Month: May 2017

A little respite from our worries

by digby

Stone Part One – Tommy Ingberg

It’s getting so weird, I think we could all use a break:

I don’t know about you, but that made me feel a little less crazy.

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They think they are so clevah!

by digby

I knew this was their gambit. It is so, so lame:

During a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper, Conway managed to look into the camera and claim with a straight face that Trump isn’t under under FBI investigation after all.

Conway repeatedly referred back to a part of the letter Trump sent to Comey where Trump writes, “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.” (Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from any Trump-Russia investigations after it was revealed he lied about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.)

“Let me repeat that the president has been told by the FBI director that he is not under FBI investigation, that is right in the president’s letter,” Conway said.

Cooper, incredulous, replied with, “This White House is under investigation, the people around the president are around investigation — you would agree with that, yes?

“No I don’t, I know that some are obsessed with the word Russia — the president is not under investigation, I’m around the president, I’m not under investigation,” Conway said. “I can name many people in that same situation.”

That’s right. The president saying in the letter that Comey told him he wasn’t under investigation is supposed to render him innocent of the charge that he fired an FBI director who was investigating him. It’s embarrassing, especially delivered with Conway’s snotty sneer.

This is serious business and they’d better sober up.

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by digby

I’m guessing that’s true. And Jake Tapper now reports:

There are two reasons why President Donald Trump fired James Comey, according to a source close to the now-former FBI director: 

• Comey never provided the President with any assurance of personal loyalty.  

• The fact that the FBI’s investigation into possible Trump team collusion with Russia in the 2016 election was not only not going anywhere — the investigation was accelerating. 

The official White House version of what happened is that deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, fresh on the job, wrote a memo expressing concern about the way Comey had handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation. 

But mounting evidence suggests Comey was actually fired because of the Russian investigation.

Rosenstein, in his memo, faulted Comey for being unfair to Clinton when he announced his conclusion last July that the case against Clinton should be closed without prosecution. He also criticized Comey for holding a press conference in which he “Release(d) derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation.” 

The official version of the firing is that the President took the advice of the deputy attorney general, who ever since Attorney General Sessions’ recusal, oversees the director of the FBI. 

“This whole thing is very simple — you’re trying to make it very complex,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on CNN Tuesday morning. “This is a president who saw that the FBI director had lost the public confidence, the confidence of Republicans and Democrats.”

But we know from his public statements that Trump does not share any of Rosenstein’s concerns that Comey was unfair to Clinton. In fact, he faulted Comey for the opposite — for not criminally charging Clinton. 

In addition to that fact, Rosenstein’s memo was dated May 9, Tuesday — but White House officials tell CNN the president had been considering firing Comey since he took office, but most intensely for at least a week before Tuesday’s fateful decision. Comey testified May 3 to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Clinton email investigation and the Russia election investigation
If only there was some way for us to see what was on the President’s mind in real time last week. 

Oh right — there’s Twitter…. 

Let’s take a look at the President’s late-night tweetstorm of twitter May 2, just before Comey’s testimony. 

FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017

…Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017

Moreover, the letter the President wrote to Comey firing him includes zero references to the Clinton investigation and one big one about the Russia investigation. 

The White House does not seem to like any questions about this. 

“You want to question the timing of when the President fires, when he hires. It’s inappropriate,” said Conway Wednesday. “He’ll do it when he wants to, just like he fired FBI Director Comey when he was faced with evidence that was unignorable.” 

Except of course that evidence about how Comey had treated the Clinton investigation was quite ignorable for the President for more than three months after he took office or until he needed a reason to fire him. 

One other point to be questioned has to do with the role of Sessions, who officially removed himself from the Russia investigation as it related to US political campaigns after it became clear he had not been forthcoming about his meetings during the presidential campaign with the Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Still, he cited his own ties to the Trump campaign as the reason for his recusal. 

“I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States,” Sessions said back in March. 

Except that recusal oddly does not appear to have been in effect when Sessions forwarded the letter from his deputy, Rosenstein, to the President and separately called for Comey to be fired. And it is not in apparent effect now as we’re told Sessions is leading the search Comey’s replacement.

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Mr Popular hits 36% approval

by digby

This is the latest polling from Quinnipiac. These numbers were before Trump decided to do his best Richard Nixon impression:

American voters, who gave President Donald Trump a slight approval bump after the missile strike in Syria, today give him a near-record negative 36 – 58 percent job approval rating, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. Critical are big losses among white voters with no college degree, white men and independent voters.

