Trump’s political situation as a Star Wars crawl. Idea by @barry_osborne, words by @costareports and @PhilipRucker https://t.co/BoLtSI0Dg7 https://t.co/Udv9rJ78qp
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) December 9, 2018
To continue tonight’s theme…
Quite the paragraph. https://t.co/dTss3URVbM pic.twitter.com/FGI3rQiE3R
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) December 9, 2018
A growing number of Republicans fear that a battery of new revelations in the far-reaching Russia investigation has dramatically heightened the legal and political danger to Donald Trump’s presidency — and threatens to consume the rest of the party, as well.
President Trump added to the tumult Saturday by announcing the abrupt exit of his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, whom he sees as lacking the political judgment and finesse to steer the White House through the treacherous months to come.
Trump remains headstrong in his belief that he can outsmart adversaries and weather any threats, according to advisers. In the Russia probe, he continues to roar denials, dubiously proclaiming that the latest allegations of wrongdoing by his former associates “totally clear” him.
But anxiety is spiking among Republican allies, who complain that Trump and the White House have no real plan for dealing with the Russia crisis while confronting a host of other troubles at home and abroad…
The White House is adopting what one official termed a “shrugged shoulders” strategy for the Mueller findings, calculating that most GOP base voters will believe whatever the president tells them to believe.
But some allies fret that the president’s coalition could crack apart under the growing pressure. Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump strategist who helped him navigate the most arduous phase of his 2016 campaign, predicted 2019 would be a year of “siege warfare” and cast the president’s inner circle as naively optimistic and unsophisticated.
“The Democrats are going to weaponize the Mueller report and the president needs a team that can go to the mattresses,” Bannon said. “The president can’t trust the GOP to be there when it counts . . . They don’t feel any sense of duty or responsibility to stand with Trump.”…
REPUBS IN DISARRAY!
He’s your very special chosen leader, my GOP dudes. You own him, and he owns you.
Even (especially) the marketing failures.
Jar Jar Kushner
— GrandstandFan (@GrandstandFan) December 9, 2018
Except without real diversity
— Cath (@41CatQ) December 9, 2018
NotMax
Misery Lie-ence Theater.
piratedan
@NotMax: soon… maybe he’ll be “just another guy in an Orange jump-suit”…..
sukabi
Gee, perhaps if they’d done their due diligence PRIOR to the 2016 election they and we wouldn’t be in this mess. But NOOOO, greedy bastards just wanted their tax cuts.
Burnspbesq
This would be funny if the stakes weren’t so high.
Platonailedit
Of course, bannon talks and thinks like a mafia thug.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Platonailedit: They all do.
Waldo
What prosecutors say: The president was in on it.
What Trump hears: The president was innocent.
Uncle Cosmo
Just FTR I hold the copyright on “Jar Jar Kush” (see threads from months back).
hervevillechaislounge
This is the shit that makes me completely unhinged. There’s nothing “dubious” about Trump’s claims; his claims are false.
No one who read the sentencing memo could claim, in good faith, it exonerates Trump. Either he didn’t bother to read it or he’s gaslighting yet the MSM can’t draw the obvious conclusions even when the existence of the nation depends upon it.
View from nowhere? View from the nether-reaches of their own goddamn duodenums would be a more accurate assessment.
Bostonian
“Republican allies, who complain that Trump and the White House have no real plan for dealing with the Russia crisis while confronting a host of other troubles at home and abroad…”
Of course he has no plan. He never had a plan to deal with any damn thing. Just deny, deny, deny, and rob, rob, rob. The entire Trump Presidency was a bust-up racket from the get-go.
RandomMonster
Someone should tell Bannon that “…go to the mattresses” has a rather different connotation than “…go to the mat”.
JGabriel
WaPo via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Finesse? Finesse?
Not a chance. Let us tells you something, Pustulant Putin Puppet: Finesse avoids Gross the way Sophisticated avoids Vulgar and Smart avoids Idiot.
All processes and dynamics you should be more than familiar with by now, Combover Caligula, from personal experience.
Trump has about as much chance of hiring someone with finesse, as a sow has of making a silk purse from its own ear.
Sloane Ranger
The reply button doesn’t seem to be working on my tablet but, replying to RandomMonster,
Doesn’t the phrase “go to the mattress” appearing The Godfather as Mafia talk for going on to a war footing (moving your soldiers to a safe house where they sleep on mattresses laid out on the floor)?
JGabriel
WaPo via Anne Laurie @ Top:
No, Steve, the person who weaponized the Mueller report was Donald Trump, when he sold himself to Putin to rig the Presidential election.
What Democrats are going to do is their job – to act as a check on an unlawful, unfit, and traitorous president.
Platonailedit
@RandomMonster:
Going to the mat is to fight it out by yourself.
Going to the mattresses is to have your henchmen fight for you. So, yeah, thug bannon knew what he is talking about.
