Month: November 2017

Huckleberry Graham slaps himself in the faceby digby

He’s on a mission to try to be Trump’s best friend, I would guess because he thinks he’s so special he can guide him to do what he wants him to do.

Republicans' mind-blowing hypocrisy in their attempt to attack the media, everyone: pic.twitter.com/EKfXQGUeiu— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) November 30, 2017

Newsflash, Huck. Trump thinks you’re a fey, effete loser. Don’t kid yourself. Go ahead and flatter him. He loves it. But he doesn’t hear anything else you say.

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“States’ Rights” neo-confederates show their stripes

It was always obvious that the confederate “States’ Rights” fetish was just an excuse to discriminate against black people. We knew that. And there was nobody who was more of a staunch defender of states’ rights than Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.
Now that he has the federal government at his disposal to enforce his own beliefs, he sees things differently:

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He pushed the wrong buttonby digby

Trump really upset Britain yesterday with his tweeting out of “Britain First” neo-fascist videos. Number 10 Downing St issued a statement saying that he should not have done it and Trump issued a nasty retort to Prime Minister Teresa May last night:

.@Theresa_May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2017

That tweet was originally aimed at a Teresa May who had 6 followers instead of the UK Prime Minister. Someone later went back and changed it.

The “other” Teresa May has been inundated with inquiries in the wake of this. She told the press:

“It’s amazing to think that the world’s most powerful man managed to press the wrong button,” she said, adding, “I’m just glad he was not contacting me to say he was going to war with North Korea.”

So are we all. But it just goes to show how easy it would be for him to do it.

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I wonder if he had his fly open during the interviewby digby

It burns me up to go back and watch these recently exposed misogynist harassers condescending, disdainful interviews with Hillary Clinton during the general election last year. Here’s Charlie Rose brow-beating her over those fucking emails in the summer of 2016:

In an interview with “CBS This Morning” co-host Charlie Rose, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton addressed perceptions of her trustworthiness and her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

While the FBI recommended no charges be brought against Clinton after their investigation into the scandal, a recent CBS News/New York Times poll shows 67 percent of registered voters do not find Clinton “honest and trustworthy.”

“Do you think the email crisis contributed to the question of trust?” Rose asked Clinton Monday.

“Well, I have said that I am very sorry about it, that I made a mistake. It was certainly not a choice I would do again,” Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton denies careless handling of classified material
“I want to hear you out on this. You’ve said, ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I made a mistake.’ ‘It was the wrong thing to do,'” Rose said.

“I have said that. Yes,” Clinton said.

Clinton: Donald Trump is dangerous
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Clinton: Donald Trump is dangerous
“And some say, what were you thinking about the national security risk when you made this decision? … And it hasn’t been determined that there was no hacking,” Rose said.

“Well, there is no evidence of it,” Clinton said.

“But some would suggest that that’s the reason that they were very good at it, ’cause there’s no evidence of it, and that you exposed–” Rose said.

“Charlie, there is no evidence of that,” Clinton said.

“But Comey, the director of the FBI, had said, you know, ‘But we don’t know,'” Rose said.

“No, that’s not what he said,” Clinton said.

“‘Can’t rule it out,’ he said,” Rose said.

“Well, but you can’t rule it in either. And there is no evidence. So we could go back and forth on this,” Clinton said. “I go where the evidence leads, and there is no evidence.”

“Let me go to what he said. He said, ‘careless,'” Rose pointed out.

Hillary Clinton on search for running mate
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Hillary Clinton on search for running mate
“Well, I would hope that you, like many others, would also look at what he said when he testified before Congress. Because when he did, he clarified much of what he had said in his press conference,” Clinton said. “And I appreciated that.”

“But he said it was sloppy,” Rose said.

“No, he did not,” Clinton said.

“Correct me if I’m wrong. … Someone said, ‘What’s the definition of careless?’ And he said, ‘Real sloppiness,'” Rose said.

“Well, let me say this: There were three at– probably at least 300 people on those emails, the vast majority of whom are experienced professionals in handling sensitive material. … And I have no reason to have second-guessed their decision to send or forward me information,” Clinton said. “Do I wish I hadn’t done it? Of course. Was it a mistake? Yes.”

