We discussed this a bit in the morning thread, but it warrants further examination and derision. Via NBC News:
Tillerson’s Fury at Trump Required an Intervention From Pence
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the White House, according to multiple senior administration officials who were aware of the situation at the time.
The tensions came to a head around the time President Donald Trump delivered a politicized speech in late July to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Tillerson once led, the officials said.
Just days earlier, Tillerson had openly disparaged the president, referring to him as a “moron,” after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials, according to three officials familiar with the incident.
I don’t know about y’all, but for me, “was on the verge of resigning” is right up there with “Ivanka privately opposed” and “John Kelly was displeased” as useless-ass information that fails spectacularly in reassuring me about the character of the people surrounding Trump. To paraphrase Yoda, “Resign, or resign not. There is no verge.” More on MoronGate:
While it’s unclear if he was aware of the incident, Vice President Mike Pence counseled Tillerson, who is fourth in line to the presidency, on ways to ease tensions with Trump, and other top administration officials urged him to remain in the job at least until the end of the year, officials said.
Officials said that the administration, beset then by a series of high-level firings and resignations, would have struggled to manage the fallout from a Cabinet secretary of his stature departing within the first year of Trump’s presidency.
Pence has since spoken to Tillerson about being respectful of the president in meetings and in public, urging that any disagreements be sorted out privately, a White House official said. The official said progress has since been made.
St. Paul in a Speedo, has there ever been a more servile toady than Mike Fucking Pence? His fawning devotion is all the more nauseating since it’s a moral certainty that Pence would shiv Trump and use the bloated carcass as the Oval Office welcome mat if he thought he could get away with it. It may well come to that, and Mother would make a splendid homespun Lady Macbeth if it does.
I’m also glad the NBC report mentions that the administration was “beset by a series of high-level firings and resignations.” My feeling is that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. It’s kind of unprecedented, isn’t it — the revolving door in this White House? I mean, it’s not unexpected; organizations that are headed up by a walking collection of untreated personality disorders often experience high turnover. But for the historical record, let’s not let that go by the boards unremarked.
Anyhoo, just as I was typing this out, I got a CNN alert on my phone saying Tillerson denies he contemplated an exit and claims the report that he called Trump a moron is “petty nonsense.” Uh huh. I bet Trump knows better, and he will hound Tillerson out of there by Valentine’s Day, if not sooner. And Rexxon will heave a sigh of relief as big as Exxon.
Open thread!
ETA: Employees of moron boss deny calling boss a moron — take that to the bank, America!
The @NBCNews story has just been totally refuted by Sec. Tillerson and @VP Pence. It is #FakeNews. They should issue an apology to AMERICA!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 4, 2017
The Moar You Know
This is a crap PR stunt designed to distract from the real news, which you can find over at the New Yorker about some of Yam Saddam Jr. and Ivanka’s cute and very illegal shenanigans, from back in the day when all they could fuck up was their real estate “empire”.
Gonna cost Cyrus Vance Jr. his job, that story will, at the very least.
This right here is why I think the “moron” story is 100% bullshit. Tillerson’s got more money than Trump could dream of. And people with far less refuse to submit to such degrading treatment in the workplace. Simply not believable.
Corner Stone
Now I know why mother will not allow Pence to be alone with another woman. This has to be the third or fourth intervention where Pence has had to “counsel” or talk down somebody from doing the right thing. So apparently Pence can talk the panties off a virgin, he’s just that damned good at being bad.
Kay
These people. I get that their sense of themselves dictates that they portray working for Trump as somehow standing in the breach but the best thing they could do is get out of the way and let it come crashing down.
It failed. The system failed. They ALL failed. Patching it up with duct tape is just putting off the inevitable. We can’t fix it as long as they are standing there pretending they are load bearing walls when really they’re just bending and carping occasionally.
Mike E
The first official act of Pres Pence!
Corner Stone
You haven’t yet seen Trump’s tweets about this that Rex totally refuted the reporting and NBC is #FakeNews ?
rikyrah
I don’t believe he was going to resign. He will resign when Vlad tells him that he can resign.
bystander
I like that Tillerson joins the Club Touched by Shit Midas.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
God, I hope so. It’s important that someone be held accountable at some point.
Too bad he didn’t stop the Trumps when he had the chance. how many could have done it over 40 years? Probably thousands
rikyrah
@Kay:
uh huh
and, as you point out – complete crap.
Corner Stone
@Kay:
They all wanted something and they all had the worst egos imaginable. Every one of them thought they were smarter than Trump and could control him in ways that brought their goals forward.
At this point, doing the right thing is working with Congress to take Trump out of office, by any mechanism available.
Baud
@bystander: Waiting to see how Rick Perry and Ben Carson get slimed.
No Drought No More
WTF else does anyone expect Tillerson to say? “Yes, I did call the president a moron. Your point being?”.
Gary K
He doesn’t deny he said the word.
catclub
These two sentences are self contradictory. Pence knows he is the only one in the whole admin that CANNOT be fired. he wants something to run, and people to run it, if and when he takes over. That is not the behavior of a toady.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
They think it’s scarier to let him fail but it isn’t. The unreality is scary. It’s untethered from anything real.
Let him FAIL. If someone had done it decades ago we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Corner Stone
BCrack in OP:
@The Moar You Know:
I think these two blurbs go very nicely together. Maybe one day the media will stop listening to Ivanka’s PR people and actually tell the truth about this lying, conniving snake.
