on Capitol Hill, whose continued support he needs, are very unlikely to turn on him. (—) ”
-John Cassidy
This isn’t meant to be discouraging, because things *are* going to change. Anecdotal: Last night I was talking to a woman (HRC supporter) who has land out west and in a wealthy area of the east and a lot of other stuff. She said that most of her neighbors are saying to her “… … BUT we like what he’s doing.” They’re making money. He knows how to protect himself with what they care about.
I don’t think a volatile stock market scares them either, since those with enough money can profit when it tanks too. Financial pressure, boycotts and publicity on Republican donors matters.
Then there’s Pence. He and his supporters both claim to believe he’s there to help christians return to god-given power and that ungodly Trump is part of that plan too. He claims he’s preordained.
Redshift
@Gravenstone:
Unfortunately for all of us, it’s only a way out of the problems of being president, which are the ones he probably cares the least about. He’d still be stuck with having lost his lifelong “Laws? I just ignore ’em. Whaddaya gonna do?” And losing (probable) no-indictment-only-impeachment.
He got himself into the one position where his lifetime of financial crimes couldn’t be kept under the rug, and he really does have no way out
sukabi
I read this as outside the Golden Teat…??
Aleta
” A panel of three federal judges held Monday that North Carolina’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans over Democrats and said it may require new districts before the November elections, possibly affecting control of the House.
The judges acknowledged that primary elections have already produced candidates for the 2018 elections but said they were reluctant to let voting take place in congressional districts that courts twice have found violate constitutional standards.
North Carolina legislators are likely to ask the Supreme Court to step in. The court traditionally does not approve of judicial actions that can affect an election so close to the day voters go to the polls.
But the Supreme Court has just eight members since Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s retirement last month; a tie vote would leave the lower court’s decision in place. Senate hearings on President Trump’s nominee to fill the open seat, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, commence Sept. 4.”
-Wa Post
Ruckus
@Anne Laurie:
I see about a 50-50 of it going either way. We did lose a party before this that had presidents in it, the Whigs. But the country was a lot smaller and younger, still finding it’s way, not that we aren’t. But I see this as sort of a mid life crisis, a lot of countries go through this. It’s just that most that have in the last hundred years have been much smaller and even greater turmoil but it was usually caused by the same dynamic, a shit, narcissistic loser of a leader, gets in way, way over his (always a he isn’t it. boys are so fucking stupid) head until it gets chopped off, figuratively or actually. Hell we’ve even helped them stick their necks out far enough to get it cut off clean. Then it starts out all over again, the politics are always a mess because the people get so confused about what is real, what is wrong and most of them are just trying to feed themselves in whatever manner it takes.
rachel
@burnspbesq: I doubt there are any Vir Cottos in Trump’s White House.
Tim C.
@rachel: No… Sadly not. Though I expect our side gets a General Sheridan and a Commander Sheridan.
(goddess we are a bunch of obscure nerds.)
Vhh
@Aleta: I wonder if Mueller’s strategy is to RICO Trump Org into asset forfeiture. This will drive Trump into full narcissistic meltdown.
Aleta
Kushner real estate company was fined $210,000 by NYS “for filing 42 false applications for construction on more than a dozen buildings” (AP) .
The Hill
“An AP investigation in March showed Kushner Cos. frequently filed false construction permits with New York City saying it didn’t have any rent-regulated tenants in the buildings it owned even though it had hundreds of them.
The company, led at the time by White House adviser Jared Kushner, used the false paperwork to push out tenants, the AP reported earlier this year. Had the company disclosed the rent-regulated tenants, it would have prompted oversight of construction projects at the buildings, according to the AP. But because it didn’t, there was no surveillance of construction crews, and tenants told the AP that there was extensive construction that they believed was an effort to harass them in to leaving the buildings.
Kushner Cos. then sold at least four of its dozens of buildings and likely attracted higher-paying renters to the other building, according to the AP. Kushner Cos. said in a statement to the AP in March that “if mistakes or violations are identified, corrective action is taken immediately.”
“Kushner would never deny any tenant their due-process rights,” the company said at the time.”
The Hill
Platonailedit
@Aleta:
How easily the fucking media bought into that framing, which was nothing but a fucking grifting scheme for the fucking family.
Both the 1%ers and the racist base aren’t gonna ditch the totus. It’s up to the plebes to kill off this thug’s regime.
Aleta
@Vhh: That would be a dream come true.
burnspbesq
@rachel:
More likely Miller is Mr. Morden.
Aleta
@Platonailedit: Immediately after the election they printed the stories they were given about the tech boy genius and his silicon valley business skill when he’s just a mean fraudulent cheater who used a newspaper he’d bought to lie to people. No doubt lied on his loan applications, government funding applications and of course sec. clearance applications and tax forms. Another hardened liar in a family that’s rotten to the bone marrow.
NotMax
@Aleta
Wouldn’t be at all shocked to find out his branded vodka was made from leftover banquet-used Sterno chafing dish warmers..
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: We’ve got the classic strongman problem: he knows he goes to prison if he ever leaves office, so he’s not going to, if he can help it.
I don’t think he’s got strong enough military/police/Secret Service support that he can just mount a coup and call himself President for Life. He’s gone at the end of eight years, if nothing else takes him down. But he’s not going to voluntarily resign.
Matt McIrvin
@Aleta:
What depresses me is the other end of the spectrum: so much of the young progressive left is effectively pro-Trump, not in that they actually like Trump, but because they hate liberals and Democrats as strongly as any Tea Partier. They’re convinced that the Russia story is a hoax because the establishment shitlibs are pushing it. They’re currently souring on Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez because she wouldn’t publicly gloat about McCain dying of cancer, which evidently is now the criterion for not being a shitlib. Even if you disliked McCain (and I did–I’m not enjoying the hagiography myself) you’d think it’s not hard to understand the basics of how politics works and what you have to say if you’re running for office.
jR
@Ruckus: sounds like you’re talking about Charles I
boatboy_srq
@Adam L Silverman: Had Cartagia ruled the Vorlons, and had his first acts been to make peace with the Shadows and war on everyone else, maybe the comparison would work.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
Just now?