Month: March 2018

Everybody wondered about Qatar at the time …

by digby

So this happened in June of 2017:

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump published a series of vehement statements on Twitter in response to the decision by seven Arab countries to abruptly cut off ties with Qatar. “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar—look!” Trump tweeted. “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!” (When told of the tweets, Trump’s fellow Republican, Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was reportedly left to ask who tweeted them, and when: “The president? When did that occur?”)

One can only imagine the Qatari reaction to Trump’s tweets. Whatever is being communicated to Doha privately by other U.S. officials, the president’s rant appears, at least on its face, to represent a major reorientation away from Qatar.

It’s not entirely clear what prompted Qatar’s neighbors to turn on it so swiftly. Reports suggest frustration with its support for certain Islamist groups, and some point specifically to an apparent billion-dollar payment made by the Qataris to an al-Qaeda affiliate and Iran, allegedly to free members of the royal family who were captured on a hunting trip. There’s even the suggestion that Russian hackers deliberately manufactured the crisis by planting fake news with Qatar’s state news agency. All in all, it’s hard to know exactly how to evaluate the breach, and thus gauge the appropriate American response to it, without knowing precisely what prompted it.

Whatever the impetus, Trump’s all-in reaction is worrisome. My experience as a counterterrorism official in the Obama administration drove home the inescapable fact that the world of counterterrorism is rarely suitable for black-or-white, you’re-with-us-or-you’re-against-us treatments of our partners.

That’s because the United States, for all its might, relies heavily on partners for a wide range of counterterrorism support. Take Qatar as a perfect example. The country hosts America’s largest military base in the Middle East, used for critical counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Other reports have indicated that the nation’s assistance was critical in freeing a U.S. hostage held by al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, much as Qatar reportedly later helped free a Canadian hostage held by the Taliban. And the Pentagon itself has boasted of involving senior Qatari military leadership in discussions convened by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on how to counter violent extremist organizations.

I don’t think anyone ever satisfactorily explained what happened there.

Today we see this:

Federal investigators are scrutinizing whether any of Jared Kushner’s business discussions with foreigners during the presidential transition later shaped White House policies in ways designed to either benefit or retaliate against those he spoke with, according to witnesses and other people familiar with the investigation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has asked witnesses about Kushner’s efforts to secure financing for his family’s real estate properties, focusing specifically on his discussions during the transition with individuals from Qatar and Turkey, as well as Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates, according to witnesses who have been interviewed as part of the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 election.

As part of the scrutiny of Kushner’s discussions with Turks, federal investigators have reached out to Turkish nationals for information on Kushner through the FBI’s legal attache office in Ankara, according to two people familiar with the matter. Separately, Qatari government officials visiting the U.S. in late January and early February considered turning over to Mueller what they believe is evidence of efforts by their country’s Persian Gulf neighbors in coordination with Kushner to hurt their country, four people familiar with the matter said. The Qatari officials decided against cooperating with Mueller for now out of fear it would further strain the country’s relations with the White House, these people said.

Kushner’s family real estate business, Kushner Companies, approached Qatar multiple times, including last spring, about investing in the company’s troubled flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York, but the government-run sovereign wealth fund declined, according to two people familiar with the discussion. Another discussion of interest to Mueller’s team is a meeting Kushner held at Trump Tower during the transition in December 2016 with a former prime minister of Qatar, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, or HBJ, according to people familiar with the meeting.

HBJ had been in talks with Kushner Companies about investing in its Fifth Avenue property, which is facing roughly $1.4 billion in debt that is due in 2019, these people said. Those talks with the company continued after Kushner entered the White House and stepped away from the business, but last spring HBJ decided against investing, these people said.

In the weeks after Kushner Companies’ talks with the Qatari government and HBJ collapsed, the White House strongly backed an economically punishing blockade against Qatar, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, citing the country’s support for terrorism as the impetus. Kushner, who is both President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a key adviser, has played a major role in Trump’s Middle East policy and has developed close relationships with the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Recall that Kushner has been jetting off to hold private all-nighters with the new Saudi crown prince.

Obviously we don’t know if Jared has been leveraging the US government to get loans for his family’s business. But if “appearance of conflict of interest” is really a thing and not just something to be used against Democrats, then it’s hard to imagine a better example. If it’s worse we have the most serious case of corruption in American history on our hands.

