Trump is used to getting people to take his money (or, more accurately, the promise of his money), eat his shit, and pretend to like it. That strategy doesn’t work so well for people who don’t owe you anything. Two examples from the last couple of hours:
- The entire State Department senior leadership team resigned this morning. These aren’t political appointees, they’re career diplomats.
- The President of Mexico cancelled his US trip over Trump’s decision to start building a border wall. (The “eating shit” metaphor is really not strong enough for what Trump expects from Enrique Peña Nieto – Trump expects him to commit political suicide, and smile while he does it)
So, that’s the morning. I wonder what the afternoon will bring.
ruemara
Hell & sandwiches
GregB
This is known as alternative winning.
Jeff
He’s visiting us in Philadelphia finding out how unpopular he is here.
Winnief
Not at all surprising Nieto is refusing to visit. What is surprising is that Trump’s team ever thought he would behave differently after Trump promised to build that damn wall.
Ironically, I think Trump will be a deterrent to illegal immigration in one sense, because he’ll make the US much less desirable as a location to everyone.
Spanky
Ya know, a little game I play is to hover over the tab on the right, read the title of the next post, and guess the author. I had this one pegged as a Cole post. Touché.
As to the subject, I got nuthin.
hovercraft
What will be left after the “first 100 days”?
Just asking, is there something I should be doing to be ready?
Just kidding, umm probably not ;-)
MattF
Interesting item about how Russian rockets (which the US depends on to crew the ISS) have gone unreliable. Dishonesty has a price.
mai naem mobile
I don’t want to ever hear about a business man running for president and that being a good thing. Ever. I will never forgive the morons who voted for this Nut Job to get back at the black man or the intelligent woman that you could not handle because she was a striver and successful.
Yarrow
@Winnief: I think you meant #FuckingWall.
The Moar You Know
@GregB: You win today’s internets.
Major Major Major Major
It apparently works very well for Congress, who have sheepishly said they’ll give him his $15,000,000,000 for his damn wall.
rikyrah
Two national polls: Obamacare now more popular than Trump
01/26/17 10:42 AM
By Steve Benen
The day before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, Fox News released the results of a new national poll that showed the Republican with a 42% favorability rating. The same poll found “Obamacare” with a 50% favorability rating.
It created an awkward political dynamic: the new president is now less popular than the health care law he’s eager to destroy.
Yesterday, Public Policy Polling released the results of a new national survey – the results of which were shared exclusively with The Rachel Maddow Show last night – that pointed in a similar direction. Support for the Affordable Care Act, in this poll, stood at 45%, while Trump’s support was 44%.
That’s obviously a pretty modest difference, but the broader point remains the same: Trump is working from the assumption that the ACA is a disaster the public is eager to get rid of, but when pollsters actually gauge Americans’ attitudes, the reform law is more popular than the president bashing it.
All of this comes the week after the release of an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that found the Affordable Care Act “has never been more popular” than it is right now. A Washington Post report added:
rikyrah
Did Secretary of Exxon really come out and say that he’s about to reverse the progress that the US has made with Cuba?
I read it on Twitter.
p.a.
@Winnief: W cut immigration by tanking the economy. #HHooverstillwrong
Tazj
I would say to Dem politicians-Wake Up! You don’t have to oppose every nomination or every proposal but show us you have some fight. I really appreciate Kirsten Gillibrand, but let’s show a little more opposition. The people in the State Department are showing some courage.
Eric Boehlert @Eric Boehlert 39m
kindness
I just read the head of the Border Patrol quit yesterday/this morning as well. Daily Kos has it front paged along with those fleeing the State Department.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
You hit the big point here. People only eat Trump’s shit if he pays them to. But he seems to have become so used to people swallowing whatever he feeds them that he no longer understands why some people won’t do it. He seems utterly bewildered and betrayed somehow that millions of us are unwilling to chow down on what he gives us. He’s never had to deal with so many people who loathe him so deeply, and he can’t handle it. I’ve said this before, but I don’t think he’ll last a year.
p.a.
@hovercraft: GOLD! Hannity and Beck tell me so. Price will go up when they use it to build the wall.
Adam L Silverman
Actually they were all in political appointment billets. Here’s how it works. They all are career Foreign Policy Officers who, after working their way up to Foreign Executive Service (FES), the State Department’s version of Senior Executive Service (SES), were then given political appointments (Political Appointment Service/PAS) to the billets they just resigned from. Normally some of them would have simply gone back into the FES pool and taken other FES assignments. They have, instead, all decided to retire from service.
