Donald Trump is a dim-witted conman, but like any half-bright male baboon, he knows how to dominate rivals. Our long national nightmare of governance by a lesser primate (any random baboon would be a VAST improvement) is interspersed with darkly comic glimpses of arrogant fanatics and sundry knaves being ritually humiliated for disobedience and/or publicly shitting in their own hats when commanded to do so by a corrupt and ridiculous buffoon.
Secretaries of State Tillerson and Pompeo illustrate the two options admirably. Tillerson gave up being a powerful executive of a rapacious multinational polluter to take orders from an absurd cocksplat, endure serial humiliations and then get fired while on the toilet. In the final analysis, he may have escaped the Trump orbit less ignominiously than his successor, who has publicly shat his hat: [The Times]
WASHINGTON — As President Trump’s first C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo was briefed by agency officials on the extensive evidence — including American intercepts of conversations between participants — showing that Russian hackers working for the government of Vladimir V. Putin had interfered in the 2016 American presidential campaign. In May 2017, Mr. Pompeo testified in a Senate hearing that he stood by that conclusion.
Two and a half years later, Mr. Pompeo seems to have changed his mind. As Mr. Trump’s second secretary of state, he now supports an investigation into a discredited, partisan theory that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked the Democratic National Committee, which Mr. Trump wants to use to make the case that he was elected without Moscow’s help. “Inquiries with respect to that are completely important,” Mr. Pompeo said last month. “I think everyone recognizes that governments have an obligation — indeed, a duty — to ensure that elections happen with integrity, without interference from any government, whether that’s the Ukrainian government or any other.”
Mr. Pompeo’s spreading of a false narrative at the heart of the Ukraine scandal is the most striking example of how he has fallen off the tightrope he has traversed for the past 18 months: demonstrating loyalty to the president while insisting to others he was pursuing a traditional, conservative foreign policy. Mr. Pompeo, 55, now finds himself at the most perilous moment of his political life as veteran diplomats testify to Congress that Mr. Trump and his allies hijacked Ukraine policy for political gain — and as congressional investigators look into what Mr. Pompeo knew of the machinations of Mr. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.
Pompeo is evil, but he’s not stupid. He knows this crackpot “Ukraine framed Russia” conspiracy theory is garbage. But there he is, outsourcing U.S. foreign policy to Sean Hannity and treating the professionals he led at two separate federal organizations as extras in the Trump Show. Here’s hoping the cowardly, careerist fuckbucket gets a send-off that makes Tillerson’s toilet firing look like a gold Rolex retirement ceremony.
Aleta
Reposting: “I should eat a shoe”
via darth
Roger Moore
A perp walk would be an excellent choice.
psycholinguist
I’m stealing “fuckbucket” Always nice to add a new cussword to the arsenal.
waspuppet
Just a reminder that Pompeo lied about not being on the July 25 Ukraine call.
And he was adamant that we never refer to the Houthis without saying “they are known liars.”
So …
Jim, Foolish Literalist
maybe my favorite crackerism since your takedown of Andrew Sullivan, running screaming through the streets of Georgetown, his naked body smeared in beagle poop
maybe not stupid, but broken. I don’t know what Blue Dog Sleeper may lie out in Kansas to block his Senatorial ambitions, but I hope they’re out there. I wonder how much of his sell-out is also in hope for the war with Iran, that will bring the beautiful cleansing fire to the Holy Land, so that Jeebus may return.
Jeffro
Amazing that just 3 dim witted crooks (Barr, Pompeo, and Giuliani) could put such a potentially HUGE and damaging scheme into effect. And they almost got away with it, too.
Thanks, whistleblower!
trollhattan
Pompeo acts pretty much like a standard-issue Republican politician, which he is. I’m certain he has his lyin’ eyes on the boss’s desk, because he’s just that guy.
Tillerson, in the meantime, still carries water for Exxon, even allowing as to how just maybe they were a little slow on the whole “climate” thing.
How many gajillion do you suppose this guy is worth. More than Wilbur Ross? Way more than his last boss.
balconesfault
Pompeo gets a double dose, with Michael McKinley testifying yesterday that Pompeo lied to Congress.
