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Month: August 2018

The secrets spill out of the safe

The secrets spill out of the safe

by digby

I don’t know if this is true, but let’s just say it would be the least surprising thing in the world if Trump turned out to have paid off a whole lot of women and fathered a child with at least one of them. And anyone who thinks it’s impossible that Trump would have had an affair with housekeeper because he cavorted with models and playmates should remind them selves that Arnold Schwarzenneger was an international movie star and far outstripped any celebrity Trump had before he ran for president.

Anyway, here’s the latest sordid tale:

A former Trump World Tower doorman who says he has knowledge of an alleged affair President Donald Trump had with an ex-housekeeper, which resulted in a child, is now able to talk about a contract he entered with American Media Inc. that had prohibited him from discussing the matter with anyone, according to his attorney.

On Friday, Marc Held — the attorney for Dino Sajudin, the former doorman — said his client had been released from his contract with AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, “recently” after back-and-forth discussions with AMI.

CNN has exclusively obtained a copy of the “source agreement” between Sajudin and AMI, which is owned by David Pecker.

The contract appears to have been signed on Nov. 15, 2015, and states that AMI has exclusive rights to Sajudin’s story but does not mention the details of the story itself beyond saying, “Source shall provide AMI with information regarding Donald Trump’s illegitimate child…”

The contract states that “AMI will not owe Source any compensation if AMI does not publish the Exclusive…” and the top of the agreement shows that Sajudin could receive a sum of $30,000 “payable upon publication as set forth below.”

But the third page of the agreement shows that about a month later, the parties signed an amendment that states that Sajudin would be paid $30,000 within five days of receiving the amendment. It says the “exclusivity period” laid out in the agreement “is extended in perpetuity and shall not expire.”

The amendment also establishes a $1 million payment that Sajudin would be responsible for making to AMI “in the event Source breaches this provision.”

“Mr. Sajudin has been unable to discuss the circumstances regarding his deal with American Media Inc. and the story that he sold to them, due to a significant financial penalty,” Held told CNN. “Just recently, AMI released Mr. Sajudin from the terms of his agreement and he is now able to speak about his personal experience with them, as well as his story, which is now known to be one of the ‘catch and kill’ pieces. Mr. Sajudin hopes the truth will come out in the very near future.”

In April, Sajudin told CNN he claims to have knowledge of a relationship Trump had with his former housekeeper that resulted in a child.

At the time, AMI called Sajudin’s story “not credible” and denied any connection between the story and Trump and his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen.

We’re Lucky There Are No Real Problems To Solve by tristero

We’re Lucky There Are No Real Problems To Solve 

by tristero

This is a brilliant summary of one of the most astounding — and most sordid — weeks in recent American history.  As I remarked to Digby privately, the plot of Westworld is far more plausible than what’s going on right now. The level of incompetence, maliciousness, and corruption seeping out of the Republican party — especially but not exclusively from Trump and his cronies — staggers belief.

But these pathetic paragraphs caught my attention:

Buried under the news avalanche: the White House released a greenhouse gas emissions plan that could boost output from coal-fired power plants rather than push them towards closure. Trump’s supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, moved closer to confirmation as he appeared to get the nod of approval from the Republican senator Susan Collins. 

Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted: “i understand the focus on politics here at home, but 1) NK is not denuclearizing; 2) Venezuela is on the precipice; 3) a crisis with/over Iran is brewing; 4) climate change is worse sooner than predicted; 5) US relations w China and Russia are at post-Cold War nadir. just sayin’”.

And that’s just the start. Can you say rotting American infrastructure? Genocide in Myanmar? Worldwide hunger?

But we’re right to pay attention to the Trump/Republican madness. Until Trump and the current incarnation of his party are history, very little can be done to address any real-world problem. They are far too powerful and obstructive.

Contemptibly lacking in courage; cowardly by @BloggersRUs

Contemptibly lacking in courage; cowardly
by Tom Sullivan


Image via Brennan Center for Justice.

The word craven comes to mind. Often. Whether it is an aborted attempt to close 7 of 9 polling places in a rural, heavily African American county or a desperate, 11th-hour special legislative session called to massage ballot language for something as monumental as state constitutional amendments, our Republican counterparts seem determined to demonstrate their abject contempt for principles of representative democracy. That abbreviated list is just from yesterday.

