The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Athos_131]

We'd probably have to do some serious digging, but there might be one thing.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election

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[Athos_131]

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[Athos_131]

Trump to ask Justice Department to look into campaign surveillance claims

A source familiar with the probe called the Sept. 1 deadline “entirely made-up” and “another apparent effort to pressure the special counsel to hasten the end of his work.”

“He’ll wrap it up when he thinks he’s turned over every rock, and when that is will depend on how cooperative witnesses, persons of interest and maybe even some targets are, if any of those emerge, and on what new evidence he finds, not on some arbitrary, first-of-the-month deadline one of the president’s attorneys cooks up,” said the source, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Border Patrol agent died in fall, according to memo contradicting Trump’s claim of attack

Initially, the cause of the agents’ injuries was unclear, but Border Patrol union officials quickly claimed that they were victims of a savage attack. Trump said on Twitter soon after that Martinez had been “killed” and his assailants would be brought “to justice.”

More than two months into its investigation, the FBI said Wednesday that it found no signs the agents were assaulted. Kevin McAleenan, the acting commissioner of the Border Patrol, told his staff this week that the men fell into a nine-foot-deep culvert on a pitch-black night.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

One thing, Rudy Giuliani: The Trump campaign *did* use it.

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[Athos_131]

EPA bars three reporters from covering meeting; one says she was shoved by a guard

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[Athos_131]

There Is Only One Trump Scandal

The sheer volume of Trump scandals can seem difficult to keep track of.

There’s the ongoing special-counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign aided a Russian campaign to aid Trump’s candidacy and defeat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton; there’s the associated inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey, whom he had asked not to investigate his former national-security adviser; there are the president’s hush-money payments to women with whom he allegedly had extramarital affairs, made through his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and facilitated by corporate cash paid to influence the White House; there is his ongoing effort to interfere with the Russia inquiry and politicize federal law enforcement; there are the foreign governments that seem to be utilizing the president’s properties as vehicles for influencing administration policy; there’s the emerging evidence that Trump campaign officials sought aid not only from Russia, but from other foreign countries, which may have affected Trump’s foreign policy; there are the ongoing revelations of the president’s Cabinet officials’ misusing taxpayer funds; there is the accumulating evidence that administration decisions are made at the behest of private industry, in particular those in which Republican donors have significant interests.

The preceding wall of text may appear to some as an abridged list of the Trump administration’s scandals, but this is an illusion created by the perception that these are all separate affairs. Viewed as such, the various Trump scandals can seem multifarious and overpowering, and difficult to fathom.

There are not many Trump scandals. There is one Trump scandal. Singular: the corruption of the American government by the president and his associates, who are using their official power for personal and financial gain rather than for the welfare of the American people, and their attempts to shield that corruption from political consequences, public scrutiny, or legal accountability.

Take recent developments: There’s the president’s attempt to aid the Chinese telecom company ZTE, mere hours after the Chinese government approved funding for a project in the vicinity of a Trump property in Indonesia. There’s the millions of dollars corporations paid to Cohen after the election in an attempt to influence administration policy in their favor. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, also the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, urged banks to pay off politicians in an effort to weaken the CFPB’s powers legislatively—since taking the helm of CFPB, Mulvaney has dropped a number of cases against payday lenders who charge exorbitant interest rates, after taking thousands from the industry as a congressman. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s own mini-universe of scandals stems from his improper relationships with industry figures, his misuse of taxpayer funds, and his attempts to obscure the truth about both. Trump attempted to pressure the Postmaster General to increase fees on Amazon in order to punish The Washington Post, which has published many stories detailing wrongdoing and misbehavior on the part of the Trump administration, and the Trump campaign before that. Not long after The New York Times reported that Trump officials may have solicited campaign help not just from Russia, but also from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the president “demanded” that the Justice Department launch an inquiry into whether the FBI improperly investigated a campaign that was eagerly soliciting international aid to swing the election in its favor.

