Month: November 2019

Okay, this is out of hand
by Tom Sullivan

Vito Corleone he’s not. More like Harry Mudd without the roguish charm.

Several stories breaking in the last days suggest impeachment-worthy enterprises Donald Trump’s “family” runs from the White House began before the now-infamous phone call with Ukraine that sparked the initial impeachment inquiry.

As Digby covered Friday night, an op-ed by David Ignatius strongly suggests Trump’s Ukraine conspiracy began during his first year in office with another Ukrainian president:

What led to Trump’s first meeting on June 20, 2017, with Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko? Ukraine had hired the lobbying firm BGR Group in January 2017 to foster contact with Trump, but nothing had happened . . . and then the door opened. Why?

On June 7, less than two weeks before Poroshenko’s White House meeting, Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, had visited Kyiv to give a speech for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, headed by a prominent Ukrainian oligarch. While Giuliani was there, he also met with Poroshenko and his prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, according a news release issued by the foundation.

Just after Giuliani’s visit, Ukraine’s investigation of the so-called black ledger that listed alleged illicit payments to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was transferred from an anti-corruption bureau, known as NABU , to Poroshenko’s prosecutor general, according to a June 15, 2017, report in the Kyiv Post. The paper quoted Viktor Trepak, former deputy head of the country’s security service, saying: “It is clear for me that somebody gave an order to bury the black ledger.”

In May 2018, the Ukrainians stopped cooperating with the Robert Mueller investigation into Russian 2016 campaign interference. The New York Times reported that four corruption cases involving Manafort had been shelved by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor at a time Ukraine was negotiating the purchase of Javelin anti-tank missiles for its defense against Russian invaders in eastern Ukraine:

The State Department issued an export license for the missiles on Dec. 22, and on March 2 the Pentagon announced final approval for the sale of 210 Javelins and 35 launching units. The order to halt investigations into Mr. Manafort came in early April.

Ukrainian law enforcement officials allowed Konstantin V. Kilimnik, a Manafort associate with ties to Russian intelligence (and sought in a Mueller indictment), to leave Ukraine for Russia “putting him out of reach for questioning.” Kilimnik received a packet of Trump campaign polling data at a meeting in a New York cigar bar in August 2016.

Did Trump (through Giuliani) pressure Poroshenko in 2017 to obstruct the Manafort investigations to get his White House meeting? Did Trump use the Javelins in 2018 to pressure Ukraine into ceasing cooperation with the Mueller investigation? Because those alleged actions went largely unnoticed, did Trump use military aid as leverage again, this time to pressure Poroshenko’s successor, Volodymyr Zelensky, to manufacture political dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter? Only this time, in full view of career national security staff?

Are we seeing a pattern here?

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Friday cited the Ignatius column and garnished it with a video clip of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) of the House Oversight Committee hinting to reporters that the impeachment investigation would explore where the Javelins fit in.

“If I were an enterprising reporter, I would spend a little time on the issue of Javelin missiles,” Connolly said.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday would not rule out obstruction of justice charges appearing in proposed articles of impeachment:

“What we’re talking about now is taking us into a whole other class of objection to what the president has done. And there may be other — there were 11 obstruction of justice provisions in the Mueller report. Perhaps some of them will be part of this,” Pelosi said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. “But again, that will be part of the inquiry, to see where we go.”

Next, British officials tell The Independent that Trump has Attorney General William Barr asking foreign governments for evidence “Ukraine framed Vladimir Putin over the US election in a complex triple-cross operation by impersonating Russian hackers.” Barr has pursued the elaborate conspiracy theory with the governments of Italy, Australia, and the UK, essentially investigating FBI, CIA and Mueller investigators:

And the information being requested has left allies astonished. One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that “it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”.

This administration’s behavior, with its revolving-door rogues gallery of unqualified sycophants and national security risks, has grown beyond preposterous.

“Forget the myths the media has created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand,” Deep Throat tells Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men. Trump’s men are arrogant and clumsy in addition to not being very bright. So far, Trump’s supporters in Congress as well as outside the Beltway are just fine with him running an ongoing criminal enterprise out of the Oval Office. So far, they have his back.

