The Commentariat -- February 3, 2019
Afternoon Update:
The Laziest President* in American History. Alexi McCammond & Jonathan Swan of Axios: "A White House source has leaked nearly every day of President Trump's private schedule for the past three months.... This unusually voluminous leak gives us unprecedented visibility into how this president spends his days. The schedules, which cover nearly every working day since the midterms, show that Trump has spent around 60% of his scheduled time over the past 3 months in unstructured 'Executive Time.' We've published every page of the leaked schedules in a piece that accompanies this item. To protect our source, we retyped the schedules in the same format that West Wing staff receives them.... Trump ... usually spends the first 5 hours of the day in Executive Time.... He spends his mornings in the residence, watching TV, reading the papers, and responding to what he sees and reads by phoning aides, members of Congress, friends, administration officials and informal advisers.... Some days, Executive Time totally predominates. For instance, he had 1 hour of scheduled meetings on Jan. 18 (with acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin) and 7 hours of Executive Time." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I suspect this is the most Trump can manage. He's a fat old guy, his diet is terrible, (and who knows? he might be taking energy-sapping meds). As a result, he doesn't have much energy. Since Ronny Jackson will once again be performing & reporting on Trump's annual physical exam, we'll never know what's wrong with his health & ability to function.
Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "President Trump declined to say Sunday whether he wants the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation made public, instead promising to defer to the Justice Department.... Asked about the 34 people Mueller's probe has indicted, the president said none of the charges were related to him or collusion with Russia. In fact, Mueller's team has indicted a number of Trump campaign or administration officials for lying about their interactions with Russia.... The president's comments on the investigation, which the acting attorney general said is wrapping up soon, came in a wide-ranging interview with CBS News. Among the highlights of the interview: The president said he is keeping another government shutdown on the table, outlined disagreements with top intelligence officials, argued that keeping troops in Iraq is vital to watching Iran, contended that having a Cabinet packed with interim secretaries is a plus for his administration and again attacked former defense secretary Jim Mattis by falsely saying he forced him to resign.... He repeatedly cited the costs of having troops all over the world as a reason to bring them home. He struggled to reconcile his criticisms of [President] Obama for telegraphing withdrawals of troops but now doing it himself. 'I'm not telegraphing anything,' he said, minutes after explaining what he wanted to do in Syria.... The president again disagreed with his intelligence chiefs, saying there is a 'very good chance' he can make a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons at a summit next month, which the president said was already scheduled. ...
... Here's the transcript of the interview.
Christian Vasquez of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Saturday weighed in on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's racial controversy -- by taking a shot at his 2017 Republican gubernatorial challenger, Ed Gillespie. 'Ed Gillespie, who ran for Governor of the Great State of Virginia against Ralph Northam, must now be thinking Malpractice and Dereliction of Duty with regard to his Opposition Research Staff. If they find that terrible picture before the election, he wins by 20 points!' Trump tweeted. Gillespie appears to remain a sore spot for Trump.... Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and counselor to George W. Bush, never invited Trump to campaign. After Northam won, Trump tweeted that Gillespie 'did not embrace me or what I stand for.'"
Tom Nichols, in a Washington Post opinion piece: "... while Democrats, and decent people everywhere, have a right to demand that [Virginia Gov. Ralph] Northam step down, Republicans who continue to support a party dominated by Trump can't be taken seriously on this point. Trump's record on race-related issues is abysmal.... For the most part, the party has indulged his race-baiting comments and his crude handling of racial issues. But somehow party leaders, who stand firmly behind him, and a national party that just passed a resolution expressing 'undivided support' for him, seems to have no qualms about calling out Northam.... There are plenty of good arguments for kicking Northam out of his job. The newfound racial piety of a party that sold its soul to Trump isn't one of them."
God Save the Queen. David Herszenhorn of Politico: "If Britain crashes out of the EU, and things go bad in London, Queen Elizabeth II will be ready to make her own exit -- to an undisclosed location. The U.K. government has repurposed Cold War emergency evacuation planning to prepare for the chance of violence and mayhem following a no-deal Brexit, and the need to protect the royal family, the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday reported."
