Month: November 2018

Slow motion Mueller Report

by digby

Manafort’s been lying to Mueller and they are pulling his plea agreement. Mueller will be spelling our how he knows this in his filing. It’s unclear if we are going to see it soon or if the judge will keep it unders seal as the rest of the investigation continues.

Manafort has been sharing information with Trump’s lawyers. It appears that information may not have been what Manafort or Trump’s lawyers thought it was. And Trump just submitted his “written interview” about collusion without knowing that.

Stay tuned.

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Daddy’s little girl on the hot seat

by digby

This is what you get when you bring your family into your corrupt administration:

When two Republican members of Congress began formally questioning last week Ivanka Trump’s use of private email for government business, it was seen by people close to the White House as a sign of things to come for the president’s family.

One of the Republicans was Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has conducted little oversight of the Trump White House until now.

The other was Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who previously led a two-year investigation into events surrounding the attack on American diplomatic outposts in Benghazi, Libya, focusing relentlessly on the role of Hillary Clinton. His most prominent investigation as chairman has scrutinized alleged anti-Trump political bias within the F.B.I. during its inquiries related to the 2016 presidential campaign.

“That you now have Republicans investigating members of the first family is an indication of the perils ahead” for the Trumps, said Tom Davis, the former House Republican from Virginia who was the chairman of the Oversight Committee from 2003 through 2006.

Mr. Gowdy, who is retiring from Congress in January, will have little to do with any investigation, and his role in endorsing the inquiry was seen as pro forma. In his place as chairman of the committee will be Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, one of the newly empowered House Democrats eager to take on the Trump administration.

The Democrats are already laying out lines of inquiry that could quickly lead not just to Mr. Trump and his White House aides, but also to his immediate family. And Republicans returning to Capitol Hill next year may be forced by the changed political climate to take a harder line toward the Trump family.

Likely Democratic targets include not only the president’s personal finances and those of the Trump Organization, but also the actions taken by his sons Donald Jr. and Eric and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, during the 2016 campaign and its aftermath.

The Oversight and Judiciary Committees are likely to focus on any violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bans payments from foreign governments to federal officeholders, an avenue that will lead to an examination of payments to Trump-held properties and the role of both of his sons and Mr. Kushner. And some investigators may try to question Donald Trump Jr. again about a meeting he held with a Kremlin-linked lawyer promising “dirt” about Mrs. Clinton.

While some of the areas primed for inquiry — most notably, ties between the Trump campaign, the Trump Organization and Russia, and possible campaign finance violations — are likely to overlap with investigations by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and federal prosecutors in New York, Democrats believe they have a broader mandate to question everything from foreign business dealings by Ms. Trump and the Trump Organization to the administration of security clearances at the White House, including the one given to Mr. Kushner.

He’s bullshitting himself on this although I’m sure the GOP will be shrieiking like harpies:

Mr. Trump has told aides that he believes that Democrats have the potential to appear overly partisan in investigating his family and that voters may be sympathetic to efforts to rebuff them.

Thomas M. Reynolds, a former congressman who was the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2006, agreed that the incoming House majority would be wise not to meddle excessively in the private affairs of the president’s business and two adult sons.

But, he said, “we’re on a thin line here because the president still owns the company.”

Ya think? Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

Both Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump were advised by White House lawyers of the risks of joining the West Wing as formal advisers two years ago, since it would open them up to official lines of inquiry, among other issues. On the other hand, people close to them noted that they might be shielded by executive privilege in some instances, whereas the president’s adult sons, who do not serve in the administration, are not.

Democrats have said they will not reflexively file subpoenas, but they have already gotten signals from the White House that cooperation is likely to be minimal. Even if the Mueller investigation ends in the coming months, as Mr. Trump’s lawyers believe is possible, the White House is facing a string of congressional subpoenas that could grind the gears of government to a halt, and put a spotlight on areas that the secretive Mr. Trump prefers to keep out of sight.

Nepotism laws were put in to benefit government officials as much as the public. The president is in an untenable position if anything is turned up against Jared and Ivanka, his low rent Haldeman and Erlichmen who Nixon thought of as his sons but nonetheless hung them out to dry. Can Trump do that to his baby girl and her husband?