Greg Sargent suggests what Trump demands is his followers go all in on defending his actions as legitimate. As He, Trump defines it:

In other words, Trump wants Republicans to say: Trump was damn right to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden, because Biden is corrupt. Trump himself has at times unabashedly told reporters that, yes, Ukraine should investigate Biden.

[…]

Trump regularly calls on Republicans to fight to “win.” He wants them to throw aside any squeamishness about using all the tools at their disposal — including over the manipulation of our foreign policy and large swaths of the federal government — toward that end. Everybody is corrupt; it goes without saying that Biden and Democrats are; all that matters is who manipulates the rules more skillfully, and as a result, triumphs.

Trump wants Republicans to go full Judean People’s Front for him. But while they may have their swords at the ready, when their careers are on the line how many will fall on them for him?

Friday Night Soother

by digby

How much would you pay to help secure the future of something you love?

For Zoe Newman and her mother, Sam Newman, the answer is more than $3,000 and counting.

The two are dedicated visitors and donors to the Assateague Island National Seashore, home to the Maryland herd of wild ponies. This month, with help from her mother, Zoe became the first person ever to foster every horse in the herd.

The Newmans take advantage of days Zoe, 14, has off from school to make the 3.5-hour drive to Assateague from their home in Lexington Park, Md. as often as possible.

During their visits, Sam and Zoe enjoy camping under the stars, watching sunrises and sunsets and climbing their favorite tree, along with catching glimpses of their favorite ponies. The two have made around 30 trips out to Assateague in the last couple of years, but wish they could go even more.

“We love it there,” Sam said. “We get up at 4 o’clock in the morning when we’re there, just so we can catch the sunrise. Beautiful doesn’t even describe it.”

Zoe first fell in love with Assateague and its ponies when, at age 10, she used her savings to adopt her first foster, a chestnut pinto named Annie Laurie, via the Assateague Island Alliance’s fostering program.

Funds raised from the symbolic adoptions are used for educational purposes and for herd management. The mares receive birth control, which helps keep the herd to a manageable size and helps the mares avoid giving birth when they are too young, which lengthens their lives, said Ashlie Kozlowski, outreach coordinator for the Alliance.

“After I fostered Annie Laurie, I just couldn’t stop,” Zoe said.

Zoe Newman, 14, displays her collection of “diplomas” depicting all 75 ponies from the Maryland herd on Assateague. On Oct. 14, 2019, Zoe became the first person to have fostered the entire herd via the Assateague Island Alliance program, which goes to fund horse management programs on the island. (Photo: Courtesy of Samantha Newman)

She spent her summers working for a family friend, and every cent she earned was used to add to her collection of foster horses, her mom said.

Each time the pair visited the island, Zoe would stop by the office to foster between one and three horses per trip. They came so often that the woman working at the desk began calling them “the horse people.”

The foster fee, now $40 in person and $50 online, was only the beginning of Zoe’s donations. She would always give $50 — even when the foster fee in person used to be only $35, her mother said.

“And I was always so amazed that this little lady just gave all of her money into this horse fostering program, and she just made me so proud and I knew they mean a lot to her,” Sam said. “And they mean a lot to me, too.”

On her own, over the course of four years, Zoe fostered 22 ponies and donated her remaining savings to the Assategaue Island Alliance. Some of her favorites have been Yankee, a 5-year old stallion with a band of several females; Chestnut, another successful harem stallion; and Precious, one of the older horses on the island who often gets left out of the fostering process due to her age.

“And then (it became) a running thing between my mom’s friends and my friends that one day I would end up with all the horses on the island,” Zoe said.

That prediction came true Oct. 14, during the mother and daughter duo’s most recent trip out to the island. Sam surprised Zoe with $2,120, enough to foster the remaining 53 horses in the Foster Horse Program, completing her collection.

“At the rate she was going, she was going to be in her adulthood (before she had them all), so I decided to do that for her,” Sam said. “She was in shock.”

