Trump, May 2017: 100 days of [unintelligible]

Senate to FBI seems like a lateral move to me. But I guess not having to campaign or fundraise has its appeal.

The head of the fbi is more powerful than a senator, if that's your bag

faster than a speeding bullet

I presume Abbott would fill Cornyn's seat, right?

A handy resource:

http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vacancies-in-the-united-states-senate.aspx

For Texas, interim governor appointment, then:

If vacancy occurs in an even year on or before the 62nd day before the primary, remainder of term is filled at next regular general election. If vacancy occurs after 62nd day before the primary in an even year, or in an odd year, special election is held on the first uniform election date occurring on or after the 36th day the election is ordered

Ned thinks we can math

A person does a thing and then things happen

Keep in mind right now there's a Senatorial election in Alabama coming up and it's the corrupt former Attorney General vs. Judge Roy Moore (among others, I think). Sadly, these candidates do not cancel each other out.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_rJbwHXUAAujDc.jpg

lol

Spicer indicates he feels personally victimized in this job.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 12, 2017

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/us/politics/trump-sean-spicer-sarah-huckabee-sanders.html

Good headline

‘Looking Like a Liar or a Fool’: What It Means to Work for Trump

This makes sense

Scooplet by @NYTmike: Comey wants to testify, but insists it be in public. Watch this space: https://t.co/fWuPiGHMJw

— Lara Jakes (@jakesNYT) May 13, 2017

Meantime, more from his favorite channel of choice

Fox News EVP John Moody questions if Trump “actually plans to stay in office for four years”https://t.co/kFBP9RkioD

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) May 13, 2017

Elsewhere...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-trump-adviser-paul-manaforts-bank-records-sought-in-probe-1494637248

The Justice Department last month requested banking records of Paul Manafort as part of a widening of probes related to President Donald Trump’s former campaign associates and whether they colluded with Russia in interfering with the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

In mid-April, federal investigators requested Mr. Manafort’s banking records from Citizens Financial Group Inc., the people said.

It isn’t clear whether Citizens is the only bank that received such a request or whether it came in the form of a subpoena. Federal law generally requires that a bank receive a subpoena to turn over customer records, lawyers not connected to the investigation said.

Citizens gave Mr. Manafort a $2.7 million loan last year to refinance debt on a Manhattan condominium and borrow additional cash, New York City real-estate records show. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t ascertain if the Justice Department request is related to that transaction or whether the bank has turned over Mr. Manafort’s records.

Also, more from Adam Davidson on the wider Trump financial front

http://www.newyorker.com/business/adam-davidson/the-senate-starts-to-look-at-trumps-businesses

More significant for the long term, perhaps, was another request made by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which is known as FinCEN, to turn over documents related to Trump and his campaign officials as part of what Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the committee, told CNN is “our effort to try to follow the intel no matter where it leads.”

The FinCEN request is particularly interesting because the unit enforces money-laundering laws and is familiar with Donald Trump’s holdings, specifically the Taj Mahal casino, in Atlantic City. Trump opened the Taj Mahal in 1990. He sold half of his shares in 2004, as part of a bankruptcy settlement, but remained a minority owner. In 2015, the Taj Mahal admitted to “willfully” violating the law by letting many suspicious transactions go unreported to the authorities, and agreed to pay a ten-million-dollar fine—one of the largest ever for a casino. While the fine came at a time when Trump was no longer a majority owner, FinCEN made clear in its public statement that the casino had violations dating back to 2003, when Trump was majority owner, and had faced another fine in 1998. The casino closed late last year.

With further thoughts on money laundering from there.

For Texas, interim governor appointment, then:

November 7th is the next uniform election date in Texas. It's an odd year (and how) so that's when Cornyn's Senate seat would likely be voted on. Not sure who the Dems would run... one of the Castro brothers, Wendy Davis, Leticia Van de Putte? Whoever it is will get soundly beaten by the Republican candidate.

I nominate f. hazel on behalf of the ILX Party.

I promise to lose gracefully and expensively.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jeff-sessions-drug-laws-toughest-maximum-sentences-policies-obama-a7733266.html

Mr Sessions advised that all criminals be charged with the “most serious, readily provable offence,” or whichever crime has the longest sentence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM_6tgVJb_o

I'd prefer Lemongrab at this point in our reality

Is the dinner that Trump mentioned in the interview the same one that was about a week after he was sworn in as president back in January? Does that put any different slant on whether Comey was going to stay on as FBI director. Does Trump know that it's normally a 10 year appointment and does this tie in further with him thinking that as President, everything else is under his immediate command?

It just sounded from the interview as though this dinner was more recent.

Also does Carter Page have any credibility left? I'm getting Chris Hayes shows late so only just seeing that he was teh studio guest on Thursday night.

& I've seen Adam Schiff on several things this week and unfortunately keep seeing Andy Kaufman in his face. He seems a good guy but I wonder if that undermines anything?

I trust that Sessions's brutal sentencing standards will be applied to the current administration when the time comes.

Also does Carter Page have any credibility left?

