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

Would any development NOT have been spun as a win for Team Trump? (By Team Trump, that is.)

I'm already seeing Trumpsters conveniently ignoring that this terrible bill was Trump's highest priority circa yesterday, and now they're cheering, because WINNING.

Related:

https://twitter.com/HallieJackson/status/845251292570226688

Remember, if this bill fails, top WH source told me POTUS won't see it as failure - instead, as "people in Congress breaking their promises"

https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/845246574385094656

Freedom Caucus source to me just now: "Think they want it to fail on the floor to make a point."

something tells me it may not be a great idea to start a war with the one group you actually need to constantly look the other way

And per the screenshots here, Drudge and Breitbart merrily targeting Ryan:

https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/845267910973181953

frogbs otm: perhaps after being publicly blamed for failing to Make Health Care Great Again, GOP congresspersons will suddenly develop an interest in all this Russia nonsense.

Perhaps but I wouldn't count on it immediately. Still...

Team Trump would view it as a win if the bill passed too. but if Trump's stark warning about GOP members being primaried came true, does he really think he'd do better with a Dem-led Congress that now hates his guts?

he may be right that the most collateral damage from this happens to Congress and not him but he's naive af if he thinks none of this hurts him.

Nunes hopes he pleased senpai tho

Yeah, I think actively impeding Congress from getting what they want would be the quickest route to potential impeachment.

There is considerable frustration inside the White House. Most of it seems to be directed toward the House Freedom Caucus.

“We’ve emboldened them,” an aide said.

The President is said to be “agitated” by the process, an aide said, which he thinks is all political. He’s also disappointed at the outside groups for failing to budge.

But an official says the President actually meant what he said a couple weeks ago: Who knew this would be so hard?

lolololol

but if Trump's stark warning about GOP members being primaried came true

He danced around with not endorsing Rs who pissed him off last year, but always came around

won't matter as much if constituents are pissed off about broken promises though. it's easier to sell hope than it is to repackage failure

which he thinks is all political
which he thinks is all political
which he thinks is all political
which he thinks is all political
which he thinks is all political

Politics are Too Political sounds like a song an ex-Eagle would sing

Can't see how it helps Trump if he paints the Freedom Caucus and all opposition to him as losers who will lose their seats. He needs every last one of those losers.

On the lighter side...

― to fly across the city and find Aerosmith's car (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, March 24, 2017 1:47 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

late on this, but DYING.

Nunes planning to speak again at 10:30

"I'm my own leak."

"Devin, why do you keep looking off camera? Who are you looking at?"

Hmm...

https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/845271731900223488

The National Enquirer--which has close ties to Trump world--is now turning on Mike Flynn.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7sCKPBXkAAjsJr.jpg

"leaks, that's when i am a viking"

meanwhile, in overseas murder

@AlexanderEmmons
The US is killing more and more civilians in Syria and Iraq. Look at the data, from @airwars:

https://airwars.org/data/

How long before we read about Flynn, Manafirt, or Stone being tossed out a window of Trump Tower?

They're random gentlemen that the president has sat next to on a plane. I don't see why people feel such a need to try and connect their direct ties with Russian governmental officials to the fact that they were personally beaten to death by the president on camera. It's really a stretch.

would be such amazing chutzpah if that's his spin - "i caught the spies! ME!!"

Nunes rambling is just that but he seems to have said Manafort has 'volunteered' to appear before the committee.

he's gonna show up with a burlap sack over his head and many visible bruises

Meantime:

https://twitter.com/TimAlberta/status/845280848463233024

Freedom Caucus reax to Trump tweet, per multiple sources: meh. Laugh it off. "Trump being Trump." Surprised he didn't come after us sooner.

While

https://twitter.com/AlexNBCNews/status/845274499276816384

House GOP source: We are going forward. If Freedom Caucus wants to kill the bill do it in public on the floor. Our members are sick of this.

With other mutterings that Ryan, McCarthy et al are fully in line with this.

