The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Katiebee]

Only a coward fires someone by twitter.

Trump didn’t have the decency, nor intestinal fortitude to fire Tillerson face to face.

Hey Joan, your hero doesn’t have feet of clay. He has a yellow streak down his back.

He wouldn’t rush into a school to face a shooter, he would hold students in front himself because he is a coward.

[joan1984]

Never knew you were a Rex fan, Katiebee. Were you a Comey fan as well? Pompeo and our President seem more on the same page, and Mike will do well as Secretary of State. Plus, first woman Director of Central Intelligence, and a demonstrated patriot to boot.

Was a busy morning. Rex Tillerson received his orders, including a call from the President from Air Force One, as the President was flying to California.

Rex will be out before April Fools day, if I understood his farewell address today. He did some good work, and was too much a globalist, too much an establishment guy, to take the actions needed, and finish the necessary work now under way, on many urgent matters.

No one should doubt this President will get what he seeks. The State Department employees should take note, stop the internal games, or see similar action. Promises kept.

Former Sec. Rex Tillerson made his own positions clear to the President, and was not surprised he was being replaced with the willing, loyal, high energy Secretary Mike Pompeo.

Trump fired Tillerson as Sec’y of State.

What a complete, an unmitigated incompetent he is, to do that for no decernable good reason.

I am interested in hearing what conservatives think about their hero’s action.

[Jed_]

With Tillerson fired, my White House Staff Retention Bracket is busted.

#Resist

What bracket?  LOL

[Athos_131]

Was a busy morning. Rex Tillerson received his orders, including a call from the President from Air Force One, as the President was flying to California.

This is bullshit.  Tillerson found out he was fired over Twitter.  In fact, they fired the SecState communications director when it got out.  Trump called him on Air Force One almost 3 hours later.

#Resist

[Sensualtravler]

Save your breath Joan They still think Hillarious is Godless. Sorry, I meant Goddess.  

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/1005170786298143/

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/999654320183123/

Suppose Hillary had won??

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/985987084883180/ LMAO

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/985987084883180/

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/985987084883180/

[Athos_131]

Save your breath Joan They still think Hillarious is Godless. Sorry, I meant Goddess.  

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/1005170786298143/

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/999654320183123/

Suppose Hillary had won??

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/985987084883180/

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/985987084883180/

https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsVoices/videos/985987084883180/

This thread is about Donald Trump.  Please try not to hijack it.

#Resist

[Jed_]

It’s astonishing the way the right dwells on Hillary Clinton as if she won the presidency, yet constantly insisting it’s the left that is dwelling.  I’m willing to bet a $1000 dollars that in any news cycle chosen in the last year you will find that right wing Fox mentions Hillary Clinton far more often than any other news organization labeled by the right as liberal.  I also bet a $1000 that ST and Joan have mentioned Hillary Clinton far more often than any single member here they deem liberal.

[Jed_]

To my point that I posted yesterday, someone not far from me has used a front loader to display right wing billboards along Interstate 70 for the last couple years.  The current billboard shows a picture of Trump beside the word ‘President’ and below that a picture of Hillary beside the words ‘Not president’.  The billboard only demonstrates that it’s the right that is still contesting the election and finds Hillary Clinton so utterly fascinating, not the left.

For those of us on the left, we look forwards not backwards.

[Katiebee]

Never knew you were a Rex fan, Katiebee. Were you a Comey fan as well? Pompeo and our President seem more on the same page, and Mike will do well as Secretary of State. Plus, first woman Director of Central Intelligence, and a demonstrated patriot to boot.

Was a busy morning. Rex Tillerson received his orders, including a call from the President from Air Force One, as the President was flying to California.

Rex will be out before April Fools day, if I understood his farewell address today. He did some good work, and was too much a globalist, too much an establishment guy, to take the actions needed, and finish the necessary work now under way, on many urgent matters.

No one should doubt this President will get what he seeks. The State Department employees should take note, stop the internal games, or see similar action. Promises kept.

Former Sec. Rex Tillerson made his own positions clear to the President, and was not surprised he was being replaced with the willing, loyal, high energy Secretary Mike Pompeo.

