US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

Trump devours you like warm cottage cheese.

xpost

Here's where we see if blusterbear Bannon turns tail or goes ham.

i finally got around to reading the rest of the Wolff piece a few minutes ago. it does irritate me when people put paraphrased remarks within quotation marks, but i agree with the interpretation that it's probably mostly on the mark, given that no one from the white house has really disputed any specific parts of it (that i've seen, at least).

there's these really damning passages, like:

As soon as the campaign team had stepped into the White House, Walsh saw, it had gone from managing Trump to the expectation of being managed by him. Yet the president, while proposing the most radical departure from governing and policy norms in several generations, had few specific ideas about how to turn his themes and vitriol into policy. And making suggestions to him was deeply complicated. Here, arguably, was the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-­literate. He trusted his own expertise ­— no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s. He was often confident, but he was just as often paralyzed, less a savant than a figure of sputtering and dangerous insecurities, whose instinctive response was to lash out and behave as if his gut, however confused, was in fact in some clear and forceful way telling him what to do. It was, said Walsh, “like trying to figure out what a child wants.”

and what's amazing is that i've never really seen anyone really dispute this characterization of trump, either. even his defenders. this dude does not read. he doesn't like the big words. he doesn't pay attention. he gets distracted. some people close to him call him childish, outright, and most of the others don't say anything or brag about how good he is at sinking putts from 30 feet away. but no one really chimes in with an anecdote about how trump is actually really interested in a certain policy, or the good idea that he had that one time in that one meeting, or that he really likes kafka or something. there's just nothing there.

Couldn't such an NDA-related lawsuit claiming slander open the door for some sort of discovery proceedings? That is, it's not slander if it's true, which would lead to all sorts of dirt aired in public. Right?

IIRC, that's precisely how a lot of Church of Scientology dirt wound up on the record.

Yeah. They got a lot of crazy stuff from L. Ron's suppressed memoir, so to prove slander they would have had to produce it and other documents. Which no way were they going to do.

I mean, every move the WH has done today has been to basically shout at the world "Please look at it further and take it seriously." Wolff must not believe his luck at this point.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018

Yep Twitter Trump has been boring today - no threatening to nuke the Palestinians or anything. Sad.

xp you got it, big guy

I'm probably late to this interpretation but lately I'm getting a strong "SIEG HEIL!" vibe from the MAGA! exhortations.

And Bannon is the Ernst Rohm of the WH administration

of note:

Changes to Presidential Job Approval Tracking and Reporting

Beginning in 2018, Gallup will start updating presidential job approval on a weekly basis, rather than on a daily basis. We are making this change largely because the source for these daily data, the Gallup Daily tracking program -- made possible by a client-supported commitment to daily interviewing on a wide variety of well-being metrics -- is shifting from telephone surveys to reporting mail surveys on a monthly basis.

Gallup remains committed to tracking presidential approval using probability-based, telephone interviewing, but is reducing the sample size from 3,500 to 1,500 U.S. adults per week. As a result, Gallup will aggregate and report presidential job approval each week, rather than daily, beginning on Jan. 8 at 1 p.m. ET. We will continue to report subgroup differences for presidential job approval using the large sample sizes collected each month.

The Gallup Poll Social Series surveys conducted each month, other standalone surveys, and periodic updates of other Gallup trends and measures throughout the year will continue as they have with no change.

xp sic semper Strasseris

Wolff has the explosive quotes taped, so the access journos newly worried abt the sanctity of journalism can relaxhttps://t.co/CfBrE6Kksf

— Heidi N Moore (@moorehn) January 4, 2018

More golden quotes from the Wolff book here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-wolff-my-insane-year-inside-trumps-white-house-1071504

"There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn't stop saying something."

Okay, okay, I'll preorder the fucking thing already.

The way that closes is killer

Hoping for the best, with their personal futures as well as the country's future depending on it, my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.

At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.

i hope rosenstein highlighted all the damning evidence about nunes

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/03/politics/rod-rosenstein-house-intel-russia/index.html

damn, if he's got recordings

also the skepticism about this Wolff piece is odd to me in that it reads pretty much exactly like.... every other fucking thing I've ever read about the Trump White House

tbf Wolff himself doesn't exactly have a glowing rep

yeah you're right that is fair
but I guess I was expecting this fantastical thing when most of the behavior an the dynamics between the various factions seemed very in line with a dozen stories

like, I don't know maybe people are still struggling with THIS IS THE GUY HE'S JUST A DUMB ASSHOLE, there's nothing there and there's some need for there to be

Dumb is one thing, actively falling apart is another.

Put them together and what've you got.

