So Mick Mulvaney told us. And Trump certainly set out a rich buffet for his detractors…
New: Trump canceled plans for a Doral-based G7 after hearing from Republican lawmakers that they were unable to defend the move, especially after having fielding questions about Ukraine dealings and Syria decision. w/ ?@vmsalama?: https://t.co/KOdR7KXHYN
— Michael C. Bender (@MichaelCBender) October 20, 2019
Trump was also told by White House officials that the controversy over the G7 location would overshadow any agenda he hoped to highlight at the international summit next year. https://t.co/KOdR7KXHYN
— Michael C. Bender (@MichaelCBender) October 20, 2019
MORE from me & ?@EricLiptonNYT?: Local officials in Doral weren’t notified of the cancelation — or the original choice, for that matter. And a former G7 sherpa for Bush says the choice of Doral would’ve posed ethical problems for visiting leaders. https://t.co/Yiww8pKXVB
— Katie Rogers (@katierogers) October 20, 2019
… “He had no choice,” Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and longtime friend of the president’s, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “It shouldn’t have been done in the first place. And it’s a good move to get out of it and get that out of the papers and off the news.”
[And you know it just broke Christie’s heart to be called on to explain this for his old frenemy…]
The president first heard the criticism of his choice of the Doral watching TV, where even some Fox News personalities were disapproving. By Saturday afternoon, his concerns had deepened when he put in a call to Camp David, where Mr. Mulvaney was hosting moderate congressional Republicans for a discussion of issues facing them, including impeachment, and was told the consensus was he should reverse himself. Those moderates are among the votes Mr. Trump would need to stick with him during an impeachment.
“I didn’t see it being a big negative, but it certainly wasn’t a positive,” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, one of those at Camp David. He said the group told Mr. Trump’s aides that sticking with the decision “would be a distraction.”…
“I think there was a lot of concern,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of the Republicans’ leadership team. “I’m not sure people questioned the legality of it, but it clearly was an unforced political error.”
Mr. Cole said he did not speak to the president directly about it, but expressed relief that Mr. Trump had changed his mind, and was certain that other Republicans felt the same way. “We just didn’t need this,” he said.
By late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Trump had made his decision, but he waited to announce the reversal until that night in two tweets that were separated by a break he took to watch the opening of Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News program…
[Because a guy needs a little ego balm when he’s facing such a hurtful choice.]
“At the end of the day,” Mr. Mulvaney said Sunday, “he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business, and he saw an opportunity to take the biggest leaders from around the world, and he wanted to put the absolute best show, the best visit that he possibly could.”
[A show, he most certainly put on, regardless.]
…[T]he selection, as the president had anticipated, touched off a wave of censure from Democrats and ethics experts.But it was also criticized by conservative legal scholars, who were already uncomfortable with a number of recent actions by the White House, including pressuring Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and his son Hunter Biden.
“It is really just about him ordering the country to pay him money,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a Department of Homeland Security official in the George W. Bush administration who is now a senior fellow at the conservative R Street Institute. “It is just indefensible.”
Pushing the Doral site also threatened to hurt the United States’ standing globally, legal experts said, in light of its decades’ worth of efforts to combat corruption by other foreign governments, according to Jessica Tillipman, a lawyer who specializes in an American law known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
“This is no different than any other corrupt leader of an oil-rich African country who is taking money from the government and taxpayers,” she said….
Scholars who have studied the history of Group of 7 gatherings — dating to their start in the 1970s — said they could cite no other time when a president effectively tried to force global political leaders to pay his or her family money at a resort owned by the head of state.
“This was unprecedented,” said John Kirton, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and the director of the G7 Research Group, which studies these gatherings. “This was astounding and embarrassing to the United States.” …
LOL cave. But he still got a free f***ing tax-paid infomercial for his chain of Florida bribery mills from the White House podium.
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) October 20, 2019
Imagine his face when Bill Barr told him, “Actually this might be a problem for us.”
