Twitler is live-tweeting the morning shows again, and holy fuckballs! Here he is throwing his lackeys under the bus for pushing out multiple versions of the story behind the Comey firing:
As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
I know, right? When the addled demagogue himself can’t keep his story straight, we can hardly expect his henchmen to keep up with the lies as they hatch in his diseased brain pan. But Trump has a solution:
…Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
Makes sense to me. I’m certain Spicer & Co. would welcome the opportunity to come back in from “among the bushes” and hide in their offices instead of being trotted out daily to repeat laughably obvious falsehoods. But wait — there’s more!
James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
That lathe sound you hear is Richard M. Nixon spinning in his grave. And finally, this:
When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
Of course, those who keep up with current events via sources other than Fox News know Clapper hasn’t been party to the ongoing investigation since January 20, 2017, and he made it clear he wasn’t privy to the status of the FBI investigation at all. Which is ongoing.
I’m not a lawyer, but isn’t this some species of obstruction? And how on earth are we supposed to have confidence that anyone Trump appoints to replace Comey won’t have received the message, loud and clear, that his boss expects him (or her) to deep-six the investigation that has inflicted such a grievous narcissistic injury?
And even if by some miracle an honest person is appointed and concludes the investigation, who believes Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III will act appropriately on the evidence submitted? Anyone?
I still think it’s possible that Trump really doesn’t know about any collusion — he’s clearly dumb and malleable enough to have been sleazed into office by cleverer people acting in their own interests. But it’s getting harder to believe that every day, with every word he utters and every tweet his stubby little thumbs furiously tap out.
We need a special prosecutor and an independent investigation. To the phones!
Mike in DC
I am a new (ish) lawyer, and it sure sounds like obstruction, witness threatening and potentially jury tampering to me.
GregB
No one could have predicted.
sigaba
Cowards, cowards all.
Shumer and Nancy have pretty much all they need to go nuclear, hope they can escalate.
Humdog
The crazier he acts the more infuriated I get with his party continuing to stand behind him. We are governed by traitors and imbeciles and criminals. This is fine!
dr. bloor
I’m too old for this. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that mediots now accept the legitimacy of tweeting as a reality-based, acceptable form of communication from the President of the United States.
Mike J
Major Major Major Major
I hate him so much.
I envision this ending with the authorities coming in to the oval office to arrest him as he sits there, brooding and alone, abandoned by the whole executive branch (those that haven’t already been snapped up), in the dark and unable to figure out how to use those damn digital light switches.
dr. bloor
@sigaba: At this point, I’d rather see them titrate the pressure rather than go pedal to the metal right away. Every day the Congress and POTUS are preoccupied with this mess is one less day President Pence and a R congress have before midterms to do real damage.
Certified Mutant Enemy
As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!….
“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
— Mark Twain
MattF
My initial reaction to Trump’s asking Comey about whether he was being investigated was ‘Well, of course he did’. So, yeah… rule-of-law, et cetera, and all that is, in Trumpland, out the window and what else is new?
hovercraft
@Mike in DC:
Stolen from AM Thread:
Kay
That drawing made me laugh :)
I feel like even ultra-savvy people are like “I am becoming CONCERNED”
Troubled. It’s troubling.
We need a word for the phase that comes after 1. concerned, 2. troubled, 3…?
Certified Mutant Enemy
As a very active President
A truly active President would spend less time watching Fox “News” and less time on twitter.
J R in WV
In ltaly, Mrs J found an NYT while walking back from Etruscan tomb complex, full of Corey stuff! First time online since departure, tablet making absurd suggestions about word choice, repeatedly!! Go on, try to type Etruscan, I dare you!!
Great landscapes, sound of tractors working in vineyards surrounding antique hotel, wine tour Wed. Cooking class yesterday, made pasta, ravioli, drank wine, ordered case of wine, olive oil, balsamic vinegar! Visited museum with Etruscan relics, tiny amount of remains after tombs robbed, but good museum inside restored hilltop fortress in Castellino in Chianti town.
Too cool to swim, stone walls 30 inches thick, so comfortable inside. God bless America, we need all the help we can get! Will rejoin political fray next week…
Aleta
-From Science magazine and KU News
Aleta
@J R in WV: Sounds absolutely wonderful. Bravo.
LurkerNoLonger
@Certified Mutant Enemy: “It’s not possible to keep our lies straight when I keep changing the lies!”
