Month: November 2019

There is no wage growth. Promises made, promises kept

by digby

All those blue-collar workers who voted for Trump should have paid attention to what he says, He has always been for low wages:

From the Fox Business News debate in November 2015:

CAVUTO: Mr. Trump, as the leading presidential candidate on this stage and one whose tax plan exempts couples making up to $50,000 a year from paying any federal income taxes at all, are you sympathetic to the protesters cause since a $15 wage works out to about $31,000 a year?

TRUMP: I can’t be Neil. And the and the reason I can’t be is that we are a country that is being beaten on every front economically, militarily. There is nothing that we do now to win. We don’t win anymore. Our taxes are too high. I’ve come up with a tax plan that many, many people like very much. It’s going to be a tremendous plan. I think it’ll make our country and our economy very dynamic.

But, taxes too high, wages too high, we’re not going to be able to compete against the world. I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is. 

People have to go out, they have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum. But we can not do this if we are going to compete with the rest of the world. We just can’t do it.

In Michigan he explained how he thought US automakers could compete:

Trump said U.S. automakers could shift production away from Michigan to communities where autoworkers would make less. “You can go to different parts of the United States and then ultimately you’d do full-circle — you’ll come back to Michigan because those guys are going to want their jobs back even if it is less,” Trump said. “We can do the rotation in the United States — it doesn’t have to be in Mexico.”

He said that after Michigan “loses a couple of plants — all of sudden you’ll make good deals in your own area.”

Never say he doesn’t deliver on his promises. While the rich and corporations are fat and happy, wage growth is practically non-existent.

President Donald Trump regularly boasts that the United States is experiencing the “best economy ever” — but a new opinion poll conducted by the Financial Times shows that most voters clearly don’t feel that way.

Even though the United States has a low unemployment rate and a record stock market, the poll shows most Americans don’t feel they’re getting ahead thanks to sluggish wage growth.

“Persistently slow wage growth appeared to be a main driver of discontent, with 36 percent of those who said they were worse off blaming their income levels,” the Financial Times reports.

Don’t say he didn’t warn you.

But at least he owns the libs and keeps Mexicans and blacks in their places. That’s really all that matters.

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Oh Pauli, you won’t see him no more

by digby

When the president of the United States talks like a gangster, here’s how it looks to his targets. From former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s deposition:

Q: Also on page 4, at the top, President Trump said, “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news, so I just want to let you know that.” Do you see that?

A: Yes.

Q: What was your reaction when you saw that?

A: Again, I hate to be repetitive, but I was shocked. I mean, I was very surprised that President Trump would—first of all, that I would feature repeatedly in a Presidential phone call, but secondly, that the President would speak about me or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart.

Q: At the bottom of that same page, President Trump says, “Well, she’s going to go through some things.” What did you understand that to mean?

A: I didn’t know what it meant. I was very concerned. I still am.

Q: Did you feel threatened?

A: Yes.

He’s the most powerful thug in the world. I’d be scared too.

But consider that she’d already been treated as if there was a contract out on her:

Q: What did she say to you?

A: Well, in the first call, which happened at quarter of 10 in the evening Kyiv time,
she said that she was giving me a heads-up, that things were going wrong, kind of
off the—off the track, and she wanted to give me a heads-up. She didn’t know
what was happening, but there was a lot of nervousness on the seventh floor and
up the street.

Q: What did she mean by “up the street”?

A: The White House.
…
A: She called me about an hour later, so it’s now 1 a.m. in the Ukraine.

Q: And what did she say to you then?

A: She said that there was a lot of concern for me, that I needed to be on the next
plane home to Washington. And I was like, what? What happened? And she
said, I don’t know, but this is about your security. You need to come home
immediately. You need to come home on the next plane

Jesus.

These people are mobsters and all the Republicans are going to defend it as perfectly normal. If it is, the US State Department is a criminal organization.

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It was bribery, plain and simple

by digby

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Bribery: 

Bribery refers to the offering, giving, soliciting, or receiving of any item of value as a means of influencing the actions of an individual holding a public or legal duty. This type of action results in matters that should be handled objectively being handled in a manner best suiting the private interests of the decision maker. Bribery constitutes a crime and both the offeror and the recipient can be criminally charged.

