To the surprise of no one:
Ironically, Trump is probably most pissed off about the North Korean foreign minister calling Pence a “dummy,” which is perfectly true. Let’s just hope the orange fart cloud focuses on golf or staring at someone’s boobs instead of avenging his toady.
Oh well. At least we have a coin immortalizing two of the most absurd hairdos to ever adorn the noggins of a pair of nuclear-armed, narcissistic rage-bots.
Joe Falco
But but what about the commemorative coin?!
D58826
That letter sounds like one I would write to tell a merchant that I was dissatisfied with his product, I was returning said product and would not be doing business with him again.
otmar
I can’t help it, but that text reads like it was written by the Onion.
D58826
@Joe Falco: well with some bad luck they might go down in history alone with the 1948 ‘Dewy Wins’ headline
arrieve
Even when his staff is (presumably) dictating the letter for him, he sounds like an idiot. “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me.”
It sounds like a teenager on Facebook.
jeffreyw
They’ll be melted down to reclaim the zinc.
Roger Moore
Nobody could have predicted this, except for all the people who did. I guess Stephen Miller can stop thinking about how to get hatred of the other into Trump’s Nobel acceptance speech.
germy
@Joe Falco:
It’ll be even more valuable! Like owning a “Dewey Defeats Truman” newspaper, or the Beatles’ “Butcher Boy” album cover.
EDIT: And D58826 beat me to the gag.
chopper
so trump is upset that another world leader is angry and tossing around insults. makes sense.
Elizabelle
Quel surprise.
The midterms cannot come soon enough. Get some accountability in there.
I don’t think we as a country can stand having this unqualified liar in office for a full term. Maybe not the world either.
Come on Mueller. But we personally need to reach out to infrequent voters and register new ones; make sure they have all the photo ID they will need. Got to have something to do in the long months ahead.
MattF
On the other hand, NK refrained from quoting George Will’s characterization of Pence as a ‘grovelling lickspittle’. So, there’s some restraint there.
retiredeng
Time for a Nobel Booby Prize to be created just for Trump.
germy
@D58826:
“I’d like to speak to the manager.”
germy
“Ours are so massive I pray they never have to be used.”
Platonailedit
Well, it always a coin toss.
JPL
haha Pompeo is reading the letter out loud, and it is even worse when spoken aloud.
Cheryl Rofer
Early random thoughts:
This is actually a good thing, if Bolton doesn’t use it to declare war on North Korea. There were too many things that could go wrong with a Nobel-Prize-seeking president* encountering one of the world’s worst dictators over nuclear weapons.
Trump will say that this shows what a good negotiator he is. He is always going on about walking away from a deal.
The letter reads (to me) as if someone with rudimentary diplomatic skills wrote a draft and Donald had to put his own stamp on it.
There are American journalists in North Korea for the destruction of the nuclear testing site, which is reported to have taken place. Not a good time to dis the dictatorial leader, although it will probably turn out all right, because Kim Jong Un is playing the role of adult in the room.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Trump has got to go down in flames. If this incompetent fraud skates I will just break down and cry.
schrodingers_cat
Chicken little chickened out.
Halcyon
Um, where is this from, though, and why am I not seeing it anywhere else?
ETA: Oh, wait, I guess there it is for real. My bad!
Elizabelle
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: He will go down in flames. I hope sooner, rather than later.
We just have to limit the damage to what’s good when he does.
I want the dirty politicians and consultants and dirty media to go down with him too. They are a direct threat to our democracy, more than North Korea could ever pose.
germy
And that little shit wanted to be president?
Steeplejack
Just seeing Trump’s fat, Sharpie-scrawled signature drives me into a rage now. Grr!
Ohio Mom
@Cheryl Rofer: In this age of satellites that can photograph car license plates, do we really need reporters on the ground to witness the destruction of the test site? I’d rather no more potential American (or anybody else) hostages.
rikyrah
@Joe Falco:
But but what about the commemorative coin?!
HOLLERING!!
Chief Oshkosh
The truly pathetic thing is that the Trumpeters are touting this as a negotiating tactic. “It’s called ‘walking away from the table,’ you libtards. Watch and learn.”
Uh, OK, Einstein. What happens next? Un crawls back on his knees begging forgiveness for …?
Elizabelle
@Halcyon: NPR reported on it at the top of the hour. They read the line about “tremendous anger and open hostility” aloud.
rikyrah
@MattF:
BUT, you had some big NK official calling out Pence…they were right, but I still thought it was humorous.
randy khan
Honestly, it’s good news. The summit was not going to go well.
Elizabelle
@Cheryl Rofer: Agreed.
Trump is at the middle of the end now, I would guess. He can lie all he wants to the ignorant among us. His problems are not going away, and he is not suitable for office.
rikyrah
@germy:
UH HUH
UH HUH
Never forget that muthaphucka’s ‘LISTENING TOUR’, when he’s trying to bullshyt you that they didn’t know what Cambridge Analytica was doing. He knew EXACTLY what they were doing, and planned to do the same.
Cheryl Rofer
@Ohio Mom: It was a PR move for North Korea. And I would have gone if I had been invited.
germy
Bolton’s mustache twitches with anticipation.
smintheus
@D58826: It sounds more like the letter that a ne’er do well would write to a merchant after being told he was being banned from the premises.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
you could play trump vocab bingo with that: wonderful, beautiful, tremendous, sad…
“We were informed the meeting was requested by North Korea, but that to us is totally irrelevant.”
