Trump, July 2017: Tweet more

hard to blame the President for the AHCA failure yesterday...I mean, he sat in a fire truck, he even tried wearing a cowboy hat...what more could he do?

the chapters about the importance of playing dress-up in the art of the deal were my favourites

he even tried wearing a cowboy hat

Pix please. I feel we all need a little Lonesome Cowboy Don today.

saddle up

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com%2F2017%2F07%2Fmade-in-america-11-trump-hat.jpg%3Fw%3D640%26h%3D453&f=1

So this means McConnell can't use reconciliation again this year, right?

that window closes in September so theoretically he could but that would require pushing the bill to the right to appease Paul, Lee and Moran and still keep the other "moderates" on board. Which, you never know, might happen - it worked in the House. Seems unlikely though, esp given the other legislative priorities like the debt ceiling.

Okay Bannon is a piece of shit BUT this Paul Ryan burn is extremely good https://t.co/HvwtkDqtV6 pic.twitter.com/0b5WHRt9Eb

— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) July 18, 2017

stopped clock etc

this is enjoyable https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6o1egf/im_chris_cillizza_editor_at_large_for_cnn/

stopped clock etc
stopped heart due to severe cirrhosis, more like

we should be so lucky

i can confirm that caek's link is enjoyable

chris cillizza's reddit ama is going extremely well pic.twitter.com/dMHkESDz1G

— Isaiah Breen (@isikbreen) July 18, 2017

there's actually 2 AMA's, the second one is going even worse

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6o1ea5/im_chris_cillizza_editor_at_large_for_cnn/

You have been criticized for focusing too much on horse race coverage. With that in mind, do you enjoy the feet?

Best drive by to Reddit ever.

The illustrations accompanying this weekend's NYT Magazine cover story about the WH were quite amusing inasmuch as they depicted everyone as recognizably human except for Bannon, who looked like a vomit-drenched carpet wadded up and stuffed into a suit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6o1ea5/im_chris_cillizza_editor_at_large_for_cnn/dkdt7hg/

someone never saw Wolf Blitzer's celebrity jeopardy appearance, or he's admitting they're all really bad

how fucking clueless do you have to be to think that a chris cilizza ama would be anything other than a world-class clusterfuck

as clueless as cilizzas

Cilizza Clusterfuck Claims Complete Collapse Of Clue-Collection

Meantime

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/eighth-person-in-trump-tower-meeting-is-identified/2017/07/18/e971234a-6bce-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.4054ab6a3309

An American-based employee of a Russian real estate company took part in a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., bringing to eight the number of known participants at the session that has emerged a key focus of the investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian.

Ike Kaveladze’s presence was confirmed by Scott Balber, an attorney for Emin and Aras Agalarov, the Russian developers who hosted the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Balber said Kaveladze works for the Agalarovs’ company and attended as their representative.

Balber said Tuesday that he received a phone call from a representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller over the weekend requesting the identity of the Agalarov representative , which he said he provided. The request is the first public indication that Mueller’s team is investigating the meeting.

That...feels like a big deal? Like a really big deal?

This Ike Kaveladze?

http://www.youtube.com/user/ikeusa1965

Capito is a no on repeal-without-replace.

they like Ike

Seems like it's much easier to 'duuuuuhhhh' your way through accusations of collusion when you have Russian businesspeople with whom you've had dealings at the table.

HARDER, I mean.

repeal-without-replace will get even less votes than the previous option - McConnell's basically just daring all the hardcore rightists to back it, his maneuvering over the last week looks deliberately designed to hang the Cruz/Lee/Paul wing out to dry as scapegoats for failure. And Mitch probably is, in all fairness, correct that their intransigence and ideological purity shenanigans really are the problem in terms of getting actual legislation passed.

No the problem is the party has no ideas that are not terrible and the electorate is figuring this out

do you actually think they give a fuck about the electorate

I do, actually! Why do you think they run a massive propaganda machine if not to influence the electorate?

I almost think Trump has a better sense of the politics of this thing than McConnell. It sounds like McConnell's trying to put up something that only needs 50 votes (because it won't repeal all of the ACA regulations is my understanding) but if you know your doomed to fail, why not go the full repeal and then blame the Dems when you don't get 60? Hell, if they knew they needed 60 I'm sure all of the GOP would vote for repeal because it would be entirely symbolic, just like the repeals they passed with no consequence during Obama's presidency. I mean it's an utterly pointless, cynical, and misleading endeavor but at least it would put them back in their comfort zone of blaming the other party for their failures. I think based on his tweet this morning that Trump at least understands that much.

Trump doesn't understand a goddamned thing

otm

if Trump had a better sense of politics and a functioning cerebral cortex, he wouldn't have accepted the House or McConnell's bill.

As always, Trump's tweet was either him parroting someone else or it was written by someone else. He was busy being a fireman and a cowboy yesterday, and he would probably be hard-pressed to provide a half-lucid explanation of what either of those much more straightforward professions entail let alone the procedural intricacies of his own job.

Or what Shakey said.

to be clear here, I don't think this current version of the bill tanked because the electorate exerted pressure on its members to vote against it. If they did, the key parts of the electorate we're talking about are Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Jerry Moran's constituents, and I have a very hard time believing that the majorities of Kentucky, Utah and Kansas thought that the bill didn't go far enough in repealing Obamacare/wouldn't kill poor people fast enough etc. Show me some polling data if I'm wrong, but everything I've seen shows that the opposition to this bill was generally from the *other* end of the ideological spectrum.

So when I say McConnell is correct that his right flank was the problem, I am speaking purely from the POV of political calculus to pass a bill. The moderates weren't his problem, he could possibly have bought them off - it was the intractable ideologues who were his biggest problem, and he maneuvered thing such that this failure can be squarely pinned on them.

xp

Perfect timing!

BREAKING: Trump says Republicans should `let Obamacare fail,' says, `I'm not going to own it'

— The Associated Press (@AP) July 18, 2017

He let Cruz trot out his big amendment, and then the thing LOST votes from the right - that's McConnell giving him a black eye/hanging him out to dry. Which is totally understandable, given that they fucking hate each other.

xp

Trump doesn't realize he already owns it = he is a moron

I do, actually! Why do you think they run a massive propaganda machine if not to influence the electorate?

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, July 18, 2017 11:41 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the propaganda machine (fox news, as a piece of it) is are nearly quiet on healthcare and are concentrating on how the russia thing isn't real, how anyone who isn't a core republican is just a petty politician trying to discredit the administration

the healthcare shit is purely pounding on people in the ranks in order to bust heads and keep the democrats threatened. it's completely dead, but it's a huge energy sink right now. never forget that the republicans claim to have some goals, but the real one post-2010 is to make sure the government does as little as possible through perpetual gridlock

NYT says repeal, replace later already DOA https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/us/politics/republicans-obamacare-repeal-now-replace-later.html

SPOTTED at private 2013 dinner with @realDonaldTrump & Agalarovs: Ike Kaveladze, 8th person at Trump Tower meeting https://t.co/TjaTIBM5Al pic.twitter.com/XfASF5al13

— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) July 18, 2017

Surely he must have had that responsibility over healthcare explained to him when he first said that a couple of months ago. Healthcare is currently under your remit as the governing body so making it worse is a reflection on you etc etc.

lol @ "Plan C"

xp

funny how officeholders don't want to commit political suicide

McConnell has seen the limits of his scorched-earth approach to legislating, which many of us predicted. His caucus owes him no loyalty.

Plan C You Later