Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

The willow is too close to the house.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Tillerson out

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    PsiFighter37

    McMasters next? I get the sense we are in for a lot of turnover now, since Trump’s idea of success is to make a shitshow of everything.

  2. 2.

    rumpole

    Tillerson just said that it was Russia that poisoned those folks in Britain and that there was no doubt about it. Coincidence?

  3. 3.

    Steve in the ATL

    And the CIA is now run by a woman who ran a black site and later ordered the evidence of the torture three destroyed lest it mark her career. God help us.

  5. 5.

    raven

    Your new CIA Director!

    Gina Cheri Haspel (born October 1, 1956) is an American intelligence officer. She joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1985.[1] In February 2017 she was appointed by President Donald Trump as Deputy Director of the CIA.[1][2][3] She is the “first female career CIA officer” to receive that appointment, although she is the second woman, as Avril Haines had been appointed by Barack Obama in 2013.[4][5] On March 13, 2018, Gina Haspel was nominated to be the Director of the CIA, the first woman to be so.

    Service with CIA[edit]
    Haspel ran a “black site” CIA prison located in Thailand in 2002.[6][7] The site was codenamed “Cat’s Eye” and held suspected al Qaeda members Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah for a time. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture specifies that during their detention at the site they were waterboarded and interrogated using no longer authorized methods.[8][9] Declassified CIA cables specify that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in a month, was sleep deprived, kept in a “large box”, had his head slammed against a wall and he lost his left eye. Zubaydah was deemed, by the CIA interrogators, to not be in possession of any useful intelligence (Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah).[10]

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    Trying to figure out what this means. Pompeo is definitely more of an ideologue and Trump ass-kisser than Tillerson was, so maybe it’s related to the tariff thing? Timing is interesting too.

  10. 10.

    Quinerly

    @Betty Cracker: Timing very interesting indeed. Tillerson’s dad died recently. Tillerson out of the office for a couple of weeks. Was returning from Africa a day early. Arrived back at 4:00AM this morning. Supposedly decision was made Friday to fire him.

  12. 12.

    p.a.

    Ummm… don’t know what this means. Outside of consistent kleptocracy and attacking POC, this misadministration is too anarchic to predict anything, except the continuous ‘hold my beer’ effect. Interesting, though, that the CIA chief gets State at the same time there’s talk of talks with the DPRK. Awaiting the next ‘hold my beer’ moment.

  14. 14.

    japa21

    Both Pompeo and Haspel will need to go through confirmation process again, right? Pompeo hasn’t been a total toady.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @rumpole:

    I noticed the same thing. Timing was interesting. And now, of course, we know why Rexxon Drillerson “took ill” and had to return early from Africa. Well, at least Trump didn’t leave him stranded in Nigeria.

  16. 16.

    CaseyL

    I cry no tears for Tillerson, who oversaw the dismantling of the State Department (and who only took the job in the first place to get Russian oil leases for his old company).

    Pompeo will be a disaster as SoS, and Haspel probably a disaster as CIA Chief… but it’s not like Dolt45 was going to name smart ethical people, so I guess we should be thankful he didn’t replace Tillerson with his golf caddie or Pompeo with the lady who waxes his ass crack.

  17. 17.

    JPL

    I think that Rosenstein made statements of support for the special counsel in order to preempt discussion of Mueller being fired.
    Rosenstein won’t do it, so I assume he’ll be fired soon, and replaced soon.

  18. 18.

    different-church-lady

    Maybe he thinks this is still The Apprentice and the goal is to shrink the cabinet down to one victor.

  19. 19.

    ewrunning

    Appears that Tillerson was told on Friday, i.e., while he was visiting s***hole countries.

  21. 21.

    MomSense

    Didn’t Pimpeo recently meet with the heads of the three Russian intelligence agencies? Job interview? We only knew about that meeting because it was on Russian State TV

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @CaseyL:

    the lady who waxes his ass crack

    A mental image I don’t need first thing in the morning. Or, really, any time.

  23. 23.

    jimmiraybob

    @CaseyL:

    I guess we should be thankful he didn’t replace Tillerson with his golf caddie or Pompeo with the lady who waxes his ass crack.

    We’ve got 21/2 years to go. They’re working down the list.

  24. 24.

    different-church-lady

    @JPL: Can Trump actually fire Rosenstein directly? Wouldn’t he need to get Sessions to do it, or replace Sessions with someone who won’t recurse themselves who will then fire Meuller?

  26. 26.

    randy khan

    Not that I think Pompeo will be good, but he probably has a better idea of what State actually does than Tillerson, so perhaps there’s some hope that he won’t continue hollowing it out.