That was a sentence he insisted on.
randy khan
@otmar:
That’s nicer than what I was thinking.
Cermet
No agreement would in any manner or form undo the progress the North has made nor removed the hydrogen bombs and ICBM’s; those boats sailed long ago thanks to bush-wack and his puppet master, bloody hands cheney. The orange fart cloud could only get meaningless agreements that provide valuable stuff to the North – so, this is as close to a win as we could currently hope for.
Platonailedit
I bet the rest of the world sides with the NK on this. The little shit played the big shit rather easily.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: Its like one of Betty C’s chickens danced all over the page. No penmanship, its like he never received an education.
NorthLeft12
After Deadbeat Donald had the statement of the DPRK Foreign Minister read to him by one of his lickspittle lackeys, I think he realized he was in way over his head with these guys.
Some might call it cowardice, but I’ll give credit to the Orange dumbass that he was clever enough to pull out now before he was humiliated on the world stage……..again. Bigly!
randy khan
@Cheryl Rofer:
“Rudimentary diplomatic skills” might be an overstatement. Certainly no career diplomat was involved.
smintheus
@Steeplejack: Trump can’t even color between the lines.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Snooze Hour has done several self serving interviews with Force Book. What has surprised me about the devolution of America is how eager the press corpse has been to get in bed with Fascists.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Elizabelle: Don’t toy with me like this! I fear he’s going to totter away free.
different-church-lady
Where’s your Peace Prize nooooooooooow?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Pool Boys are on it!
I would say that certainly is a bubble of thought. You can almost see it float for a few yards and then pop at contact with a leaf, or a twig. When I saw that tweeted I assumed it was Mike Allen.
LAO
hahahahaha:
different-church-lady
@arrieve: Really, there’s nothing more painful than dialogue buildup.
schrodingers_cat
From the most admired nation to the laughing stock of the world.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What did America get, except egg on its face.
Brachiator
Trump is a coward. He is afraid to negotiate deals with strong world leaders. Spread the word.
MattF
@NorthLeft12: One could certainly call it cowardice– but leaving town after the big show fails is a basic part of a con artist’s game. In this case, Donald is now motivated to fire everyone involved in order to distract attention from his own failure.
VOR
@Cheryl Rofer: Fucking scary that Kim Jong-Un can be called the adult in the room. Accurate, but frightening. “a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me.”? English teachers everywhere are groaning aloud.
The Ancient Randonnuer
@germy:
:
I miss Tom from MySpace.
dmsilev
Maybe Trump will send Pence to the DMZ to glower threateningly across the border again. Surely that will do the trick.
Stan
I agree this is good news. Anything trump was going to agree to would have been a disaster so, keeping the status quo is much safer.
Of course the letter sounds like it was written by a child because…..he is one.
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): What are you guys seeing that makes you think Trump is going to get away scott free? Corner Stone was all heated up last night.
The Kushner clearance? Who knows what’s up with that? Perhaps people are reading too much into that one?
dmsilev
@MattF: If we’re lucky, he’ll fire Bolton. Of course, I’m sure he’d manage somehow to find someone who is worse as a replacement.
LAO
@dmsilev: We should be so lucky.
No Drought No More
The one and only concern of Donald Trump in 2018, exclusive of all else, is how to keep his sorry ass out of prison. Or, as the “glass half full” crowd would have it, to keep his sorry ass from dangling from a hangman’s noose). Nothing else in the world matters to him. Absolutely nothing.
(Sung to the tune of Eric Burdon’s song War: “Trump, What is he good for? Absolutely nothing”).
MattF
@dmsilev: Hmm. Satan?
CliosFanBoy ne woodrowfan
@Ohio Mom: what they need to see is underground. It’s like trying to see if the subway repairs are proceeded from above ground.
randy khan
It’s worth noting that this letter was released the same day as Kim’s little “destroy our test site” event. You know which one of them looks better when you put the two things side by side.
Yarrow
What are they going to do with all those coins they made specially for the summit?
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Well all the cool kids at Balloon Juice know how things are going to turn out. They are convinced that the Republican Reich is going to last a 1000 years.
boatboy_srq
@D58826: To Lord Dampnut everything is retail or real estate.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
Toddler writing on the wall with a crayon.
bemused
@Joe Falco:
It goes on sale at a drastically reduced price, they create an uncommemorative replacement coin or they pretend it never existed. I go with option three.
jonas
Wow. Did NOT see that coming. Who knew that agreeing to a summit with no real understanding of the stakes or having a framework agreement in place first would only lead to a humiliating backdown like this? *rolls eyes into next county*
Oh well, there’s always next year’s Nobel ceremony…
mozzerb
@retiredeng: The Nobel Participation Trophy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yup, he bestrides the world like a bigly respected and not-laughed-at Colossus
MattF
@jonas: And Trump demands a Participation Award. Or he’ll sue.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat:
Follow the money. Look who owns them and what their motivations are. Individual reporters may be good but if the boss and owners say, “No, don’t investigate that story” or “We don’t frame things like that” or “We don’t ask those questions” they either go along or quit their jobs. Newspapers are disappearing and local news stations are being swallowed up by corporations. There aren’t a lot of other places for them to go if they want to make a living doing as reporters.
