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You are here: Home / Useful Idiot, a Picture Story Featuring Chris Cillizza

Reader Interactions

158Comments

  1. 1.

    Jerzy Russian

    Christ, what an asshole!

    I love how my phone has “asshole” in the autocorrect menu.

  2. 2.

    Chyron HR

    “63 million members of the white working master race can’t be wrong. Period.”

  3. 3.

    NCSteve

    I remember back when I was able to think that David Broder was the worst thing the WaPo ever inflicted on the world of journalism.

  4. 4.

    Mike R

    Can he really be this obtuse or is it an act to secure a position as village idiot?

  5. 5.

    Gravenstone

    The fact that Cilliza has anything resembling a public career following his never ending trail of idiotic pronouncements and ‘hot takes’ is one of life’s more glaring mistakes.

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gravenstone: Well, he has never been “inconveniently right.” He is always at one with the conventional wisdom even when it is wrong.

  8. 8.

    gene108

    Women are weak. Men are strong.

    I’m not seeing the issue here, regarding how Hillary’s and Donald’s health was covered in the 2016 campaign.

    //what a lot of Americans are thinking.

  9. 9.

    SFAW

    @Gravenstone:

    The fact that Cilliza has anything resembling a public career following his never ending trail of idiotic pronouncements and ‘hot takes’ is one of life’s more glaring mistakes.

    Fortunately, there’s no such thing as White Privilege, or to be more accurate, White Moron Privilege, right?

  10. 10.

    gene108

    @LAO:

    I don’t follow Twitter*. What did he do?

    * I tried, but I never could get the hang of it.

  13. 13.

    MomSense

    @LAO:

    Oh god. What did he do this time?

    I had such a beautiful time at the symphony last night that I’ve been trying to avoid him so I can enjoy the good feelings.

  14. 14.

    Bobby Thomson

    That Cilizza still has a job is proof that many more idiots exist in positions of power.

  15. 15.

    Jerzy Russian

    @LAO: What did he tweet? That being asked, the answer to your question is “yes, I will be feeling sick about those tweets once I see them.”

  18. 18.

    Yarrow

    @LAO: I avoid looking at his tweets. What specifically are you talking about that he tweeted?

    I’m surprised that Chris Cillizza hasn’t yet been accused of sexual harassment or assault or something along those lines. His sexist comments made me think he’d be an obvious candidate for such behavior.

  20. 20.

    JPL

    Tapper used to visit the site once and awhile, and hopefully he’ll see this post.
    John, pictures tell a thousand words.

  23. 23.

    rikyrah

    You go and attack a man in a Wheelchair who was minding his own business, and they died….
    You are described as a ‘ Decorated Marine Sniper’.

    Uh huh
    Uh huh
    Look how they buried the CRIME in the story. Why isn’t the CRIME the lead of this story?
    WHITE PRIVILEGE, that’s why.
    ……………………………………..
    Chesterfield man charged in fatal assault of elderly Richmond man was decorated Marine sniper
    By MARK BOWES AND ALI ROCKETT Richmond Times-Dispatch

    A Chesterfield County man charged with attacking two senior citizens in Richmond, killing one of them, was a decorated Marine and scout sniper who testified last year during his sentencing in a firearm case that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and physical injuries that have left him disabled.

    Michael Kevin McReynolds, 43, who police say assaulted the two South Richmond men without any apparent provocation, served in the 1990s and was “highly recommended for re-enlistment” after he was honorably discharged as a sergeant, according to military records in one of his court files in Chesterfield Circuit Court.

    ………………………………………

    Police said that after first knocking 62-year-old Melton Leon Tucker unconscious, McReynolds found Johnny Battle, an 80-year-old in a wheelchair, in the backyard of his nearby home in the 3100 block of Decatur Street.

    Battle was knocked out of his wheelchair and beaten severely, a law enforcement source said, and he died Monday. Two witnesses said the assailant yelled racial epithets and tried to escape in Battle’s car, but it wouldn’t start.

    “He just cold-cocked [Tucker] for no reason,” said Raymond Hudson, a neighbor who witnessed the assault on the first victim. “He drew back and sucker-punched him while Tucker was looking away.”

  29. 29.