After getting caught in national media klieg lights, the Board of Elections in Randolph County, Georgia on Friday voted down its own proposal for closing polling places. It took less than 60 seconds for the publicly shamed to go from opening the meeting to “This meeting is adjourned”:

“We are pleased African-Americans voters in Randolph County will be able to access polling stations in November,” Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a phone interview. “Too often they are faced with voter suppression tactics like this which are clearly motivated by racial animus.”

A court in Raleigh on Tuesday slapped down as unconstitutionally misleading North Carolina Republicans’ ballot language on constitutional amendments for stripping power from the Democratic governor. They called a hasty special session on Friday to rework the language. They might not get another shot at this after new members are sworn in post-November.

Rob Schofield of NC Policy Watch writes:

It should not work this way. State constitutions simply should not be fundamentally rewritten during a poorly noticed, hastily arranged, kangaroo legislative session in which new amendment language is unveiled and approved in a span of a few hours (or a day or two) – especially when the session takes place just days before the public is scheduled to start absentee voting. This is the kind of action one would expect from architects of a military coup in a Third World country.

But then, the country has a president whose underworld ties make him more suited to the Third World, so there’s that.

Ed Kilgore finds the Randolph County spectacle demonstrates just how grotesquely wrong Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was in his assessment that “Our country has changed”:

But the big takeaway is that this is precisely the sort of change in voting procedures that would have until recently triggered an automatic review by the Justice Department, which would conduct an investigation and then either grant or deny a “preclearance” before it could be implemented, under the provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2013, however, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Shelby County v. Holder decision, basically gutted Section 5 (by voiding Section 4, which identified the jurisdictions subject to preclearance), liberating the mostly former Confederate jurisdictions involved from having to get the Feds’ permission for voting changes potentially affecting minority voters.

North Carolina and Texas are petri dishes for Republican election mischief since 2013. Wisconsin also makes the finals of this election rigging science fair. On top of that surgical precision, since 2013 North Carolina’s post-2010 GOP-led legislature has kept voters heads whipsawing with modifications to election procedures both large and small. Slapped down by the courts, they’ve turned to voters to do their dirty work by asking them to pass voter ID on the fall ballot.

Kilgore wants to see “a set process with national guidelines, and a pretty strong disincentive for mucking around with voting rights.” At their next opportunity, Democrats need to put and end to these administrative equivalents of “ballot stuffing.” Let’s hope that opportunity comes in January 2019.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Friday Night Soother

Friday Night Soother

by digby

A tall one, via Huffington Post:

On Saturday, newlyweds Luke and Tristan Karshagen were taking wedding party pictures at a game reserve at the Areena Riverside Resort in East London, South Africa, when a rather friendly male giraffe by the name of Abby happened to pop over to say hello.

The moment was captured by Stephanie Norman of Stephanie Norman Photography, whose pictures have since gone viral.

“He approached the group by popping his head over the trees and then walking over to us and sniffing the bridesmaids’ flowers,” she told HuffPost. “He was very relaxed and just incredibly inquisitive.”

At first, everyone was a bit shocked by the sudden appearance of the giraffe but soon realized that Abby “just wanted to know what was going on and was more than happy to just be part of everything,” she said.

“Everyone kind of scattered a bit to give Abby his space,” Norman said. “But then they were quite excited about this experience that they were having on their wedding day.”

At one point, Abby even bent down and nuzzled the bride and groom as they posed for a picture. 


“We were all bubbling with excitement and continuing with photos as we chatted and laughed about how lucky we were, when Mr. Giraffe popped his head over the trees again,” Norman wrote in a blog post for Love What Matters. “He was really intrigued by those bouquets, and kept the bridesmaids in fits of giggles as they tried to hide their flowers from him. We all managed to get some selfies, and after a few more minutes, he stepped over all of us and made his way off into the setting sun.”

Yes, he has betrayed the country. It’s right out in the open.