Humboldtblue
Paris turned off the lights to the Eiffel Tower in recognition of the shooting in Vegas. Vegas turned the lights off on its Eiffel Tower following the terrorist attacks in 2015.
Speaking of France, I stumbled across this story today. Residents in the small village of Les Ventes in Normandy have honored an American pilot who was shot down in June of 1944. He remained in his plane and kept it flying above the village to avoid crashing into the buildings. For 67 years his wife in Texas had no confirmation he had been killed.
Les Ventes
Baud
Trump is going to talk about this in his LV remarks, isn’t he?
Corner Stone
@bystander: The thing I love about Tillerson is that he’s still acting as a CEO of a corporation. He just doesn’t give a shit about his staff or anybody else. This is govt running by a bidnessman.
If we survive, I hope this admin kills that damn zombie idea once and for all.
Kay
@Baud:
I make fun of President as Daddy (rightfully!) but I really did find Obama comforting after shootings. I mean, I’ll survive but it sucks that the Big Empty Barrel can’t come up with some normal human reaction after these events- if nothing else just imitate a feeling person. Make an effort.
Betty Cracker
@catclub: Please review every utterance of VP Pence ever and come back and tell me he’s not a toady. Servile behavior with an ulterior motive does not remove the stain of obsequiousness.
Biscuits
This “administration” has more drama than a bus full of debutants-apologies to debutants.
FlipYrWhig
@No Drought No More: That’s pretty much what he said. He’s saying an inside-baseball who-called-whom-what-names story is “petty.” No reason why “petty” isn’t also “true.”
Especially if it’s Tom. RIP.
Corner Stone
@Kay:
Corkdog Off The Chain! It’s going to be hilarious getting soundbytes from Corker for the next year.
SatanicPanic
@No Drought No More: wouldn’t that make him the kind of tell-it-like-it-is guy that everyone supposedly wants?
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
You might have a point.
No Drought No More
‘Kerfuffle’ is such a pleasant word for the intentional dismantling of the State Department of the United States by American fascists in order to further their takeover of the government by corporate powers..
To quote Paul Simon: “I don’t find these things amusing anymore”. Republicans are goddamn traitors to America currently in the process of destroying everything this nation professes to stand for, and I refuse to observe any propriety that informs me its unfair to say as much. J’accuse!
Corner Stone
@No Drought No More: “I have offered my resignation and the President has accepted it.”
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know: Are you saying Tillerson never called Trump a moron and that someone in the Trump camp made that story up to distract from the Trumpling malfeasance? Or that Tillerson DID call Trump a moron, and the Trump camp decided to release that particular story as a distraction? Was Trump in on the decision?
Ridnik Chrome
I am picturing this as a scene out of “Dr. Strangelove”: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.”
Rasputin's Evil Twin
@Corner Stone: Thank you for that image. I needed a reason to start drinking this early, and the image of Pence seducing a virgin must be washed away with a lot of vodka.
Elie
Whether these folks (Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, Tillerson), think they are plugging some sort of breach or not, it will not work. Things will continue to fall apart until some un-named crisis forces a collapse that hopefully, we can survive. You can’t have this much dysfunction and have things “work out” ultimately. Do not forget also that they are woefully understaffed in most agencies, but most alarmingly in State and Defense. I bet that they themselves have no idea what is gonna come apart catastrophically — system is too complex for just four people to balance and manage safely. I also agree with Betty that whatever they think they are doing, they should stop and let the system input FAILURE instead of trying to shore it up. We are probably fucked either way because I don’t think that they can keep this up. We just don’t know where the ceiling will fall first — the whole thing is rotten and sagging…
T S
Resign or resign not, do or do not, with me or against me…..ooooooh, that’s right, SW is inconsistent pop entertainment with no real wisdom.
TriassicSands
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t think that is true. From what I’ve read, Tillerson has about $250 million. He’s not a billionaire. Trump undoubtedly has far less money than he claims (though lots more than when he entered office), but he probably has at least a few hundred million.
bystander
@Baud:
In all fairness, those two were slimed from the start. Not to say Shit Midas couldn’t give them a little burnish, maybe attract a few flies.
tobie
@Betty Cracker: Don’t overthink this. The Trump administration is one big howitzer of fiasco, spreading chaos and destruction wherever it turns. Morongate and Ivanna-Junior-fraudgate simply emerged at the same time. What’s a pity is that the press will go with the story about the insult rather than the story about consistent fraud because the former is sexier.
Highway Rob
@The Moar You Know:
Wagging the dogshit, as it were?
Calouste
This is probably the right thread to remind people that it’s been more than two months since the shitgibbon moved Kelly from DHS and there hasn’t even been talk of a replacement yet.
bystander
@Corner Stone: Tillerson’s assault on the State Dept. should be grounds for trying him on the collusion charges, along with twitler and Uday and Qusay.
germy
I assume my local news will cover this Vance story (if they bother to at all) as “Look: Another corrupt democrat.”
SatanicPanic
@Calouste: Is that a good or a bad thing? Not sure.
Droppy
As Cheif Opertating Orcifer of Morons of America, I strongly condemnulate Secretariat Tillersons imprication that Djonald Trump is a Moron. Guy hasn’t pade his dews in like 20 yeres. Trump not a Moron!
Major Major Major Major
This is a comment containing the word foo ‘foo’
Spanky
Just walked past a bumper sticker that said “Elect a clown, expect a circus”.