None of that excuses their choices, but it is the environment they work in.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Elizabelle: I think Trump himself directed the Kushner clearance.
My fear that Trump will skate comes from watching previous administrations skate on various crimes. Even Nixon was allowed to just leave office. But after W, we just “looked forward.” There’s a lot of deference to the president, partly because of the role and partly because he represents a lot of voters whose choice we on democratic principle respect. And of course, Trump has skated on everything his whole life.
I hope I’m wrong. I have a lot of faith in Mueller.
El Caganer
@germy: No that is just one of the rodents that nest there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Mueller and state AGs. All the focus is on New York, but I can’t imagine that they haven’t left a trail of fraud wherever they’ve done business, CA, NJ. Who knows, the UK and Ireland?
MJS
@otmar: Yep, I thought it was a parody. God help us all.
HeleninEire
LOL. That is all.
clay
You can tell which parts were insisted upon by Trump:
Citing something that clearly bothers him, and then saying it doesn’t matter is a standard Trump tick.
Yeah, there’s no doubt he insisted upon this exact phrasing.
Incoherent and nonsensical enough to only come from Trump. Only their dialogue matters?!?!! What the everlovin’ fuck? Their personal dialogue is what matters THE LEAST!
Since Trump only knows, like, three adjectives, this one is him.
Setting aside the clunky, middle school-esque wording, uh… what? Trump just canceled; now he wants KJU to un-cancel? Does he think… oh, forget it.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Well, the bigly news is that Donald Tяump is now in the running for the Nobel Giving Up Prize.
Cheryl Rofer
MUST TAKE KITTEHS OUT! NAOW!
Josie
@Yarrow: Makes a major in journalism a rather poor choice at this point, doesn’t it.
Steeplejack
@VOR:
If you’re talking about “between you and me,” that is actually correct.
This is something that grinds my gears on the writing for high-toned TV shows. A supposedly super smart character—looking at you, Sherlock on Elementary, but I see it somewhere practically every night—will say something like: “But there was another photograph of she and I that showed conclusively . . .”
You wouldn’t say, “There was another picture of I.” You would say, “There was a picture of me.” So you would say, “There was another picture of her and me.”
But years of somehow getting the idea that “I” is always better than “me” have caused people to tie themselves in knots.
On the other hand, if you weren’t talking about “between you and me,” never mind.
MattF
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): For Kushner’s clearance, just consider that Trump himself has a clearance.
germy
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So no communication with our ally SK before he wrote the letter? What an imbecile.
But you knew that.
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: He’s afraid to negotiate deals with weak world leaders. Kim, who’s hardly an influential figure, is drinking tRump’s milkshake; imagine what a strong opponent would be able to – oh, right, that already happened and that’s how we got Lord Dampnut in the first place.
MattF
@Steeplejack: Yeah, it’s called ‘hyper-correction’. But it’s not actually wrong, either– grammatical case matters, except when it doesn’t.
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): He is not going to skate. He is going to prison. The entire GOP is a criminal organization and those who orchestrated it and participated in it will pay. Mueller is rolling them up like a crime family and it’s going to get really chaotic as the investigation closes in.
Jim, Foolish Literalist is right that state AGs are involved and state charges are going to be part of this whole thing and not just in NY. Do not forget that our allies’ intelligence communities are a big part of the reason why we know what we know. They picked up a lot of this criminal activity. So much happening behind the scenes that we don’t hear about or only get glimpses of, and even then you have to be reading certain news sources. It’s a massive criminal and traitorous enterprise and it is global in scale. When it all finally comes out it will be shocking.
mad citizen
“War” was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for Motown in 1969. Edwin Starr on vocals. I’ve maybe heard an Eric Burdon version, but I think the Motown version was the hit/classic.
clay
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
That’s what I’ve suspected. I think Adam said a while back that a President has ultimate authority on granting clearances. But Trump had been deferring to the IC’s judgment on this. Well, over the past few months, Trump has been deferring less and less, like a T-Rex testing the different parts of the electric fence.
Mnemosyne
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
We’ve been “looking forward” for a hell of a lot longer than that. HW Bush should have been impeached for his role in Iran/Contra, but Congress let him just pardon the biggest conspirators and life went on.
germy
Steeplejack
@No Drought No More:
“War”? Edwin Starr, please.
Although Eric Burdon did an album or two with the group War.
Aleta
“I am breaking up with YOU.”
and reposting:
Preemptive Break Up
Chyron HR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Join the club.
Jeffro
It must be tough to be Obama right now, knowing in your heart of hearts that you could tweet a pic of yourself holding your Nobel Prize, w/ just the faintest of grins, and cause Orange Crash to stroke out in 30 seconds…
MJS
By definition,”hostages” are illegally captured individuals held to extract something from someone. So Trump is labeling the end of an illegal act as “a beautiful gesture that was very much appreciated”. What a complete fucking idiot.
germy
@Jeffro: Wait til Obama gets his Emmy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: I think it was Charlie Pierce who a few years ago traced it back to Ford’s pardon of Nixon. Even Molly Ivins, who was often a north star for me, especially with stuff I was too young to remember or have a reasonable opinion on, thought it was the right thing, but who knows.
I don’t like to go too far back. When people say, on the tubes, “this is all because of Bork!”, I have to walk away breathe mindfully.
Immanentize
@Steeplejack:
Ah yes.
“I dreamt that I was in a Hollywood movie….”