    JPL

    @LAO: MSM will cover it, until they are interrupted by the next outrage. I’ll give Trump an A plus for changing the news subject, while the rest of us stayed curled up in a fetal position.

  30. 30.

    rikyrah

    Trump Lawyers Lack Security Clearances
    May 2, 2018 at 9:41 am EDT

    President Trump’s current team of lawyers lacks the security clearances needed to discuss sensitive issues related to a possible presidential interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

    Trump’s former lead lawyer John Dowd had been the only member of the president’s personal legal team with a security clearance… When Dowd quit in March over disagreements with Trump on legal strategy, Jay Sekulow became the lead lawyer on the investigation and is still waiting for his clearance.

  31. 31.

    SFAW

    @LAO:

    I expect Republican disapproval will level out at “furrowed brow.”

    And ZEGS will blame it on the rising tide of moral relativism from the lie-berals, and chuckle softly.

  32. 32.

    jonas

    @Mike R:

    Can he really be this obtuse or is it an act to secure a position as village idiot?

    He’s already their king.

  34. 34.

    MattF

    @LAO: Hm. He’s turning up the bluster, bullshit, and bullying a notch or two. Not unexpected, given that’s the full range of his behavioral repertoire. I’ll note that Rosenstein and Mueller and, I guess, Sessions, have had ample opportunity to prepare. Interesting times.

  36. 36.

    alhutch

    Rikyrah – This story follows the thread of yours posted above (Marine sniper problems):

    Ex-UFC fighter, Marine Corps sniper accused of sexually abusing girl in his jiu jitsu class | OregonLive.com https://goo.gl/5KKdd1

    He also killed an unarmed man in a road rage incident back in 2014, yet is still roaming our streets. Very hard to understand how that can be.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    I love that part. That’s there a written record, written by them, and they think no one will ever know :)

    They’re as crazy as Trump. It’s a match made in heaven.

  39. 39.

    rikyrah

    .@MichelleObama will be joined by 8,000 students, and celebrities including Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, @RebelWilson, @JussieSmollett, @jessetyler, @KELLYROWLAND, @Zendaya, and @jameernelson at Temple University today https://t.co/a1CzSNavY8 #CollegeSigningDay pic.twitter.com/7TaPTwEs6t

    — Action News on 6abc (@6abc) May 2, 2018

  40. 40.

    JPL

    Trump started his tweeter day by saying he was busy negotiating with No Korea over nuclear war, and it went down hill from there.

  41. 41.

    gene108

    @LAO: @JPL:

    Nothing can be done unless we can have Democrats take over Congress in November. I guess just get our marching shoes ready, incase we need to take to the streets before then.

  42. 42.

    kd bart

    A total self unaware hack. Should be hit upside the head. It may loosen a clue in that so called brain.

  43. 43.

    MattF

    I believe that Cillizza has been spontaneously excreted from the ranks of creditable journalists and opinion-mongers. He hasn’t yet gotten to the ‘need to spend more time with my loved ones’ stage, but it must be tempting.

  45. 45.

    Timurid

    @LAO:

    The Ukrainians would be fools to do that. The definition of “penny wise, pound foolish.” If they help Trump, they’re also helping their enemy Russia win the long game. Whatever tactical advantage they can gain with those missiles is totally not worth it.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    I love the doctor story. The thugs went in and ransacked his office. Utterly lawless individuals, and they run the whole country.

    I suppose he should be grateful. At least he was spared the threats in the supermarket parking lot.

    Why did they need “the records”? We all know they’re invented bullshit. The doctor says it, and he signed them!

  48. 48.

    brendancalling

    Chris Cillizza lives to punch down.

    A few months ago, I tweeted something along the lines of “can we just light Chris Cillizza on fire already?”. He highlighted it in his feed and said something about how shocked he was that someone could say such a thing. I actually wound up sort of apologizing, because right after I tweeted it, the news came in about the guy who threatened to shoot up CNN headquarters.

    A few days ago, that amazing deadspin article came out, and he has had NOTHING to say about the suggestion that “the whole American society would benefit greatly by Chris Cillizza being fired out of a large cannon into an even larger cliff face.” Because THAT guy has a platform and a lot of people read it.

    Always punching down. Oh, and I retracted my apology and post paragraphs from that piece on his feed almost every single day.

