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Is it Time for Pentagon Papers 2: Electric Boogaloo?

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The White House is claiming that Bolton’s book is top secret, especially the criming parts (probably). The Times has it. The Post probably has it too. The obvious thing to do if Trump continues this ridiculous charade is to publish the parts that relate to Trump (which the Times has already sorta kinda done, in summary form), just as those two papers did back in 1971.

The other obvious thing that could happen is that Bolton and his mustache of destiny could transport themselves to literally any media outlet in this here US of A and tell their story using his piehole, which we here at Balloon-Juice have on good authority works well at saying things, since he was able to use it to tell Eliot Engel to investigate Trump. Most of the things he says are fucking stupid, but the point remains.

Either way, this fucker’s story is going to get out, only when when and how are at stake.

Open thread.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Best News from the Super Bowl Promos

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Maybe I should tag this as a respite thread. But we deserve a break!

After David MacNeil’s dog collapsed last July and was given a grim cancer diagnosis with a life expectancy of one month, he took the 7-year-old golden retriever named Scout to the University of Wisconsin at Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, hoping for a minor medical miracle.

The veterinarians pursued an aggressive treatment that paid off: Within two months, Scout’s heart tumor was 90 percent smaller than its original size. Today, the lucky dog is healthy and all but free of cancer.

MacNeil, the chief executive of WeatherTech, the suburban Chicago manufacturer best known for its floor mats and custom automotive liners, was beyond grateful. On Sunday, his gratitude will be on display in one of the most coveted forms of advertising: a Super Bowl commercial.

The 30-second spot, titled “Lucky Dog,” is set to air during the second quarter of Super Bowl LIV on Sunday and tells Scout’s story from diagnosis to recovery as it spotlights the veterinary school at UW-Madison. The commercial ends with a call to donate, in which all money raised through the advertised WeatherTech link will benefit the school’s medical research. The school said in a statement that funds will be routed through the University of Wisconsin Foundation…

In a statement, UW-Madison notes that dogs and humans share similar cancer rates — about 1 in 4 dogs and 1 in 3 people will develop cancer in their lifetime — and similar tumor characteristics. As a result, some cancer therapies that were first developed for dogs are used to treat cancer in people…

 
Too, also:

… Jason Levine, Sabra’s chief marketing officer, told the Advocate in a statement that the company is showcasing a diverse group of people in its Super Bowl ads and is thus offering “something for everyone.”

Kim Chi and Miz Cracker are among seemingly unrelated celebrities who will be part of Sabra’s football promotional blitz. Another commercial includes rapper and singer T-Pain auto-tune singing about being ready for hummus before placing a hummus-dipped chip in his mouth. Teresa Giudice and Caroline Manzo of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” fame also star in another ad where they icily say one another’s name in a way only cordial enemies do as they feast on bread dipped in Sabra hummus…

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Pawns of the Powerful Open Thread: More ‘Headaches’, But Not for Commander Bonespurs

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I’m seeing arguments that the White House is ‘downplaying’ these injury reports so that Trump won’t feel ‘compelled to escalate in retaliation’, but let’s be honest — Trump has already forgotten the whole American-base-getting-bombed incident. There’s no way for him to spin the results as a win, and he’s too lazy / cowardly to start anything that might require him to focus beyond the next news cycle. Between this and Trump’s favorite war criminal threatening his former SEAL teammates today, the GOP’s “pro-military” reputation is getting flushed most efficiently.

… Several Pentagon officials told CNN that the number of diagnosed cases is likely to continue to change. Approximately 200 people who were in the blast zone at the time of the attack have been screened for symptoms.

Although traumatic brain injuries are not always apparent immediately after they’ve been suffered, the disclosure of injured US service members indicates that the impact of the attack was more serious than initial assessments indicated. Tuesday’s announcement is the third time the Pentagon has updated the figures for the numbers injured.

The Pentagon and President Donald Trump had initially said no service members were injured or killed in the January 8 Iranian missile attack, which was retaliation for the January 2 US drone strike that killed a top Iranian general.

Last week Trump said he does not consider potential brain injuries to be as serious as physical combat wounds, downplaying the severity of the injuries suffered in Iraq…

“No, I heard that they had headaches, and a couple of other things, but I would say, and I can report, it’s not very serious,” Trump replied during a news conference.

An influential veterans group demanded Trump apologize for those comments.