— Schooley (@Rschooley) October 20, 2019
The phrase "Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility" is indicative of a measured, eminently sane and presidential man. (I will call you later!) https://t.co/cBKVgnOmeB
— Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw) October 20, 2019
Tfw people make a big hassle over your crimes and stuff https://t.co/qfnDjcGNEh
— IrrationalHostilityHat (@Popehat) October 20, 2019
Thoughts and prayers to all the bedbugs at Doral that will be going hungry. ????
— Gabe Ortíz (@TUSK81) October 20, 2019
He's the whiniest, unmanliest grifter who ever grifted. But he whines! He whines for you, forgotten America! pic.twitter.com/TOMzvCc822
— Dan Murphy (@bungdan) October 20, 2019
Trump’s G7 Doral move was like shooting on the wagons that are circling him.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) October 19, 2019
Thinking tonight of all the Republican officials who defended Trump's decision to hold the G7 at his own hotel… what do they say now?
— Susan Glasser (@sbg1) October 20, 2019
Sen. Ken Cramer (R-ND) on Trump’s decision to award G7 summit to his own Miami property: “It may seem careless politically, but on the other hand there's tremendous integrity in his boldness and his transparency”https://t.co/50KObtK7q9
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) October 18, 2019
I'm almost sorry Trump didn't double down on the also-impeachable G7 thing, but at least he waited long enough for enough Republicans to get out on a limb defending it before he sawed it off behind them.
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 20, 2019
Let’s recap: Congressional GOP spent an entire week defending the president for something that was clearly unethical & very probably unconstitutional all for no reason b/c Trump realized he had to fold.
Don’t forget most Rs were totally fine with it. Lesson: don’t defend Trump! https://t.co/Z1OwmXzOYV
— Heath Mayo (@HeathMayo) October 20, 2019
It is #ExtremelyFunny that Mick Mulvaney confessed, in detail, to high crimes and misdemeanors while lavishly announcing a WHOLE OTHER premeditated act of thievery that has now been called off less than 60 hours later.
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) October 20, 2019
When do they announce that the G7 is going to Turnberry?
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) October 20, 2019
Look on the bright side!
Given that Trump caved on Doral within two days, I really don't think he'll refuse to concede and then maintain that position for the 11 weeks between election day and inauguration.
— Boo-risma Executive Board Member (@agraybee) October 20, 2019
geg6
That Dan Murphy tweet is spot on.
Motherfucker is the whiniest asshole I’ve ever seen outside of a gathering of the Trumpenlumpentariat.
rikyrah
As we were discussing in the previous thread:
I was very satisfied watching the commentary about Doral. Since I’ve never been a government contractor, I had no idea how extensive and how to the minutia, government contract law is.
This was going to be ACTUAL CONTRACTS. No gray area. No fuzzy area. You go against the contract law, and you are open to being charged with a felony. And, that began with Mulvaney, standing his lying azz up there, talking about the ‘process’ had been gone through. You have to put the process in writing. People must be able to follow the dots. Mulvaney put his azz up there for felonies. Not that I care about him being charged…but, I honestly believe that some attorney stood up on a table and began to shout the laws- explicit, no way around them – laws, that would have been broken with Doral.
SOMEONE was going to have to put their signature and possible freedom on the line to sign those contracts. It’s all fun and games until you risk going to jail.
I am clear that I believe everytime he goes to one of those damn clubs, he’s breaking the Emoluments Clause because the Secret Service pays out . Then there’s the membership fees paid.
But, his sycophants will argue ‘ fuzzy area’.
This G7 thing was an actual government contract. For it to go forth, someone would have to sign on the dotted line and become legally responsible for FOLLOWING ALL OF THE LAWS OF GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS.
Once you sign, and they catch you breaking said law, your azz is on the line for felonies.
MattF
It’s been predicted (in the thread below) that Trump will find a way to get the Doral some other federal contract. That phoney emoluments clause is for losers.
lumpkin
All these gops, afraid to condemn the corruption because they’re askeert of trump and his supporters and afraid to approve it because they’re afraid of everyone else. Being an abject chickenshit is not easy.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t share that one Twitterer’s optimism about Tяump going away peacefully when he loses. This shit was only about money, and as much as he loves money, conceding a loss affects his psychological well-being, and soothing his battered, shattered ego is an involuntary reflex for him at this point.