Yes, he has betrayed the country

by digby

This piece by William Saletan at Slate is very intriguing and not just because it shows that Trump is traitorous but because it requires nothing more than accepting what we can see with our own eyes:

To escape the Cohen and Manafort stories, Trump is retreating into the Russia mystery. He can’t be impeached, the theory goes, because he hasn’t been caught betraying his country. But he has. Trump has bent over backward to defend Vladimir Putin at America’s expense, and the question is why. Journalists have explored the worst possibilities: Trump is a Russian agent, Trump conspired with Putin to tip the 2016 election, Putin is blackmailing Trump with a raunchy sex tape.

In this article, I’m going to take the opposite approach. I’ll assume none of that speculation is true. I’ll stick to the public record. I’ll set aside the question of collusion as most people understand it—a conspiracy during the election—and I won’t postulate any hidden motives. I’ll present the minimum we know about Trump and Russia. The minimum is enough to merit impeachment: Trump is working with Putin to protect Russia and cripple the United States.

This conclusion doesn’t require any wild theories about kompromat or dual loyalty. Everything Trump has done can be explained by traits and motives he displays every day: narcissism, insecurity, ruthlessness, and spite. He enjoys the celebrity of meeting with well-armed dictators. He’s obtuse to moral distinctions between regimes or systems of government. He sees no difference between the national interest and his personal interests, or between getting campaign help from Americans and getting it from a foreign power. And he’s obsessed with domestic enemies. He’s far more interested in using Putin to pummel Democrats than in working with Democrats to confront Putin.

These ingredients have been sufficient to turn Trump, in effect, against his own country. Putin didn’t need to collude with him. All Putin had to do was praise Trump, signal his support for Trump in the election, offer him a prestigious geopolitical relationship, and come to his defense when U.S. intelligence agencies accused Russia of helping Trump win. That put the intelligence agencies on the wrong side of Trump, and it put Putin on the right side. And that’s how we ended up where we are today: with a president who defends Putin’s crimes and persecutes former U.S. officials who exposed those crimes.

Maybe you’re skeptical that Trump’s behavior can be explained without kompromat. Or maybe, in the absence of proof of collusion, you think it’s unfair to accuse him of betraying his country. But come along, and I’ll show you how both can be true.

He lays it all out in several sections entitled:

The Courtship
Tests of Loyalty
The War at Home
The Turn Against Intelligence
Attacking the Investigation
Embracing Putin
Denouncing America
The Crisis Will Never End

Saletan makes a compelling case that Trump has consciously adopted the Putin line and for a variety of reasons, mostly attributable to the fact that he is a deranged, unfit imbecile and Vladimir Putin is playing him like a fiddle. It’s right there before our eyes.

None of this precludes the possibility that Putin has something on Trump or that he did all this for pecuniary reasons. It’s entirely possible. But just on the basis of what we already know, out in the open, we know that it’s entirely possible that the president of the United States has taken the side of a foreign adversary against his own government purely out of stupidity, stubbornness and spite. It seems to me that nothing could be more impeachable than that.

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Q-Anon censors the shaken crazies

Q-Anon censors the shaken crazies

by digby

I mentioned the other day that the Q-Anon “community” is having a little bit of trouble understanding their world right now. So the moderators of the forum are making sure they don’t hear anything that upsets their alternate universe:

Michael Cohen’s guilty plea Tuesday shook up believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory, who had previously believed special counsel Robert Mueller was secretly working with President Donald Trump, not investigating him.

QAnon supporters believe in clues from “Q” that posit a world where Trump is engaged in a life-or-death struggle with a global pedophile cabal. In Q’s telling, Mueller is working hand-in-hand with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Trump to stop Democrats.

Along with the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on the same day, the Cohen plea left QAnon believers questioning whether they had been wrong to place all their hope in an anonymous internet poster.

In response, QAnon leaders on Reddit responded by cracking down on any mention of Cohen’s guilty plea, which was made with federal prosecutors in Manhattan—not Mueller.

But how, QAnon believers wondered, could sending Cohen and Manafort to prison amount to a win for Trump?

“Q, you have claimed that you are in control, can you explain how this helps the good guys???” pleaded one user on TheGreatAwakening, the main subreddit for QAnon supporters.

As alienated QAnon supporters began to complain to each other about feeling duped, TheGreatAwakening’s moderators decided to cut the spread of the discontent off at the source by ruling that most mentions of Cohen were off-topic…

Isn’t that something?