Cermet
The orange fart cloud has been a grifter all his life; what else did anyone expect as president select? The ass wipe is doing exactly what he did to everyone his entire life – lie, cheat, and steal working with any low life (putin, for instance) that offers a buck. Expect more of the same and thanks to our corrupt justice system, he is untouchable – utter bullshit that a seating president can’t be indited, tried, convicted and put in jail. In no way or manner does that prevent his being president; hell, most his cabinet and staff would be better off working in a prison.
JR
@sukabi: They did their diligence. The rank and file foisted Trump on all of us. Now you could argue that would have been a good time for them to rediscover some principles but alas these are Republicans we are talking about.
Brachiator
So, basically no concern at all with the crimes that Trump may have committed, and no concern with the rule of law, just “how do we get out from under this shit.”
The Republicans have stopped pretending that they believe in democracy. Or to paraphrase a Viet Nam era quip, the Republicans believe that they have to destroy America in order to save it.
Patricia Kayden
@Bostonian: How is Trump supposed to deal with the Russia investigation? How do other criminals handle investigations into their misconduct? Prosecutors usually have the upper hand in such matters and Mueller has Trump by his you know what. Here’s hoping that as Trump goes down he takes the entire GOP with him — especially Pence.
Matt McIrvin
@Patricia Kayden: In this particular case, Trump could shut it all down, because he’s ultimately his prosecutor’s boss. But I do think he’s past the point where he could have shut it all down and gotten away with it in the long run.
bemused
Republican allies can’t possibly be surprised by “new” revelations nor trump’s lack of a plan. This has been true from the beginning. I’m sick of hearing about their whining anxiety.
RandomMonster
@Sloane Ranger: @Platonailedit: Thank you for educating me!
trnc
Anyone one else think this is another indication of money laundering?
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime-beta/the-big-bread-crumb-in-the-cohen-memo
For those without TPM Prime, it’s pointing out that the Moscow hotel deal was potentially worth “hundreds of millions of dollars”, compared to previous recent foreign deals that were worth 1-5 million.
WaterGirl
So as Republicans learn more about the things Trump has done, they’re not thinking “Holy fuck, he really did do all that stuff he has been accused of!”
Instead, the pack of murderous, rabid wolves is mired in disbelief that the farmers are actually going to shoot them. These fuckers are unbelievable.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@WaterGirl
it’s even more surreal consider they just got routed in an election that was specifically about Trump’s conduct and they act like it’s just a matter of keep public opinion on their side, like this idiot quote from Newt
The 2018 was the equivalent of the 1998 election and even thought he was the Speaker of the House at the time, Newt is to much of pompus twit to get it.
RepubAnon
@Brachiator: The Wisconsin Republicans believe that only their supporters’ votes count.
Are Rural Voters the ‘Real’ Voters? Wisconsin Republicans Seem to Think So. Of course, if they lose the (gerrymandered) rural vote, Republicans would pick some narrower set of supporters to define as “real” voters.
Michael Cain
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It was a geographically selective rout. The Dems did very well in the 13-state West and the 12-state NE urban corridor. In the other 25, they gained 14 House seats (not atypical for the party out of power in an off-year election), gained 4 governors (also not unusual given the number the Republicans had to defend), and lost 4 US Senate seats. If the Republicans had held Arizona and Nevada, the Dems would be looking at a horribly difficult Senate map again in 2020: only seven Republican-held seats up in the two regions where they did so well this year (and only one of those in the NE urban corridor). Perhaps three of those seven are realistically in play. Plus the near-certainty of losing the Alabama seat. To win the Senate, the Dems are going to have to win in the South, the Great Plains, and the Interior West. To be honest, I am really scared.
nasruddin
WAPO: “whom he sees as lacking the political judgment and finesse to steer the White House through the treacherous months to come.”
Bit of fiction writing there by Costa or Rucker. I can’t see Mr Trump saying that, let alone “seeing” it. Why do they keep trying to normalize this mook at this stage?
“The end of the year” sounds like the most he can manage: CNN link stuff
nasruddin
@Michael Cain: I agree. The house is almost a nothingburger for the next 2 years. The senate is where the emperor can consolidate his power and build up his allies with judicial and executive branch appointments.
We can only be saved by his continuing incompetence, his black hole brand of narcissim that renders his judgment so bad, and what appears to be incipient dementia. The first two have kept other influencers from gaining control but if his mental faculties are failing one of the fitter and just as evil side kicks will take over. I had long thought it would be Kelly but he has apparently failed. Who’s next?
boatboy_srq
If they weren’t so comfortable pulling shenanigans like NC 9, they wouldn’t need to be so scared about honoring their oaths and allowing the investigations and inevitable impeachments and trials to proceed. They made themselves this weak through being this corrupt.
Michael Cain
@nasruddin: Not a nothingburger — it renders the possibility of McConnell and his two-seats-larger majority nuking the legislative filibuster in the Senate moot. But over the next two years we may get a lesson in just how much authority Congress has ceded to the executive branch over the last century, given a Senate willing to approve nominations and federal courts that are increasingly willing to support rolling back regulations and allowing states broader control in areas like voting rights.