Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Late Night Spy-vs-Spy Open Thread: How Badly Did Ivanka Want A Divorce?

Late Night Spy-vs-Spy Open Thread: How Badly Did Ivanka Want A Divorce?

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She had a nice lifestyle, a profitable brand, the envy of all her Park Slope peers, until somebody talked Daddy into running for President…

Yes, “Melania’s pre-nup” would be the obvious joke, but who believes Melania was paying that much attention to what the old man’s cronies were up to?

(General speculation, if you click on the tweets and read the replies, seems to be that Trump should’ve had the smarts to be nicer to Christie.)

Apparently Fox News had a really frantic evening, looking for substitute target for the evening’s Ten Minute Hate…

(You probably don’t want to read the replies to that tweet… )

Reader Interactions

71Comments

  1. 1.

    liberal

    You get in a cab in Lisbon, and the only words on the radio you can understand are “Donald Trump”.

  2. 2.

    piratedan

    true, I would categorize his foreign policy handling as catastrophic…

    so… next on GOP survivor, does anyone from the GOP leadership survive? Anyone ready to open up odds in Vegas?

    McConnell…. spouse is in the cabinet
    Ryan – briefed, like McConnell about what was going on and let it happen anyway
    McCain – see McConnell. nepotism in exchange for silence/support – true patriotism on display there
    McCarthy – in the know about the Russian “ownership” of their presidential candidate
    Priebus – filtered money from Dark Money Russian sources to GOP campaigns and coordinated social media attacks on GOP opponents
    Nunes – worked to subvert FBI investigation
    Chaffetz – complicit in using fake docs to attack Clinton

    Is there anyone over there who actually believes in the country or has a set of principals regarding what is right and wrong and takes their oath of public service seriously? Do any of these folks spill or do they ride that bomb all the way down Slim Pickens style?

    .

  3. 3.

    MisterForkbeard

    Yep. Not sure how anyone could possibly think he’s done well on foreign affairs. He’s alienated allies, damaged NATO, destroyed world opinion… the only things he’s been successful at was negotiated a huge arms deal that will be used for war crimes… and for which his daughter’s foundation received a huge bribe. And I suppose Putin is happier with him than with Obama, so hooray?

  5. 5.

    Peale

    Huh.

    Raised the quotas on refugees?

    What’s up with this? Did they determine that, refugees were being screened before?

  6. 6.

    Redshift

    @MisterForkbeard: I guess neocons and their supporters like the fact that he’s bombed without regard for civilian casualties and he’s made it clear to or dictator pals that we don’t care about human rights? I dunno.

  7. 7.

    piratedan

    @amk: sorry about that, sometimes going into rant mode causes the grammatical pendant to get the dirty end of the stick.

  8. 8.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Redshift: Right. I’m just not seeing anything that remotely looks like successful foreign policy, even if you squint and turn your head sideways.

  10. 10.

    The Dangerman

    Ivanka? Shit; I think Melania’s the one that’s pissed.

    She didn’t want to be First Lady, Shit, she didn’t want to be Mrs. Donald Trump. What she did want was his money and to lead a fairly quiet life spending that fuckload of money.

    I wonder what happens to all that money if The Donald goes to The Slammer. Who needs a divorce where you have to worry about that Pre-nup stuff?

    ETA: Seriously, is there any of this band of misfits you’d hire to run the Blizzard Machine at Dairy Queen?

    ETA2: Actually, Melania. She looks like one tough cookie. A gold digging tough cookie but a tough cookie nonetheless.

  11. 11.

    ? ?? Goku ? ?

    Term disaster aside from foreign affairs? What planet is Boehner living on? What about Trump’s Excellent Middle East Adventure?

  14. 14.

    Mike in NC

    Once upon a time, “Green Acres” was a cheesy sitcom with an idiot rich New Yorker and his dimwit Eastern European wife. Now it’s a reality show with added Russian spooks running around.

  15. 15.

    burnspbesq

    After revoking his passport last week, Turkey has now issued a warrant for the arrest of NBA player Enes Kanter, on whatever bullshit charges they normally throw at Gulenists. I think it’s at least 50/50 that Trump will extradite him, although he can certainly afford good lawyers (his 2016-17 salary was $17.1 million).

  17. 17.

    gene108

    @piratedan:

    McConnell is not up for re-election until 2020, which is still a long ways away and he his clever enough to not get his finger prints all over the murder weapon or if he did, convincingly claim it was self-defense.

    McCain isn’t up for re-election until 2022 and he survived being one of the Keating Five. I think he’ll weather this just fine.

    Priebus will have a lifetime sinecure on the wingnut welfare circuit for being the good soldier and trying to keep Trump in check.

