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Month: July 2017

Well, that’s that

Well, that’s that

by digby

Trump cleared the whole thing up:

“I said, did you do it? And he said no, I did not. Absolutely not. I then asked him a second time in a totally different way. He said absolutely not,” Trump said.

I think we can put this whole thing to bed now, don’t you? Trump asked him twice, in two different ways  (to fool him, dontcha know) and he said absolutely not.

So can we move on to wall building and torturing like he promised?

Update: He also said that Putin would have preferred Hillary Clinton to win because he wants a strong military and fracking.

That’s not what he said at the time …


Oct. 17, 2016:
Trump tells radio host Michael Savage that he might meet with Putin prior to the start of his administration. 

“I think I could see myself meeting with Putin and meeting with Russia prior to the start of the administration,” he said. “I think it would be wonderful.” 

In the interview, he also said that Clinton shouldn’t talk “so tough” on Russia, saying “She talks tough with Russia. She shouldn’t be talking so tough. Frankly, if we got along with Russia and knocked out ISIS, that would be a good thing, not a bad thing.”

Oct. 27, 2016 

Trump says at a rally in Ohio that it was not smart of Clinton to speak “very badly of Putin.”

And why on earth wouldn’t Putin prefer this guy:

Dec. 18, 2015 

Trump said on Morning Joe that Putin was a better leader than Obama, and dismissed Joe Scarborough’s allegations that the Russian president “kills journalists that don’t agree with him.” 

“He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” Trump said. 

He added: “I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, so you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, a lot of killing going on, a lot of stupidity.”

Dec. 20, 2015 

In an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Trump defends against allegations Putin has ordered the killings of journalists and dissidents. 

“As far as the reporters are concerned — as far as the reporters are concerned, obviously I don’t want that to happen. I think it’s terrible — horrible. But, in all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t’ seen that. I don’t know that he has. Have you been able to prove that? Do you know the names of the reporters that he’s killed? Because I’ve been — you know, you’ve been hearing this, but I haven’t seen the name. Now, I think it would be despicable if that took place, but I haven’t’ seen any evidence that he killed anybody in terms of reporters.”

Dec. 21, 2015 

Trump tells Iowa radio host Simon Conway, “I’ve always had a good instinct about Putin. I just feel that that’s a guy—and I can analyze people and you’re not always right, and it could be that I won’t like him. But I’ve always had a good feeling about him from the standpoint.”

Dec. 30, 2015
 

Trump says at an event in South Carolina that Putin says he’s “brilliant.” And attacks his opponents, saying, “they want me to refute his statement.”

Jan. 26, 2016 

In an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, Trump discusses the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian security agent, and the 2016 findings of a British inquiry that Putin “probably approved” his poisoning.

“Have they found him guilty?” Trump said. “I don’t think they’ve found him guilty.”

“If he did it, fine. But I don’t know that he did it. You know, people are saying they think it was him, it might have been him, it could have been him. But Maria, in all fairness to Putin—I don’t know. You know, and I’m not saying this because he says, ‘Trump is brilliant and leading everybody’ —the fact is that, you know, he hasn’t been convicted of anything.”

Feb. 15, 2016 

Trump says at a news conference he’d be a better negotiator with Putin than his rivals.

“You want to make a good deal for the country, you want to deal with Russia – and there’s nothing wrong with not fighting everybody, having Russia where we have a good relationship as opposed to all the stupidity that’s taken place.”

Trump finally found his oligarch bestie

Trump finally found his oligarch bestie

by digby

David Corn lays out the plot that seems to be emerging from muck:

Here’s a point missing in much of the coverage of Donald Trump Jr.’s bombshell emails: If they are an accurate depiction of events, these messages show there was a conspiracy between the Putin regime and the Trump camp that was exceedingly simple and compact and quite easy to implement. The apparent plot—yes, it was a secret plot—involved a small number of people: three of Donald Trump’s closest advisers, a Trump business partner (and that man’s son), a Russian official close to Vladimir Putin, and two emissaries. Actually, none of this is surprising. Or complicated. You do not need Agent Mulder to get to the bottom of this.