  28. 28.

    Coffee at dawn ☕

    Ugh, not just a teabagger, but a teabagger from the failed state of Kansas. And Haspel, the torturer.

  29. 29.

    different-church-lady

    Ah, here we are:

    Tillerson warns US still vulnerable to Russian meddling

  30. 30.

    Betty Cracker

    @japa21: Pompeo hasn’t been a total toady? The only non-toady moment I can recall was when he was pressed on the IC’s conclusion about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he agreed that Russia had interfered, but even Trump has done that when cornered.

  31. 31.

    JPL

    @different-church-lady: There was an article from last month indicating that he can, although he might have to answer questions about why. Paul Ryan would simply say it’s unhelpful and not bother with questions.

  33. 33.

    bluefoot

    When does the Saturday Night Massacre start?
    With any other administration, impeachment proceedings would have started months ago.

  34. 34.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Quinerly:

    President’s “body man” also leaving.

    Do you mean Keith Schiller or someone else? Schiller, his long-serving bodyguard, left several weeks ago (yes, I realize “bodyguard” and “body man” are not the same — just hadn’t heard of this particular departure).

  35. 35.

    MomSense

    I’m getting my mass demonstration preparedness checklist out. Time to be ready for action.

  37. 37.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: Hi MomSense. Is that something you could post a link to? After the past few days, I think we might be nearing that point, too.

  40. 40.

    ewrunning

    Now an official statement from the Department, Undersecretary Steve Goldstein, indicating Tillerson had not intended to leave and never heard from Trump about his departure.

  46. 46.

    jonas

    @raven: Ugh. Not that this is surprising, though. John Brennan may be tweeting and saying the right things about Trump now, but on his watch under Obama, his Job Nr. 1 was to make sure no-one in the CIA was ever held accountable for anything done during the early years of the War on Terror (including himself), so here we are, with people like Haspel now running the place. And there are plenty more where she came from. Of course under Trump “participated in documented war crimes” is an asset, rather than a liability.

  48. 48.

    Steve in the ATL

    @LAO: I am, though I’ve actually spent more time in the Bay Area than in Atlanta this year!

  49. 49.

    waspuppet

    @rumpole: No. There is no coincidence. And in other non-coincidence news, Devin Nunes shuts down the Russia probe the first House business day after Britain reveals that the poisoning was a Russian job — i.e., the first House business day after it was revealed that if you don’t do what Russia says they will find you and hurt you wherever you are. Just saying.

  52. 52.

    MomSense

    Tom Cotton said he knew about Tillerson before trump’s Tweet which means he knew before Rex.

  54. 54.

    Sheila in NC

    @waspuppet: also the day that Isikoff’s and Corn’s book has come out documenting the Russian involvement in the election and their support for Trump.

  56. 56.

    No Drought No More

    Although he intentionally overstated the case by 45% or so, Mitt Romney’s “47% philosophy” is one shared by none other than Vladimir Putin. It’s little wonder, then, why congressional republicans have chosen to honor and protect Putin from retaliation, that is, by betraying their own country and oaths of office in the process. They are immoral, cold blooded scum, ALL of whom currently, and after great deliberation, aid and abet a mortal enemy of American democracy, every hour of every day. Some will later profess to be shocked and surprised when Trump falls, and his crimes exposed. Don’t believe them, because they won’t be.

    That congressional republicans have proved themselves traitors to The United States will also simplify the campaign strategies of democratic candidates everywhere.

    “So what if they’re Russians?” Putin said of the people named in last month’s indictment. “There are 146 million Russians. So what? … I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. … They do not represent the interests of the Russian state.”

  59. 59.

    No Drought No More

    C.I.A. guy Phillip Mudd: “The [congressional republicans] responsibility was not to represent party, Democrat or Republican, but to represent people”.

    It’s disingenuous of Phil- to say the least- to profess surprise that congressional republicans mean it when they say, “corporations are people too, my friend”.

  61. 61.

    TenguPhule

    @No Drought No More:

    That congressional republicans have proved themselves traitors to The United States will also simplify the campaign strategies of democratic candidates everywhere.

    Firing squad or Noose?

  62. 62.

    patrick II

    @Quinerly:

    Tillerson was returning from Africa

    I am surprised they let him fly home on a government plane. That’s not like Trump.

  63. 63.

    Bookeater (formerly JosieJ)

    @waspuppet:

    Not that I necessarily disagree with you, but if Devin Nunes is only just realizing that now, he’s even denser than he looks.

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