And,by the way Devin Nunes,Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn and all the rest of these Republicans are well aware of this stuff. They are accessories.

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Remember when Trump said he’d put Carl Icahn in charge of China?

by digby

He did:

TRUMP: We have to start creating jobs. We have to start creating wealth. We all go to good schools. I go to grade schools, you go to grade — you don’t have to be even a smart — you don’t have to be the greatest student to know when Ford builds this massive plant to build cars and they bring them back into our country, no tax, we get nothing. We get nothing.

They leave Michigan the other night. Unbelievable people. We have an unbelievable crowd. They leave Michigan. They take them out of Detroit and all over the place. And they go to Mexico. There’s no way that helps us. And you’re going to have to do something with the tariff at the border.

If they’re going to make cars over there, if they’re going to leave the United States give great jobs for Mexico and not the United States, you know what, it’s fine. But they have to pay some kind of a price.

We are getting killed on trade.

CUOMO: All right. Let me go back…

TRUMP: And interestingly, Carl Icahn agrees with me. And Carl Icahn, you know, is a great negotiator and I have many other great negotiators and they are dying to get involved.

CUOMO: But you wouldn’t really put him in-charge of China?

TRUMP: I would absolutely.

CUOMO: In-charge of China?

TRUMP: Can I tell you what…

CUOMO: Please, because you know what makes people think — it’s like…

TRUMP: … in-charge of China.

CUOMO: … this is not a business, it’s a whole political governmental thing.

TRUMP: No, no, no. It’s a business too. Hey, you can come up with me in this building you’ll see the largest bank in the world from China is in this — I have a great relationship with China just like I do with Mexico.

CUOMO: Right. But don’t we need diplomacy in all of the policy…

TRUMP: No. We have diplomacy now. They’re killing us and they don’t even like us. So we have diplomacy. So we’re diplomatic. They don’t like us and they’re beating us. With me, they’ll like us and we’ll beat them. OK?

CUOMO: The…

TRUMP: You know, how do I have the biggest bank as my tenant? I mean they’re tenants and I have them in order branch (ph). China — I sell tremendous numbers of units, apartments to people from China. They love me. A Business Weekend story, “What are the 10 things that the Chinese most want?” One of the 10 things was anything Trump. And I say, “Really is that right?”

They respect the truth. They understand they’re ripping us off. I take a guy like Carl Icahn, you take Henry Kravis, you take so many of the guys that I know, and you say, “You know what? I’d like you to watch over the deals that are being made with China because we’re getting killed on trade.”

Believe me, we will be so good. You should get a guy like Carl on, very smart, great negotiator. We will be so good.

CUOMO: DO you think he’ll take a job like that?

TRUMP: He’ll do it in two seconds. He’s already told me he’d love to do it.

He later tapped Icahn to be one of his advisers but Icahn moved on.They remain good pals. And guess what?

Billionaire investor and longtime Trump confidant Carl Icahn dumped $31.3 million of stock in a company heavily dependent on steel last week, just days before Trump announced plans to impose steep tariffs on steel imports.

In a little-noticed SEC filing submitted on February 22, 2018, Icahn disclosed that he systematically sold off nearly 1 million shares of Manitowoc Company Inc. Manitowoc is a “is a leading global manufacturer of cranes and lifting solutions” and, therefore, heavily dependent on steel to make its products.

The filing came just seven days before a White House event where Trump announced his intention to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports.

Trump’s announcement rattled the markets, with steel-dependent stocks hardest hit. Manitowoc stock plunged, losing about 6 percent of its value. Reuters attributed the drop to the fact that Manitowoc is a “major consumer of steel.” As of 10:20 a.m. Friday, the stock had lost an additional 6 percent, trading at $26.21.

Icahn was required to make the disclosure because of the large volume of his sale. The filing reveals that he began systematically selling the stock on February 12, when he was able to sell the stock for $32 to $34.

I’m sure it’s all a coincidence.

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Trump wanted to punch someone so he started a trade war

by digby

This story from MSNBC tell the tale:

With global markets shaken by President Donald Trump’s surprise decision to impose strict tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the president went into battle mode on Friday: “Trade wars are good, and easy to win,” he wrote on Twitter.