PST
This isn’t especially on topic for this thread, but I liked what I read. David Leonhardt’s column in the Times argues that the time is now ripe for demonstrations in favor of impeachment. Want Trump to Go? Take to the Streets:
KrakenJack
I do wish he had doubled down on Doral. It had the potential to do a lot more damage to him as each aspect of his harebrained idea got attention. The fact that he got good advice is nearly as surprising as him taking it…
hells littlest angel
Technically, carnival freak shows are part of the hospitality business. Barkers say, “Step right up!” Which is hospitable.
Aleta
His business is inhospitality. Dictating who is not welcome. Forcing people into confinement for personal profit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
they’re already running a GE ad that features the usual graphics for a presidential ad– vision, jobs, change– and the the words “tough guy”, and you just know he insisted on it being in there. And to his howler monkeys, it makes sense, he’s standing up to the real enemies, people like the people who read this blog.
Watching MSNBC with hopeful reports of a “Republican insider” who told Nicole Wallace there’s a 20% chance of conviction in the Senate, I wonder if trump gets that Mitch McConnell would slit trump’s throat yesterday if he thinks trump puts the Senate majority at serious risk
Brachiator
I guess Trump considers being president his side hustle.
This crap is pretty much the definition of “conflict of interest.”
Gin & Tonic
@PST: Having closely observed the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that brought down Viktor Yanukovych, I can state confidently that the American people have neither the stomach nor the stamina for that level of protest.
hells littlest angel
@Brachiator: I guess Trump considers being president his side hustle.
I think he considers it his loss leader.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
Apparently the Emoluments Clause is as fuzzy an area as it gets, with no legal standard or punishment set, never addressed before because nobody has ever been as blatant in their corruption as Trump.
@Aleta:
I would say that’s his passion. Somebody profits off of it, but not him directly. He just really hates brown people and wants to murder all of them.
Fair Economist
@KrakenJack: Trump would have been digging his grave deeper by sticking with the Doral, yes, but today’s remarks show he is really losing it. He will find plenty of other holes to dig himself into.
Brachiator
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I just want to be rid of him. It can be smooth or messy. I just want him gone, and think we will be able to handle the clean up.
Fair Economist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Fundraising and approval ratings say we’re already there. In all 5 of the obviously competitive Republican seats (AZ/CO/IO/ME/NC), the incumbent is underwater in approval, behind in fundraising, or both. Given the lead weight Trump will provide in the general I’d say flipping the Senate is now more likely than now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
maybe the greatest act of hackery since Roman Hruska’s “The mediocre should have a voice on the Supreme Court!”
and he’s probably Senator for life if he wants it
ETA: Also, Steve Schmidt is back on MSNBC after a several month time-out (self-imposed?) after his meltdown when people started making fun of him for Howard Schultz
jeffreyw
The fact that they took the money from the bank during daylight hours doesn’t mean that the bandits had integrity. It was bold and transparent, so they do have that going for them.
zzyzx
@rikyrah:
I’ve read the clause a dozen times today and I don’t see any way it can be broken without another country being involved. Other laws, sure but I keep seeing this being the phrasing:
So the G7 summit was a definite violation. The Secret Service paying him doesn’t seem to apply.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zzyzx: some people argue that gov’t money going to his golf clubs fall under the domestic emolument clause
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@KrakenJack: I’d say the taking wins by at least a full length.
zzyzx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: OK thank you. That’s where I was confused. I figured I had to be wrong.
The Moar You Know
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I keep reading this shit in the news.
I mean, just so we’re all clear, we all understand that number is zero, right? Not one. Not even Susan Collins.
rikyrah
@zzyzx:
I thought there were two Emoluments clauses – foreign and domestic.
The Secret Service falls under domestic.
waspuppet
Except it won’t be, because Donald Trump is a manchild who will be complaining about this for the next six or seven years.