The “transcript” of the call between Trump and Ukraine President Zelensky:

The President: … I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she ·doesn’t do anything. A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it’s something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.

President Zelenskyy: Yes you are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1000% and I can tell you the following; I did talk to Angela Merkel and I did meet with her I also met and talked with Macron and I told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. They are not enforcing the sanctions. They are not working as much as they should work for Ukraine. It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I’m very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

The President:
I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.

President Zelenskyy:

Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.. That I can assure you.

The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.

There’s more. But if that doesn’t sound like a bribe to you, then I can’t help you.

The Republicans are starting to pivot to the notion that Trump may have asked for a quid-pro-quo, but there was nothing wrong with it because he didn’t have any criminal intent. Sure. Neither did Don Corleone when he said “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse” which is basically what Trump said in that conversation.

S far Trump isn’t buying it. He’s carrying on with his patented “Witch Hunt!!!! primal scream defense. But he may have no choice in the end if the Senate Republicans insist that it’s the only way they can justify voting against conviction.

But it’s clear that Trump did not just commit “other high crimes and misdemeanors” which he did commit over and over again with his blatant abuse of power and obstruction of justice. He also committed one of the two plainly articulated impeachable crimes in the constitution: bribery.

I assume that close to half the country will say their Dear Leader can do no wrong. But it doesn’t change the clear facts. The president committed not only an impeachable act, he committed a criminal act. And he believes, probably correctly, that he can get away with it. If he wins re-election, there will be no restraints.

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Chip in for Susie

by digby

Susie Madrak is one of my OG blogger buddies, writer for Crooks and Liars and all-around good egg. She got some scary news and could use a few extra bucks right now:

The stress of covering Trump may have sent some of my cells into overdrive and now there’s a tumor. A rare tumor! A malignant tumor!

It’s still small, and it’s still early. I have a lot of things to do before surgery next month and I’m not going to (pardon the expression) kill myself to keep up the same blogging pace (which, to readers, probably looks more like a leisurely stroll, but whatever).

In the meantime, I’ve asked a couple of friends to pitch in. I’ll still post, just not as much.

I may not even need will most likely need radiation. My future also involves some medications that are a pain in the ass, but I expect to be around for a while. (Thank you, baby Jesus, for Medicare!)

If you want to chip in to help cover all the extra gas, tolls, and miscellaneous expenses this enterprise is costing me, why, that would be just swell. Because my anxiety levels are through the roof — it all adds up. Thanks!

Click here to donate.  Every little bit helps at a time like this.
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Ukraine is just another cover-up

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

During the 2016 campaign candidate Donald Trump was always a bit odd about Russia. He claimed he knew Russian President Vladimir Putin, then denied he knew him a dozen different times. He insisted that the Russian president thought he was a genius based upon a mistranslated comment. We now know that the entire top tier of Trump’s campaign was eager to accept “dirt” from Russia on his Democratic opponent in June of 2016. But in real time one of the first clues that something was weird with Trump and Russia was the fact that his campaign changed only one aspect of the Republican platform: military aid to Ukraine, of all things.

Robert Mueller was unable to prove there was anything nefarious about that request, only concluding that the Trump campaign adviser who made it had conversations with the Russian ambassador and had called Trump’s top foreign policy adviser, Jeff Sessions, at the time. Why this was the only policy change in the entire convention remained a big mystery.

It’s now been reported that Ukraine has been on Trump’s mind since at least June of 2016, when news reports started to surface about Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee. According to documents released to BuzzFeed under the Freedom of Information Act, Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul Manafort, told him that Ukraine was likely responsible for the hacking, not Russia. As time went on and it became obvious that the hackers were actively helping his campaign, Trump latched on to that alternative narrative.