“Was it wrong?” Rose asked.

“Well, it was wrong because — look at what it has generated,” Clinton said.

“But was it careless?” Rose asked.

“Well, I think you would have to say 300 people who communicated with me on email are among the most careful people I’ve ever had the privilege of working with,” Clinton said.

“Do you think it contributed and became a controversy because it fed trust issues?” Rose asked.

“Well, I’m sure it didn’t help. Yes, I am sure it didn’t help,” Clinton said. “But I’ll tell you this, I am the last person you will ever have to worry about, ever — not being 100 percent as specific and precise as I can be so that nobody ever raises any questions like that ever again.”

Sanctimonious interrogations about her trustworthiness! From Charlie Rose! It makes me see red.

Look at his body language. What a pompous, supercilious ass.

I got this link through this piece talking about how these men shaped the presidential race from Amanda Marcotte at Salon.

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The enablers feeding the megalomaniaby digby

So John McCain says he all in on the tax plan. That’s probably that. But he and Corker and the others who have concerns about Trump either aren’t thinking this through or are even more craven than the rest of these craven wingnuts.
In my piece for Salon this morning I wrote about the fact that the Republican congress feels compelled to deliver Trump a win because their base is down the rabbit hole with Trump and they figure they have to join them. But I don’t think these people have fully grasped what it will mean to give Trump this big win.

Here’s a look at it:

Exhausted by the Trump presidency? Brace yourself: White House officials expect Trump to be even more outrageous and cocksure in coming months.

What we’re hearing: Officials tell us Trump seems more self-assured, more prone to confidently indulging wild conspiracies and fantasies, more quick-triggered to fight than he was during the Wild West of the first 100 days in office.

Imagine Trump if he signs a huge tax cut into law, which seems likely, amid soaring stocks and rising economic growth.

Imagine if Roy Moore wins in Alabama, which seems likely, too. It surely won’t humble Trump — or hem him in.
He’s like the Incredible Hulk, after the media and Mueller made him mad.We just witnessed the most unthinkable 96 hours of Trump’s reign:

He called for a probe of the chairman of NBC News, a boycott of CNN, global skepticism of CNN International, and a public contest to crown the king of Fake News.

He told friends that the “Access Hollywood” tape may have been doctored, and that former President Obama may have been born abroad.
He re-tweeted conspiracy theorists.

He unapologetically circulated videos aimed at demeaning an entire religion, Islam. He sent his press secretary out to argue it doesn’t matter if the tapes are fake, because the threat is real.

Be smart: Elected Republicans, at least in public, seem fine with it all. They chuckle and say it’s simply Trump being Trump. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and his staff seem fine with, or at least resigned to, this reality. No one who matters is doing anything but egging him on.

Case in point: Amid all of this, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) calls Trump “one of the best presidents I’ve served under.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) gushed that he’s never seen Trump in finer form than digging into the tax bill this week.

Update via Crooks and Liars:

Joe Scarborough needs to talk to his pals in the GOP about these concerns and ask them if it’s really a good idea to feed his megalomania with this grotesque tax cut:

“The problem, Mika, is that we are not fine in this country,” Scarborough said.

“I said America will be strong. We will survive this. But right now, at this particular moment — and we will get to this in a moment with Richard Haas, we are headed towards a nuclear showdown, most insiders say it matches everything we’ve heard from inside the administration, we are closer to war on the Korean peninsula that most Americans know, we said this months ago, we will have a ground war, they’ve believed that inside the White House for a very long time.

“Yet, he seems completely detached from reality. We had a New York Times and Washington Post piece saying so a couple of days ago: if this is not what the 25th Amendment was drafted for… I would like the cabinet members to serve America. You know you don’t serve Donald J. Trump, scam developer, scam, you know, Trump University proprietor. Reality TV show host, you don’t represent him. You represent 320 million people whose lives are literally in your hands and we are facing a showdown with a nuclear power and you have somebody inside the White House, somebody at the New York Daily News says is mentally unfit, people close to him say is mentally unfit, people close to him during the campaign told me had early stages of dementia.

“Now listen, you can get mad at me,” he said. “You can say it’s not okay to say, but it is reality.