I think that as a Dominionist, he believes he has no responsibility to tell the truth to anyone who isn’t similarly saved/enlightened. The evangelicals all think they’re in on the game, and don’t mind being lied to by one of their own … as for the rest of us, f*** us.
glory b
He’s only 55?? Really?? Wow, who knew evil was so aging.
Then again, how old is Wilbur Ross? I understand he doesn’t have as much money as he claims, and not as much as Trump thinks he has. Don’t remember where I heard that, though.
Gin & Tonic
Looks like Gordon Sondland wants to avoid being convicted of perjury.
Jamie
I’m dying over “absurd cocksplat.”
Mike in NC
@trollhattan: I’ve seen several references to where Pompeo hopes to sit his lard ass in the Oval Office after Trump’s lard ass is gone, like many other Tea Party extremists. Ivanka will be disappointed.
mrmoshpotato
All true but “Fuck ’em!” nonetheless.
CaseyL
@Jamie: Me, too! I’ll steal that one, along with fuckbucket.
Betty, are you naturally gifted at coining invectives, or is there a science to it?
Cheryl Rofer
That Times article is MUCH too kind. If he thought it benefitted him, he would deny the sun in the sky and call it midnight. Most of his public pronouncements lately have been in that style.
He has sold his soul to Trump and to his hopes of being the saviour when Trump crashes and burns. But he’s pretty far into the Ukraine mess to be able to do that.
I get that it’s hard for people to believe that someone who was at the top of his West Point class and got a law degree from a good school can look so dumb, but consider that he also has said he believes in the Rapture.
Now I sorta regret not writing the post on his lies that I had planned. No way I can write all the posts I’d like to, though.
Cheryl Rofer
@Gin & Tonic: “refreshed his recollection.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gin & Tonic: @Cheryl Rofer:
ETA:
Every once in a while you see an article about a scientist who believe in the Rapture, or the Young Earth, or whatever, and I contemplate what a fascinating thing the human mind/spirit is, that they can compartmentalize like that. Almost, but not quite, in the same way that I find trump both fascinating and repellent.
Gin & Tonic
@Cheryl Rofer: Potato, potahto.
Jay
Yarn connected to pushpins so that you don’t have to.
All the Russiagate connections mapped for your convenience.
Uncle Cosmo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
What he is, is clever rather than intelligent: Can work out a maneuver to get his ass out of its immediate discomfort, but can’t look any farther down the line to see how that’ll get him into even more trouble anon.
In that sense he reminds me of quite a few “common clay of the Old West” types I’ve run across. In chess, the type is known as the “coffeehouse player”, the patzer, who’s adept at setting simple traps, but after his opponent manages to sidestep them all, finds himself with a lost game.
We don’t need “clever” anywhere near the levers of power, much less Dominionist “clever” rooting around for that One Weird Trick that’d bring Son-O’-God down from the clouds in his Celestial Pickup.
zhena gogolia
I made a mistake of dipping into the comments on the story about Sondland changing his story. The NYT commenter consensus is that DJT is headed to victory in 2020.
Jamie
@Gin & Tonic: Do powerful people get infinite swings at the ball when attempting to tell the truth? I mean, what does it take to put one of these fuckers in jail for perjury? (See also: Jeff Sessions.)
Amir Khalid
@Cheryl Rofer:
Better than even chance he’s just saying it to pander to the ignorami who believe it for real.
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: OK, I’ll bite. Why do they think that? What’s their reasoning?
Roger Moore
@Jamie:
I was thinking of Jared Kushner’s SF86 forms, but we can each find our own example.
zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca:
He’s gained ground in the EC, Elizabeth Warren will be a disaster, Dems are in disarray, etc.
rikyrah
Tillerson was always the Secretary of Exxon, hired by Vlad to get those sanctions to go away so that Russia could do its 500 BILLION DOLLAR DEAL WITH EXXON.
Tillerson never gave two shyts about the State Department.
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: Hmmm…Wonder how many of those are real commenters and how many might be bots.
rikyrah
Pompeo was always a right-wing asshat.
zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca:
I couldn’t stand to stick around to try to find out.