Meanwhile the entire right wing — led by the president — are pushing another conspiracy theory about social media allegedly censoring right wing voices.

And how are the true believers dealing with the dissonence that does creep in?

With moderators pulling questions about Cohen, the theories about how his guilty plea actually proves QAnon is real have become even more elaborate. QAnon believers who are still on board with the conspiracy theory are becoming increasingly interested in numerology, or spinning up worlds where Cohen has either deliberately sacrificed himself.

Grasping for any good news, several QAnon believers have claimed that the unnamed presidential candidate implicated in Cohen’s guilty plea is actually Hillary Clinton, when, in reality, it’s clearly Trump.

“Is this the move that Trump has been waiting for?” asked on Reddit user commenter pushing the idea that Cohen would soon testify against Clinton.

Loons, all of them.

Update: oh my God

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The virus is spreading

The virus is spreading

by digby

Trumpism, that is:

In Brazil’s presidential contest, the campaign of Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right Brazilian congressman who defends torture and the country’s former military dictatorship, is getting a boost from former Trump campaign CEO and White House adviser Steve Bannon, as well as Michele Bachmann, the former congresswoman from Minnesota.

Bolsonaro, who is allied with Brazil’s increasingly powerful conservative evangelicals in addition to the moneyed and military elite, is also anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ-equality, and anti-abortion. His platform pledges to combat “gender ideology” in schools.

In 2014, Brazilian-based American journalist Glenn Greenwald called Bolsonaro “the most misogynistic, hateful elected official in the democratic world,” noting that Bolsonaro had more than once had publicly told Congresswoman Maria do Rosário that she wasn’t even worth raping. Bolsonaro once said that he would rather his son die in a car accident than be gay.

Some of the cultural and political forces that helped propel Trump into power could do the same for Bolsonaro. Widespread disgust with crime and legislative corruption and ineptitude create favorable conditions for a law-and-order candidate. Bolsonaro has reportedly promised bonuses to police officers for killing criminals. He has praised Chile’s dictator Pinochet, who killed thousands, for doing “what had to be done.”

In addition, Brazil has been through a period of intense economic and political turmoil. In 2016, the heavily evangelical “Bullets, Beef and Bible” congressional caucus voted to oust President Dilma Rousseff, a move that is widely considered to be “more coup than impeachment—an ideologically driven attempt to impose a conservative evangelical agenda on Brazilian politics,” according to demographer Peter David Arnould Wood, writing in U.S. News and World Report. During the congressional vote to impeach Rousseff, Bolsonaro taunted her by dedicating his impeachment vote to the colonel who ran the unit where she was tortured during the military dictatorship.

This month, Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, a Brazilian legislator, announced that Bannon would be an advisor to his father’s campaign. He said Bannon would offer suggestions on data analysis and use of the internet, but that the arrangement did not include anything “financial.” Earlier in the month, Eduardo had tweeted a picture of himself with Bannon and declared that they would “join forces” against “cultural Marxism.” Probably not coincidentally, the elder Bolsonaro announced recently that if he is elected he will pull Brazil out of the Paris climate agreement. Brazil has the largest economy in Latin America, and ninth in the world.

It sounds like he would be competing with Trump and Rodrigo Duterte the president of the Philippines, for who can be the crudest, most depraved demagogue on the planet.

Bannon is a dangerous person. It’s not a good idea to dismiss him as a clown or a crank. He’s all over the world rubbing shoulders with the worst right wing tyrants in the world. He hasn’t been secret about his plans. I wrote about this well over a year ago:

“Trump is a ‘blunt instrument for us, I don’t know whether he really gets it or not.’” The “us” to whom he refers? The white nationalist, neofascist movement he helped to popularize at Breitbart News, which he called the “platform for the alt-right.”

Indeed, Bannon wore not one, but two button-down black shirts for that interview. Considering that some of his most important intellectual influences are fascists and white nationalists, that may just be his own personal tribute to the previous blackshirt movement he claims to have studied. One of his favorite philosophers, the fascistic Italian writer Julius Evola, thought Mussolini wasn’t extreme enough.