But the public show of confidence belies the fact that Trump’s policy maneuver, which may ultimately harm U.S. companies and American consumers, was announced without any internal review by government lawyers or his own staff, according to a review of an internal White House document.

According to two officials, Trump’s decision to launch a potential trade war was born out of anger at other simmering issues and the result of a broken internal process that has failed to deliver him consensus views that represent the best advice of his team.

On Wednesday evening, the president became “unglued,” in the words of one official familiar with the president’s state of mind.

A trifecta of events had set him off in a way that two officials said they had not seen before: Hope Hicks’ testimony to lawmakers investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, conduct by his embattled attorney general and the treatment of his son-in-law by his chief of staff.

Trump, the two officials said, was angry and gunning for a fight, and he chose a trade war, spurred on by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, the White House director for trade.

Ross had already invited steel and aluminum executives to the White House for an 11 a.m. meeting on Thursday. But Ross, according to a person with direct knowledge, hadn’t told the White House who the executives were. As a result, White House officials were unable to conduct a background check on the executives to make sure they were appropriate for the president to meet with and they were not able to be cleared for entry by secret service. According to a person with direct knowledge, even White House chief of staff John Kelly was unaware of their names.

By midnight Wednesday, less than 12 hours before the executives were expected to arrive, no one on the president’s team had prepared any position paper for an announcement on tariff policy, the official said. In fact, according to the official, the White House counsel’s office had advised that they were as much as two weeks away from being able to complete a legal review on steel tariffs.

In response to NBC News, another White House official said that the communications team “was well-prepared to support the president’s announcement” and that “many of the attendees had been in the White House before and had already been vetted for attendance at a presidential event.” A different official said of the decision, “everyone in the world has known where the president’s head was on this issue since the beginning of his administration.”

There were no prepared, approved remarks for the president to give at the planned meeting, there was no diplomatic strategy for how to alert foreign trade partners, there was no legislative strategy in place for informing Congress and no agreed upon communications plan beyond an email cobbled together by Ross’s team at the Commerce Department late Wednesday that had not been approved by the White House.

No one at the State Department, the Treasury Department or the Defense Department had been told that a new policy was about to be announced or given an opportunity to weigh in in advance.

The Thursday morning meeting did not originally appear on the president’s public schedule. Shortly after it began, reporters were told that Ross had convened a “listening” session at the White House with 15 executives from the steel and aluminum industry.

Then, an hour later, in an another unexpected move, reporters were invited to the Cabinet room. Without warning, Trump announced on the spot that he was imposing new strict tariffs on imports.

By Thursday afternoon, the U.S. stock market had fallen and Trump, surrounded by his senior advisers in the Oval Office, was said to be furious.

CNN’s Gloria Borger is reporting that Trump’s pals are increasingly worried that he’s unraveling:

Not since Richard Nixon started talking to the portraits on the walls of the West Wing has a president seemed so alone against the world.

One source — who is a presidential ally — is worried, really worried. The source says this past week is “different,” that advisers are scared the President is spiraling, lashing out, just out of control. For example: Demanding to hold a public session where he made promises on trade tariffs before his staff was ready, not to mention willing. “This has real economic impact,” says the source, as the Dow dropped 420 points after the President’s news Thursday. “Something is very wrong.”

Even by Trumpian standards, the chaos and the unraveling at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are a stunning — and recurring — problem.

But there’s an up-against-the-wall quality to the past couple of weeks that is striking, and the crescendo is loud, clear, unhealthy, even dangerous.
[…]
The President is stewing, according to one source with knowledge, blaming everyone but himself for the tumult: his chief of staff Gen. John Kelly for mishandling the clearance issue, Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, Republicans for being afraid of the NRA, Democrats for obstructing everything.

So the President has gone rogue, which is not a healthy development…Multiple sources report an increasingly isolated Trump: cordoned off from old friends by Kelly, getting the cold shoulder from wife Melania (after Stormy Daniels and friends), increasing friction with his daughter and son-in-law over clearance, and home alone without longtime bodyguard/friend Keith Schiller and Hicks. His economic team is split over tariffs; his national security adviser, according to reports, will be replaced soon. No doubt the exodus will continue.