In each of these cases, the president or one of his associates was seeking to profit, personally or financially, from their official duties and powers. When that conduct has potentially run afoul of the law, Trump has sought to bend federal law enforcement to his whim, the better to protect himself and his associates from legal accountability. The president’s ongoing chastising of his own Justice Department, and his war of words with current and former FBI officials, stem less from any coherent ideological principle than from Trump’s desperate need to protect himself. An authoritarian model of law enforcement, where the president personally decides who is prosecuted and who is not based on his own political agenda, is simply the best way for Trump to shield himself and his inner circle from legal consequences.

The president’s opponents have yet to craft a coherent narrative about the Trump administration’s corruption, even though the only major legislative accomplishment Trump has to his name is cutting his own taxes. But his supporters have, ironically, crafted an overarching explanation to account for how the president they voted for, who came to office promising to eliminate official corruption, has come to embody it. The “Deep State” narrative is no more complicated than an attempt to explain the accumulating evidence of misbehavior on the part of the administration as a wide-ranging conspiracy to frame the president. The more evidence of wrongdoing that comes to light, the more certain they are that the conspiracy theory is true. In their own way, Trump supporters have recognized that Trump’s burgeoning list of scandals is made of branches from the same twisted tree.

The latest Trumptown fable, that the FBI inquiry into the Trump campaign was meant to aid Clinton’s campaign, is as incoherent as it is absurd. The FBI properly kept the Russia inquiry under wraps while high-ranking FBI officials defied Justice Department rules and made public statements about two inquiries into Clinton prior to election day. Neither of those inquiries led to indictments or guilty pleas; the special-counsel inquiry has led to more than 20 so far. Had the FBI been motivated by a political vendetta against Trump, leaking the fact of the inquiry on its own, even if it uncovered no malfeasance at all, would have been enough to damage his candidacy. The essential quality of pro-Trump punditry however, is that their perception of reality must be warped to conform to the latest Trump proclamation, even if it contradicts previous Trump pronouncements or established facts. Trump dictates reality, and his supporters rush to justify whatever has been decreed. In this way, Trump manages to corrupt not just those in his immediate orbit or inner circle, but even those who have never met him, who endeavor to reconcile the insurmountable gap between his words and the world as it exists.

I want to emphasize that not everything the administration is doing that I believe is bad is a scandal, which I am defining as official wrongdoing or corruption. The president’s ongoing immigration policy, an attempt to displace, through aggressive deportations of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants, and the cancellation of Temporary Protected Status and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, is a moral travesty but not necessarily a misuse of his official powers. Trump’s immigration policy is a reflection of his belief that these people from “shithole countries” are inferior, and therefore offer little to the United States. He is hardly the first president to pursue such a policy on such a basis; but a policy can be morally repugnant without being a scandal.

The president’s unwavering commitment to this ethnonationalism persuades his followers that he is incorruptible, despite his use of his own powers for personal gain and profit. “You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened,” the segregationist George Wallace once said of his rise to power. “And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.” (These days, they stomp the floor for “son of a bitch” or “animals.”) Any effective hustle persuades the mark that they’re the ones profiting.

For those Americans unmoved by such appeals, the ongoing corruption of the official powers of the U.S. government on behalf of ego, avarice, and impunity should not be seen as separate stories. They are the same story, and it is the story of the Trump presidency.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The Worst of All Possible Worlds: We Need Republicans to Act Against Trump

I've thought about metaphors, like say Donald Trump is pretty much a guy who likes to fuck sheep but he's always just lived on a small farm with only a couple of sheep in the barn for him to fuck, but then, all of a sudden, someone mistakes his fucking of sheep for being a really good shepherd and he's hired to take care of a giant flock which for him is like fuck paradise and now he's fucking all the sheep he can, fucking them every which way, in their sheep asses, in their sheep pussies, in their sheep ears, sometimes just rubbing his dick on the fleece on their bodies until he orgasms, and no one's stopping him, no matter how much people point over the fence and say, "He's fucking the sheep, sweet Jesus. He's fucking the sheep," but no one who could stop him from sheep-fucking is going to stop him, and, horrible as it is, you can't look away because there's a fat old man fucking sheep.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Recruiting Intelligence Sources: President Trump Makes a Hard Job Harder

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[Lois]

I have no doubt this is why Trump is also attacking the FBI and the DOJ, so they won't be believed wen they reveal their findings about Trump's collusion with Russia.