Zoe Newman, left, and her mother Sam stand with the bay stallion “Delegate’s Pride,” also known as “Chip,” during a recent trip to Assateague Island. The 10-year-old pony received the nickname because people feel he takes after his father and is a “chip off the old block.” (Photo: Courtesy of Sam Newman)

Zoe’s interest in the National Seashore and its wildlife may propel her to a career as a park ranger, she said. She is considering going to college with the goal of becoming a ranger at Assateague.

During her visits, Zoe already looks after the horses’ well-being by picking up litter, especially balloons, and speaking up when she sees other visitors acting dangerously, such as attempting to pet the horses.

“She just makes me so proud, because she definitely has the love for this place, and she definitely has the love and respect for these animals on the island,” Zoe’s mother said.

With all 75 horses now under her wing, Zoe plans to continue working to renew her adoptions, which expire annually.

In the meantime, she and her mother will continue to visit the island as often as possible.

“I wanted to give something back to the island because the island gives me so much more.” Zoe told Kozlowski after the mass adoption. “I love to see the horses run free and watch them grow.”

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Yes, it does read like a pot-boiler. A very bad one.

by digby

This piece by David Ignatius opens up the Ukraine story in a new way that I think is important. I doubt the impeachment is going to go anywhere near this stuff. They are anxious to get this done before the spring. But the SDNY investigation and various threads of the Manafort case may officially spell all this out eventually.

The upshot is that Trump and Rudy were a) criminals and b) stupid:

A standard theme in detective thrillers is that the perpetrator feels compelled to return to the scene of the crime. It’s an irrational urge, and readers of such potboilers are often left wondering whether the protagonist secretly wants to get caught.

Perhaps we’re living a real-life version of this fictional plot in President Trump’s alleged solicitation of political help from Ukraine, which this week spawned a full-blown impeachment probe. Republicans question whether the Ukraine events have the weight of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But when seen as part of a pattern of behavior, the gravity becomes clearer.

Trump survived his first effort to solicit foreign political help in his appeals to Russia for damaging information about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. But soon after Trump was cleared of “collusion” by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, he seemingly went at it again — this time demanding political dirt from Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a condition of delivering military assistance to Kyiv.

Trump evidently thought he’d been exonerated, too, of obstructing Mueller’s investigation (though Mueller’s report is ambiguous on that question). Perhaps emboldened, the president has since appeared to deepen his obstructive behavior, trying to block witnesses from testifying before Congress about Ukraine or any other questionable presidential and personal behavior.

If this were a thriller, we’d suspect that the central character has a compulsion that he doesn’t understand or control — and keeps repeating the actions that get him in trouble.

But this is reality, not bedtime reading. And now it’s an impeachment investigation, as of Thursday, that requires evidence of wrongdoing rather than psychological speculation about motives. House investigators have been conducting a rapid, well-focused inquiry. But here are two nagging questions that I hope investigators can answer.

What led to Trump’s first meeting on June 20, 2017, with Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko? Ukraine had hired the lobbying firm BGR Group in January 2017 to foster contact with Trump, but nothing had happened . . . and then the door opened. Why?

On June 7, less than two weeks before Poroshenko’s White House meeting, Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, had visited Kyiv to give a speech for the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, headed by a prominent Ukrainian oligarch. While Giuliani was there, he also met with Poroshenko and his prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, according a news release issued by the foundation.

Just after Giuliani’s visit, Ukraine’s investigation of the so-called black ledger that listed alleged illicit payments to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was transferred from an anti-corruption bureau, known as NABU , to Poroshenko’s prosecutor general, according to a June 15, 2017, report in the Kyiv Post. The paper quoted Viktor Trepak, former deputy head of the country’s security service, saying: “It is clear for me that somebody gave an order to bury the black ledger.”

The New York Times reported in May 2018 that Ukraine had “halted cooperation” with Mueller’s investigation. The paper quoted Volodymyr Ariev, a parliament ally of Poroshenko, explaining: “In every possible way, we will avoid irritating the top American officials.”

Was there any implicit understanding that Poroshenko’s government would curb its cooperation with the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of Manafort, who would later be indicted by Mueller?