Trump fired Tillerson as Sec’y of State.

What a complete, an unmitigated incompetent he is, to do that for no decernable good reason.

I am interested in hearing what conservatives think about their hero’s action.

He was called after the tweet.  And firing your Secty
of State by phone is still a cowards way.  He is being replaced by a Yes man.

God forbid one should offer dissenting views to ones superior. The narcissist demands yes men to kiss his ass daily. Remember the televised cabinet meeeting where they had to go around the room and all say how great it was working for Trump?
Staff are required to give full measure of consultation with their superior. That includes saying his plans have problems. Doing otherwise is not doing the job.

But you support Kim-Trump-un., our Glorious Leader.

Why do you hate America, Joan?

[Lois]

Rex will be out before April Fools day, if I understood his farewell address today. He did some good work, and was too much a globalist, too much an establishment guy, to take the actions needed, and finish the necessary work now under way, on many urgent matters.

What work is that?  Getting us into unnecessary wars?

[Athos_131]

Exclusive: Defense Dept. charged nearly $140,000 at Trump branded properties

#Resist

[Katiebee]

Probably milking the government for all sorts of payments and benefits.

[Athos_131]

In fundraising speech, Trump says he made up trade claim in meeting with Justin Trudeau

He blatantly lied to the Head of State of an ally.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

  "  Russia,  Russia , Russia  "

Mueller Subpoenas Trump Organization, Demanding Documents About Russia

#Resist

[Athos_131]

So, uh, what’s this bowling-ball test that Trump was talking about?

There is a group of people who are convinced that they have seen a movie called “Shazaam,” starring the comedian Sinbad. In the film, Sinbad plays a genie, doing the sorts of things that genies do.

It’s hard to say what exactly happens in the movie, because the movie doesn’t exist. As I said, there are people who say it does and who also say they’ve seen it. But they haven’t. Maybe they’ve seen “Kazaam,” a movie starring Shaquille O’Neal doing genie things, but there’s no “Shazaam.”

People misremember things. They have a sense that something happened, and they append details in the way a bird builds a nest: pieces from here and there that fit together. So a Shaq genie movie becomes a Sinbad genie movie and people wonder why it isn’t on Netflix.

Perhaps this helps explain President Trump’s odd comments at a fundraiser in Missouri on Wednesday.

Trump was talking about how Japan kept American automakers out of its market, explaining one of the mechanisms that was used.

We send a car to Japan, they analyze it for four weeks before they decide to send it back because it’s not environmentally friendly. … One of the car companies actually had a car made and it was the most environmentally perfect car, cost them a fortune. They spent a fortune. … But they wanted to see if they could get it in [to Japan]. And it, they were going crazy. Four days went by. Then five days. And they were ready to approve it and they said, no, no, we have to do one more test. It’s called the bowling-ball test, do you know what that is? That’s where they take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and they drop it on the hood of the car. And if the hood dents, then the car doesn’t qualify. Well, guess what, the roof dented a little bit, and they said, nope, this car doesn’t qualify. It’s horrible, the way we’re treated. It’s horrible.

In The Washington Post’s report on Trump’s speech, reporters Josh Dawsey, Damian Paletta and Erica Werner followed that anecdote with a curt assessment: “It was unclear what he was talking about.” Which is a fair statement.

Trump appears to be claiming that, as a last resort to ban imports, American cars are forced to pass an unpassable test. A heavy weight is dropped on a car from some height, and, if the weight dents it, the car is not approved for import. Think of it like a poll test: The goal is to exclude participants, not to conduct a fair evaluation.

An effort to determine what “environmentally perfect” car Trump was describing was unsuccessful. But several people intimately familiar with the Japanese import system indicated in interviews that they had never heard of Trump’s bowling-ball test.

In 1995, then-President Bill Clinton announced a plan to add a tariff to Japanese luxury cars entering the United States in an effort to counterbalance the trade deficit with that country. The proposal was announced by Mickey Kantor, Clinton’s trade representative, who stated that “the U.S. is not going to stand by and watch its workers and its products unfairly treated.”