According to interviews with Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates, who participated in the campaign at the highest level, this theory was first shared by none other than Konstantin Kilimnik, a pro-Russian Ukrainian with apparent ties to Russian intelligence who served as Manafort’s conduit to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, to whom Manafort owed millions of dollars. This theory was evidently passed around at meetings with top campaign officials as they tried to figure out how to access the hacked material themselves.

Gates also told Mueller’s team that Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, agreed that it was likely Ukraine had done the hack, because U.S. intelligence agencies were so incompetent that their conclusion it was the Russians had to be incorrect. Apparently, Flynn believed he could use his intelligence sources to get hold of those “missing emails.” It never occurred to any of them, apparently, that Russia wasn’t trying very hard to hide its tracks for a reason.

Just after the Republican convention in July 2016, Trump was asked about the Russian invasion of Crimea. In fact, it was at the same press conference when he made the famous “Russia, if you’re listening” comment that he said this:

I asked @realDonaldTrump:”Would you as president want to recognize #Crimea as Russian, lift sanctions?” – “Yes we would be looking at that”

— MareikeAden (@MareikeAden) July 27, 2016

It’s possible that Trump simply didn’t know what she was talking about. But now that we know campaign officials were obsessively talking about Ukraine during this period, that seems less likely. It also seems less likely that the change in the platform was just a weird decision by one low-level staffer. Trump and his campaign were already building their case that Russia was not behind the hacking. It’s easy to understand why Manafort would push this. He was under investigation by the Ukrainians at the time. And Flynn was openly hostile to the intelligence community because it had rightfully discerned that he was batshit crazy, and had successfully had him removed from his highly sensitive position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Why was Trump so eager to exonerate Russia? That can be explained in a number of ways. He wanted a Trump Tower Moscow deal so badly he could taste it. The rumors that Russians were helping his campaign were floated almost immediately from the time the DNC hack became public. Despite his eagerness to work with them, Trump wasn’t so naive that he didn’t realize that might not look good to the public. (He’s been much less cautious since he became president, going out of his way to please Putin and consistently defying those who tell him it’s not a good idea on either a policy or a political basis.)

Why Trump has tilted so strongly toward Russia remains the burning question of the Trump era and we may never know the answer. But whatever motivated him has pushed him to make decisions that led to his inclusion in the exclusive club of presidents who have been investigated for impeachable crimes.

It is probable that the extent of Trump’s experience with Ukraine prior to the 2016 campaign was leering at Miss Ukraine in the Miss Universe pageant dressing room. But according to the Washington Post, his hostility toward the country, fed by cronies such as Manafort, Giuliani and Flynn (along with some possible whispered sweet nothings by a certain strongman) is intense:

Three of President Trump’s top advisers met with him in the Oval Office in May, determined to convince him that the new Ukrainian leader was an ally deserving of U.S. support. 

They had barely begun their pitch when Trump unloaded on them, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the meeting. In Trump’s mind, the officials said, Ukraine’s entire leadership had colluded with the Democrats to undermine his 2016 presidential campaign. 

“They tried to take me down,” Trump railed. 

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the senior member of the group, assured Trump that the new Ukrainian president was different — a reformer in Trump’s mold who had even quoted President Ronald Reagan in his inaugural address, for which the three advisers had been present. But the harder they pushed in the Oval Office, the more Trump resisted. 

“They are horrible, corrupt people,” Trump told them.

These Trump advisers seemed to take him at his word, as do others quoted in the story. But we know that Trump had an ulterior motive for resisting the aid to Ukraine, don’t we? He needed something to bribe Ukrainian leaders with so they would announce they were going to investigate the 2016 election and Joe Biden’s alleged corrupt dealings. It served his purpose quite well to say that he actually believed they were “horrible, corrupt people.” Even he isn’t so brazen that he would tell his advisers that he wanted Ukraine to smear a political opponent and get Russia off the hook for its sabotage of the 2016 election, so maybe hold off on giving the Ukrainians any aid until they’re desperate enough to cooperate.

Rudy Giuliani, who has been meeting with Ukraine officials since 2017 about this, and who admitted to consulting with Manafort as well, has clearly been spinning this Ukraine conspiracy theory with Trump ever since 2016, waiting for the Mueller report to be released to put the screws to the Ukrainian government. But hubris got to Trump, who foolishly made the ask himself, setting off alarms that can’t be turned off.

