Trump, June 2017: From [Covfefe] with Love

Benjamin Wittes

yeah I def want to listen to someone with #SupportTheDeepState in their bio

ya, i'm pretty sick of these "omg huge drop comin'" teaser posts. fucking lazy ass way of trying to get clicks.

the only drop that matters is the pee tape

need a steady stream of intel on that

meanwhile, least surprising thing ever, but

The net neutrality debate is a case in point. The biggest campaign fundraisers for the Clinton campaign — Democratic lobbyists such as Ingrid Duran, Vincent Roberti, Steve Elmendorf, Al Mottur, and Arshi Siddiqui — are now lobbying on behalf of AT&T, Verizon, or Comcast on net neutrality. These companies dominate the telecom industry, which is working with the Trump administration to unwind one of President Barack Obama’s biggest accomplishments.

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/23/democratic-lobbyists-donald-trump-mottur-podesta-comcast-prudential/

Wittes at least is maybe 3/3 for this stuff. No one else has delivered.

This Washington Post story is despair-inducing.

agreed

It's the connect-the-dots type of story that crafts a narrative out of all of the events the public only learned about in a piecemeal fashion. Seeing everything spelled out is depressing

I thought I'd gotten over my frustration with Obama in 2011 and 2013.

for some reason i can't get around the washpo paywall this time. guess i'll have to read a summary of it elsewhere.

ask the Russians how to get through it

incognito window always works for me xp

wait, never mind. i've hacked the mainframe. i'm in

now i can depress myself more with the real stuff rather than second hand. fuck yeah!

Due to my close relationship with Jeff Bezos the WaPo is $4 a month

oh shit, is there a discount for prime subscribers? makes sense. so much synergy, i feel it in the loins. does the washington post cover what an asshole he is, or do they kind of look the other way?

you get six free months with prime iirc, then the discount

feel like in the end the Obama admin will be known for proving that "when they go low, we go high" doesn't work in real life

https://subscribe.washingtonpost.com/prime/#/

on the bottom of all the amazon/whole foods article they had a little tag with (Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, also owns the Washington Post)

I chuckled

kudos to Kerry wanting to go all-out on the Russia sanctions though

(that was an x-post back to frogs)

we're going to look back on this moment with pride from our new country the united states of russia in 2022.

feel like in the end the Obama admin will be known for proving that "when they go low, we go high" doesn't work in real life

― frogbs, Friday, June 23, 2017 11:13 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not when reduced to a facile catchphrase, anyway. It assumes of its audience a basic understanding of why one approach might be preferable to the other, which is I think a faulty assumption wrt our aimlessly-aggrieved and undereducated populace.

going high doesn't mean sitting on your hands because someone might accuse you of being partisan

Marcy Wheeler's analysis has a lot of quotes from the piece if you can't access Washington Post.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/06/23/the-compartments-in-wapos-russian-hack-opus/

Obama has always been a chump, away with him

Meantime

Here we go: Sandoval and Heller with joint presser on Medicaid today in Vegas.

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) June 23, 2017

Sandoval: "This will kill NV. Over to you, Dean."
Heller: "I should oppose?"
Sandoval: "Must I draw you a picture?"
Heller: "Ok. I'm a no."

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) June 23, 2017

on the other front, someone has something to prove

The U.S.-led coalition conducted a strike in Palmyra, Syria last night. That is well west of the Euphrates. Flouting Russia's warning.

— HansNichols (@HansNichols) June 23, 2017

so cool we're slowly being dragged into a proxy war against Russia, it's just like old times

i'm ready for the Rambo 3 reboot

On Oct. 7, the administration offered its first public comment on Russia’s “active measures,” in a three-paragraph statement issued by Johnson and Clapper. Comey had initially agreed to attach his name, as well, officials said, but changed his mind at the last minute, saying that it was too close to the election for the bureau to be involved.

...

The statement was issued around 3:30 p.m., timed for maximum media coverage. Instead, it was quickly drowned out. At 4 p.m., The Post published a story about crude comments Trump had made about women that were captured on an “Access Hollywood” tape. Half an hour later, WikiLeaks published its first batch of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

(a side lol at comey worrying that it was too close for the election for the FBI to be involved.)

i can't remember - was it ever confirmed that WikiLeaks timed the publishing of the Podesta emails to counter the press coverage of the Russian interference statement? or is it just assumed?

i think they knew trickling out bit by bit would generate more damaging headlines

Wasn't the first batch of emails released less than one hour after The Washington Post published the Trump pussy-grab video? And then spread out to have maximum effect on the election

That Marci Wheeler piece is interesting, not only for its description of how the focus of the Washington Post reporting over the last year has helped to (inaccurately) shape the narrative on this story, but also for the bit about the planting of cyberweapons in Russia's infrastructure.

Also this: “Whatever else this article is designed to do, I think, it is designed to be a threat to Putin, from long gone Obama officials.”

I appreciated the Wheeler piece giving some context to some of the breathless retelling of this sort of stuff..

as much as the press has been killing the game lately, its really just the highest form of access journalism being perfected.