'left'

Yeah I guess presupposing he had any at a previous time is far fetched, but he was appearing on at least a couple of news programmes a few months back.

the current line on Comey is that he'll testify only if it is in a public forum

good [unintelligible] !

xpost and if someone beatboxes for him

before everyone gets carried away with all this trump and russia hoax, let's get back to first principles, please

lying about a bj is a far greater crime than securing russian assistance in a US election

attempting to provide affordable healthcare is a far greater crime than firing law enforcement officials who are investigating you

religious values outweigh science

deficit spending is good for the economy, but only when republicans do it

tax cuts for the wealthy are more important than healthcare or infrastructure

thank you

This guy gets it

forgot 'hillary is crooked'

so crooked

Erick Erickson had an illuminating op-ed in the Times today about how "the Comey affair" is no bigs

Just a bit of threatening a witness

Was it him? It was probably written before Thursday if so. Yesterday he posted a Twitter thread pretty much saying 'this is ALLLLL fucked.'

1. Some game theory for @EsotericCD whose twitter handle comes up on my phone when I type "game theory"

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 12, 2017

And some Mike Allen fun

https://www.axios.com/top-republicans-demoralized-and-dumbfounded-but-publicly-defend-trump-2405906415.html

Elected Republican officials are publicly defending Trump but privately are dumbfounded, disgusted and demoralized by this turn of events.

We haven't had a single conversation with a top Republican that doesn't reflect this. The worries are manifold:

This kills momentum on legislating, and unifies Democrats in opposition to everything they want to do.
This makes it easier for Democrats to recruit quality candidates and raise money for the off-year elections.
It sours swing voters.
It puts them on the defensive at home. They want to talk tax reform and deregulation -- not secret tapes and Russian intrigue.
But mainly it reinforces their greatest fear: Trump will never change. They keep praying he'll discipline himself enough to get some big things done. Yet they brace for more of this.

Pobrecitos.

Of course, none of those five reasons appear to be 'he's doing longterm damage to the country itself.'

They keep praying he'll discipline himself enough to get some big things done.

Have they even heard of Trump's Taj Mahal casino? That's Trump's idea of doing a big thing and an accurate indicator of how well he does big things.

a faint glimmer of hope in all this tragicomic madness -- if given their increasingly shrinking deplorable base, the only way the shameless cheaters in the GOP can "elect" a president anymore is by running someone as godawful as comrade combover, congress just might end up all gummed up dealing with his/her incompetence / venality anyways

. . . which of course they'd allege is a feature not a bug since the government that governs least governs best, but still!

They're just perverse contrarians. A stupid way for the world to end.

ha, just saw this ad for the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDonPK5bJoM

I admit I'm amused

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/us/politics/richard-burr-trump-investigating-russia.html

Still, Mr. Burr’s distaste for the news media is well known at the Capitol.

On at least one occasion, he climbed out of an office window to avoid reporters, while carrying his dry cleaning, according to a senior Republican aide who has spoken to him about the episode.

“It was further than I thought,” Mr. Burr remembered of the descent, according to the aide.

He now occupies a second-floor space in the Russell Senate Office Building. It is not clear precisely how or why he chose to take this escape route — or, in fact, if this was the office in question.

“I understand from him that he did jump out a window once with his dry cleaning,” a Burr spokeswoman, Becca Glover Watkins, said in an email, “but I don’t know the circumstances.”

And another fun read. He really can't let it go, can he

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/us/politics/election-is-over-but-trump-still-cant-seem-to-get-past-it.html

In the small dining room next to the Oval Office where he works much of the time, President Trump keeps a stack of color-coded maps of the United States representing the results of the 2016 election. The counties he won are blotchy red and span most of the nation.

Mr. Trump sometimes hands the maps out to visitors as a kind of parting gift, and a framed portrait-size version was hung on a wall in the West Wing last week. In conversations, the president dwells on the map and its import, reminding visitors about how wrong the polls were and inflating the scope of his victory.

At the root of Mr. Trump’s unpredictable presidency, according to people close to him, is a deep frustration about attacks on his legitimacy, and a worry that Washington does not see him as he sees himself.

As he careens from one controversy to another, many of them of his own making — like his abrupt decision to fire the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who was leading an investigation into the president’s associates — Mr. Trump seems determined to prove that he won the election on his own. It was not Russian interference. It was not Mr. Comey’s actions in the case involving Hillary Clinton’s emails. It was not a fluke of the Electoral College system. It was all him.

xp Dr. Northam is a medical doctor, so we can be certain that "narcissistic maniac" was offered in a diagnostic sense.

jesus, that ad is america 2017 in a nutshell, isn't it?

i feel like every person that visits or encounters trump needs to hand him a little laminated copy of something like this. i'm assuming those ones that break it down to the county level and then adjust size for population would just confuse him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/how-election-maps-lie/img/us-vs-cartogram-600.jpg?c=722

oops wrong year obv

joke's on me FAKE MAPS

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_pH39rUAAACu3Y.jpg:large

or

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_l3korUMAEZaTN.jpg:large

These are really the best as always, though it's a shame they've never been able to squeeze in AK and HI.