And the President — who has bullied Jeff Sessions regularly since the summer — is now furious that the attorney general has dared defend his department against a President who called it “disgraceful.” A man who prides himself on his instinct to counterpunch finds it shocking when someone punches back. Oh the irony of Trump!

“Some of these things don’t bother him like they do other people,” offers another old friend, trying to explain the chaos, or at least how Donald Trump regards it.

This is all working out just fine. He’s fine. We’re all fine. Carry on …

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The White House exodus picks up the pace

by digby

I wrote about the exodus for Salon this morning:

Three weeks away from his next election, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had developed an invincible nuclear weapon. America shrugged. There is so much craziness happening in U.S. politics right now that it simply didn’t register.

Even the most pessimistic of observers assumed that President Donald Trump’s White House would have gotten at least a little bit better at this by now. But we’re over a year into the Trump presidency and it’s only getting more chaotic. There’s a desperate quality to it that hasn’t been there before and people are beginning to wonder if the administration is even minimally functional.

An astounding number of people have now left — a nearly 34 percent turnover rate in the first year. It’s unknown how many people have left the government since Trump took over, but the number is also quite likely high. And that’s not even counting the number of vacancies that Trump and the Republicans just aren’t bothering to fill in the first place.

From the moment Trump reluctantly let his good pal Michael Flynn go just three weeks into his presidency, it’s been a series of resignations, firings, hirings and overwhelming disorganization. Apparently, the great businessman Donald Trump isn’t a very good judge of talent. Nor can he manage his way out of a paper bag.

This week alone we learned that his most trusted aide, communications director Hope Hicks, is resigning — a move that was apparently something that had been in works for some time but just happened to come on the heels of her embarrassing involvement with the accused domestic abuser Rob Porter, both on a personal and professional level. But it is also widely assumed that she may be legally exposed in the Russian investigation and is getting out before it gets any worse. Politico reported that yesterday:

President Donald Trump’s lawyers have urged him not to discuss details of the unfolding Russia investigation with anyone outside his legal team, warning of a conversational “bright line” that could put aides and associates in legal jeopardy, according to current and former Trump aides. But Trump often ignores that legal advice in the presence of senior aides — including his departing confidante and White House communications director, Hope Hicks.
“I think the president has put her in a very precarious position,” a senior Trump administration official said in a recent interview.

Hicks is not alone. Current and former Trump aides describe a president who often fails to observe boundaries about the Russia probe and who calls staffers into his office and raises the subject without warning.

That’s typically selfish of Trump. He’s putting staffers at legal risk and there’s no way in the world that they won’t be stuck with the legal bills. If he follows his usual pattern, Trump probably won’t even pay his own.

Hicks isn’t the only staffer to announce her resignation this week. According to BuzzFeed News, there are many more who are unhappy. And Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s personal spokesman Josh Raffel also put in his papers. Who knows what he’s been dragged into with the ongoing revelations of conflicts of interest and corruption by his bosses?

After all, this week we also learned that Kushner’s top secret clearance had been downgraded to the point where most experts insist that he can no longer do the job he was supposedly hired to do. Evidently, American intelligence got word that foreign countries knew a sucker when they saw one and were plotting how to take advantage of Kushner’s conflicts and naivete, so chief of staff John Kelly finally pulled the plug. Unfortunately, the word is that Kushner is one of the few who has no plans to leave. But perhaps that’s understandable, since he’s mainly been meeting with people who later gave his family business half a billion dollars in loans to help bail them out of their crushing debt.

According to CNN, FBI counterintelligence is also looking into Ivanka’s business concerning a Trump Organization branding and management agreement with a Malaysian developer for a hotel in Vancouver, Canada. It’s yet another of their complicated financing entanglements that is making it impossible for the members of this family to receive security clearances. (Why Ivanka needs one in the first place remains a mystery.)

Aside from dealing with a very, very difficult president who is clearly in way over his head, much of the tension in the White House stems from the Jared and Ivanka faction vs the Kelly faction. Kelly was on thin ice just two weeks ago over the mishandling of the Rob Porter affair but won a round with the downgrading of Kushner’s security clearance. Nonetheless, Kelly seemed disillusioned on Thursday when he spoke at the 15th anniversary of Department of Homeland Security. He wryly joked, “The last thing I wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life, being the secretary of homeland security, but I did something wrong and God punished me, I guess.”

