Trump 20: Sauron Doesn't Seem So Bad After All

[fraurosena]

 

As horrible as Trump is, he's horrible in a bumbling idiot kind of way.  I truly fear the potential for 7.5 years of a Pence theocracy. 

Honestly? I don't think it's going to come to that. When the presidunce goes down, he's taking the whole current administration and gop-top with him. The more you read about all the investigations going on, into collusion and ties with Russia, as well as money-laundering and other financial crimes  - and all of the people who are being investigated, I believe that when one topples, all of them will.

I just really and sincerly hope it's sooner rather than later.

[fraurosena]

Aaaand.... we have yet another coal on the fire of those emoluments lawsuits:

With shift on Cuba, Trump could undercut his company’s hotel-industry rivals

Here's the start of the article, which is way too long to post here without the spoiler option.

--- QUOTE ---

By rolling back Obama-era policies that allowed more private business investment in Cuba, President Trump would be leveraging the power of his office, like others who came before him, to shift Washington’s approach to the communist island.

But as the owner of a real estate company with a big stake in hotels and resorts, Trump brings an added element to an issue that is unique to his presidency — the ability, through his official actions, to undermine a growth area for his industry rivals who have raced in recent years to establish a foothold in a lucrative new market.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which merged with Marriott International to form the world’s largest hotel chain, last year debuted the first Cuban hotel managed by a U.S. company in nearly 60 years, taking advantage of President Barack Obama’s 2014 move to normalize relations with Cuba and lighten regulations enforcing the U.S. embargo on the island.

Trump is expected to announce in Miami on Friday his intention to ban certain financial transactions between U.S. businesses and the Cuban military, whose companies control much of the island’s economy and a significant share of the tourism and hotel sector.

That directive could undercut efforts by the U.S. hotel industry, which hopes to use the Starwood deal as a template as it continues to push Congress to lift the ongoing U.S. embargo completely.

The issue offers a reminder of Trump’s dual roles, public and private, as a result of his decision to retain his sizable ownership stake in his company.

[...]

--- end QUOTE ---

 

Although we could (and should) all be outraged by his blatant disregard for the emoluments clause, I can't help but giggle gleefully at his generosity with in giving more and more grounds for impeachment. 

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena -- you posted about Pence's lawyer's law firm's Russian connection. Well, his lawyer is also godfather to Comey's daughter AND apparently Comey used to work with the firm.

Vice President Pence became the latest member of the Trump administration to lawyer up Thursday, announcing that he had hired an outside attorney, Richard Cullen, to deal with the ongoing probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections.

News reports described the sterling reputation of Cullen, 69, a former Virginia attorney general and longtime Washington insider who played crucial roles in some of the most high-profile political investigations of the last several decades.

But other parts of his resume attracted even more interest. For three years, Cullen worked at a Richmond law firm with a central figure of the Russia investigation: FBI Director James B. Comey, who was just fired by Pence’s boss, President Trump.

And not only is Cullen his “close associate,” as news reports described, but he is also the godfather of one of Comey’s daughters.

“So swampy,” one Twitter user said. “What a tangled web we weave …” tweeted another.

...

In such a place, it would be tough to assemble a team of people that hadn’t shared a cubicle at least once or twice, or passed one another going through revolving doors and revolving scandals.

A relatively small group of people specialize in this type of work and their names come up, depending on their age, across some the biggest Washington controversies from Watergate on.

Even in the earliest stages of the Russia investigation, as more and more members of the Trump administration lawyer up and the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, assembles its own team, the pattern is once again repeating itself.

The origin of many of these connections is the investigation of the Watergate break in, 45 years ago this coming weekend.

Cullen, fresh out of college in the 1970s, was involved with Watergate from the sidelines. He served on the campaign staff for Republican Rep. M. Caldwell Butler of Virginia, a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

“And lo and behold, there’s the impeachment,” Cullen recalled in a 2007 profile in Richmond Law Magazine.

As a swing vote, Butler played a crucial role in Nixon’s impeachment hearings, and Cullen often fielded questions from reporters covering it. Years later, he served as special counsel to then Sen. Paul S. Trible Jr. (R-Va.) in the Iran-contra investigations.

As the Richmond Law magazine profile stated it, “Cullen has frequently crossed paths with the powerful, the famous and the infamous.”

Comey and Cullen worked together at law firm McGuireWoods between 1993 and 1996. And although they did not overlap, both served in the U.S. attorney’s Office in Richmond.