    The rest have something to worry about going into 2018.

  18. 18.

    Aleta

    From WSJ (The link to access the story is at
    https://twitter.com/Evan_McMullin/status/868305657719640064)

    The hacking spree that upended the presidential election wasn’t limited to Democratic National Committee memos and Clinton-aide emails posted on websites. The hacker also privately sent Democratic voter-turnout analyses to a Republican political operative in Florida named Aaron Nevins.
    Learning that hacker “Guccifer 2.0” had tapped into a Democratic committee that helps House candidates, Mr. Nevins wrote to the hacker to say: “Feel free to send any Florida based information.”
    Ten days later, Mr. Nevins received 2.5 gigabytes of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee documents, some of which he posted on a blog called HelloFLA.com that he ran using a pseudonym.
    Soon after, the hacker sent a link to the blog article to Roger Stone, a longtime informal adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, along with Mr. Nevins’ analysis of the hacked data.

  20. 20.

    gene108

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Replies,are,interesting, in that so much economic anxiety seems to have been assuaged because of Trump. So many of them are now happy with growing economy, low unemployment, rising stock market, etc.

  21. 21.

    patrick II

    Trump is not just stupid, he is a fascist. His sees the natural ally against Islamic terrorism and the war of civilizations as his fellow white fascist billionaire, minority hating, queer hating, faux Christian Vladimir Putin — not Angela Merkel or her kind. In Trump’s speech to NATO he only spoke of a military alliance against Islamic terrorism, not a word, even implicity, about the threat of Russia, it’s military adventurism or its interference in liberal democracy’s elections. Trump supported Marine le Pen, Nigel Farage, Brexit, and probably whichever fascist will be running against Angela Merkel.
    When we assert his G7 and NATO allies meetings are a catastrophe, and blame it soley on his stupidity we are not accounting for his goals. In his view the meetings will have been a success. If the goal is undermining liberal democracies and creating a better world for billionaire fascists to rule, then he is doing just fine.

  26. 26.

    Elizabelle

    Zbig brz has passed. Aged 89 or so. Good guy. Spared becoming Joe S’s 3rd father in law. So there is that.

    Jimmy Carter has survived Zbig. Hoping JEC gets to vote in the 2020 elections too.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    For the writers, I came across a website where the author is doing a Ultimate 11-Day Novel Planning Challenge where she sends you free worksheets and prompts for 11 days. I sort of wish I had found this out before I bought her book with the same worksheets, but oh well. I like her designs, so I don’t mind paying for them.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne

    @liberal:

    Compared to the US, which completely destabilized the middle east?

    Remind me, who was it that the mujhadeen in Afghanistan first organized themselves to fight against?

  31. 31.

    Chet Murthy

    @liberal: Hey hey, we got a Russkie here! Welcome, Boris! How did we smoke you out (aside from the obvious accent)?

    Your tu quoque (go look it up, I’ll wait) that we can’t decry your boss Putin’s meddling in Western affairs, b/c we meddled in middle-eastern affairs.

    A -patriot- undertsands that these are two different matters: we can process that America’s foreign policy isn’t always the right one, while still being steadfast that NOBODY gets to mess with OUR country, nor those of our closest allies.

    But hey, you were thinkin’ we’re a buncha well-meaning idiots? Go fish in some other frozen pond, Boris.

  32. 32.

    Aleta

    @piratedan: There was a story after the election that claimed the genius Jared had made all the campaign decisions from inside a numbers/analytics-based office of whiz kids in Texas. If they were receiving hacked election info directly from Fla or Russia, that would be something he needed to hide, and especially urgent if he was later being pressured to pay more money.

    Mostly I think it’s possible that his communications with Russia weren’t new. It’s all about money with them, so he and T could have panicked over unpaid debt or campaign debt or over being blackmailed, and he urgently needed to talk to someone in the Russian government who they thought would help. I don’t think he was naive or inexperienced as suggested, just trying to reach someone he already knew. They supposedly had each borrowed from Russian banks (the Russian mob) years before the campaign, and been involved in other illegal international deals.

  33. 33.

    Major Major Major Major

    So, off topic, story, own-horn-tooting. As astute followers of me (ha) will know, I recently got a drawing tablet for my birthday and have been working with it a lot to get back up to speed. (Many moons ago I used to draw a comic.)

    Anywho, I was trying to figure out what to draw. I’d been toying with sci-fi drawings but it wasn’t really doing it for me. The other day I randomly started drawing more urban fantasy/horror creatures, but still wasn’t sure where I was going. Then this morning somebody here quoted Schiller, “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain,” and I thought, you know, ‘Against Stupidity’ would be a good name for a sarcastic, world-weary piece of urban horror about a college-age person. Who maybe just, I don’t know, transferred to a new school and is going to be staying at his aunt’s house, a spooky old victorian in Denver. Sort of a inherits-a-haunted-house thing.