MattF
From Politico, a description of Trump’s first Pentagon briefing. It did not go well.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/21/inside-trumps-first-pentagon-briefing-229865
zzyzx
@rikyrah: You are correct. It is I that was confused.
The 25th Amendment turned out to be so different in realty than the pop understanding that I kind of assumed we were just messing things up again.
Redshift
The important lesson from the Doral fiasco is that the GOP could have stopped any of Trump’s previous appalling actions if they really wanted to, so the truth is they didn’t really want to. Sniveling about being afraid of him turning the base against them, or anonymous GOP legislators saying how appalled they were privately is just BS and ass-covering.
rikyrah
@Redshift:
TRUTH
Aleta
@Frankensteinbeck: To me, his business and profit include what he receives from his transactions. What he receives from votes and anti-immigrant publicity. And what he receives when his donors or helpers get government contracts to run immigration facilities, training or supplies for CPB, etc.
zhena gogolia
@Redshift:
Absolutely true.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
PJ
@PST: The time for demonstrations in the street in favor of impeachment would be the time when there are enough Republican senators who would be afraid enough for their seats to vote to convict, and not before then. McConnell is talking about having a Senate trial this year because he knows the sooner the trial happens, the easier it will be to get an acquittal. The longer the impeachment investigation goes on, the more crimes Trump commits and admits to, the more pressure there will be on Republican senators to do the right thing, and the easier it will be to get a conviction (I’m not saying it will be easy or even likely).
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Back 11 years ago when I was still working for an environmental protection agency I applied for and received quite a lot of federal money via a grant program. It made me very nervous, as I didn’t know anything about federal contracts. But the agency I worked for was funded in large part by federal grants!
So I made sure the work done with the funds was directly related to the grant applications I submitted, and let the administration folks make sure the “I”s were crossed and the “T”s were dotted… er, uh, something like that.
I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has run on all that…
Elizabelle
@The Moar You Know:
Mitt Romney (aka Pierre whatever)?
I disagree that there is not one single Republican senator that would vote to convict Trump, which seems to be what you are assuring us. We don’t know, but it is a definite possibility.
I tire of people who deal in absolutes.
Elizabelle
@PJ:
I agree. Time is not on the Republicans’ side, and Trump is what he is and seems to be getting less stable by the day.
Circumstances change. Every single day.
Margaret Sullivan, WaPost ombudsman: The media has turned a corner and is normalizing Trump less. It’s about time.
This could help. It’s well past time, more like 3 years too late, but Trump’s failures are out there to see, for anyone not looking on with Fox TV-addled eyes.
Trump’s situation is not going to improve.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I doubt it will matter. I guarantee his secret service detail is so sick of the guy they’ll throw him out on his ear for the rest of us, just to be rid of the rancid sack-o-grievances.
different-church-lady
You misspelled “hostility” there…
different-church-lady
You know, maybe having thoughts just isn’t your thing.
LuciaMia
Wow, I’m kinda shocked he didn’t. Totally out of character.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You always have to remember: Trump is a follower when it comes to this stuff. He latches on to every batshit conspiracy that floats up through the wingnut vent pipes because he is just as much a consumer of this garbage as any other brain-addled Breitbart devotee.
Calouste
@LuciaMia: Give him a day or two. There will be another twitter rant. He just can’t admit he made a mistake, and that has happened many times before.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
As unhinged as he’s been lately I’m starting to wonder if the bottom is dropping out of his scam of a financial empire. Doral is losing money, Turnberry is losing money, the place in Ireland (or is that Turnberry, in which case the place in Scotland) is losing money. Does he own any properties that are actually making money? Maybe his creditors are starting to turn the screws, so he comes up with this desperate G7 Hail Mary to mollify them only to see the idea fall through immediately. Suppose he and his kids wind up in receivership while he’s still in the White House?