‘Bout sums it up, if a tragically inept kleptocracy counts as a circus.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: It’s not my theory; my take is roughly consistent with yours — they’re shitlords, not masterminds. But I am curious about how folks who DO believe in the Distraction Strategy think it works. Is a brittle narcissist going to be cool with “SoS Called Trump a Moron” headlines for a day or two? If he’s not involved, do the underlings who are manufacturing these controversies think this particular stunt won’t negatively affect Trump’s performance in Las Vegas today? Etc.
Calouste
@SatanicPanic: Just another tell of incompetence and disinterest. Also good to use as an argument that the shitgibbon doesn’t care about keeping us safe.
Brachiator
I suppose that people could resign. But maybe they think that they can bring some stability to the Madness of King Trump. Or Pence and company want to be able to move up into the presidency and other positions if and when Trump flames out.
Suzanne
@Brachiator:
Really, though…..when they game out the whole situation, is this truly what they see happening?! They don’t see their reputations tarnished forever, and the private sector grossed out by them?
I would bet that this is the last important job any of them will ever have.
rikyrah
Best tweet of the day:
REX STANDS BY TRUMP, MORON THIS LATER
— TheYukster (@SetagayaGirl) October 4, 2017
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: My guess is the latter, but still, there’s no excuse for Pence’s ostentatious knob-polishing. I’ve had one boss who was truly a visionary and a wonderful person, and I supported her and moved her agenda forward enthusiastically as long as we worked together. But I did it without attaching my lips to her ass like a remora — I’ve got more dignity than that, for crissakes, and I’m a nobody! Pence’s unctuous sucking up is a tell, IMO.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker:
The beauty of this reporting is that although it may not be headline news for long, it will be mentioned as a side bon mot every single time a discussion of Rex Tillerson is had. It’s not going to simply float away.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
No.
Power is the best repairer of reputations.
Mnemosyne
Giving a malignant narcissist the power of the presidency is like handing a fully automatic weapon to a three-year-old and sending them out in the middle of a crowd.
They knew what Trump was and they thought they could manipulate him, but you cannot manipulate a narcissist except by kissing their ass and being submissive at all times.
catclub
@Calouste: The ranks of generals willing to take a job with Trump has been seriously picked over.
sharl
Your station is a member of the Sinclair Broadcasting chain, I’m guessing?
I would be happy to see Cyrus Vance, Jr. go down in flames, regardless of his party affiliation. His dad was an honorable guy with the courage of his convictions. Maybe the apple rarely falls far from the tree, but sometimes it falls then rolls all the way into the next county, and that appears to be the case with Junior. His very intentional public humiliation and prosecution of a small, honest Chinese-American community bank (Abacus) – done while ignoring much larger and illegal-as-hell banking misdeeds – still pisses me off.
LurkerNoLonger
It’s pretty simple to figure out what’s the truth and what’s a lie involving Trump: Everything he says is a lie, so the opposite of what he says is the truth. Take that tweet for example:
The story is true.
Chris
@T S:
You could’ve just gone with the classic. “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”
catclub
If we are going to ignorantly opine on topics of the day, can we spare a moment for Catalonia and Kurdistan?
What the heck is going to happen there? Which side should we be on? How long will it take to settle out?
(The Lebanese civil war took about 15 years – we are in year 7 of the Syrian version.)
catclub
@LurkerNoLonger: I am not so sure. Trump did not end the statement with ‘Believe Me!’
rikyrah
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES 10/3/17
Congressman’s emotional response to Trump Puerto Rico visit
Rep. Luiz Gutierrez calls Donald Trump’s behavior in Puerto Rico, where he lavished praise on his administration, ‘disgraceful.’
Betty Cracker
OMFG. It’s true — there is a Trump tweet for every occasion.
AnonPhenom
The only way Tillerson leaves is if all possible chances of lifting the sanctions on Putin’s yummy Arctic crude evaporate (2018 elections turn into a Dem wave).
It’s the reason Tillerson is on team Trump.
It’s the reason Putin developed enough balls to back Trump.
Tillerson and Putin’s contempt for Trump stems from the fact that 1) Trump doesn’t realize that he really a puppet and 2) it’s not in their interests at the moment to enlighten him to that fact.
So Tillerson and the rest of the current denizens of the West Wing are left with no choice but to continue fishing Trump’s turds from the Republican Policy Punch Bowl.
They will continue to embrace the suck for the foreseeable future.
trollhattan
@No Drought No More:
Hope he’d say “Yes, I called the moron a moron.”
How’s Exxon stock these days? Is ol’ Rex earning his keep?
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Ooh, nicely played. :-)
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: possible
@Betty Cracker: somewhat more likely
Oh hell yes. Regardless of what the facts behind the scenes were.
Trump doesn’t make a lot of decisions but floating any kind of story in which a subordinate calls him a moron and isn’t hauled off to the Traitor’s Gate and the block would require him to sign off on it.
sukabi
@rikyrah: not just him NJ congresswoman calls his visit disgusting, insulting.
Repatriated
@Betty Cracker: Incident was in July, but came out now. If I had to guess, the tweet undercutting contacts with N. Korea provoked the initial leak (from someone in or aligned with the State Dept. wanting to take Trump down a peg). The followup calls to validate tipped off the WH that the story was out there, and the only control over it they had was timing. The fact that there were multiple sources suggests that they were given permission to leak confirmation.
They may have thought that either they needed a distraction from PR, or that this was the least-damaging time to let it out before it was publicized anyway.