Immanentize
@Kay: 3. “Freaked the fuck out?”
Kristine
@J R in WV:
::major envy:: A trip like that is on my bucket list.
Major Major Major Major
@Certified Mutant Enemy: A truly active president would probably exercise a little, too, instead of being somebody who apparently thinks bodies are depleteable like batteries.
Feebog
“Perfect accuracy” or as the rest of us describe it, “the truth”.
Jilli Brown
@Humdog: A guy at a town hall said it best…”when do you stop being a politician, and start being an American?”
hovercraft
@Aleta:
But selling weapons allows him to show off how big and strong his weapons are, training is weak and girly, it’s something only weak leaders like the ones who came before him would do. No he’s going to go all in with weapons sales, when they see just how big and strong his weapons are, they’ll bow down before him and acknowledge his greatness.
Lurking Canadian
@LurkerNoLonger: That’s it exactly. The easiest version to “keep straight” is the truth. It’s only bullshit that requires careful management
NotMax
Brought upstairs from below:
It’s been reported that in private life Dolt 45’s own lawyers insist that at least a pair of them be present in meetings with him in order to provide witness to what they said as opposed to what he says they said.
AFAIK, Comey did not heed this precaution.
clay
Reposting this from the dead thread:
The most frustrating thing about this — about ALL of this — is that everything was entirely predictable and unsurprising. Everything — the corruption, the erratic behavior, the incompetence, the ties to Russia, the ignorance about how government [or anything] works, the bullying, the obvious disregard for norms and conventions and the rule of law…
All of this was visible during the campaign, and a lot of us were screaming from the rooftop, desperately warning people of the danger of this orange buffoon.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the media and (most of) the public are starting to be horrified by what’s going on. (Congressional Republican, with very few exceptions, are as usual profiles in venality.) But anyone who is shocked by this just simply wasn’t paying attention, or just didn’t want to accept what was blindingly true.
This could’ve been avoided. Easily.
Aleta
Photo of the new picture to be hung in the WH
From The Hill
JGabriel
I can’t decide which would be a more appropriate punishment for Trump’s crimes:
A) To put Trump behind bars in an American prison, or
B) To freeze all of Trump’s accounts, and deport him to Russia, via giving him a parachute and pushing him out of a plane over the middle of Siberia.
Woodrowfan
Keep in mind a large majority of republicans still think he’s doing a good job and support him.
Immanentize
@NotMax: That is a good observation because the M.O. of FBI special agents conducting non-interrogation investigative interviews is to always have two agents present. They take almost no notes when speaking with the witness, but immediately afterwards (like in the car) talk between themselves and then make a report of the conversation that crystallizes their joint recollections. Very effective technique in testimony if a case reaches trial.
Bruce K
@Aleta: If I ever see one of those maps on actual paper, I’m gonna put a big red thumb tack on it in the approximate location of Ossining, New York. With luck, that’ll be his final residence.
Immanentize
@Woodrowfan: But there are starting to be fewer self-identified republicans.
Jeffro
If he starts tweeting about how his tweets are not obstruction of justice…is that meta, or just omega-level derp?
oldgold
Trump’s a toxic mix of Sonny and Fredo Corleone.
Jeffro
@Aleta: I love the comments: “Hang it by the door so it can be the last thing you see before they lead you out in handcuffs”
I’m sure that Trumpov thinks he has plausible deniability w/ regards to the Russian hacking, his own campaign staff colluding with the Russians, etc. What he’ll go down for are his lies, cover-ups, and obstruction these past few months. That, and a gazillion counts of money laundering for Russian mafioso.
Vhh
@JGabriel: Just send him to Russia, no need to exaggerate.
Major Major Major Major
@clay: I heard Frum say about the Russia stuff a couple months ago that there are “many secrets but few mysteries.” You could say something similar about many unforeseen details but no surprises.
artem1s
@Kay:
deer caught in the headlights? pants-stained? subpoena’d? Indicted?
Kay
i want to know who else took a “loyalty oath” to work for Trump. We can assume all of them or they’d be fired.
Gross. They should all be ashamed. Ambition is a powerful drug.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Yes, I recall distinctly under GW Bush he had a staffer who’s job was to just watch the news and to alert Bush if something major came up since Bush was to busy. Let that concept sink in.