According to Joshua Green, who wrote “Devil’s Bargain,” the recent book about Bannon, Trump and the 2016 election, Bannon claims to believe that the world is entering a very dark phase which was caused by the Enlightenment and can only be averted by adoption of a belief system called “primordial Traditionalism,” one of the progenitors of fascism. Evola thought it was a pretty darned good system:

There are positive and valuable aspects. Those which I could value are the reconstruction of the authority of the state and the idea of overcoming class conflict toward a hierarchical and corporative formation, to some extent, of a military and disciplined style within the nation, in addition to some of their anti-bourgeois proposals. To me, all of that is positive.

Green says:

[Bannon] is trying to not only take over American politics, but look at what he’s doing in places like the European Union. He’s trying to destroy what he would call these globalist edifices, which he believes [are] a manifestation of the rise of modernity and something that needs to be destroyed to pull us back to a pre-Enlightenment era.

Not that he’s ambitious, mind you.

We can ignore this global trend if we choose. But it doesn’t seem wise.

Oh, and look who’s on board:

Either during or just after the visit, [Michelle] Bachmann recorded a video message that was posted online urging Brazilian voters “to only vote for a candidate for the president of Brazil who will support moving the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem.” Bachmann explains:

That’s in agreement with God’s word. God is very clear in the Bible that His throne is established in Jerusalem. For three thousand five hundred years, God has designated Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It’s a fact! And so we know from the Bible that those nations and those individuals who bless Israel will also be blessed themselves, and they’ll prosper. We want Brazil to be blessed. We want Brazil to prosper. Therefore, make sure when you vote, you only vote for a candidate who will move the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem. It will be a blessing to you and a blessing to Brazil.

There’s little doubt which candidate Bachmann is talking about.

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Poor dizzy Duncan had no idea his awful wife was stealing money from the taxpayers

Poor dizzy Duncan had no idea his awful wife was stealing money from the taxpayers

by digby


What a a fine chivalrous military hero Duncan Hunter is:

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), who has been indicted on corruption charges related to the use of his campaign money, appeared to blame his wife for the predicament when he said in an interview Thursday night that she handled the finances for their family and his campaign.

Hunter and his wife Margaret, who was also indicted, entered pleas of not guilty in federal court Thursday morning. They face 60 charges related to the alleged misuse of $250,000 in campaign money. Prosecutors say the couple used the money to illegally pay for personal expenses, including lavish vacations, dental fees and a plane ticket for their pet rabbit.

Among the allegations is that Hunter called his wife when he wanted to buy some Hawaii shorts and that she told him to purchase them at the pro shop of a golf club so they could be listed as golf balls for the Wounded Warriors Project, a veterans charity. Hunter denied that accusation.

On Thursday evening, Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked Hunter, “Are you saying it’s more her fault than your fault?”

Hunter, a Republican from San Diego who served in the Marines, replied: “I’m saying when I went to Iraq in 2003, the first time, I gave her power of attorney and she handled my finances throughout my entire military career and that continued on when I got into Congress. Because I’m gone five days a week, I’m home for two.”

“And she was also the campaign manager,” he added. “Whatever she did, that will be looked at too, I’m sure. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t spend any money illegally. I did not use campaign money, especially for Wounded Warriors stuff, there’s no way.”

He also said it’s a “witch hunt” and that this is all a deep state conspiracy. These people are getting more and more pathetic by the day. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t count on him losing the election. I think it’s pretty clear that the Trump Republicans have no principles, nor morals and no honor. Throwing your wife overboard is what any “smart” guy would do, amirite? Can’t trust those bitches.

His district is crawling with those guys.

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Donnie Two Scoops gets permission for the hit

Donnie Two Scoops gets permission for the hit


by digby

My Salon column this morning:

One of Donald Trump’s alleged charms is that he talks like a regular guy. His voters like that he doesn’t put on airs or act as though he is better than they are. As he said at the Republican National Convention, “I am your voice.” If that’s the case, the Trump voters of America all sound like none-too-bright TV mobsters lately because President Trump has been doing his best impression of Tony Soprano. Not for the first time, of course. Trump has often copped the attitude of a mob boss, but he’s really ratcheted up the gangster talk lately, and with good reason. The feds are breathing down his neck.

