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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Chuck Grassley Rips the White House

Chuck Grassley Rips the White House

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Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He wrote a letter to the White House requesting that the Office of Legal Counsel withdraw its opinion that Democrats’ requests for information be ignored.

Unfortunately, the May 1, 2017 Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion authored by Acting Assistant Attorney General Curtis E. Gannon on this topic completely misses the mark. It erroneously rejects any notion that individual members of Congress who may not chair a relevant committee need to obtain information from the Executive Branch in order to carry out their Constitutional duties. It falsely asserts that only requests from committees or their chairs are “constitutionally authorized,” and relegates requests from non-Chairmen to the position of “non-oversight” inquiries— whatever that means.

This is nonsense.

…

For OLC to so fundamentally misunderstand and misstate such a simple fact exposes its shocking lack of professionalism and objectivity. Indeed, OLC appears to have utterly failed to live up to its own standards. You are being ill-served and illadvised.

Six pages, with footnotes.

It’s good to see a senator doing his job. And the fact that he’s Republican shines a little ray of hope.

Here’s an article about it in Politico, if you want to go there.

Reader Interactions

262Comments

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Wow! I don’t remember ever having had a scrap of respect for Grassley before today, but there seems to be someone in there who at least understands that there are institutional norms for a reason.

    Good for you, Chuck. Moar of this, please.

  4. 4.

    Raoul

    He has a long way to go before I’ll respect him, but this is a useful first tiny step.

  5. 5.

    geg6

    Wow. Amazed. Good to see that at least one Republican remembers what his job is and that it could just as easily be them in this situation next time.

  7. 7.

    trnc

    Yes, it’s good to see a no-holds-barred type letter like that from a senate GOPer to this WH.

    Any idea to what specific request he was referring about the Obama admin?

  8. 8.

    Corner Stone

    If I’m Katie Tur I have to about good and damn tired of getting turfed by Brian Williams.

  10. 10.

    SatanicPanic

    @Chris: IKR, his party is so infested with toadies that it’s hard to imagine he’s not one too

  12. 12.

    PeakVT

    Sadly, Grassley will now be hailed as a bipartisan hero for weeks for what is actually a rather straightforward defense of (implicitly defined constitutional) turf.

    Take what you can get, blah blah blah…

  13. 13.

    Gravenstone

    I’ll admit, I saw “Chuck … rips WH” and my mind immediately filled in an image of Schumer, because dog bites man after all. Good on Grassley for speaking up.

  14. 14.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @amk:

    first tex drillerson

    I must have missed this. Did Rexxon do or say something honest, sensible, or compassionate?

  15. 15.

    hueyplong

    I can only assume Grassley recently received a bad diagnosis and believes in some sort of posthumous accounting.

    Grampa Walnuts might want to do the compare-and-contrast thing.

  16. 16.

    jl

    @PeakVT: I was going to say the same ting, probably even a guy like Grassley feels he has to defend legislative turf. He doesn’t want this to set a precedent. Probably not much more than that, unless and until next two elections look undeniably catastrophic to the GOP.

  17. 17.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Chris: I don’t see one, but I’m not good at that. That’s why I included the Politico article, which also doesn’t show an angle.

    @amk: I doubt it’s a pivot. Poor old Tex now has to implore the Saudis not to go after Qatar, in contradiction to his boss’s cheerleading. Will be interesting to see how that goes. I’m not in Washington, but my opinion, fwiw, is that it’s probably not a good idea to start stuff like this with a 5 am tweet.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    @PeakVT:

    Sadly, Grassley will now be hailed as a bipartisan hero for weeks

    And then it will be “Even the left-leaning Republican Senator Grassley supports the Senate version of Trumpcare.”

  19. 19.

    hovercraft

    @Corner Stone:
    Don’t worry she’ll be back soon enough to rationalize Twitler’s behavior and tell us that in spite of his uncouth, unseemly behavior in public, he’s a real charmer in private and he doesn’t really mean half the stuff he says in public, even if his fans do. We just need to understand that he want’s to be loved, and this is all new to him!
    Nicole Wallace is more watchable and rational in her discussions about Twitler than Katy, I think she spent too much time with him and his fans last year, they got to her.

  21. 21.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @SiubhanDuinne:

  22. 22.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Chris: Perhaps it’s done out of genuine frustration with this White House, which appears to believe it can do whatever it wants. Sadly, I can see Grassley’s letter ending up in the round cabinet file and not even being responded to.

  23. 23.

    Boatboy_srq

    The key distinction between the outgoing generation of GOP asshat and the incoming Teahadis is that the former have a gram of respect for due process, the rule of law and the Constitution, whereas to the latter these things are just props for photo-ops. Both use these objects as cudgels with which to beat Those People®, but at least the old volk know when enough is enough.

  24. 24.

    JPL

    Congratulations to Grassley for doing his job. Someone probably told him, that this could happen to his party also.

    @Cheryl Rofer: Saudi threatens to cut funding to Somalia, unless they cut ties with
    Qatar. I don’t think they feel threatened by Tillerson’s remarks.

  25. 25.

    nightranger

    This is Chuck Grassley you are talking about. If you are pinning your hopes on that guy then there is not hope!

  26. 26.

    Central Planning

    @Cheryl Rofer: My boss was (is? are you still considered in the reserves if you’re deployed?) in the reserves and got deployed over to Qatar. He was supposed to be home in a month or so but they pushed it out 2 more months. Lovely :/ I hope this doesn’t fundamentally change what happens at our bases over there (i.e. more attacks, risk, etc)

  27. 27.

    hovercraft

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Poor old Tex now has to implore the Saudis not to go after Qatar, in contradiction to his boss’s cheerleading.

    I saw a report saying that Twitler himself had to call the Emir of Qatar the other day to grovel and offer to mediate the dispute. I guess after someone told him our troops are there, and that cheer leading a humanitarian disaster is a very bad look, he made nice. No way he apologized, but he called. If I’m the Emir, I’m not sue if that’s good or bad.

  28. 28.

    NCSteve

    The Founders intended to set up a system where the factors conferring and affecting the personal power of individuals in each branch would translate into institutional imperatives that created action that pushed attempts to encroach on the power of the other branches and, in turn, urgently resist the attempted encroachments of the other two branches. In particular, they set up a system where this was supposed to engender continual nonviolent struggle between the two political branches.

    Most of the time in our history, those institutional imperatives to preserve and expand individual power have, eventually, superseded partisan or personal loyalties. However, since Nixon was impeached, Republicans have been on an ongoing campaign to, step by step, subordinate and subvert that dynamic process by making partisanship, rather than institutional affiliation, the overriding source of personal power. Put more bluntly, they’ve tried to ensure that stepping outside the party line gets you thrown out of office.
    And now, finally, we’re at the inevitable Constitutional crisis where we get to find out whether the rusty machinery of institutional power, privilege and prerogative has any remaining capacity to motivate them.

    So far, not looking good, but there are a few hopeful signs like this one that the system might just be able to creak and squeak and grind its way back into functionality again.