One suspects that John Kelly may not be long for the Trump administration either. But he will probably last longer that national Security Adviser H. R. McMaster. Nicolle Wallace at NBC reported that he’s leaving a soon as the end of this month. He and Trump don’t get along well to begin with but Trump treated him like he was no better than a lowly Jeff Sessions after he said that the Russian interference was incontrovertible:

General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems. Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2018

Speaking of Sessions, Trump is also still lashing out at him publicly apparently hoping that he’ll quit, a transparent gambit that now has Robert Mueller possibly seeing it as part of the cover up. Sessions seems to be staying put, even going so far as to put out a statement defending the integrity of the DOJ that almost sounded defiant. Then he went out to dinner with Trump’s other nemesis, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which had to make Trump blow his top. After all, Trump wants Sessions gone but knows Senate Republicans would not be pleased. Whether that will ultimately stop him from doing what he clearly wants to do is unknown.

Trump and his White House are unraveling. The chaos and corruption are getting worse and there’s no end in sight. On Thursday, after an embarrassing lack of preparation or planning, and against the advice of his economic team, Trump announced that he’s going to slap big tariffs on steel and aluminum, sending the stock market into a steep nosedive. Apparently his top economic adviser Gary Cohn has said he will resign if this goes into effect.

So the exodus will not be ending any time soon. And nobody knows who they can find to replace all these people. What competent person would want to put on their resume that they worked for President Donald Trump?

Citizens, not sheep
by Tom Sullivan

Emma Gonzalez speaks at the Rally to Support Firearm Safety Legislation in Fort Lauderdale, February 17, 2018. Photo by Barry Stock via Creative Commons.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) suggested in a tweet Wednesday, “We claim a Judea-Christian heritage but celebrate arrogance & boasting. & worst of all we have infected the next generation with the same disease.” That last barb seemed aimed at students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They returned to school for the first time Wednesday after a mass shooting on Valentine’s Day claimed 17 of their classmates.

Their outspokenness and activism in the wake of the shooting, and especially their skill in using social and traditional media for organizing to fight gun violence, has the NRA and its shills knocked back on their heels.

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick knows why. No, these “poised, articulate, well-informed, and seemingly preternaturally mature student leaders” are not participants in a conspiracy financed by George Soros:

Despite the gradual erosion of the arts and physical education in America’s public schools, the students of Stoneman Douglas have been the beneficiaries of the kind of 1950s-style public education that has all but vanished in America and that is being dismantled with great deliberation as funding for things like the arts, civics, and enrichment are zeroed out. In no small part because the school is more affluent than its counterparts across the country (fewer than 23 percent of its students received free or reduced-price lunches in 2015–16, compared to about 64 percent across Broward County Public Schools) these kids have managed to score the kind of extracurricular education we’ve been eviscerating for decades in the United States. These kids aren’t prodigiously gifted. They’ve just had the gift of the kind of education we no longer value.

Part of the reason the Stoneman Douglas students have become stars in recent weeks is in no small part due to the fact that they are in a school system that boasts, for example, of a “system-wide debate program that teaches extemporaneous speaking from an early age.” Every middle and high school in the district has a forensics and public-speaking program. Coincidentally, some of the students at Stoneman Douglas had been preparing for debates on the issue of gun control this year, which explains in part why they could speak to the issues from day one.

Senior David Hogg, accused by online conspiracy sites of being a “crisis actor,” is in fact the news director of the school’s broadcast journalism program. Other student leaders come from the school’s drama program. Instant media star Emma Gonzalez read her speech in Fort Lauderdale from the back of her AP Government notes.

This is not the kind of education that breeds compliance, but citizen engagement. Thus, Rubio’s swipe and the Washington Examiner’s accusation that rather than engaging in “substantive policy debate,” Hogg and Gonzalez have “succumbed to the easy allure of partisan activism and demagoguery.” Better they learn to make money for their employers than trouble for their betters elders.

As Lithwick observes, this is not the kind of education that turns out cogs for the corporate machine, but rather the kind that nurtures the sort of citizens the founders hoped would lead their new country. Its survival depended upon it.