It started last week with a tweet responding to the news that his White House counsel had been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office for 30 hours:

Since then, Trump has made statements obviously designed to reassure his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort that if he keeps quiet he may receive a presidential pardon for his multiple felony convictions. Trump even went so far as to have his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor who made his bones putting away mobsters in New York, send a message through the Washington Post that Manafort’s up for a pardon once Mueller delivers his report:

Trump’s lawyers counseled the president against the idea of pardoning anyone linked to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, according to Giuliani, saying Trump should at least wait until special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has concluded his probe.

He might as well have been blinking morse code: “just hold on, Paulie, the boss’ll spring you once he takes care of Bobby the Gumshoe” (The question of why Trump would consult with his personal lawyers instead of the White House Counsel or the Department of Justice pardon office for advice on this issue answers itself.)

Trump himself has made it clear exactly what he expects:

You’ll note that he’s not fond of his former goombah Michael Cohen whom he sees as having stabbed him the back. The feeling is mutual. Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis said Cohen would not accept a pardon from Trump which is probably another appeal to the special prosecutor to offer him a deal and reduce his sentence, but it’s pretty bold nonetheless. He undoubtedly realizes that Trump will never pardon a rat like him.

But perhaps the most telling mafioso-style comment came in a Fox and Friends interview in which Trump claimed that “flipping” (known to non-criminals as “cooperating with the government”) is unfair and should be outlawed. He said he’s had many friends suffer from its use, which says a lot about the company he keeps. And he once again went on and on about how he believes in omertà or as he calls it “loyalty.” He was especially upset — again — at Attorney General Jeff Sessions. When asked if he was planning to fire him he said:

We have somebody that they seem to like to go after lot of Republicans…I put in an attorney general who never took control of the Justice Department. Jeff Sessions, never took control of the Justice Department. It’s sort of an incredible thing. It’s a very, very sad day. Jeff Sessions recused himself, which he shouldn’t have done or he should have told me,” Even my enemies say that Jeff Sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself and then you wouldn’t have put him in. He took my job, and then he said, “I’m going to recuse myself.” I said, “What kind of man is this?”

He also insulted the Department of Justice and the FBI, implying they are all a bunch of partisan hacks even as he said that the rank and file of the FBI are all his supporters.

It’s long been obvious that he’s desperately trying to get Jeff Sessions to quit so that the GOP Senators who have told him that he will face big problems if he fires him can be appeased. (“What’d I say?”) With the exception of one early resignation attempt which Trump grudgingly rejected, Sessions has been stoically absorbing Trump’s insults in order to carry out their mutual agenda. But this time he was forced to respond, likely because the department demanded their leader defend them and make clear that the Department of Justice isn’t Trump’s personal goon squad and protection racket.

Sessions said that the “Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations” and that “no nation has a more talented, more dedicated group of law enforcement investigators and prosecutors than the United States.” Then he pointed out that he really was doing Trump’s bidding by enacting their antediluvian policies to take America back to the 50s — the 1850s.

It appears that he needs to hurry if he wants to get it all done, however. Shortly after he released his statement, Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) made it clear that their previous commitment to protecting Sessions, and by extension the Mueller investigation, was no longer inviolable. In fact, they provided a roadmap for Trump to end his nightmare at long last.

Graham told Bloomberg that President Trump is “entitled to an attorney general he has faith in, somebody that’s qualified for the job, and I think there will come a time, sooner rather than later, where it will be time to have a new face and a fresh voice at the Department of Justice.” He went on to make clear that he shouldn’t be fired before Brett Kavanaugh can be jammed through confirmation and the midterms, pretty much giving the green light for him to do it in November.

Grassley, who had previously said he wouldn’t schedule any confirmation hearing to replace Sessions, indicated he now thinks he could fit them in.  Trump doesn’t actually need a replacement to take out Mueller. He can just put a previously confirmed consiglieri in the job on a temporary basis and he will make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Trump is so overwrought that it’s likely they realize he’s going to do it and they are simply trying to hold him off long enough to get their Supreme Court Justice and hopefully hold on to their slim majority in November. They will sell their souls for those two goals. And even if they lose their majority, their help with this little problem will turn them into made men who will go to the mattresses to fight an impeachment conviction against the big boss. It’s all in the family.

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