Cullen, who is now chairman of McGuireWoods, has often spoken highly of Comey in the press. When Comey was named FBI Director in 2013, Cullen told the Richmond Times Dispatch that his former colleague would “be a great director. There are many people in Richmond who remember him and his family fondly and are very pleased that the president has chosen him for such a vitally important position.”

But two years later, Cullen and Comey’s ties became news. Cullen was hired to represent FIFA chief Sepp Blatter in the corruption investigation into soccer’s governing body, a probe led by the agency of his “close associate” — then FBI director Comey.

...

[JMarie]

 

Mrs. Pence is going to have to start selling those silly towel charms again, as her husband's salary is about to be gobbled up by legal fees.

I had to google this, as I'm not familiar with towel charms.

http://fortune.com/2016/07/16/karen-pence-towel-charms/

The company also makes charms for bath towels. On the company's website, Pence said, "how many times have you walked into the bathroom and seen multiple towels on the floor and wondered, 'Whose towel is whose?' Towel charms solve that problem and eliminate daily unnecessary laundry."

Um, never?  Because we don't throw our towels on the bathroom floor.

[GrumpyGran]

Thanks, my wonderful info crew, you have updated me on all of the rolling insanity that is the Trump administration.

And I'm going to the Duggar dinner too. Maybe we'll get a side of chickenetti! But I'm spiking all their drinks. Can you imagine what would go down when those people got a little alcohol in them?

[fraurosena]

I might have found the legal reason why those democrats are joining in on the lawsuits concerning the emoluments clause. According to this tweet by an experienced attorney, it's because of so-called "legislative acquiescense".

Intrigued, I looked up what that term means, and I found a paper by William N. Eskridge, Jr., Associate Professor of Law at Yale University. (here's a link to the paper, for any and all who might be interested: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4826&context=fss_papers)

The paper states the following that I believe pertains to the dems emoluments lawsuit:

Issues of "legislative inaction" often arise in cases where the Supreme Court considers the validity of an administrative or judicial interpretation of a statute and the argument is made that the interpretation must be accepted because Congress has acquiesced in it by not overruling it, has ratified it by reenacting the statute, or at some point was presented with a formal bill or amendment embodying an alternative interpretation and rejected it.' [...]

Three related doctrines emerge from the Court's past treatment of legislative inaction issues: (1) the "acquiescence rule," positing that if Congress does not overturn a judicial or administrative interpretation it probably acquiesces in it; (2) the "reenactment rule," which posits that a reenactment of the statute incorporates any settled interpretations of the statute by courts or agencies; and (3) the "rejected proposal rule," which posits that proposals rejected by Congress are an indication that the statute cannot be interpreted to resemble the rejected proposals.

As I interpret it, if the presidunce's violations of the emoluments clause is ignored by Congress, Congress thereby acquieses his conduct. If no action is taken, in due course, it would even become legal for the presidunce to violate the emoluments clause (as by their inaction Congress has acquieced it). If I'm correct, this in turn could eventually possibly even invalidate that same clause. But I'm no legal eagle and I confess I haven't read the whole paper (yet).

Whatever the case, I'm even more glad of the dems actions in filing their lawsuit now!

[Dandruff]

 

Well, how can she justify calling her product a 'charm', which is a decidedly magical and pagan attribute? Isn't that downright blasphemy? 

Does money trump blasphemy?

[SPHASH]

 

Does money trump blasphemy?

It does when your a Republican

[Flossie]

Regarding how former FBI James B. Comey has a close connection to the lawyer representing Vice President Pence in the Russian connection to the election scandal.

It makes sense in a way.  Comey seemed to me to be a Republican at heart.  I think he tried hard to be non partisan, but stumbled when you consider his frequent forays into looking into Hillary's emails.  

Now a man, Richard Cullen, that Comey felt close enough to to name as a godfather to one of Comey's daughters is representing Vice President Pence in the upcoming investigation into the Russian connection.  How did this happen?

I think things changed when Trump became president and started to lean on Comey.  This baffoon was in the White House, and Comey had a large part in getting him there.  But Trump the Baffoon couldn't trust Comey because Obama appointed him FBI director.  Trump wanted something more concrete.  I fully believe that Trump wanted Comey to swear allegiance to him, and when Comey felt that pressure, he found himself in a position that shocked and emasculated him.  He started to write down his interactions with Trump, discussed his concerns with others in the FBI, and appealed to Sessions for help ("Don't ever leave me alone with him again!")  