Spanky
Well, dogs lying down with cats, lions lying down with lambs, and now Dana Milbank in the WaPo is calling out the conservative Supremes, line by line?
rikyrah
@AnonPhenom:
I see no lie told
The Secretary of Exxon has 500 BILLION REASONS why he’s still at State.
Brachiator
@catclub:
Who ,knows. There was a time when about the only thing I knew about Catalonia was that Stephen Maturin, the character in the Patrick O’Brian novels, favored Catalan independence.
Has the US taken a formal position on either of these issues? I recall some reporter asking Trump’s opinion when he was doing a press appearance with the king of Spain. But has anything happened since?
There does seem to be something in the air. Catalonia and the Kurds are calling for independence despite the strongest warnings against pursuing this. Could a new vote for Scotland’s independence be far behind?
It’s a good thing that Americans don’t give a shit about anything outside our own borders. Otherwise even Fox News might be worried that the US does not appear to have any foreign policy teams who are providing advice on these hot spots.
Shalimar
It all sounds like a good cop/bad cop routine, except no one told Tillerson the bad cop is supposed to be crazy, not rock dumb.
Leto
@Corner Stone:
We’re waaaaay past the two to three flush territory for most in this administration.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know: Your theory does not comport with my observations of Trump’s nature; I think he’d sooner publicize reports that his wife was caught blowing a Secret Service agent on the portico than see his intellect mocked by an underling in headlines worldwide. But thanks all the same for explaining!
schrodingers_cat
I am so tired of reading about the machinations of the Reality TV President. So I decided to check news in India and this is what I found.
RIP Tom Alter, an Indian actor of US origins had passed away after a short battle with skin cancer. His Hindi/Urdu was impeccable but unfortunately because of his blond blue eyed looks was typecast as the snarling Firang (foreigner),usually a British officer. In his theater career he got to play many varied roles like the great Urdu poet Galib etc.
Alter and Attenborough in Satyajit Ray’s movie Shatranj Ke Khiladi (Chess Players)
Shalimar
@Spanky: Not going to make me look. I already read a disgustingly smarmy Milbank column yesterday just because the synopsis was a point I agreed with. One is my yearly quota.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
You really hate these people, don’t you? (this is not a knock).
Pence wins nothing by standing up to Trump. What would be the point? He doesn’t have to worry about impressing the rubes. But past presidents have put their VPs in a little corner and told them not to do a damn thing unless summoned. Pence wants to be in the room where it happens.
And Trump has clearly made it known that he only wants to hear good things from loyal people. Kinda like this character from The Wiz.
No Bad News
Dignity ain’t in the job description for VP, especially in the Age of Trump.
Mike in NC
Trump made damned sure that he surrounded himself with toadies and sychophants who valued making a buck far more than being loyal to the country. That’s why virtually every day is another disaster and/or scandal.
Why doesn’t he just cut to the chase and fire off a bunch of nukes?
Elie
@Brachiator:
There was some speculation that the “unrest” right now might be stimulated by Russian intervention in these freedom movements. Would not surprise me — is in line with their disruption strategy already observed. — Who knows but as I said, would not surprise me and might be why Trump is saying much about it?
A Ghost To Most
@Shalimar: I still read him. He has improved slightly, now that he doesn’t have the horse race tout Chinchilla egging him on.
Jennifer Rubin is the go-to column in WaPo these days. Watching her walk back from Jenghazi has been illuminating.
Jay C
@Brachiator:
True: both those independence referenda have fairly serious implications for international relations (mostly negative). The Kurdistan one has basically pissed off four well-armed-and-unfraid-to-use-them countries (Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria) – all of whom – in a rare display of Middle-east unanimity – have vowed fundamental opposition to the idea. The Catalonian vote at least, only pissed off one country (Spain), but has serious implications for the EU (the Catalans aren’t the only regional separatists): OK, Europe is a *slightly* more-civilized region than “Kurdistan”, but it’s still hard to see how either situation is going to get resolved with some level of violence/unrest.
And it’s even harder to see how the flailing incompetent Administration we’re currently saddled with can really offer any positive input. Maybe Trump can go to Barcelona and throw them paper towels?
Shalimar
@LurkerNoLonger: Anyone who watched Tillerson knows Trump’s tweet is a lie. Tillerson absolutely did not deny it, he refused to comment on something so trivial. Tillerson isn’t as stupid as Trump, or Pence. He knows there might be audio of him saying it.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
It smells like borscht and vodka to me. ??
Steeplejack (phone)
Turning off MSNBC for a while. The Dotard is on the ground in Las Vegas and going to visit shooting victims in a hospital. No doubt hilarity will ensue.
I will really hate myself if I find out later that I missed Trump hearing a reporter’s shouted question and responding with “No moron! No moron! You’re the moron!”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Brachiator:
Breaking Europe and the ME into squabbling smallish ethnic nation-states and deliberately wrecking largely stable multilateral international organizations in favor of multiple competing and unwieldy bilateral trade agreements brings the world to the sort of zero sum economic and diplomatic thinking that led to the Great War.
I suppose the theory that Wall Street and Putin are operating under is that in such an environment, large multinational corporations and corrupt totalitarian oligarchies become too powerful to be dealt with by law. What they haven’t considered is that only the most conniving mediocrities rise to the top, and being powerful (remember, we’ve disdained democratic norms and every leader is a “great man”), their mistakes in governing and diplomacy get magnified – particularly along ethic lines.
Shalimar
@A Ghost To Most: I do read Rubin now, after retching at her columns during the Romney-worshipping years. She has been terrific since Trump took over the Republican id.
