I’d like to keep the DOE thread on those topics, so here’s a new one to pick apart Donald Trump’s latest babblefest.
Open Thread: Trump’s Interview With the Wall Street JournalPost + Comments (317)
This post is in: Open Threads, Russiagate, Trump Crime Cartel, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell
I’d like to keep the DOE thread on those topics, so here’s a new one to pick apart Donald Trump’s latest babblefest.
Open Thread: Trump’s Interview With the Wall Street JournalPost + Comments (317)
by Betty Cracker| 227 Comments
This post is in: Election 2016, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Russiagate, Assholes, General Stupidity, Not Normal
NPR broke a story today about how the White House — and possibly Trump himself — colluded with a Texas-based Trump donor and Fox News to push a fake news story about murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich. The fake news was broadcast on fake news outlet Fox News specifically to take the focus off the Trump-Russia collusion story:
Behind Fox News’ Baseless Seth Rich Story: The Untold Tale
The Fox News Channel and a wealthy supporter of President Trump worked in concert under the watchful eye of the White House to concoct a story about the murder of a young Democratic National Committee aide, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The explosive claim is part of the lawsuit filed against Fox News by Rod Wheeler, a longtime paid commentator for the news network. The suit was obtained exclusively by NPR.
Wheeler alleges Fox News and the Trump supporter intended to deflect public attention from growing concern about the administration’s ties to the Russian government. His suit charges that a Fox News reporter created quotations out of thin air and attributed them to him to propel her story…
The first page of the lawsuit quotes a voicemail and text from Butowsky boasting that President Trump himself had reviewed drafts of the Fox News story just before it went to air and was published.
Spicer now tells NPR that he took the meeting as a favor to Butowsky, a reliable Republican voice. Spicer says he was unaware of any contact involving the president. Butowsky now tells NPR he was kidding about Trump’s involvement.
“Just kidding” my ass — Trump was on this story like a duck on a June bug, as was Sean Hannity and the Trump sock puppet crew at Fox & Friends. And this on the heels of the news yesterday that Trump dictated the lies about the nature of the meeting at Trump Tower between Russian operatives and Trump’s idiot son, son-in-law, campaign chairman, etc.
Prediction: this story — added to the growing mountain of evidence that Trump lies all the time and orchestrates fake news to cover up his campaign’s involvement with Russia — will furrow many a Republican brow. But it will inspire no action whatsoever from that group.
Meanwhile, the fake president who uses fake news to protect his fake victory, is projecting again this morning:
Only the Fake News Media and Trump enemies want me to stop using Social Media (110 million people). Only way for me to get the truth out!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2017
That’s a bald-faced lie, of course. It’s Trump’s supporters and operatives who are begging the shitgibbon to quit tweeting. Those of us who want him to fail (for America’s sake!) fully support Trump’s right to continue to obstruct justice, issue threats and generally make a fool of himself on Twitter.
by Betty Cracker| 255 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Russiagate, Assholes, General Stupidity
The Russian embassy in the UK gets in on the “deep state” action, the cheeky bastards:
Russia wouldn’t respond in kind beyond pure dip.reciprocity.Our problem,like those of ??itself,doesn't lie w/??people,but elite&deep state pic.twitter.com/EKjdeCOp2K
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) July 31, 2017
Coincidentally, most Americans don’t have a problem with the Russian people but rather Putin’s blatant violation of our national sovereignty to install a dangerous fool at the head of our government.
I don’t know if he’s used the term yet, but Trump must buy this “deep state” nonsense completely since it suggests he won fair and square when he didn’t. The “deep state” concept is continuously invoked on Fox News as an excuse for Trump’s many failures, as well as by Trump’s paid supporters like this douchebag:
The deep state is real. All Obama hold overs in the Gov't need to go to allow @realDonaldTrump to Make America Great Again!
— Corey R. Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) July 30, 2017
It’s also a favorite term of Trump-enabling douchecanoes like this gigantic asshole who runs Wikileaks:
Will the US deep state destroy Donald Trump?
Background: What is the deep state? https://t.co/s3LboI2q6T
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 13, 2017
Interesting how they’re all singing from the same hymnal now — even the Russian embassy.
Open thread!
This post is in: Activist Judges!, Dolt 45, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Russiagate, Assholes, Jump! You Fuckers!, Schadenfreude
Since I am not by nature a nice person, I’ll admit that stories like this make me quietly gleeful. From the Washington Post, “Senate Republicans have tolerated Trump’s controversies. His treatment of Sessions is different”:
… Cornyn is not alone in rallying to the defense of Sessions, who, despite sometimes having waged lonely battles as one of the chamber’s most staunch conservatives, still has many friends among Senate Republicans. Most have issued statements of support, and several are making private calls to reassure Sessions that they are behind him.
But the tension over Trump’s treatment of Sessions goes beyond the senators defending a friend.
Unlike any other controversial move that Trump has pondered in his six months as president, Senate Republicans are sending preemptive signals that firing the attorney general or pressuring him to resign would be a terrible move.
Some have warned high-level White House officials that it would look as though Trump were making the move solely to shut down an investigation of his campaign and the White House, now overseen by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, while also making clear that they agree with Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from an investigation of the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia.