To discredit and to demean: Trump bragged about his media-bashing strategy

by Erik Wemple

President Trump routinely attempts to convince his followers that the media is out to get him; that it doesn’t actually have any sources for all those White House scoops; that it lies; that it’s the enemy of the people; that it traffics in “fake news” — among other offenses carefully outlined in tweet after tweet. Sometimes the fake-news smear is conveyed in all-caps, connoting seriousness.

Ah, but it’s all a show. That’s what the president reportedly told Lesley Stahl of CBS News before her interview with the president-elect shortly after his victory in November 2016. In a conversation with Judy Woodruff for the Deadline Club Awards 2018, Stahl mentioned her conversation at Trump Tower with the politician prior to the interview:

At one point he started to attack the press. And it’s just me and my boss and him, and he has a huge office. And he’s attacking the press, and there were no cameras, there was nothing going on. And I said, “You know, that is getting tired. Why are you doing this? You’re doing it over and over, and it’s boring, and it’s time to end that, and you’ve won the nomination. And why do you keep hammering at this?” And he said, “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe it.”

We knew that, all of it.

Yet there’s an extra chill that comes from learning that the president himself acknowledged boasted about a strategy aimed at the degradation of the Fourth Estate. Remember: In September 2016, Trump reacted to news that public confidence in the media had reached a new low. “I think I had a lot to do with that poll … because I’ve exposed the media,” said Trump at the time. “I am very proud to say that I think I had a lot to do with that poll number.” Maybe this is one issue on which we can take the president at his word.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/05/22/to-discredit-and-to-demean-trump-bragged-about-his-media-bashing-strategy/?utm_term=.4842ef1cdcd9

[Athos_131]

Judge: President can’t block critics on Twitter

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[Athos_131]

Lesley Stahl: Trump admitted mission to "discredit" press

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[Lois]

Doofus Bolton mentioned the "Libyan solution" with regards to the North Korean situation.  This was taken badly by the North Koreans in light of Bolton's past comments regarding North Korea and the fact that Lybian leader Muammar Gaddafi ended up dead.

So goes the chance for Trump to actually achieve something laudable.

Maybe he will fire Bolton now?

[Katiebee]

Pence also ran his mouth about the Lybian solution.
The great deal maker failed to even reach the table. He bailed on it today.

[Athos_131]

'No Nobel Peace Prize for Trump': South Koreans slam cancellation of summit

Maybe he can get one for writing.

#Resist

[JulesVern]

His Fox 'News' interview yesterday. CNN has a take on it.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/24/politics/donald-trump-fox-and-friends/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories%29

The craziest line:

11. "You need thousands of judges based on this crazy system. Who ever heard of a system where you put people though trials."

CNN's reply:

Um, well, so, um....

Couldn't have said it better myself. Who needs all those crazy trials and things right?

[Athos_131]

'Trump's son should be concerned': FBI obtained wiretaps of Putin ally who met with Trump Jr.

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[Athos_131]

I have a bone to pick with you, Athos!

You have not posted a single thing about China's investment in Trump's Indonesian hotel in exchange for a lifting of a ban on the imports of a Chinese Company's cellular phones.  The phones were banned because of tracking software embedded in the phones made them a national security risk, but Trump is saying that the Chinese are loosing too many jobs because of our ban!

You've been seriously slacking dude!

Trump administration presents Capitol Hill with deal to rescue Chinese firm ZTE

Will the GOP have a backbone?  Tune in tomorrow—same Racist-time, same Misogynistic-channel!

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[Athos_131]

At Trump Tower, Michael Cohen and Oligarch Discussed Russian Relations

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