Let’s start with Aras Agalarov. He is a billionaire developer in Russia in favor with Vladimir Putin, who in 2013 awarded him the Order of Honor for his construction work in Russia. Agalarov is also a business partner of Donald Trump. In 2013, he signed up with Trump to bring to Moscow the Miss Universe contest, which Trump co-owned at the time. That deal was brokered by Emin Agalarov, Aras’s son and a middling pop star, and Emin’s manager, a Brit named Rob Goldstone.

For years, Trump had tried to do hotel and condo projects in Moscow. All these endeavors had failed or fizzled. (Trump Vodka had flopped, too.) The Miss Universe event was his only successful venture there. It was good for the Agalarovs. The contest was held in Crocus City Hall, part of a large shopping and exhibition complex they own on the outskirts of Moscow, and they were able to raise their profile and promote their ritzy theater there. Emin, as part of the deal, got to perform two songs before a global audience, which he and Goldstone hoped would boost his career.

The event made at least $12 million for Trump’s Miss Universe Organization. Even better for Trump, the pageant forged a tight bond between him and Aras and Emin Agalarov. Trump appeared in a music video Emin released. The Trump Organization and the Agalarovs started working on a deal to bring a Trump tower to Moscow. In fact, as Yahoo News reports, Ivanka Trump traveled to Moscow shortly after the event to scout locations. Here is a photo Goldstone posted on his Facebook page of Ivanka meeting with Emin there:

And in the following years, there was steady contact between the Trumps and the Agalarovs—and Goldstone, too. Though no Moscow project materialized, there remained a relationship.

Come the campaign of 2016, it was no surprise that Emin and Aras Agalarov were pulling for their pal Donald. And it’s only natural they wanted to help.

According to emails released Tuesday by Trump Jr., on June 3, 2016—shortly after Trump had secured the Republican presidential nomination—Aras was in a meeting with Yury Chaika, the prosecutor general of Russia, who had been in the post since 2006. A few weeks earlier, Putin had recommended that Chaika serve another five-year term. Certainly, only a Putin-fancied official would be in this job. But this was a sign that Chaika remained in Putin’s good graces. (The previous year, a prominent Russian opposition activist had accused Chaika’s family of being involved in corruption and criminal activity.)

The Trump Jr. emails do not note how the meeting between Chaika and Aras Agalarov came about. But according to an email sent from Goldstone to Trump Jr., Chaika told Agalarov he could provide the Trump campaign “with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary” and that would be “very useful” for Donald Trump. This contact makes plenty of sense. If the Russian government wanted to help Trump win the presidency by passing his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, the natural go-between would be Aras Agalarov, who had been Trump’s business colleague. Agalarov could go straight to the source.

And apparently he did. According to the Trump Jr. emails, Aras Agalarov made the obvious play. He had Emin ask Goldstone to contact Trump Jr. Emin’s manager then emailed Donald Trump Jr. and told him about the Agalarov-Chaika meeting and added, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but it is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin.”

Nothing complex here. A Putin official seems to be collaborating with Trump’s business partners to get Trump negative material on Clinton.

Next, Trump Jr. seems to have a phone call with Emin, and a meeting is scheduled for a few days later in Trump tower where Trump Jr. will meet with what one email describes as a “Russian government attorney.”

Trump Jr. then widens the cabal by informing Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort about this operation, and they are added to the meeting. An email forwarded to them about the get-together has the subject heading: “Russia – Clinton – private and confidential.” On June 9, the meeting occurs.

It only took three days for this plot to zip from the discussion between Chaika and Aras Agalarov to the inner circle of Trump’s campaign. Trump Jr. says nothing came out of the conversation between the Trump advisers and the Russian lawyer, claiming she spoke only in vague and meaningless terms. But given that the president’s son has repeatedly dissembled about this episode, there is no telling if this description can be trusted. (The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has denied working on behalf of the Russian government or conveying negative information about Clinton.)

