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

Said doc request, it should be noted, was made over the summer, so whatever it is isn't something new.

it is truly bonkers that really not a single day has gone by in the last year-and-a-half without some batshit thing going down.

Whoa -- Kobach's little sham group has been dissolved?

White House statement: "Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission [on Election Integrity]"

— Josh Eidelson (@josheidelson) January 3, 2018

more good news if true

It's legit, being reported elsewhere.

Full statement is a roffle

Trump is disbanding his voter fraud commission pic.twitter.com/Gymb2wUU4Q

— Stefan Becket (@becket) January 3, 2018

nice

Dude looks like Ivor Cutler up there

Xposts fifth time

sweet!

In Wolff book, Bannon quoted after Trump denounced Sessions to NYT in July: "If he fires Mueller it just brings impeachment quicker. Why not, let's do it. Let's get it on. And I am going to go in and save him? He's Donald Trump"

— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) January 3, 2018

And Bannon, quoted about Mueller hiring Andrew Weissmann: "You've got the LeBron James of money laundering investigations on you, Jarvanka. My a---hole just got so tight!"

— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) January 3, 2018

@kalebhorton: Michael Wolff's book on Trump has the distinct and specific odor of wish-fulfillment pornography manufactured by someone who wants to make a million dollars very quickly and doesn't care how many lies it takes to get there.

this...feels right

I'm not sure he claim that he has any control over any asshole, including his own.

yeah, starting to seem that way xpost

I think it's clear that Bannon's quotes are from the heart, and that he's not the only one saying the book got their quotes right:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-enraged-personally-dictates-scathing-denouncement-of-one-time-top-strategist-steve-bannon

My a---hole just got so tight!"

omg dying

I think it's clear that Bannon's quotes are from the heart

i think they were from somewhere else

The...Shart?

I am so entertained

Michael Grimm — whose Congressional run, so far, has mostly consisted of a widely shared photo of him shaking Steve Bannon’s hand — just denounced Bannon in a statement. "I fully support our Commander in Chief."

— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) January 4, 2018

Anyway, I think this sums it up

the core dilemma here is that while Wolff doesn’t seem to do much to support his account of events & scorching hot quotes, both the Trump camp & Bannon seem to be behaving as if it’s legit https://t.co/3yT2Olrbil

— Kilgore Trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 3, 2018

the other thing is everyone in the Trump camp seems to want to dismiss everything as a lie but they don’t know which accounts and quotes are safe to dismiss so they’re just very broad & subsequently lousy denials

— Kilgore Trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 3, 2018

I’m pretty sure some of that stuff is just wholesale horseshit but I’m also pretty sure a lot of it isn’t - and I don’t think the Trump team knows how to sort that out either

— Kilgore Trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 3, 2018

And this is of interest...

FWIW: The several times I saw Wolff at the White House, he was cleared-in with a blue 'appointment" badge allowing West Wing access, rather than a gray "press" badge.

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 3, 2018

Sanders claimed he was always there at the invitation of Bannon.

if you're sucking your own cock it's best to relax, not tighten, your asshole btw

(erm, so I've heard. From a friend.)

Getcha hot takes here

Wouldn’t it be funny if Trump & Bannon cooked this one up together as a decoy for some bombshell policy initiative?

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) January 3, 2018

Fun times amidst the maggots.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/bannon-endorsement-trump-republicans-263753

read that as 'coked this one up'

Lol

One Republican senator joined many Democrats at a private congressional briefing about Trump’s mental health by a Yale psychiatrist, @anniekarni reports https://t.co/M7pjx8pfPp

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) January 4, 2018

Apparently they met with Ryan to get reassurance that the DOJ wouldn't be refunded if they didn't conply5with Nunes' document request.

*comply with

...defunded?

Apparently that's something congress can do

The Congress has the power to simply not fund an institution that is not being obedient. The DOJ has to be confronted, at some point, with reality that Congress is not going to tolerate being kept in the dark and being told lies. https://t.co/CaTaO6011e pic.twitter.com/sBUsC6AN1u

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) January 4, 2018

Newt, with Jeffersonian wisdom.

what about the refunding though

I don't think this would actually happen, and it would backfire massively if it did, but Rosenstein was apparently concerned enough to seek reassurances from Ryan.

This @jdawsey1/@AshleyRParker WaPo piece says Bannon has alienated Rebekah Mercer https://t.co/jlscrwPfuh pic.twitter.com/Zgz5kNGw9a

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) January 4, 2018

ya i was saying you said re-funded

RIP bannon's presidential run

RIP big ban

Can we finally stop hearing about this shithead now?

i think we're going to be hearing a lot more from him

although, i guess i was thinking of it in terms of trump v bannon. but i suppose it's more like trump + FOX v bannon, which does tilt the scales against him a bit.

BREAKING - Attorneys for President Trump send Steve Bannon a cease and desist letter citing the non disclosure agreement he signed during the campaign https://t.co/jDybwQenJ2

— John Santucci (@JTSantucci) January 4, 2018

i've always been curious about what would happen if someone decided to say To hell with the NDA....

The funny thing is that it’s kinda aimed at the wrong person. It’s Wolff’s work that caused all this.

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.