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah:
No matter how much they might be suffering under Fidel Castro, being nice to the Cuban people who can’t swim all the way here just encourages the Soviet Union.
EdTheRed
Welp:
Barbara
Spending huge amounts of political capital to be friends with Russia but enemies with Mexico is the single stupidest idea I can think of. I have only been to Mexico once, and I would really like to go back, but we have good friends who were working for the Mexican Foreign Office in the U.S. for a long time and it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around the idea that Mexico would ever be anything but an ally, even if there is obviously tension related to immigration. The solution is for Mexico to become more like us, more like Canada, not to insult them daily. Preaching to the choir, I know, but to have such a myopic view of the world that you know so little about your next door neighbor verges on astonishing.
philpm
Right now, if congressional Republican leadership (oxymoron I know) aren’t filling up a Depends a minute over the State resignations, they should be.
Nick
And the evening and the morning were the 7th day of the Trump Administration
Lizzy L
@EdTheRed: The WaPo and TPM are saying the officials resigned, and this tweet says they were fired.
Hmmm.
philpm
@rikyrah: I did see last night that Rick Scott is threatening to cut off state money from any Florida port that does business with Cuba.
Spanky
@Lizzy L: “I hereby resign my position.”
“No you don’t! You’re fired!”
khead
Caught this from Franklin Graham today:
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
If you read it on twitter, then it’s true. Hasn’t the new leader said it’s the most reliable purest form of his voice, no media to lie or distort his voice?
rikyrah
We Can’t Have Four Years of This
by Martin Longman
January 26, 2017 1:02 PM
Media criticism is a huge part of my job and I’ll always find things to fault in how the media covers our politics and our politicians. I do not believe, however, that the media went easy on Donald Trump during the campaign. I’ve actually never seen any politician get so savaged day after day as Trump was in the last election. Pretty much everything we know about Trump’s shortcomings came from articles written either by bigfoot reporters at our major newspapers or by longtime Trump-watching journalists in the New York area.
Trump lost the endorsement of dozens of newspapers that have endorsed Republicans in the past. In the end, in the entire country, he only won the endorsement of a single handful of metro newspapers. Even the right-wing media turned on him, including the National Review which opposed him with real fury. I could write a separate article about how Clinton was treated, but I want to stay on my topic.
Donald Trump was exposed by the media and people had access to all the information they needed to know about his fraudulent business practices, his dishonest and bullying litigiousness, his failure to honor contracts, his sordid personal life, his connections to prominent organized crime figures, his business failures, his record of racism, his foreign entanglements, and his almost unbelievable personal narcissism. Maybe the media actually helped Trump despite giving us all this information because they gave him so much attention and chased his every shocking move, but they didn’t give him a pass or fail to treat him with appropriate skepticism.
We all learned something about the standing of the media when enough of the public shrugged it all off and supported him to make him our president. I think it’s clear that the media lost their credibility with much of the electorate, and we can debate how much they earned that loss of credibility. Yet, it’s clear to me, at least, that they lost more than they deserved to lose.
Now, when I open up the Washington Post and an article begins with the following paragraph, I know things are messed up.
Even after more than a half a decade in office, a failing war based on falsified intelligence, a drowned New Orleans, and a global collapse of the economy, no major newspaper ran straight news articles this hostile and disrespectful about President George W. Bush. Donald Trump has been in office less than a week, and his word is already an open joke and so lacking in credibility that our major newspapers have no compunction about dismissing his utterances out of hand.
Reading the transcript of his first big presidential interview with ABC News, I was something close to paralyzed with fear. Watching it made things worse.
rikyrah
this is insane.
I despise everyone who voted for him.
DESPISE THEM for putting MY country at risk.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Spanky: First thing I thought of, too.
Major Major Major Major
@philpm: I read this as ‘any Florida p0rn’ and though, damn, that’s harsh.
ThresherK
Best tweet from yesterday, in CU Boulder:
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Adam L Silverman:
This confirms what I suspected: what they’ve done is actually make it easier for Twitler to now stack the upper echelons of State with their own people. It’s not unlike how the Bushies did it at Justice.
I know in my agency, what happens is SES people typically get into those slots because they’re sympathetic with a given administration’s goals. When a different (read opposite party) group come in, most typically retire within a year. Weep not for them because they’re fully vested in their Fed retirement and usually go onto work for a Beltway Bandit making craptons of money.