Corner Stone
@Shalimar: No reason to read it. Milbank’s just pointing out the obvious. The R’s on the SCOTUS are inventing reasons not to deal with gerrymandering, D’s are going to vote to intervene and once again we all rest in the palm of swingster Kennedy. His critique is not necessarily very scathing or on point, pretty standard for what we know about Alito and Roberts, by their behavior. Gorsuch is going to be every bit of the R stooge we were convinced he would be.
Amaranthine RBG
@The Moar You Know:
But, but, that bell is ringing — must talk about this …
Starfish
My eyes!
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack (phone): You’ve got to love it when our SecState is in agreement with the leader of NoKo on Trump’s mental state. Maybe that can be a starting ground for peace talks. Trump really is bringing people together, after all!
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Of course Pence doesn’t have any motivation to “stand up to Trump,” but a lot of ground exists between “defiance” and “knob-gobbling.” Joe Biden managed to convey deep personal affection for PBO and wholehearted support for his agenda without slithering around on his belly and licking PBO’s wingtips. Just sayin!
Betty Cracker
@Shalimar: I finally got around to watching the clip, and you’re right. He absolutely did not deny it, ergo, he totally said it.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Assange was up to his ass in the Catalonia issue, from what I’ve read, so we can infer Putin’s preferences from that.
A Ghost To Most
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know about Catalonia, but the drive for Kurdish independence predates Putin.
catclub
@Steeplejack (phone):
Trump wins. This is the mentality that got CNN to cover his empty podium (live!) rather than speeches by Hillary.
trollhattan
O/T Odds that Stephen Paddock’s final gory act might have been in response to massive gambIing debt or a long con finally gone bad have gone up a tad, upon learning his girlfriend has had at least two Social Security numbers and is a bigamist. Maybe they were just fellow travelers or maybe there’s something else. Josh Marshall has a good piece questioning just where the hell he got his money, given he had a smattering of jobs and there’s no detail about his supposedly brilliant real estate investments.
MattF
As for the Tillerson/Trump thing… why, exactly, would either party be unhappy about what’s happening? Trump gets to humiliate Tillerson and humiliation of underlings is, ever and always, What Trump Really Wants. Tillerson gets his opinion of Trump out into the open and isn’t fired for it. Everyone gets what they want.
catclub
@trollhattan: I was leaning toward brain tumor/ very bad diagnosis/prognosis. Another day when I should not read the comments at zerohedge, but probably will.
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker: B Crack, almost 100 comments deep and no one has yet given you the thumbs up on your skilled Title Work?
MattF
@trollhattan: My theory, fwiw, is that Paddock wanted to kill one particular person and hid that killing by killing a few dozen other people at the same time.
Elie
@A Ghost To Most:
Both predate Putin but the exacerbation of tension may have Putin’s hand in it. Of course there may be other influences, but we already know how this fits with his strategy of sowing division and breaking up the sureness of the world order to his advantage…
Corner Stone
@Corner Stone: The Tillerson non-denial is front page on Yahoo! This is going to sting for a while.
NotMax
“I dispute the use of the word moron. Notes from the gathering clearly show I referred to him as a flaming asshole.”
Ruviana
@sharl: Prompted by your observations re: Cyrus Vance Jr. Two words: Andy Cuomo.
A Ghost To Most
@Elie: Seems plausible, but isn’t Putin buddies with Erdogan? If that is the case, why would Putin want to stir up shit with Turkey?
PPCLI
@NotMax: or to paraphrase something John F. Kennedy said about Canadian prime minister Diefenbaker ” I most certainly did not call him a moron at that time. I didn’t know him well enough yet.”
Elie
@MattF:
I’d put it slightly differently. The goal is continued chaos and disruption within our foreign policy leadership team. This while the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It is at least partially by design as Tillerson has failed to fill many positions at State and has been mostly focused on “re-organization”… to me — pure bullshit. Just a reason to twiddle his thumbs. All of this is some sort of Kibuki mix of intentional disruption mixed with actual incompetence. Either way, it is destroying our standing in the world. The old man is doing his job by splitting the domestic population into waring camps – witness how he is treating the Puerto Ricans, the NFL and the whole Charlottesville horror. Our country is moving towards basket state status and the wheels of justice under Moeller’s investigation are moving deliberately but slowly.
PPCLI
@trollhattan: it looks like the bigamist GF story has already been retracted.
Kay
DON’T get mad at me- I’m just the messenger but Democrats are ignoring state races again.
There is some fundamental problem in the Democratic Party re:state races. this is some kind of power struggle that has to be resolved. It’s more than “neglect”- this HAS to be deliberate- and that means someone is hanging on to national $ and power rather than pushing it down.
They are going to lose the next round of governor’s races.
Frankensteinbeck
Pence is less eager to shiv Trump than you think. He believes that he doesn’t have to, because God will strike down Trump and give Pence the presidency he is destined to wield to make this a Christian Nation. Yes, he is that nuts.
Corner Stone
@A Ghost To Most: IMO they are not exactly buddies. I think for Putin it’s a sphere of influence thing and for Erdogan he likes Putin’s dictatorship model and is working that playbook.
A Ghost To Most
@Frankensteinbeck:
He has plenty of company.
Corner Stone
Wife to Husband: You’ve been cheating on me with my sister! I have 12 witnesses!
Husband: I’m not going to deal with this petty stuff.
low-tech cyclist
Yeah, the way Trump contacts his Cabinet secretaries directly to disagree with them.