  49. 49.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @JPL:

    I’ll give Trump an A plus for changing the news subject, while the rest of us stayed curled up in a fetal position.

    What the fuck died in your wheaties this morning?

  50. 50.

    rikyrah

    Ukraine Stopped Cooperating With the Mueller Investigation to Appease Trump
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    May 2, 2018

    A theme that keeps cropping up lately is the way that people who have to deal with Donald Trump—be they foreign governments, congressional Republicans or White House staff—have to deal with his narcissism. To recap, Richard Greene wrote that they have one of two bad choices.

    There are only two ways to deal with someone with [Narcissistic Personality Disorder], and they are both dangerous. There is no healthy way of interacting with someone with this affliction. If you criticize them they will lash out at you and if they have a great deal of power, that can be consequential. If you compliment them it only acts to increase the delusional and grandiose reality the sufferer has created, causing him to be even more reliant on constant and endless compliments and unwavering support.

    That is what comes to mind when I read this bit of a bombshell from Andrew Kramer:

    In the United States, Paul J. Manafort is facing prosecution on charges of money laundering and financial fraud stemming from his decade of work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

    But in Ukraine, where officials are wary of offending President Trump, not so much. There, four meandering cases that involve Mr. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, have been effectively frozen by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor.

    The cases are just too sensitive for a government deeply reliant on United States financial and military aid, and keenly aware of Mr. Trump’s distaste for the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into possible collusion between Russia and his campaign, some lawmakers say.

  51. 51.

    MattF

    @Kay: I think the doctor feels– threatened. And, from Trump’s point of view that’s the desired outcome. I’d like to see Trump’s actual medical test results, but that’s mere idle curiousity.

  52. 52.

    gene108

    @rikyrah:

    While tall, about 6 feet 1 inch tall, and thick boned, Tucker is 62 years old and walks with a limp. He said he’d been drinking Saturday, as he was when a reporter spoke to him Tuesday about the incident.

    Found this description of Tucker, one of the victims, interesting. He’s a big guy, who’d been drinking and therefore maybe not the most up-and-up victim.

    I think in earlier years, I might have just glossed over a paragraph like that.

  53. 53.

    rikyrah

    House Freedom Caucus Writes Articles of Impeachment Against Rosenstein
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    May 1, 2018

    For a while now I have been suggesting that the initial step Trump will likely take in an attempt to shut down the Mueller investigation is to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosesnstein, who is the Justice Department official overseeing the probe after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself.

    House Republicans like Rep. Devin Nunes, who chairs the intelligence committee, have been hounding Rosenstein to release documents related to the investigation and threatening to impeach him if they are not produced. In each instance, the deputy attorney general has found a way to eventually comply.

    None of that seems to matter to the members of the House Freedom Caucus (HFC).

    Conservative House allies of President Trump have drafted articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the ongoing special counsel probe, setting up a possible GOP showdown over the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election…Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a Trump confidant — finalized the draft in recent days.

  54. 54.

    Shantanu Saha

    Chris Cillizza is a walking, talking example that Affirmative Action (for below average white men) works.

  56. 56.

    rikyrah

    Both Parties Didn’t Give Us Trump
    Blaming Trump’s rise on partisan gridlock masks just how ruthlessly the GOP set the stage for his demagoguery.

    by Gilad Edelman
    April 26, 2018

    It may be a dark time for liberal democracy, but it has been a banner year for books about liberal democracy—and the peril it’s in. In our new issue, Rick Valelly reviews books by Yascha Mounk (The People vs. Democracy) and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (How Democracies Die), each of which sounds an ominous warning about the trajectory of the American experiment.

    In Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy, Bill Galston strikes a slightly less panicked tone. “Liberal democracy is fragile, constantly threatened, and always in need of repair,” he writes. “But liberal democracy is also strong, because, to a greater extent than any other political form, it harbors the power of self-correction.” This admonition doubles as a useful reminder of why we should care about liberal democracy in the first place.

    Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is also helpfully clear on what populism is. (The right-wing kind, anyway. He doesn’t address the tradition of American progressive populism.) Following the work of Jan-Werner Müller, Galston rejects the idea that the word is merely a label for whatever elites don’t like. Rather, he writes, it “is a form of politics that reflects distinctive theoretical commitments and generates its own political practice.” Populist leaders insist that they alone speak for a mythically homogeneous and morally pure group known as “the people,” whose interests are defined in opposition to some group of “enemies of the people”—typically political or economic elites and immigrants or ethnic minorities. Populism is thus fundamentally illiberal, because it takes aim at the liberties and institutions—courts, the free press, minority protections—that serve as a check against pure majority domination.