Today’s job approval rating compares to a negative 40 – 56 percent approval rating in an April 19 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University and a negative 35 – 57 percent score April 4, his lowest approval rating since he became president.

The president is losing support among independent voters and groups which are important parts of his base. Approval ratings are:
Negative 29 – 63 percent among independent voters, down from a negative 38 – 56 percent April 19;

A split among white voters with no college degree, as 47 percent approve and 46 percent disapprove, compared to a 57 – 38 percent approval April 19; 

White men go from a 53 – 41 percent approval April 19 to a split today with 48 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving.

American voters’ opinions of several of Trump’s personal qualities are down:

61 – 33 percent that he is not honest, compared to 58 – 37 percent April 19;

 
56 – 41 percent that he does not have good leadership skills, little change;

 
59 – 38 percent that he does not care about average Americans, compared to 57 – 42 percent April 19; 

66 – 29 percent that he is not level-headed, compared to 63 – 33 percent last month; 

62 – 35 percent that he is a strong person, little change; 

56 – 41 percent that he is intelligent, compared to 58 – 38 percent; 

64 – 32 percent that he does not share their values, compared to 61 – 35 percent.

“There is no way to spin or sugarcoat these sagging numbers,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

“The erosion of white men, white voters without college degrees and independent voters, the declaration by voters that President Donald Trump’s first 100 days were mainly a failure and deepening concerns about Trump’s honesty, intelligence and level headedness are red flags that the administration simply can’t brush away,” Malloy added.

American voters disapprove 52 – 40 percent of the way Trump is handling the economy. His grades on handling other issues are: 

44 percent approve of the way he is handling U.S. policy toward North Korea and 48 percent disapprove; 

Disapprove 59 – 36 percent of the way he is handling foreign policy; 

45 percent approve of the way he is handling terrorism and 48 percent disapprove; 

Disapprove 62 – 35 percent of the way he is handling immigration.

[…]

Trump’s first 100 days in office have been “mainly a failure,” 58 percent of voters say, while 38 percent say they have been “mainly a success.”

By a 54 – 38 percent margin, American voters want the Democratic Party to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is the widest margin ever measured for this question in a Quinnipiac University poll, exceeding a 5 percentage point margin for Republicans in 2013.

If Democrats had won control of the U.S. Senate in the 2016 elections, the country would be in a better place than it is now, 41 percent of voters say, while 27 percent say it would be in a worse place and 30 percent say it would be the same.

American voters dislike Democrats less than they dislike Republicans:

Voters disapprove 71 – 22 percent of the way Republicans in Congress do their job; 

Voters disapprove 58 – 34 percent of the way Democrats in Congress are doing their job.

It won’t change him. He’s incapable of change. But these are the kinds of numbers that start to make a difference with other Republicans.

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All the makings of a banana republic

by digby

From the editor of Foreign Affairs:

We have the tin-pot leader whose vanity knows no bounds. We have the rapacious family feathering their nests without regard for the law or common decency. We have utter disregard for values at home and abroad, the disdain for democracy, the hunger for constraining a free press, the admiration for thugs and strongmen worldwide.

We have all the makings of a banana republic. But worse, we are showing the telltale signs of a failing state. Our government has ceased to function. Party politics and gross self-interest has rendered the majority party oblivious to its responsibilities to its constituents and the Constitution of the United States. On a daily basis, Republicans watch their leader violate not only the traditions and standards of the high office he occupies, but through inaction they enable him to personally profit from the presidency, promote policies that benefit his cronies and his class to the detriment of the majority of the American people, and serially attack the principles on which the country was founded — from freedom of religion to the separation of powers.

Recent events have taken this grim situation and turned it dire. We now know that Donald Trump chose a man as his top national security advisor whom the prior president had both fired and warned him against hiring. We know that Trump’s White House failed to vet this man who would be entrusted with some of America’s most sensitive secrets and decisions. We know they did not get him the security clearances his position required, yet allowed him to operate freely in that position. We know that this man, Gen. Michael Flynn, took significant cash payments from an enemy, Russia, and from a nominal ally with which we have precarious relations, Turkey. We know Flynn failed to disclose those payments in violation of the law.

Indeed, we know that the only thing likely to keep Flynn from serving time for felonies is if he strikes a bargain with the prosecutors who are now investigating his behavior. As a consequence of revelations associated with those investigations, we know that Flynn, had on-going contact with Russians officials during the campaign and, after he was named national security advisor, had conversations with the Russian ambassador about which he lied to the American people and, ostensibly, to the vice president of the United States. We know these conversations were likely illegal as well.

