Trump, June 2017: From [Covfefe] with Love

A useful peek behind the curtain

Sen. Angus King (I-ME), part of Senate Intel, tells @chucktodd collusion/coordination aspect of their invest. not over. "We are 20% into it"

— Kailani Koenig (@kailanikm) June 18, 2017

King adds Senate Intel's investigation is complex, involving thousands of pages of intel docs, lots of witnesses, etc. https://t.co/nAjF8C67MW

— Kailani Koenig (@kailanikm) June 18, 2017

Separately, a hilarity

Jake: So Trump said "I'm under investigation" even though he isn't?

Trump lawyer: The president isn't under investigation. It's that simple pic.twitter.com/BakMGggjFq

— David Mack (@davidmackau) June 18, 2017

we just tell him he is because it gets him aroused

laurence tribe has been compromised

Endorsement and validation of the conspiracy theories continue. Especially dangerous because, to public, it carries the Harvard imprimatur. pic.twitter.com/Hb2IAVMhcC

— Andy Grewal (@AndyGrewal) June 17, 2017

And with Ailes gone, Gabriel Sherman has a new white whale (and why not)

Source close to the WH told me other day that Bannon and Priebus have all but stopped trying to get Trump to stop tweeting insane things 1/2

— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) June 18, 2017

Advisers stopped raising tweets with Trump because he lashes out when he's feeling controlled by staff. Legal team is pulling hair out 2/2

— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) June 18, 2017

I honestly had wondered

For those wondering if Sheriff Clarke ever actually received a job offer, I've obtained a copy of the letter from DHS Human Resources pic.twitter.com/RIcZgDfThb

— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) June 18, 2017

Well, of COURSE when you campaign explicitly against Federal employees, even the admins and mail-room ppl will hate you and work to thwart you.

I can't parse what I'm supposed to think about that lawrence tribe thing. is the level here "there's people who buy into false conspiracy theories that might help unseat the president OR that might not pan out and thereby strengthen the president's position?" or what, can somebody break this shit down for me

Serious question: why do reports on these urban/rural studies ONLY EVER TALK TO THE RURAL PEOPLE? https://t.co/azzwQ1qtmB

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) June 18, 2017

So the weird Rosenstein memo wasn't trying to get ahead of anything but was instead trying to cover for Trump's admission of being under investigation in that morning's tweet? Is that right?

We may never know.

You have two groups of people: One thinks the government should try and help everyone, the other thinks government should help no one. And then the second group gets mad that the first group gets more help from government? Fuck off.

My mom, who's 92 and knows a thing or two, has adopted the anti-social-Darwinist motto: Everyone does better when everyone does better. She put a bumper sticker with this onto her walker.

It's just simple: When you use all your political capital on ensuring that some people can't piss in the bathrooms they want to piss in, you don't have political capital to get as much stuff for yourself. Get your priorities in order.

I want the same bumper sticker as Aimless's mom.

Holy crap. This exchange between Chris Wallace and Trump's lawyer is absolutely incredible. pic.twitter.com/Wem33Lc1VK

— David Mack (@davidmackau) June 18, 2017

I can't parse what I'm supposed to think about that lawrence tribe thing.

Law professors at Dartmouth and U-Iowa are stupid assholes, that's my takeaway.

Wow, that fox clip is so much fun it almost made me forget how fucked we are.

can you imagine being a functioning adult human and taking a clown like Sekulow seriously? like how fucked up is your life/ reality?

Law professors at Dartmouth and U-Iowa are stupid assholes, that's my takeaway.

― El Tomboto, Sunday, June 18, 2017 2:46 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*whispers* dartmouth doesn't have a law school

Is the president not not not not under investigation?

Well whatever the guy teaches that Grewal was tweeting @

Steely-eyed Trump laywer guy's media blitz is really amazing to watch. Both the CNN and Fox clips linked above... I mean it's two entirely different versions of a deranged non-answer. I guess I give the edge slightly to the CNN version where, when Trump Tweeted "I am being investigated," what he meant to type was "I am not being investigated" or maybe "The Washington Post says I am being investigated," but those would have taken him over the 141-character limit. Tapper, who can be forgiven for not anticipating this line of argument, has not run the numbers and thus cannot point out that the the actual tweet in question tops out at 111 characters so actually both of those would have fit just fine.

Also none of this matters because the tweet's implied argument is facile nonsense anyway but man, it's good to be reminded once again of just what cynical hacks high-paid lawyers can really be. Imagine the long billable brainstorming hours coming up with wtf he was going to say about this crap, then the moment of crystallization around this line of defense, and the deep breath of determination to bark it out, over and over and over and over. We're live in five, four... Game face on, reminder to self to mention the five ANONYMOUS SOURCES?!?!?!! as often as possible in a two-minute span. It's go time.