The new administration then gets people into those SES slots often by going outside to advertise the job or find GS-15 kapos internally to promote from within. SESes from a previous administration who don’t leave and don’t buy into the new administrations goals are typically pressured into crappy daily jobs and thus leave eventually.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Steve!
@khead: Spoiler: it won’t.
hovercraft
@philpm:
So he’s cutting off all of them? Smart, wicked smart.
? Martin
@Lizzy L: Pretty sure they all worked under Clinton. I guess the loyalty inquisitions have begun…
trollhattan
@mai naem mobile:
Yup. Our first MBA president worked out so very well that we had to up the ante. Right.
Government should above all be boring, run quietly and effectively by competent people who understand it. What we now have is the very inverse, and it’s “interesting” alright. May we and the country survive.
Lizzy L
Dianne Feinstein’s local office mail-box is full. Her DC number is busy. Kamala Harris’s DC mailbox and her Fresno mailbox are both full. The people of California are reaching out. w00t!
If you live in a red state, it’s even MORE important that you contact your legislators. Congress needs to hear that their constituents are not okay with this.
Miss Bianca
@GregB: OK, you’re on fire now. Second comment of yours today that’s made me LOL!
Major Major Major Major
@Lizzy L: Damn, I was just about to call.
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Well, that’s no good.
Jeffro
I am driving home from Richmond – I take it today has not been a slow news day?
Adam L Silverman
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Pretty much.
trollhattan
@khead: Okay, there’s a Gumby award nominee for the year’s greatest stretch. And it’s January.
eric
stand by: the single biggest potential issue will be: did a Trump insider compromise a US intelligence asset inside the Russian spy agency? that story will have legs no matter how in the bag the press is for a GOP daddy state.
Note: not clear or certain he was such an asset, but the Ruskies say he is.
hovercraft
Wow, It Gets Bigger
By Josh Marshall Published January 26, 2017, 12:45 PM EDT
Last night I noted that a top Russian spy who is the number two person in the FSB department which allegedly oversaw the US election hacking operation had been arrested and charged with treason. Was he a sacrificial lamb and olive branch to Trump? A way for Putin to claim that his spy services had perhaps gone rogue? Or was he suspected of being a source to US intelligence? People who fall from grace in Putin’s Russia are often dealt with with trumped up criminal prosecutions. But treason is a special charge.
Well, now we have reports that Sergei Mikhailov is suspected of being a US asset at the heart of Russian intelligence.
The report is from The Moscow Times, a respected English language publication. But the report appears to rely on a report in Novaya Gazeta.
From the Moscow Times …
A top cybersecurity specialist in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was arrested on Wednesday reportedly on suspicion of leaking information to the U.S. intelligence community — a bombshell accusation that, if true, would mean Washington had a spy in the heart of Russia’s national defense infrastructure.
Here’s the additional detail …
According to the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the FSB believes Sergei Mikhailov tipped off U.S. officials to information about Vladimir Fomenko and his server rental company “King Servers,” which the American cybersecurity company ThreatConnect identified last September as “an information nexus” that was used by hackers suspected of working for Russian state security in cyberattacks.
The article goes on to say that four others have been arrested in connection to the treason case against Mikhailov. It is important to note that even if these are the charges, in a country like Russia, what you’re charged with isn’t just not necessarily true. It may not even be what the state and prosecutors think is true.
But this immediately poses the question: if Mikhailov was a US asset, how was he compromised? Did the information put out by US intelligence somehow lead to his exposure? Without putting too fine a point on it, a number of close advisors to President Trump are being scrutinized for ties to Russia. Some of them participated in the intelligence briefings the President receives. Do we have a very big problem?
O. Felix Culpa
@Nick: And G-d saw it was deplorable.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: So the right thing for them to do may have been to stay? I’m speaking from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, not taking into account their personal well-being or psychological state; just, would staying have prevented harm?
MattF
@hovercraft: Good thing Trump gets along so well with the CIA.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: One of the people at State had been in the same job under both Bush and Obama and was angling to stay on under Trump.
Until today.
philpm
@Major Major Major Major: Scott’s trying to bogart all that for himself.
Tazj
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Oh, I didn’t know. I suppose that’s true of the border patrol chief who resigned also? These things just happen when administrations change?
Elmo
@hovercraft: It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
hovercraft
@khead:
Don’t worry they will have the biggest crowd evah! They will have Mike Pence there as the keynote speaker, and you know he’s a superstar.
Lizzy L
@Major Major Major Major: They were asked to leave — the choice to stay was not available.
philpm
@hovercraft: My thought as well.