Reached by email Thursday morning, Kantor indicated that he had “no recollection” of any test of the sort mentioned by Trump.

We also contacted John Felice, now a managing partner at MotorMindz, a group that pushes for innovation in car manufacturing. Before joining MotorMindz, Felice was a vice president at Ford who worked for the company’s Asia division.

“It doesn’t resonate with me, that specific test,” Felice said by phone. He noted, though, without singling out Japan, that “a lot of countries have their own unique regulatory issues which can be a challenge for any automaker.” Tests for how bright headlights should be, things like that. While he hadn’t been at Ford for 10 years or so, he said, the bowling-ball test didn’t ring a bell.

In the consistently ungenerous swamps of social media, theories about the bowling-ball test centered on a vague idea that there had once been an ad that involved dropping a bowling ball on a car. Maybe this Nissan ad somehow got Shazaam’d into a political talking point?

Some people speculated that perhaps he was conflating mattress ads involving bowling balls with car ads doing the same. Others speculated that Trump had somehow attributed to the Japanese government a David Letterman sketch.

As a shot in the dark, I rented the unabashedly Nippophobic 1986 movie “Gung Ho,” starring Michael Keaton. In it, Keaton negotiates a deal with a Japanese manufacturer to reopen a shuttered car plant in a fictional Pennsylvania town. At no point during the movie are bowling balls involved. (To be fair, I fast-forwarded through it.) In “Rising Sun” — a 1993 movie that’s almost literally what you would get if Michael Crichton had written “Gung Ho” — there is a scene in which garbage is thrown on a windshield, but no bowling balls.

We will at this point note that it’s possible there was a last-ditch effort by Japanese authorities to keep some specific American car out of the country that some auto manufacturer conveyed to Trump. Efforts to contact Japanese representatives about the complaint were unsuccessful before publishing, but when the Trump administration filed a trade complaint over the automobile market last year, Japan responded by saying that it imposes no “non-tariff barriers” to entry to its market — meaning no weird tests that are impossible to pass.

One reason American cars aren’t common in Japan has nothing to do with protectionist practices. The Japanese dealership system is much more generous than ours, the Atlantic reported in November, and it would require a significant investment from American manufacturers to build to scale.

Of course, Trump also has something of a track record of telling stories in which details are misremembered, exaggerated or misrepresented. (There are also stories in which the entire conceit has proved false.) It’s entirely possible that someone told him about a protectionist test undertaken by a foreign government aimed at excluding certain products from markets and that anecdote became this story about bowling balls being dropped on Chevy Cruzes at the docks in Nagoya.

Or maybe there was a movie in which Sinbad played a guy trying to save an auto plant in the Rust Belt, figuring out how to keep car hoods from being dented by Japan’s infamous bowling-ball test.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this movie.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

  "  Russia,  Russia , Russia  "

Data Firm Tied to Trump Campaign Talked Business With Russians

When the Russia question came up during a hearing at the British Parliament last month, Alexander Nix did not hesitate.

“We’ve never worked in Russia,” said Mr. Nix, head of a data consulting firm that advised the Trump campaign on targeting voters.

“As far as I’m aware, we’ve never worked for a Russian company,” Mr. Nix added. “We’ve never worked with a Russian organization in Russia or any other country, and we don’t have any relationship with Russia or Russian individuals.”

But Mr. Nix’s business did have some dealings with Russian interests, according to company documents and interviews.

Mr. Nix is a director of SCL Group, a British political and defense contractor, and chief executive of its American offshoot, Cambridge Analytica, which advised the Trump campaign. The firms’ employees, who often overlap, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant.

Continue reading the main story
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Lukoil was interested in how data was used to target American voters, according to two former company insiders who said there were at least three meetings with Lukoil executives in London and Turkey. SCL and Lukoil denied that the talks were political in nature, and SCL also said there were no meetings in London.

The contacts took place as Cambridge Analytica was building a roster of Republican political clients in the United States — and harvesting the Facebook profiles of over 50 million users to develop tools it said could analyze voters’ behavior.