Why was Marie Yovanovitch , the U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, fired in May? Trump, Giuliani and their allies had been attacking her since early 2018, but for what reason? Lutsenko, the Ukrainian prosecutor, told the Hill in March that she had given him a “do not prosecute” order, an incendiary charge that Donald Trump Jr. promptly echoed on Twitter. But Lutsenko later recanted, and the State Department said the story was a fabrication.

So why were Trump and Giuliani so eager to dump the ambassador? Here’s what Yovanovitch said during her Oct. 11 testimony to House investigators: “Individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”

The former ambassador may have been referring to Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas , two Giuliani clients who were indicted last month on suspicion of arranging secret contributions to help foreign governments. (Fruman and Parnas have pleaded not guilty.) Their biggest project, according to an Associated Press Oct. 7 story, was a plan to sell U.S. natural gas to Ukraine, aided by Giuliani and Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s lobbying of Naftogaz, the Ukrainian gas company.

As this piece in TIME shows, Rudy has been chasing power and money for a long time. When Trump got in he decided to mix the two and ended up committing crimes. Of course, that’s what happens to everyone who gets involved with Donald Trump.

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They have to kiss the hem

by digby

If you wonder why Ukrainian president Zelensky acts like a supplicant in Trump’s presence or wonder if the joke of a president really has any power, observe this:

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize President Donald Trump, offered rare praise Wednesday for the president during a tour of areas affected by catastrophic fires and widespread power outages in Northern California.

Newsom said Trump has been “a partner’’ and that his administration has been “extraordinary” in its response to a state in crisis. His office announced earlier Wednesday that California had been awarded a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will enable local, state and tribal agencies to apply for 75 percent reimbursement of their costs in responding to the Easy Fire in Ventura County.

California previously received the same federal grant for the massive Kincade Fire in Northern California and the Getty and Tick fires in Southern California.

“His team is performing above and beyond expectation,’’ Newsom said of Trump, following a visit to meet with the senior residents of Las Casitas Mobile Home Park in American Canyon, which has been without power since Saturday. “Every single request we’ve had to the Administration has been met.’’

They have to do it. They need the money and people’s lives depend on it.

It’s sick.

Another enemy of the state in the crosshairs

by digby

I wondered about this the other day when I saw it:

The Army intends to fully support the officer who is testifying in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.

Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a combat veteran and a Purple Heart recipient, serves on the National Security Council. On Tuesday, he went before Congress after being subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee.

Without referring to Vindman by name, Trump has repeatedly accused him of having a political axe to grind by describing him as a “Never Trumper witness.”

“Lt. Col. Vindman, who has served this country honorably for 20+ years, is fully supported by the Army like every Soldier, having earned a Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq in 2004,” Matt Leonard, an Army spokesperson, told Task & Purpose.

Why did they feel the need to do that? Seems odd.

I think we have our answer. When Trump called him a “Never-Trumper (code for traitor) they knew it wouldn’t be long before someone brought this up:

When Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman appeared before members of Congress on Tuesday to discuss what he knew about President Trump’s conversations with Ukraine’s president, he was violating an order from his commander in chief not to cooperate with the House’s impeachment inquiry.

He is likely protected from legal ramifications from showing up to testify, a former Army judge advocate told Military Times on Thursday. But it remains to be seen whether what he told legislators could get him charged with a crime ― and, of course, how his choice to rebel against his White House chain-of-command will affect his career.

“It’s not far-fetched,” Sean Timmons, a managing partner at Tully Rinckey, said. “It’s a murky issue.”

It comes down to whether Trump’s order was lawful, he said. If Trump was trying to prevent Vindman from sharing sensitive information, it could be. If he was trying to prevent testimony, period, it’s not.

The Military Whistleblower Protection Act prohibits government officials from interfering with a member of the military in communicating with Congress or an inspector general. Adding to the complexity is that the president gets to determine what is and isn’t classified.