“When are we supposed to say this — after the first nuclear missile goes, is that when it’s proper to bring this up in polite society?

“Tell me. General Mattis, when is it polite to bring this up in polite society? Rex Tillerson, when is this the right time to talk about a mentally unstable president in the White House and a nuclear showdown with another unstable madman in North Korea? Is it after the first nuclear missiles fly? What exactly is the right time, Steve Mnuchin?

“Mike Pence, guess what, Republicans want you to be president. The Republicans in the House would love you to be president of the United States. You know why? Because you’re stable.

“And here’s the thing. Everybody around Donald Trump knows he’s not stable. Everybody around Donald Trump knows he’s not stable,” he emphasized. “Everybody. And yet, this continues.”

Trump delusional? Sure. But so is the whole GOPby digby

I wrote about the tax cut Armageddon for Salon this morning:

When Barack Obama became president in 2009, he called together all the opinion leaders in Washington and announced that he was planning to propose a Grand Bargain that would include a cut in “entitlement” spending in exchange for the Republicans agreeing to allow the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans to expire. It had progressive Democrats in a state of agitation, feeling that the president was selling out the signature achievement of the New Deal for a temporary tax hike.

The Tea Party right refused to take yes for an answer. The Democrats were offering to take the heat and cut those hated “entitlements,” yet the far right couldn’t bear raising taxes on rich people. Silly Tea Partyers, didn’t they realize that they were walking away from a great deal?

It turns out they were biding their time until they held all the levers of power again so they could slash taxes for the wealthy, raise taxes on everyone else and institute “triggers” to cut vital programs as soon as their deep cuts start to raise the deficit, as they inevitably will. Why take half a loaf when you can hold out and get the whole bakery?

They even did a trial run in one of the “laboratories of democracy” to prove to everyone how slashing taxes on the wealthy and cutting all those “entitlements” that encourage dependency will boost growth dramatically and make everybody richer, happier and more successful. This was what we might call Sam Brownback’s “Make Kansas Great Again” plan, which he literally sold to his constituents by saying their state was going to be the “Petri dish” for all the supply-side economic lunacy the right has been trying to enact for decades.

He did it, too. And it didn’t work out very well. As one Kansas Republican lawmaker told the Atlantic:

“It was supposed to increase the GDP, and it didn’t. The feds will have that same problem,” said state Senator Jim Denning, a conservative who originally supported the tax cuts. In a phone interview, Denning told me he had done his own economic modeling in 2012 and “proved to myself that the tax cut would work.” But the new policy did not prevent a rural recession in Kansas or a dip in its oil-and-gas business. “It generated hardly any measurable economic activity,” Denning said. By the beginning of this year, he had changed course and voted along with Democrats and a coalition of Republicans to reverse most of the cuts, erasing Brownback’s economic legacy.

Donald Trump generously relieved Kansans of Brownback himself, by nominating him to be the ambassador-at-large for “international religious freedom.” He has not yet been confirmed.

Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, has been getting an earful from his constituents who are gobsmacked that he is planning to vote to do to the whole country what they did to their state. The Kansas City Star editorial board recounted a conversation the senator had with one of his voters who asked him: “Why would you take this failed experiment nationwide? Our members of Congress should be the ones leading the way for tax reform that actually affects normal people, not just millionaires and billionaires.”

Sadly, that’s unlikely. Certainly Sam Brownback won’t be issuing the warning. He’s in Washington this week trying to push through his confirmation — and telling outrageous lies, as Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye wrote earlier. Apparently, Donald Trump shared with Brownback some of that strange brew that makes people believe that up is down and black is white:

Sam Brownback is here in the Senate (outside GOP lunch) saying the Kansas tax plan worked, created jobs.
"What we did actually worked."— Richard Rubin (@RichardRubinDC) November 29, 2017

Yes, guys. I'm aware of what happened in Kansas. Here's our story from last year: https://t.co/BeRqwbN23B— Richard Rubin (@RichardRubinDC) November 29, 2017

Surely the Republicans all know this. Moran even admitted that Kansas is “discussed” in Washington, one assumes as a cautionary tale. And yes, the federal government is not like a state for a hundred different reasons, which makes it unlikely that the consequences would be exactly the same. Nonetheless, it’s patently obvious that this tax plan will be a disaster on a national scale, probably resulting in some kind of crisis these same Republicans will then insist requires deep austerity measures to fix. That’s the game as it’s been played for 30 years, and it’s always worked out fine for them. They cut taxes on the rich and the economy eventually goes to hell, at which point Democrats are voted in to clean up the mess, and the GOP insists on spending cuts to vital programs to pay off the debt they incurred with their tax-cutting spree.

