Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

We won’t go back.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Monday Evening Open Thread: Like He’ll Have A Choice…

Monday Evening Open Thread: Like He’ll Have A Choice…

by | 83 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , ,

President Donald Trump, facing calls for impeachment from some Democrats, sought on Monday to draw a contrast between himself and former President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 before lawmakers could remove him from office….

Trump’s comments came the same day John Dean, the former White House counsel to Nixon, testified before the House Judiciary Committee and drew comparisons between the president and his former boss. Following the testimony, Trump said “John Dean’s been a loser for many years.”

Some Democrats are pushing for impeachment proceedings linked to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether the president obstructed justice…

His foreign paymasters remove their support, and within 24 hours the Squatter-in-Chief (plus whichever members of his family he chooses to share the news with — tough luck, Eric! Too bad, Melania!) will be hiding in a country with no extradiction treaty. Doubt the Bush clan will let him into their Paraguay holdings, though…

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  2. 2.

    karen marie

    within 24 hours the Squatter-in-Chief (plus whichever members of his family he chooses to share the news with — tough luck, Eric! Too bad, Melania!) will be hiding in a country with no extradiction treaty.

    If only. Unfortunately, the Russians abandoning Trump personally doesn’t mean they’re going to stop fucking with our elections or national political conversation, because their intent is not to support or not support one man but to disrupt the country. When Trump stops cooperating with them, they’ll happily move against him. It only provides more opportunity for mischief.

    [Shaking my fist at sdhays who won “first!” seconds before I hit “post.”]

  3. 3.

    The Dangerman

    I don’t leave.

    Can we get him a big tub of Extra Crispy and a tray of Macs, stat? He might leave then…

  4. 4.

    Nicole

    Reading about Chao and McConnell and remembering when book royalties were enough to get the leader of one of the houses of Congress to resign. God, I’m so tired.

    Meanwhile, here in NYC a repo man, at the bank’s instructions, took possession of a car that belonged to an NYPD officer who had skipped 3 months worth of payments, and guess who ended up charged with a felony? Ugh. I liked it when I was naive and believed that laws applied to cops and Republicans.

    https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2019/06/08/repo-man-speaks-out-after-arrest-for-repossessing-car-belonging-to-nypd-officer-staten-island

  6. 6.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Too bad, Melania!) will be hiding in a country with no extradiction treaty.

    Until the negative is proven, I will continue to believe Melania is still there because she got the first half of a very large settlement in her name, in Switzerland, in December of 20016

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    and speaking of Russian influence, I’d like to see Mark Penn’s financial statements, too

    @ davidfrum
    True artistic perfection: Mark Penn defending Trump to Mark Levin on Fox, invoking his standing as “life-long Democrat and former Clinton strategist”

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    This is WereBear, yes? Or does she also go by WereCat? Not doubting you, just have never seen her use the WereCat moniker.

    Pamela is brilliant. I’ve learned an enormous amount about communicating with our feline friends since I first became aware of her.

  12. 12.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @karen marie:
    Does Putin believe in human-caused climate change? His efforts at disrupting the current world order doesn’t seem to support that he does

  14. 14.

    Roger Moore

    “You will laugh, but Trump doesn’t have a single ratified deal under his belt. He’s only destroying existing deals & agreements,” says top Kremlin propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov.

    It may come from a propagandist, but nobody can point out how it’s untrue. That’s the advantage of Trump; he’s so ludicrous you don’t have to lie or even exaggerate to have propaganda that seems like it must be fake.

  15. 15.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I like Biden. I think he’d be a decent general election candidate, better than many of the almost two dozen, but… /very Nixon voice/…. My god, my god.

    Sam Stein @ samstein 25m25 minutes ago
    Biden at a fundraiser tonight, on his desire to work with the Republican Party post Trump.
    “With Trump gone you’re going to begin to see things change. Because these folks know better. They know this isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing.”