“If the president were to order the lieutenant colonel not to testify, that would not be a lawful order,” Timmons said. “However, it gets tricky, because you have to obey orders unless it is manifestly unlawful. It’s not clear if such an order would be manifestly unlawful if the president is using his executive authority to prohibit the communication of information that the executive branch determines to be classified, sensitive, top secret, not to be disclosed to anyone without prior authorization.”
In any case, Vindman’s testimony would need to be limited to avoid disclosing anything out of order, Timmons said.

The White House’s impeachment inquiry policy is laid out in an Oct. 8 letter from its senior counsel, Pat Cipollone, calling the investigation invalid and unconstitutional.

I suspect they knew that Trump would agitate for Vindman’s court-martial. The only troops he really likes are those that lick his boots and/or commit war crimes. The rest are enemies of the state.

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In Bizarro World, this makes sense

by digby

Donald Trump Jr, apparently void of all self-reflection, says “I wish my name was Hunter Biden. I could go abroad, make millions off of my father’s presidency – I’d be a really rich guy” pic.twitter.com/wSVOMihXHw

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) October 31, 2019

To think that such a delusional person is allowed to carry a gun. 

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My Salon column this morning:

President Trump made history on Thursday, and not in a good way. The House of Representatives took its first vote on impeachment, passing a resolution that governs the terms of the inquiry, 232-196. If this proceeding goes all the way, as it likely will, Trump will become the third president in history to be impeached.

Even he knows that won’t look good in the history books, especially since he’s accused of a serious abuse of power by extorting a foreign government to smear a political opponent. Of course, this comes on top of the Mueller report, which laid out 10 possible counts of obstruction of justice and a long list of errors in judgment that should disqualify him from ever running for office again. No matter what happens, Trump’s legacy is already set.

Although it’s highly unlikely that Trump will be convicted in the Senate and removed from office, it’s not something a smart person would leave to chance. But this is the Trump administration we’re talking about, so you just never know what they might do to turn it into a probability. After all, he escaped accountability from the Mueller report and then immediately went out and did exactly what he’d been suspected of doing in the first place. Learning from his mistakes isn’t one of Donald Trump’s strong suits.

As I mentioned earlier, Trump and the Republicans have decided to use the same strategy they used during the Mueller investigation. They believe it was successful and see no reason to change course simply because they are dealing with a new case that’s unfolding in real time. They are attacking the proceedings as illegitimate (“witch hunt!”) and insulting and degrading those who are testifying to his abuses. I don’t expect them to hold back.

Where corn is king, King is threatened
by Tom Sullivan

The Corn King was my first giant. Outside a suburban Chicago supermarket he was dressed as a giant corn stalk. Or maybe a giant ear of corn. I don’t remember exactly. I was maybe eight. Like Andre, only lankier, he was hired by some Midwest food producer as spokes-giant for their bacon.

Out where corn is still king these days, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is as threatened as Iowa farmers.

Bloomberg reported this week that Donald Trump’s trade war has farm bankruptcies surging 24 percent across the Midwest, the highest since 2011. There were 24 total farm bankruptcies in Iowa in the last year. Not the highest number in the country — with 48, that honor goes to Wisconsin, a critical “hold” state for Trump in 2020 — but still no favor to King.

Farmers are increasingly dependent on federal aid to weather Trump’s tariffs and China’s retaliatory actions. Amidst all that, Trump struggles to stave off impeachment and he and King fight for reelection:

Almost 40% of projected farm profit this year will come from trade aid, disaster assistance, federal subsidies and insurance payments, according to the report, based on Department of Agriculture forecasts. That’s $33 billion of a projected $88 billion in income.

The trade war and two straight years of adverse weather rattled farmers already facing commodity price slumps.

Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings in the 12 months ended September rose to 580 from a year earlier. That marked the highest since 676 cases in 2011 under the chapter of the bankruptcy code tailored for farms. The total “remains well below” historical highs in the 1980s, the federation said.

Trumpland spells that “Winning!”