Sessions wasn't any help.  He's already charted his course, which is to kiss up to Trump, feign memory loss when asked the tough questions, and "defend his honor" at all costs.

Poor Comey.  He's been kicked out of the Cool Kids Club and now he's all alone.  Is it any wonder he's turned against Trump?  However, I think Comey has a lot more Sacred Secrets of the Republican Party he could share, and he's waiting to see what happens next.  Will the GOP dump Trump and welcome Comey back into the fold, or will they turn against him entirely and we get to see what happens when a former Director of the FBI gets pissed and tells all?

Note to Comey:  You've experienced the way many people are treated when they aren't one of the Cool Kids.  Most of us are in that group, and we're tired of dealing with the assholes who are.

[47of74]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Aaaand.... we have yet another coal on the fire of those emoluments lawsuits:

With shift on Cuba, Trump could undercut his company’s hotel-industry rivals

Here's the start of the article, which is way too long to post here without the spoiler option.

--- QUOTE ---

By rolling back Obama-era policies that allowed more private business investment in Cuba, President Trump would be leveraging the power of his office, like others who came before him, to shift Washington’s approach to the communist island.

But as the owner of a real estate company with a big stake in hotels and resorts, Trump brings an added element to an issue that is unique to his presidency — the ability, through his official actions, to undermine a growth area for his industry rivals who have raced in recent years to establish a foothold in a lucrative new market.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which merged with Marriott International to form the world’s largest hotel chain, last year debuted the first Cuban hotel managed by a U.S. company in nearly 60 years, taking advantage of President Barack Obama’s 2014 move to normalize relations with Cuba and lighten regulations enforcing the U.S. embargo on the island.

Trump is expected to announce in Miami on Friday his intention to ban certain financial transactions between U.S. businesses and the Cuban military, whose companies control much of the island’s economy and a significant share of the tourism and hotel sector.

That directive could undercut efforts by the U.S. hotel industry, which hopes to use the Starwood deal as a template as it continues to push Congress to lift the ongoing U.S. embargo completely.

The issue offers a reminder of Trump’s dual roles, public and private, as a result of his decision to retain his sizable ownership stake in his company.

[...]

--- end QUOTE ---

 

Although we could (and should) all be outraged by his blatant disregard for the emoluments clause, I can't help but giggle gleefully at his generosity with in giving more and more grounds for impeachment. 

Yep I was just coming here to make note of this myself about Numbnuts doing this to hurt competitors.  Now you know for a goddamn fact that if he had hotels on the island he would be calling for more open ties between the US and Cuba.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because we love being the laughingstock of the world: "Trump said foreign leaders wouldn’t laugh at the U.S. Now they’re laughing at him."

Spoiler

Two weeks ago in the Rose Garden, President Trump declared that under his leadership, foreign leaders won’t be “laughing at us anymore.”

Since then, he’s been the butt of jokes in capitals around the world.

In Mexico, former president Vicente Fox posted a profane video on YouTube, mocking Trump’s taste for taco bowls (“they’re not even Mexican!”) and border walls (“Mexico will not pay”) that has been viewed nearly half a million times.

In France, new President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a website titled “Make Our Planet Great Again” and invited U.S. scientists to move there, a week after Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord.

And in Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who sparred with Trump in a testy phone call in February, this week treated a black-tie gala to a snarky impersonation of “The Donald,” referring to the Russia investigation and employing the president’s famous catchphrases.

“The Donald and I, we are winning and winning in the polls,” Turnbull said, prompting hearty laughter from fellow politicians. “Not the fake polls. They’re the ones we’re not winning in. We’re winning in the real polls. You know, the online polls.”

For Trump, the global trolling represents a mild rebuke for a president who had lambasted former president Barack Obama as feckless on the world stage and adopted a tough-guy persona aimed at putting “America first.”

Far from being cowed by Trump’s vow to achieve “peace through strength,” fellow world leaders appear emboldened to poke fun at him as a way to bolster their political standing. To a degree, the strategy is similar to one employed by Democrats, celebrities and some Republicans who have calculated that mocking Trump can boost their popularity.

