Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

BREAKING: http://thehill.com/media/323635-trump-stops-following-scarborough-brzezinski-on-twitter

Saw on Twitter last night, forget from whom, that in 2005 Trump paid over one-fifth as much in AMT as all of the Top 400 filers that year (of which he was NOT one) combined. that to me is more interesting than anything Maddow discussed in her entire hour, especially considering Trump wants to get rid of AMT.

the foreign dealings are worth digging into, of course, but there was absolutely nothing tying that stuff to these two pages of returns, so it just made her look like she was trying force connections that hadn't been proven, which is basically what she does every other night of the week.

Was going to say, it is just a matter of time before the Trump White House starts bringing up Russia to distract from ACA repeal, and then lo and behold, this morning they arrest several Russian spies for the Yahoo hack.

ain't Comey supposed to announce something today?

Supposedly.

Texans Receive First Notices of Land Condemnation for Trump’s Border Wall

I still can't see how THAT won't blow up in Trump's face.

eminent domain is as american as apple pie

Didn't Trump say he loves eminent domain?

he thought they were referring to the Who song

A kinda big thing among a lot of movement conservative types has been how eminent domain is awful. At the same time another kind big thing has been complaining about illegal immigration. I'll be amused to see how this breaks down.

Separately -- good job there:

https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/842033863287271424

House Intel Committee chairman @DevinNunes says if one takes POTUS tweets on wiretapping literally then clearly he was mistaken

he's right!

Amazing how that works.

And per other notes:

https://twitter.com/kristina_wong/status/842032059371642880

Nunes says NSA's Adm. Rogers, Comey will testify in a public hearing on Monday.

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/842006263013769218

I'd love for someone to give us all some formal guidelines on which presidential statements we should take literally/seriously and which ones we shouldn't. And I just generally love that we're in a situation where that's even a distinction that anyone should have to fucking make.

If something sounds "bad" (or sick), don't take him literally. We're also not supposed to take him literally when he says something that sounds "too good" like "all Americans will have healthcare at a low cost."

you're so supposed to him seriously when he's right about something and think he's joking when he's not

it's the same thing bar buffoons do - loudly share stupid opinions until someone calls them out on it, then claim they were just joking brah, relax

We should internally treat his every statement with the distinct lack of seriousness that he's consistently demonstrated throughout decades as a public figure and externally treat his every potentially self-incriminating with grave seriousness and a demand for answers from the top down and an insistence upon any evidence that supports said statements, etc.

@pixelatedboat
Weird that Trump's only deduction was for "the pens I use to draw larger breasts on Broom-Hilda every day"

-9 % approval on Rasmussen today. That's about a ten point swing in a week.

Is there any place doing a worthwhile/contextualized Trump approval ratings tracker? 538 have one buried beneath the sport stuff, and they say it's doing the usual thing of adjusting for 'house effects' and poll quality and stuff - but I'd love to see something that overlays past presidents' complete arcs over the same period just so you have some kind of point of comparison.

this GOP pollster did that during the campaign. haven't seen him do it since except this link

https://twitter.com/adrian_gray/status/832379313165066240

which has this

http://i.imgur.com/rlKp3jY.png

Unfortunately it seems like 30% of the US population is the hard core ride or die republicans

anyone know the last time comrade combover was interviewed by a real journalist?

Unfortunately it seems like 30% of the US population is the hard core ride or die republicans

Never forget lunch discussion 145

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-crazification.html

Yeah but instead of the Alan Keyes barrier its now the Todd Akin threshold (ps I regurgitate everything I hear on podcasts. this is Harry Enten's take)

this is an interesting insight regarding the trump returns and whether they were leaked by the WH or not.. I didnt think about how it might tie in to his CURRENT returns, which should be filed soonish?

And to know that, we need something else even more than Trump’s returns from 2005, or 1995 or 2015. We need to see the tax returns he files while he’s president. Every president for the last 40 years has released theirs — you can read them here. We need to know what he’s making, who’s paying him, and how it relates to the policy decisions he’s making. The past returns are important, but the future ones are even more vital. The White House will claim that nobody cares and it’s none of our business. But we do care, and it’s absolutely our business.

So I guess Comey's taking a late lunch and is then gonna casually kinda drop the info on the investigation sometime as he's leaving the office this evening?

he's finishing his caesar salad, a friend told me

https://secure.politico.com/story/2017/03/comey-will-testify-publicly-on-russia-investigation-next-week-236081

I've heard that he prefers writing letters

lol:

A culture of paranoia is consuming the Trump administration, with staffers increasingly preoccupied with perceived enemies — inside their own government.

In interviews, nearly a dozen White House aides and federal agency staffers described a litany of suspicions: that rival factions in the administration are trying to embarrass them, that civil servants opposed to President Donald Trump are trying to undermine him, and even that a “deep state” of career military and intelligence officials is out to destroy them.

Aides are going to great lengths to protect themselves. They’re turning off work-issued smartphones and putting them in drawers when they arrive home from work out of fear that they could be used to eavesdrop. They’re staying mum in meetings out of concern that their comments could be leaked to the press by foes.