“The VFW expects an apology from the President to our service men and women for his misguided remarks,” William “Doc” Schmitz, Veterans of Foreign Wars national commander, said in a statement Friday…

Look, if these troops had superior genes, like the very stable genius squatting in the Oval Office, they’d have been smart enough not to be stationed in a war zone. Trump likes soldiers who aren’t wounded, at least if those wounds are potentially gonna cost Trump any political capital.

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No recollection…

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In the “Lumpy rug” thread below, valued commenter Sab pointed out that one reason GOP senators are so reluctant to hear from John Bolton and other witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial is that they’ve got their own dirt to conceal. Right on cue, The Tampa Bay Times published a story about a conversation Trump had with Lev Parnas about Florida Senator Rick Scott.

The story is based on the 80-plus minute recording where Trump was heard making a thuggish-sounding order to “take out” a U.S. ambassador. At the same event, Trump also talked to Parnas about then-Governor Rick Scott, who was running against a long-time incumbent Democrat for the senate seat:

About halfway through the recording, Parnas mentioned he lived in Florida, prompting Trump to ask how Scott, then Florida’s governor, was faring in his U.S. Senate campaign.

“Rick Scott’s good,” said Parnas, who was indicted in October on charges that he and his business partner, Igor Fruman, steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors. Both are now key figures in Trump’s impeachment proceedings.

“Is he going to win?” Trump asks.

Parnas responded: “It’s going to be close, but I think we’re going to pull it out.”

He repeatedly referred to Scott’s election effort as “we,” suggesting an intimacy or involvement with the campaign. Parnas also told Trump: “We’re doing a fundraiser” for Scott in May and mentioned having lunch with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, now one of Trump’s impeachment defense lawyers.

The article reviews the federal indictment of Parnas and fellow Giuliani-adjacent goon Fruman for illegally dropping hundreds of thousands of foreign-sourced dollars on Republican candidates. It recounts how the pair also contributed heavily as individuals and through their company to Scott and the current GOP governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

Coincidentally, DeSantis also had “no recollection” of meeting Parnas when the feds scooped Rudy’s pals up. DeSantis donated the funds he received from the pair to charity, as did Scott in the wake of the indictment. The article notes recent WSJ reporting that indicates Parnas turned over texts between himself and DeSantis to the House Democrats. I mean, who among us hasn’t carried on text conversations with complete strangers, right?

Meanwhile, Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, is tweeting out photos of his client with various GOP bigwigs and encouraging Republican senators to vote for witnesses and a fair trial. Here’s one from this morning:

Parnas, the Forrest Gump of Republican corruption, seems to have a lot of receipts. So yeah, good point, Sab. Any guesses on which Republican will get the next attack of amnesia?

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One corner of a very lumpy rug…

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As the Ukraine scandal was blowing up a while back, Kay pointed out that given Trump’s well-documented greed and corruption, we can be certain he abused his power for personal gain in interactions with other countries besides Ukraine. She suggested the exposure of Trump’s malfeasance in Ukraine is lifting just “one corner of a very lumpy rug.”

The Times got its mitts on further excerpts of Bolton’s book, which lifts other corners and implicates AG William Barr:

WASHINGTON — John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, privately told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Barr responded by pointing to a pair of Justice Department investigations of companies in those countries and said he was worried that Mr. Trump had created the appearance that he had undue influence over what would typically be independent inquiries, according to the manuscript. Backing up his point, Mr. Barr mentioned conversations Mr. Trump had with the leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China.

Mr. Bolton’s account underscores the fact that the unease about Mr. Trump’s seeming embrace of authoritarian leaders, long expressed by experts and his opponents, also existed among some of the senior cabinet officers entrusted by the president to carry out his foreign policy and national security agendas.

Barr’s spokeswoman denied the conversation ever happened and accused Bolton of projecting his own views onto Barr. Why did Bolton go to Barr in the first place? Was it not obvious to him Barr is up to his neck in Trump’s fuckery? Maybe it’s harder for wingnuts to accept that Barr is a corrupt Trump flunky with his own agenda because he’s been a DC fixture for so long?

You’d think the cautionary tale Bolton sees in the mirror while trimming his iconic mustache would be a clue, but oh well. Or maybe this is Bolton’s opening salvo in a bid to discredit Barr with fellow Republicans should the entire Trump scam collapse? If so, I wish him godspeed, the warmongering shit-stain.

Anyhoo, The Times article cites Bolton’s earlier allegation (in a private speech) that Trump’s eagerness to curry favor with Turkish President Erdoğan by torpedoing an investigation into a Turkish bank is related to Trump’s business interests in the region. (The investigation was restarted when the corrupt move to quash it attracted unwanted attention — shades of the aid release in Ukraine!)