    Sound familiar? Galston gives over a chapter of the book to the rise of populism in Europe, but the focus of his analysis is on the conditions that made the Donald Trump disaster possible and how better federal policy can get us out of it. The rise of Trump, he argues, stems primarily from a mix of economic concerns and resentment toward immigrants and cultural elites. The solution, then, is for elites to stop being such snobs, and to adopt economic policy that spreads growth more equitably and immigration reforms that acknowledge white Americans’ understandable (in Galston’s view) concern over cultural displacement and national identity.

  58. 58.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @rikyrah:
    Apparently Fascist Caucus asssholes like Mark Meadows aren’t afraid of getting shot, as that report from TPM on why many Republicans have been retiring before the mid-terms suggested.

  59. 59.

    No Drought No More

    The same breed of cats exactly like Cillizza from a bygone era mercilessly attacked George McGovern in equal measure, too. The flag those half-wits flew under being emblazoned with the motto, “acid, amnesty, and abortion”.

  60. 60.

    MomSense

    @gene108:

    We have to protect the vote. Conventional Wisdom considers Scott Walker to be on the more sane end of the GOP spectrum and look at how he attempted to prevent the special elections.

  61. 61.

    rikyrah

    The Status Anxiety of White Evangelicals
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    April 24, 2018

    White evangelical support for Donald Trump is at an all-time high and perhaps no one expresses the attraction better than Douglas MacKinnon in an victim-drenched article titled, “How long will I be allowed to remain a Christian?

    Recognizing that, Olga Khazan wrote that “status anxiety” is what drove the election of Donald Trump.

    [Diana] Mutz examined voters whose incomes declined, or didn’t increase much, or who lost their jobs, or who were concerned about expenses, or who thought they had been personally hurt by trade. None of those things motivated people to switch from voting for Obama in 2012 to supporting Trump in 2016…

    Meanwhile, a few things did correlate with support for Trump: a voter’s desire for their group to be dominant, as well as how much they disagreed with Clinton’s views on trade and China. Trump supporters were also more likely than Clinton voters to feel that “the American way of life is threatened,” and that high-status groups, like men, Christians, and whites, are discriminated against.

    What are we to make of this when, as MacKinnon himself acknowledged, Christians are still a majority in this country? Here’s how Mutz described what is happening:

    “For the first time since Europeans arrived in this country,” Mutz notes, “white Americans are being told that they will soon be a minority race.”When members of a historically dominant group feel threatened, she explains, they go through some interesting psychological twists and turns to make themselves feel okay again. First, they get nostalgic and try to protect the status quo however they can. They defend their own group (“all lives matter”), they start behaving in more traditional ways, and they start to feel more negatively toward other groups.

  63. 63.

    Yarrow

    @rikyrah: Rosenstein doesn’t seem very concerned about the idiot Freedom Caucus.

    Asked about reports that the House Freedom Caucus had drafted articles of impeachment against Rosenstein, he says he doesn't have anything to say about documents that people don't have the "courage" to put their name on. "The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted."— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) May 1, 2018

  64. 64.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @JPL:
    Do you honestly think Trump would have the audacity to order that millions of protestors be shot or that their would be troops or police willing to follow him over that cliff? I don’t.

  65. 65.

    rikyrah

    Trump’s Direct Assault on Native American Tribal Sovereignty
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    April 24, 201

    Much has been made of Donald Trump’s history of racist statements about African Americans and Latinos. We’ve heard a lot less about his overt racism against Native Americans. But that was a key issue back in the 1990s when Trump used racist tactics against Native American casinos.

    When Trump began clashing with Native American tribes, the stakes for him were huge. He had benefited from Atlantic City’s near-monopoly on East Coast gambling until a change in federal law in 1988 opened the door to more tribal casinos. Trump owned two casinos and opened a third in 1990. In the early 1990s, just as the casinos were emerging from bankruptcy, federal lawmakers were working out how to regulate the fledgling Indian gaming industry

    …………………………………………………..