This is what ought to register: The scheme appears to have been put into play by a Putin regime official and a Putin-friendly oligarch who was Trump’s business partner in Russia—and Trump’s son, son-in-law, and campaign manager all joined in. (A pop singer, a Russian lawyer, and a talent manager all had supporting roles.) Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort were looking to collude with a foreign power to gain an advantage in the election—an allegation the Trump team has repeatedly and passionately denied.

There may be much more to all this. The Russian government may very well have been looking at Trump or a long time. He is, after all , an idiotic clown. Anyone with brains could see that he was a mark.

And there’s also plenty of suspicion falling on Kushner for entirely different reasons having to do with own family’s debts as well as his involvement with the Trump digital campaign which may have been involved with  targeting of damaging information provided by Russian hackers. All that may pan out to nothing but there are very live questions about all of it.

But the real estate oligarch/pop star connection is just the kind of obviously stupid relationship you’d expect from Trump, the low rent reality star who is now the leader of the free world. It’s perfect.

He’s going under

He’s going under

by digby


CNN reports on the dark night of Trumpie’s soul:

Paris (CNN)If Washington is currently a dark place for President Donald Trump, a stop in the City of Light may prove well-timed.

“The White House is paralyzed,” a top Republican close to the West Wing told CNN ahead of Trump’s departure to Paris, a withering assessment of an administration whose goals of passing a health care bill, overhauling the tax code and defeating ISIS have been complicated once again.

“Another week lost,” is how one official described the legislative timeline for Trump and Republicans, an acknowledgment that the latest swirl of Russia developments complicate an already imperiled agenda.

Escaping what advisers, aides, and other Republicans describe as a White House rattled by Russia bombshells, Trump will find himself here instead embraced by Gallic splendor. He accepted an invitation from the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, to be on hand for Bastille Day, the national holiday that commemorates the start of the French Revolution.

The Paris trip is at least a momentary respite from his current predicament in the United States: embattled against accusations prompted by his oldest son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer and surrounded by lawyers and aides urging him to remain quiet. 

Back home, Trump faces a deepening crisis over that meeting, which has jolted the White House and moved the Russian meddling controversy directly into Trump’s inner circle.

The President approached the news about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting through the same lens he approaches everything with the word Russia in it, according to another person who has spoken with him: as an effort by his enemies and the media to discredit him and his presidency.

Privately, Trump has expressed dismay that Trump Jr. agreed to meet with the Russian lawyer, according to a Republican source, who said the President believes it wasn’t a smart move — but also that his son did not run afoul of the law.

Trump, the Republican source said, is annoyed that the narrative surrounding the meeting has become a distraction from what he and his advisers saw as a successful overseas trip last week. 

Ahead of his departure for Paris, Trump spent much of his time watching television and huddled with top advisers, according to two administration officials. He barely left the Oval Office. And his mood ranged from furious to frustrated, but also defiant.

A day earlier, he received some degree of solace during a visit from evangelical leaders. A photo from the session inside the Oval Office showed a huddle forming around the entrenched President, hands resting on his shoulders as his head bows in prayer.

Outside the room in the West Wing hallways, staffers remain in fighting mood, according to several people speaking on condition of anonymity, describing the mindset among Trump’s aides. Many view the episode surrounding Trump Jr. — who remains widely popular among ex-campaign staffers — as blatantly unfair, even if they concede his decision-making on the matter appeared questionable.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus — who himself has been the subject of speculation over his own standing with the President — has been telling staffers to “tune out the noise,” according to a person familiar with his conversations. He’s urged underlings to keep their heads down and stay focused on their work.

But the prospects of continuing the administration’s work apace became far more difficult Tuesday morning when the email bombshell — which showed Trump Jr. reacting enthusiastically to news the Russian government may have had dirt on Hillary Clinton — hit the West Wing with very little warning.

It’s also triggered another round of speculation about aides’ standing in the White House. Questions about the origin of the leaks have rippled through Washington, with the suggestion that backstabbing aides may be looking to take down their rivals. 

Little has emerged about how, specifically, The New York Times learned about the damaging emails. But in a White House already gripped with internal battles, the revelations only fueled the impression of a divided West Wing.