Just One More Canuck
@VOR: Millions of English teachers cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced
raven
@Steeplejack: One of the best show I have seen in Athens was War!
randy khan
@Steeplejack:
The whole letter is a writing disaster, grammar aside.
Brachiator
@Cheryl Rofer:
Trump is the ultimate bullshitter. “Walking away from a deal” is the kind of slimy shit that dishonest used car salesmen pull. You know they want to make a deal. They want your money.
There is no point in bragging about how you can walk away from a deal if you have previously been talking about what a great guy the North Korean leader is and how you know great things will come out of the summit? Trump doesn’t know what he is doing, and instead tries to distract the rubes with irrelevant comparisons of foreign policy and whatever it is that Trump used to do.
Again, I wonder what kind of advice Trump is getting, and if somebody with foreign policy smarts was actually able to convince Trump to back off.
Trump is such a distraction that I don’t know what Kim is doing. Where does he go from here? Continued negotiations with South Korea?
The nuclear test site may have been damaged and is of no further use to Kim. And he’s still got his nukes. And we don’t have his response to Trump’s cancellation.
chopper
@JPL:
maybe if it had music behind it, like in a ken burns film.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You and us both, buddy.
VOR
@Steeplejack: I am very much not an English teacher. I don’t think “I” should always be used instead of “me”. But in this case “you and I” reads better to my ears than “you and me”, especially in a diplomatic letter between two world leaders. However the overall letter is true to Trump’s normal mangled syntax.
The Trump Administration has been plagued by mis-spellings and other grammatical mistakes. Samantha Bee last night pointed to the “White Hose”. Then there was “Air Force Once”. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43957756
Jeffro
@germy: Shoot, he already has a Grammy…a TIME “Person of the Year”…a Nobel…what else is there? He probably has a great chili recipe – he should submit that at the next cookoff he can get to.
I think he’s angling to take over for Morgan Freeman as Narrator-Of-All-Things in a few years. How great would that be, hearing his voice narrating every third commercial, every other documentary, and so on? Wingers would be keeling over like they’d contracted Instant Ebola.
Immanentize
@raven: With or without Eric Burden? Did that show go on for hours? They were know for long sets….
/S/ Mr. Jealous
Jeffro
@chopper: “We Are the Champions”?
Wait…doesn’t he always play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” at his nazi rallies? Go with that one, Trumpov.
Jeffro
@Brachiator:
Probably yes on the continued negotiations. “SK, you know we don’t want to invade (or nuke!) you…we just want to stay in power, freeload off of China, and get these dang Americans out of here. Send them away and let’s keep flirting!”
My guess is we’ll be back at creative insults from NK in about 3, 2, 1…meanwhile, in Wingnutistan, Trumpov is a great negotiator for “walking away from the table”. Ooo-kay. I just hope he doesn’t decide to press the US military right up to NK’s borders/airspace to ‘show them who’s really in charge’. That could get really ugly really quick…
TheDr
@Jeffro: And right on cue, it looks like there will be an opening for Narrator-Of-All-Things pretty soon too….
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/24/entertainment/morgan-freeman-accusations/index.html
chopper
@Brachiator:
and trump has made it very clear that he needs this deal to happen for his own credibility during an election year where his party is looking at some pretty huge losses.
cynthia ackerman
@schrodingers_cat:
The signature and his trademark handshake are of a piece: garish, bullying, inappropriate, and mainly projecting insecurity.
Same could be said for his body language, and so much else.
And those are his good parts …
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): A nation can learn. Painfully, and with a lot of foot-dragging.
People will be in the street if Trump is pardoned. You cannot have a criminal in the Oval Office, self-dealing and corrupt and grifting like Trump. You cannot have a president (this one is illegitimate, but …) who makes no pretense of governing in the interest of all citizens, not just the ones who (stupidly, cravenly) voted for him.
I hope they nail Trump’s tiny balls to the wall, and everyone who conspired with him. Those who took illegal contributions.
I am not in favor of capital punishment, but I personally would volunteer to execute Mitch McConnell for all that he has done over the years.
If they can prove that Paul Ryan and others took foreign money or did anything else corrupt to steal elections, or prevent free and fair ones, his ass should be in prison too. For a long time.
Roy Cohn has no place in our government. Kill it dead.
And don’t let the wealthy — who have committed these crimes — get away with a two-tier justice system.
Our democracy depends on it.
Go Nurnberg on these criminals’ a$$$es. Hard.
Steeplejack
@randy khan:
You’ll get no argument from me. But I couldn’t resist the teed-up opportunity to vent and not have it sound completely irrelevant. Win-win!
Miss Bianca
@VOR: at least he didn’t say, “between you and I.”
ETA: I see that Steeplejack got there first. Way to go, SJ!
chopper
@Jeffro:
worst. ramen. ever.
Aleta
@Yarrow: Besides their skyrocketing value as erroneous collectables…I can picture them clustered decoratively on the wall of a deteriorating golf clubroom in some sinkhole-infested investment opportunity.
Steeplejack
@raven:
I saw them somewhere back in the day (Mobile, maybe?), and they were fantastic.
rikyrah
Clapper Russia assessment calls Trump legitimacy into question
Rachel Maddow puts into perspective former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s assertion that Donald Trump is only in office because Russia put him there, and what that means to current political events.
rikyrah
Morgan Freeman accused of inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment by several women
POSTED 11:12 AM, MAY 24, 2018, BY CNN WIRE
HOLLYWOOD — A young production assistant thought she had landed the job of her dreams when, in the summer of 2015, she started work on “Going In Style,” a bank heist comedy starring Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin.