    And yet the most alarming thing we’ve seen from the Trump administration might still be in its infancy stages. Recently HHS has approved the right of states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. Native Americans have traditionally been exempted from those kinds of requirements. Now the Trump administration has suggested that they will no longer allow that to continue. It is their reasoning on that decision that is monumental.

    The Trump administration contends the tribes are a race rather than separate governments, and exempting them from Medicaid work rules — which have been approved in three states and are being sought by at least 10 others — would be illegal preferential treatment. “HHS believes that such an exemption would raise constitutional and federal civil rights law concerns,” according to a review by administration lawyers…

    The tribes insist that any claim of “racial preference” is moot because they’re constitutionally protected as separate governments, dating back to treaties hammered out by President George Washington and reaffirmed in recent decades under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, including the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

    In other words, the Trump administration could be moving in the direction of overturning this country’s treaties with Native American tribes that have existed from our founding as a country. While it is true that the federal government has a horrible track record of abiding by those treaties, no president has ever established policy in direct contradiction to tribal sovereignty.

  67. 67.

    Yarrow

    @MattF: Of course Paul Ryan is fine with it. Paul Ryan is a traitor and hopes he can keep himself from going to prison. Nope.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @MattF:

    The doctor is an enabler who rode the lies until they stopped benefitting the doctor. I do think it’s (still) illegal to force your way onto private property however, so I would assume the President’s employees should be charged with something.

  69. 69.

    catclub

    @LAO:

    I expect Mueller will be fired (after Rosenstein’s fired) by the end of the week.

    I expected Trump to not have enough endurance for the race and drop out sometime after he got the nomination. Did not quite work out that way.

    Two day limit on predictions at least makes it easy to check on.

  70. 70.

    SFAW

    @JPL:

    If he fires Mueller, you can be assured that we are moving towards a fascist regime. I actually felt pretty good this morning though.

    But according to Very Serious Republicans in the Senate and House, Shitgibbon would not do that, because …. veeblefetzer.

  71. 71.

    NotMax

    Documenting the quote marks before they are changed. From Wikipedia:

    Christopher Michael “Chris” Cillizza (/sɪˈlɪzə/; born February 20, 1976) is an American “journalist” and political commentator for CNN.
    [snip]
    Cillizza also goes by the nickname, Lace, due primarily to his delicate sensibilities.

  72. 72.

    JPL

    This is pretty neat.

    APNEWSALERT: Black men arrested at Starbucks settle with Philadelphia for $1 each and a city pledge of $200K for young entrepreneurs.

  74. 74.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    In addition, I have read/heard that in New York State, original medical records are the property of the physician, not the patient, although the patient has a right to copies.

  76. 76.

    catclub

    @rikyrah: Quel surprise. I wonder if Trump knows that one of Obama’s best legacies was getting the US government to doing better by Native Americans – and he has to reverse that – or just instinct?

  77. 77.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @JPL: and @LAO:

    Be prepared because he is setting up reasoning for ridding himself of the pesky investigation.

    I expect Mueller will be fired (after Rosenstein’s fired) by the end of the week.

    This time for sure!

  78. 78.

    guachi

    Huh. I’m actually older than Cillizza. I always assumed I was younger. Now I have even less sympathy for him.

  79. 79.

    LAO

    @Betty Cracker: Trump is creating the pretext for firing Rosenstein, which will then allow him to appoint someone who will fire Mueller. (I figured you were being rhetorical, but you know).

  80. 80.

    Amir Khalid

    If your employer finds out that you faked a doctor’s certification about your health when you applied for the job — that’s essentially what Bornstein asserts Trump did — they have cause to fire you, as I understand these things. Shouldn’t someone be investigating this?

  81. 81.

    Yarrow

    @Frankensteinbeck: It is kind of funny, isn’t it? People keep predicting Mueller will be fired (after Rosenstein) and it just doesn’t happen. It may happen at some point but it hasn’t yet.

  83. 83.

    JPL

    @LAO:

    The House Republican duo targeting senior leaders at the Justice Department have a new demand for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein: They want to see an unredacted copy of the memo he sent to whom detailing the scope of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
    The same lawmakers are also demanding a new disclosure from Attorney General Jeff Sessions: They want to know whether he was involved in the decision to raid the personal attorney of President Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, according to a letter sent last week.