Something I wrote here three years ago:

America’s founding ideas were cultivated and distilled by people of the Enlightenment, probably the best educated the world has ever produced. Men mostly. White men. Wealthy white men.

Two and a quarter centuries later, another collection of wealthy white men want America to return to those roots, where only wealthy, white people will be educated in wealthy, white, business-friendly ways. State supports for low tuition rates “distort” the market. Costs must rise to drive students who can still afford it into the more remunerative majors. Tech schools for the rest.

Lithwick concludes:

To be sure, the story of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students is a story about the benefits of being a relatively wealthy school district at a moment in which public education is being vivisected without remorse or mercy. But unless you’re drinking the strongest form of Kool-Aid, there is simply no way to construct a conspiracy theory around the fact that students who were being painstakingly taught about drama, media, free speech, political activism, and forensics became the epicenter of the school-violence crisis and handled it creditably. The more likely explanation is that extracurricular education—one that focuses on skills beyond standardized testing and rankings—creates passionate citizens who are spring-loaded for citizenship.

What upsets Rubio and the Examiner is that Stoneman Douglas students don’t know their places. Schools that are preparing students to serve their country rather than the economy are not fulfilling their mission. Their issue with Stoneman Douglas is it is not turning out sheep.

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

There Is Nothing Remotely Funny About This Level Of Chaos 

by tristero

I completely agree:

“Communications Chief to Leave White House” (news article, March 1), about the planned departure of Hope Hicks, reveals the dysfunction at the White House, with the prominence of staff members who lack political experience. I was struck Wednesday night by the coverage on cable TV news, which at times appeared to be having too much fun covering what many regard as a reality show. 

This is not funny, as we live in a very dangerous world. Beyond the headlines are many ominous warnings of countries, including our own, preparing for a war that can easily go nuclear — that is, if we do not have steady and wise leadership. 

I would encourage people to treat what many describe as a circuslike atmosphere in government with less amusement and more of the gravity it deserves. Everyone needs comic relief, and that can be obtained in late-night entertainment talk shows and elsewhere, but not in the news. 

JEFFREY B. FREEDMAN, NEW YORK

The present situation is, by far, the single most dangerous time in my entire life and my life includes the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think it will be a miracle if we can avoid a nuclear war. The stress the entire world is living under is incredible

Yeah, let the Olivers and the Colberts joke. We need comic relief. But the media endangers the planet if it in any way minimizes the existential threat the Republican party and its leader, Donald Trump, poses.

This isn’t the slightest bit funny. And no, I won’t chill until Republicans are completely out of power on the federal level.

White Utah politicians rap. Yes, you read that right.

by digby

Offered without comment because I’m busy having my brain bleached:

The Utah House of Representatives made a rap video about how a bill becomes law, and somehow it's worse than you would expect pic.twitter.com/Dq3U7RwGBu— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) March 1, 2018

Republicans are just fucking with our heads now, right?

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Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination fake? Say it ain’t so!

by digby

Satire is dead. Fuggedaboudit:

Mr Trump was reportedly nominated for his “ideology of peace by force” by an anonymous American.

The director of the Nobel Institute said there were concerns that Mr Trump’s nomination may have been falsified.

“I can say that we have good reason to believe that [the nomination of Mr Trump] is a fake,” Nobel Institute Director Olav Njølstad told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

“This happens very rarely, and if that happens then it does not matter. Those who nominate candidates considered relevant are checked whether they are valid nominees,” Lundestad told Vanguard News.

[…]

“It is not unthinkable that Trump can be nominated by valid proposers. But it must be confirmed that nominees have the opportunity to nominate candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Lundestad said.

Actually Trump is not a valid nominee. I don’t think I have to explain why. On the other hand, he’s not a valid president either. We can say he won the Olympic mold Medal for the giant slalom and give him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress too. Anything’s possible in Trump World.

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Nunes: I know you are but what am I

by digby

Paul Ryan: What, me worry?

So the Senate Intelligence Committee determined that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee leaked Senator Mark Warner’s private emails to the press. I know this shocks you. And look at the response from the Speaker of the House:

In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Nunes, Jack Langer, did not dispute that the committee had leaked the messages, but called the premise of this article “absurd.”