Yeah, you’re right. Of course he would.

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What? No Labels is enabling the GOP? Say it ain’t so!

What else is new?

by digby

The Daily Beast reports that the “centrist” organization No Labels thought the GOP’s vilification of Nancy Pelosi was something they wanted a piece of for themselves:

As incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi works to consolidate votes for her leadership bid, a group of largely centrist House Democrats have remained holdouts. Publicly, they’re pushing for tweaks to House rules once Democrats take over the chamber in January. But behind the scenes, a leading advocacy group that has helped organize this coalition of moderates has been itching to make life hell for Pelosi.

Internal communications reviewed by The Daily Beast show that early this year the group No Labels, a centrist advocacy organization, contemplated a plan to kneecap Pelosi’s political standing. In one exchange, a top official with the group even laid out the pros and cons of turning the California Democrat into a “bogeyman.”
[…]
Emails obtained by The Daily Beast show that No Labels leadership contemplated a campaign to attack Pelosi aggressively after the primary campaign of centrist Rep. Dan Lipinski, who faced a primary challenge this year from Marie Newman, a progressive political neophyte. Lipinski’s pro-life stance had alienated a number of Democrats, but he was a proud member of the No Labels-backed House Problem-Solvers Caucus, and the group worked through a network of allied super PACs to support his reelection bid.

“Nancy, I have been thinking about our using Pelosi as the chief bogeyman in our messaging post-Lipinski,” began one email, subject line: “Pelosi as bogeyman.”

Pelosi had endorsed Lipinski. But No Labels leadership was convinced that her support was a fig leaf. Jacobson, according to a source familiar with the group’s internal deliberations, was convinced that Pelosi had secretly tried to scuttle the congressman’s reelection and proposed publicly attacking the Democratic leader in the run-up to the midterms.

“We were trying to figure out, assuming we got a positive result [in the Lipinski race], which we did, what would be the comms strategy afterwards,” said the source. “Nancy Jacobson’s immediate answer was, ‘I want to make Pelosi the bogeyman.’ She wanted to make it all about Nancy Pelosi and how she was going after incumbent dems. None of that was true.”

According to the emails, No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy appears to have tried to talk Jacobson down. A direct confrontation with Pelosi would blow back on the group’s congressional allies, he explained. It would also be unprecedented; No Labels had never engaged in similar campaigns against congressional leaders of either party. Clancy instead proposed to make Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) the object of the group’s criticism. Unlike Pelosi, Sanders had actually endorsed Newman; had no procedural power to wield against members of the Problem-Solvers Caucus; and wasn’t even a Democrat.

“This is us, in effect, declaring war on Pelosi,” Clancy warned. “No Labels has never identified a party leader as ‘the enemy’ before. We didn’t do it with Obama or Trump. We haven’t done it with Schumer, Ryan or McConnell. If we do this, we should consider some very real downsides.”

At the end of his memo, Clancy conceded that, “at some point,” No Labels “is probably going to go to war with Pelosi. And it probably should.” But “I don’t know that now is the time to do it, especially when we have a perfectly good villain to use in Bernie.”

They went with it. Which proves beyond a reasonable doubt exactly where they fit into our political eco-system.

We’re full of fun “did you knows,” like this one about Nancy Pelosi! pic.twitter.com/fO1r5UiRgs

— No Labels (@NoLabelsOrg) June 2, 2018

And since Democrats won back control of the House this month for the first time in eight years, No Labels has egged on lawmakers—including Lipinski—to withhold their support for Pelosi’s speakership bid in an effort to extract some procedural concessions.

Though it all, No Labels insists that Pelosi is not the “boogeyman” its leader had contemplating portraying after Lipinski’s primary victory. “No Labels is not against Nancy Pelosi or any other speaker candidate,” the group claimed over the weekend. “We are FOR rules changes that empower members in both parties who want to work across the aisle to find solutions and prevent the fringes – in both parties – from perpetuating endless gridlock.”

Yeah, they didn’t get their GOP members to hold up Paul Ryan for such “rules changes”, undoubtedly knowing they would laugh in their faces.