  32. 32.

    Peale

    @hovercraft: If I’m the Emir I’m calling Merkel to come mediate the dispute. Or Castro in Cuba or Nieto in Mexico, or any number of world leaders he loathes. And if I’m Norway, I’m giving any world leader who does so the Peace Prize automatically, even if mediation is a failure or things just work their way out on their own.

  33. 33.

    Chris

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    “Secretary of State of the United States asks Saudis and Egyptians to ease back on the policy that President of the United States made them do during his regional tour.”

    I mean, Trump took credit, and why would he ever lie?

  35. 35.

    clay

    @hovercraft:

    I saw a report saying that Twitler himself had to call the Emir of Qatar the other day to grovel and offer to mediate the dispute.

    Good Lord, no!

  36. 36.

    hovercraft

    So I guess Dear Leader is really down after yesterday, his minions really are pouring it on a bit thick.
    via TPM

    MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who asked Scaramucci why, if Trump believed that America was part of a global community, the President left out a sentence supporting Article 5 from his speech at NATO headquarters on May 25……….

    “Why would the President have taken Article 5 out of his NATO speech, and surprised those around him, members of his NSA team, who thought that was in there?” Ruhle asked.

    Scaramucci, who served on Trump’s presidential transition team’s executive committee, called the omission a “Reaganesque sort of thing.”

    “It’s the same reason why Ronald Reagan left in ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall,’” he said. “I think the President’s trying to send a message to our fellow allies that you’ve been under, as it relates to your national defense expenditures, particularly Germany is at, like, 1.2 percent, when they signed a contract that they would be at 2 [percent].”

    Aside from comparing America’s strongest allies — who have fought the war on terrorism for more than 15 years — to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Scaramucci failed to mention that member nations have until 2024 to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense under the agreement he referenced.

    Scaramucci added, referring to Trump’s decision not to mention Article 5: “I think the President’s trying to send people a message that he wants people to be accountable to the treaty and so by — taking that out is a symbolic message. And it’s one of the geniuses of the President as it relates to negotiating. He wants these people to be held accountable.”

  37. 37.

    jl

    @clay: Good Lord, yes, Trump admin is trying to set up a conference to mediate and end the dispute. Trump will take charge and forge and Great Deal.

  38. 38.

    Chris

    @NCSteve:

    Pretty much. What the GOP has been trying to construct at the national level is a political machine, loyalty to which would trump loyalty to whatever office you happened to hold. It’s a system of government with a long history in the United States, but always at the city, county or, at most, state level – never national, at least not until recently. I’d say they’ve done a pretty good job, even if you occasionally get some token resistance like this (which I doubt will amount to much).

  39. 39.

    ruemara

    Good on Grassley. In fact, call his office and thank him for this. I’m not kidding. These fuckers are a lot like dogs. You need to provide some sort of endorphin boosting praise to get them to do a good thing and you have to be consistent and firm about their habitual bad behavior.

  41. 41.

    jl

    @hovercraft: Huh? Is that statement legit, or is it fake news? Well, it’s full of untrue statements, and makes no sense. So, I guess it’s legit.

    It does advance the area of Zombie Reagan emulation into new uncharted territory of the arcane field of self-refuting argumentation.

  42. 42.

    hovercraft

    @Peale: @clay:
    But this is the reason he ran for president! He’s the BEST negotiator in the world, he can solve all these petty disputes, he knows how to do that!
    Just stand back and watch, he’ll have this done in no time, he’s offered to host the mediation in the White House, because I’m sure the Saudi’s Qatari’s and the rest of them have never seen grandeur such as the White House, and it’s not like they’ve been there before, so they’ll be awed!

  43. 43.

    Corner Stone

    @ruemara: He’s another senile Senator who should have retired already. His office got this right but I doubt he could coherently speak to this issue.

  44. 44.

    Felonius Monk

    Watching Trump’s press conference. This guy is truly a disgrace to this country and all of humanity.

  45. 45.

    DesertFriar

    Further in the letter…

    Moreover, in recent years, particularly under the Obama administration, the
    Executive Branch has sought to rely on increasingly tenuous claims of privilege and
    force congressional investigators to seek compulsory process and avoid scrutiny in the
    absence of a subpoena. The OLC opinion’s refusal to recognize a voluntary request as a
    legitimate, constitutionally-grounded part of the each Member’s participation in the
    legislative powers will only feed this unfortunate trend. It risks increased
    brinksmanship in Executive-Legislative relations and will result in less, not more,
    “dynamic . . . furthering [of] the constitutional scheme.”13

    Well I guess it’s an win that Grassley didn’t worm in a Benghazi somehow.

  46. 46.

    Peale

    @jl: I think it’s the legitimate way he sees things. Russia is to be emulated now. The great wall is now those pesky EU Germans and French who won’t let him build a golf course.

  47. 47.

    jl

    @Chris: There is Mark Hannah in the late 19th Century, who ran a national GOP machine.Boss Hannah was careful to stay well hidden in the background, though. Trump is new in that he is going to try to be both the front man office holder and the boss of the machine.

  50. 50.

    Peale

    @hovercraft: Yep. I mentioned this yesterday, but the Emir of Qatar is not exactly going to trust that his country is going to be there right now if he leaves it. If Trump wants to be a hero, he goes there, not the other way around.

  51. 51.

    Corner Stone

    Trump is literally twiddling his thumbs during the speech by the President of Romania.

  54. 54.

    trnc

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Sadly, I can see Grassley’s letter ending up in the round cabinet file and not even being responded to.

    Which sounds like a good time to start requesting WH appearances in front of the committee, followed by subpoenas if necessary.

  57. 57.

    sukabi

    @Patricia Kayden: I think Grassley’s letter is a non too subtle shot across the WH bow. Ie “quit obstructing and interfering in congressional business or we will exercise our power to bring you to heel.”

    From what I read of the letter it was pretty detailed and specific as to what the role of the congress is, up to and including impeaching members of the executive and judicial branches.

  58. 58.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I am not listening to Trump’s press conference right now, but here’s someone who is.

  59. 59.

    hovercraft

    When you’ve lost Pete Williams……..
    NBC’s Pete Williams: Filing Comey Complaints Is ‘Pretty Weak Tea’ For Trump

    “They say is he’s going to file two complaints – one is with the Department of Justice Inspector General.”

    But the Inspector General only investigates active government employees.

    Williams continued, “Arguably when Mr. Comey was in the government, he took the memos home, but if that’s the sum and substance of the DOJ inspector general’s investigation, that would seem to be pretty weak tea.”

    “Secondly he says he’ll file a complaint with the Senate Judiciary Committee or Senate Committee, I don’t know what good that will do.”

    “The White House had a choice here, they could have asserted executive privilege…once Mr. Comey put out his advanced statement to the committee on Wednesday, but they chose not to exert executive privilege so they can’t play that card,” he said.”

    “I think at the end this is not going to come to much but, it succeeds in changing the conversation about Mr. Comey’s testimony to something else.”

