After the explosive preview articles and a rushed publish date, there was little question that this week’s bobbleheads would have little else to discuss but Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury”. But here’s the thing about the book: for as much as the Trump administration lashes out and denies it, Wolff isn’t writing anything that hasn’t been… Continue reading “Michael Wolff: It’s ’25th Amendment time’ and the GOP ‘knows it’”
WASHINGTON — The top Senate Democrat investigating Donald Trump’s Russia ties says he believes mounting Republican assaults on federal inquiries into the matter are “a lot of bluster” and only indicate that the probes “are getting closer and closer to connecting the dots.” Continue reading “Sen. Mark Warner slams GOP assaults on Trump-Russia probes”
This seems a bizarre waste of time and energy, but I’m sure it keeps the people in the cheap seats happy:
Just in: Grassley and Graham have made a criminal referral to DOJ about Chris Steele. Legal experts tell me this looks like a PR stunt, mostly because it's not clear that the senators have info that the FBI does not already have (and DOJ hasn't independently pursued charges) pic.twitter.com/J5RTkzI2Y2
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) January 5, 2018
So everyone knows he’s crazy, and it’s even worse?
When President Donald Trump sat down for dinner on September 18 in New York with leaders of four Latin American countries on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly, anxieties were already running high.
There was the matter of Mexico and his promise to build that “big, beautiful wall,” presumably to keep not just Mexicans but all of their citizens out of the United States too. And the threat to blow up the North American Free Trade Agreement. And then, a month earlier, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump had volunteered that he was considering a “military option” in Venezuela as that country’s last vestiges of democracy disappeared. Amid the international furor over his vow to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea in the same golf-course press conference, the news that the president of the United States was apparently considering going to war with its third-largest oil supplier had gotten relatively little attention. But the leaders from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Panama invited to the dinner remembered it well.
So, it turned out, did Trump. After the photo op was over and the cameras had left the room, Trump dominated the long table. His vice president, Mike Pence, was to his right; Pence had just spent nearly a week on a conciliatory, well-received tour of the region, the first by a high-ranking administration official since Trump’s inauguration. To Trump’s left was his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. “Rex tells me you don’t want me to use the military option in Venezuela,” the president told the gathered Latin American leaders, according to an account offered by an attendee soon after the dinner. “Is that right? Are you sure?” Everyone said they were sure. But they were rattled. War with Venezuela, as absurd as that seemed, was clearly still on Trump’s mind.
By the time the dinner was over, the leaders were in shock, and not just over the idle talk of armed conflict. No matter how prepared they were, eight months into an American presidency like no other, this was somehow not what they expected. A former senior U.S. official with whom I spoke was briefed by ministers from three of the four countries that attended the dinner. “Without fail, they just had wide eyes about the entire engagement,” the former official told me. Even if few took his martial bluster about Venezuela seriously, Trump struck them as uninformed about their issues and dangerously unpredictable, asking them to expend political capital on behalf of a U.S. that no longer seemed a reliable partner. “The word they all used was: ‘This guy is insane.’”
It has now been 100 days since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico. And to date, less than half the island has power. Sure, it’s the Caribbean and not subject to the frigid cold weather we’re seeing on the mainland. But it’s absolutely unacceptable that we have American citizens (I’m not even clear Trump is… Continue reading “As Trump golfs, hospitals across US face severe IV bag shortage”
Thursday morning, after Donald Trump was done making up for a little lost time on Twitter and in between rounds of golf, he squeezed in one last self-congratulatory tweet that had the internet first scratching its collective head, then laughing its collective ass off. Continue reading “Trump gets shredded on Twitter for claiming yet another of Obama’s accomplishments”
It’s been a while since America has seen an epic refusal to concede. Usually the worst that happens following a closely-contested race like the one Doug Jones just won in Alabama is that the loser gives a rather salty speech and moves on. Continue reading “A river called denial”
Rep. Francis Rooney (FL) is a major Republican donor and a freshman Congressman who’s a member of the ultra-right Republican Study committee. He appeared on MSNBC with Hallie Jackson this morning, and her facial expressions are something to see. Continue reading “Hallie Jackson’s face is priceless as GOP rep says FBI, DoJ is ‘off the rails’”
Russian leader Vladimir Putin is manipulating President Donald Trump like a skilled intelligence operative, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Monday. Clapper was discussing calls between Trump and Putin in recent days, when the two discussed North Korea and a foiled terrorist plot in St. Continue reading “Former intel chief: Putin using Trump like an ‘asset’”
Thank heavens. This guy was a completely unprepared and unqualified mess — much like Trump:
The nomination of Brett Talley, the Justice Department official in line for a lifetime judicial appointment, “will not be moving forward,” a Trump administration official told NPR Wednesday.
Talley had been rated “unanimously unqualified” for the post by the American Bar Association this year after an evaluation that questioned his experience. Talley had never argued a case, or even a motion, in federal court, he testified.
Even after Talley’s nomination advanced through the Senate Judiciary Committee on an 11-to-9 party-line vote, media reports and good government groups cast doubt on his credentials for the spot on the U.S. District Court in Alabama, along with raising questions about his alleged failures to disclose blog posts and his wife’s work in the Trump White House.
Talley, a Harvard Law School graduate, came to personify a wave of criticism over the Trump administration’s judicial selections.