*****
** John Walcott of Time: "In the wake of ... Donald Trump's renewed attacks on the U.S. intelligence community this week, senior intelligence briefers are breaking two years of silence to warn that the President is endangering American security with what they say is a stubborn disregard for their assessments. Citing multiple in-person episodes, these intelligence officials say Trump displays what one called 'willful ignorance' when presented with analyses generated by America's $81 billion-a-year intelligence services. The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump's briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible. What is most troubling, say these officials and others in government and on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on the episodes, are Trump's angry reactions when he is given information that contradicts positions he has taken or beliefs he holds. Two intelligence officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public." Emphasis added. ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: mike pence knows this. Mike Pompeo knows this. John Bolton knows this. So do other senior officials & some members of the Cabinet. Why haven't they invoked the 25th Amendment? The House should speed up impeachment proceedings. Waiting for Mueller is no longer a reasonable option.
David Enrich, et al., of the New York Times: "To finance his business's growth [in early 2016], [Donald] Trump turned to a longtime ally, Deutsche Bank, one of the few banks still willing to lend money to the man who has called himself 'The King of Debt.' Mr. Trump's loan request, which has not been previously reported, set off a fight that reached the top of the German bank, according to three people familiar with the request. In the end, Deutsche Bank did something unexpected. It said no. Senior officials at the bank, including its future chief executive, believed that Mr. Trump's divisive candidacy made such a loan too risky, the people said. Among their concerns was that if Mr. Trump won the election and then defaulted, Deutsche Bank would have to choose between not collecting on the debt or seizing the assets of the president of the United States.... The failed loan request ... shows that [Trump] was actively engaged in running his business in the midst of the presidential campaign, and it is likely to attract scrutiny from Democrats on two House committees that are investigating his two-decade relationship with Deutsche Bank." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: The Times reporters have it all wrong. As I wrote earlier, based on Trumpenlogic, "It's not business if you try & fail to complete a deal." See also Akhilleus's comment, yesterday, on Trumpenlogic. Akhilleus does kinda rip it to shreds.
** Dana Milbank: "Sarah Sanders, asked by the Christian Broadcasting Network this week about Trump being the right man for the moment, replied: 'I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that's why he's there.' This makes sense, because Trump has of late been acting as if he draws his authority from the divine right of kings. He's asserting his absolute power to act without -- and often in contravention of -- the Democratic House, the Republican Senate, his own intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities and diplomats, and the will of the American public." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... AND Arwa Mahdawi in the Guardian points to another bit of Sanders "logic": "... it was God that put Trump in power rather than, you know, any of that Russian collusion malarkey." Mrs. McC: All kidding aside, it seems plausible that Sarah's faith in the divine right of King Donald is what allows her to go out every day & defend the indefensible. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
All the Best People, Ctd. Dan Lamothe & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "President Trump has tapped a senior Navy officer that he considered last year to be his Veterans Affairs secretary for promotion to two-star admiral and to be his chief medical adviser, even though there is still an open Pentagon investigation against him into allegations that derailed his VA secretary nomination. The White House sent Rear Adm. Ronny L. Jackson's name for promotion consideration to the Senate on Jan. 15. He was serving as the president's doctor last April when Trump nominated him for the VA post, and withdrew from consideration after accusations of mismanagement and misconduct as White House physician emerged. A spokesman for the Defense Department Inspector General's Office ... said his office's investigation into Jackson is still ongoing." This is an update of a story linked yesterday.
Trump Administration Too Busy to Find the Children It Lost. Jacob Soboroff & Dennis Romero of NBC News: "The Trump administration said in a court filing that reuniting thousands of migrant children separated from their parents or guardians at the U.S.-Mexico border may not be 'within the realm of the possible.' The filing late Friday from Jallyn Sualog, deputy director of the department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, was an ordered response in an ACLU lawsuit challenging the government's separation of at least 2,737 children of migrants detained at the border since summer 2017. Sualog said her office doesn't have the resources to track down the children, whose numbers could be thousands more than the official estimate."
Also Too Busy to Provide Heat & Light in Freezing Prison. Annie Correal of the New York Times: "The inmates were held in cramped cells that had no electricity and were frigid cold. Vents in the ceiling were stuffed with clothing or cardboard to keep out icy air. At 2 p.m., the jail population had not yet been fed. Those were the conditions described on Saturday by elected officials in New York City who had visited a federal jail on the Brooklyn waterfront, Metropolitan Detention Center, where more than 1,600 inmates have been largely confined to their freezing, dark cells for nearly a week, since an electrical fire partially cut off power to the jail, prompting management to cancel visits and place inmates on lockdown.... Elected officials said jail officials rejected an offer by the city to supply emergency generators and emergency blankets. On Saturday evening Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter that the city was sending trucks with hundreds of blankets and hand warmers to the jail and that generators were on the way 'whether they like it or not.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is the same administration that was horrified that armed federal agents, with warrants, entered the homes of poor Roger Stone & frightened his dogs. In a tweet, President* Trump wrote, "Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better" (than Stone was). Trump should be handing out blankets to freezing federal prisoners instead of golfing at Mar-a-Lago.