“The New York Times, a prominent purveyor of leaks, is highlighting anonymous sources leaking information that accuses Republicans of leaking information,” he said. “I’m not sure if this coverage could possibly get more absurd.”

AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, declined to comment. In his meeting with the senators, Mr. Ryan made clear that he heard their complaints but noted that he did not run the committee himself, the officials briefed on the encounter said.

In case you forgot the details, here they are:

The text messages were leaked just days after the same House Republicans had taken the extraordinary step of publicly releasing, over the objections of the F.B.I., a widely disputed memorandum based on sensitive government secrets. Taken together, the actions suggested a pattern of partisanship and unilateral action by the once-bipartisan House panel.

Fox News published the text messages, which were sent via a secure messaging application, in early February. President Trump and other Republicans loyal to him quickly jumped on the report to try to discredit Mr. Warner, suggesting that the senator was acting surreptitiously to try to talk with the former British spy who assembled a dossier of salacious claims about connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and Russia.

“Wow! -Senator Mark Warner got caught having extensive contact with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch,” Mr. Trump wrote at the time. “Warner did not want a ‘paper trail’ on a ‘private’ meeting (in London) he requested with Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame.”

“All tied into Crooked Hillary,” Mr. Trump added.

The messages between Mr. Warner and Adam Waldman, a Washington lawyer, show that the senator tried for weeks to arrange a meeting with the former spy, Christopher Steele. The Senate committee has had difficulty making contact with Mr. Steele, whom it views as a key witness. And Mr. Waldman, who knew Mr. Steele, presented himself as a willing partner.

This is so absurd it makes your head hurt. The GOP House Intelligence Committee staffer who wrote the infamous Nunes memo is a former Justice Department lawyer named Kashyap Patel.

Aaaaand:

Over the summer, Mr. Nunes dispatched Mr. Patel and another member of the committee’s Republican staff to London, where they showed up unannounced at the offices of Mr. Steele, a former British intelligence official.

Told Mr. Steele was not there, Mr. Patel and Douglas E. Presley, a professional staff member, managed to track him down at the offices of his lawyers. There, they said they were seeking only to establish contact with Mr. Steele, but were rebuffed and left without meeting him, according to two people with knowledge of the encounter.

A senior official for the Republican majority on the Intelligence Committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said the purpose of the visit had been to make contact with Mr. Steele’s lawyers, not Mr. Steele. Still, the visit was highly unusual and appeared to violate protocol, because they were trying to meet with Mr. Steele outside official channels.

Ordinarily, such a visit would be coordinated through lawyers, conducted with knowledge of the House Democrats, who were not informed and the American Embassy.

In the months since, Mr. Patel has apparently forged connections at the White House. In November, he posted a series of photos to Facebook of him and several friends wearing matching shirts at the White House bowling alley. “The Dons hit the lanes at 1600 Pennsylvania,” Mr. Patel wrote under the photos.

Yes, Nunes and Trump splashed Mark Warner’s private email attempts to set a meeting with Christopher Steele on behalf of the Senate Intelligence Committee all over the newspapers, implying that Warner was somehow in cahoots with the Russians. This is th same Nunes and Trump who who dispatched their own staffer to London last summer to try to meet with Christopher Steele on behalf of the House Intelligence Committee.

It’s that crazy.

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Trump’s “not into popularity”

by digby

Oh my dear God, he is so delusional:

I think the bragging is the thing I hate more than anything about him. Having to watch this grandiose madman pull a “Mooch” every single day is akin to pulling out my fingernails over and over again.

I realize that some of this is my problem. I’m temperamentally not very comfortable with the kind self-promotion that seems to be in vogue these days. But Trump is something different. He proclaims himself a genius,says he knows more than the experts in every field, brags about not reading because he already knows everything, says he can assault women with impunity, claims to be hugely popular when he’s clearly not and on and on and on. At this point he’s just telling his personality cult, “you can believe me or you can believe your eyes” and I find it so disturbing that it makes me feel a little bit crazy.

Maybe that’s the point. He’s challenging reality on all fronts in order that people like me will simply crawl off into a corner and spend our days counting the individual hairs on the cat. I’m almost there …