The nature of the comedy, it was soon clear, was that here was a group of ambitious men and women who had reached the pinnacle of power, a high-ranking White House appointment — with the punchline that Donald Trump was president.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-wolff-my-insane-year-inside-trumps-white-house-1071504

I genuinely believe 95% of the carping about Wolff is professional jealousy and nothing more. Oh, Michael Wolff has an exaggerated sense of his own importance, and touts his proximity to power at every opportunity? This separates him from every other big-name journalist exactly how? Also, scumbags he made sound like assholes in his work later shouted "I never said that"? Oh, THAT'S never happened before. I find it perfectly plausible that Trump could golf with Boehner, give a talk about Boehner, then in a meeting say "Who's John Boehner?" Why? Because he thought it would be advantageous to Donald Trump to do each of those things, at the moment that he did them, and that was all his canary's brain needed to know. Every political and/or business journalist in America would act exactly like Wolff if given half a chance, and they're just pissed that a guy who looks like a cross between Roy Cohn and Klaus Kinski in Nosferatu pulled off what they couldn't.

https://www.apnews.com/19f6bfec15a74733b40eaf0ff9162bfa

fuck you Jeff

Every political and/or business journalist in America would act exactly like Wolff if given half a chance, and they're just pissed that a guy who looks like a cross between Roy Cohn and Klaus Kinski in Nosferatu pulled off what they couldn't.

It makes perfect sense to me that a hack grifter journalist would be the one to get this level of access.

This will solve EVERYTHING.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders issues statement saying "all personal devices for both guests and staff will no longer be allowed in the West Wing." pic.twitter.com/r2P1fzfMem

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 4, 2018

Sessions compares marijuana to heroin and blames it for spikes in violence.

FFS!! i hate this fucking goblin

the fact that no one immediately shouted FAKE NEWS!!! at the Wolff story but instead started attacking each other and threatening lawsuits kinda makes me feel it's legit

"There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn't stop saying something."

I notice this in his recent interviews. He'll say something over and over again and then the interviewer will ask him another question and...he'll just keep going back to his previous point. Like an entire page of that NYT interview was him answering questions about his tax bill with stuff like "actually you'll see everyone agrees it was the Democrats that colluded"

Also kind of reminds me of him calling the war widow and just sorta rambling on about completely unrelated topics

Rather. Also, Wolff says he has tapes.

Sessions' decision, BTW, is a fudge. He's basically saying federal prosecutors can do what they want depending on how they feel, and I have a feeling more than a few of them will shrug.

I find it perfectly plausible that Trump could golf with Boehner, give a talk about Boehner, then in a meeting say "Who's John Boehner?" Why? Because he thought it would be advantageous to Donald Trump to do each of those things, at the moment that he did them, and that was all his canary's brain needed to know.

― grawlix (unperson), 4. januar 2018 15:11 (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Okay, but then that's how the story is, that Trump decided to say that even though he golfed with Boehner. Presenting the story without mentioning that they've golfed together is piss poor research. And, well, sorry, but that's kinda not up for discussion.

And I say that as someone who will read the book, and probably laugh heartily at stupid shit like that Boehner quote. But Wolff is cutting corners everywhere, there's no doubt about that.

i don't buy that ! he would like nothing more than to reignite the war on pot anyway he can , he could have left that in place just fine. xp

Man, the wedgie those burnouts gave Sessions in high school must have been positively atomic. But I guess he's showing them.

Sessions waited too long. I'm not being flip here -- if he had announced it out of the gate, that's one thing. This is only coming after a full year, Trump's political erosion, California fully implementing its own policy, etc. So now?

now I imagined Sessions holding a keytar and mouthing ATOMIC from the Blondie song.

Anyway, good luck with that!

NEW - Another letter....Trump's attorney sends letter to author Michael Wolff and publisher demanding cease and desist publication of new book https://t.co/q4fSuHugXZ

— John Santucci (@JTSantucci) January 4, 2018

i'm not saying he will be effective in turning back the tides on already legal states but for states trying to bring it on like here in NJ this doesn't help at all.

No platforming. SAD!

i'm not saying he will be effective in turning back the tides on already legal states but for states trying to bring it on like here in NJ this doesn't help at all.

Sessions himself noted the answer in his confirmation -- Congress can change the law. So if you wanted people to rally to a cause...

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders issues statement saying "all personal devices for both guests and staff will no longer be allowed in the West Wing." pic.twitter.com/r2P1fzfMem

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 4, 2018

lol

i'm not saying he will be effective in turning back the tides on already legal states but for states trying to bring it on like here in NJ this doesn't help at all.

I'm willing to bet that Phil Murphy has a way better relationship with NJ's US attorney than Jeff Sessions does. Just a hunch.

so there are definitly tapes xp

Zing.

Some reporters are calling the book sloppy, challenging specific passages.

How could Wolff know for sure what Bannon and the late Roger Ailes said at a private dinner?

It turns out Wolff hosted the dinner for six at his Manhattan townhouse. https://t.co/DXjtl4Q7s9

— Robert Mann (@RTMannJr) January 4, 2018

does that mean Sanders is taking his phone away?

Jake Tapper with the bucket of cold water:

Like “Trump lawsuits against the women he allegedly sexually harassed and assaulted” imminent or “Trump lawsuit against the New York Times” imminent? https://t.co/JHWhCsnXWp

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 4, 2018