There’s more. It gets worse concluding with this:

America looks like a country it has never been. Trump is a laughingstock in the best of circumstances, a disgrace based on his known behavior to date, and a threat to global order and security with each action he takes. He discredits the office he holds and the government he leads.He discredits the office he holds and the government he leads.

But for every depredation or attack on our system by Trump and his team, for every act of complicity by the invertebrates who lead the GOP on Capitol Hill, there has been some portion of the U.S. government and system to counterbalance it. Judges have stayed bad executive orders. The FBI has investigated — personal career consequences for the investigators be damned.

The brazen firing of Comey is an escalation. If Trump is allowed to get away with this and appoint a lackey as chief investigator into his team’s alleged wrong-doing, the world will see the United States as a failing state, one that is turning its back on the core ideas on which it was founded — that no individual is above the law and that those in the government, at every level including the president, work for the people. Only if an independent prosecutor is appointed will America be seen as being the nation of laws it has long represented itself to be. Only if a thorough investigation takes place that includes an examination of Trump family ties in Russia (and elsewhere) and how these may have compromised the United States will the message be sent that America is the nation that has for so long been seen as an example to the world.

It will require a bipartisan commitment to truth and justice. Ultimately, and the sooner the better, it will require our system and people to reject Trump and those surrounding him — who have already done so much to disgrace the offices they hold undermine America’s standing in the world.

There’s little sign of that yet unfortunately…

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The fuming toddler

by digby

He’s worked himself up into a frenzy:

President Donald Trump weighed firing his FBI director for more than a week. When he finally pulled the trigger Tuesday afternoon, he didn’t call James Comey. He sent his longtime private security guard to deliver the termination letter in a manila folder to FBI headquarters.

He had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

Trump’s firing of the high-profile FBI director on the 110th day since taking office marked another sudden turn for an administration that has fired its acting attorney general, national security adviser and now its FBI director, who Trump had praised until recent weeks and even blew a kiss to during a January appearance.

The news stunned Comey, who saw his dismissal on TV while speaking inside the FBI office in Los Angeles. It startled all but the uppermost ring of White House advisers, who said grumbling about Comey hadn’t dominated their own morning senior staff meetings. Other top officials learned just before it happened and were unaware he was considering firing Comey. “Nobody really knew,” one senior White House official said. “Our phones all buzzed and people said, What?”

By ousting the FBI director investigating his campaign and associates, Trump may have added more fuel to the fire he is furiously trying to contain — and he was quickly criticized by a chorus of Republicans and Democrats. “The timing of this firing was very troubling,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican.

Trump had grown angry with the Russia investigation — particularly Comey admitting in front of the Senate that the FBI was investigating his campaign — and that the FBI director wouldn’t support his claims that President Barack Obama had tapped his phones in Trump Tower.

Bipartisan criticism of Comey had mounted since last summer after his lengthy statement outlining why he was closing the investigation into Clinton’s private email server.

But the fallout seemed to take the White House by surprise. Trump made a round of calls around 5 p.m., asking for support from senators. White House officials believed it would be a “win-win” because Republicans and Democrats alike have problems with the FBI director, one person briefed on their deliberations said.

Instead, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told him he was making a big mistake — and Trump seemed “taken aback,” according to a person familiar with the call.

By Tuesday evening, the president was watching the coverage of his decision and frustrated no one was on TV defending him, a White House official said. He wanted surrogates out there beating the drum.

Instead, advisers were attacking each other for not realizing the gravity of the situation as events blew up. “How are you not defending your position for three solid hours on TV?” the White House aide said.

Two White House officials said there was little communications strategy in handling the firing, and that staffers were given talking points late Tuesday for hastily arranged media appearances. Aides soon circulated previous quotes from Schumer hitting Comey. After Schumer called for a special prosecutor, the White House huddled in press secretary Sean Spicer’s office to devise a strategy and sent “fresh faces” to TV, one White House official said.

By Tuesday night, aides were using TV appearances to spin the firing as a simple bureaucratic matter and call for an end to the investigation. “It’s time to move on,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary, said on Fox News.

In his letter dismissing Comey, Trump said the FBI director had given him three private assurances that he wasn’t under investigation. The White House declined to say when those conversations happened — or why Comey would volunteer such information. It is not the first time Trump has publicly commented on an ongoing investigation — typically a no-no for presidents. He said earlier this month that Comey had done Clinton a favor by letting her off easy.