Chris Johnson
@zhena gogolia: Just as a little hypothetical: knowing as we do that the FYFNYT is wildly political and taking a partisan line ever since God knows when, and that there’s a good chance that Russians are running it and directing its coverage, exactly how difficult would it be for Russian troll farms to pack the NYT comments section with propaganda?
I’m genuinely interested, because this is one of the things one does when one is Russia doing this. You bomb the hell out of places like Reddit that have comment voting, you try to place ‘thought leaders’ in other places, but in a friendly environment where commenting is weighted and destined for a sort of side-editorial on what is already tainted coverage?
If they’re not tactically slanting the fuck out of the NYT comments section, I call that malpractice. By definition it is the one place that will be the most fruitful for troll action. Hell, even if the NYT wasn’t corrupt and in bed with these people, it’d still be the front lines as far as troll action is concerned.
O. Felix Culpa
@Miss Bianca: @zhena gogolia:
Wise move. I don’t know what comment sections indicate anyway (present company excepted) in terms of the general climate. They seem to be wretched hives of scum and villainy, for the most part.
Mary G
I keep reading that he is still super popular in Kansas, even though he’s been a total dick to local media. I think impeachment proceedings against him would be nice.
Cacti
If/when the current White House occupant is purged by the ballot box, any person he put in a position of responsibility at any department or agency, needs to be summarily fired.
No transition time. Gone the same day. A willingness to accept an appointment by the current administration should be prima facie evidence of bad character,
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Native intelligence and willful ignorance are two different things, see Flat Earthers. Basically Pompera at the “it’s to late now” point with Trumpism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
why don’t these millennials get that every thing they put on their phones and YouTubers and tic-tacs will follow them forever!
Jamie
@Roger Moore: That’s my second go-to example. But, yeah. It’s a target-rich environment.
Roger Moore
@Chris Johnson:
The people at the top of FTFNYT are a bunch of good old American Plutocrats. You don’t need to invoke Russian influence to explain why they have it in for the Democrats, unless you think the Russians have been influencing them since the Clinton era (ETA: if not earlier). Similarly, media comment sections have been home to right wing trolls since they were called letters to the editor.
PPCLI
@Gin & Tonic: I figured at first that Sondland was still 100% on the team, just changing the story to fit the new defensive retrenchment: “OK, it was a quid pro quo, but not the bad kind.”
But he isn’t just admitting to asking for “aid in exchange for investigation of Burisma and Hunter Biden”, which the Repubs are gearing up to argue was just an instance of Trump’s (ahem) well-known aversion to corruption, and that kind of quid pro quo is asked for all the time, blah blah…
Instead, he’s admitting that the deal included an announcement of the investigation, which is inexplicable as anything except a political favor for Trump, since an announcement could make harder to complete a successful investigation. So either they’ve moved the goalposts even farther back, or he’s bungled, or he really is bailing out to save his skin.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G:
feature, not bug, to a lot of those doughty heartlanders, also to Florida Men
Patricia Kayden
Patricia Kayden
West of the Rockies
Really, Betty, you should be writing for a much larger audience. I LOL’d reading this post. (But I hope you’ll stay here and keep posting.)
Amir Khalid
@Cacti:
As I understand, political appointments end with the term of the POTUS what appointed you, so appointees would be out anyway. The problem would be with those whom the administration placed into the agency/department on civil service terms, who would have to be sacked for cause which requires a drawn-out process — not to mention a cause.
hueyplong
Not sure a word as evocative as “cocksplat” is enhanced by a modifier (“absurd”).
It’s a showstopper all by itself.
frosty
“Absurd cocksplat”
You’re cribbing from Tony Jay, aren’t you?
Cacti
@Amir Khalid:
It’s a bit more complicated than that.
First there are political appointments requiring Senate approval. There are more than 1,000 of those in various departments and agencies of the Executive branch. Then there are political appointments not requiring Senate approval, which make up a few hundred more. Below them is the Senior Executive Service, the majority of whom are non-political appointments, but up to 10 percent of the SES can be political appointees, so several hundred of them too.
In all, around 2,000 employees in the Federal government are subject to the Appointments Clause rather than the Civil Service Act.
Many of them carry over into succeeding administrations.