Cambridge Analytica also included extensive questions about Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in surveys it was carrying out in American focus groups in 2014. It is not clear what — or which client — prompted the line of questioning, which asked for views on topics ranging from Mr. Putin’s popularity to Russian expansionism.

On two promotional documents obtained by The New York Times, SCL said it did business in Russia. In both documents, the country is highlighted on world maps that specify the location of SCL clients, with one of the maps noting that the clients were for the firm’s elections division. In a statement, SCL said an employee had done “commercial work” about 25 years ago “for a private company in Russia.”

Cambridge Analytica has been a political flash point since its role in the Trump campaign attracted scrutiny after the election. While Mr. Nix’s firm turned over some records to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during its investigation of Russian interference, Democrats on the committee want a fuller review. “It is imperative to interview a broader range of individuals employed by or linked to Cambridge Analytica,” they said in a report this month.

Asked about the Russian oil company, a spokesman for SCL said that in 2014 the firm’s commercial division “discussed helping Lukoil Turkey better engage with its loyalty-card customers at gas stations.” The spokesman said SCL was not ultimately hired.

Arash Repac, chief executive of Lukoil Eurasia Petrol, offered a different explanation for the talks. He said that a meeting he attended with SCL in Turkey involved a promotional campaign with local soccer teams.

“We needed somebody to guide us with the customer data that we were collecting,” he wrote in response to a question from The Times. “Even though our campaign went ahead, we decided not to cooperate with SCL. No contracts were signed.”

But Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge Analytica and develop the company’s voter-profiling technology, said Lukoil showed interest in how the company used data to tailor messaging to American voters.

“I remember being super confused,” said Mr. Wylie, who took part in one of the Lukoil meetings.

“I kept asking Alexander, ‘Can you explain to me what they want?’” he said, referring to Mr. Nix. “I don’t understand why Lukoil wants to know about political targeting in America.”

“We’re sending them stuff about political targeting — they then come and ask more about political targeting,” Mr. Wylie said, adding that Lukoil “just didn’t seem to be interested” in how the techniques could be used commercially.

Mr. Wylie, a former contractor, left SCL before the talks concluded and could not say what became of the relationship with the oil company. He had a falling out with SCL and tried to set up a rival business. SCL said he had violated a nondisclosure agreement and that his comments were an attempt to hurt the company.

A second person familiar with the discussions backed up Mr. Wylie’s account, but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a confidentiality agreement.

Though Lukoil is not state-owned, it depends on Kremlin support, and its chief executive, Vagit Alekperov, has met with Mr. Putin on a number of occasions. Reuters reported last year that Lukoil and other companies received instructions from the state energy ministry on providing news stories favorable to Russian leadership.

Mr. Nix, for his part, has long been adamant. “We just don’t have business in Russia,” he told TechCrunch last year. “We have no involvement in Russia, never have done.”

#Resist

[Lois]

I suspect a substantial portion of the Steele dossier about Trump is true, and that Trump is currently being blackmailed by the Russians based on the financial dealings detailed therein.  Trump does not want to go to jail.

Why else would Trump remain silent about Russia's incursions into our infrastructure wherein they have the ability to shut down our electrical grid and aviation computers?

Why else would he fire Tillerson right after Tillerson made strong comments about Russia's behavior?

It explains so much.

[Katiebee]

Occam’s Razor.

[Athos_131]

Former FBI agent scorches Fox’s Brit Hume for trying to justify Trump’s firing of McCabe

#Resist

[Athos_131]

What authoritarians do: Attack the apolitical administration of justice

It is no trifle when Stephen K. Bannon attacks the “deep state.” It is not simply a legal ploy when Republicans running interference for President Trump call the FBI “corrupt” or when Trump’s lawyer John Dowd calls to shut down the Russia investigation. When a witness to conversations and interactions with Trump who has turned over information to the investigation is fired, the danger goes beyond the investigation directly at hand. In one form or another, these are attacks on a vital pillar of democratic government — the apolitical administration of justice.