Trump received letters from Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, calling for Comey’s dismissal, on Tuesday, a spokesman said. The president then decided to fire him based on the recommendations and moved quickly. The spokesman said Trump did not ask for the letters in advance, and that White House officials had no idea they were coming.

But several other people familiar with the events said Trump had talked about the firing for over a week, and the letters were written to give him rationale to fire Comey.

Oh, and he’s been talking to that loon Roger Stone who apparent;y encouraged him to fire Comey.

Stone is definitely under investigation by the FBI.

Did Trump jump the shark?


by digby

I wrote about the big story for Salon this morning:

I had already written about two thirds of a column about the Propublica scoop regarding FBI Director James Comey’smisstatements about Huma Abedin’s emails in his testimony before congress last week when the breaking news hit that President Trump had summarily fired him ostensibly because he had mishandled the Clinton email investigation. So much for that column. After everything Comey had done to help Trump, this was unexpected to say the least. You’d think the president would be more grateful.

Nobody saw it coming. Indeed, it turned out that Comey himself found out that he was fired when he was speaking to some FBI employees in Los Angeles when the news appeared on the TV behind him. He thought it was a joke. The letter firing Comey had not even been delivered to the FBI headquarters by Trump’s personal bodyguard Keith Schiller yet.

According to Dana Bash on CNN, the White House was completely surprised by the horrified reaction, having expected that they would be applauded by the Democrats because they cleverly used the Clinton case as their rationale. In fact, former Clinton campaign staffer Karen Finney said on All In with Chris Hayes, the Justice Department seems to have used Clinton campaign documents and quotes from newspaper op-eds, as the basis for their argument recommending Comey’s dismissal. Everyone who knows how the DOJ works says that slap-dash document is highly unusual.

Needless to say, this was a ludicrously lame tactic. However angry Democrats may have been at Comey’s interference during the election, and rightfully so, firing him in the middle of the Russian investigation was certainly not something they would ever applaud. If they thought this move would do anything but ratchet up the inquisition they are even more incompetent than we knew.

No one will ever believe that Donald Trump fired James Comey because he inappropriately discussed the Clinton case publicly during the campaign. Donald Trump made hay of Comey’s comments hundreds of times in his rallies. His convention was a slavering witch hunt based largely on the dark implications of Comey’s comments.

But when the FBI director dropped his stink bomb about the Huma Abedin emails on October 28th, this is what Trump said on the trail:

“It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. You know that. It took a lot of guts. “What he did, he brought back his reputation. He brought it back.”

After his inauguration he blew kisses at Comey in the White House and assured everyone of his unshakable faith in his integrity.

Recently, however, Trump has been angry with Comey all over again.

FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017

Trump himself made it clear that while they pretended to be concerned with Comey’s handling of the Clinton case, he was concerned with the Russian investigation as well. In the letter he sent to Comey he spilled the beans:

While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.

Unless there’s some other investigation we don’t know about, that comment referred to the Russian election.

If it’s true that Comey reassured him that he wasn’t under investigation, Trump would have been smarter to fire Comey for doing that since such a communication is an egregious violation of Justice Department rules.

It’s possible Trump mentioned these reassurances to place a superficial band-aid against charges that he fired someone who was investigating him personally. The public won’t buy that any more than they will buy the idea that he’s concerned about Comey’s “gratuitous” smearing of Clinton last July as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein charged in the memo on which Comey’s firing is allegedly based.

We don’t know why Trump changed his mind about James Comey and suddenly decided he had to go but it’s a fair assumption that he’s concerned about the Russia investigation. Yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee requested documents from the treasury department about the Trump team’s financial ties to Russia. And last night CNN reported that a Grand Jury had issued subpoenas to associates of Michael Flynn. This issue is obviously getting hotter by the minute.

The New York Times reported that “Senior White House and Justice Department officials had been working on building a case against Mr. Comey since at least last week” and that “Mr Sessions had been charged with coming up with reasons to fire him.” Sessions recused himself from the Trump-Russia investigations so they only alluded to that in Trump’s strange letter. But during his confirmation hearings Sessions also recused himself from the Clinton email case. Therefore, he should have had nothing at all to do with this event. And yet he did. This fact has not received much notice but one assumes he will be questioned about it at some point.