One source familiar with the matter said tensions have emerged between some members of the President’s senior staff and Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s longtime lawyer who has been retained to handle the Russia matter.

When Trump departs for Paris late Wednesday, he’ll take along with him chief of staff Priebus, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, and his homeland security adviser Tom Bossert. But two of the most prominent faces of his trips abroad — senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner — will remain stateside. 

Some inside the administration concede the President’s staff is long due for a shakeup, but that constant efforts to rebut the Russia allegations have made executing such a decision difficult.

Priebus, one administration official said, faces “fresh, new hell” daily. And other staffers simply seem too inexperienced to properly execute a presidential agenda, the official said.

Trump pushed back on reports of disarray in his White House on Wednesday, writing on Twitter: “The W.H. is functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V.”

For months, Republicans close to the White House have been wringing their hands about Trump’s reliance on his family members — political neophytes — for everything from political advice to domestic policy to international affairs.

A number of those officials warned that the combination of power and naïveté was sure to get Trump’s family members in trouble. But even these sources expressed surprise about the damaging nature of the meeting between Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer.

“They’re in deep, deep s— and they don’t know it,” one Republican said of the Trump White House.

This Republican predicted the situation will worsen in the near future. Now that Trump’s family members have all lawyered up, “they’re past the point of coordination,” and each person’s lawyer will be looking to make a move that will cast their client in a positive light.

“Now you’re into the phase that they’re starting to turn on each other,” the source said.

But Trump is still more inclined to trust his family members than anyone else on staff.

“Trump has not surrounded himself with good, strong, smart political operatives,” said one source close to the White House. As for the kids and Kushner, “these guys have gone from never playing the game to walking into the major leagues, and they make mistakes all the time,” the Republican source said.

Trump himself has remained out of sight since returning late Saturday from Hamburg, where he attended a high-stakes G20 summit and met with several foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The public invisibility is exceedingly rare for a new president. Officials described the absence as long-planned, however, after Trump complained he wasn’t given any downtime following his first foreign trip in May.

“The last time we didn’t plan any (down)-time and he wasn’t happy about it,” one official said.

Trump has been advised by his lawyers and White House advisers not to tweet about the matter involving his son, though he did emerge on Twitter Wednesday in a defiant mood.

“My son Donald did a good job last night. He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history,” Trump wrote. “Sad!”

Having accepted an invitation from his French counterpart, Macron, to view the city’s Bastille Day celebrations, Trump will decamp from controversy-clouded Washington for a more laudatory environment in Paris, where a military parade and haute dining await.

He’ll have to bring his own ketchup.

I don’t know why they thought his G20 trip was a success — it was anything but — however, I suppose if Hannity says so it must be true.

Trump’s tweets are almost poignant. If he weren’t such a roaring psychopath I might even feel sorry for him. Here he is, stuck in this job for which he has absolutely no talent, qualifications or temperamet, beyond over his head — drowning in quicksand. And because he thought this was some kind of performance job like The Apprentice, he pulled his family in with him and they’re going down too.

Ivanka and Jared will probably quit, decide to go back to New York and spend more time with their money. But Jared won’t be off the hook. He could end up like his daddy. I’d imagine Chris Christie will celebrate with an Orange Julius if it happens.

At this point, paralysis is the best we can hope for. If they can’t do anything at least it delays and obstructs some of their toxic agenda. Not all, of course. They are doing plenty of irreversible harm. But the White House being embroiled in what looks like it might be the worst political scandal in American history will inevitably erode GOP power and

There’s even more at the link about what to expect in Paris.

It’s Shakespearean.

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They’ll kill their own voters if it means they can get their tax cuts

They’ll kill their own voters if it means they can get their tax cuts

by digby

This from the New York Times Upshot shows how the states will be impacted by the Senate health care bill. The darker the color the more uninsured by 2022.

The states that expanded medicaid will be hit hardest of course. That’s 14 million people left with nothing right there.

And then there are the cuts to the subsidies for middle and working class Americans who have to buy insurance through the private market:

And yes, as you can see, they are happy to screw their own constituents in order to get the Holy Grail of permanent tax cuts.