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/politics/jeff-session-justice-department-house-conservatives/index.html

  84. 84.

    catclub

    @NotMax: I was wondering if that top quote qualifies as ‘blind pig finds an acorn’ or ‘stopped clock right twice a day’
    I need to keep my similies/metaphors in order.

  85. 85.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Yarrow:
    It’s not impossible. I can’t predict when or if because I don’t know what the thing is that’s blocking him. Everything the leaks in the WH want you to think stops him keeps changing, but he never does it. But if it does happen, people who predict it will only be right in a stopped clock sense. It’s been, what, a year of nonstop predictions that this is it, this is the thing that signals Trump is about to fire Mueller?

  86. 86.

    LAO

    @Frankensteinbeck: I get that you are doing the whole “boy who cries wolf thing” but Trump’s tweets and Rosenstein’s statement last night, demonstrate, IMO, that the pressure on Trump has risen in recent days and the actions of the House Republicans (preparing the articles if impeachment) are empowering him. I hope that I am wrong.

  87. 87.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: I can’t bring myself to create an account at FoxNews but the operative question isn’t how long he can remain a Christian, but how long it will take him to recognize that he never was a Christian. Basically, many people but especially a certain number of people living in the South turned the idea of Christianity upside down in order not to engage in any moral reckoning over civil rights. They’ve been running from what Christ taught ever since.

  88. 88.

    rikyrah

    So it turns out that @docusearch has been impersonating people in an effort to illegally obtain their bank acct information, including bank balances. This is criminal conduct and also subjects them to huge civil liability. If you have info, please share.

    — Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 2, 2018

  89. 89.

    Yarrow

    @Amir Khalid: Trump was elected, he didn’t lie on an application, so no, no one will do anything.

    The doctor who signed a piece of paper full of lies about Trump’s health will be the one investigated. The doctor is in violation of his medical license by signing such a letter. I expect some sort of lawsuit against Trump from him, along with the robbery one, that claims intimidation and threats were ongoing. He knows he is in violation by signing such a dumb letter and giving interviews at the time, so he needs to protect his license by showing it happened under duress. He’s using the media to start that process.

  90. 90.

    jl

    I’m trying to decide which slogan best describe Cillizza:
    Ride the wavelet
    Win the Minute

    they don’t really capture it, and i am dissatisfied.

    What we need is a snappy phrase for a person who habitually jumps on the back of the nearest passing turnip truck and then immediately falls off the other side.

  91. 91.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @LAO:

    Trump’s tweets and Rosenstein’s statement last night, demonstrate, IMO, that the pressure on Trump has risen in recent days and the actions of the House Republicans (preparing the articles if impeachment) are empowering him.

    There has been a signal like this weekly, if not daily, for the whole year. It’s always something. Besides those House idiots have been doing this for ages. It’s not actually new. They’re the conservative nutball grandstanders squad.

  92. 92.

    Mandalay

    @Cacti: Ugh. I had supported Bernie Sanders until he didn’t want to talk about his taxes, at which point he instantly became dead to me.

    Same goes for Nixon. I now hope she gets shamed and humiliated. Fuck her.

  94. 94.

    MattF

    @LAO: I agree that the whole mess is nearing a cliff. I’ve been relying on Trump’s cowardice and incompetence, and that’s worked so far. But, as Stein’s Law says, if something can’t go on forever, it will stop.

  96. 96.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    Really. People are prematurely freaking out, one of them a lawyer no less who should probably know better.

    ETA: Not saying it couldn’t happen, just that it never seems to so I’m sceptical.

  98. 98.

    Yarrow

    @Frankensteinbeck: Yep. I agree we don’t know what’s stopping him and he may fire Rosenstein at some point. But yeah, it’s been a long time of people saying he would fire Mueller and he hasn’t. It could happen, though.

    @LAO: I agree with you that the pressure has risen. We knew this would happen as Mueller got closer to Trump. He’s freaking out and it’s going to get worse. In some ways it doesn’t matter because the wheels are in motion, but the longer Mueller stays in his job the better. I’m sure some of Trump’s lawyers are telling him that firing Mueller is a bad idea, but Trump isn’t the best client.