The Trump administration has done everything they could think of to derail this Russia investigation from firing Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and US Attorney Preet Bahraha to employing the hapless congressman Devin Nunes to distract the press with a three ring circus around Trump’s fantasy tweet that President Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. They got Republicans in congress to shriek about leaks and “un-masking” both of which they were perfectly fine with until now. They smeared Susan Rice and President Obama. Now this.

I do wonder if one of the reasons they fell upon the excuse that Comey mishandled the Clinton case was to give them a reason to re-open that case. The condemnation of Comey in the DOJ memo could easily be read as criticism that he failed to indict her if you wanted to see it that way.  Certainly, that’s what Trump has always thought. Considering the White House’s increasingly frantic efforts to sidetrack and mislead, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try to do it. The one thing his loyal fans would love more than anything else would be if he followed up on his promise to “lock her up.”

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“Every move they make keeps signalling ‘cover-up.’”
by Tom Sullivan

The Justice Department last night, as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. CNN learned of the subpoenas hours before President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Comey heard about his firing when word flashed over televisions in the FBI office in Los Angeles where he was speaking. He first laughed, thinking it was a prank. Nope.

Trump had sent his personal bodyguard, Keith Schiller, now director of Oval Office operations, to FBI headquarters to deliver the letter. In the letter, Trump wrote, “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to lead the Bureau.”

Even firing letters are propaganda. Trump and his campaign’s connections with Russia are under FBI investigation, and the firing, the New York Times reports, “raised the specter of political interference by a sitting president into an existing investigation by the nation’s leading law enforcement agency.”

The Times continues:

The officials said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, pushed for Mr. Comey’s dismissal. But many in Washington, including veteran F.B.I. officers, saw a carefully choreographed effort by the president to create a pretense for a takedown of the president’s F.B.I. tormentor.

To give the firing bipartisan cover, the memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recommending Comey be dismissed cited several past Department of Justice officials of both major parties who disapproved of Comey’s handing of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and his election season press conferences about the Clinton inquiry:

Donald Ayer, who served as Deputy Attorneys General under President HW Bush, along with former Justice Department officials, was “astonished and perplexed” by the decision to “break[] with longstanding practices followed by officials of both parties during past elections.” Ayer’s letter noted, “Perhaps most troubling… is the precedent set by this departure from the Department’s widely-respected, non-partisan traditions.”

We should reject the departure and return to the traditions.

Suddenly the Trump White House is following rules?

The Washington Post reports on the immediate blowback to the Comey firing:

“The decision by a President whose campaign associates are under investigation by the FBI for collusion with Russia to fire the man overseeing that investigation, upon the recommendation of an Attorney General who has recused himself from that investigation, raises profound questions about whether the White House is brazenly interfering in a criminal matter,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. The House committee is looking into Russian interference in the election.

Some Republicans were also concerned. “I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey’s termination,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also examining Russian meddling. “I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee.”

FBI director fired
POTUS investigated
Election hacked
Judges attacked
Media called fake news
Votes suppressed

This is how democracy dies— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) May 10, 2017

Those of a certain age remember the Nixon-era “Saturday Night Massacre.” On October 20, 1973, President Nixon fired independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the investigation into the Watergate break-in. Former Nixon White House counsel and Cox prosecution witness, John Dean, reflected on Trump’s firing Comey. He told the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer, “Every move they make keeps signalling ‘cover-up.’”

But amidst all the very serious punditry, I’ll throw this out as what is sure to be a far-fetched, alternate explanation. Trump (to corrupt Churchill) is a pathology, wrapped in an insecurity, inside an ego. He is a needy man-child whose boundless insecurity demands he always see himself as a winner and the alpha dog in every situation. And even without Kellyanne Conway’s help, he will bend reality itself to maintain that image of himself. Treating this episode as Watergate-esque gives Trump too much credit for being an ordinary corrupt politician who is “not a crook.” Simply observe one of his tweets from last night:

The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017

No normal, well-adjusted, mature adult writes like that. The investigative focus on Russia may simply gnaw at an ego that shows off executive orders for the camera like a kid displaying his latest finger painting to his mother.

Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum suggests Trump does not have to be guilty of anything nefarious to act this way:

Trump is impulsive and arrogant. His narcissistic ego needs to believe he won a great electoral victory by his own exertions, not that he was tipped into office by a lucky foreign espionage operation. He could well resent the search for truth, even without being particularly guilty of anything heinously bad.