But the job quickly devolved into several months of harassment, she told CNN. She alleges that Freeman subjected her to unwanted touching and comments about her figure and clothing on a near-daily basis. Freeman would rest his hand on her lower back or rub her lower back, she said.
In one incident, she said, Freeman “kept trying to lift up my skirt and asking if I was wearing underwear.” He never successfully lifted her skirt, she said — he would touch it and try to lift it, she would move away, and then he’d try again. Eventually, she said, “Alan [Arkin] made a comment telling him to stop. Morgan got freaked out and didn’t know what to say.”
Freeman’s alleged inappropriate behavior was not limited to that one movie set, according to other sources who spoke to CNN. A woman who was a senior member of the production staff of the movie “Now You See Me” in 2012 told CNN that Freeman sexually harassed her and her female assistant on numerous occasions by making comments about their bodies
Brachiator
@MattF:
Problem is, Trump can’t leave town, because he’s the president.
Oooh. Good point. He may not fire anybody, but he probably will find a convenient scapegoat to yell at.
Jeffro
@TheDr: Well hey…there you go.
Wingnuts will no doubt demand that the Freeman narrate-everything job be held open until the next election. So that the voters can decide.
rikyrah
Schiff: DoJ briefing of Trump Russia source to include Gang of 8
Congressman Adam Schiff tells Rachel Maddow that he has been informed by an intelligence official that the DoJ briefing on the United States’ investigation of the Russian contacts made by members of Donald Trump’s campaign will include the bipartisan Gang of 8 so as not to be a partisan Republican exercise.
rikyrah
Breaking: Schiff expects Gang of 8 inclusion in DoJ briefing
Rachel Maddow recaps breaking news that Rep. Adam Schiff has been informed by a cabinet member that the Gang of 8 will be included in the DoJ’s briefing on how the United States investigated contacts by the Donald Trump campaign with Russian intelligence, raising the possibility of conflicting expectations of what will occur.
randy khan
@Cheryl Rofer:
So, a story about walking out of a negotiation:
Many years ago, I saw something at an antique shop that I liked. I wasn’t sure what I ought to be willing to pay, so I asked my wife (actually my girlfriend at the time) what a good price would be, since she knew more about that particular kind of thing than I did. She gave me a number. I started the usual dance with the dealer, but he wasn’t willing to go down to the price my wife gave me. So I said thanks but no thanks and started to walk out of the shop. (This was all very cordial.) The dealer caved.
As we were leaving, my wife asked me what had happened. I told her, at which point she told me that by “good price” she’d meant the best price I could hope to pay, not what I should be willing to pay.
The point of this story is not that it’s good to walk away, but that ignorant people sometimes get lucky. I don’t think that’s the way to play international arms negotiations.
Jeffro
@chopper: great with a refreshing cola, though…(h/t TRANSMETROPOLITAN by Warren Ellis)
rikyrah
History highlights Trump’s failure on Russian election outreach
Rachel Maddow tells the story of how Adlai Stevenson, acting for the good of the country, not only rejected overtures of the Soviet Union to assist his presidential campaign but told his political rival, President Eisenhower about the matter.
Aleta
@germy: Could win the UR The Puppet Prize.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
Morgan Freeman has just been accused of inappropriate sexual advances by “women” in the plural. Goddammit.
rikyrah
Trump lacks American democratic value enforced by past presidents
Russian interest in influencing American elections is not a new thing, but Donald Trump’s failure to uphold the basic American value of rejecting such an offer has no precedent in history, Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian explains.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Sometimes I look at the crazy men running the world and feel like we’re back in the age of absolute inherited monarchs, and boys in their teens and early twenties became kings and jumped into wars. Because what else would you expect if that’s who your rulers were?
Platonailedit
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@otmar:
Yes, the bit when Trump boasts about the size of his arsenal, how the personal dialog between Trump and Kim only matters, just so insecure. It’s like a guy breaking up with a girlfriend after she dumped him.
Elizabelle
Joe Biden speaking live right now, on abuse of power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEc8QVGDi-A
Platonailedit
Brachiator
@VOR:
No, “you and me” is correct, but the language is unnecessarily contorted.
we were starting a wonderful dialog
we were building a constructive relationship
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I took comfort in learning that the freeloading 30-year old in upstate NY thinks that that millennials are liberals. He’s conservative, so he has concluded he cannot be a millennial.
Now we have to get our young liberals to vote and march and hopefully won’t lose too many to Saint Bernie’s ratfucking of the Democratic party. Which is the natural home for liberals and moderates.
schrodingers_cat
@Platonailedit: The Rs and that includes the President can only destroy, not build. They are nihilists not conservatives. They are not trying to conserve, they are trying to destroy.
Platonailedit
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yes, you can almost see the back in forth between the writer and Trump over the need to not just lash out the way it goes
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
“I look very much forward…”
Sounds like bot-speak to me.
randy khan
@Brachiator:
It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
dr z
This is an astonishingly bad writing – both in substance and style. Unbelievable.
Brachiator
@Platonailedit:
So, you’re telling me that Trump’s preferred technique is to use the withdrawal method?