ETA: Scratch that. More than 2,000. There are also Schedule C political appointments.
PPCLI
@PPCLI: OOPS — correction. Now that I’ve seen the direct quote (if this is the only one where he admits the quid pro quo revised version), he doesn’t say an announcement of an investigation of Burisma / Hunter Biden. He says:
OK, he’s still bullshitting, it’s just that he’s adapted to the new flavor. They’ve been told (what is obvious) that a public announcement of an investigation into Hunter Biden would be even more indefensible than everything else. And given the other testimony, it’s hopeless to deny that an explicit announcement wasn’t part of the deal. So now they’re going to try to argue that there was an announcement demanded, but the announcement was of a general corruption investigation, not mentioning Burisma and Biden.
I will change my mind if there are other parts of the testimony that undercut this interpretation, but for now I count him as still securely on the team, trying to modify the testimony in such a way as to facilitate the defense messaging relative to new goalposts.
MazeDancer
Since the GOP lost the Governorship in Kansas, maybe Pompeo has decided you can’t go home again and is aiming for the WH.
But you want talk about “not likeable”, that would be snarly Mike.
In better news for Democracy, turnout in my teeny village in Upstate NY was rip-roaring when I went to vote this afternoon. This is for county offices. Not even Village or State. Dems canvassed me twice, very impressive. But the local book store owner who ran for County Legislature last time got robbed by low turnout, so, maybe this time he’s going to be sure.
Knocking wood it is a Dem rally and not a Trumpist one.
Jay
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
uh uh uh
PPCLI
@PPCLI: Added (the system wouldn’t accept my edits): ETA: OK, I’ve seen the full statement from Sondland, and he does say earlier that the announcement was to mention the Burisma investigation.
trollhattan
@Jay:
Sounds very Roger Stonelike to plant somebody in the courtroom for a little “I’m having a seizure here” cosplay. That’s how he got started.
Mnemosyne
@Chris Johnson:
Pair that with my assumption that many, if not most, of the new digital subscriptions to the NYT after Trump’s election trace back to Moscow, and probably also Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang, if recent news coverage is accurate.
pat
@zhena gogolia:
Where on earth did you get this impression? Just read the Readers Picks, for petes sake.
Jeesh.
ThresherK
@frosty: After reading “absurd cocksplat” I want to re-research the Scots’ collection of terms used for Trump.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
I do think that a huge reason why the Russians were able to get so much traction with the American right wing is that they have so much in common — they’re all racist plutocrats who dread the thought of the plebes getting any power over them. It was a natural alliance, especially since I’m sure the Russians minimized any differences to make sure they worked their way in.
It’s not so much that American conservatives were misled by the Russians as that they decided that their goals had more in common with Putin’s goals than they did with the goals of the US as a whole. They’re not dupes, they’re willing and eager allies.
ETA: Heck, American evangelicals already had a huge amount of experience in minimizing differences to gain allies since they already changed their longstanding religious beliefs to conform with Catholics so they could add them as voters for the rest of their racist and misogynist agenda.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne: Also genuine question, as I haven’t clicked on an NYT link: Can one still get 10 articles a month, then clear their cookies and read more?
Is there any need to digitally subscribe to the NYT in order to get into the discussion threads on their news, politics, and op/ed stories?
The idea that trollbots for Trump, Tulsi, etc, are swarming the NYT commentariat is something I can believe.
PPCLI
@rikyrah: Wow. Speechless at the sheer hubris and sense of untouchability Volker displays.
I’m beginning to get a better sense of why Jim Jordan looked so uncharacteristically despairingly glum in a couple of his post-hearing press conferences. And we still haven’t seen Taylor’s or Vindman’s transcripts yet.
I suppose I too would have decided in these circumstances that the only possible strategy was to descend on the hearings like a pack of howler monkeys with cellphones and pizza.
J R in WV
OK, so this morning I was out of the house about 0500 am, for a 0645 appointment for an MRI on my right knee. Just now the nurse at my Doctor’s office called with the results of that work. She used a lot of technical terms, but essentially most of the cartilage is gone, and what is still there is trash.
Dr Bill thought I would slide by with some repair work, but actually, it’s looking more like total replacement, the third after two shoulders.