    I don’t tend to worry about it too much because there’s nothing I can do about it. At the moment I watch what happens and am prepared to act with phone calls to Congress and protests.

  100. 100.

    Amir Khalid

    @Yarrow:
    So Bornstein is now having to fight to keep his medical licence. That seems just. But Trump, who instigated this deception and ultimately benefited from it, gets to skate? I should hope not. Should the Democratic party win either house of Congress, I would expect them to investigate this with a view to impeachment.

  101. 101.

    LAO

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:

    one of them a lawyer no less who should probably know better.

    I’m going guess that you’re talking about me. I’m not really freaking out, I’m pissed. So I’ll accept “prematurely pissed” as a description. Here’s the thing, I’ve spent 20 years as a federal criminal defense attorney and I’ve watched the Media get everything wrong about how a federal criminal investigation progresses (and don’t get me started on how stupid twitter is). Since I believe Trump will never submit to an interview and he’ll never appear before a grand jury, there is nothing left for him to do but fire Mueller at some point. I think we are reaching that point. I would love to be wrong. I want to be wrong. I’m not sure that I am wrong,

  103. 103.

    LAO

    @JPL: It’s tonight, I’m working on my best behavior — will report back if fisticuffs ensue.

  105. 105.

    MomSense

    @LAO:

    This is the worst game of chicken ever especially since it seems like the cars have extra passengers. Bibi Netanyahu is riding shotgun, Kim Jong-Un is lying in the back of the station wagon without a seatbelt, and the rest of us are watching in horror.

  108. 108.

    No Drought No More

    David Corn of Mother Jones flagged this tweet* today: “This is a chilling reminder that the tradition of Justice Department independence is just that — a tradition. It’s not enshrined in law. Trump has power, and he can use it”.

    Which put me in mind of something Keith Richards noted in his autobiography (titled Life). Richards wrote of Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein: “”Klein was a lawyer manqué; he loved the letter of the law and loved the fact that justice and the law had nothing to do with each other; it was a game for him”. Life; pg. 288

    * I’ll never be old enough not to feel a bit silly typing, much less using in everyday conversation, the verb ‘tweet’. “I tot I saw a pussy cat” and Sylvester have a lot to do with my attitude, no doubt.

  112. 112.

    germy

    Two black men arrested for sitting at a Philadelphia Starbucks without ordering anything have settled with the city for a symbolic $1 each and a promise from officials to set up a $200,000 program for young entrepreneurs.
    https://t.co/demMyplHWE— The Associated Press (@AP) May 2, 2018

  119. 119.

    catclub

    @JPL:

    Ty Cobb is out and Emmet Flood is in, according to the NYTimes.

    Why don’t they give Curt Flood a shot? “They called me every name but a child of God.”

  122. 122.

    schrodingers_cat

    Firing Mueller is going to precipitate a constitutional crisis. Rs will try to brazen it out of course but no one can predict right now that the outcome will be a favorable one for the current President. We know what the President wants and he is powerful. We don’t know what will happen and neither does he.
    He is unpopular despite what the toadies of the Rs would have us believe by interviewing his fan base over and over again.

  125. 125.

    VeniceRiley

    @JPL:

    Ty Cobb is out and Emmet Flood is in, according to the NYTimes

    He wants to fire Mueller but can’t, so he fires his own lawyers. I’m going to miss Cobb’s epic ‘stache.

  128. 128.

    NotMax

    @JPL

    Pace Warhol: “In the future, everyone will be the President’s lawyer for 15 minutes.”

  129. 129.

    lollipopguild

    @No Drought No More: “It was a game to him” This is the big problem for this whole country now. We have way too many people in this country, in politics, in law , in the media, to whom life is simply “a game”. They are not getting hurt(yet) so they watch and enjoy and cheer on the players.

  130. 130.

    Puddinhead

    @jl: I think his MO is to constantly remind himself that there’s no “unclick” function in the internet as his fingers shoot diarrhea onto his keyboard. That’s all the guy lives for, right? So, his catchphrase should perhaps be “Remember, there’s no unclick.”

  131. 131.

    Ruckus

    @kd bart:
    He’s not unaware. He is a conservative asshole who gets paid to write bullshit.
    Your clue X 4 won’t help. Him. Might do the rest of the world a solid.

  133. 133.