“In the private conversations I’ve had with heads of states and ministers of foreign relations . . . they all feel what Turnbull just basically came out and said: This is, by far, the least capable person ever to sit in the office and it’s appalling they have to deal with him,” said Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, a global risk-assessment firm. “Even in a country that really needs to have a good relationship with the United States, you’re just not willing to deal with it. Your own ego will say, ‘Screw this guy.’ ”

White House officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Foreign leaders have been wrestling with how to deal with Trump’s norm-busting rhetoric since the campaign, when he questioned long-standing U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia, attacked Mexico, Japan and China on trade, and praised Russian President Vladi­mir Putin. Although heads of state tend to shy away from directly weighing in during a campaign, mindful of the need to work productively with whoever wins, some leaders felt compelled to speak out.

Among them were Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who rejected Trump’s suggestion that his government would pay for a border wall, and then-Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who said during a meeting with Obama that the world’s future is about building “bridges, not walls.”

Others held their tongues, hoping to get off to a clean start with Trump after the new president assumed office. But it wasn’t long before some leaders began to lampoon Trump’s testosterone-laden approach to governing.

Perhaps the first to poke her thumb in his eye was Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin, who in February posted a Facebook photo showing her signing a law surrounded by female aides — an image widely presumed as a retort to photos showing Trump signing executive orders flanked almost exclusively by men.

Last month, five Nordic leaders reenacted a photo of Trump where on his visit to Saudi Arabia he put his hands on a glowing globe, except they substituted a soccer ball in place of the orb.

“Who rules the world? Riyadh vs Bergen,” Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg wrote in a caption on social media, saying that she and her colleagues were signaling support for “sustainability goals.”

For Trump, things have gotten so bad that he is now being trolled by those he has gone out of his way to praise, such as Putin, who on Thursday said with a straight face that he would offer asylum to former FBI director James B. Comey. Last month, Trump fired Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, a senior fellow on Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution, said it is not unusual for U.S. allies and partners, especially those in Europe, to oppose U.S. policies or for their politicians to criticize the United States. But she added that “there’s a certain heft, a certain gravity that the preeminent global superpower carries with it in the world. The president embodies that more than anyone else.”

The trolling of Trump “is a bit the opposite of that,” Wittes said. “Does it mean that people don’t take the United States seriously? I don’t know. Maybe it means President Trump himself has demonstrated such a willingness to let it all hang out in public, every stray thought, that if you live such a public life you can’t be surprised if people pick it up and run with it, even if you’re president.”

Australian officials quickly attempted to squash the notion that Turnbull’s channeling of Trump was intended as a rebuke.

The two had tangled during a February phone conversation, during which Trump told Turnbull “this was the worst call by far” and hung up on him. A subsequent meeting between them in New York to clear the air was marred when Trump arrived three hours late.

A spokeswoman at the Australian Embassy in Washington said Turnbull’s remarks had been “taken completely out of context,” emphasizing that he was speaking at an off-the-record roast in the vein of the White House correspondents’ dinner.

Then again, Trump boycotted that dinner two months ago, where he was roasted in absentia by Daily Show comedian Hasan Minhaj.

“It’s questionable whether parodying the president at an event where it was almost certain to get out was a judicious thing to do, given the history,” said Andrew Shearer, an Asia security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served as an adviser to former Australian prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott.

“We do know that he’s thin-skinned, and the risk is that he doesn’t take a joke,” Shearer said of Trump. “I would hope he would.”

 

[sawasdee]

An interesting take by a Wapo commenter on those who surround the TT:

Quote

Have you noticed what last-ditch types latched on to Trump? Gingrich, Giuliani, Christie, Pence, all unelectable in their own constituencies. Priebus, who was going to lose his job at the RNC for screwing up the primary and letting Trump take over the party. And the list goes on.

Where can they go if the TT falls? This may explain the blind loyalty...

[fraurosena]

These days it's becoming harder not to believe were all in the midst of a Monty Python sketch.

Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, hires his own lawyer in Russia probe

Spoiler

Michael Cohen, who for years has served as President Trump’s personal attorney, has hired a lawyer of his own to help him navigate the expanding Russia investigation.

Cohen confirmed Friday to The Washington Post that he has retained Stephen M. Ryan, a Washington-based lawyer from the law firm McDermott, Will & Emery who has experience prosecuting criminal cases as an assistant U.S. attorney.

Cohen’s hiring of Ryan as his personal lawyer was first reported by Katy Tur of NBC News.

Cohen’s decision is the latest indication that the Russia probe overseen by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is intensifying and could end up focusing on a number of Trump associates, both inside and outside the White House.

Michael Caputo, a New York-based political operative and radio commentator who served as a senior communications adviser on Trump's campaign, also has hired a lawyer of his own to navigate the Russia probe.