One Twitter wag summed up the case perfectly:

Donald Trump extorted a foreign government to take down a political opponent and in the process hampered their ability to combat their regional aggressor who happened to help Donald Trump against his previous political opponent.— Grudge of Whales (@grudging1) November 3, 2019

If you think of Trump’s Ukraine conspiracy theory as the cover-up operation for his 2016 crimes, the whole thing makes a lot more sense.

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Rattled: Trump’s prevent defense
by Tom Sullivan

All four White House officials scheduled to give closed-door testimony today in the House impeachment inquiry will not appear, multiple news outlets report. They include National Security Council lawyers John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis as well Brian McCormack of the office of management and budget, and Robert Blair, a top aide to chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Eisenberg and McCormack are under subpoena. Blair was on the July 25 call with the president of Ukraine at the center of the inquiry.

CNN reports the administration is claiming executive privilege in Eisenberg’s case, while officials claim Ellis, McCormack and Blair won’t be able to have a White House lawyer present.

OMB officials Michael Duffey and Russell Vought will not appear as scheduled later this week, a source tells CNN.

The Washington Post explains:

Russell Vought, a Mulvaney protege who leads the White House Office of Management and Budget, intends a concerted defiance of congressional subpoenas in coming days, and two of his subordinates will follow suit — simultaneously proving their loyalty to the president and creating a potentially critical firewall regarding the alleged use of foreign aid to elicit political favors from a U.S. ally.

The OMB is at the nexus of the impeachment inquiry because Democrats are pressing for details about why the White House budget office effectively froze the Ukraine funds that Congress had already appropriated.

Donald Trump is his own war room, press secretary Stephanie Grisham told Fox News. He is enraged that his “employees” have been testifying before Congress. He threatens to expose the whistleblower whose original complaint is irrelevant now that his account has been corroborated by multiple administration officials. Trump threatened Sunday to expose Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (who already testified) as a “Never Trumper.” Reporters would see his evidence against an active duty Army officer on his White House staff “very soon.”

Trump-watchers know by now not to hold their breaths waiting.

Current and former officials tell the Post Trump “has asked for copies of witness statements so he can decide how to criticize them, complained that his lawyers are not doing enough to stop people from talking, and even encouraged members of Congress to question the credibility of people working in his own administration.”

Schooled in the dark art of winning at all costs by “master of situational immorality” Roy Cohn, Trump appears rattled. “Never admit mistakes. Always attack your accuser. Win no matter what. Gloat when you do,” the New York Daily News described Cohn’s strategy. Trump is clinging to Cohn’s advice while stonewalling the impeachment inquiry with a “prevent defense.”

False stories are being reported that a few Republican Senators are saying that President Trump may have done a quid pro quo, but it doesn’t matter, there is nothing wrong with that, it is not an impeachable event. Perhaps so, but read the transcript, there is no quid pro quo!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2019

Trump has gone from claiming there was no quid pro quo for releasing military aid to Ukraine to suggesting if there was, there was nothing impeachable about it. Cohn would not approve.

His defenders appeared on the Sunday talk shows claiming Trump committed no extortion because, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway told “Fox News Sunday,” “[Ukraine] got their aid, and that’s what’s important.” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told “Meet the Press,” “We know there’s no Ukraine investigation … the military aid got there.” Ukraine never delivered, so how could there be a crime?

But conspiracy is itself a crime. How many people has the U.S. jailed for terrorist plots they planned but never carried out?

The acting president found himself booed at two sporting events within a week. Trump’s ego is very fragile. He’s so accustomed to basking in glory at his MAGA rallies that he’ll internalize these booing incidents. A few more could shake his confidence both in his re-electability and his ability to hold off impeachment in the House that now seems inevitable. He’s already worried his firewall in the Senate may not hold.