I saw that guy on Meet the Press this morning. My head was swimming trying to follow him--it reminded me of O.J. writing a book that explained how he would have done what he almost certainly did except he didn't really do it.

Lmao at that Fox clip.

"Let me be crystal clear..." <-- people who are never crystal clear after saying they will be amirite

Copyright:

http://funeraladvertising.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/nixon.jpg?w=300&h=273

"Chuck, I think you're reading more into that tweet than what's there" (brain explodes)

To think that Chris Wallace is by far the best FOX anchor.

How is this real

Every thing Trump and his associates say or do is like the dumbest thing they could possibly do in that situation.

To think that Chris Wallace is by far the best FOX anchor.

Does Shepard Smith no longer work there?

it's a symptom of affluenza, is my latest theory. we need to raise taxes to help these fools

xpost

weird Rosenstein memo

Twitter rumor is that some European intelligence agency has some kompromat (but not the one mentioned from the Steele dossier) and is deciding whether and how to release it. Hence the odd wording about identifying the country of a source.

nice

Those of you who weren't obsessed with TBN in the 80s, Jay Sekulow is a longstanding evangelical dude. used to appear on PTL Club all the time with his legal take on stuff that, at the time, was quite fringe. He has decades of experience and is really dogged and focused in his goals, he's a real-deal ideologue. He also plays in a band with John Schlitt from Petra and John Elefante from Kansas, they do a mix of reactionary CCM & classic rock covers eg Boston.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om-oM-gXPEs

maybe you think you don't love CSNY but I guarantee this will make you feel bad for the violence done to a perfectly fine CSNY song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VfQricEyT4

sorry, not Y, just CSN, mea culpa mea culpa mea profunda culpa

wow, just wow

he was co-counsel for ISKCON before the Supreme Court in '92, defending their right to distribrute Krishna-conscious literature at the Port Authority; he prevailed. Over the years he has followed in the footsteps of his TBN peers and shown himself a man with no ethical mandate higher than "stay close to the action and never concede ground" - a good fit for his current boss. A very interesting article about him here: https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/oldspeak/the_secrets_of_jay_sekulow

More on lawyers

NYT colleagues scoop that Kushner is looking to expand legal team, and reached out to Menendez lawyer Abbe Lowell https://t.co/Ovout9kctZ

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 19, 2017

it's getting to the point where these assholes are no fun anymore

can't they all just have a massive collective stroke

man it was cool hating this guy when he was just a blithering trump legal flack, but seeing him put his dirty fingers anywhere near "long time" just made it all too real

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/help-wanted-why-republicans-wont-work-for-the-trump-administration/2017/06/17/61e3d33e-506a-11e7-b064-828ba60fbb98_story.html?utm_term=.acc770aadfc2

"Republicans say they are turning down job offers to work for a chief executive whose volatile temperament makes them nervous. They are asking head-hunters if their reputations could suffer permanent damage, according to 27 people The Washington Post interviewed to assess what is becoming a debilitating factor in recruiting political appointees.

"“I have people knocking down my door to talk to the presidential personnel office,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer. “There is a huge demand to join this administration.”"

Detail from that article: Senate has 25 work days left before recess. Any articles that has looked at the bare minimum of days they need to get the AHCA through, so we know the deadlines?

other people are asking the same question, frederik

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/06/can_republicans_really_pass_the_ahca_by_june_30.html

america is run by sociopaths

Thanks qualmsley, that's exactly what I was looking for!

If McConnell's deadline is June 30th then... There's less than two weeks to do it already, and that includes a CBO score, which, ok, they say could take just one week. But does anybody really know that? Or are they just hoping. Even so, it better come out today or tomorrow, I would think.

Did anyone write about it this weekend, because... They kinda needed to do a heck of a lot of meetings over the weekend, I would have thought, to ensure that they were close enough to 50, and... I don't get how anything then doesn't get leaked, what with congress members then needing to check with advisors, etc.

I don't wanna jinx it, but I'm beginning to doubt McConnell can do it.

I mean, by June 30th. The September reconciliation deadline probably unfortunately still achievable, and hell, they could just take another year and try again. Though I doubt they would wait for their tax cut that long.

"“I have people knocking down my door to talk to the presidential personnel office,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer. “There is a huge demand to join this administration.”"

That's actually called a protest- note their signs

I saw Chris Hayes refer to the idea of appending a substitute amendment to a bill which would be changed at the last minute in order to get the AHCA passed without being seen at all as a new strategy. I could swear I've heard this attempted somewhere before.
I watched a load of Colbert Reports and Daily Shows from the start of 2013 over the last couple of months, so wonderi9ng if it was there. Or was it tried somewhere else earlier this year?
Either way sounds like a revolting thing to try to do. Gosh do these people have no fellow feeling for those effected by the results of this bill?

I thought once they have their Mystery Bill, they plan to pass it in TWO days?