Also, Bush never let the Russians in the Oval Office, just saying.
hovercraft
@Immanentize:
Actually the Shrub debacle was the start of the flight from the GOP, what the talking heads neglect to clarify whenever they are talking about “independents” is that they lean republican because so many of them are republicans who became so ashamed of Bush that they stopped identifying themselves as republicans, but they still vote like republicans. If I remember correctly less than 10% of so-called are truly independents, most vote dem. or rep. consistently. Wilmer may cause more independents who consistently vote democratic, but the other side has been fleeing in shame at least since Bush.
LAO
Well this is certainly jarring:
When you lose Eric son of Eric, what more is there?
hovercraft
@Aleta:
Can someone please just sleep with the man and tell him he has the biggest most beautiful dick the world has ever seen. Pleeeeaaazzzz, for the sake of humanity, just take one for us, Marla told him it was the “best sex ever”, you’ve got to tell him it’s the best sex ever in the history of the universe.
I’d volunteer, but fortunately I’m black, short, fat and almost 50, so sadly I can’t do this, but somebody please save us!
Mike in DC
@Kay:
3. Stalling for time 4. Hemming and hawing 5. Just about ready 6. Lost my seat in the midterms 7. Time to act!
Aleta
@clay: Yes, from the ride down the escalator and the paid crowd. Every single fucking moment of campaign speech and press interview. The aggressive thugs acting from the start as his ‘security’ against reporters.
Years before he ran, he was imagining government attacks on rioting citizens. I imagine him as a teenager watching TV news footage of civil rights protests with his racist father and cheering for the racist police.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@hovercraft: I don’t have the current numbers on party affiliation, but I suspect that the 60% of Republicans who approve of firing Comey would turn out to be our old friends the 27%
clay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
No, but Bush did look into Putin’s heart and know that he was a good man. Ugh, even at the time, I knew that was a stupid thing to say.
But you’re right about Bush being busy. Let’s contrast:
-We know Trump watches TV all day.
-We now know that his office door is pretty much open and people can wander in and chat with him.
-One of the Time reporters was on TV and said that normally a president’s schedule is very tight (“If he says you can have two minutes for a photo, they will usher you out at exactly two minutes.”), but Trump stayed with them for a surprisingly long time, giving them a tour of the White House and talking about things in each room.
-His weekend leisure is already notorious.
Which all leads to one conclusion — Trump is not doing a lot of the things that keep normal presidents extraordinarily busy. Which, and I’ve asked this before, begs the follow-up question — Who, if anyone, is doing those things?
Aleta
@hovercraft: Profit.
Jeffro
@LAO: the infighting between Rs as this stuff picks up speed is gonna be AWE. SOME.
Aleta
@Bruce K: Perfect.
MCA1
@JGabriel: Neither. Seize all of his assets, and make him live, penniless and pensionless, amongst the public in some place like Trenton or Stockton or Tuscaloosa, and have to work at a f’ing 7-11 so he can eat at the Taco Bell next door every night until his arteries explode. He’d probably commit a felony of some sort within 2 weeks, tops.
Radiumgirl
@hovercraft: I think you’re onto it. Obviously, with Melania in NYC, the Trumpster’s sexlife is in the dumpster. Accounts for a lot, don’t you think?
Jeffro
@JGabriel: it’s going to be interesting, seeing him become the most reviled person in American history over the next six months or so. Well, for 73% of us, anyway.
MCA1
Re: this new threatening of Comey, my greatest fantasy now is that Comey went to the dinner to which he was summoned by Il Douche wearing a wire. Being a seasoned investigator, I have no doubt he could have gotten a full confession of everything on tape. Hell, a rookie agent in the bottom quarter of their class at Langley could get this particular target to confess to everything, because he’d be confessing unwittingly.
It’d be like that scene in The Big Short where the guys from Wall Street are meeting with the mortgage broker bro’s in Florida, and Steve Carell’s character goes “Why are they confessing?” and Ryan Gosling’s character (I think) says “They’re not. They’re bragging.”
burnspbesq
@Bruce K:
Sing Sing is a New York state prison. Will you settle for Marion, Illinoia, a Level 5 Federal pen full of Chicago gangbangers?