They are actually a perfect organization for the Trump era. Self-serving liars who genuflect to the right and oppose the left. Nothing new there either.

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How’s Trump’s trade war working out for us?

by digby

It’s not the sole reason for GM laying off thousands and shutting plants. They seem to have decided that investment in American plants isn’t really worth their while (despite that fat corporate tax cut)  and the American people, who have very short memories, have decided they only want to drive gas guzzling trucks because gas is cheap right now.

But Trump has made things worse:

Cost pressures on GM and other automakers and suppliers have increased as demand has waned for traditional sedans. The company has said tariffs on imported steel, imposed earlier this year by the Trump administration, have cost it $1 billion.

Tariffs can be a useful tool and could have been deployed in ways that strengthened American manufacturing. But imposing tariffs willy-nilly because he doesn’t understand how the world really works and thinks he can just strut around and show his power and everything will fall into place is not a good strategy.  Economics is much more complicated than Trump’s simplistic insistence that the rest of the world has been screwing America for decades and he’s going to make it stop.

Reality is starting to bite.

TRUMP on GM plant closures: "We don't like it. I believe they'll be opening up something else. And I was very tough. I spoke with her when I heard they were closing and I said, you know, this country has done a lot for general motors. You better get back in there soon." pic.twitter.com/ggV5YgEwyz— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 26, 2018

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He has a natural instinct for science

by digby

I would guess that most of you have read about the devastating climate change report. It should be keeping us all awake at night.

But there is someone out there who knows that it’s all bunk because he’s related to someone who was a scientist:

“I agree the climate changes, but it goes back and forth, back and forth.” When the interviewer noted that scientists have concluded otherwise, Trump asserted his own scientific credentials.

“My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years. Dr. John Trump. And I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject, but I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture.”

I think this explains a little piece of his worldview in general — his “instincts” based upon his superior genetics tell him everything he needs to know. In fact, they tell everyone everything they need to know:

So Trump’s claim to scientific competence rests on his belief that science is a matter of instinct, and this instinct is passed on genetically, as evidenced by his uncle. Those lucky few possessed of this gift can look at two competing hypotheses and know which one is correct, without needing to study the evidence, or even having a clear understanding of what “evidence” means. Trump has luckily inherited this instinct, along with some $400 million in untaxed gifts from his father.

Reminder about Trump’s belief in “genetics” (actually eugenics, although he doesn’t know what that word means)

LA Times:

Like history’s monarchs, Trump believes that the qualities that make him successful are in-born. He once said he possesses a genetic “gift” for real estate development.

“I’m a big believer in natural ability,” Trump told me during a discussion about his leadership traits, which he said came from a natural sense of how human relations work. “If Obama had that psychology, Putin wouldn’t be eating his lunch. He doesn’t have that psychology and he never will because it’s not in his DNA.” Later in this discussion, Trump said: “I believe in being prepared and all that stuff. But in many respects, the most important thing is an innate ability.”

Perhaps Trump’s conviction that DNA — not life experience — is everything explains why he proudly claims that he’s “basically the same” today as when he was a boy. “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same,” he said. “The temperament is not that different.”

Academic research popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2002 essay “The Talent Myth” demonstrates that achievement depends more on dedication and experience than in-bred ability. But this message is lost on many well-to-do Americans who, researchers have found, believe their wealth affirms their innate superiority. The better-off are also more inclined to believe that “people get what they are entitled to have.”

Trump has handed down his sense of entitlement to the next generation. His son Donald Jr. told me: “Like him, I’m a big believer in race-horse theory. He’s an incredibly accomplished guy, my mother’s incredibly accomplished, she’s an Olympian, so I’d like to believe genetically I’m predisposed to [be] better than average.”

The notion that Donald Jr.’s mother, Ivana Trump, was an Olympic skier in 1972 persists even though her country, Czechoslovakia, fielded no team. Her son not only believes the tall tale, he’s convinced that it affirms his own superiority. “I’m in the high percentile on the bell curve,” he said. He then added that his father’s abilities are even greater. “That’s what separates him from everyone I know.”