Bolton also alleges that Trump gushes over China’s President Xi and relaxed sanctions on a Chinese telecom over Republican and national security agency objections because Trump required Xi’s assistance after painting himself into a corner with the trade war.

Outside Bolton’s claim that he raised concerns with Barr, this isn’t new information — the bank investigation and telecom sanctions removal always looked fishy as hell. And Trump’s gonna Trump, so I’m confident any investigation into Trump’s behavior in any interaction with a foreign or domestic entity, including a Girl Scout cookie sale, would reveal a cesspool of self-dealing and fraud.

But it’s good that the topics have been reintroduced in the middle of the impeachment trial, if only to remind the Republican senators currently engaged in a massive cover-up of just how lumpy the rug they’re standing on is — and how quickly it could be snatched out from under them.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread

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The Emperor's New Garments - Tom Toles

(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)

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The ‘Novel Coronovirus’ Update, Monday / Tuesday

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From the Washington Post:

BEIJING — As officials grow increasingly fearful about their ability to contain the fast-spreading outbreak of a novel coronavirus, this metropolis recorded its first death on Monday, hundreds of foreign nationals prepared to flee the country, and the U.S. government warned Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China and planned to boost airport staff to screen nearly all passengers from there.

In a rare public mea culpa, a Chinese official said Monday that the government had mishandled the early stages of the crisis, which has claimed at least 100 lives and infected more than 4,400 people. Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang, speaking with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, said his city did not release “timely and satisfactory” information at the start of the epidemic, and he appeared to blame higher-ups in his chain of command…

The mayor said 5 million people have already left his city, some before and some after the official quarantine. Meanwhile, more than 700 miles away, Beijing recorded its first death from the outbreak, according to the city’s health commission. A 50-year-old man who visited Wuhan on Jan. 8 developed a fever when he returned home a week later and died Monday — one of the pathogen’s younger victims. Seven other cases of illness in Beijing have been confirmed so far.

Late Monday, a top U.S. health official criticized Chinese authorities for not inviting U.S. and other international investigative agencies to join them in researching the new virus. While China has been more transparent than it was during the 2003 SARS outbreak, U.S. officials are still getting their information through press briefings rather than from direct transfer of scientific data, said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases….

Amid growing alarm about the disease’s fast spread, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is boosting staffing at 20 U.S. airports that have quarantine facilities. Vice President Pence said Monday that those airports receive 90 percent of airline passengers from China. Previously, passengers from Hubei province were screened and tested at five airports if they showed signs of fever or respiratory illness or have been in contact with a sick person, the CDC said. The expanded effort will take effect in coming days….

Global markets took a sharp downturn Monday as investors grew increasingly anxious about the swift spread of the coronavirus beyond China. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 454 points, or about 1.6 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq indexes were also down 1.6 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively…

IIRC, that’s about the same Dow Jones drop as one of the Oval Office Occupant’s more incendiary trade tweets, so not too alarming, just yet.

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The Black PSYOP Part VII: Pam Bondi Brings Russia’s Agitprop to the United States Senate

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In every one of the Black PSYOP posts I’ve done, I’ve referenced Paula Chertok’s reporting that the earliest mention of Vice President Biden having a potential ethical and/or legal problem was Russian agitprop first reported in Russian state backed media RIA Novosti. I have also referenced in several of these earlier posts that Secretary Kerry’s step-son was also referenced.*  As I’ve explained in these previous posts this was done to begin to dirty up Vice President Biden and Secretary Kerry who were both reportedly considering running for president in 2016.

On Saturday I explained that the President’s defense team would try to launder the debunked Russian conspiracy theories about Ukraine, not Russia, interfering in the 2016 election and doing so to frame Russia and the President for doing so, as well as the agitprop that Vice President did something illegal in regard to Ukraine in an attempt to cover up for the fact that his son had a sinecure. This is what the Republican members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Judiciary Committee were using the impeachment hearings to perpetuate the Black PSYOP of laundering Russian conspiracy theories, misinformation, and agitprop through each committees’ hearings and into the mainstream news reporting.

Today former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a member of the President’s defense team, laundered this Russian agitprop from 2014 through the Senate and into the news. And you can see that this is a direct transmission of the agitprop cited above because Bondi suddenly introduces a new player into her narrative: Secretary Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz. The video below is queued up to start at the 5:25 mark just before she introduces the agitprop.