Trump's strategy to resist impeachment investigation is to commit more impeachable offences in public, which congress will have to investigate, leading him to commit more impeachable offences in public, etc. etc. In theory this could stretch things out forever. https://t.co/vNNC1b6cyh— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 4, 2019

“Strategy” may be generous here. Trump is clearly on the defensive and unaccustomed to playing defense.

Trump quotes of the week

by digby

There are many of them, of course. But these two stand out for me:

TRUMP: "We don't have to defend the borders between Turkey and Syria. They've been fighting for 1,000 years. But we did keep the oil if you don't mind. We kept the oil. And we will distribute that oil." pic.twitter.com/o4qU3Czrm5— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 2, 2019

And this one in which the man who repeatedly says he’s a very stable genius takes Beto O’Rourke to task for being a braggart:

Here's the transcript of Trump's comments about Beto O'Rourke and how boastful people are usually not as good as they say they are. pic.twitter.com/1sXVyG4osh— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 3, 2019

You can’t make this stuff up. The lack of self-awareness in the Trump family is pathological Honestly, I think there’s a serious mental problem here.

The oil comment is going to get people killed. It should get Trump sent to the Hague. But the good news is that he’s not a big warmonger like some people. He’s not into meddling in their ethnic cleansing and genocide business. He just wants to use the military to steal resources. So it’s all good.

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#Butheremails Again. Still.

by digby

Their dream will never die:

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson on Thursday formally sought “all email communications” between Hillary Clinton and former President Obama, saying the Justice Department was blocking their release — even though they could shed light on whether the former secretary of state discussed sensitive matters on her unsecured personal email system while she was overseas.

Johnson’s letter came as House Democrats approved procedures for their impeachment inquiry against President Trump, warning he may have endangered U.S. national security by allegedly withholding aid to Ukraine for political reasons. Earlier this month, a State Department report into Clinton’s use of a private email server for government business found dozens of people at fault and hundreds of security violations.

In a letter to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Johnson, R-Wis., said summer 2016 communications from FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok to FBI Director James Comey’s Chief of Staff James Rybicki hinted at the existence of the Clinton-Obama messages that were relevant to the issues raised by her private server.

Ron Johnson is very dim so he might actually believe that Clinton and Obama and the deep state and the western allies and Ukraine and God-knows-who-else conspired against Trump in 2016. But surely they can’t all be this dumb. Right?

… sigh.

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He wanted those stolen emails. And he would do it again.

by digby

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the DOJ has released a number of FBI interviews from the Mueller investigation in full. This is particularly interesting:

President Donald Trump and other top 2016 Trump campaign officials repeatedly privately discussed how the campaign could get access to stolen Democratic emails WikiLeaks had in 2016, according to newly released interview notes from Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation.

CNN sued the Justice Department for access to Mueller’s witness interview notes, and this weekend’s release marks the first publicly available behind-the-scenes look at Mueller’s investigative work outside of court proceedings and the report itself. Per a judge’s order, the Justice Department will continue to release new tranches of the Mueller investigative notes monthly to CNN and Buzzfeed News, which also sued for them.

A retelling of events from former Trump deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, who served alongside campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is the fullest detail revealed by the Justice Department yet on discussions within the Trump campaign as it pursued damaging information about its Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The documents were stolen by the Russians, the American intelligence community has found.

A reminder:

TRUMP: … And Putin, I will say this: if he had it, it was up to him. He would much rather have Hillary Clinton be president right now. And all of these countries would rather have Biden or anybody else but Trump.

STEPHANOPOULOS: He said he was trying to help elect you. He said that explicitly.

TRUMP: Well he might’ve said that after I won, because it’s a smart thing to say. Okay?

STEPHANOPOULOS: And Mueller says that he’s trying to do that–

TRUMP: Mueller said that we rebuffed Russia, that we pushed them away, that we weren’t interested. Read the report.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I have read the report. On that though your son Don Jr. is up before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, and again, he was not charged with anything. In retrospect though–

TRUMP: I mean not only wasn’t he charged, if you read it, with all of the horrible fake news, I mean, I was reading that my son was going to go to jail. This is a good young man. That he was going to go to jail and all of these horrible stories. And then the report comes out and they didn’t even say, they-they–hardly talked about him.