Teddys Person
@hovercraft: Alas, I too cannot volunteer for this important mission since I exceed both the age and weight requirements. However, I am willing to assist with the Silkwood shower the poor woman will need post coitus.
hovercraft
@clay:
Wolf Hall and the Tudors have been on recently, Henry the VIII had courtiers fawning and genuflecting to him around him all the time, he constantly hosted lavish dinners, so why not him, he’s a greater man than he was. It may be time to trade Melania in for a new wife. It’s Anne of Cleaves turn, but he’s not likely to take a homely German wife, so he’ll skip right to a teenager, pity he got rid of Miss Teen USA.
burnspbesq
@Teddys Person:
If we lived in Tom Clancy World, John Clark and Domingo Chavez would show up just in time to keep Trump’s private goons from offing the underage escort that his Secret Service detail smuggled into the White House. And they would take her to a safe house to which Gerry Hendley had invited an intrepid WaPo reporter loosely based on Kurt Eichenwald.
sdhays
@Mike in DC: 8. Why are Democrats so partisan? It’s time to move on.
Actually, I think that’s #7.
Aleta
Video of the SNL Spicer podium being driven in traffic in character by Melissa McCarthy.
S. Mitra Kalita @mitrakalita
[email protected] as @seanspicer cruising down 58th St. #SNL
https://mobile.twitter.com/mitrakalita
ETA I think I’m wrong about in traffic. More like a protected shoot?
Dave
@burnspbesq: Well the Alternate Tom Clancy world where Liberals are patriots on the whole and Conservatives are untrustworthy and weak; with some exceptions.
Shalimar
The Rosneft stock in exchange for lifting sanctions, which I am convinced actually happened with the stock already delivered as promised, was negotiated by multiple aides including Trump’s personal lawyer, Cohen. It would be shocking but also kind of hilarious if they exceeded his authority and did that without telling him so they could keep the resulting billions.
David Spikes
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Trumpkin is busy, bust, busy-watching the 3 TVs in the Oval Office and screaming at the screens while tweeting and berating his staff for “their” incompetence.
I mean has any president ever come out publicly with the equivalent of the Comey tweet.
The Russians in the Oval Office should be a continual drumbeat-I mean, what the hell was that?
clay
@Dave: I can’t imagine even Clancy being happy with a Republican who let the state media of a semi-hostile foreign power into the Oval Office.
Shalimar
@Aleta: There were a lot of cars involved and a long distance travelled in the video I saw for a protected shoot, but I can’t imagine them just putting her on the street in traffic with no protections at all if for no other reason than strangers might fuck up the footage.
Wyatt Derp
@Teddys Person: Silkwood Shower! I am stealing that one…
Shalimar
@LAO: In more clear language, Eric son of Eric is saying: “If you can believe the president’s own words, and God knows you almost never can, we need an independent counsel.”
burnspbesq
@Shalimar:
If that was in fact the deal, Trump is in breach. Hard to imagine that Putin was dumb enough to deliver the stock outright, as opposed to putting it in escrow until Trump performed. Trump could end up in prison and out of office with nothing to show for it.
Matt McIrvin
@hovercraft: I recently saw a survey about attitudes on abortion that revealed another odd thing: people who identified as “independent, lean Dem” were (slightly) more strongly in favor of abortion rights than self-identified Democrats.
I’m not sure about this, but I suspect the Democratic-leaning “independents” were white cultural liberals whose affiliation was mostly based on sex-and-religion issues, and that asking them about, say, welfare programs or labor unions might have gotten very different responses.
Bruce K
@burnspbesq: Yeah, but if Pence pulls a Jerry Ford with the pardon power, that keeps Trump out of Marion. Pence can’t keep the cheeto out of Sing Sing.
Citizen Alan
@Major Major Major Major:
I keep having this recurring vision of how President Clark died at the end of season four of Babylon 5. Suicide, immediately after launching all the planets nuclear missiles.
Shalimar
@burnspbesq: Iirc, the stock transfer on December 6th was to a Saudi Arabian holding company of unknown ownership, so it very well could be a temporary escrow holding until he fulfills his promise.
Ruckus
@burnspbesq:
Putin wants us in complete and utter disarray. A constitutional democracy in the middle of a constitutional crisis with a dumpf at the wheel is about as close as he can get. It undermines the concept of a republic, of the people being in charge. And that strengthens his concept of a country and of being a leader. IOW he thinks this makes him look wonderful at home. As well as everywhere else, as he’s taken down the big bully of the world, without firing a shot.
RobertDSC-iPhone 6
@clay:
He once wrote of a stealth jihadist who was a member of President Ryan’s personal security detail who tried to kill the President & the Attorney General in the Oval Office.