For those that don’t want to watch the audio-visual extravaganza that is Pam Bondi, here’s the transcript:

Here’s how Hunter Biden came to join Burisma’s board in 2014: He was brought on the board by Devin Archer, his business partner. Devin Archer was college roommates with Chris Heinz, stepson of Secretary of State John Kerry. All three men, Hunter Biden, Devin Archer, and Chris Heinz had all started an investment firm together. Public records show that April 16th, 2014, Devin Archer meets with Vice President Biden at the White House. Just two days later, on April 18th, 2014, is when Hunter Biden quietly joins Burisma, according to public reporting. Remember this is just one month after the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office opened a money laundering case into Burisma, Hunter Biden joins the board.

Now compare this with the RIA Novosti reporting above.

As of right now the PBS Newshour and other mainstream broadcast and cable news stations have either the full video of Bondi’s time at the podium or clips of it up on their digital and social media feeds. That’s the first step of the information laundry for the Black PSYOP. The second step has already occurred, if you keyword search “Pam Bondi John Kerry’s stepson” you get results from conservative to far right digital “news” sources. The first page of returns includes The Daily Wire, Breitbart, Towhnall, The Epoch Times, Daily Gaming World, and GLOCKTalk, which is a firearm’s forum and the thread is full of inaccurate conspiracy theories like this one:

The Black PSYOP Part VII: Pam Bondi Brings Russia's Agitprop to the United States Senate

Those returns also include mainstream reporting, such as this article from Newsweek. But it won’t be long until the right wing digital news and social media ecosystem push this from the fringes to Fox News. Once there this five year old Russian agitprop, intended to be part of potential active measures campaigns against either Vice President Biden or Secretary Kerry in 2016 will get broadcast to a much wider audience. And just in time for the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary both Vice President Biden and one of his most senior surrogates, Secretary Kerry, will be dirtied up. Just the way Vladimir Putin wanted back in April 2014. Which is why Bondi did it. To get results like this:

Open thread!

* I really don’t understand why Elizabeth Cheney was included in the agitprop that was initially placed in RIA Novosti. There was reporting in 2015 that Bill Kristol was floating VP Cheney’s name for a potential 2016 run. And VP Cheney did suggest that he thought VP Biden should run in 2016. But neither of those makes any sense as to why Russia’s misinformation and agitprop campaign would include his daughter in what was clearly a placed piece of agitprop in 2014 to dirty up potential 2016 Democratic candidates.

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Lest We Forget: The Liberation of Auschwitz

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As world leaders gather in Poland Monday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi-run Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland, Edith Friedman Grosman will be far away in Toronto. On Monday, the energetic 95-year-old, who was on the first official transport of Jews to Auschwitz, plans to live-stream the ceremony from home, but only if she feels up to it.

She’s already returned to Auschwitz four times, and that’s enough.

“I’m glad they’re doing something for Auschwitz 75,” she told The Washington Post. “But they have to do something in 100 years and 125 years, too.”…

They were told they would be registering for three months of work in a shoe factory, and that it was their patriotic duty to help in the war effort. But when they showed up to “register,” they were strip-searched, loaded into trucks and taken away. Most were teenagers, some were in their twenties, and a handful of mothers in their forties boarded in place of their daughters. None of those mothers would survive.

Over the next few days, Jewish girls were swept up from all the surrounding villages. By the end of the week, Friedman Grosman, then 17, and her sister Lea, 19, were on the first official transport of Jews to Auschwitz, arriving by train on March 27, 1942…

These young women arrived at a pivotal moment in the concentration camp’s history. At first, it had been a Nazi prison for Poles of every ethnicity, then for Soviet POWs. By 1942, the Nazis were focusing on gathering up Jews, though they had not yet started their “Final Solution” — mass extermination.

In fact, the girls’ real job wasn’t to make shoes, but to build the very infrastructure that would convert the camp into a death machine. Over the next year, they were brutally forced to demolish old buildings with their bare hands, empty trash out of frozen lakes and build dozens of new barracks. For clothing, they were given the bloody uniforms of dead Soviet soldiers and a few striped dresses with no undergarments. Their entire bodies were shaved, and their shoes were flat pieces of wood with flimsy cloth ties.

Most of them died that first year — of starvation, disease, beatings, medical experiments and suicide. Friedman Grosman’s sister was sent to a gas chamber after she caught typhus. More than 77 years later, her grief is still deep…

At her apartment in Toronto on Saturday, friends brought by so many dishes for Friedman Grosman that she worried she would have to throw food away. In between visits, she told The Post she had one message for the world: “Don’t hate. Because hate brings criminality and hate brings death. I saw it, I was there.”