Like the way he doesn’t make public statements about Sessions failing to prosecute Hillary Clinton, but calls him on the phone, dealing with it privately.
Or like the way he doesn’t publicly diss Tillerson’s attempts to communicate with North Korea, but sorts it out in a private meeting.
Elie
@A Ghost To Most:
These strategic alliances aren’t ever pure…. They are almost always highly conditional to expedient needs. They all play the game. The long game for Putin, however, seems pretty clear and no one seems to have the means to block his strategy. Normally, that would be the US, but he has castrated our power and sowed disruption in our political system. We are hog tied and right now, don’t see a way out of this unless the Republicans change their tune, which I don’t see happening even remotely, so they are on board and apparently accept the new world disorder…
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: who would I contact about this?
Betty Cracker
@MattF: Because the whole world now knows (or has heard it alleged) that Tillerson called Trump a “fucking moron” in a high-level meeting? I think Trump’s towering self-regard hides a bottomless pit of insecurity. He has lashed out in a self-destructive fashion at much less significant slights. I don’t believe for a second he’s happy about this story or would have approved it as a distraction item, even if I believed in the distraction theory, which I don’t. Shitlords, not masterminds.
Gin & Tonic
@catclub:
A day that ends in “y”, in other words.
Elie
@Kay:
What is your evidence of that? Are you hearing complaints from candidates and campaigns or from internal organizational sources? I am down in the weeds with local races and we never hear anything except occasional rumors but please share anything that I could pursue and check out here in WA state. Honestly! I wanna pull my hair out!
PPCLI
@Frankensteinbeck: though I absolutely guarantee you that Pence” has said to many groups of evangelical leaders: “OK, sure, he bragged about sexual assault. But look at what a great leader king David was. Not only did he rape Bathsheba, he arranged the death of her husband first. Trump has never done that. So far as we know. And even if he did – and I’m not saying he did, I’m just saying *if* he did – everyone involved except the dead husband has signed an iron-clad, unbreakable non-disparagement agreement.”
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t know. But most of you are donors. Demand better work. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy. They could just do a bad job. They could be complacent or distant or just bad at their jobs.
There’s something wrong here. They control fewer states that at any time since 1929 or something and they’re solely focusing on the Senate and the House. The organization is broken. The national Party isn’t working right. The whole point is to get people elected- there’s no qualifier- it isn’t get DC people elected.
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
You do not lie. He has his House of Cards Fantasies.
But:
1. He’s up to his eyeballs in the Flynn mess
2. He’s up to his eyeballs in the Comey firing
And, the thought…the mere thought…that Dolt45 would go down WITHOUT TAKING PENCE WITH HIM?
The very definition of DELUSIONAL.
Shalimar
@The Moar You Know: The “moron” incident happened in a room full of high-profile administration officials, NBC confirmed it with 12(!!!!) of them, and Tillerson refused to deny it. What more evidence do you need beyond the audiotape which would have been released if he had said it didn’t happen?
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: Or the articles, too.
ETA: (‘too’? ‘either’? scrap the whole utterance and start over? languaging is hard today)
low-tech cyclist
@Kay:
I don’t see the netroots (or at least the parts I frequent) paying that much attention to the states either.
In less than 5 weeks, Virginia voters will choose a new governor, lt gov, and AG, and all 100 seats in their House of Delegates are up for grabs as well. It’s a great opportunity for Dems to reduce the 66-34 GOP advantage in the House of Delegates in a state that’s voted Dem in the last three Presidential elections. Every now and then you hear something about the race for governor, but not much, and nothing about all the other races.
I’m ready to open my wallet to Dem challengers for House of Delegates, if I have a better way of picking candidates to give to than throwing darts at a board. But right now that’s all I’ve got. I hear a lot about 2018 House races already, but almost nothing about elections next freakin’ month.
PPCLI
@Kay: if the Democrats don’t control more states before the next census, electing people to the house and to state offices will become even harder
Kay
It makes me sad that Russia knew enough to target Wisconsin and Michigan.
Not a proud marker for those states voters, I must say. You feel like such a dope, being manipulated like that
p.a.
@Kay: Kayssandra! Totally agree about short-shrifting state/local. Why? IDK. Maybe not exciting to the Dem’s Big $ Boyz? Where are all those small donors we heard so much about in the Bamz years? Where did their $ go, and where could it go if it continues to flow?
Kay
@low-tech cyclist:
I don’t know what to do about it. Just thinking back to 2006 there was SUCH a focus on states because we had lost the national in 2004. I hope we don’t have to lose Trump’s 2nd term to “get it”
Shalimar
@MattF: Or more than one person, since he picked an event he would have attended in the past and where he most likely had met dozens if not hundreds of the attendees. The most likely explanation for the scope is so he could pick out people who had slighted him in some way.
germy
Kay
@PPCLI:
Well, I see the urgency but I’m helping with the Dem gov primary in Ohio and there’s nothing. That’s just one race. The sec of state is important for national Democrats too.
I’m not seeing any kind of effort at all.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: The support for both those things from the Snowden/Assange/WikiLeaks group says ratfucking by the Putin Cabal. I see a lot of liberals coming down as pro, because they don’t have 2 dimes worth of knowledge on what the fuck is happening over there but “FREEEDOM”. I’m getting tired of us going stupid too.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: MORON LABE
Elie
@Kay:
Again, how and by what evidence are you coming to that conclusion? Not saying you are wrong, but if I am chasing this down, I need some hint on what to question or what level to question… Otherwise I just raise anxiety and discord for ambiguous concerns. Help me out….We cannot afford to blow this. I’ll tell you this, our local races are a challenge in terms of giving candidates for City Councils and School Boards enough dough and manpower assistance. The Republicans are rolling in dough as usual.