STEPHANOPOULOS: (inaudible) going to the FBI when he got that email.

TRUMP: Okay, let’s put yourself in a position: you’re a congressman, somebody comes up and says, “Hey I have information on your opponent.” Do you call the FBI?

STEPHANOPOULOS: (inaudible) if it’s coming from Russia you do.

TRUMP: I’ll tell you what: I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you–

STEPHANOPOULOS: Al Gore got a stolen briefing book. He called the FBI.

TRUMP: Well, that’s different. A stolen briefing book. This isn’t a (inaudible). This is somebody who said “We have information on your opponent.” Oh, let me call the FBI. Give me a break, life doesn’t work that way.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The FBI Director says that’s what should happen.

TRUMP: The FBI Director is wrong. Because, frankly, it doesn’t happen like that in life. Now, maybe it will start happening. Maybe today you think differently, but two or three years ago, if somebody comes into your office with oppo research–they call it oppo research–with information that might be good or bad or something, but good for you, bad for your opponent, you don’t call the FBI. I would guarantee you that 90 percent, could be 100 percent of the congressmen or the senators over there, have had meetings, if they didn’t they probably wouldn’t be elected, on negative information about their opponent–

STEPHANOPOULOS: From foreign countries?

TRUMP: They don’t pro–possibly. Possibly. But they don’t call the FBI. You don’t call the FBI every time some–you hear something that maybe–…

He also said that if someone came to him with information about his 2020 candidate he’d do it again. Clearly, he also believes it’s “perfectly” fine to extort foreign countries to smear his opponent in exchange for US aid.

He is an ignorant, amoral, monster who does not understand, nor would he care, that he did something unethical or illegal. And his enablers and accomplices in the GOP are willing to sell their souls to stay in power. They know he’s a criminal. But as long as they have the excuse that their vacant base believes he’s great they aren’t going to lift a finger to enlighten them. They don’t care either.

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Is another shutdown looming?

by digby

A reporter asked the president today if he would “hold up funding for the government” because he is “so upset.”

His reply:

“No, no… I call them the do-nothing Democrats. They’re doing nothing. They’re not getting USMCA done, everybody wants it. Even the Democrats want it. They’re not getting anything done. Even guns they don’t talk about guns. All they can do is talk about one phone call that was made to the president of Ukraine that was perfect. It was perfect. It was a perfect phone call. And they’re hanging their hats on this one phone call. And you know what? The Republican party has never been so unified…

Same reporter: Will you commit to no government shutdown?

It depends on the negotiation. I wouldn’t commit to anything. It depends on what the negotiation is.

Pelosi said she doesn’t think he’ll shut down the government because it didn’t go well for them last time. This assumes that Trump is capable of learning from past mistakes for which there is zero evidence.

The government is operating on a temporary funding measure that expires Nov. 21. As lawmakers haggle over a spending plan, congressional Democrats and the White House are at odds over the same issue — Trump’s demand for border wall spending — that was at the root of a 35-day government earlier this year. That ended with the Trump administration agreeing to a funding bill without the extra money he sought.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer this week said he was concerned that Trump would create a standoff over funding because of the House impeachment inquiry. “He always likes to create diversions,” Schumer said.

Pelosi said that she and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are trying to come to an agreement on the full-year spending bills, including how to resolve the border wall spending.

I would not be surprised if he did it for the reason Schumer suggests. If the impeachment hearings are having an effect he may very well believe that he should shore up his base with a big ‘fuck you” and shut down the government. Mitch McConnell might not be able to stop him.

When you consider Trump’s moves you have to think in terms of what he believes he needs to do to keep his cult happy. And what he thinks makes them happy is to see him fighting. That’s why he says things like this:

"Nobody's gonna mess with me" — this man is the President of the United States pic.twitter.com/m2RS9apIJP— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 3, 2019

He believes that total defiance is his winning strategy.

I don’t know if he’ll go for a shutdown again but I certainly would not be in the least bit surprised.

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