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ETA: I also like Warren, coming closer to making a choice (while of course remaining team broken glass) but if I were to get to one of her town halls, I’d ask her if she has a plan for making Mitch McConnell minority leader)
    (edit function won’t post)

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: true, the lumpenmittel likes to hear about bipartisanship and blah blah blah. I still wouldn’t mind him taking a few shots at McConnell while he does that.
    ETA: I’d like to see him go to Maine and say, “I see my old friend Susan Collins going along with everything McConnell and trump want and I want to call her up and say, “Susan, what happened to you? What are you doing?”
    “Mitt Romney, would your father be proud of you, defending trump?”

  22. 22.

    SFAW

    His foreign paymasters remove their support, and within 24 hours the Squatter-in-Chief (plus whichever members of his family he chooses to share the news with — tough luck, Eric! Too bad, Melania!) will be hiding in a country with no extradition treaty.

    As the saying goes: Isn’t it pretty to think so?

    He will think that he has the Armed Forces at his beck and call, and “just let the Demon-rats TRY to step me from looting the Treasury,” and so on. Nixon knew when it was time to go, when Howard Baker (or whoever it was) told him so, because he had about 90 IQ points on the Traitor-in-Chief. Nixon was paranoid and evil, but not a moron.

  23. 23.

    Duane

    I want a tee-shirt with those two criminal mugs on it. Keep reminding people they’re in bed together. From Russia with love!

  24. 24.

    SFAW

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I’d ask her if she has a plan for making Mitch McConnell minority leader

    Screw that. Ask her if she has a plan for making him “former Senator,” hopefully “convicted former Senator.”

  25. 25.

    germy

    @SiubhanDuinne: She brought me to tears one day with her writing. It was when she wrote about giving a feline a “knowledge of love” –– it brought back memories of long departed pets of mine.

    She is a brilliant and sensitive writer.

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: @SFAW: She could always Sumner him.

  35. 35.

    BlueDWarrior

    @rikyrah: why is it obstensibly Leftie agitators that think the way to get things done is to yell at our own politicians even louder than usual? Especially when the calculation that mostly bogs us down is “the mushy middle scares easily”?

  36. 36.

    My Side of Town

    Since Malcolm made the statement today that Dirty Don could have fired all he desired directly, I wish someone would have asked him why he didn’t instead of coercing his minions to do his dirty work?

  37. 37.

    Shana

    @The Dangerman: For some reason I just flashed on an episode of All Creatures Great and Small where James Herriott was visiting two older spinster sisters to deal with their pig about some problem. He needed the pig to be in a stall where he could examine it but in order to get the pig from the yard into the stall in the barn one of the sisters was luring it along with digestive biscuits. She’d put one down on the ground, the pig would eat it, she’d move about 2-4 yards away and put another biscuit down for the pig. James was getting impatient and asked can’t you put the biscuits farther apart? The sister laughed and replied that she couldn’t because the pig knew if they were farther apart she wouldn’t get as many biscuits.

    Not sure why your mention of KFC and McDonald’s made me think of that….

  38. 38.

    germy

    Trump told aides to deny that his internal polling showed him trailing Joe Biden in many of the states he needs to win, NYT reports, even though Trump is also trailing in public polls from key states like Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania. https://t.co/IohVU3QHWC— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 10, 2019

  39. 39.

    Brachiator

    @sdhays:

    So, new reelection slogan: Nixon was a quitter!

    Trump: I love authoritarians because they never leave!

  42. 42.

    My Side of Town

    @debbie: I’ll vote for him in the general if he manages to convince the majority of dems that he is the one.

  43. 43.

    germy

    Each side has its own reality:

    Rarely will you see a self-own as bad as the one we saw on the Hill today. The lunatic Dems brought former felon John Dean to the Hill and he embarrassingly imploded. He was so awful that I’ll be using clips of him on my conservative podcast. The Dems are hopeless. So pathetic.— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) June 11, 2019

    Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz was ripped after his questioning of John Dean backfired: “John Dean is making Gaetz look like the fool and laughingstock he is. And it’s glorious,” said Scott Dworkin of @TheDemCoalition. https://t.co/pLUH1su9L3— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) June 10, 2019

    But only one side is right.