JPL
During this administration a lot of shit can occur, when one is away from the news for several hours. Tillerson was right though.
germy
Michelle Obama speaks frankly about the bar getting lower and lower
MattF
@Betty Cracker: That’s rational, but Trump is not a rational person. Trump has an exceedingly narrow window on reality, sees and believes only what he has to and nothing more. He expects to be despised. Watching Tillerson put on the kneepads satisfies Trump’s true desires.
Corner Stone
@MattF: From over 600 yards away and an elevation distance change of +300 feet? Shooting uphill and downhill with that kind of change is difficult, even for someone with a lot of experience.
I personally am curious why it appears he started at or near the stage and didn’t start at the outside and work in.
Corner Stone
@germy: Well, that is at least 1 mark on Kelly’s side of the board.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: They are certainly going to lose in Massachusetts, but I think Massachusetts governor is hopeless at the moment, regardless of what they do–Charlie Baker is popular and even most Ds regard him as not a bad guy. (Democrats continue to control the legislature.)
A Ghost To Most
@Corner Stone: Agreed. From that distance and elevation, and firing on (almost) automatic, hitting one particular person among thousands seems far-fetched. He was going for body count.
trollhattan
@germy: Certainly makes Kelly look like the smartest guy in the room. Rohrabacher is seven kinds of crazy and as we’ve learned, crazy is contagious.
ruemara
@Major Major Major Major: Your state (or in this case, that state’s party chair) And frankly, the people living there. Look, the Dem party is fighting on all fronts. One of my friends is a local and says he is burning out with trying to negotiate with BernieBros who’ve answered the call to serve and fight Dems on every last thing during organization meetings – even when they agree. The people heading state parties are old guard lifers. If they can’t or won’t change, step in and take over. Do the work. So many complain, but so few are willing to put in the time these folks have. They could use new blood, energy and out of the local politics bubble thoughts. If I’m unpartied and can help, so can anyone else. Work outside the parties for things like flippable. There’s always options.
PPCLI
@Kay: Sorry to be unclear. I wasn’t suggesting that this isn’t something you know well. I was just chiming in with another reason to be troubled by what you are seeing.
Betty Cracker
Maybe we should have a thread on state level politics and try to get clarity on who does what. Is the DNC screwing the pooch? Are state parties bungling opportunities?
I’ve been grubbing around in local politics for ages and am a precinct captain in my county organization, but I don’t pretend to understand how it all works at higher levels.
Chris
@Kay:
Yeah, this is a systemic problem. For whatever reason, the Dems have been underestimating the importance of more localized infrastructure forever now.
I think a lot of it is down to who the two parties’ supporters are. A ton of the Republican Party’s institutional support comes from various Big Fish In Little Ponds, whose biggest interest is keeping the federal government, with its greater power and harder to penetrate bureaucracy, out of their fiefdoms so they can continue to rule them. Since every place has its petty tyrants and the GOP has more or less explicitly cast itself as their party, they can go pretty much anywhere in the country and find people, usually with at least some social capital and some local organization in the form of chambers of commerce, megachurches, the local law enforcement community, etc, who’ll be happy to be the building blocs of their local party. The really big money helps (i.e. wealthy institutions like Wall Street or wealthy families like the Kochs), but even without them, you’d still have all these people.
When Democrats were powerful, it was because they had similar local infrastructures of their own (some of which were meant to counter the conservative petty tyrants and some of which were, frankly, our own version of them) that they could similarly count on as the building blocs of their coalitions – labor unions, big city political machines, certain ethnic communities, the entire political bloc that was the Solid South. Republicans understand this and have put a stupendous amount of effort over the last forty years into either co-opting or destroying these (the war on organized labor being one of the biggest versions of this; gerrymandering and vote suppression are as well, as an effort to dilute the power of pro-Democratic ethnic groups as much as possible), with a great deal of success.
And a ton of modern Democratic voters don’t seem the grok the need to rebuild them or something like them. Part of it might come down to the fact that we expect the federal government to do most of the work in politics, which is understandable, but even then, federal actors need to build off of local ones. I think part of it might also come from naivete about/distaste for the nature of politics – the belief that elected officials and public servants are all that matters, and a distaste for the kind of power blocs behind them that ensure continuity or the like. At the party level, I don’t know – but it’s a problem among voters before anything else.
T S
@Chris: True…that would be more directly aimed at the apparent Jedi hypocrisy.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Obama and Biden were partners. There seemed to be a warm bond of affection between them. But even Gore was able to talk back to Clinton, and offer needed stern advice.
But it is pointless to compare a mature, confident human being like Obama to Trump. Trump ain’t got no coherent agenda. And on the personal level, we know absolutely that he demands fawning loyalty. The stronger Pence you want to call for would not survive a Trump presidency and would be swiftly marginalized.
If I were given to conspiracies, I would say that the GOP leadership has instructed Pence to play nice and stay close to Trump, just in case there is some scandal or meltdown that would elevate him to the presidency.
Yeah, Pence could, I suppose, be tougher. But he easily insures that he has Trump supporters on his side by being a total kiss-ass.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay: No we’re not, at least not in NM. It’s the local and state organizations that do the legwork for the state races, which we’re already preparing for.