It’s evil.

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Eric Prince for Viceroy

Eric Prince for Viceroy

by digby

h/t The Intercept

I wrote about the latest atrocity from Steven Bannon for Salon this morning. Yes, he’s back. And he’s as nutso as ever:

So according to Donald Trump Jr.’s own emails it looks like he, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort knowingly met with a woman said to be representing the Russian government who was peddling derogatory information about Hillary Clinton. Whether that constitutes a crime is still unknown, but it proves that the Trump campaign was at best dumb as rocks, and at worst willing to collude with a foreign government to win an election in return for God knows what.

That story has sent an electric shock through Washington with tales of a White House in chaos and a Shakespearean family drama unfolding before our eyes. The president has uncharacteristically withdrawn from public sight as his son and son-in-law become the central players in the scandal with speculation running rampant about who is leaking the information and why.

Ever since President Trump’s inauguration there has been a tremendous amount of palace intrigue with factions loyal to Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon fighting for influence alongside whichever policy advisers and cabinet officials happen to be relevant that particular week. The Russia scandal has implicated Kushner in ways that make him especially vulnerable, however, and Bannon appears to be filling the vacuum.

According New York Magazine’s Joshua Green, who has been following Bannon for years and has a new book coming out on the subject called “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency,” Bannon is fully back in the fold after a few shaky months and he’s advising Trump to fight and win by any means necessary. Green reports that the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, the recent moves on immigration and Trump’s Warsaw speech are all signs that Bannon’s influence is once again on the rise. He notes that Bannon, so far, is personally untouched by the Russia scandal:

Bannon’s feud with Kushner has quieted down. And so far, while at least ten White House officials and former aides, including Kushner, have retained lawyers in the special counsel’s probe, distancing themselves from Trump, Bannon is not among them. 

Instead, he’s back in the bunker alongside a boss who is often angry, always under fire, and, on the matter of Russia, increasingly isolated from all but a handful of advisers and family members.

Green calls Bannon “Trump’s indispensable henchman, the man he turns to when everything’s going to hell,” and says he is in charge of Trump’s “war room.” That has largely been concentrated on assassinating the character of Robert Mueller, which Bannon evidently sees as the fight’s most important priority.

In a startling story that got overlooked this week amid all the Don Jr. email excitement, the New York Times reported that Bannon and Kushner have been dabbling in real war planning as well:

Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, have developed proposals to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan at the behest of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law, according to people briefed on the conversations. On Saturday morning, Mr. Bannon sought out Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon to try to get a hearing for their ideas, an American official said.

I wrote about Prince’s relationship with Trump a few months ago. They’re close enough that Prince was with Trump and the family on election night. Prince has also been implicated in the Russian scandal, according to the Washington Post, having arranged a secret meeting in the Seychelles Islands with an emissary from Vladimir Putin to set up a back channel between the two presidents. Prince is also currently under investigation by the Justice Department and other federal agencies for money laundering and attempts to broker military services to foreign governments. His history of running a criminal operation in Iraq is well known, but he seems to have landed on his feet. It’s easy to see why Trump has such a high regard for him. He’s almost like family.

Prince wrote about his plan in the Wall Street Journal in May, suggesting that the president appoint a “viceroy” for Afghanistan, using the colonial model of the East India Company to illustrate his idea. Salon’s Matthew Pulver explained how Prince planned to bring this idea up to date:

The British East India Company was not simply a mercenary army like his Blackwater but an armed corporation that colonized like a state power. It was not merely a government contractor like Blackwater but an autonomous military and administrative entity sharing the worst aspects of both the corporation and the imperial state. So, Prince’s first innovation is to do away with civilian-military control administered by the Department of Defense and overseen by civilian, elected leadership, as is currently in place, and replace that apparatus with an armed corporation.

The second innovation will be to use cheap local labor paid for by resource extraction. Pulver wrote:

“There’s a trillion dollars in value in the ground: mining, minerals, and another trillion in oil and gas,” Prince says of Afghanistan. This would provide the revenue stream to replace government contracts. Prince’s firm would be self-funded, self-reliant, and thus autonomous to a degree more similar to a nation-state than a military contractor like Blackwater serving under a defense department.