Caputo has retained Dennis C. Vacco, a former New York state attorney general and a partner at the law firm Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman. His hiring also was first reported by NBC's Tur.

On Thursday, Vice President Pence’s office announced that the vice president had hired outside legal counsel, Richard Cullen, to assist him with inquiries from the Mueller investigation as well as congressional committee probes.

During a Friday morning event here in Miami, The Post asked Pence whether he had any comment about hiring his own lawyer. The vice president said only: “It’s very routine. Very routine.”

It is not entirely clear what role Cohen or Caputo might have in the Russia investigation. Cohen, who worked as a lawyer for the Trump Organization for a decade, made an appearance in the dossier compiled by a former British spy. The dossier, which was published online in January by BuzzFeed, alleged that he had traveled to Prague to meet with Russians and coordinate their hacking efforts. Trump has rejected the dossier as “fake news,” and Cohen has vigorously denied its allegations about him, noting he was in California at the time it alleged he had visited Prague.

In January, Cohen was involved in a separate incident that could potentially have drawn the attention of investigators. He has confirmed that he met with a Ukrainian lawmaker at a New York hotel at the urging of a former Trump business associate named Felix Sater. At the meeting, Sater gave Cohen a peace plan that the lawmaker had drawn up for his country that would have paved the way for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russia after its 2014 military incursion in Ukraine.

The New York Times reported that Cohen said he took the plan and left it in the White House office of then national security adviser Michael Flynn, days before Flynn resigned over his contacts with Russia's ambassador. Cohen told the Post that he had merely recommended Flynn as the proper recipient for the plan but that he had taken the written proposal home and thrown it away.

Caputo, who briefly worked for the campaign, was an ally to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. He lived in Moscow for several years in the 1990s, and briefly held a contract in 2000 with the Russian conglomerate Gazprom Media to improve Russian President Vladimir Putin's image in the United States.

At this rate we'll soon be hearing that the lawyers' lawyers lawyered up too...

(oh, and yay @Destiny, for finding the missing icons!)

[sawasdee]

I vaguely remembered this, but couldn't have quoted it. Thanks again, Wapo commenters!

Quote

October 31, 2016  
 
“Donald Trump said that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be plagued by criminal investigations, threatening to throw the country into upheaval should she be elected.”  
 
"She would be under protracted criminal investigation and probably a criminal trial, I would say. So we'd have a criminal trial of a sitting president," he said.”  
 
“He warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders would "sit back and they would laugh and they would smile" during a years-long investigation. In the meantime, he predicted, manufacturing in the country would further decline and other problems would go unaddressed.”  
 
"Our country will continue to suffer," Trump said.”  

Apart from the fact that a sitting president can only be impeached, not prosecuted. But who cares about one more lie - until you're grateful that it was a lie?

Ever heard of Karma, Donald? Or projection?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s outburst of rage just sent the Russia scandal hurtling forward"

Spoiler

We are heading toward Donald Trump’s version of the Saturday Night Massacre.

While the details aren’t precisely the same, the parallels are many. A president under a widening investigation for (among other things) possible obstruction of justice. A special counsel targeted by the president’s ire. High-ranking officials in the Justice Department unwilling to put loyalty to the president above their obligations to the country, and losing their jobs because of it. All that’s left is the dramatic round of firings and resignations and the headlong rush toward impeachment.

Richard Nixon didn’t have Twitter, but Donald Trump does. And this morning, he attacked his deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein:

...

In addition to everything else, Trump confirms here the reports from anonymous sources that he is the target of an obstruction of justice investigation. Glad we cleared that up.

What does this have to do with Watergate? Let’s go back to the Saturday Night Massacre. In October 1973, Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, demanded that President Nixon turn over recordings of his Oval Office conversations. Nixon refused, and tried to negotiate a deal that Cox rejected. Nixon then ordered the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused, and resigned. Nixon then ordered the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused, and resigned. Nixon then ordered the next person in the Justice Department hierarchy, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox. Bork agreed. While it would be 10 more months before Nixon himself resigned, the Saturday Night Massacre may have been the point where his determination to obstruct the Watergate investigation became the most clear to everyone in the country.