Yashar Ali of the Huffington Post: "When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's longtime communications director Matt House announced he was leaving just after November's midterm elections, the news was met with widespread bipartisan praise for House and his reputation for fairness.... House's departure, however, was not voluntary. HuffPost has learned, through two source with knowledge of the situation, that House was pushed out for allegedly having inappropriate sexual encounters with junior staffers, ending what was a nearly six-year tenure as communications director for the New York Democrat. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity.... In a text-message statement late Friday, a spokesman for Schumer confirmed that House was forced out after the encounters were alleged[.]" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
** Presidential Race 2020. Alex Shephard of the New Republic: The "kind of mass hysteria has gripped the left [over Howard Schultz's candidacy] ... "bears an unflattering resemblance to the lane-clearing that party officials employed ahead of the 2016 election, coronating Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democratic nominee well before the Iowa caucuses.... [But] Schultz ... [is] an out-of-touch billionaire with unpopular ideas straight out of the Democratic Party of the 1990s. He presents a stark opportunity for Democrats to show where they stand-by rejecting Clintonism once and for all.... Schultz won't compete in the Democratic primary because, he says, he doesn't believe in universal health care or free college, but it's also because he knows can't win the party's nomination. The question is whether his positions -- few though they may be at this stage -- are broadly popular. The evidence is that they're not.... Rather than treating him as a potential spoiler, Democrats should portray Schultz as emblematic of everything wrong with Trump's America. His opposition to taxing the wealth, support for cutting entitlements, and belief that plutocrats can solve the country's pressing problems make him the perfect villain.... Democrats can use Schultz's political flirtation as a dry-run for the policy arguments they will make over the next two years."
Capitalism Can Kill You. Katie Zezima & Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post: "Members of the family that owns Purdue Pharma, the company that created the powerful opioid painkiller OxyContin, directed sales representatives to push extremely high doses of the drug and later tried to get involved in opioid addiction treatment as a way to boost profits, according to a lawsuit. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey alleges the Sackler family, which controls Purdue, engaged in frequent acts of deception and misconduct to make as much money as possible, even as OxyContin sparked the nation's opioid crisis and its staggering toll of addiction and death. In parts of the lawsuit, Healey paints a portrait of insatiable greed and disregard for the suffering that the company's main product had caused. 'Eight people in a single family made the choices that caused much of the opioid epidemic,' the lawsuit contends."
Beyond the Beltway
Say What? Jonathan Martin, et al., of the New York Times: "Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, facing pressure from his own party to resign, said Saturday he would not quit and denied that he had appeared in Ku Klux Klan robes or in blackface in images from his medical school yearbook that have upended his governorship. 'It was definitely not me,' Mr. Northam, a Democrat, told reporters at a news conference in the governor's mansion.... Pressed on why he initially apologized, Mr. Northam said he had wanted to 'take credit for recognizing that this was a horrific photo that was on my page with my name on it.'... But he may have made his effort to remain in office more difficult by revealing that he had darkened his face with shoe polish for a Michael Jackson costume in a dance contest in Texas in 1984, when he was a young Army officer." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yeah, he might have. "That isn't me in blackface here even though yesterday I said it was but that was me in blackface over there so I won't resign." Could be a problem. ...
... Marc Caputo of Politico: "... on Saturday, Ralph Northam staked a claim in the annals of most surreal political press conferences, presiding over a 40-minute extravaganza.... Here are six of the strangest moments of the presser." ...
