Trump, June 2017: From [Covfefe] with Love

this is essentially the same as being caught in a elevator pulling up your trousers next to a fresh, steaming pile of human shit, then loudly insisting you had nothing to do with it while refusing any requests for access to the elevator surveillance tapes

it looks real bad

They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

Sounding pretty defeated this morning. No all caps, no exclamation marks...

'nice' not nearly as punchy as 'sad!'

mr. trump, where are your tax returns? why did you make one change and one change only to the RNC plank at the RNC convention?

I wonder if he has begun realizing that if he'd just kept his mouth shut and not fired anyone, that this whole thing would have gone away on it's own...

Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull imitated Trump in a speech that I guess is something like the White House Correspondents' Dinner, except it's not supposed to go public? Anyway, there's video.

Yam is essentailly a scab picker when it comes to crisis management

back in This Will End Well

Regime change back on formal agenda.
US supports "elements inside #Iran that would lead to peaceful transition of that gov," Tillerson says.

— Sadegh Ghorbani (@GhorbaniSadegh) June 14, 2017

Does going after him now permanently bypass Mueller being able to build a case that way?

Reading Josh Marshall try to piece together the timeline, assuming certain aspects of the Post story are true it's possible the obstruction investigation began before Mueller came on board, and that it was Rosenstein that set it in motion. Meaning there was maybe a month or so of material in progress that passed on the Mueller.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-wapo-obstruction-blockbuster-and-the-world-of-hurt-to-come

One key point is that Mueller did not start this obstruction investigation. According to the Post, that probe began “days after Comey was fired on May 9…” Mueller was appointed on May 17th. Reading the Post piece closely, I do not think it explicitly says that the probe began prior to the 17th. But the wording and logic of the piece strongly suggests that is the case.

Of course, none of us know all the facts, but given how cagey everyone from Comey to Rosenstein to Rogers and others have been about this story, anything is possible.

I hope Trump spends all week pushing back against Mueller and picking more fights with Australia.

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/15/533014228/senators-grill-trump-judicial-nominees-on-provocative-blog-posts

So here's a legal question from some of you real and fake lawyers. If Trump flat out said in his Lester Holt interview that he fired Comey due to Russia, how is that not an admission of intent? Likewise, if he told the Russians in person on the day after firing Comey that the firing "relieved great pressure," how is that not an admission as well? You can't make the claim that Trump didn't know what he was doing if the day or days after he flat out says why he did it in the most incriminating way.

On that second point, the White House never denied how he was quoted in the Russia meeting, right? Why not? Was there a recording/transcript? Usually they push back with "that is privileged, private information" or "the report is fake" or something like that, but they never did that, did they?

OK, Trump's had his morning shot of meth:

You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people! #MAGA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2017

He's totally going to fire Mueller, isn't he?

well, yeah

I still think the perfect ironic twist to all this would be the discovery that actual witches conspired in his downfall. Like he made a deal with a devil and it's time to collect. Or hey, maybe a twofer, with the ghost of Rasputin dragging him down.

Anyway, I still think Salem was the single greatest witch hunt in American history, followed by McCarthyism, but reasonable people can disagree.

i think you could make a pretty good case that trump's enthusiastic embrace of birtherism was a milestone in a more recent witch hunt

Trump's going to started tweeting about voodoo dolls soon

When I was a kid you just assumed that our witch hunts were just going to be greater than the ones our parents had. But sadly they mostly suck now.

This is the first American generation whose witch hunts will not be better than their parents' witch hunts.

This isn't your grandmother's witch hunt

It's Witch Hunt XTREME

The greatest witch hunts are actually some groundbreaking stuff being done in Brooklyn. You probably haven't heard of it.

Elsewhere

Breaking: CNN is suing the FBI in federal court -- seeking copies of the Comey memos. @gregorywallace story here https://t.co/RWE0nDu6lC

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 15, 2017

I don't follow why CNN has the right to them. Or rather, they have a right to publish them, but I don't see how/why they can force anyone to give them to CNN. Trump's tax returns are not classified, either, and CNN can't demand them from the IRS, right?

Yeah now all of a sudden I'm wondering something. Salem is on the ocean. One presumes that some of its colonial-era citizens sometimes engaged in fishing, whether for their livelihood or just to augment their food supply.

Could some of them simultaneously participated in a witch hunt AND a fishing expedition? That would be kind of awesome.

Ask this guy:
http://www.ifi.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/witchfinder-LG.jpg

Or this one:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiM7vbO_r_UAhUH0IMKHd6LBMkQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Falchetron.com%2FThe-Witch-Who-Came-from-the-Sea-58765-W&psig=AFQjCNHQNr8szRyofsHpPojlS1QndkYUfg&ust=1497620863850178

Goddam it. I blame witches.

http://www.goodfishguide.org/fish/147/Witch,%20Witch%20flounder,%20Torbay%20sole

https://images.lookhuman.com/render/standard/5400206052064080/6733-heathered_black-z1-t-witches-get-shit-done.png

more like the lying conniving bastards hunt

http://thedoteaters.com/tde/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/wumpus_feat.png

she turned me into a newt

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/NewtGingrich.jpg/170px-NewtGingrich.jpg

As I understood it Salem was actually set up initially as a shelter and supply base for fishing fleets that also worked as a base for the puritans who found Europe and the Uk overly tolerant. So there was always a more secular element to the population.
Think the 2 factions lived slightly separated but not everybody there was the puritan of historical stereotype.

Okay. We've had our fun. Now let's get back to the things that Americans REALLY care about.

Benghazi iirc

otm

Fast and Furious

Chappaquiddick

Communist in Hollywood

people continually say firing mueller would be a horrible move for him, that just seems like wishful thinking. i'm sure he'd get away with it, much like he has with every other act of malfeasance his entire life

fidget spinners, whatever the fuck they are

xp

people continually say firing mueller would be a horrible move for him, that just seems like wishful thinking. i'm sure he'd get away with it, much like he has with every other act of malfeasance his entire life

only one way to know for sure!

For morbz

http://www.aveleyman.com/Gallery/ActorsB/833-19636.jpg

At the Drive-In somehow re-formed

surprised trump hasn't tried to claim credit for that too

AT LAST.

"A former senior official said Mr. Mueller's investigation was looking at money laundering by Trump associates," a source told the Times. "The suspicion is that any cooperation with Russian officials would most likely have been done in exchange for some kind of financial payoff, and that there would have been an effort to hide the payoffs, most likely by routing them through offshore banking centers." A separate investigation into Russia has also reportedly focused on potential use of offshore banking centers to launder money. In April, House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) visited Cyprus, which "has a reputation as a laundromat for the Russians who are trying to avoid sanctions."

I'm tired of "collusion" as shorthand for what may have happened b/w Trump and Russia; it allows Republicans to swat aside suggestions that Putin conspired to put Trump in the White House in exchange for favorable treatment. The real story is how deeply Trump was in debt and how badly he needed laundered Russian dough.

jings