    All Trump’s team have are parlor tricks, angry dogs and distractions.

  60. 60.

    jl

    @LAO: I, for one, always want a cookie. So, Grassley and I have probably exactly that one thing in common.

  65. 65.

    jl

    @hovercraft: “I think at the end this is not going to come to much but, it succeeds in changing the conversation about Mr. Comey’s testimony to something else.”

    Probably back to topic that Trumpsters are incompetent thugs.

  67. 67.

    Quinerly

    @hovercraft:
    Katy Tur has interesting background story. Both parents journalists. Her father was the helicopter pilot that we all remember from the OJ Bronco chase. He has since become a she. Katy had a long term relationship in her early 20’s with Keith Olbermann. Think I got all my facts straight. Big article about her when she first started covering Trump. Believe she had been living in France prior.

  69. 69.

    Peale

    @amk: Does it matter, though? Unless the irish MPs demand votes on those issues, does it matter?

  71. 71.

    jl

    @Cheryl Rofer: So, the question is, which Trumpster loon tune got to Trump after Tillerson talked with him? I’m going off the ‘last person in the room’ theory of Trump agency.

  72. 72.

    Miss Bianca

    @jl: @jl: Wasn’t Hannah the guy who sought to neutralize Theodore Roosevelt’s political influence by making him McKinley’s vice-president? And then upon McKinley’s assassination, said, “Great..now that damned cowboy is President of the Unted States!”? Yeah, good times.

  73. 73.

    Cheryl Rofer

    And now I see on Twitter that Trump is answering questions. I’m going to try to look away. Going to be going out to my knitting group in another half-hour or so.

  74. 74.

    Chris

    @hovercraft:

    Except the message they hear isn’t going to be “oh good, we should work even harder to do this thing we’re already doing anyway.” It’s going to be “they are no longer reliable allies, so let’s start making arrangements without them.”

    @jl:

    I meant as something that would outlast any one boss, like Tammany Hall in NY. But yeah, some presidencies have had similar mechanisms to lean on.

  75. 75.

    rikyrah

    DA PHUQ?

    A 41 y.o. Korean man adopted in the US at age 3 is being deported b/c his adoptive parents didnt get him citizenship https://t.co/JV1tdRmM28

    — Liam Stack (@liamstack) October 29, 2016

    (1/2) I was adopted by US couple as infant (from Japan), priority for them was naturalization for me….

    — Arapaho415 (@arapaho415) October 29, 2016

    (2/2) What will he do now? (Speaking for myself, I speak only English, no nothing about Japanese culture.)

    — Arapaho415 (@arapaho415) October 29, 2016

    (2/2) two sets of abusive parents & 2000 law that grants auto-citizenship to US adoptees (not retroactive though).

    — Arapaho415 (@arapaho415) October 29, 2016

  76. 76.

    jl

    @Miss Bianca: Yes, I think so. For some reason, national political machines in US politics have a history of malfunctioning at critical times. Let’s hope that historical pattern continues.

  77. 77.

    amk

    @Peale: It’s not about the votes the con mp’s are being grilled about. dup will prove to be a dud for teresa.

  78. 78.

    germy

    domestic and foreign affairs.

    Scott Brown is ambassador to New Zealand.

    Democratic Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii) and Kamala Harris (Calif.) voted against the nomination.

  80. 80.

    rikyrah

    Welcome to Wakanda! #BlackPanther world premiere of the teaser trailer TONIGHT during Game 4! @MarvelStudios pic.twitter.com/CRli0AsSbF

    — Lupita Nyong’o (@Lupita_Nyongo) June 9, 2017

  82. 82.

    jl

    @germy: Did they get NZ and Australia mixed up? Aussies would have fun with a badly aging piece of beefcake as ambassador. They’d lure him out to beach for embarrassing pics and suchlike. NZ will just think it’s an insult.

  85. 85.

    jl

    @Cheryl Rofer: About as enthusiastic as his denunciations of white reactionary domestic terrorism. But, at least he was forced to spit it out.

  87. 87.

    JPL

    Trump has always lied, so his accusing Comey of perjury is nothing new. At this point, what does he have to lose.

  88. 88.

    Jeffro

    @JPL:

    Trump’s playing a dangerous game, and one has to be concerned about the safety of our troops.

    Yup. Right about, oh, NOW would be a very good time for our snooze media to start beating him about the head with those sorts of questions…just to see if he’s finally aware that we have a huge base in Qatar, among other things.

  89. 89.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Trump: “Comey said things that cleared me entirely. And you can’t believe anything he says because he was lying”.

    Uhhh….

  91. 91.

    amk

    Trump and Tillerson appear to be running entirely different Qatar policies, with the military somewhere in between.— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 9, 2017

  92. 92.

    JMG

    Not that he will, but if Tillerson had any self-respect, he’d resign as soon as this is over. And US Forward Central Command in Qatar might be up for a military coup right now.

  95. 95.

    Gretchen

    McCaskill called out Grassley yesterday for not letting Dems participate after he added amendments to the ACA himself. A little shame?

  96. 96.

    Chyron HR

    @hovercraft:

    Scaramucci, who served on Trump’s presidential transition team’s executive committee, called the omission a “Reaganesque sort of thing.”

    I assume they mean Reagan’s literal brain damage.

  97. 97.

    hovercraft

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    They need to put that thing everyone claimed was in Bush’s back on Twitler, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. The only problem is that the people he keeps around him most of the time haven’t a fucking clue either!

    I know this assumes that he would agree, since he knows everything!

  98. 98.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Re asking for Comey’s loyalty:

    “I did not say that.” Pause. “And there’d be nothing wrong if I did say that”

    He just can’t help himself. He bristles at criticism even when it’s criticism of something he’s pretending he didn’t do.

  100. 100.

    Jeffro

    @amk: What could possibly go wrong?

    Let’s just hope there’s something, a series of steps in place…let’s call it The Mango Protocols…if we happen to hit a major international crisis, or even a minor one. I’ll settle for the first level of The Mango Protocols being: an aide swaps Trumpov’s phone for one with no connectivity…let him tweet all he wants, none of it gets out. Level two would involve stirring large amounts of Metamucil into his ketchup bottle, so that he’s “indisposed” while the adults try to deal with the crisis.

    Level three? I dunno…does he like George W’s brand of pretzels?

  102. 102.

    hovercraft

    @Quinerly:
    Didn’t know about her parents, but she was dating someone in Paris/London and they broke it off because she moved back here. She talked about how one day she was covering Europe, then she got the call to come cover shitstain and basically never went back.

  103. 103.

    Peale

    @Cheryl Rofer: Except for Turkey, once it puts troops in Qatar. I really can see some ridiculous outcome to this situation where we’re helping the Saudis overthrow the government of Qatar in a coup, shooting at Turkish troops as we do so, at the same time Turkish troops are supposed to be taking Raqqa.

  104. 104.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Goatee of Understanding on MSNBC: “I’d say I’m shocked, I’m stunned, but I think we’ve all run out of adjectives”

    When you’ve exasperated Chuck Todd, you’ve lost Walter Cronkite.