The racehorse theory of human development explains Trump’s belief in his suitability for political leadership, despite the fact that he has never held office. He’s absolutely convinced that America’s problems will be solved by his God-given management skills, bankruptcies notwithstanding. You are either born with superior qualities — the right DNA — or you are not. And people get what they deserve. In his case, that includes the White House.

Why anyone would think he’s a white supremacist is beyond me.

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Everyone knows that Trump and Stone are joined at the hip, right?

by digby

Trump and Stone’s 1999 presidential trial run

I’m noticing a theme emerging among various reporters and analysts, (Jonathan Swan of Axios and former TIME editor Rick Stengel come to mind) in which they cynically assume that if the Mueller investigation is focusing on silly clowns like Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone this whole thing is probably just a great big nothing burger. They seem to think this probe needs to uncover a massive, high-level conspiracy between Putin and Trump to be legitimate. That’s simply not true.

Everyone needs to remember that Donald Trump himself is one of those silly clowns. Roger Stone has been his political guru for years. It was Stone who recruited him for his short-lived Reform Party bid in 2000. He tried to get him to run for NY Governor but they mutually decided that Trump should make his bid for President instead.

Stone and Trump are in this together, always have been. The idea that such a close, longstanding intimate of the president, a man whose entire identity is “dirty trickster” going all the way back to Richard Nixon (whose face he has tattooed on his back) is completely missing the story. That Trump is so closely associated with this “clown” in the first place is outrageous. That this “clown” was out there working on Trump’s behalf in the netherworld of hacking and sabotage is completely predictable.

It’s also completely obvious that Trump himself would have been in on it. 

Whether Mueller can prove that is yet to be determined. But dismissing Stone as a silly fringe player ignores the fact that this also describes Trump. And Trump is no fringe player anymore. He’s the president of the United States.

Consider as well that Nixon was taken down by a botched “3rd rate burglary” done by a bunch of misfits trying to sabotage the McGovern campaign. Nixon wasn’t working with a foreign government on that particular operation (although he had a history of doing similar in the 1968 campaign) he was caught because his team worked with fringe crackpots like G. Gordon Liddy to implement a criminal conspiracy.

As Deep Throat said to Bob Woodward way back when: “… the truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand…”

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Trump and the troops: a black comedy

by digby

Note the hideous gold throne in the background

My Salon column this morning:

All presidents have their own way of celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. President Obama and his family would celebrate at the White House after spending the Wednesday before passing out food and good wishes to the needy in the Washington area. George W. Bush and his family usually spent it at their Texas ranch although he very famously made a surprise trip to Iraq in 2003 to serve a turkey dinner to the troops in the war zone. Bill Clinton and family often served Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless before going to Camp David for the day. The Reagans always spent the holiday at their Santa Barbara home.

All of them would issue a Thanksgiving proclamation and they very often called troops around the world to thank them for their service.  It’s what presidents do. And President Trump did it too, although I think most of the country wishes that he’d just dropped that tradition as he has so many others. It was an epic disaster of a call.

First, lets set the stage. Unlike the previous presidents who either spent the holiday at a personal home or a White House residence, Trump goes to his gilt-laden commercial property in Florida where people pay him for the privilege of sharing the meal with him.  And unlike most “winter white house” situations, they apparently have no permanent set for the president to perform his duties so they put a little desk in the middle of a lobby making him look like he was sitting at the check-in table for a life insurance seminar.

Trump’s teleconference is on speakerphone, yet Trump holds a phone to his ear.

You can’t parody this stuff. https://t.co/eYBGyAsemH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 22, 2018

Trump gave a standard written speech about the troops and then proceeded to speak with various members of the armed services around the world on speaker phone. He asked Generals for public combat assessments (not cool) and bizarrely quizzed some poor befuddled Coast Guard Lieutenant stationed in Bahrain about trade:

What’s going on in the region?  How are they feeling about things?  How are they feeling about trade?  Because, you know, trade for me is a very big subject all over.  We’ve been taken advantage of for many, many years by bad trade deals.  We don’t have any good trade deals.  How are you finding things in the region, Nick?