Taylor
@rikyrah: The problem with our shitty press was that, because of their religion of false equivalence, they had to balance every Trump scandal with a Clinton scandal. So they kept on about EMAILZ, to the point where it’s all anyone remembers. In retrospect, Trump played them masterfully.
These people will not change. They are profoundly stupid.
Keith P.
Keep beating on Trump until he breaks. So insulting his ego gives him the vapors? Good, do it every day. Start up more Twitter feeds devoted to insulting him, going after his insecurities. It’s like aikido – let your opponent throw himself off balance.
trollhattan
@hovercraft:
Pence has one of those personalities that seems to suck the very life out of a room. Other than his intermittent Indiana shenanigans I’d never been exposed to him until the election; now I’ve already hit my limit. The anti-Biden in virtually every way.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Not necessarily. It depends what jobs they would have been assigned to at their last earned rank in the Foreign Executive Service. Having the expertise in house would be useful, but only if their replacements were willing to listen to them.
hovercraft
Liars who lie just for the sake of lying.
From the Vichy Times.
…Mr. Trump said he was told a story by “the very famous golfer, Bernhard Langer,” whom he described as a friend, according to three staff members who were in the room for the meeting….
The three witnesses recalled Mr. Langer being the protagonist of the story, although a White House official claimed the president had been telling a story relayed to the golfer by one of Mr. Langer’s friends.
The witnesses described the story this way: Mr. Langer, a 59-year-old native of Bavaria, Germany — a winner of the Masters twice and of more than 100 events on major professional golf tours around the world — was standing in line at a polling place near his home in Florida on Election Day, the president explained, when an official informed Mr. Langer he would not be able to vote.
Ahead of and behind Mr. Langer were voters who did not look as if they should be allowed to vote, Mr. Trump said, according to the staff members — but they were nonetheless permitted to cast provisional ballots. The president threw out the names of Latin American countries that the voters might have come from.
Mr. Langer, whom he described as a supporter, left feeling frustrated, according to a version of events later contradicted by a White House official.
The anecdote, the aides said, was greeted with silence, and Mr. Trump was prodded to change the subject by Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, and Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.
Just one problem: Mr. Langer, who lives in Boca Raton, Fla., is a German citizen with permanent residence status in the United States who is, by law, barred from voting, according to Mr. Langer’s daughter Christina.
“He is a citizen of Germany,” she said, when reached on her father’s cellphone. “He is not a friend of President Trump’s, and I don’t know why he would talk about him.”
She said her father was “very busy” and would not be able to answer any questions.
Someone’s lying, I wonder who?
Adam L Silverman
@Tazj: To a certain extent yes. Some stay, some don’t. Some get moved to new positions. Some then don’t like them and resign/retire a bit later.
Timurid
@hovercraft:
I’m trying to visualize the CIA’s response if they learn that one of their assets was intentionally burned by the Trump administration.
What’s coming out is mostly scenes from Ludlum’s more half-baked novels… This is still real life, right?
The Moar You Know
@hovercraft: This better not be fucking true.
Tazj
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you for the explanation.
MattF
@hovercraft: It happened inside DJT’s brain, so it happened.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Tazj:
Yes but usually within a year, certainly not this fast.
To give you some contrast, my sub-agency of an executive level department, no one’s leaving. They’ve been asked to stay on, in some cases moving up a level to “acting”. But they are placeholders until the kleptocrats get their act together and get the right hires into the right slots.
PPCLI
@rikyrah: Obviously this poll was rigged, because they asked about the Affordable Care Act. Everybody loves that. It’s Obamacare that they hate and want destroyed immediately.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Adam L Silverman:
Absolutely. This is also typically why GS-15 department heads also cycle out, particularly if they’re eligible to bail by retiring. They have to work for these idiots and it gets old bashing your head against the wall of an SES who while isn’t a political appointee, might as well be one. Thus, the SESes eventually are able to hire or promote to department head-level positions people more in tune with their goals.
Again, this typically takes time to do as in about 2 years. That’s about how long it took the Bushies to do it. It took Obama about the same time to squeeze out those bastards.
It’s another reason why Twitler and Chaffatz want to gut civil service protections: they can accelerate the process.
I’ve always told people that the Bushies were the ones that created the template on how to do this but that if Cheetoh Donnie was elected, you’d see it on steroids. Welcome to ‘roid rage.
PPCLI
@Major Major Major Major: A few months ago, the NYT had an article about the growing number of Cubans who are flying to Mexico and then presenting themselves at the US border, immediately getting legal residency. This is a financial opportunity for Cuba — for a moderate fee, award Cuban citizenship to any Latin American that asks. Then they can move to the US if that is what they want to do.