ETA: I also get tons of fundraising emails from the Democratic Governors’ Association, so there’s focus on winning/retaining governorships on the national level as well. That said, I give my money locally these days.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay: The best way to do something about it is to get involved in one’s own local and state races. Raise awareness in one’s local Democratic Party. In my limited experience, people are highly aware of the need to win locally and eager for the help.
Elie
Organizing a party infrastructure at the local level and building on that is hard work and frequently trial and error with set backs. Like many blue states, WA state (at least western WA) has cities that are markedly blue but the rural areas are red. The fights for national offices have tipped blue because of the population numbers in cities.
In our county, and in our legislative district, we are purplish pink. Our races are hotly contested and the Republicans are well funded and entrenched. Getting solid candidates who can speak from the gut is a big goal of ours. We are in progress and have some good ones but this will be a multi year process
I have no real idea what is going on at the state. We have a Democratic Governor, Jay Inslee who seems popular enough. Have not heard of other legislature candidate issues. We have an opportunity to tip the Senate our way this next election. We have the House.
Again, I am down local and don’t get much info on the workings of the uppers. Do know that there has been some tension between Bernie supporters and the mainstream Dems, but I haven’t learned of any super destructive stuff — everyone knows we better watch out if we get these guys out.
Again, I want to hear what is going on that people know about that I can dig into …
Joe
Maybe Tillerson is hanging around because his signature will be needed on the 25th-Amendment letter.
Corner Stone
AP now reporting the StateDept spokesperson is denying Rex called Trump a moron.
Elie
@Joe:
Its purpose is distraction and ongoing demoralization and degradation of the Dept of State, US foreign policy and standing in the world Its working quite well, sadly.
gvg
@Kay: How did we get to having so few Democratic governor? So few state legislatures? Could it be that the party apparatus hasn’t been that good at winning elections for some years? That’s what I think. Its not new IMO
Mnemosyne
@gvg:
That decline almost precisely maps with the Supreme Court deciding that money is speech and anyone can give unlimited amounts of dark money via SuperPACs.
The Kochs and other unaccountable billionaires started pouring millions of dollars into local and state races so the Republican had $1,000,000 to campaign with while the Democrat had $100,000, at best. And this is the result.
Corner Stone
@gvg: They are much better at negative campaigning than we are. We run ads highlighting the evil that men do – and their voters love them for it. They run ads scare boosting a society run by competent women – and our voters run from us.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: You forgot to blame the Ds.
Mnemosyne
@A Ghost To Most:
Well, sure, but the question was “why now in the middle of battling ISIL?” not why theres a Kurdish independence movement. There’s been one since at least WWII, so that’s why the question is “why right now?”
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Dang, I knew I forgot something. ?
I’m sure there is incompetence and infighting in the DNC and in the state parties. Since Kay is in a mostly red state, the Democrats’ fight is going to be harder and there’s going to be a lot more dissension in the ranks about what needs to be done and which direction to go. That may make the national party reluctant to give money to anyone when it’s not clear who the state party is going to support.
And given that the Russians made sure that longtime party operatives like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, and John Podesta were driven out of the DNC, I’m sure there’s a lot of slack that needs to be picked up there.
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
And let us not forget the shadow thrown on Democrats by that nigra in the White House!
I think during those 8 years the money poured into the Republican coffers AND the culture wars deepened and set up the way for the Trump “Era of Hate and Polarization”…
Most of the Republican governors are reactionaries like Rick Abbott in Texas
Mnemosyne
@Elie:
Absolutely. And the same dark money that went to Republicans was used to create seemingly left-wing “news” sources that poisoned the well against Democrats.
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
The thing is that I STILL don’t think that Democrats know how to counter the cultural/emotional issues that drive Republicans. It is maddening! We are sincere, well prepared, smart but we struggle with how to convey what we are about….. They commandeer the fear and outrage to make even small issues into major stands… We have to find a way and candidates who can deliver that energy…..
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
Also, us blabbering about dark money aint gonna stop it so what can we do? We have to have a counter and so far, its just banging on doors and trying to get good candidates for the many times thankless task of running for office — esp locally if you are a Democrat…. raising money, getting helpers is ball busting work…
O. Felix Culpa
@Mnemosyne:
This. ALEC recently returned to set up in little ol’ Albuquerque. We’re working to negate their influence in the 2018 elections as best we can.
@Elie: We fund raise and we organize. We won several important local and state races in 2016. Dollars can buy a lot, but solid grassroots organizing and getting people to the polls can also be effective.
Elie
@O. Felix Culpa:
Oh I get that (about fund raising and organizing). That is what I do and many who care here on the county level…. Not magic, just hard work but very rewarding. As I was saying upstring Democrats have a chance to flip the State Senate so we are working it. Have a bunch of county and city council races too. We are building….
O. Felix Culpa
@Elie: Wishing you the best of luck! We flipped the State House & retained the State Senate in 2016. We’re aiming to win the governorship next, which is being vacated in 2018. Our excellent Secretary of State is also up for reelection and we want to keep her. She fought the good fight against the evil Trump/Kobach voter info request, where a Repub might have cheerfully handed our data over. Local elections really do matter.
Another Scott
@low-tech cyclist: I’ve been donating here – https://www.crowdpac.com/campaigns/294103/unite-to-flip-virginia-and-the-nation – and to the big 3 races, and supporting a local blog to try to get the word out.
BlueVirginia.us
Some of us are trying, but it’s hard when Donnie and his minions steal all the oxygen…
Cheers,
Scott.