As to Dowd’s comments, which he later claimed represented his own views, reaction across the political spectrum was harsh, while many outside observers raised questions about the motive behind former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe’s firing.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) released a terse statement: “Mr. Dowd’s comments are yet another indication that the first instinct of the president and his legal team is not to cooperate with Special Counsel Mueller, but to undermine him at every turn. The president, the administration, and his legal team must not take any steps to curtail, interfere with, or end the special counsel’s investigation or there will be severe consequences from both Democrats and Republicans.”

Trump’s actions have broader implications for our democracy. Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group seeking to check attacks on democracy and illegitimate executive branch power grabs, put out a white paper this month that now seems prescient. “If those in power can wield the enforcement authority of the state to punish their critics or opponents — or to turn a blind eye to law-breaking by their friends — we have lost the rule of law. Thomas Jefferson observed, and the Justice Department quotes on its website, ‘The most sacred of the duties of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.’ Each time the White House intervenes with the Justice Department’s handling of a specific-party matter, it risks violating that sacred duty.” When the president seeks to reach down into the Justice Department to tilt the outcome of actions or to punish individual lawyers for pursuing justice, a grave injury is done to our democracy.

Yascha Mounk, author of “The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger And How to Save It,” tells me, “For citizens to have trust in their law enforcement agencies, justice doesn’t only need to be done; it also needs to be seen to be done. Given that Mr. McCabe was fired after continual attacks from the President of the United States, we already know that this important principle has been violated in this case.” He adds, “Even if it eventually turns out that McCabe really did misbehave — and there is no publicly available evidence to substantiate that theory so far — the manner of his firing undermines the independence of the FBI and the trust Americans can put in their institutions.” He continues, “The alternative is even worse: If the charges against McCabe eventually turn out to be spurious, then the partisan takeover of the FBI is very far along. And that should terrify any American citizen who values his liberty or his democracy.”

That politicization of the Justice Department and the implicit threat of retaliation for crossing the president should be of grave concern.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) is right to call for immediate hearings. In a statement released on Saturday he said, “During my four decades in the Senate, I have never before seen our nation’s career, apolitical law enforcement officials so personally and publicly maligned by politicians — indeed, by our President. And I have never been so concerned that the walls intended to protect the independence of our dedicated law enforcement professionals, including Special Counsel Mueller, are at risk of crumbling.” He recounted, ““A month ago I asked Chairman Grassley to hold a hearing on the escalating politicized attacks on the Justice Department and the FBI. We can all point to mistakes made by Justice Department officials over the course of high-profile investigations during the 2016 elections. Such mistakes rightly fall within the purview of the Judiciary Committee’s routine oversight functions. . . .  I believe the Judiciary Committee will fail to fulfill its core oversight responsibility if it does nothing in this moment.”

Between Dowd’s comments and Trump’s after McCabe’s firing, we see the intensification of Trump’s deliberate interference with the Justice Department to suit the president’s personal interests. “Whatever Andrew McCabe did or did not do, his firing two days before retiring would obviously never have happened if the President hadn’t personally demanded it,” Protect Democracy Executive Director Ian Bassin surmises. He tells me that this incident shows that “Trump has moved from autocratic rhetoric to autocratic action, as personally ordering the purging of civil servants who are insufficiently loyal is what autocrats do.” He warns the Justice Department inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility not to do Trump’s bidding. Bassin asserts, “Trump’s certain intervention was also so manifestly corrupt that it likely violated constitutional principles that limit a President’s authority to ‘do whatever he wants with the Justice Department.'”

In sum, recent events should underscore the dangers that remain so long as Trump is president. First, he may use his executive powers to extract revenge, settle scores and instill fear in political opponents — just as the Nixon White House did with the Internal Revenue Service. Second, he will continue to undermine the morale of prosecutors and investigators, causing them to leave, second-guess their actions or shape their work so as to avoid the president’s wrath. And worst of all, Trump will undermine the public’s faith in entities that are supposed to be apolitical fact-finders and enforcers of the law, leading Americans to question the honesty and fairness of our government and criminal-justice system. That, in a nutshell, is how authoritarians infiltrate and abuse the administration of justice — unless the voters rise up to stop them.

#Resist