Hurray!! It appears to be a miracle that I’m able to walk at all…
Otherwise I’m fairly healthy as she went over my blood work results from my last checkup.
Amir Khalid
I’m watching Liverpool’s group match against Belgian side Genk,who have suddenly equalised against the run of play. It’s 1-1 at Anfield in the first half.
West of the Rockies
@J R in WV:
Ugh. Best wishes for a smooth procedure and solid recovery.
Jay
Jay
Chris Johnson
@Roger Moore:
The New York Times is a newspaper. Newspapers have been all dying ever since the Internet. It’s also a supposedly top of the line newspaper based in New York, where people have expensive tastes, where they want to believe they are the best and brightest and bosses of everything.
Trump and Epstein have been operating since well before the Clinton era. In New York City, and all over the world.
I totally get that the NYT can be hostile to Democrats on its own initiative, but your argument does not at all convince me they are good old American plutocrats. Newspapers are where money goes to die, and the rulers of the NYT expect to be able to mix with the real plutocrats (much like Donald Trump always expected to). Their greed and desperation as the money trickled away from their entire business sector had to have been palpable. The Post got eaten up by Bezos. There would be nothing surprising about the NYT getting taken over by Russian oligarchs, because they’d have the one best qualification for becoming puppets: desperate need for money and wanting to appear as if they are the true wealthy and powerful.
It’s really simple. Russian oligarchs had money, and the NYT had influence. Inevitable, you might say. And look at the outcome.
Jager
@J R in WV:
One of my old hockey buddies has had both replaced, he took his grandkids skating 4 months after the last one. He suggests pre-op physical therapy and post-op and pay close attention! to what the therapists tell you to do.
J R in WV
@Cacti:
Fixed that for you… sometimes we agree.
I just wish we could do something about all the lame, ignorant, fascist judges Trump and Moscow Mitch McConnell have lodged within the Federal courts.
tokyokie
@West of the Rockies: I’m currently confined to the house after having the procedure a week ago. So far, so good (although a miscommunication between the hospital and provider has delayed my home-health physical therapy). Nowadays, they’ll get you up to walk a bit late in the day of surgery and I guess they send everybody home with a CPM machine. I’m tired of hobbling along with the walker, but with my previous reconstructive knee surgery a million years ago, I was in a full-leg cast for three weeks, and I’m a lot more ambulatory than that.
Bill Arnold
@hueyplong:
Urban Dictionary is scary on cocks. (I usually just search on – wordtolookup urban)
(In the future as more C words get added these links will not point to the right place.)
https://www.urbandictionary.com/browse.php?character=C&page=622
and single words starting here:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/browse.php?character=C&page=637
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
The NYTimes has been overtly supporting fascists since at least the 1920s. I don’t remember the exact date, but they ran a long fawning piece about young Mr. Hitler and how great a politician and leader he looked like being for Germany in the early 1920s.
They never had a critical word to say about nice Mr Hitler until after war was declared due to the attack by the imperial Japanese Navy on US soil.
They also never admitted that the nice Mr Stalin had anything to do with a famine in Georgia and Ukraine, in fact they denied that there was any food shortages in those states of the USSR, ever, at all.
So the NY Times has been solidly in support of authoritarian rule nearly everywhere for nearly the past century to the best of my research ability. Don’t forget their support of the illegal colonial war in Vietnam, the never mysterious weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which made it essential that we illegally attack Iraq, Ms Clinton’s somehow illegal private emails, etc, etc.
And I’m sure this is a very partial list, I don’t have the time to do an exhaustive job of their support for war and authoritarianism. But they surely love them some Trumpism!!
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
25 years ago my ortho guy told me, after MRI that the meniscus was in 2 pieces and a new non OEM knee was needed. But because of my age he didn’t want to replace it unless I couldn’t walk. Still have the OEM knee and it’s the better one.
BTW I’ve had the meniscus fold/overlap/twist on me once. Now that was fun.
Ruckus
@Jay:
Money Talks………..
Procopius
@balconesfault: Thank you for reminding us of Pompeo’s Dominionist ideology.
Betty
A wonderful bunch of words to describe these asshats, Betty Cracker!