  105. 105.

    Jeffro

    @amk: pretty much the same response he has given about Paul Manafort, Vladimir Putin, Corey Lewandowski, etc…

  106. 106.

    Jeffro

    @Bill E Pilgrim: He was talking about the news conference just now, right?

    Well, Chuck, all I can say is you guys in the media could consider asking Ryan & McConnell just what they’re willing to tolerate in order to get their sweet, sweet tax cuts through. Among other things.

  109. 109.

    hovercraft

    @germy:
    And you wonder why Kiwis greeted Rex with the bird last week?
    Between Thiel and now Scott Brown, they may ban all Americans.

  110. 110.

    JMG

    Grassley did this because the White House said it wouldn’t honor requests from Democrats unless the relevant Republican committee chair, of which he’s one, signs off on them. He foresees an endless string of requests that if he doesn’t cooperate gets him mucho negative attention and if he does cooperate pisses off the Trumpsters. It’s self-defense.

  111. 111.

    jl

    @Peale: Not the makings of a national security crisis that will help the Trumpsters domestically. Can they be so stupid or so lost in their own little fantasy world? Or is this from Trump, who ferociously latches onto random BS if he thinks he can take credit for it?

  112. 112.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Richard Painter, George W’s chief White House ethics lawyer, on MSNBC just repeated his claim that Trump telling the DOJ to go after Comey now is “witness intimidation”, and will expose him to additional charges of obstruction of justice.

  114. 114.

    hovercraft

    @Jeffro:
    The problem is that the two questions he took today are the first he’s taken from the media in almost a month. If given a chance, he’d have been peppered with questions about all the bombshells that have been dropping on his presidency every day beginning at 5 o’clock.
    Hey media, can we just have a nice normal evening tonight, please, I’m looking at you Wa Post and the Fucking NY Times.

  115. 115.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Jeffro: Yes that was his response to anchor Brian Williams asking Chuck for his thoughts right after the press conf.

  117. 117.

    NCSteve

    @Chris: It goes beyond a machine. What they are constructing, have constructed, is not a political party in the traditional American understanding of the term. What they have turned themselves into is a ethnically based hypernationalistic, overtly authoritarian and anti-democratic nihilistic movement party, more akin to what you saw in Europe in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

  120. 120.

    hovercraft

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    They are brown people, Muslim brown people, you know Sand Ni**ers, so I’d say both Steve’s. The Saudi’s gave him a fancy gold medal and projected his face on the wall, and they have the most oil, so not a hard choice.

  123. 123.

    different-church-lady

    CHRISTMAS DAY!

    Trump: I’m willing to testify under oath about Comey claims

    I’ve long thought the moment he goes before congress is the moment they get him on perjury.

  124. 124.

    Shalimar

    @hovercraft: The Qataris also finance construction projects, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if Trump thought he could keep some of that money if he participates in the invasion.

  125. 125.

    hovercraft

    @Shalimar:
    Do you seriously think that anyone trusts him on anything? The entire world is watching this shitshow, they see everything we do, they know the last person rule. Unfortunately for us and them, they also know the real world consequences, I wouldn’t be shocked to see a statement come out of the White House in short order telling us that Twitler misspoke, it’s not like they can come right out and say the Moron in Chief doesn’t actually speak for the United States of America because it’s too hard to incorporate pictures and his name into briefing books about the middle east.

  126. 126.

    Chris

    @NCSteve:

    True, the next step beyond the American style “the machine” is the old European style “the Party.”

    Though you can split the difference and have the system that dominated the South all through the Jim Crow years – less than the NSDAP or the CPSU, but much more than Tammany Hall. Which ultimately is probably the closest historical analogy to what they’re aiming for.

  127. 127.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Cheryl Rofer: I’m still trying to figure out how Trump thinks any Republicans ever became presidents without winning the Electoral College. His ignorance is below what could be cured with School House Rock.

  128. 128.

    Jeffro

    @Yoda Dog:

    FUCK THAT, DROP THE MOAB, WaPo!

    Oh hell yes indeed – it’s getting a bit late on a Friday – let’s have it, Posties! Whaddya got for America to ponder over the weekend?

  129. 129.

    Peale

    @Shalimar: I do think we need a timeline on that Rosneft sale in December. The players at the Mayflower meeting in April last year included Singapore and the italian bank that financed the deal. However, the final winner was Qatar. I really wouldn’t put it past Trump to be mad that the big transaction with the Russians that he wanted to pull off went to the Qataris. I would not be surprised if he decided that he wants that deal renegotiated.

  130. 130.

    Shalimar

    @hovercraft: No, I don’t think anyone who is paying attention still trusts Trump at this point. His word on anything is worthless. But they still can’t say it out loud because he does have power.

  131. 131.

    Wyatt Derp

    Trump: I’m willing to testify under oath about Comey claims

    Will that be before or after he releases his tax returns?

  132. 132.

    Gravenstone

    @different-church-lady: He’ll have a coven of lawyers preventing him from answering even the most mundane of questions. It’ll be 100% “I can’t comment” with maybe an “on advice of legal counsel, I invoke my fifth amendment rights against self incrimination” sprinkled in.

  133. 133.

    Shalimar

    @Peale: That is true. Trump hasn’t fulfilled his half of the bargain, so he shouldn’t have received his 1/2 a percent of Rosneft. I assume it is Russia who won’t approve the transfer, but it would be just like Trump to blame the 3rd party holding the assets.

  134. 134.

    jl

    @Iowa Old Lady: Saw suggestion by John Harwood vie Josh Marshall twitter that Trump spewed the incoherent Qatar bashing because he, or his Trumpster flunkies, think some kind of national security crisis, that theoretically in some alternative universe, Trump could do something about to make it better, would distract from domestic problems.

    If true, that would be unbelievably base cynical and vile, and very dangerous. And also deeply stupid, moronic, really. A smash-up between three US allies that involved endangering US troops, or put them in a tense situation caught between allies who are fighting, would not be the kind of foreign policy crisis that would help Trump. More like the Marine barracks bombing under Reagan, a cluster mess that would hurt the administration. If that is what is going on, the Trumpsters are really vile and dangerous morons. But, we knew that already.

  136. 136.

    hovercraft

    @Wyatt Derp:

    Will that be before or after he releases his tax returns?

    That will be after Melania holds her press conference to show that all her documents are in order!

  137. 137.

    ? Martin

    @NCSteve: Right. This is a distinct culture forming in the US. We were warned the Confederacy would rise again, and they are.

  139. 139.

    SatanicPanic

    How many adversaries do you think took away from this week’s episodes that Trump is a dunce who is in over his head AND no one around him can guide him? Because if I were them I’d be like- it’s true, even his own party admits he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

  140. 140.

    Peale

    @Shalimar:

    But they still can’t say it out loud because he does have power.

    I’m so tired of political correctness, aren’t you?

  142. 142.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    OFFS Dave Weigel is live tweeting from Bernie’s cult rally. It’s “lock her up” all over again. I hope Tom Perez is self-flagellating somewhere.