    So I drew a cover and I just wanted to share!

  34. 34.

    piratedan

    @gene108: not sure having a secure Senate seat for the coming electoral year is going to matter much with treason, RICO and election fraud being on the table.

  35. 35.

    Keith P.

    @piratedan: The GOP actually has a pretty decent young bench lined up. There’s Sasse, Haley, Kinzinger…maybe Cotton, too. They could all be formidable in 2020-2024.

  37. 37.

    piratedan

    @Aleta: true, Jared may not be guilty of that.. per se… but do you believe that guys like Preibus, Ryan and McConnell also passed on the opportunity for routing cash and analytics while handling GOP races?

  43. 43.

    divF

    *Taps* Is this thing on ?
    I’m sitting in a Lufthansa business class lounge in Frankfurt. I arrived here four hours ago from Jeddah, and am leaving in another three hours for San Francisco. I have a splitting headache from caffeine withdrawl, deliberately induced. I drank too much coffee in Saudi Arabia, and need to detox. Still, it is unpleasant, but then again, most aspects of this trip have been.

    One nifty thing, though is that the lounge here has shower facilities. You sign up, they give you a pager, and you get a nice facility to clean up in (I only had to wait 10 minutes). Two sprayers, lots of hot water under high pressure – I feel like a new man. Plus shaved and brushed my teeth.

    That is all. If anyone is out there, I will be on this channel for another hour or so.

  45. 45.

    divF

    @Major Major Major Major: There is a room full of cots here in the lounge (fully-reclining chairs, actually). I wouldn’t be surprised if there were others outside – there are shower facilities in the terminal.

  47. 47.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    It would be funny if Christie was the leaker.

    But he just doesn’t have the necessities to notice a real reporter like Ellen Nakashima. The needy, crude jersey boy casts his limited view to fawning gossip columnists like matt bai and maggie haberman.

  48. 48.

    gene108

    @piratedan:

    It’s going to be hard enough to bring Trump down. Getting to members of Congress will be damn near impossible.

    Even if Democrats retake both houses of Congress, in 2018, I don’t see them looking to literally destroy Republican colleagues.

  49. 49.

    OzarkHillbilly

    In December, the Osage Nation tribe in Oklahoma wrote two checks to the secretive nonprofit organization set up by Missouri Gov.-elect Eric Greitens to fund his inauguration. The first was the largest. On Dec. 15, the Osage Nation Executive Branch gave $50,000 to Committee for A New Missouri Inc. Public records kept by Osage Nation refer to the check, approved by Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear, as a political donation. The next day, Osage Nation wrote another check, for $2,700.

    The donations had a purpose. “That was me trying to establish a good relationship with the governor of Missouri,” Chief Standing Bear told me last week in an interview. “We thought we would show him respect.” The Osage Nation chief hopes that respect ultimately leads to a casino in Missouri, possibly in Cuba, fronting Interstate 44, about 80 miles southwest of St. Louis.

    Ah yes, respect, that’s what they’re showing. Give Standing Bear and the Osage credit where credit is due, unlike Greitens they are right upfront about what they are doing and why.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Oooops, my bad, forgot about the “C” word.

    In December, the Osage Nation tribe in Oklahoma wrote two checks to the secretive nonprofit organization set up by Missouri Gov.-elect Eric Greitens to fund his inauguration. The first was the largest. On Dec. 15, the Osage Nation Executive Branch gave $50,000 to Committee for A New Missouri Inc. Public records kept by Osage Nation refer to the check, approved by Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear, as a political donation. The next day, Osage Nation wrote another check, for $2,700.

    The donations had a purpose. “That was me trying to establish a good relationship with the governor of Missouri,” Chief Standing Bear told me last week in an interview. “We thought we would show him respect.” The Osage Nation chief hopes that respect ultimately leads to a ca$ino in Missouri, possibly in Cuba, fronting Interstate 44, about 80 miles southwest of St. Louis.

    Ah yes, respect, that’s what they’re showing. Give Standing Bear and the Osage credit where credit is due, unlike Greitens they are right upfront about what they are doing and why.

  52. 52.

    Tony J

    Jared and Ivanka
    Squatting in DC
    I’ll spot you the S O N
    And raise you T R E

  53. 53.

    Sanjeevs

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: i wonder is it Giuliani . Left the transition team on Dec 9. Letter was received Dec 12.
    His departure was never explained. They reported it as a potential conflict of interest as if Trump cared.
    So why did he play a massive role in the campaign only to seemingly leave abruptly. it makes no sense.