Unlike in the past, these tax cuts are extremely unpopular. According to FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten, this bill is more unpopular than most tax hike bills are. Why? Because everyone knows it’s a giveaway to the rich at the expense of the middle class. The GOP Congress could take its time and fashion a bill where the numbers add up. That could at least pass muster with most Republican voters. So why are they in such a frenzy to pass this monstrosity?

It’s hard to know. It’s almost as if congressional Republicans are on autopilot, unable to exercise free will. Many of them, like Moran of Kansas, know very well that this plan is an utter disaster that will result in higher taxes for everyone but the top 1 percent, along with the degradation of important programs like Medicare, all of which will be used against them in upcoming elections. If I had to guess, I’d say they are simply mesmerized by what Trump has been able to do.

All week long we’ve been reading stories about how he is creating his own reality, unmoored from facts and truth. People are whispering about the 25th Amendment and wondering if the president of the United States might actually have a breakdown. But these GOP officials watched Trump give a speech in Missouri on Wednesday, where the crowd cheered wildly while he claimed that his plan has wealthy people like himself complaining about having their taxes increased so ordinary people can have a big tax cut.

Republican senators all know that’s a brazen lie. It is literally the opposite of the truth. But they see those Trump voters believing every word he says, and they understand that the truth is now irrelevant to the Republican base. All Trump’s supporters want is to see their hero win. If he loses yet again because the Republican Congress fails to deliver a bill for him to sign, members of that Congress know there will be hell to pay.

Republicans are happy to pass a tax cut, of course. It’s what they live for. But this is a Kansas-level economic debacle in the making, and they are not stupid enough not to understand that. They’re betting that their seats are safer if they go along with Trump’s magical thinking than if they stay in the real world. After all, the Republicans have been lying almost as much as Trump — about almost as many things — for a long time. This time they’ve decided to hold their collective breath and dive down the rabbit hole with him. Maybe some of that Trump Teflon will rub off on them.

Another momentous day in the #TrumpRepublic
by Tom Sullivan

Our sitting president will lie if asked for the time of day, just for practice, it’s been said. One might call that evil. Unless he is simply delusional. Why not both?

He has enablers, Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker observe:

Trump has internalized the belief that he can largely operate with impunity, people close to him said. His political base cheers him on. Fellow Republican leaders largely stand by him. His staff scrambles to explain away his misbehavior — or even to laugh it off. And the White House disciplinarian, chief of staff John F. Kelly, has said it is not his job to control the president.

Not that he could. Rucker and Parker cite outside advisers who say the president’s weekends at his Palm Beach resort allow friends and club members to plant ideas in his head that wind up as tweets. “Mar-a-Lago stirs him up,” said one of the unnamed advisers.

Reports of the last 24 hours have a certain “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” quality:

• Incited violence against Muslims without reason or regret by retweeting unverified anti-Muslim videos.
• Insinuated Joe Scarborough was involved in the death of a former intern.
• Insinuated TV heads and critics should be investigated for unknown reasons.

The anti-Muslim videos got him into a Twitter spat with our closest ally:

Trump also strained, at least temporarily, the special relationship with Britain. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a rare rebuke from 10 Downing Street: “British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents: decency, tolerance and respect.”

On Wednesday evening, Trump responded on Twitter: “Theresa May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”

That’s not how it feels. But there’s an upside, quips Rich Lowry, “Mark Twain is supposed to have said of Wagner’s music, ‘better than it sounds.’” Aside from the anti-Muslim videos, the suggestions that Joe Scarborough murdered an intern, and the daily proofs he is unfit for office, the president is pretty conventional, the editor of National Review believes. The sitting president is rolling back DACA, Obama’s Clean Power Plan, and Obamacare subsidies, so it’s all good:

It is difficult to see how Ted Cruz would have governed any differently on any of these issues. Unlike Cruz, Trump is an accidental constitutionalist. Trump’s social conservative base demands originalist judges, and his alliance with the Federalist Society produces them. Meanwhile, Trump’s deregulatory reflex and desire to reverse Obama’s legacy mean he’s clawing back his predecessor’s overreach.