  45. 45.

    Raven

    @germy:

    I go down to Speaker’s Corner I’m thunderstruck
    They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks
    Two men say they’re Jesus one of them must be wrong
    There’s a protest singer singing a protest song – he says
    ‘they want to have a war to keep us on our knees
    They want to have a war to keep their factories
    They want to have a war to stop us buying Japanese
    They want to have a war to stop Industrial Disease

  46. 46.

    boatboy_srq

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: This is what happens when all your life your spiritual leadership was insisting you think the best of people, and you kept on listening in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

  47. 47.

    Brachiator

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Biden at a fundraiser tonight, on his desire to work with the Republican Party post Trump.

    “With Trump gone you’re going to begin to see things change. Because these folks know better. They know this isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing.”

    I agree that this is nonsense. But a Democrat is going to have to work with these people. Would you prefer eternal combativeness?

  48. 48.

    My Side of Town

    Well, I guess today is episode one of season one of “The Impeachment” I’d say that 22 episodes could take us to late November 2019. Starting Season two in late April should take us to late October, 2020 given another 22 episodes. I hope they get a Hollywood pro in to write the scripts.

  50. 50.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie: that’s what I always think of, the arrogance of people like Hickenlooper insisting, with all apparent conviction, that they could do what Obama didn’t. But Baud has a point, there are gettable voters– tote bagger types– who don’t like trump but do like tax cuts, and they like to hear that shit. They think of themselves as “non partisan” and reasonable, smart people and they want to vote for someone they think agrees with them. Warren talks about getting bipartisan legislation, and i think Gillbrand or Klobuchar have a line about “I even worked with Ted Cruz!”, with the “that asshole” part just implied by inflection.

    I guess I’d just like Biden to be a little better at it

  52. 52.

    germy

    Biden at a fundraiser tonight, on his desire to work with the Republican Party post Trump.
    “With Trump gone you’re going to begin to see things change. Because these folks know better. They know this isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing."— Sam Stein (@samstein) June 11, 2019

    They absolutely will not. The post-Trump GOP is going to be an all-nude cash cube free-for-all of smirking dipshits desperately one-upping each other to corner the Qanon vote. Work PAST them, not with them. https://t.co/6BMz4j6JVg— Zeddediah Springfield (@Zeddary) June 11, 2019

  55. 55.

    JoyceH

    Hey does anyone else think that the real purpose of calling John Dean to testify was mainly to get his name in headlines and remind John McGahn that there was a White House Counsel who went to prison for helping the president obstruct justice?

  56. 56.

    My Side of Town

    @JoyceH:

    remind John McGahn that there was a White House Counsel who went to prison for helping the president obstruct justice?

    Except he went states evidence and entered witness protection.

  57. 57.

    Jay

    @Brachiator:

    “Republicans have continually shown, by their actions and their votes over the past decade, that they have no interest in bipartizan efforts to pass legislation to improve the lives, jobs, health and wellbeing of all Americans.

    Under Mitch McConnel and the Trump Administration, hundreds of bills which would help America from Example A to Example Z have been passed in the House only to die of neglect in the Senate.

    The only way America can move forward, is with Democratic Majorities in the House, Senate and a Democratic President in the White House”

  62. 62.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: fuck Biden. Seriously fuck him. If you don’t learn after Merrick Garland and still want to compromise with the GOP on any fucking thing you need to just quit and join the Republic#nt party.
    Also anybody see the story of Amy Chua’s daughter getting a clerkship with Kavanaugh? These people don’t even try to hide the pay to play crap. The second Kavanaugh clerk is Christian Federalist society nutjob. Trenton Van Oss. Seriously who names their kid Trenton Van Ass.

  63. 63.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    fuck Biden. Seriously fuck him. If you don’t learn after Merrick Garland and still want to compromise with the GOP on any fucking thing you need to just quit and join the Republic#nt party.