But now Trump’s problems are our problems. Trump challenges Republicans in leadership to do their jobs and deal with, rather than kowtow to Trump the man-child:

The question has to be asked searchingly of the Republican members of Congress: Will you allow a president of your party to attack the integrity of the FBI? You impeached Bill Clinton for lying about sex. Will you now condone and protect a Republican administration lying about espionage?

Where are you? Who are you?

Wait, don’t answer that. If the fate of the republic depends on them alone, we may see, as the Washington Post’s motto suggests, democracy die in darkness.

They don’t like sharing their country

by digby

I don’t know about you but I’m shocked that the pussy grabbing anti-feminist, immigrant deporting, Muslim banning, law and order enforcing candidate won over a bunch of people who are economically comfortable but have “cultural anxiety:”

In the wake of Trump’s surprise win, some journalists, scholars, and political strategists argued that economic anxiety drove these Americans to Trump. But new analysis of post-election survey data conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic found something different: Evidence suggests financially troubled voters in the white working class were more likely to prefer Clinton over Trump. Besides partisan affiliation, it was cultural anxiety—feeling like a stranger in America, supporting the deportation of immigrants, and hesitating about educational investment—that best predicted support for Trump.

This data adds to the public’s mosaic-like understanding of the 2016 election. It suggests Trump’s most powerful message, at least among some Americans, was about defending the country’s putative culture. Because this message seems to have resonated so deeply with voters, Trump’s policies, speeches, and eventual reelection may depend on their perception of how well he fulfills it.

Actually, I don’t think this is the case. As the NY Times Thomas Edsell wrote last week, these people don’t expect him to fulfill anything. They just want him to articulate their hate. And he is going to do that.

Over the past 50 years, overarching and underlying conflicts about morality, family, autonomy, religious conviction, fairness and even patriotism have been forced into two relatively weak vessels, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The political system is not equipped to resolve these social and cultural conflicts, which produce a gamut of emotions, often outside our conscious awareness. Threatening issues — conflicts over race, immigration, sexuality and many other questions that cut to the core of how we see ourselves and the people around us — cannot be contained in ordinary political speech, even as these issues dominate our political decision-making.

It is Trump’s willingness to violate the boundaries of conventional discourse that has granted him immunity to mainstream criticism. Pretty much everything he does that goes overboard helps him. He is given a free hand by those who feel in their gut that he is fighting their fight — that he is their leader and their defender. As the enemy of their enemies, President Trump is their friend.

Of course it was “culture.”

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Nasty boys and girls

by digby

Our embarrassing toddler in chief handing out electoral maps of his win to reporters last week

From Yahoo News Via Daily Kos

President Trump’s upset November victory never seems to be far from the White House’s mind.

On Tuesday, Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media, celebrated the six-month anniversary of the election by tweeting a screen grab of the late night phone call in which Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called to concede to Republican candidate Donald Trump. Scavino promised to share video of the conversation, which he said came via a Nov. 9 phone call at 2:30 a.m. from longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin to Trump’s then-campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway.

Nir writes: “This is not normal behavior. This should not be treated as normal behavior. This is just pure sickness, masquerading as presidency.”

Yahoo reported:

In a message to Yahoo News, Conway said she and Abedin connected before Clinton offered “congratulations AND concession” to Trump. But Conway rejected the notion that Trump’s team believes people need to be reminded of the election results.

“Aren’t you asking the wrong POTUS candidate/staff/movement?” Conway wrote.

Trump has previously used his own Twitter stream to accuse his political opponents of failing to accept defeat in the election. “The election is over!” Trump exclaimed last month. But he has also continued to sling Twitter barbs at Clinton and passed out maps of his election win during a recent Reuters interview.

A spokesperson for Clinton did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

And look at this. A new “alt-truth” site from the Trump team. They’re just going for it:

Scavino’s tweet isn’t the Trump team’s only promise to share behind-the-scenes footage. On Tuesday, Trump’s campaign website was relaunched. In a press release, Trump’s campaign organization said the site would offer a “unique, behind the scenes view.” The announcement framed the website as a new salvo in Trump’s ongoing feud with the press.

“Providing a unique experience for online visitors, the website will include: facts the mainstream media is hiding about policy positions and actions by President Trump; compelling, never-before-seen photos from recent campaign rallies and events featuring President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence; news announcements from Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; and other materials that you won’t find anywhere else in the media,” the statement said.

Just a reminder people. This is very, very abnormal. The most powerful nation on earth is being run by a group of junior high school mean girls. And it starts at the top. It’s horrifying.

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