  144. 144.

    Wyatt Derp

    @hovercraft:

    That will be after Melania holds her press conference to show that all her documents are in order!

    But first he will release all the evidence of Barack Obama’s fake birth certificate. Such a busy calendar!

  146. 146.

    gvg

    @rikyrah: I understand some of the stranger phobic peoples fear that leads to laws about not granting citizenship to criminals but sometimes we need to realize that it’s our culture that fucked someone up. This guy is ours, not some other country’s.
    We need more good people to take time to foster but it sure is hard to give back kids we love when their families do recover and people are afraid to risk their hearts. I am afraid to start fostering again too, but I am thinking about it.
    I would like to hear about charges against the two abusive families. That is horrible.

  147. 147.

    hovercraft

    @Gravenstone:

    He’ll have a coven of lawyers preventing him from answering even the most mundane of questions. It’ll be 100% “I can’t comment” with maybe an “on advice of legal counsel, I invoke my fifth amendment rights against self incrimination” sprinkled in.

    I’m not sure, the fact that all he hears on the TV machine is that a president cannot be indicted, the most that can happen to him is a referral to the House for impeachment, could make him believe that they are so far up his ass they’d never do it. Between that and his belief that he can outsmart anyone could make him dumb enough to actually answer questions, and lie his ass off. He probably knows that Clinton lied and stayed in office so why can’t he. A blowjob’s not the same as aiding and abetting an enemy but to him, who knows? A girl can dream.

  149. 149.

    Shalimar

    @Peale: This is more diplomat-speak, which goes back a few more millennia, but yeah, we all know he’s a buffoon. Figure out how to deal with it, because he won’t get better.

  151. 151.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Miss Bianca: I read in Edward Morris’ The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (prequel to his Theodore Rex) that Hanna was aghast at the notion of TR as VP:

    In 1900, Hanna again chaired McKinley’s presidential election campaign, and emphatically argued against placing Governor Theodore Roosevelt on the ticket as vice president.

    Don’t any of you realize that there’s one life between that madman and the Presidency?

    Hanna reportedly exclaimed.

    (Here’s a source)

  152. 152.

    Princess

    I am sitting here listening to David Brooks give the commencement speech at my son’s college graduation. What is this life?

    That is all

  153. 153.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Gravenstone:

    They’re the same people as Trumpers, and they have no fucking clue about it. No wonder Russian active measures worked so well.

  156. 156.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Peale:

    So glad Dems spent a fuckton of cash hauling that grifting fraud’s wrinkled old ass around the country/

  157. 157.

    Mary G

    I guess Senator Grassley deleted the tweets from January or February where he complained that nobody at the White House would return his calls, but he missed a couple:

    Whoever monitors twitter at WH for President Trump read my previous 2tweets and hv this businessman understand TRANSPARENCY=ACCOUNTABILITY— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 11, 2017

    Senators this powerful don’t forgive & don’t forget.

  158. 158.

    gvg

    How many of his cabinet have to declare him unfit under the 25th? Is it a certain number or a ratio because not every President has the same size cabinet and Trump hasn’t filled some spots. If he keeps screwing up their jobs, they might gang up on him.

  159. 159.

    Brachiator

    Not that he will, but if Tillerson had any self-respect, he’d resign as soon as this is over

    Jeremy Corbyn is calling on Theresa May to resign. Nancy Pelosi is saying that Attorney General “Alt Right” Sessions should resign. Trump is accusing Comey of lying under oath. Presumably, Trump should re-appoint Comey to head the FBI and then demand his resignation.

    And the weekend is just getting started.

  160. 160.

    p.a.

    @Mnemosyne: It’s axes all the way down.

    “Interestingly, axes is the only word in English that can be the plural of three different singular noun forms–ax, axe, and axis.”

    (I googled to check the plural. Was 95% sure, but with the other plurals also, thought there might be a diff apart from pronounciation. English is so promiscuous a language these things are common.)

    also too

    “Ax and axe are variant spellings of the same word. Ax/Axe can be a noun or a verb, and both spellings can be used in all the same contexts. Axe has been the more common spelling for several centuries in British and American English, but in America ax has gained in popularity in recent times.”

  161. 161.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NCSteve:

    What they are constructing, have constructed, is not a political party in the traditional American understanding of the term.

    So far so good.

    What they have turned themselves into is a ethnically based hypernationalistic, overtly authoritarian and anti-democratic nihilistic movement party, more akin to what you saw in Europe in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

    Um…nope. The GOP has become the Global Oligarchy Putsch. It’s not party before country, it’s billionaire bankrollers. Who are fine with Putin’s destabilization of US democracy because that’s what they want as well: hollow out the Federal government until it provides extraterritoriality for their investments (zero taxes is only a start), capitulations to protect them & their minions, & a readily-looted Treasury of tax revenues squeezed from the proles they’ve set upon each other. Then on to the EU, blather, reince, repeat, to create a world order with the oligarchs’ collective boot on the collective human face, forever.

    (ETA: They’re gambling they can survive with Rossiya-Bratva LLC (V.V. Putin, CEO) & China Inc. as global partners because, after all, the German industrialists managed to survive the Third Reich & prosper even after it went off the rails. I have my doubts. An organization that routinely murders its opponents is not one you want to have in your ruling councils…)

  162. 162.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Jeffro:
    Mango Protocol? The studio that made Mechanika and Agatha Knife? Well… okay, yes, for paternalistic homicide, childishness, and general world devastation, I guess I can see the link.

  164. 164.

    Mnemosyne

    @gvg:

    I’ve heard before about abusive adoptive families that don’t get citizenship for their kids so they can keep more control over them, or who never get birth certificates for their biological kids so the kids have no way to escape them. It’s pretty sick.

  165. 165.

    moops

    … this nut job President is going to start another war in the Middle East to take the heat off his scandals. I don’t even think his staff or advisors know that is his actual plan, or can’t bring themselves to admit it. A Big New War is all upside for Donald Trump. It doesn’t matter that it is bad for everyone else. Everything Trump does is what is best for him, just him.

    At some point the elected GOP is going to figure out that Trump does not even care about tax cuts. Trump doesn’t care about tax cuts. He has other ways of not paying taxes. He, Donald Trump, is not personally affected by the proposed GOP tax cut, so he does not really care about it except in the general Cleek’s Law sense. He is not of the GOP tribe, he is just against anything associated with Obama (hence taking apart Obamacare is far more important to Trump).

    He would wipe his ass with the GOP tax cut if that would make these scandals go away and make his polls shoot up. He has to keep acting like he cares about the GOP agenda because the GOP reps are the only protection he has from prosecution. The GOP can’t let him hang because an impeachment turmoil derails the tax cut they need to get in the door before the 2018 elections. Trump’s “trump” card is new Middle East war. Trump can intimidate his skeleton WH staff and launch the whole thing from the Executive Branch.

  168. 168.

