Trump, May 2017: 100 days of [unintelligible]

I'm sure he's going to have some great conversations with heads of state about how unfairly he's been treated by the media

Happy birthday to you, Karl. :-D

thanks! i promise i'm having real birthday fun and relaxing and all that good stuff, too. :)

i knew it was exceedingly unlikely, but i was still holding out hope for some sort of trump flame-out resignation today. would have been the best bday ever! i suppose there are still a few more hours to go...

I'm sure the Italians will love to hear about how T feels he has been treated worse than any politician. Within living memory, they hung the dead body of a once-beloved politician - upside down - in the town square.

wonder if he's visiting romania

Yesterday conservatives were just in shock. Now they've moved beyond shock to a stage of vehement denial. They know that flat out justification of Trump's actions is not a viable option. Entire episodes that have come to light must be disappeared somehow.

I expect their main line of defense will be to assert (often!) that the investigation is purely political. Whether the stories about Trump's actions are true is never to be mentioned. They'll emphasize the harm it will do to the conservative cause, in the justified belief that this will be heard by Trump's adherents as a call to arms, to rally against the enemy and defeat him. Defeat means stopping the investigation or refusing to believe its findings are of any importance other than a political attack.

The sleight of hand involved is that Trump himself is the worst enemy to their cause, through his own actions. They'd be much better off without him, but you can't tell them that.

whoever thought the taint of trump would taint them all, it's a real american tragedy

Remember when Donald Trump was accused of sexual harrassment and assault multiple times throughout his life?

And when he tried to silence a woman he harrassed when she was a teenager by spreading rumors about a sex tape?

No.

Trump's reportedly "measured" response to news of a special counsel was surely because a) he either knows he's not clean or b) again, he likely had no idea what a special counsel is, and probably someone informed him of its seriousness.

Can Trump the President recover from this? it's been a few months into the first year of his first term, and this will be going on for months/years, all while he does his usual daily dose of fucking up. It will just keep compounding and compounding. Like, the special counsel was approved on the basis of shit from the last week alone, and I assume will work backwards from there.

Question: if the special counsel finds evidence of illegal activity after, I dunno, 5 minutes of looking, can he just come forward then and there and get this over with? Or is the goal to be as comprehensive as possible, leaving Trump in power for years while Mueller accumulates enough evidence to put away several Trumps?

Second question: if Trump resigns during the investigation, or if the investigation goes on for 4 years and Trump decides not to run again, does it continue without him?

Supposedly crimes are crimes and when there's a strong case it is prosecuted. While in office, the only body that could try him would be Congress, no matter what the special counsel's investigation turns up. If Trump were impeached or resigned, then in reality, political considerations would almost certainly ensure that Trump would not be prosecuted after leaving office. He'd have to kill someone in the middle of 5th Avenue to get jail time, to paraphrase a certain POTUS.

Remember when Donald Trump was accused of sexual harrassment and assault multiple times throughout his life?

― Treeship

does anybody remember laughter?

A healthy pattern!

Called tonight by Trump aide, who said core problem is Oval fights too often happen after probs, staff + Cab resist blunt early advice...

— Robert Costa (@costareports) May 18, 2017

... described Oval as rah-rah place until it isn't. Things fall apart, then the mood grows dark. Fights. Then rah-rah creeps back, per aide

— Robert Costa (@costareports) May 18, 2017

GENIUS!

Tip for Special Counsel Robert Mueller: Depose John Podesta FIRST, before he can coordinate with others.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 18, 2017

"rah-rah creeps back"

http://i.imgur.com/sDCPJg8.jpg

hey guys

rah-rah

Ah-ah-ah!
Ro mah ro-mah-mah

To be a fly on the wall

TICK-TOCK on how Trump team took the news that special counsel had been named to lead FBI's Trump-Russia investigation. pic.twitter.com/mMK8uhkHDZ

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) May 18, 2017

Whoops again!

WSJ has more reporting on classified information shared by Trump. https://t.co/faZkhmd4NR pic.twitter.com/ncsmtd8sdR

— andrew kaczynski 🤔 (@KFILE) May 18, 2017

seriously surprised Trump wrote that statement himself. regardless of whether or not he's innocent, he certainly seems to believe it!