    You know, all politicians love corn dogs and whatever food the state they are currently in is famous for.

  65. 65.

    Raoul

    Following the testimony, Trump said “John Dean’s been a loser for many years.”

    I realize that the MAGA horde is stupid, but after many years of Trump, he basically has like four insults to choose from. He’s such a weak pile of nothing. I can’t believe people in his party are afraid of him.

  67. 67.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raoul: the paucity of trump’s vocabulary fascinates me, especially his reliance on the word “nice”. I think he said the royals were ‘very nice’.

  68. 68.

    Jay

    NEW: Rep. Justin Amash says he has stepped down from the conservative House Freedom Caucus. This comes less than a month after he became the first Republican member of Congress to say Trump has committed impeachable offenses. https://t.co/tJrApeAe2E— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) June 11, 2019

  70. 70.

    germy

    @Raoul:

    I can’t believe people in his party are afraid of him.

    They’re not afraid of him. They’re afraid of his angry and violent fans.

  73. 73.

    Raoul

    “Russian state TV starts to mock Trump. Remember, this romance will eventually end when it no longer suits their agenda.” –Frank Figliuzzi

    I am sure that the Russians wouldn’t want to actually help elect a Democrat, but if it suits their fancy to sow more chaos in the US by not supporting Trump 2020, they’ll bug out in a hurry.

  74. 74.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @germy: My theory, which is mine, is that the reason Romney is kowtowing is to preserve the rube vote for Ragg and Tagg and Dragg. Ditto the elder Bushes and George P. Jebbie and Dumbya will never run for office again, and even if he came out full-on never-trump I doubt Romney would ever lose an election in Utah.

  75. 75.

    Raoul

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ve heard a few clips from a couple decades ago. He used to actually be able to use more complex vocabulary. I don’t know if it’s laziness, far too much repetition of his stock phrases, or (more likely seeming, to me) he’s in fairly noticeable mental decline.
    The stress of trying to stay in office against a wall of scandal, early dementia, or what, I do not know. But his doctors claiming he’s in the peak of health is, ahem, utter bullshit when it comes to his mental state. His physical decline is pretty damn obvious, too.

  76. 76.

    Dan B

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Is this a rhetorical question? In case not Russia is a petro state depsendent on selling natural gas to europe and petroleum when it can. It has no interest in renewable energy or in anything but party approved science. And with an economy the size of Italy it is in real danger.

    Of course it’s in danger from global warming. The arctic coastline permafrost is eroding at up to three feet a day, already in June! Watch for polonias and massive fires in the tundra this year again. It’s hard to drill for gas when it’s blowing up or when the taiga is in flames.

  80. 80.

    Jay

    @Dan B:

    Siberia started burning in early May this year,

    “The head of the local Ministry of Emergencies Valentin Nelyubov said the situation with wildfires grew so difficult due to insufficient fire extinguishing forces and lack of initiative shown by the municipal authorities.

    Overall in Irkutsk region firefighters face more than 50,000 hectares (50km2) of burning woods and fields.

    In the neighboring Trans-Baikal region wildfires reached the area of 31,300 hectares (313km2). ”

    https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/raging-wildfires-ravage-siberia-and-far-east-of-russia/

  82. 82.

    Chris Johnson

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

    Does Putin believe in human-caused climate change? His efforts at disrupting the current world order doesn’t seem to support that he does

    Putin thinks climate change will turn Siberia into farmland. Doesn’t quite work that way, but he is like ‘bring it’, in the belief that it will benefit Russia.

  83. 83.

    J R in WV

    @Raoul:

    Following the testimony, Trump said “John Dean’s been a loser for many years.”

    I realize that the MAGA horde is stupid, but after many years of Trump, he basically has like four insults to choose from. He’s such a weak pile of nothing. I can’t believe people in his party are afraid of him.

    And John Dean was an investment banker and author. When he retired, he moved to a Beverly Hills estate. Sound like a loser to YOU?

    I don’t think many losers retire to Beverly Hills, actually!

Comments are closed.