Platonailedit
Villago Delenda Est
Dense is a dolt. He always has been.
Brachiator
@randy khan:
Here’s looking at you, Kim.
burnspbesq
@Joe Falco:
Melt ‘em down and re-use the metal. Or give them to children in sub-Saharan Africa, like the t-shirts commemorating the victory of the team that loses the Super Bowl (t-shirts for both teams are manufactured well in advance of the game).
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: Apparently not when it comes to sexual intercourse, if a $1.3 million hush money payout is for what we think it’s for, and I think that we all do suspect that.
The Moar You Know
@clay: Trump doesn’t have to defer to anyone on this. Sadly, that is the law. Trump IS the source of all classification. If he says so, Kushner can get a TS, SCI, Q, or all of them together. That he has deferred at all to the IC and let Kushner’s clearance get downgraded is interesting. He certainly knew he did not have to.
Enough Kremlinology for today. I’m tired of these people and we still have 972 days of them left to deal with.
burnspbesq
@SiubhanDuinne:
Power corrupts.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: Every last one of his appointees needs to be subjected to this.
nonynony
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Be prepared to cry then. My prediction is that he loses the election in 2020 and goes back to being a reality TV star. Being president will immunize him from a lot of stuff as long as he doesn’t travel internationally.
We don’t go after presidents in this country because our system of government can’t handle it. Look at Nixon – sure he resigned in disgrace but he resigned. He was never prosecuted and was able to live out his miserable life to the age of 81. Reagan didn’t have to even do that dance. Our political structure just doesn’t allow for it – the first president that is thrown in jail after being booted out of office will likely mark the end of the whole country because our system of government isn’t robust enough to be able to handle the distinction between jailing people who committed crimes in office and jailing political opponents after they lose an election. (And you can bet your sweet bippy that the first time the Republicans get the chance, they would get revenge. They didn’t waste much time finding a Democrat to impeach after Nixon left office once they had the Congress, and they won’t waste time finding a Democrat to throw in jail if Trump gets jailed either.)
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes. And Gorsuch has to go.
Elizabelle
@nonynony: Nothing ever changes. We still have slavery. Women cannot vote.
Kay
You stop at five, because by five the child knows it’s bullshit so it becomes embarrassing for both of you.
Lapassionara
@rikyrah: I don’t think rejecting foreign help in an election is just an American value. I am pretty sure it is against the law.
I wish pundits would point out that fact more often.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Ha! Well played.
ET
I have a feeling that tRump is most pissed because it won’t provide him with press opportunities that make him look like the Bid Deal Maker .
Platonailedit
Not that it was ever going be easy, now the mustachioed war mongerer’s bomb, bomb Iran and/or North Korea wet dream came to a premature end.
Cheryl Rofer
@Steeplejack: YASSS!
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: I think you may have just won the Internets for the day.
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
We have advance a little bit. A number of the crappy rulers are women. Theresa May and deposed South Korean leader Park Geun-hye come to mind.
Peale
@nonynony: Trey Gody would like you to hold his beer.
The Moar You Know
@nonynony: Thank you. I’m finding the level of wishful thinking around these parts pretty intolerable. The only legal mechanism for removing Trump from office is not available, wholly because Dem voters didn’t do their job and show up because of reasons I still don’t understand. Or care to understand.
As far as jailing the orange sack of shit, your reasoning is, sadly, solid. I hadn’t really thought that through. There’s no extant democracy that can survive the jailing of an elected leader, the few that have or are, are enjoying the simple pleasures of armed civil war.
(You can remove said leader from power and that seems to go OK, but jailing them seems a step to far, for some reason)
burnspbesq
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
FWIW, Cambridge Analytica’s bankruptcy petition lists the attorneys general of NY, NJ, and CT, and the SEC, as unsecured creditors.
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@Brachiator: “Let us go there, you and me,
When the evening is comatose beneath a tree
Like a pronoun suffering from case dysphoria.”
Cheryl Rofer
@Brachiator:
I felt a slight tremor of that in the first paragraph. Although it could be Bolton, preparing for war.
JPL
@The Moar You Know: Would it be appropriate in that case to leave banana peals around.
Amir Khalid
Trump lacks the normal work habits and personal skills and ethical sense most people acquire in school and at work. He lacks the basic negotiating skills most people learn in situations like buying a car or house. After decades as a supposedly successful businessman he lacks the wisdom not to borrow more money on a property than he can hope to make running it. Is it any wonder that his record on foreign policy shows him frittering away America’s good name and credibility? Not really.
Chyron HR
@nonynony:
Well, we know he’s too dumb to understand why members of the Bush administration don’t go to certain western democracies. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll commit some war crimes the international community will be interested in.
Amir Khalid
@JPL:
Peels.
nonynony
@Elizabelle:
I don’t know how you go from what I wrote to this. Of course we can make progress within our system – it requires getting political elites on board with the change you want and making sure they benefit. A lot of rich people benefited from the end of slavery in this country, and a lot of rich people benefited from allowing women to vote. You break the rich people up into factions that you pit against each other and you can make progress. I can pull other examples as well where the rich benefit even if the most retrograde rich hate it – Social Security and Medicare immediately come to mind where the sane billionaires saw it as a necessary economic stabilizer and the insane billionaires have been fighting to claw it back ever since.