I have long believed that the notion Trump is an isolationist is a grave misunderstanding. He’s a crude imperialist, who believes we should “take the oil” because “to the victors belong the spoils.” Lately, it’s become less clear that Bannon’s “nationalism” is aligned with America rather than some vague (and racist) notion of “the West.” It looks more and more as if Trump’s loyalties lie wherever the Trump Organization has a real estate or licensing deal. Prince’s plan sounds like it’s a perfect fit for both of them.

Thankfully, according to the New York Times, Secretary Mattis “listened politely” but told Bannon that he had no intention of including this daft idea into the review of Afghanistan policy that he and national security adviser H.R. McMaster are leading. Let’s just hope that Bannon and Trump are now so immersed in their Russia scandal “war” plans that they lose interest in privatizing a real one.

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“Nobody could be so foolish” except … by @BloggersRUs

“Nobody could be so foolish” except …
by Tom Sullivan

The “failing New York Times,” as Donald Trump prefers to call it, certainly seems to be getting the better of his failing administration this week.

The Times Editorial Board this morning summarizes where we are after yesterday’s events in two paragraphs:

All along, the truth was right there in the emails — Donald Trump Jr.’s emails, that is, which he released publicly on Twitter Tuesday morning after learning that The New York Times was about to publish their contents.

In language so blunt and obvious it would make a Hollywood screenwriter blush, the emails confirm what the president, his son and others have denied repeatedly for more than a year: that top members of the Trump campaign met with representatives of the Russian government in the expectation of help in damaging Hillary Clinton and getting Donald Trump elected.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Sunday had called the meeting a “nothing burger.”

Now This provides a quick Twitter recap of just some of the other denials going back to July 2016:

If there were a jury impaneled to rule on the evidence so far, it would still be out. While some opponents are tossing around the T-word loosely to describe the Trump campaign’s pursuit of Russian oppo-research, it is unclear what laws clearly have been broken. Dahlia Lithwick polled several experts for Slate:

To the extent there is a credible criminal claim to be made against Trump Jr., it’s likely under campaign finance law. As Fordham University School of Law’s Jed Shugerman lays out, 52 U.S. Code Section 30121 provides that:

It shall be unlawful for—

(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—

(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election …

(2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) … from a foreign national.

This law regarding “contributions and donations by foreign nationals” bars candidates and their associates from “soliciting,” accepting, or receiving anything of value that would benefit their campaign from any foreigners. According to most of the folks I queried, it now appears the elements for a criminal violation of this statute have been met.

But that is still somewhat thin. Stanford Law School’s Robert Weisberg dissented on whether opposition research of unknown quality and quantity constitutes a “thing of value.” Nevertheless, Lithwick writes, “As ‘nothing burgers’ go, this one looks like a whopper.”

Called to weigh in on the legal issues raised by the email, Carlton Larson from the UC Davis School of Law told NPR this morning that the Trump email, “was so extraordinary, I thought, this is probably fake because nobody could be so foolish as to respond to that email and go to the meeting.” Nobody except Donald Trump Jr. And Jared Kushner. And Paul Manafort.

“They aren’t rookie mistakes. This is a team that never should have taken the field,” writes the Times’ Dana Milbank.

The Trump administration has fallen into self-parody of the sort Andy Borowitz lampooned back in March:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a fiercely defiant statement on Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, denied that any member of the White House staff has ever worked “in any way, shape, or form” for the benefit of the United States.

[…]

“At no time during the transition or afterward did any member of the Trump team have meetings, conversations, or any other contacts that furthered the interests of the United States of America,” Spicer said. “In the thousands of communications that took place, the United States never came up even once.”