Meanwhile, Steve King, “the anti-immigrant Republican who dabbles in white nationalism,” faces political challenges from both Trump’s trade policies and 2018 challenger J.D. Scholten. Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times in Northwest Iowa, home to King’s congressional district, writes:

King’s hokum has earned him four GOP primary opponents next June. Last winter, House leadership stripped King of his committee assignments for the latest in a 20-year string of outrageous comments about Mexicans, gays and the superiority of white northern European cultures. King’s base here remains solid. Pro-life voters stand with him in this land of German Catholics, stoic Lutherans and Dutch Reform enclaves for whom abortion is the main, if not the only, issue. His public shaming serves King well as an embattled populist foil to the Washington elite who rig the game against us out here amid the swaying dry corn of northwest Iowa.

Scholten gave King, 70, a scare last year in an election that saw Democrats take the House. In Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, Republicans outnumber Democrats by 70,000. Scholten finished 10,000 votes short. “Last time I thought we could win,” Scholten said. “This time I expect we will win.”

While much of the state is in the throes of harvest, Scholten says he smells something in the corn dust. Farmers here are unhappy with President Trump for granting 31 petroleum refineries waivers from federal requirements that they blend corn ethanol into their gasoline. Corn prices dropped not long after. Former governor Terry Branstad, now ambassador to trade-conflicted China, warned Trump not to grant the waivers. Trump did it anyway. “They screwed us,” Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the state’s senior senator, admitted. (Corn prices are still up about 20 cents a bushel from last fall, near the break-even point for most growers.)

Two of Iowa’s biodiesel plants have shut down while others have cut production or gone to “hot idle,” meaning no production until markets improve, but no staff cuts for now. China was Iowa’s largest agricultural export market, writes Cullen, until the trade war cut soybean prices by a third.

Scholten is seeing strong turnouts in his tour of towns of 1,000 people or fewer this week, Cullen adds. Not bad for an R+11 district a year ahead of the election:

They warmed to Scholten’s populist call for antitrust enforcement in agribusiness, universal health care and a fair shake for forgotten places. Their questions were about ethanol, rising health-care costs and rural development. Nothing about impeachment.

“There is unrest in the towns that Trump forgot,” Cullen writes. Scholten’s Winnebago is visiting a lot of them in IA-4. Cook’s still ranks the district Likely Republican. Rank this contest “to be continued.”

Trump is now officially Florida Man.

A rock solid party line

by digby

Trump likes to say that the Democrats are so much more partisan than the Republicans, that they always stick together. That is, of course, a joke. But it came to mind when I read this from the NY Times evening email:

We looked into the archives to see how The Times covered similar votes in the last two presidential impeachments. Here was how we described the House approving a resolution in the Nixon impeachment investigation, in 1974:

“The House thus formally ratified the impeachment inquiry begun by the committee last October and empowered the panel to subpoena anyone, including the President, with evidence pertinent to the investigation,” The Times wrote. “ … The vote followed an hour of debate in which no one rose to defend Mr. Nixon, but Democrats and Republicans quarreled over the best method to guarantee that the inquiry, would not become partisan.”

And here was how The Times described the House approving a resolution in the Clinton impeachment investigation, in 1998:

“After a civil if sometimes harshly phrased debate that lasted more than three hours, the House of Representatives voted largely along party lines this afternoon to begin a full-scale, open-ended inquiry,” The Times wrote. “ … the founding fathers, the Constitution and the long shadow of precedent were cited by both sides as the debate unfolded.”

Right after the House voted today, I asked my colleague Carl Hulse, who covered the Clinton impeachment, what his first thought was about this vote compared to the one he covered in 1998. Here’s what he told me:

“The vote today underscored the deep and new kind of polarization in Washington. Back then, 31 Democrats broke with the president, and Bill Clinton was happy about that! He thought it’d be more. Now, no one broke. That’s how much things have changed. If 31 people broke with Mr. Trump, we’d be proclaiming him dead. It would feel like a political apocalypse. Today, it was a rock solid party line.”

A rock solid party line. For Donald fucking Trump.

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A normal human being in the White House

by digby

The last time Halloween at the White House wasn’t a nightmare:

Here’s this year:

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania are hosting a Halloween trick-or-treat event at the White House pic.twitter.com/jEwmKxgmU6

— POLITICO (@politico) October 28, 2019

A lot of people love Trump as a person. I will never understand…