    Jeffro

    @Frankensteinbeck: That’s funny…I guess everything really HAS already been thought of and is out there somewhere on the internet. (Translation: I had never heard of ‘Mango Protocol’…was just trying to think of a clever way to name plans to deal with ill Douche.

    How new bands ever manage to figure out (and trademark) a name for themselves, I’ll never know…

  169. 169.

    Mike in NC

    Was the Trump press conference held at Mar-A-Lago? Because after all it’s Friday and his travel day. Bannon is passed out under his desk. Just another normal weekend in America, 2017.

  172. 172.

    Yoda Dog

    @Jeffro: I was in a shitty band in my youth and we never could come up with a name worth a shit. Everytime we thought of something decent, it was taken.

  173. 173.

    SatanicPanic

    @Jeffro: I never cared much for Biden. He’s fine, but I don’t like him in the same way as Gillibrand or Harris

  174. 174.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @moops:

    this nut job President is going to start another war in the Middle East to take the heat off his scandals.

    Which will become another scandal, one with deadly results.

    What’s the over/under on Trump/GOP bringing back the draft for this new ME bloodbath?

  175. 175.

    p.a.

    @moops: well, effing up their tax cut would leave the Rethugs only 2 options: try to ditch him for Pence, or actually assist in fomenting war; there’s ALWAYS a rally ’round the flag effect (at first), and no institution is better at using war hysteria to its advantage than the Rethug Party. While trump is busy playing general they’ll find a way to get their tax cuts.

  176. 176.

    JPL

    @moops: Maybe Cheryl or Adam can update us later today, on the president’s remarks today. I would like to know when we should push the panic button.

  178. 178.

    D58826

    @Mike in NC: No it was the Rose Garden and he is off to the golf course in NJ.

    On Nicole Wallace they are talking about whither the president can be charged w/o obstruction for ordering an investigation to be shut down. Now mostly every one agrees that while in office the answer is no but once out of office it’s an open question because there is no precedent.

    So a hypothetical
    1. the IC has intercepts of Trump asking Putin for money in exchange for lifting sanctions.
    2. the IC turns it over to the FBI and they start a criminal investigation.
    3. POTUS orders the investigation shutdown under the constitutional doctrine that he is the head of the executive branch (according to Allen Dersahwitz).

    It seems to me that if that is true then we are no longer a nation of laws since at least one citizen is above the law. I remember during Whitewater/Monicgate Bill had to adhere to the laws according to the GOP.

  179. 179.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Miss Bianca: I wouldn’t have known myself had I not read the book in question earlier this year. (For that matter I read The Price of Union just before that, in which Herbert Agar all but canonizes McKinley & anoints Hanna as the benevolent Svengali of fin-de-sickle =;^D US politics. I wuz like, WT everlovin’ F??? It was, of course, 19-freakin’-54…)

  181. 181.

    Jeffro

    Politico is reporting that the House committee just asked Trumpov to turn over any Comey tapes by June 23

  182. 182.

    Mike in DC

    @D58826:

    In that hypothetical Justices Kagan and Sotomayor and Ginsburg fall upon Alan Dershowitz and beat him savagely.

  184. 184.

    moops

    @p.a.: I don’t think the GOP can manage yet another tax cut in a time of war. It won’t work for the 27%. That bedrock will wobble if they try it.

    No, they need AHCA to go through and looted federal agencies to create the budget space to weave that narrative. The budget hole from the Iraq war is still something people can vaguely recall. I think so at least. Not for the hate-radio crowd, but the Fox television part of the base got to see Bush Jr get cast out and de-listed and this concept was allowed to penetrate the bubble. They stopped aggressively lying about it once Bush Jr was no longer needing cover.

    Trump is actively trying to destabilize the region to shift the news cycle to the Middle East. Blowing a half year’s budget of cruise missiles blowing up a Syrian airbase was another example. It’s not his money. He made money that day.

    The nation will likely rally and Trump will get more respect. Respect from those media jerks. NYTimes will write resolute stories about his big moves as NYTimes always falls in line with US military adventures.

  185. 185.

    Mnemosyne

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    An organization that routinely murders its opponents is not one you want to have in your ruling councils…

    American oligarchs are soft and weak compared to the Russian and Chinese oligarchs. The only comfort I have is that, if the Mercers and Kochs and Thiels get their way, they’re not going to last long in the Game of Thrones world they chose.

  186. 186.

    Chris

    @moops:

    Trump is actively trying to destabilize the region to shift the news cycle to the Middle East. Blowing a half year’s budget of cruise missiles blowing up a Syrian airbase was another example. It’s not his money. He made money that day.

    I mean, the prime movers here are still Saudi Arabia and Egypt. (I know Trump claimed credit for their move, but does anyone really believe that?) All Trump is doing right now is trying to make it all about him, but he’s not in the driver’s seat.

  187. 187.

    Mnemosyne

    @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:

    What’s the over/under on Trump/GOP bringing back the draft for this new ME bloodbath?

    If there’s even a hint of that happening, I’m giving my 19-year-old nephew the money to see a psychiatrist and get re-diagnosed for ADHD (which he does genuinely have, but the Devil Woman took him off the medication) so he’ll be 4-F.

  188. 188.

    JMG

    The idea that Americans would rally around Trump for another Mideast war, especially one he’d be perceived as having started, is one I don’t see. Qatar isn’t going to attack our base — it’s their leverage. Iran isn’t going to strike first, it needs international sympathy in case of a US conflict. People rallied around Bush because 9/11 was a national trauma. But the trauma was a long time ago. There are American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines today who weren’t toilet trained when it happened. There’s always a strain of chickenhawk war fever. But the overall public would rather not, thanks.

  189. 189.

    Mike in DC

    Trump offering to testify under oath. Unlikely. But this shit would end quickly if he was that stupid and got deposed by Mueller. He can’t help lying. His depos in civil cases have been uniformly bad for him. It’d be a perjury trap for him, but in a criminal investigation, not a civil case.

  192. 192.

    moops

    @Chris: He is trying to drive things. I admit that this could just be Trump being a big dumb know-nothing. When I try to think like Trump I would figure out who in my circle is exposed to the Russia scandal, in some way that is independent of my own treason, then make that person the fall-guy when Middle East Peace entirely falls into a smoking pile and Trump has to undertake military options.

    Kushner being assigned such a bizarre and diverse portfolio starts to make more sense. How did it make any sense to make Kushner in charge of the Office of American Innovation, ending the opiod epidemic AND US Envoy of Peace in the Middle East, and several other grab bag roles in the WH.

  193. 193.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @JMG: This. You know Trump would order something stupid that would get a lot of troops killed. Something so visible that could not be ignored. Like the TET Offensive in Vietnam.

  194. 194.

    SatanicPanic

    @JMG: I agree. We just don’t trust this guy and we got burned last time, so I don’t see this working out for him.

  196. 196.

    Redshift

    @moops:

    I don’t think the GOP can manage yet another tax cut in a time of war. It won’t work for the 27%. That bedrock will wobble if they try it.