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This is one time when the choice is between crazy and stupid that I’m definitely going with stupid. Sean Duffy is dumber than a box of rocks.
sdhays
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I think he’ll bitch and whine for the 11 weeks, but the people around him will start clearing out their desks. It will mostly be a panicked thrashing around trying to cover up as many crimes as possible before they have to turn over the keys, but I don’t think it matters what Dump tweets after he loses the election (if we have to wait that long). And, honestly, I question whether he will ever comprehend his legal jeopardy before he is actually sitting behind bars. He has gotten away with so much in his life, and he really lacks basic imagination and comprehension skills that I’m not sure he could even formulate a stupid plan of hanging on after the election. I think he’ll start looking at how to monetize his victimization pretty much immediately.
Mike in NC
After calling Hannity and Dobbs, Trump is going to do another 180 and decide nothing comes close to Doral. The classiest bedbugs in all of Florida. He might even have it declared a national landmark.
Still can’t get over him holding a 71 minute cabinet meeting. At a minimum, three hours of uninterrupted ass-kissing were called for.
p.a.
He’s especially hospitable to authoritarian strongmen, girls in dressing rooms, and Slovenian ummm… well…
NotMax
Maitre d’: “Mulvaney, party of one?”
//
lollipopguild
@sdhays: The rumor in 2016 was that after he lost he would start trumptv with Roger Ailes.
TS (the original)
@LuciaMia:
Someone got through to him that this was 100% impeachable – or maybe Putin rang and said he wasn’t staying in Florida in hurricane season.
Aleta
@lollipopguild: I expect to see him plastering his horrible self and products and voice upon the airwaves, cheating his voters out of money while offering their attention to whoever purchases him
Just Chuck
So brazen corruption done out in the open is merely an “unforced political error?” Fuck you Cole. The other Cole that is. Well, fuck him too.
FlipYrWhig
@lollipopguild: The amazing thing is how much happier SO MANY PEOPLE would be if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016. Trump would be MUCH happier, tweeting potshots every day that the media would eagerly cover. Hillary would be being asked constantly about Trump’s Twitter feed and there would be infinitely many stories about how her administration was dogged by vociferous criticism and unable to change the focus to a positive agenda. Mitch McConnell would be even more gleefully paralyzing government. “The left” would be barraging Hillary with insults about how she was so ineffective and Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have stood for any of it. And meanwhile the government would slowly and steadily govern things and we’d never have had to hear about caged migrant babies or slaughtered Kurds or Rudy Giuliani’s freakish teeth.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: And my taxes would not have gone up, and we’d be staving off the next financial collapse, and…
HumboldtBlue
Rand Paul is very, very concerned about civility in this country.
The Moar You Know
@Elizabelle: Name one. Remember the vote is public.
Hell, I’ll give you Romney, even though he won’t. Now, name 19 more. That’s what you need. 20 to convict.
I tire of people who deal in wishful thinking as being equivalent to what is actually possible in the real world, so I guess we’re even there.
hueyplong
FWIW, I’d put the odds of a stroke ahead of removal by impeachment, but recent events give rise to a non-zero chance that our national enemies will in rapid succession call in markers to the extent that Republicans actually sit around and discuss having him knocked off like Howard Beal in Network. (They’d decide to ride it out with him.)
It’s insane, but three years ago things that have actually transpired would have been called insane.
Ruling out anything is what sounds wrong to me now.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@HumboldtBlue: Fuck Rand Paul, (How’s that civility?)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Moar You Know:
Hmmm, not necessarily.
Barbara
@Elizabelle: By the time of a vote there will be enough or none. That’s how it works.
Nick Schulig
He should host the G7 at Guantanamo. Trump and his special guest Vlad should stay there after the meeting.
Momus
He’s not in the “hospitality business,” he’s in the serial bankruptcy business.
TriassicSands
Clearly, no one could ever have predicted that anyone would object to Hospitality Don having official governmental meetings at his resort properties. Because this was such a completely normal thing to do, only the Lunatic Left at its looniest could object. Once Hospitality Don and the GOP have completely rewritten the Constitution designating Trump Emperor for Life and mandating that all government contracts go to Trump-owned businesses will the US be truly great. With the Congress disbanded, our Emperor — he of “great and unmatched wisdom” — will be free to rule by fiat.
All hail, Hospitality Don, Planet Lord and Exalted Emperor of the Earth.