What we haven’t done before ever is prosecute a sitting or former president for crimes committed while in office. And the reason why is because no president wants to be the person that opens up that Pandora’s box of taking legal action against a political opponent. Obama didn’t do it against W, Clinton didn’t even try it against HW or Reagan. And notably not even W tried to do it against Clinton. Hell we even pardoned almost everyone from the South involved in the Civil War because the political backlash of prosecuting them after the war was won was perceived as too much of a risk, and those guys were outright traitors by any definition. And unless Trump decides to cross that rubicon and try to throw Obama or Clinton in jail for “crimes” they committed, I don’t think it will be crossed by whoever wins in 2020 either. Because the backlash would be horrible.
I’d love to see him prosecuted – I don’t think anyone should be above the law. But at this point we’ve got over 200 years of history that suggests that this isn’t actually true and that some people actually are above the law. If I’m wrong and he’s prosecuted without tearing the country apart then great! I’d love to be wrong on this one, but I don’t hold my fellow Americans in such a high regard. Especially the ones who are white and vote Republican.
Emma
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: To be submitted to the next Bulwer-Lytton contest, yes?
Mike in DC
@The Moar You Know: fiat justitia, pereat mundi
catclub
@MattF:
so everyone at the State department except Pompeo is safe.
Mike in DC
@nonynony:
Sometimes the country NEEDS to be torn apart in order to be reformed into something better.
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@Emma: Bulwer-Lytton? I’m thinking more Nobel.
droog
It’s a guess how Trump’s brain processes info, but I reckon he thinks Pence cost hm the Nobel Peace Prize.
nonynony
@The Moar You Know:
To a degree. Because removing them from power is just “politics”. It’s how the game is played and so it doesn’t tend to lead to violent reaction. You leave open the option of them making a comeback or their proteges coming up in their place and you don’t make them a martyr that their followers believe has been jailed for their beliefs.
But I would also argue that once you start using the legal mechanisms for removing a president from office you run the risk of making what should be a tool to remove a corrupt and/or incompetent from power into just another political tool to get what you want. That’s where the Republicans are with impeachment now – the threat of impeachment against Nixon for real crimes led to them to search for anything – no matter how small – to use as a pretext to impeach Clinton to get what they wanted. So impeachment becomes normalized as a political weapon instead of a legal tool. If it ends up getting used against Trump, we likely see the spiral continue and the next time Republicans have power they’ll be worse about it than they were with Clinton. (That’s not a reason not to do it if it needs to be done – you don’t refuse to use fire to cook your food just because an arsonist can also use it to burn down your house – but it’s something to keep in mind when we’re wondering why President so-and-so is being impeached in 2032 because they lost money on a land deal when they were in their 20s or something).
catclub
@The Moar You Know:
nonynony was only mostly solid. Saying that Nixon was not prosecuted and omitting that Ford pardoned him for anything and everything.
nonynony
@Mike in DC:
Perhaps that’s true. But keep in mind that usually when a country gets torn apart it typically exists for a very long time as something worse before it actually gets better. If we fell apart tomorrow in civil war likely most of us would be dead of old age before the country was better from it.
Cheryl Rofer
I’m seeing reports, which I would like to be confirmed, that neither the ROK nor the DPRK was informed before the letter was released. Repeat, unconfirmed.
The Other Chuck
@nonynony: So abandon the rule of law because it’s already tainted. Spoken like a true Republican.
Steeplejack
@Mike in DC:
I’ll just have the penne alla vodka, thanks.
nonynony
@catclub:
This is true – my comment was getting too long. But it brings up a point where I think you could prosecute a former president, and that’s if the sitting president is of the same party as the one who was removed from office. It would tear their political party apart instead of the country, but at least the blame being thrown around would skew towards intra-party politics.
That’s also why it’s unlikely to happen. Even Gerald Ford couldn’t bring himself to put country over party and let the investigation and prosecution of Nixon go forward, so I doubt any other partisan who was able to make it to the presidency would be able to do it either knowing that it would pretty much guarantee that they would become a hated figure within their own party and would be unlikely to be anything but a hated lame duck for their tenure in office.
nonynony
@The Other Chuck:
I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done. I’m saying it won’t. There is a difference you know.
Elizabelle
@nonynony: I don’t think our country can survive not prosecuting for all the malfeasance that has gotten us here. It’s a corrupt system, mostly corrupted by Republicans. Historical precedence is only precedence until it isn’t.
If it tears the country apart to prosecute, it is still worthwhile. What kind of country do you have that does not prosecute?
Now I realize, one great problem is an equally corrupted Supreme Court. You have to be very careful how you frame the arguments. Because you don’t want corrupt and terrible behavior enshrined into law. As happened with Citizens United.
I have pretty much had it with the cool kids at Balloon Juice. Maybe I should pie some of you, or maybe I should just wean myself off of this site.
Elizabelle
@nonynony: I hope you are dreadfully wrong, and I hope you are prepared to come up with megadonations to a good charity when you are wrong. Some real skin.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: If prosecuting him for his actions in office isn’t feasible, I still think that prosecution for his actions prior to taking office is still on the table.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes. But prosecution for actions in office should also be pursued, where to not do so sets a dangerous precedent.
Mike in NC
Ha. We’re enroute to central Florida, where they’re enjoying Rainy Season. Timing is everything, just as with summits.