  54. 54.

    Central Planning

    @piratedan: That’s hilarious. I’m ashamed my internal pedant didn’t notice the principal error. Or would it be better to write it as “principle” error?

  55. 55.

    msdc

    Don’t think Comey should have been fired: 53%
    Trump disapproval rating: 54%
    Obama election results, 2008: 53%

    I think we’ve found a disturbing corollary to the 27% rule. The ceiling on the number of sane people in this country is way too fucking low.

  56. 56.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @Sanjeevs: Nah. Giuillani is as corrupt as they come. Currently defending a foreigner who laundered money for Iran. He’s also limits his vain manhattan view to ass kissing gossip columnists.

  57. 57.

    Central Planning

    @msdc: You could probably say that the sane percentage is 2x the crazification.

    ETA – this gets into all sorts of other interesting relationships. Does sanity go up as insanity goes up? You hit an upper bound that way. Seems like the ratio is inversely related (if it isn’t a constant). In theory, when there are fewer crazy people you should have more not-crazy people. We’ll have to get BJ’s top mathematicians on this ASAP!

  58. 58.

    Sanjeevs

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: That’s the thing. How come he’s not part of the great grift along with Wilbur Ross, Mnuchin etc.
    What was the real reason he dropped out?
    Giuliani signed on for old fashioned GOP ratfucking. Maybe he wasn’t up for whatever Flynn and Kushner were tasked with at that meeting

  60. 60.

    PST

    I was trying to find a half-remembered quotation about Brzezinski and came across this gem from Hamilton Jordan. Not relevant, but I had to share it with someone. It’s in an old interview with Bill Moyers.

    The best piece of advice that I think I probably ever received was from Richard Cheney, who is now a congressman — a very fine human being who was chief of staff under President Ford — and he told me that the one thing that I should do would be to keep my head low.

    Of course, you should always keep your head low around Dick Cheney.

  61. 61.

    Sherparick

    @piratedan: pretty well sums it up. Except that 80% of the Republican Party, 35% of the country, 55% of whites, are fine with the treason so long as you are pissing off liberals, stomping on the browns & the blahs, & cutting taxes on rich people. The 1,000 or so ultra rich who really run this criminal organization are particularly concerned about that last point.

  63. 63.

    J R in WV

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Bill,

    I took a picture of a town 16 Km away with my super-zoom Lumix. It was hazy blue from the distance, which I fixed in Gimp with color balance. But now the clouds are magenta, and the sky isn’t blue.

    Any suggestions for an approach to keep the clouds and sky while not having hazy blue look, I still have the original…

  64. 64.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mnemosyne: cool! I will look at those. Had a really weird dream the other morning, and immediately wondered whether it could be turned into a romance novel plot!

    Now just sitting here drinking my coffee and catching up on all the treasons du jour…or would that be treasons de la nuit? Most of the dumps seem to be coming in the evening now…

  66. 66.

    cmorenc

    @MisterForkbeard:

    @Redshift: Right. I’m just not seeing anything that remotely looks like successful foreign policy, even if you squint and turn your head sideways.

    Well, over in Wonderland, Alice discovered that people’s take on things was quite different from hers, to her complete bafflement about their sensibilities. If you want to visit Wonderland to see for yourself, channel-surf your way over to Fox and take a seat at the tea party table.

  67. 67.

    Jay C

    (

    General speculation, if you click on the tweets and read the replies, seems to be that Trump should’ve had the smarts to be nicer to Christie.)

    What I’ve read is that that’s going to be one of those “nevergonnahappen” things, as Jared Kushner supposedly has a permanent loathing for Christopher The Large: Christie was the Federal prosecutor who sent Jared’s dad Charles away for a vacation at Club Fed (for, among other things, campaign-finance violations) a decade or so ago; I’m sure that (despite the bouts of partisan suckup), Big Chris would only be too pleased to see the son follow in his father’s (shackled) footsteps: and the rest of the Trump family along with him.

    @The Dangerman:

    Yeah, Melania may come across as a shallow clotheshorse, but I wouldn’t underestimate her: remember, she’s from Slovenia: part of the former Yugoslavia: a country where “unmarked grave in the forest” has been a common solution for many awkward political problems….

  68. 68.

    patrick II

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Great drawing, great head scratching. Too close to the street — people will hear him scream.

    I just got a Surface Pro 4, the pen/drawing capabilities are pretty awesome. Do you have any recommendations for software?

  70. 70.

    kbuttle

    We’ve misjudged Trump and his motives.

    This whole thing has been a Machiavellian scheme to get Ivanka single and in need of comforting.

    He’s pulling the threads like a spider.

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