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Evening Respite Thread

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I’m not religious, but some of my favorite artists are. Poets and lyricists, primarily. Why? Dunno. I suppose if one truly wants to eff the ineffable, one could certainly have a worse background than deep spiritual study. Also, too, I happen to think we could use a little more grace in the world, and song is a good vehicle for that sentiment.

Without further ado, here are two wonderful covers of wonderful songs.

“Come Healing” by Elayna Boynton (original by Leonard Cohen)

“Redemption Song” by Johnny Cash & Joe Strummer (original by Bob Marley)

May you all have a peaceful evening. I’m going to kick back and watch some teevee. Here’s a place to find respite from *gestures at world* that whole thing.

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Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Mike Pompeo, the Biter Bit

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Secretary Pompeo had a cunning plan, aimed at an audience of one: He would summon this little reporter girl, berate her on air, expose her as a whining liberal snowflake, and shore up his crumbling credentials with The Big Guy in the Oval Office!

Tragically, NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly refused to play her assigned role in Pompeo’s dumbshow. And not only did she pants him in the media, but the more he tries to insist that he was in no way pantsed, the more other media co-conspirators snark, Nice boxers, Secretary Pompous!

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Inexpert opinion

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Ken Starr arriving at the Capitol for the impeachment trial:

Inexpert opinion

 

Major Toht arriving at Marion’s bar to seek the headpiece of the Staff of Ra in Raiders of the Lost Ark:

Inexpert opinion 1

Same energy!

I’m not a lawyer, and I’m also not watching the Trump lawyers’ presentation in the impeachment hearing. But my husband is watching it in the other room, so thanks to our open floor plan, I’ve absorbed some of it.

I am puzzled by the Trump legal team’s choice to defend Giuliani’s antics. You’d think the less said about Giuliani, the better, from Team Trump’s perspective. Giuliani is allegedly the target of a federal investigation, and one of his indicted henchmen is routinely providing damaging information to the media. Seems like demoting Giuliani to coffee boy would be the smart play here.

Did Trump himself demand a defense of Giuliani’s activities? Do the lawyers think they have to address it because the Democratic House managers covered Giuliani in all his crackpot glory? Do they just suck at their jobs? It’s a mystery.

Open thread!

 

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He Had 10,000 Men

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What’s this, Prince Andrew isn’t cooperating with the Epstein investigation? I mean, he said he would, right? Sometimes I think–and hear me out on this, because I know it’s controversial–that people who have underage sex with boys or girls sometimes band together into secret groups guarded by institutional privilege.

Now, I’m not sure about that, and there may indeed be another side to this. I mean, alleged rapists have feelings too, amirite? I’m sure Prince Andrew, Duke of York, KG, GCVO, GD, ADC(P), POS, must be going through a tough time right now and just hasn’t gotten around to talking to prosecutors at the SDNY about his boon companion Jeffrey Epstein. Also, what about his rights? Shouldn’t he be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by testimony from grown women trying to put something horrible in their past behind them, who should be happy to take time from their new lives to dredge up the details of how they were raped as teenagers, all while being dragged through the mud by attorneys paid millions of dollars by the men they’re accusing?

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The Book Salesman

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Here’s an angle I hadn’t seen on the Bolton book bombshell (via Digby)

We don’t know how this manuscript came into the New York Times’ hands, but the paper claims that Bolton shared drafts with close associates and delivered one to the White House to determine whether it contains classified information as is usual practice. While the motive behind leaking it is unclear, it stands to reason that Bolton may have feared that the White House would withhold the book on national security grounds after hearing the president say this in Davos last week:

The problem with John is that it’s a national security problem. You know, you can’t have somebody who’s at national security — and, if you think about it, John, he knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader, and it’s not very positive, and then I have to deal on behalf of the country? It’s going to be very hard.

That sounds very much like a rationale Trump’s lawyers were testing out to keep Bolton’s book from seeing the light of day.

Yeah, it sure does. So, maybe Bolton orchestrated the leak to prevent the Trump administration from quashing his book on national security grounds? That’s a lot more plausible to me than Bolton’s being motivated by patriotism. Every single one of Trump’s low-quality hires have failed that test.

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Gonna Be Another Long Week

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Something about those faces… the bright-eyed curiosity on the left, the blissful superiority on the right…

Elsewhere…


Iowa caucus-goers want a candidate who’ll offer them a bag of magic beans. But they must be artisanal, free-range, responsibly-sourced magic beans!

Think positively:

Mandatory Bolton content:

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