Ksmiami
@Brachiator: Its all about China’s sphere of influence now… sometimes occam’s razor Is correct
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: You would have to draw a very clear line between blatant crimes like bribery and emoluments clause violations and criminally stupid policy decisions. With that, you would have to err on the side of considering something a policy decision if there is the slightest hint of a question.
Quaker in a Basement
Can we get Betty carved on Mt. Rushmore now? A goddam national treasure, says I.
kate p
I have a similar letter stored away with other favorite mementos. In second grade my son wrote to a little girl – “I hate you, but if you like me, here’s my phone number.” And today, this son is a Trump supporter. Coincidence? I think not.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: We will have to give cover to the brave and principled souls who help steer us back from this brink, and who prosecute those who committed crimes during this administration and before.
Good point on policy decisions. Part of the trick there is convincing others going forth why they are terrible policy decisions.
It’s all hard. It’s easier to be criminal and corrupt. So we have to be hard.
Steeplejack
@Mike in NC:
I will note that it is a beautiful day in my little corner of NoVA: sunny, 80°, humidity only 38% (which just by itself is a blessing at this time of year). Perfect weather to keep the windows open for fresh air, and the A.C. comes on occasionally only for a few minutes to keep the inside temp around 74°.
Ksmiami
@Elizabelle: I agree- the messaging needs to be that the gop is a criminal and traitorous organization that must be punished and disbanded@Elizabelle: yes there are only 2 ways out for this criminal admin: orange jumpsuits or scaffolding a la mussolini and then the entire rt wing apparatus needs to be denazified from Fox new on down. It’s the only way to restore reason and a Democratic Republic
Mike in DC
I kinda like the idea of Mueller charging him in 2021, and the incoming Dem president offering a pardon, conditioned upon full disclosure, public confession and public contrition. Trump either takes the pardon and accompanying irredeemable national humiliation, or refuses, and new president can just shrug and say, hey, I tried to give the country a chance to get past this, but…
Elizabelle
@Mike in DC: I don’t want to see a pardon. At all. Do the crime, do the punishment.
This is not the time for mercy.
Elizabelle
@Ksmiami: Denazification is right.
Also, I don’t think some of the glib mouths here realize how hard it is, day after day, to live through this shit. And then to show up and blithely say Trump will get away with everything?
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle: No quarter for these assholes. They need to pay, with tremendous suffering, for their crimes.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est: I agree. Seize the illgotten gains too. Some judge just fined a teenager what — $36 million — for starting the Oregon (?) fires? I want to see these criminals living on the dole before this is over.
And don’t let the plutocrat-owned press tut-tut and try to move the goalposts.
Mike in DC
@Elizabelle:
I think there’s no chance Drumpf would take a pardon if it required him to publicly admit fault.
Gravenstone
@No Drought No More:
Edwin Starr
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
He was given an education.
He got that wrong, just like everything else in his life. He did teach every school he attended something though. What a complete and utter ass he is.
Elizabelle
@Mike in DC: It’s not worth the risk. No pardon for Trump. At least, IMHO.
You’re just rewarding behavior you’ll get again, and worse. Suppose Trump was not Trump, but was Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton or even Eric Greitens, had his little pecadillos not landed him in trouble in GOP-loving Missouri?
I think they need to clean the place out, and hard.
Brachiator
@Gravenstone:
Trump, huh, yeah
What is he good for
Absolutely nothing
Trump, huh, yeah
What is he good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, why’all
Jeffro
I’ll have what Elizabelle and VDE are having, thanks. No pardons, no more “looking forward, not back”. Televise the trial, publish every last bit of evidence, air every last concern…but this kind of shit can’t keep happening.
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
I never thought I’d see the day that this would be true.
Gravenstone
@Omnes Omnibus: Almost everything being investigated now (as best we understand it) first went into motion prior to his being awarded the office of president. As such, anything consummated once in office that first started prior should be fair game for bringing charges and subsequent trials.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
Line starts behind me.
JaneSays
@Elizabelle: How are we defining “going down in flames”?
Going to prison?
Let’s not kid ourselves – that is never, ever, ever going to happen. No doubt it should happen, but it absolutely won’t. You’re more likely to win Powerball than you are to ever see Napoleorange do a perp walk in handcuffs. I’m pretty certain we’re not even going to get see him get removed from office before 2020. No chance they’ll have enough support in the U.S. senate for impeachment, regardless of what happens in November (even if the Democrats win a majorities in both houses). I know that’s very Debbie Downer of me, but I’ve come to realize that at least 35% of this sick country will simply never abandon him no matter what he says or does, and that’s probably enough to ensure he’ll at least get to finish out his current term. We just need to win the midterms, preferably both houses, so that we can reign him in and then ride out the storm until we can give him the boot in 2020. Yes, we should absolutely push for impeachment once the Democrats retake the House, and I think we’ll be successful in that endeavor. But removal in the Senate afterwards with 67 votes? It’s never happening. God help us all if he somehow gets re-elected (and we should never tell ourselves he can’t, because that already blew up in our faces once).
JaneSays
Just to be clear – if there’s any chance of him being prosecuted for his crimes, absolutely I want it to see it happen.
But I’m not going to fall into a pit of despair over it if it doesn’t happen, because the odds are that it won’t, and making my well-being contingent on him facing prison time for his crimes is just a setup to be miserable. The odds are very much in his favor that he walks away from this, at worst, as the least popular president in American history who never suffers any meaningful consequences worse than joining the relatively small club of presidents who failed to get re-elected.