... Laura Vozzella, et al., of the Washington Post: "... [Virginia] State Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) said that [Gov. Ralph] Northam called her Saturday morning and told her he did not think [a racist] picture [on his 1984 medical school yearbook page] was of him and he did not plan to resign. 'He should have said that yesterday then,' she said. 'He just told me he didn't think it's him. And I said, "Ralph, this is a day late and a dollar short. It's too late."' Around 10:30 a.m., the state Democratic party tweeted, 'We made the decision to let Governor Northam do the correct thing and resign this morning - we have gotten word he will not do so this morning.' Northam was defying an avalanche of calls to step down from the office he'd assumed not 13 months ago. He spent Friday night huddled with advisers. A meeting with the state's legislative black caucus went poorly. National Democrats, including a host of a 2020 contenders and former vice president Joe Biden, said he must resign. And even home-state allies who regarded him as a dear friend -- including immediate predecessor and patron Terry McAuliffe (D), himself a potential presidential candidate -- said he had to go." See related stories below for context. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Reminds me of Donald Trump, who -- after apologizing for his "locker-room talk" -- reportedly told people that he did not make the recorded "pussy-grabbing" remarks (which Billy Bush verified).
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Reader Comments (5)
The Walcott article about intelligence briefers finally saying that trump is unfit for the job: This is an article that I have been waiting for since the first jokes on The Daily Show about briefings being dumbed down to hold trump's attention, maybe a year ago.
A bully (or bullshitter as it was described recently) maintains power as long as people who know better allow him (usually a him) to get away with it.
I wonder if trump's base could be classified as the bullshitters of the country? Clearly, there are bullshitters at every level of society, and I can imagine that they support trump as "one of their own," winning over all of those rule-followers.
The bullshitters and the amoral opportunists (Mitch!) have allowed this fool to remain in office beyond the first round of crowd-size claims. They are every bit as responsible as trump himself. While I am sure they will all burn in hell, I would be happy for them to get humiliated while they still walk the warming earth.
Wonder what damning information Roger Stone has and who he
has it on. Who would he be afraid of? Russians? The president*?
Junior? Or is he just paranoid?
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/roger-stone-hiding-undisclosed-
location-hes-worried-getting-jack-rubyed-documentary-filmmaker/
A SUNDAY SERMON: GOD'S RESPONSE TO SARAH:
Dear Sarah,
You can well imagine–-and I say this since you obviously have quite an active one–-my chagrin at learning that you have used my name in vain. Under no circumstances would I ever want Donald J. Trump to become your nation's president. You seem to be under the illusion that I can Will at will––that my dear Sarah, has been debunked eons ago but like many, and you being included in that group, still hang on to this belief that somehow humans are moved by some guy in the sky––it ain't so, Sarah––I retired from that gig a long time ago–-and while I was playing the part my heart wasn't really in it––much too much mischief involved. Suffice to say, Sarah, shut the fuck up––yes, I, too can use that word without impunity since I reside on Cloud 9 all by myself. Your boss is a jackass, a con artist, a liar, a mobster, a racist, a poltroon, and has ruined almost everything he touches. Save yourself Sarah, quit while you are ahead and get the hell out of Dodge while you still have as little credibility left in that smirking superiority of yours.
Regards, God–-in my name only!
PD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVJrkG4uU-g
The ignorance and narcissism imposed by King Fatty on the security of our country have taken center stage as the most vital and immediate reasons to dethrone this ridiculous fraud.
The dangers posed by such incompetence and hubris are not at all speculative or hypothetical. History directs our attention to a long list of leaders who, through their own incompetence and narcissistic belief In their own gut feelings over facts, intelligence, and pragmatic, well-founded strategies and policies, destroyed or seriously impaired the nations they were entrusted to protect.
George III, with a few essentially minor concessions could have prevented the revolution that signaled the beginning of the end of the British Empire as a world force.
Napoleon III made mistake after mistake in his foreign policy choices and ended his life in exile.
Roman history fans can point to the Big Three of rulers who degraded the empire: Nero, Commodus, and Caligula, who was such an asshole his own men killed him. Speaking of which, Edward II of England was such an incompetent fraud, his own wife, who finally had enough of his bullshit, raised her own army and kicked his ass. Are you listening Melanie? Oh, I forgot. You really don’t care.
The Roman general Varus, an incompetent rich kid pretender ignored all the signs of impending doom as he led three legions into a trap in the Teutoberg Forest in Germania. He promised victory in a matter of weeks. No one returned alive. No legionaries, that is, Varus turned tail and ran.
More recently, Dubya and Cheney ignored actual intelligence and invented their own and promised, like Varus, that their unnecessary, poorly planned invasion of Iraq would be concluded with a great victory in just a few weeks. That was 16 years ago. We’re still there.
We can avoid what would most assuredly be a catastrophic error in judgement by the current Republican fool and liar in the White House.
Remove this clown. Today.