Nunes must be happy everybody forgot about him huh

Trump is struggling to stay calm on Russia, one morning call at a time

President Trump has a new morning ritual. Around 6:30 a.m. on many days — before all the network news shows have come on the air — he gets on the phone with a member of his outside legal team to chew over all things Russia.

The calls — detailed by three senior White House officials — are part strategy consultation and part presidential venting session, during which Trump’s lawyers and public-relations gurus take turns reviewing the latest headlines with him. They also devise their plan for battling his avowed enemies: the special counsel leading the Russia investigation; the “fake news” media chronicling it; and, in some instances, the president’s own Justice Department overseeing the probe.

His advisers have encouraged the calls — which the early-to-rise Trump takes from his private quarters in the White House residence — in hopes that he can compartmentalize the widening Russia investigation. By the time the president arrives for work in the Oval Office, the thinking goes, he will no longer be consumed by the Russia probe that he complains hangs over his presidency like a darkening cloud.

It rarely works, however. Asked whether the tactic was effective, one top White House adviser paused for several seconds and then just laughed.

...

Trump is most bothered by what he views as the one-sided portrayal and overall unfairness of the Russia investigation, senior White House officials said. He thinks media reports automatically treat Comey’s version of events as superior to his own and have not focused enough on Mueller’s hiring of some investigators who have donated to Democratic candidates. He is angry that Comey’s reputation has not been tarnished by his admission that he asked a friend to leak a private memo of his interactions with Trump to the news media. And he is irritated that — as he tweeted — Rosenstein penned a memo outlining possible justifications to fire Comey and then appointed Mueller to investigate Trump, in part, for doing just that.

Gosh, why would anyone ever give more weight to James Comey's statements over those of a man with a four-decade reputation as a liar and opportunist?

I just can't understand how Trump is confused that nobody takes him at his word. And almost all of these things he rages about ARE HIS OWN FUCKING DUMB FAULT.

Trump is most bothered by what he views as the one-sided portrayal and overall unfairness of the Russia investigation, senior White House officials said. He thinks media reports automatically treat Comey’s version of events as superior to his own and have not focused enough on Mueller’s hiring of some investigators who have donated to Democratic candidates. He is angry that Comey’s reputation has not been tarnished by his admission that he asked a friend to leak a private memo of his interactions with Trump to the news media. And he is irritated that — as he tweeted — Rosenstein penned a memo outlining possible justifications to fire Comey and then appointed Mueller to investigate Trump, in part, for doing just that.

The president has also seemed at times to regret his decision to fire his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, after Flynn misled Vice President Pence about his contacts with the Russians. Shortly after dismissing Flynn, the president mused privately that maybe he could bring him back — despite understanding, said a senior White House official, that Flynn faced other challenges within the administration and realistically could not rejoin the team.

xp fuck it you beat me

its also amazing that they continue to treat him like a fucking toddler and try to run out his russia energy at 6:30 in the goddamn morning every day

Something is up with Flynn. He knows something Trump doesn't want getting out. Probably something stupid, not Russian "collusion" but still

Trump is the bright and shining center of the universe. Of course people should take his word over that of a flawed person who is not the center of the universe. This is a man who voluntarily wears his hair like that. He is infallible, and it's frustrating to him that most people in the world can't see that.

The FBI had detected suspected Russian attempts to penetrate election systems in 21 states, and at least one senior White House official assumed that Moscow would try all 50, officials said.

i'd love to know which 21 states they targeted

*arms crossed*

In another article published last week, Georgia was one of the states that resisted what it saw as federal encroachment.

yeah, the washpo piece has a quote from the GA secretary of state on that:

On Aug. 15, Johnson arranged a conference call with dozens of state officials, hoping to enlist their support. He ran into a wall of resistance.

The reaction “ranged from neutral to negative,” Johnson said in congressional testimony Wednesday.

Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, used the call to denounce Johnson’s proposal as an assault on state rights. “I think it was a politically calculated move by the previous administration,” Kemp said in a recent interview, adding that he remains unconvinced that Russia waged a campaign to disrupt the 2016 race. “I don’t necessarily believe that,” he said.

Oh you guys didn't see the Kim Zetter story in politico on Georgia's election systems? It's also miserable

yeah, that article was something... http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/14/will-the-georgia-special-election-get-hacked-215255

if I'm remembering correctly, Maddow also reported a couple of nights ago that the Dallas County voter rolls were breached, and that in Durham County NC (the most democratic-leaning in the state), a hack resulted in voting machine malfunctions, such that the voting hours had to be extended by more than an hour

In the "struggles to stay calm" story linked above, one might find some dark humor in this: "Asked whether the tactic was effective, one top White House adviser paused for several seconds and then just laughed."

The barely-disguised contempt his employees have for him is emotionally gratifying for a few seconds. Then I remember how little this nightmare circus is doing for people on the edge, and I get sad again.

Even in the best-case scenario (shocking developments, irrefutable evidence, anguished confessions, humiliating resignations) this story doesn't heal a single sick person or feed a single hungry person. Except in the most incremental and abstract and distant way. MAYBE having Trumpism indelibly tarnished in the public eye - associated with failure and regret - can help progressive and liberal policy goals advance. But I'm not holding my breath.

lol man 'conservatives' just really do not give a fuuuck about anything any more. it's almost impressive.