Spanky
I’m pegging the odds of Mikhalov being an actual US asset at no more than 50%, purely on the knowledge that Vlad likes to fuck with people’s heads more than anything, and sees a plum opportunity to widen the wedge between *POTUS and his IC. My guess is that actual US assets get disappeared much more quietly. When it’s splashed all over the Russian press you know the purpose is to mess with the collective American mind.
Aleta
From website of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the only woman on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
I think all the co-sponsors are Ds except for King and Sanders (both I) and Collins (R).
Seems like pressure via phone calls etc. might be critical.
ETA And vocal support now will matter when they try to further limit repro rights in the US.
Major Major Major Major
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: @Adam L Silverman: So this is not as big a deal as I’m seeing on the book of faces? Much wailing, gnashing, rending etc. going on.
Adam L Silverman
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Unfortunately.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Yes and no.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Would this be accurate:
These types of resignations and post-cyclings generally happen when a new administration comes in, but it usually happens over a matter of one or two years, not five to seven days.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Yes. For the most part.
The Truffle
@rikyrah: Say what about those businesses that want to, you know, DO BUSINESS with Cuba? Especially now that Fidel Castro is, you know, DEAD?
catclub
@Yarrow: I always thought that Trump had decided (in his head) the Mexicans would pay for the Wall when we confiscated all remissions of money to Mexico. The fact this is blatantly illegal never entered his head.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Am I wrong to think that it seems a little too coincidental that these 4 people — including a Russian expert — all just happen to leave the same day that Russia arrests a whole bunch of their cybersecurity guys and charges them with treason? Especially given Tillerson’s personal ties to Russia?
crawdad
According to CNN they were fired. A new broom sweeps clean.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Let’s face it, Trump is not the kind of guy to balk at a little wage theft.
James Powell
@rikyrah:
What we all learned was that our country had a lot more mean-spirited, bigoted asshole voters than we thought.
People didn’t go for Trump because they distrusted the media. They hate the media for telling them the truth, just like they hate blacks, Latinos, Muslims, women, and LGBT people for expecting to be treated equally and fully human.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@hovercraft: Flynn.
John Revolta
@Spanky: Yeah I agree. If the #2 guy in a major FSB department turned out to be a CIA plant, Putin wouldn’t be making a lot of noise about it.
James Powell
@crawdad:
According to what trump’s staff told CNN to repeat, they were fired.
A puppet never really says anything.
James Powell
@John Revolta:
Agree also. It’s more like the kind of story they tell when they are making changes.
Everyone should read or re-read Darkness at Noon.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Not that many coincidences in the western world.
Shalimar
@Taylor: Booman also points out all the information that was out there on Trump like it was equally available everywhere. There were numerous instances during the campaign where major scoops by Newsweek or the Washington Post were barely mentioned and never followed up on in the NY Times. If you strictly read one source, like the Times, you got daily front page stories about EMAILS with occasional reporting of one of their minor Trump scoops. It was far from balanced negativity.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
All those leaving are just Trump draining the swamp, donchaknow. Getting rid of those crooked bureaucrats. Replacing with good honest, fiscally responsible Republicans.
catclub
@Shalimar: I immediately thought of the Reagan admin guy who praised a reporter on a highly critical piece, bacause the piece showed exactly what the Reagan admin wanted – they did not care about the words.
likewise for Trump. having him lead the news, and get live TV coverage that pre-empts any other political news,
every day for a year and a half, except when you report on Hillary’s email, was a win.
joel hanes
In case people missed it, the title of the OP is a reference to ee cummings’s gloriously defiant poem
i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or
his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but–though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments–
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
“I will not kiss your fucking flag”
straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)
but–though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat–
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
“there is some shit I will not eat”
our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died
Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too
preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.
Captain C
@philpm: That assumes they’re smart enough to figure out what a bad thing it is. Assumes facts without evidence, for the most part.
Captain C
I’m getting a “Mobile Programming from Russia: Russians will build your app” ad at the top of the page. Wouldn’t hiring them basically be saying: “Please, please put malware in an app with my name on it, preety please?!!”?
vhh
@EdTheRed: Not sure, but I wonder if this could be damage control by the Trump team, as in the dialogue
Executive: “I quit.”
CEO: “No you don’t, you’re fired.”
Does anyone know the truth of what happened?
Tehanu
@PPCLI:
And let’s not forget about getting gubmint out of their Medicare!