Like I said earlier. He probably really DOES think he's hard done by.

gonna be sad if Flynn's the only dude who really suffers here, legally speaking.

Manafort is fucked too.

Trump seems to think that asking Comey to "let go" of the Flynn investigation was similar to one CEO asking another CEO (of a wholly-owned subsidiary) to do him a little personal favor. He seems to have no conception of legal obligations, public service or his oath of office.

Regarding which, this story may be relevant

http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/james-comey-and-the-revenge-of-washingtons-professional-class

Also, the problem here is clearly not 'just' Flynn. These new stories call into question (at the very least) the competence and patriotism of those he was working for, if this was not merely winked at or ignored but specifically enabled.

would be nice if Flynn brought both Trump and Pence down with him...

Trump Team Knew Flynn Was Under Investigation Before He Came to White House
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/us/politics/michael-flynn-donald-trump-national-security-adviser.html?smid=tw-share

Daniel Dale @ddale8
McClatchy: Flynn held up attack on ISIS capital, consistent with wishes of Turkey, for which he was secret lobbyist. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article151149702.html

Josh Barro‏ @jbarro
I think this may actually be today's biggest story. How is it "America First" to let a Turkish agent delay our anti-ISIS strategy?

Christopher Hayes‏ @chrislhayes
Stressing this is big: Pence said he'd never heard of the Flynn foreign agent issue, but he was head of transition. Maybe he lied?

It's quite possible Trump didn't do anything, re: Russia, at least. But those around him sure did, and he's going to get busted for covering for them. Ignorance of the law, and so on.

Here's another question: WTF, Flynn?! Were you that hard up for cash?

Both the Centcom and SOCOM Commanders won't be happy w/ this as it was THEIR plan Flynn was screwing with. Treason is not too strong a word. https://t.co/x0dIUA5WAZ

— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) May 18, 2017

The comments on that are interesting.

fucking lol at this being the "if I did a tenth of what she did" guy

EXCLUSIVE: Trump family had "blind spot when it came to Flynn," per source. New details re mtg where Flynn asked for & was granted NSA job. pic.twitter.com/PK4J6nISU4

— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) May 18, 2017

V. Delicious if J-Red & Ivanka were the sparks for all this...

i actually saw a hunky republican who didn't sound dumb on pbs tonight. it was quite a shock. and he didn't support trump during the election. AND he's a fighter pilot. they should totally run him for prez after this nightmare is over:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Kinzinger

well, you know, hunky for a republican. he wasn't 80. or a member of the tea party.

https://moderateinthemiddle.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/154ztoy.jpg

I hope the whole GOP gets herpes in the center of their asses

I want more scandals like this: Dutch king reveals double life as an airline pilot for KLM

Ha. I bet Prince Phillip hates him.

This smarmy asshole:

... watch: rep. @farenthold tells @katyturnbc "russia is not our enemy on all fronts." pic.twitter.com/alWeGuR68g

— fake nick ramsey (@nick_ramsey) May 17, 2017

the flynn/turkey revelation is wild. goes way beyond espionage. and it was deliberate. as illegal/stupid etc as trump's disclosure of intel was i put it in the same category as everything else about trump: dangerously stupid. but the flynn thing is different.

Is this thing of the 'President has the ability to declassify information as he sees fit' actually a more involved process, not just announcing things at random? Or has there been any other instance of doing that without any element of damage limitation?

as i understand it the entire concept of classification is a power that flows from the president so he can break the rules willy nilly as he likes. however the disclosure of those docs might break OTHER rules, not strictly to do with classification, i.e. aid and comfort to an enemy, etc

Obviously every previous president has had some training in state craft even if simply by having to go through the process of election to previous roles. During which they have presumably picked up some idea of sensitivity of data and the idea of protocols by which data is shared. So those things would run through their heads before they actually did share whatever. & they would know that only certain things would be shared in pretty extreme circumstances so probably would not go ahead and just blurt it out on a locker room talk level.

...you do remember who you're talking about, right?

Hope things return to the idea of the Presidency being a point reached through prior experience and people don't think bypassing that is a good idea again. Would be good if the electorate learned from experience. JUst not sure what this guy having been elected opens the gates for.
But people were probably saying that about Obama. just not people really worth listening to because of prior agendas.