    I see no reason to believe that. What price did they ever pay with their base for the massive last tax cut in a time of war? The base believes deficits only ever come from overspending, and therefore are always the fault of Democrats, no matter who’s in charge. The only thing that’s stopping them from just passing an unvarnished deficit-ballooning tax cut is the filibuster. They can only pass it in the Senate via reconciliation; that’s why they’re destroying Medicaid to pay for it.

  199. 199.

    D58826

    listening to cong critter Blackburn saying Comey has a unique relationship to the truth but she said she isn’t saying he committed perjury. Lots of twisting and turning and explaining away

  200. 200.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @Mnemosyne: The reason I fear so is that Iran is pretty *mountainous, and therefore difficult to invade and fight in. Hence the need for a possible draft.

    *I believe Adam said so in a post or something once

    ETA: also definitely do that for your nephew. The best I could hope for is a college deferment or something.
    No way I’m dying in Trump’s Vietnam

  201. 201.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Holy Crap. Susan Collins excuses trump clearing the room to lean on Comey because Comey asked to speak to trump alone when they went over the pee tape dossier, so Comey put it in trump’s head that the President and the FBI director should speak alone.

  202. 202.

    Quinerly

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    I left and have come back. I like her quite a bit. She has tried to do straight reporting under a lot of pressure. Trump berated her on the campaign trail. At least once, security had to help her safely leave the venue.

  203. 203.

    Chris

    @Redshift:

    The base believes deficits only ever come from overspending

    And only on matters that aren’t related to military or police spending, which can never, ever, ever qualify as overspending because reasons.

  204. 204.

    moops

    Or maybe Kushner being an Orthodox Jew was the extent of Trump thinking anything through. Hey, the Jews are in the Middle East right? business those guys up Jared!

  205. 205.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @p.a.: Peruse Section 4 of the 25th amendment in detail to get a real appreciation of what a clusterfuck going that route would entail.

    Presuming you can get VPOTUS & 8 of the 15 Cabinet Secretaries* to sign a “written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” upon its transmittal to the Senate President Pro Tempore & the Speaker of the House, VPOTUS becomes APOTUS (Acting President).

    And then the fun begins. Once POTUS sends SPPT & SoH written notification that “no such inability exists,” he resumes the Presidency. Then VPOTUS & 8/15 have 4 days to re-notify SPPT & SoH, whereupon Congress has 21 days from when it returns to session (with 48 hrs if not already in session) to decide by 2/3 vote of both Houses that POTUS is unable to etc etc etc & VPOTUS (re)becomes APOTUS, otherwise POTUS keeps on keeping on.

    Lacking those 2/3 votes in both Houses, I can find nothing in the language of the Amendment to prevent this from becoming a rolling clusterfuck in 3-week cycles if VPOTUS & the Cabinet persist. And even with such a vote it is totally unclear (to me at least) as to whether POTUS could shoot Hatch & ZEGS a note, oh, say 6months down the line reading, All better now, I’m ready to resume my office! & frankly I have not a clue as to how they’d handle that.

    IANAL but in my normally not all that humble opinion, the 25th is such a complete mess that it would actually be simpler, cleaner, faster & in all likelihood easier to just impeach & remove whatever sumbidge richly deserves it!

    —-
    * Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, plus the Attorney General

  206. 206.

    D58826

    And ‘reasonable’ Susan Collins is arguing that it is Comey’s fault that Trump asked him top leave the Oval Office. Her reasoning – Comey briefed him one-on-one over the details of the Steele dossier. Therefore the inexperienced Trump assumed that it is SOP to talk to the FBI director one-on-one. A plate of spaghetti has few twists and turns

  207. 207.

    different-church-lady

    @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: “Those things… do you know what those “things” were? Weren’t you curious? I think it would intensely arouse my curiosity if the president of the Confederacy said, ‘those things,'”

  208. 208.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Republicans seem pretty convinced that they can tell the American people that Trump is stupid and most of his voters will just nod along and say, Yeah, if I was presidentin’, I’d be bad at it, too! Because his voters are even dumber than he is.

  210. 210.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @Chris: Support the troops! Any criticism of them is unpatriotic, no matter the reason!

    Conservatives love to complain that we don’t have respect for authority figures anymore but I haven’t seen any evidence of this; if anything Americans have too much and that’s part of the problem.

    The other is that for all this flag waving going on, I don’t think people really understand what it means to be in the military. Too many Americans feel that we’re entitled to be a superpower. That couldn’t be further from the truth

  212. 212.

    MomSense

    The only thing I am enjoying about this clusterfuck trump administration is seeing them prove in real time how completely unethical, psychopathic, incompetent, ignorant, and inferior they are. Trump is a miserable failure and freaking ugly to boot. Normally I don’t give a crap about looks but he has been so judgmental about the appearance of others that I think it only fair he is judged as well.

    Also too he doesn’t dress like a fucking billionaire. The guy wears ill fitting suits, pathetic ties held together with scotch tape and tops the whole thing off with ridiculous hair and makeup.

    No matter how hard he tries he cannot conceal the rot.

  213. 213.

    different-church-lady

    @Mnemosyne: CLINTON: “Trump is unready for the presidency”

    GOP: “Hey, uh… maybe she had a point after all.”

  215. 215.

    japa21

    Another great column by the Sun Times columnist at http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/will-russia-really-conquer-america-this-easily/

    It starts

    In 1855, an Illinois railroad lawyer named Abraham Lincoln wrote to his longtime friend, Joshua Speed, who had moved back to their native Kentucky. Lincoln focused on the slavery question, already tearing the country apart.

    “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’” the future president wrote. “We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

    And ends

    To Republicans, the media — the newspapers, TV, though not Fox News — is a greater threat to the well-being of the United States than its traditional enemy. That belief did not develop in a vacuum. Newt Gingrich taught the GOP to view Democrats as traitors. Now, just as an activist judge is a judge who makes a ruling you don’t like, so the media is “fake news” when it reports a fact you find uncomfortable. Trump is the scab that formed over America’s self-inflicted wound.
    In that light, the Russians have already taken us over, partially. Our government is already led by the same fact-averse, power-addled, cult of personality that Putin built around himself. The only difference is that Americans still have a chance to do something about it. Russians do not.

    Everything in between is also good reading.

  218. 218.

    Chris

    @MomSense:

    I’d enjoy that a lot more if it wasn’t proving at the same time just how many people do not give a flying fuck about any of those things as long as they get the sense that the Right People are in charge and the Other Ones are getting sufficiently kicked in the gutter.

    I mean, it’s not like none of this was clearly visible from the campaign trail.

  219. 219.

    Chris

    @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:

    Oh, yeah. Jesus God, I can’t think of any other first world nation whose population is as obsequious to its Heroes In Uniform. Other people who come to the U.S. are weirded out and in some cases seriously concerned by it.

  220. 220.

    SatanicPanic

    @D58826: Even if true, that makes Trump look stupid, and doesn’t explain why he was asking Comey to ditch the investigation.

  221. 221.

    gene108

    If I am following current events correctly, Saudi Arabia has created a humanitarian disaster in Yemen and looks to recreate this situation in Qatar.