Many are using encrypted apps that automatically delete messages once they’ve been read, or are leaving their personal cellphones at home in case their bosses initiate phone checks of the sort that press secretary Sean Spicer deployed last month to try to identify leakers on his team.

It’s an environment of fear that has hamstrung the routine functioning of the executive branch. Senior advisers are spending much of their time trying to protect turf, key positions have remained vacant due to a reluctance to hire people deemed insufficiently loyal, and Trump’s ambitious agenda has been eclipsed by headlines surrounding his unproven claim that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone lines at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-white-house-paranoia-236069

when will donald leak tax returns proving that russia doesn't own him

Many are using encrypted apps that automatically delete messages once they’ve been read

Question, how legal is this? Not that it would matter necessarily but...

it's not legal! Congress has warned them about this iirc

they use the apps on their personal devices

ohhhh, like a private server. cool.

from PPP poll:

Only 24% of Voters Support GOP Health Care Plan
Raleigh, N.C. –
PPP's newest national poll finds that there is very little support for the American Health Care Act. Only 24% of voters support it, to 49% who are
opposed. Even among Republican voters only 37% are in favor of the proposal to 22% who are against it, and 41% who aren't sure one way or another. Democrats
(15/71) and independents (22/49) are more unified in their opposition to the bill than Republicans are in favor of it.

The Affordable Care Act continues to post some of the best numbers it's ever seen, with 47% of voters in favor of it to 39% who are opposed. When voters are
asked whether they'd have rather have the Affordable Care Act or the American
Health Care Act in place, the Affordable Care Act wins by 20 points at 49/29. Just 32% of voters think the best path forward with the Affordable Care Act is to
repeal it and start over, while 63% think it would be better to keep what works in it and fix what doesn't.

“There’s virtually no support for the Republican health care plan,” said Dean
Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “Voters have been getting warmer and warmer toward the Affordable Care Act and would much rather keep it than
switch to the new proposal on the table.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/upshot/why-trump-supporters-have-the-most-to-lose-with-the-gop-repeal-bill.html

feel like, as someone who nominally values loyalty above all, people could get him to flip the table by hammering that point home

On health care, the Republicans have the advantage of a Democratic Party more interested in having a better health care system than denying Trump some kind of victory. So if they could somehow bring themselves to take the ACA and make it better (expand Medicaid, fix the problems with people not getting in the pool, etc), Trump could claim a big win and do something popular at the same time.

But of course, this GOP is not capable of anything that sensible.

8chan nazis harrassing David Cay Johnston's family now: https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/03/15/trump-supporters-8chan-launch-harassment-campaign-against-reporter/215690

and trump is too fucking stupid to break the mold and figure that out..

xp

So if they could somehow bring themselves to take the ACA and make it better (expand Medicaid, fix the problems with people not getting in the pool, etc), Trump could claim a big win and do something popular at the same time.

Trump might almost be smart enough for this - or rather, susceptible to it if someone explained to him that it would make him even more popular than he's ever been. Except: it's pretty unappealing to the business-oriented "low taxes, small government" wing (which includes people like Donald Trump), and total anathema to the ideological wing of the GOP (which also includes Donald Trump where it overlaps with "deny poor people and minorities everything"). Actually these wings overlap to an enormous degree but basically a Medicaid-expanding bill would only pass Congress with a Dem majority or a completely different Republican Party than the one we actually have in there. Yes, it's populist, but in a Huey Long "spread the wealth" sense, which is a square peg for the current GOP's round hole.

Besides, it just scrambles their narratives. I agree with the people pointing out that they screwed themselves by building their whole health care secret plan cult around opposing Obamacare. The chance for them to perform a realigning, thunder-stealing, Bismarck-implements-social-security maneuver was to implement a Romneycare or ACA model under Dubya! Expanded health care access that embraces the dynamism and job creation of the private insurance market blah blah blah. It would have been a brilliant populist move and left the Dems stuck campaigning on "well sure we like it but it doesn't go far enough!" which is fine but not quite a red-meat sales pitch.

Not to write a fifth-dimensional Obama narrative but if there's any upside to the ACA being, basically, a plan tailor-made for Romney/Jeb! Republicans (even if they won't admit it), it's that it leaves present-day GOP pols nowhere to go except proposing draconian and unpopular plans that take coverage away from people who already have it.

would also involve Trump actually having to work to develop policy + build a coalition of votes in congress, two things he clearly has no interest in doing

Yeah like the most we could ever expect would be him suddenly and incongruously tweeting "Have had great talks on 'health care',, Medicare, Medicaid must be FREE FOR ALL! Can't wait for great plan from Congress! #MAGA" but then never doing anything about it. Cue weeks of GOP media outlets emitting showers of sparks and thick clouds of black smoke, congresspeople awkwardly double-talking at town halls and on talking-head shows, and in the end they're way further from passing a plan anybody wants than they are now.

even for Yam backpedaling from "O-care is a disaster/imploding" wd be a trick