Describing the Trump administration as “a writhing ball of snakes pretending to be a government,” Charlie Pierce yesterday put the situation bluntly:

The government of the United States is a shambles. An incompetent administration headed by an unqualified buffoon is now descending into criminal comedy and maladroit backstabbing. It is an administration that not only self-destructs, but glories in the process. There seems to be no end to it, and no desire to end it by the people who actually have the power to do so. That, in itself, seems curious, and it probably should remind us all that Paul Ryan’s Super PAC was hip-deep in the borscht itself. Ryan, who really is the person best situated to close the circus down, seems to be afflicted with one of his periodic bouts of invisibility, poor lad.

Meanwhile — and don’t lose sight of this — at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, by postponing the start of the August recess Sen. Mitch McConnell is still trying desperately trying to salvage a health care bill that will throw millions of Americans off their health insurance. At Daily Kos, Joan McCarter wants to know what I want to know: What did Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell know about Trump/Russia collusion and when did they know it?

Here’s what CIA chief John Brennan told then Democratic leader Sen. Harry Reid in a private, classified briefing: “Russia’s hackings appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election,” and that “unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election.” It’s too incredible to believe that House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not get that same briefing, did not know that the CIA had solid enough intelligence that the Russians could possibly be in the Trump campaign, trying to influence the outcome of the election.

In September, intelligence officials had a secret meeting with the Gang of 12—including the House and Senate leaders and the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers’ committees on intelligence and homeland security. That meeting was intended to get leadership behind a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” publicly condemning Russia for interference.

Who stood in the way? “McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.”

“Republicans are failing at governance. And they know it,” Carl Hulse writes about the delayed recess, also in the “failing New York Times.”

As Mr. Spock once said to Captain Kirk, “Your logic was impeccable, Captain. We are in grave danger.”

Shameless

Shameless

by digby

I guess they feel the character of the man doesn’t matter as long as they achieve their political goals.

Someone explain to me again why I have to take their moralizing seriously because it’s not clear to me.

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QOTD: DJT

QOTD: DJT

by digby

The day after Junior met with a Russian emmisary he believed was giving him dirt on Hillary Clinton, his father announced that he would give a speech about what a bad president Clinton would be. He had to delay it because of the Orlando massacre but when he did, it contained this passage:


Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted.

While we may not know what is in those deleted emails, our enemies probably do.

So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be President of the United States.

This fact alone disqualifies her from the Presidency.

We can’t hand over our government to someone whose deepest, darkest secrets may be in the hands of our enemies.

If anyone thinks that Jr didn’t rush to daddy to tell him about the meeting, probably with Jared and Manafort in tow, they are being naive.

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Crooked Hillary and the Kenyan Usurper were way worse!

Crooked Hillary and the Kenyan Usurper were way worse!

by digby

This from Axios would be funny if it wasn’t so scary:

The general view of the Donald Trump Jr. email bombshell, according to sources within and close to the White House: no crime, all perception. They know it was politically awful, but have decided there was no real crime.

Their main areas of focus:

1) Who leaked this? Who is the mole?

2) How do we deal with this?

On the leaker:

Many of our White House sources are playing amateur detective, some with whackier theories than others, and some of which turn on people within the White House. Suspicion spread between people who worked in campaign and in White House, and while no one we’ve spoken to has any evidence to support their theories, it’s not stopping them from speculating.

It’s creating a very tense environment, and a number of administration officials can’t believe the level of foolishness required for Don Jr. to not only do this but to have such a conversation over email.

There’s a lot of internal anger over who gave this information to the NYT, which cited three people with knowledge of the emails in its report last night.

On the pushback:


There’s an emerging strategy to turn this back around on the Democrats.

An extreme example of this approach is Roger Stone, who texted Axios: “The president can turn the tables and dominate the dialogue by ordering the indictment of [James] Clapper, [John] Brennan, [Susan] Rice and [former president Barack] Obama for the wholesale unconstitutional surveillance of Americans… I would seriously arrest [and] perp walk every one of these criminals, making as big a show of it as possible.”

Although Stone is a longtime confidant of Trump, this in no way reflects the strategy preferred by current White House staffers. 
With that said, there are already internal conversations about turning this into a conversation about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and the way they handled sensitive intelligence.

You can already see this emerging on Fox. And they seem very excited by it.

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