However fucked up the various people around Trump are, I can’t believe that Michael Cohen doesn’t understand that Trump doesn’t care about anybody by himself. The sooner he gets arrested and cooperates, the better it will be for everyone:
NEW: Michael Cohen has told friends that he expects to be arrested any day now, according to a source close to Trump’s former lawyer https://t.co/VJEQgQy2Qe
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) June 12, 2018
The signs are all there. What are we going to do about it?
Reporters crowded into a Singapore auditorium Tuesday, expecting President Trump to walk out and announce the results of his historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Suddenly, two huge screens on either side of the empty podium came to life. Soaring music boomed over the speakers, and the reporters were bombarded with a montage portraying North Korea as some sort of paradise.
Golden sunrises. Gleaming skylines and high-speed trains. Children skipping through Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang, North Korean flags waving between images of Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Lincoln Memorial. In a split-screen shot, Kim Jong Un waved to an adoring crowd while President Trump stood beside him with his thumb in the air. The pair appeared over and over again, like running mates in a campaign video.
The film went on like this for several minutes, with brief interludes of missiles, soldiers and warships interrupting the fanfare. Some journalists, unable to understand the Korean-language narration, assumed they were watching one of Pyongyang’s infamous propaganda films. “What country are we in?” asked a reporter from the filing center.
But then the video looped, playing this time in English. And then Trump walked onto the stage and explained that the film was not North Korean propaganda. It had been made in America, by or on the orders of his White House, for the benefit of Kim. “I hope you liked it,” Trump told the reporters. “I thought it was good. I thought it was interesting enough to show. … And I think he loved it.”
The media keeps breaking it into little pieces! David Corn for Mother Jones:
In this ongoing fight, it is Trump and his bumper stickers versus a media presenting a wide variety of disparate disclosures that come and go quickly in a hyperchaotic information ecosystem, often absent full context. No wonder then that a recent poll found that 59 percent of Americans said Mueller has uncovered no crimes. In fact, he has secured 17 criminal indictments and obtained five guilty pleas. Accurate news reporting alone does not always carry the day.
The Russia scandal is the most important scandal in the history of the United States. President Andrew Johnson was impeached (but not convicted) because he violated an act of Congress to remove a secretary of war. In the Teapot Dome scandal, the secretary of the interior in Warren Harding’s administration leased federal lands at low rates to private oil companies, presumably in return for bribes. In Watergate, a president and his aides engaged in political skulduggery against political foes. President Bill Clinton lied about a sexual affair he had with a subordinate in the White House. All these scandals raised serious questions about integrity in government. But at the heart of the Russia scandal is the most fundamental issue for a democracy: the sanctity of elections.
An overseas enemy struck at the core of the republic—and it succeeded. Trump and his minions helped and encouraged this attack by engaging in secret contacts with Moscow and publicly insisting no such assault was happening. This is far bigger than a bribe, a break-in, or a blow job. And, worse, the United States remains vulnerable to such a strike.
Yet the full impact of this scandal does not resonate in the daily coverage and discourse. In many ways, the media presents the Russia scandal mostly as a political threat to Trump, not as a serious threat to the nation. And many Americans, thanks to Trump and his allies, view it as a charade. All this shows how easy it is for disinformation and demagoguery to distort reality. That is a tragedy for the United States. For Trump—and Putin—that is victory.
I don’t even know why this strikes me — maybe because Trump has so little interest in even learning the rules, let alone following them:
President Trump reportedly has a habit of ripping up pieces of paper, including letters and official documents, that are required by law to be preserved, in what was described as his personal “filing system.”
Former staffers handling records management for the White House told Politico that they were tasked with taping the paper scraps together to ensure that the administration did not violate legal requirements to preserve presidential records.
Solomon Lartey, who was terminated after nearly three decades of government service, told Politico that he and colleagues would use Scotch tape to put the pieces together “like a jigsaw puzzle.”