Odds on Manafort living long enough to testify?

1 in 6

5 to 10 in the state pen

Odds on Manafort taking the fifth?

or drinking a fifth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YloqZ0FOD0M

Okay I'm starting to fully agree it's endgame. The chairman of the House *Appropriations* Committee just came out against the bill:

https://www.facebook.com/rfrelinghuysen/posts/816598255160874

As a reporter said on Twitter: "In the old days this is the kind of stuff they would strip your gavel for"

Meantime, Schiff has said this:

https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/845293157055107072

BREAKING: Chairman just cancelled open Intelligence Committee hearing with Clapper, Brennan and Yates in attempt to choke off public info.

Well well.

Meanwhile the Newsmax guy adds to the cover:

https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/845293274009100289

Trump friend Ruddy: "Ryan did major disservice. President had confidence he'd come up with good plan. disappointing”

Circular firing squad time

Ruddy, sure.

I really am impressed by the depth of the overall botch happening here on multiple levels. As Tombot continues to rightly note, can't really laugh at/with it, but I'm kinda already expecting a number of these people to have memoirs in later years talking about these days as the bad times 'before I found God.' (Colson-style, I'd like to hope.)

in other news, fuck you, Rick Perry:

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose agency oversees the nation's nuclear arsenal, is inserting himself into an unusually small political dispute: an election for student body president at Texas A&M.

In an op-ed submitted to the Houston Chronicle, the former Texas governor suggested that his alma mater's first openly gay president may have stolen the outcome. Perry wrote that the campus election "at best made a mockery of due process and transparency" and at worst "allowed an election to be stolen outright."

"It is difficult to escape the perception that this quest for 'diversity' is the real reason the election outcome was overturned," he wrote. "Does the principle of 'diversity' override and supersede all other values of our Aggie Honor Code?"

Those who know Perry best said they're not surprised that he would take the unusual step of weighing in on a parochial issue at his alma mater — even though he's now a member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet.

"There are three institutions that are most important to Rick Perry, his wife and family, the U.S. military and Texas A&M. It depended on the day, or the weekend, which one had the top priority," said Ray Sullivan, a former Perry chief of staff and veteran of the ex-governor's unsuccessful presidential runs in 2012 and 2016.

I really am impressed by the depth of the overall botch happening here on multiple levels. As Tombot continues to rightly note, can't really laugh at/with it, but I'm kinda already expecting a number of these people to have memoirs in later years talking about these days as the bad times 'before I found God.' (Colson-style, I'd like to hope.)

― Ned Raggett,

yeah this is the sort of thing you'll read in Mark Meadows' 2028 memoir Freedom is Free: "That's when I gave up the hooch."

Oh, yeah, I've been thinking for a while that the host of people who've had to interact with Orangutan-in-Chief in the post-NDA era will have lots and lots of trash to talk in the years to come.

"Ryan did major disservice. President had confidence he'd come up with good plan. disappointing”

So when the plan was put up for discussion, he assumed it was good, without, y'know, checking? Reading it? Asking a question or two?

MMMkay so he pushed it pretty hard, considering that either (A) He didn't know or didn't care whether it was any good, or (B) Knew it was terrible but assumed it could be made good through the awesome magic of DEALZ.

Like I'm pretty sure that NDAs as a blanket requirement are about the only smart thing Trump ever did. Without them, he probably never would've gotten near the president and would likely be rotting in prison right now.

'near the presidency' rather

[(Colson-style, I'd like to hope.)

if you mean, "from inside a prison" then yes

"It is difficult to escape the perception that this quest for 'diversity' is the real reason the election outcome was overturned," he wrote. "Does the principle of 'diversity' override and supersede all other values of our Aggie Honor Code?"

Just want to point out that legend has it a certain A & M hazing ritual involves fucking a sheep.

if you mean, "from inside a prison" then yes

Maybe I should stop bothering with subtext.

we're not living in subtle times