But in Clancy World, Russia is in NATO and there are very close ties between Americans and their former Soviet enemies.
mr_gravity
@burnspbesq: Works for me.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
We do need a special prosecutor and an independent investigation.
How does anyone imagine a plausible scenario where we actually get them, though?
The special prosecutor law (under which Ken Starr — the last one — operated) no longer exists. It provided very broad powers of investigation, as well as providing true independence from the president. Who thinks Republicans in Congress will resurrect the thing to go after Trump? Yeah, didn’t think so.
What does exist is called a special counsel, a DOJ creature who can be appointed by Rosenstein (what with Jefferson Beauregard’s “recusal” and all) but who would not only have quite curtailed powers (compared to Ken Starr’s Whitewater bullshit) but would be subject to tampering and outright dismissal by the president. Any bets on that last not happening if a special counsel is actually appointed? Again, didn’t think so.
To reiterate my defeatist/trollish comment on this topic in a previous thread (that “Laughingstock” thread that had like 500 comments): there are only 3 institutions in America with any power to do anything about this — the GOP-controlled Congress, the Jeff Sessions DOJ, and the Fourth Estate.
Some congressional Republicans will continue to make the “oh-so-concerned” noises we’ve heard so far (like the ones from that upstanding maverick John McCain) and the committees “investigating” will keep doing that; mostly, I’m afraid, as a way to slow-walk this while providing phony-as-a-$3-bill cover that they are — “no, really, we are, pinkie-swear!” — actually trying to get to the bottom of the Russian collusion (and our media will largely buy that bullshit story, too).
Maybe we get a DOJ special counsel. Fantastic. See above regarding that.
And most of the media that most Americans pay attention to? They’re going to suddenly do a 180 and stop their main project of normalizing Trump (chuckling in amazement at the gosh-darn astonishing but truly entertaining post-truth novelty of it all while they do; listen to even-the-liberal NPR as an example) and actually get all Edward R. Murrow on his ass? Sure.
This is a constitutional crisis greater than any since the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, Watergate pales in comparison. But the GOP learned their lesson well from Watergate (ABC – Always Be Covering for a Republican president) and the media (most of it, anyway) has learned its own “lesson” over the past 30+ years — primarily, IOKIYAR, and the Dems are just as bad if not worse, anyway.
So, doomin’ and gloomin’ to beat the band here, but the most I expect out of this whole “Russian affair” is maybe a few indictments of Trump underlings, perhaps even a couple convictions. Trump himself going down, as by all rights he should? Don’t see it happening. Our institutions are too fucking broken. Would be thrilled beyond belief to be proven very wrong, and no matter what I’ll still do what little I can (mostly helping with some time and $$ for Democratic campaigns, as I’ve done for almost 50 years now) fighting these fascist motherfuckers.
lethargytartare
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@hovercraft: I don’t have the current numbers on party affiliation, but I suspect that the 60% of Republicans who approve of firing Comey would turn out to be our old friends the 27%
quick and dirty – 200 million registered voters, 41% GOP or GOP leaners (as of April), 60% approval = 49.2 mil approve, or 24.6% of registered voters. close enough for jazz!
Steve in the ATL
@MCA1:
Not Tuscaloosa. Have you ever been there? The number of beautiful women is staggering.
No Drought No More
Breaking News: Reuters is reporting that Comey realized Trump suspected him of wearing a wire after the president* greeted him with a bear hug and patted him all over his back for a full two minutes.
Comey further stated his suspicions were all but confirmed when they chowed down on spaghetti and meat balls, rather than the Japanese cuisine Trump had cited as the reason they needed to take off their and shoes AND socks before eating.
No Drought No More
I just caught up to this story, and had thought that Trump believed COMEY had wiretapped HIM. It made a certain sense to me, if only because I assumed no one- not even Trump- could possibly be so stupid as to implicate himself in such fashion. I figured Trump’s paranoia led him to believe that Comey had illegally recorded their conversation, and was essentially threatening him with prison if the tapes were released. I should have known better..
James Powell
@LAO:
The stupidity of Erickson’s tweet is that Trump’s own words, in writing, are not enough to convince him. It’s still an “if” to him.
TenguPhule
@clay: Nobody listens to Cassandra.
TenguPhule
@JGabriel:
Waste of a perfectly good parachute.
TenguPhule
@clay:
Nobody. Which is where the nightmares start.