The Lieutenant replied that from his perspective on a boat out in the water there was a lot of trade going on and he didn’t see any issues.  Trump told him to “keep it that way” and reiterated that we have had bad trade deals but now we’re going to have good ones because other countries won’t be taking advantage of us. The military personnel listening must have wondered just what kind of mission he thought they were on.

When he spoke with a Captain stationed on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan he implied that he disapproved of an upgrade from steam to electro-magnetic catapaults suggesting that it was a waste of money and said the new technology required operators to be “Albert Einstein” to run them. The Captain tartly replied, “you sort of have to be Albert Einstein to run the nuclear power plants that we have here as well, but we’re doing that very well.”  Trump didn’t seem upset by that answer because he really didn’t get it.

Mostly, however, he talked  about the border. The US border with Mexico, of course. None of the troops he was speaking to were stationed there. They were all stationed in the middle east or on ships at sea. Nonetheless, he used the occasion to rant and rave about the “caravan” and immigrants invading our shore even connecting the war in Afghanistan, saying “you’re doing it over there, we’re doing it over here.”

Nursing a grudge with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court over a spat concerning a judge who blocked his latest draconian immigration executive order, he ragged on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the call telling the troops that ” it’s a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services; when they tell you how to protect your border, it’s a disgrace.”

What a monumentally inappropriate comment to make to military personnel people who are in a war zone overseas. It’s mind-boggling. Of course, this is the president who addressed the Boy Scout Jamboree by telling licentious stories about rich men on their yachts saying, “you’re Boy Scouts, but you know life, you know life.” We should count ourselves lucky he didn’t ask the troops if they were getting any over there — or lead them in a chant of “lock her up!”

He simply can’t think of anything else to talk about beyond his short list of personal obsessions. When the assembled reporters asked him some questions after the call, he got right back on that feedback loop, going on and on about the alleged border crisis, the courts, trade etc. only digressing to double down on his apologia for Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, even going so far as to say that he hates what happened to Jemal Khashoggi but he knows the Prince hates it even more.  A reporter asked him who should be held accountable and he said “maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place.”

On Thanksgiving Day 2018, the President of the United States ranted to overseas troops about how terrible the American judicial system is and equated their various professional missions with his “war”  at the US border.  He fought with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and dismissed the findings of the US intelligence community (again) in favor of a murderous tyrant, blaming “the world” for being vicious. He petulantly listed one grievance after another, every government institution the subject of his wrath.

But never let it be said that it was all dark and depressing. When asked, “what are you thankful for”  he brightened immediately and without missing a beat he said:

For having a great family and for having made a tremendous difference in this country.  I’ve made a tremendous difference in the country.  This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office, that you wouldn’t believe it.

He’s right about that. Nobody believes it.

A trio of distractions
by Tom Sullivan

U.S. border agents teargas migrant children in diapers. Russians fire on and seize three Ukrainian naval vessels. The Chinese hold U.S. citizens hostage to the government’s dispute with their estranged father.

Helluva distraction, uh, trio of distractions.

A migrant family, part of a caravan of thousands traveling from Central America en route to the United States, runs away from tear gas in front of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Tijuana, Mexico.

(📷: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters) pic.twitter.com/pz7hkxsN9g— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 25, 2018

Meanwhile, the U.S. president golfs.

It would all seem conveniently timed if one were prone to conspiracy theorizing. Because on a day when former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos reports to prison, standing somewhere just out of the press lights, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team are preparing their findings on the Russian conspiracy to monkeywrench the 2016 presidential election. Nothing like a world in crisis and outrage-inducing visuals to divert people’s attention from what’s coming.

We should be glad, Matt Yglesias wrote, that Trump is too lazy to do the job, “One is mostly left to hope that he’s being dishonest and actually has a stronger grasp of things than his words suggest.” This, after all, is where conspiracy theories come from. Believing a diabolical someone is in control is better than knowing no one is. Trump’s problem is he is not competent enough to manage diabolical or maintain control.

But cruel. He’s hell at cruel.