    The Moar You Know

    Should we really care about these lawyer musical chairs? I have no idea who these people are and what these departures mean if anything.

    @schrodingers_cat: They are very meaningful. Lawyers don’t just up and quit cases, not even if they’re going to lose. I suspect one big thing and a few small things are going on:

    The biggie: They are not getting paid. This is the only reason any of the lawyers I know would bail on a case or client.
    2. Their client is insane enough and unpleasant enough to make the whole exercise not worth their time or the money. This can happen but it’s very rare. Lawyers are usually horrendous people themselves, and are used to jerks.
    3. Their client refuses to take their advice and is probably being a real dickhead about it.

  136. 136.

    Joyce H

    @Amir Khalid:

    So Bornstein is now having to fight to keep his medical licence. That seems just. But Trump, who instigated this deception and ultimately benefited from it, gets to skate? I should hope not. Should the Democratic party win either house of Congress, I would expect them to investigate this with a view to impeachment.

    I don’t think enough attention is being paid to the part of the doctor’s interview where he said that the intruders took Trump’s records and the records for the pseudonyms Trump used. I don’t know if the doctor has any legal exposure there, seems like a lot of celebrities get treatment under pseudonyms, but the issue with Trump really raises questions. Not only do we still not have a reliable report on Trump’s health, but we now know that he had or has some medical condition or conditions that he felt the need to receive testings and/or treatments for under more than one pseudonym. What were those conditions? What was the treatment? Were prescription medications involved and is Trump still taking them?

    Also – who was the third individual involved in the office raid? Weird enough to send a White House employee along with a doctor from a private business, but who WAS that other guy?

  137. 137.

    sukabi

    @Bobby Thomson: when Bloody Bill Krystal starts making sense, someone has to take up the cause of being wrong / bad.

    There are a lot of people holding influential positions as journalists that can’t actually define the word, let alone do the actual job. Instead they’ve turned the job into something they are capable of doing…gossip column courtesans.

  138. 138.

    But her emails!!!

    @Cacti:

    Aspiring progressive savior Cynthia Nixon is following the example of Wilmer and Trump by not releasing her tax returns.

    Color me shocked.

    If you read the article, it’s stated by a consultant that she plans on releasing them soon…so perhaps you’re a bit premature about your pronouncement.

  140. 140.

    Ruckus

    @gene108:
    So now everyone has to stay sober so as not to be guilty of having some asswipe assualt them?
    Sorry, there is nothing wrong with drinking. I no longer partake, but that’s a personal decision, not a legal position. The victim here shouldn’t have to be sober not to be assualted.

  143. 143.

    MattF

    @The Moar You Know: My guess is that Rudy Giuliani is having a say in how Trump’s defense is organized. Bear in mind that Trump’s judgements about hiring are– um, a disaster in progress– so Rudy has an opportunity right now to fix a few things quickly, before Trump notices that someone beneath him is making decisions.

  146. 146.

    Manyakitty

    @Kay: I want to know why he decided to come out with the info about the raid/robbery now.

  150. 150.

    Cacti

    @But her emails!!!:

    If you read the article, it’s stated by a consultant that she plans on releasing them soon…so perhaps you’re a bit premature about your pronouncement.

    Where have I heard that before?

  151. 151.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @rikyrah:

    no one expresses the attraction better than Douglas MacKinnon in an victim-drenched article titled, “How long will I be allowed to remain a Christian?

    He’s not one now. He worships Mammon and Moloch. Why is he worried?

  154. 154.

    Mnemosyne

    @sukabi:

    Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin are smart enough to realize that supporting anti-Semites will not end well for Jewish conservatives. That’s about it.

    @Ruckus:

    I think that what gene108 meant was that, until Black Lives Matter started pointing this stuff out, he wouldn’t have noticed the difference in the way the victim (heavy drinker!) is portrayed in the media compared to the murderer (decorated Marine with PTSD!)

  156. 156.

    patrick II

    Chris,
    If what you say and write has absolutely no effect on the election or candidates, why do you exist?

  157. 157.

    sukabi

    @Kay: it’s not the Bullshit records they wanted. It’s the records that have his actual drug history and actual ailments recorded they wanted… Propecia, plus all the different kinds of speed he’s been on…his probably failed treatment for syphilis….and the multiple cranial-analectomies.

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