    And Trump’s saying the Saudi’s are his best buds.

  224. 224.

    SatanicPanic

    The thing about all these congresspeople coming forward to say “Trump just didn’t know”- what are they going to do when he figures out that everyone is excusing his behavior by calling him stupid and he tweet “I’M NOT STUPID, MEANT TO HAVE MEETING TO PRESSURE COMEY”?

  225. 225.

    hovercraft

    New York Attorney General’s Office ‘Looking Into’ Eric Trump Foundation

    The New York attorney general’s office is looking into the Eric Trump Foundation following a Forbes report that detailed possible self-dealing by President Donald Trump through the foundation.

    “The attorney general’s office is looking into the issues raised by this report,” Eric Soufer, communications director for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, told Forbes Friday.

    Soufer did not respond to TPM’s questions about the scope of any potential investigation.

  227. 227.

    MomSense

    @Chris:

    I don’t know. His poll numbers are abysmally low, and we are seeing record breaking protest numbers combined with sustained actions (like calls to elected officials). I do think people are paying attention and that the majority of Americans consider trump to be an ignoranus.

  228. 228.

    gene108

    @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:

    Too many Americans feel that we’re entitled to be a superpower.

    The people, who think like this usually vote Republican. And Republicans are doing their damnedest to make sure we will no longer be a superpower.

    We didn’t become a superpower because other countries cowered in fear of us. We became a superpower because we rebuilt our enemies, from WW2, and built alliances based on the notion that a win-win scenario is best for everbyody; even if we left some things that benefit us on the table.

  230. 230.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @MomSense:

    the majority of Americans consider trump to be an ignoranus

    Didja Steele that from somewhere or is it wunna them thar Felix Culpa thingies? Axeing for a fiend…

  233. 233.

    gene108

    @Chris:

    Oh, yeah. Jesus God, I can’t think of any other first world nation whose population is as obsequious to its Heroes In Uniform. Other people who come to the U.S. are weirded out and in some cases seriously concerned by it.

    The conservative movement in this country is basically a proto-fascist movement. It became really evident during Bush, Jr’s tenure, when people who opposed Bush, Jr. were considered “America haters” and traitors.

    The only thing separating us from Russia or Turkey is strong institutions and traditions, which do not accommodate fascists very easily.

    But there’s are a large group of people, who’d love to be a lot more dictatorial, as long as they are the in-group.

    Also, too America’s fought in a lot of wars, but suffered very little damage relative to Russia or Germany or Japan. We have a very skewed idea of “what’s the worst that can happen?”, if we went to war.

  235. 235.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MomSense: I think reports are that Ossoff isn’t making a big deal out of trump, but I think trump is what’s keeping him competitive. I think more time in the KS race, and a better candidate in MT, and you might’ve seen different results. But all counterfactuals is, of course, bunk. And hokum.

  237. 237.

    MomSense

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    A friend of mine and I started using that word about an unpleasant customer we had to deal with when we had college work study jobs at a cafeteria about 30 years ago. The original ignoranus (who shall remain nameless) went on to infamy in the W administration.

  238. 238.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @gene108: In a way it’s a blessing. Imagine having more competent authoritarians in power than Trump, who could hide their agenda until too late. Superpowered Apartheid South Africa

  240. 240.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MomSense: The original ignoranus (who shall remain nameless) went on to infamy in the W administration./blockquote>
    aw, come on!<

  241. 241.

    TS

    @germy: The only people who will work for Trump are current, ex and failed GOP politicians. They have to get government $$$ to live – they don’t seem able to survive in the great capitalist society outside of Government.

    Just to add – NZ has more sheep than people.

  243. 243.

    MomSense

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Im a wicked eavesdropper at the grocery store. Hopefully my prycraft is such that people don’t know I’m listening. I live in a small town so the grocery store is one of those places people where people know each other and catch up. I have never heard so much chatter about politics or a president in my life. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that people greet each other and immediately launch into disgust gossip about trump. Even the guys who drive the big trucks seem humbled.

    The other thing I’ve noticed is that the disgust has permeated to elementary and middle school kids. They are talking about him and making fun of him. He has become an insult. This is not just with the usual sort of liberal, precocious kids.

    Pop culture is yuugely influential and it is clearly not cool to like trump. The other more serious factor is that kids are genuinely upset because they hear their parents talk about their health care worries. To many young people, trump and the Republicans are to blame for making their moms cry.

    We have to be strong and keep organizing and taking action because the GOP will not bounce back so easily from this mess.

  248. 248.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MomSense: in meatspace, most people I know/talk to are either liberal or more or less apolitical, but my formerly pretty apolitical brother now talks about trump almost every time we get together, and a fairly disengaged cousin now texts me stuff I should text to my R Senator– she’s all blue in her representation. I have one close friend who voted D for president for the first time in his 55 years, and the vast majority of my RW (because “the Church”) relations were disgusted by trump

  249. 249.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MomSense: Addington? Frank Gaffney? our new friend David Frum? (even though I appreciate the thoroughness and commitment of his neverTrumpism, I still think he’s a dick– just seems incredibly boorish and pompous as a human being)

  250. 250.

    Mnemosyne

    @gene108:

    A large swath of the US was a race-based autocracy until 1964. There are a lot of people alive today who are nostalgic for that regime.

  252. 252.

    MomSense

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    His plans were special. And that is my last clue!

    ETA I think we have to make a lot of temporary alliances until we get rid of Dolt45. I don’t think people like Frum or Rubin will be allies on much of anything else.

  253. 253.

    TenguPhule

    @MomSense:

    Bread and butter issues have to be the main course – with a side of treason.

    But what about dessert? One scoop or two?

  254. 254.

    MomSense

    @TenguPhule:

    Ha! I had chocolate ice cream and red wine for dinner last week. Unlike little Marco, I will never accept a dinner invitation from trump.

  255. 255.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MomSense: I agree– trump will insert himself into people’s minds, the rest is up to us

    @MomSense: Rubin has said things about climate change that have surprised me, but I doubt she’ll ever really convert.

  256. 256.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?

    @Mnemosyne: Its true to a large extent. I think a more accurate term would be Herrenvolk Democracy. That’s what the US, particularly the South, was

  259. 259.

    J R in WV

    @rikyrah:

    I guess we should have already known there is no limit to the evil these fascists will do, just as a matter of fact. It is as though it was normal to send someone back to a country they can’t even speak the language of.

    Despicable from top to bottom…from Trump all the way down to the ICE Nazis doing his dirty work every day.

  260. 260.

    ed

    I wonder when some congress critter will go Francis Underwood on him, and threaten him with say extra hotel taxes or removing the real estate loopholes he uses.

  261. 261.

    YellowDog

    Grassley has always taken the oversight role of Congress seriously. We’ll hate him again, but, for now, I’ll cheer him on.

  262. 262.

    sunny raines

    now there is a new definition of how unimaginably low America under republicans has gone: chuck grassely as ray of hope.

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