Karen Attiah of the Washington Post considers how the U.S. press would portray Sunday’s border incident if it occurred in a non-western country:

“American security forces under the Trump regime used *chemical weapons* in a cross border operation against unarmed asylum seekers, including children. “

The Post’s E.J. Dionne comments on how Republicans who once criticized Trump’s despotic inclinations now moonlight as apologists for a man prepared to weaponize the criminal justice system against political opponents and to wave off a Saudi ruler’s ordering the murder and dismemberment of a journalist:

But all the tax cuts and judges in the world won’t compensate for the cost to the United States of abandoning any claim that it prefers democracy to dictatorship and human rights to barbarism. The syndrome we most need to worry about is denial — a blind refusal to face up to how much damage Trump is willing to inflict on our system of self-rule, and on our values.

Early morning narcissism attack

by digby

I don’t know what he’s on but this is just … well, it’s something:

The large and violent French protests don’t take into account how badly the United States has been treated on Trade by the European Union or on fair and reasonable payments for our GREAT military protection. Both of these topics must be remedied soon.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2018

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Hitmen on the grift

by digby

Lewandowski and Bossie have a new book coming out:

“Trump’s Enemies,” which is 288 pages and published by Center Street, is a sequel to the first book Lewandowski and Bossie wrote together, the campaign memoir “Let Trump Be Trump,” which was released last year.

Lewandowski and Bossie met with Trump in the Oval Office on Sept. 20 for a friendly interview, an edited transcript of which appears in the new book. Trump told the authors that he considers the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to have helped him politically.

“I think it makes my base stronger,” Trump said in the interview. “I would have never said this to you. But I think the level of love now is far greater than when we won. I don’t know, what do you think, Mike?”

Vice President Pence, who sat in for a portion of the interview, replied, “As strong or stronger.”

Good God, he loves the taste of Trump’s boots.

Trump spent much of the interview complaining about the news media. When Bossie asked him who or what is his biggest enemy, Trump replied: “The greatest enemy of this country is Fake News. I really mean it.” He went on to say, “I think that one of the most important things that I’ve done, especially for the public, is explain that a lot of the news is indeed fake.”

Trump told Lewandowski and Bossie that he regrets not immediately dismissing James B. Comey as FBI director. “I should have fired him the day after I won and announced please get the hell out,” Trump said. The president also said congressional Republicans “let me down” by not fighting harder to secure funding to construct a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lewandowski and Bossie use their book to settle scores with a number of fellow Trump advisers. They refer to Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who are cooperating with Mueller’s investigation, each as a “rat.”

The authors describe a cohort of White House aides — including former press secretary Sean Spicer and former deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin — as “the November Ninth Club,” arguing that they are establishment Republicans who did not fully support Trump until the day after he was elected, when they began angling for powerful government jobs.

Lewandowski and Bossie also savage former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn as a “limousine liberal” and “the poster boy for the disloyal staff conspiring against President Trump.” And they accuse former staff secretary Rob Porter of working to thwart Trump’s agenda and style to make him more traditionally “presidential.”

The narrative reads in part like Trump’s Twitter grievances in book form. Lewandowski and Bossie write at length about the same FBI and Justice Department officials whose names pepper so many presidential tweets — Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok and Sally Yates. And they go after the same intelligence officials that Trump often targets — James R. Clapper Jr. and John Brennan — and accuse them of wanting to “nullify the election and bring down the president” by detailing Russia’s interference.

The authors also go after many of Trump’s Democratic foes. They refer to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) as “crazy”; call Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) “many people’s favorite liberal wacko”; and label Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) an “enemy of President Trump.” They also spell out former president Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein, echoing a common Republican tactic meant to falsely suggest that the 44th president is a Muslim.

Like Trump, the authors use colorful language to dismiss the Russia investigation, specifically the notion that the Trump campaign conspired with Russians, as a made-up excuse for Democrats losing the 2016 election. They call it “a sweeping work of fiction so complex, so audacious, so unbelievable that if they gave out awards for bad excuses, the Democrats would win an Oscar, an Emmy, and maybe even the Heisman Trophy.”

I’m sure Trump’s cult will love it.

Bossie is a professional character assasin. That he’s using his dark gifts to hit Republicans is new. I guess he figures Trump is the GOP future.

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