The president may be unhinged, but hey, it’s Republican party time. Truth has been rendered irrelevant, the Post adds:

In any given case, Trump is not trying to persuade anyone of anything as much as he is trying to render reality irrelevant, and reduce the pursuit of agreement on it to just another part of the circus. He’s asserting a species of power — the power to evade constraints normally imposed by empirically verifiable facts, by expectations of consistency, and even by what reasoned inquiry deems merely credible. The more brazen or shameless, the more potent is the assertion of power.

It’s what the conservative movement has been working towards for decades and Christmas has come early.

President* Biff is going to have us at war with North Korea and Great Britain. Awesome.— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) November 30, 2017

History will not look kindly on this bunch if the sane get to write it.

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

“You can do anything when you’re a star…”by digby

He believes he is omnipotent and nothing can touch him. He knows he’s always gotten away with everything and believes he always will:

Trump has internalized the belief that he can largely operate with impunity, people close to him said. His political base cheers him on. Fellow Republican leaders largely stand by him. His staff scrambles to explain away his misbehavior — or even to laugh it off. And the White House disciplinarian, chief of staff John F. Kelly, has said it is not his job to control the president.

For years, Trump has fired off incendiary tweets and created self-sabotaging controversies. The pattern captures the musings of a man who traffics in conspiracy theories and alternate realities and who can’t resist inserting himself into any story line at any moment.

“In an intensely polarized world, you can’t burn down the same house twice,” said Alex Castellanos, a GOP campaign consultant. “What has Donald Trump got to lose at this point?”

Castellanos added that for many voters, and especially Trump’s base, there’s an “upside” to his bellicosity. “A strong daddy bear is what a lot of voters want,” he said. “Right or wrong, at least he’s fighting for us.”

[…]

In Missouri, he was talking about taxes, but he might as well been describing his mind-set.

“Hey, look, I’m president,” Trump said. “I don’t care. I don’t care anymore.”
[…]

Trump’s advisers and friends said he feels emboldened, even invincible, to communicate as he chooses — especially on cultural issues, believing that his stances work for him politically by galvanizing his base.

Having long trafficked in conspiracy theories — his political rise was fueled by his role as one of the nation’s leading champions of the false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States — Trump continues as president to promote falsehoods and reject facts.

Trump has recently told friends that he believes special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation will be winding down by the end of the year and that he will be exonerated, even though many experts and others close to the wide-ranging probe say that view is overly optimistic.

Trump has watched as other high-profile men’s careers have crumbled under the weight of public accusations of sexual misconduct. Yet Trump has faced no disciplinary repercussions, even after bragging on a 2005 tape about having sexually assaulted women. “Grab ’em by the p—y. You can do anything,” Trump told “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush, who lost his job over the incident.

“You can do anything.”

When he said that he meant “I can do anything.”

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Dispatch from the Hague: war criminals drinking poisonby digby

Hey, why not?

A UN court has suspended an appeals hearing after a Bosnian Croat wartime commander claimed to have drunk poison.

A court spokesperson said Slobodan Praljak was still alive and is being treated.

Praljak is one of six former Bosnian Croat political and military leaders who were appealing their sentences in The Hague.

The 72-year-old tilted back his head and took a swing from a flask or glass as the judge read out that his 20-year prison sentence had been upheld.

“Judges, I am not a war criminal, I reject the verdict with contempt,” he said after drinking. The presiding judge called for a doctor and halted the proceedings.

Praljak was originally sentenced in 2013 for his involvement in a campaign to drive Muslims out of a would-be Bosnian Croat mini-state in Bosnia in the early 1990s.

Good lord, what a day…

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Samantha Bee stings O’Keefeby digby

You probably need a little levity right about now. I know I do:
The comedian mocked the recent failed sting on The Washington Post, apparently led by the far-right group Project Veritas, in a new clip shared online Tuesday.

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