If only Jeff Flake were a United States senator in a closely divided chamber who could single-handedly join with Democrats to force accountability. https://t.co/psJliBlw18
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) June 10, 2018
Jeff Flake and John McCain have talked a lot for the past year and a half about Donald Trump, but they don’t stop him in any meaningful way. Yes, McCain did vote against repealing Obamacare. But he talks a lot about Trump’s abuse of power without doing anything to stop it.
Jeff Flake, too. (Who plans to run for president.)
The only question that will matter in 2020, is: “Where were you when Trump killed democracy? What did you do to stop it?”
Saying he believes the country is already in a constitutional crisis, former Fox News national security analyst Col. Ralph Peters gave his first interview since leaving Fox to Anderson Cooper Wednesday night.
“Even Senator Joseph McCarthy never directly attacked the Constitution,” he said.
Cooper said Peters referred to a “cult of Trump.”
“Yeah, I think a lot of Trump supporters are so embarrassed by how it has turned out, that they just cling to him,” he said. “They won’t let facts penetrate their reality. I am startled by relatively educated people and military veterans who still insist that Trump can do no wrong. That he is some sort of messiah, and I part company with their views.”
“You have first-hand experience with how Russian intelligence operates, do you believe that Vladimir Putin has some grip on Trump,” Cooper said.
“I am convinced that Vladimir Putin has some grip on Trump. When I first learned of the Steele dossier, it rang true to me,” Peters said.
“That is how the Russians do things. And before he became a candidate for president, Donald Trump was the perfect target for Russian intelligence. Here is someone who has no self-control, a sense of sexual entitlement and intermittent financial crisis. Made to order for seduction of Russian intelligence. I hope I am wrong.”
He said when Christopher Steele put together his dossier, “when you look at Trump’s behavior patterns, his unwillingness to create problems with Russia even as he attacks NATO, how can he not draw the conclusions that President Trump, the president of the United States, is frightened of Vladimir Putin and his grip?”
“Without exaggeration, the Mueller investigation is the most important of my lifetime, and I am 66 years old. I lived through Watergate. Anderson, it is about a fundamental assault on the Constitution by the president of the United States.”
Oh, the horror! The Cheato can’t watch his favorite movies. No wonder he’s so cranky.
Trump's full remarks from the Celebration of America. The entire ceremony, starting with the singing of the national anthem and ending with the singing of God Bless America, lasted about eight minutes. pic.twitter.com/ABUDAYfdVR
— Bryan Armen Graham (@BryanAGraham) June 5, 2018
Here’s Trump at his faux patriotism event yesterday. Apparently he doesn’t know all the words to “God Bless America”:
https://youtu.be/ozz7K-QNF4Q
At least one person there will be smarter than Trump:
NBA star turned Kim Jong Un soulmate Dennis Rodman will be in Singapore during President Trump’s summit with the North Korean dictator next week, The Post has learned.
“The Worm” will arrive in the country a day before the June 12 sitdown — and sources said he could even play some sort of role in the negotiations.
“No matter what you might think about his presence. One thing’s for sure the ratings will be huge,” a source said. “A lot of times in situations that involve complex diplomacy countries like to identify ambassadors of goodwill and whether you agree with it or not Dennis Rodman fits the bill.”
The zany, 6-foot-7 ex-baller — who has struck up an unlikely bromance with the pint-sized, 5-foot-7 Kim, and has visited the rogue regime five times in the past — took some of the credit for getting the two leaders together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yrf9-aCQ5c
Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Sunday warned Donald Trump that he would effectively ensure impeachment if he tried to pardon himself.
During an interview on CNN’s State of the Union program, host Dana Bash noted that Trump’s attorneys had asserted in a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller that the president has the power to pardon himself. On Sunday, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani agreed that the president “probably” has self-pardoning power.
“I think it would be outrageous,” Bharara told Bash. “I think if the president decided he was going to pardon himself, I think that’s almost self-executing impeachment. Whether or not there’s a minor legal argument that some law professor somewhere in a legal journal can make, that’s not what the framers could have intended.”
“The second thing is, when Rudy Giuliani says… the president is not contemplating [pardoning himself],” the former U.S. Attorney continued, “I have no faith in that whatsoever.”
