Trump, May 2017: 100 days of [unintelligible]

What a great damned day for Trump! Glorious. Democrats bluff called. #ComeyFiring story dead. Leakers under the spotlight. Wow.

— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) May 18, 2017

much winning, so spotlight, wow

Are even his fans buying it?

Meanwhile more on the 'you could just resign, you know' front

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-worst-job-in-washington-right-now-working-for-trump/2017/05/17/a3d9ec00-3b17-11e7-a058-ddbb23c75d82_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_whitehouse-xx-pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.bad7f1962e41

Some White House staffers have turned to impeachment gallows humor. Other mid-level aides have started reaching out to consultants, shopping their resumes. And at least one senior staffer has begun privately talking to friends about what a post-White House job would look like, according to two people close the staffer.

...

But his team is growing increasingly weary. Privately, they say, the problem is not an incompetent communications shop, as the president sometimes gripes, or an ineffectual chief of staff, as friends and outside operatives repeatedly warn, but the man in the Oval Office, whose preferred management style is one of competing factions and organized chaos.

One West Wing official recently stopped defending Trump or trying to explain away his more controversial behavior. Another characterized the operation as “trudging along,” with aides trying to focus their attention on Trump’s upcoming foreign trip and the budget landing next week.

bill mitchell's schtick is simultaneously so sad & so aggravating

I weep for them. Do you not as well?

For many White House staffers, impromptu support groups of friends, confidants and acquaintances have materialized, calling and texting to check in, inquiring about their mental state and urging them to take care of themselves.

One Republican operative in frequent contact with White House officials described them as “going through the stages of grief.” Another said some aides have “moved to angry,” frustrated with a president who demands absolute loyalty but in recent days has publicly tarnished the credibility of his team by sending them out with one message, only to personally undercut it later with a contradicting tweet or public comment.

And a third said that others are now sticking around purely for self-interest, hoping to juice their future earning potential. This Republican added that any savvy White House staffer should be keeping a diary. “The real question is: How long do you put up with it?,” this person said. “Every one of those people could get a better paying job and work less hours.”

This is when I want to set anonymous sources on fire.

Oh no worries, I suspect more than a few them will be doing that to themselves soon enough.

One thing Trump is, apparently, looking forward to on foreign trip -- a week and change with no daily briefing.

— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) May 18, 2017

"Nothing can happen while I'm away, right?"

Jesus, Ned.

Xpost

Maybe he isn't aware that U.S. press travels with the president and they are in contact with the mainland via newfangled technologeekery. At every availability for questions, they will bring up questions from "home."

He's bringing along red electoral maps as gifts for dignitaries, I hope

Self immolation is a very inefficient way of producing good compost

State media (and its aspirants) are very annoyed!

I have HAD IT!! This is beyond Vile, destructive, and insane. Join me 10 EST ON THE FOX NEWS CHANNEL. https://t.co/jS1deGYoKk

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 18, 2017

Sources close to Kim Guilfoyle believe @PressSec planted a D.C. Examiner hit piece on her today - and say she thinks it's "sad!"

— Alex Isenstadt (@politicoalex) May 18, 2017

NOR has been sad :(

NRO

And this was Monday night, as noted.

CNN reporter @MichLKosinski's experience with a Trump communications flak worth reading in full pic.twitter.com/bJ3JPmIp9T

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) May 17, 2017

bill mitchell's schtick is simultaneously so sad & so aggravating

― People like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr, and (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, May 17, 2017 7:40 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

tbf I know lots of career communications "professionals" in govt and industry who behave in an almost identical manner to RC Hammond's reported antics. Usually their career trajectory arcs slowly downwards as their reputation follows them but there is ALWAYS another asshole executive who likes the idea of having a loyal pit bull who can almost spell the word "triangle" without a dictionary for their go-to media interface

Yes, this makes sense:

The @RogerJStoneJr take is on infowars, crediting Trump as selecting Mueller. https://t.co/76JD8Fr1li

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 18, 2017

The Wall Street Journal, like Sean Hannity, is very sad!

WSJ editorial board comes out against the special counsel https://t.co/JzuO8TmNzQ

— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) May 18, 2017

WSJ's complaints: (1) Mueller politically unaccountable (2) creates political risk for Trump (3) might act like Patrick Fitzgerald (horror!) https://t.co/iY1kxosLoF

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 18, 2017

Those are literally aspects of what WSJ calls a case *against* a special counsel.

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 18, 2017

I presume Rupert got jittery or something.

Meanwhile in odd coincedences

BRAZIL

- President Michel Temer recorded discussing hush money

- Opposition moving towards impeaching him

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) May 18, 2017

I'm told by a senior WH official the president's reaction to special counsel news was "measured," not angry.

— Cecilia Vega (@CeciliaVega) May 18, 2017

And the thing is, I can totally see this. He's probably going "I've done NOTHING wrong" re the big collusion charge simply because he thinks Flynn and the Russians are his buds.

BREAKING: Before He Came to White House, Trump Team Knew Flynn Was Under Investigation

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/us/politics/michael-flynn-donald-trump-national-security-adviser.html?action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=65315008&pgtype=Homepage

"latest master stroke" lol

Thing is, T. may be correct that the investigation will not find evidence that he colluded. But it may easily find evidence that he obstructed. And that's still kind of a no-no. Indeed it would be so even if the original charge were baseless.

I would say if you're a mayor and you vindictively fire the cop who pulls you over, your BAC at the time is not necessarily pertinent. You might be technically within your rights but it still looks slimy as fuck even if you were sober.

Whoops!

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article151149647.html

One of the Trump administration’s first decisions about the fight against the Islamic State was made by Michael Flynn weeks before he was fired – and it conformed to the wishes of Turkey, whose interests, unbeknownst to anyone in Washington, he’d been paid more than $500,000 to represent.

Who would believe that a guy who had publicly called for the eradication of Islam would turn out to be a poor choice for NSA

How terrible for him, he will suffer:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/us/politics/trump-foreign-travel-saudi-arabia-israel-belgium-italy-vatican.html

President Trump leaves on Friday for a nine-day, five-city foreign excursion, his first trip outside of the United States as the country’s leader and top diplomat.

He doesn’t really want to go.

In recent days, Mr. Trump has groused to several friends that he is not looking forward to leaving his new White House cocoon for high-profile, high-pressure meetings with dozens of world leaders in unfamiliar settings.

At one point, he barked at an aide that he thought his first foray abroad should be only about half as long. He will have to abandon his well-known preference for sleeping in his own bed (or in one at the hotels or golf resorts he owns) as he hops between Saudi Arabia, Israel, Belgium, Italy and the Vatican — all places without a Trump-branded property.

I really do hope he follows this model:

Mr. Trump’s last major venture overseas — a visit to one of his new golf courses in Scotland while he was campaigning for the presidency last summer — quickly went off script.

Arriving just as Britons voted to leave the European Union, Mr. Trump held a highly anticipated news conference where he bragged about predicting the outcome of the vote and waxed extensively about the beauty of his new golf course.

“This is one of the big votes in the history of Europe and Scotland and everywhere,” he said that day in June. He then spoke at length about the golf course and resort, noting a lighthouse that sits on the course.

“We’ve taken the lighthouse, which is a very, very important building in Florida — I mean, in Scotland — and we’ve taken that building and made it something really special,” he said. “It has incredible suites. Golfers will stop and they’ll have something to eat.”

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