Replacing Sessions would be difficult, and the idea of Trump making a recess appointment during the planned four-week break in August is foolhardy. Democrats can indefinitely stall a resolution to fully adjourn the Senate, having already forced minute-long periods during even shorter breaks to prevent Trump from having the authority to make temporary appointments while the Senate is away.
Democrats may have vehemently opposed Sessions’s nomination, but they have no intention of allowing Trump to fire him and name a new attorney general with a recess appointment, and frankly, Republicans do not seem to want to give Trump that power either…
What’s on the agenda, as we start another bound-to-be-beleagured day?
***********
Speaking of public schadenfreude: Having grown up in the sort of family where interactions tended to start with a challenge and escalate explosively, I’ve spent the past forty years learning that not every dark thought needs to be described exhaustively. Not only does such gleeful venting disturb those who come from less toughened environments, but it’s really quite stressful to keep up the paranoia level that’s essential when you know at a bone-deep level that talking the talk is liable to lead to walking a very unpleasant walk.
This is John Cole’s blog, and it will never be mistaken for an Oberlin drum circle. But rest assured, no matter how inventive your torture scenarios for those public officials who most absolutely deserve them, there is no membership requirement that those scenarios be shared in the comments.
Venting is important, especially in this Trump era, but not everybody here has the same tolerance for violence porn. Wish all the bad cess on Republicans and other miscreants that they deserve, but try to keep in mind that it’s not a competition to see which of us can produce the most disturbing rant.
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Rooting for Injuries (But Not Describing Them)Post + Comments (300)
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Russiagate
It’s hard for me to believe that Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. couldn’t figure out that the Russians they were meeting with might have had ulterior motives. I had an experience some years back that demonstrates how espionage recruitment works.
I was working on a project that was partly classified. My work was mostly unclassified. It was long enough ago that scientists exchanged reprints of their articles printed (nicely, by the journal publisher) on paper.
I loved getting reprint requests. International stamps on postcards, sometimes letters. One of them was from a Chinese institute, a complimentary letter with a lovely stamp on the envelope. A bit nicer than usual, but not extraordinary. So I sent the reprints.
They sent back another letter and some of their reprints. We should talk about our mutual interests. Perhaps I could even visit their laboratory. At that time, not many Americans were visiting China. It was intriguing and potentially a status point at work.
The project had a fair bit of visibility, and other governments were sending letters of interest in collaboration. One government offered to send two post-docs, all expenses paid. We had a good laugh about that. There wasn’t an institutional training program about recognizing recruitment, though.
An international meeting was coming up that they and I planned to go to. We could meet there. The Chinese interest began to seem more than normal collegiality.
I went to the meeting in Hawaii. They didn’t show up. I was relieved. I’ll never know for sure if they were trying to recruit me. That’s the point – the interest seems to be genuine, and they push a little bit and then a little more until you are giving them more information than you should.
Later it turned out that two people working on that project did give too much information to the Chinese.
This post is in: Dolt 45, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, Russiagate, Assholes
Reporter: Are you concerned Trump may fire Sessions?
Ryan: It's the president's prerogative to hire and fire whoever he wants. pic.twitter.com/7Dp9okoTpJ
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 25, 2017
Lesson @SpeakerRyan has provided Trump is he will grumble, then accept, all window-breaking. 2day Ryan surely raised odds of #Mueller firing https://t.co/qlMdmZOJpQ
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) July 25, 2017
.
Apart from waiting for the next blizzard of falling shoes, what’s on the agenda for the day?
***********
What is alarming is the refusal of Rs state *right now* with total clarity that removing Mueller will be met with a forceful response.
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) July 25, 2017
Maybe Ryan has personal reasons to want Mueller’s investigation to end. He sure acts like he’s hiding something. So does McConnell. https://t.co/IyC5XA8sgg
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) July 25, 2017
A little feel-good nostalgia, from a brighter era:
Hell of a picture. pic.twitter.com/QacSO2Vg9Y
— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) July 25, 2017
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: GOP Portraits in CustardPost + Comments (113)
This post is in: Activist Judges!, Cruz-ifiction, Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Russiagate, Assholes
JUST IN: Trump considering Ted Cruz as to replace Sessions as AG: report https://t.co/VoSI9zPiq3 pic.twitter.com/eRrOtj1Hnr
— The Hill (@thehill) July 25, 2017
Yeah, he’d be just about as terrible to everyone-not-a-rich-Republican as the Malevolent Leprechaun, but I’m not sure Cruz could even get confirmed, given how much his colleagues do not love him.
And it could be argued that, while his intentions are equally horrible, Cruz doesn’t have Jefferson Beauregard Session III’s lifelong bone-deep Confederate indoctrination to help him disguise his deep-seated racism.
Props to the CBC, though:
Congressional Black Caucus demands Sessions' resignation: He keeps lying under oath https://t.co/KGQvXqNZXa pic.twitter.com/mr9o7MLkxT
— The Hill (@thehill) July 25, 2017
I wanna do a Jared ‘Simple Tootsie from the Country’ Kushner post, but there’s TOO MUCH BREAKING NEWS. How do the paid professionals keep up? (answer: they’re paid to do so!)
Russiagate Open Thread: Trump Is <em>Really</em> Angry At “His” GovernmentPost + Comments (251)