We aren’t there yet, but let’s take a good look at where we are. There is something serious going on between Trump and Rosenstein, who is overseeing the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, only Rosenstein has the authority to fire Mueller. And it’s plain that Trump would like to rid himself of this meddlesome special counsel; the question is whether he will try. Multiple reports from inside the White House paint a picture of Trump as obsessed with the investigation, railing against Mueller and considering whether to fire him — an act that everyone around Trump knows would be a political catastrophe (and possibly a legal one as well). Here’s just one small sample, from Politico:

Just as he has done publicly on Twitter, Trump has told friends and associates that the investigation is a “witch hunt” and that others are out to get him. “It’s basically all he talks about on the phone,” said one adviser who has spoken with Trump and his top aides.

Last night, Trump took to Twitter to launch an attack on Mueller:

...

And then this morning he goes after Rosenstein, which requires understanding their brief but troubled relationship. By Trump’s own admission, he had already decided to fire FBI director James Comey when he ordered Rosenstein to prepare a report describing Comey’s alleged shortcomings. But when the firing happened, the White House initially claimed that Trump was only taking Rosenstein’s recommendation to fire Comey, in effect blaming Rosenstein for Trump’s decision. Rosenstein was reportedly so angry about it that he threatened to resign.

Here’s the Daily Beast today, confirming how personal this has gotten for Trump:

“He’s furious at Rosenstein, but the list of his people who enrage him is ever-growing,” a longtime Trump confidant, who recently spoke to the president, told The Daily Beast. “He has no qualms about throwing [Rosenstein] under a bus.”

Then we get this report from ABC News:

The senior Justice Department official with ultimate authority over the special counsel’s probe of Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election has privately acknowledged to colleagues that he may have to recuse himself from the matter, which he took charge of only after Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ own recusal, sources tell ABC News.

Those private remarks from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are significant because they reflect the widening nature of the federal probe, which now includes a preliminary inquiry into whether President Donald Trump attempted to obstruct justice when he allegedly tried to curtail the probe and then fired James Comey as FBI director.

Rosenstein, who authored an extensive and publicly-released memorandum recommending Comey’s firing, raised the possibility of his recusal during a recent meeting with Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, the Justice Department’s new third-in-command, according to sources.

If Rosenstein is considering recusal, it’s because of his role in the Comey firing — which, let’s not forget, Trump admitted both on national television and in a conversation with Russian officials in the Oval Office that he did out of unhappiness with the Russia investigation. Rosenstein could become a witness in the obstruction investigation, which would make it problematic for him to be overseeing Mueller. The authority would then fall to Brand. Is Trump going to go after her next? What happens if he orders her to fire Mueller? Would she resign in protest like Richardson and Ruckelshaus, or follow orders like Bork?

Let’s step back and try to grasp everything that’s going on here. The president of the United States is waging an inept public relations campaign against the special counsel’s investigation — not the particulars of it, because we know very little about the avenues Mueller is exploring and what he has discovered, but the very fact that he is being investigated at all. As he always does, Trump goes on the attack in personal ways. He seems to divide the world into those who are loyal to him on one hand and enemies on the other. James Comey’s fate may have been sealed when Trump asked him to pledge his loyalty and Comey refused (that is Comey’s account; the White House says it never happened).

While Trump is erratic and impulsive much of the time, he seems particularly so with regard to this investigation. In some limited way it’s understandable — no president likes being investigated — but it seems to be pushing Trump to particular heights of irrationality. If you were trying to limit the investigation and its political fallout and not antagonize the prosecutors, it would be utterly insane to send out these kinds of tweets. Trump’s staff and lawyers are surely begging him to stop. But they can’t control him. There may be people who are willing to stand up to him and tell him that he’s making a mistake, but he’s obviously not willing to listen.

In an ordinary scandal, you have some initial set of misdeeds, and then possibly a coverup that adds more misdeeds that could themselves be criminal. In the Russia scandal we could have those two sets of actions, but on top of them we have a paranoid, infantile president seemingly determined to put himself in ever-greater political and legal jeopardy. The more we learn about how deep Mueller’s investigation is reaching, the higher the chances that Trump will, in a moment of rage, order Mueller to be fired. If you think things are dramatic and absurd right now, just wait — it’s going to get worse.

"...an inept public relations campaign..." Yeah, that pretty much describes this administration.

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

These days it's becoming harder not to believe were all in the midst of a Monty Python sketch.

Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, hires his own lawyer in Russia probe

  Reveal hidden contents

Michael Cohen, who for years has served as President Trump’s personal attorney, has hired a lawyer of his own to help him navigate the expanding Russia investigation.

Cohen confirmed Friday to The Washington Post that he has retained Stephen M. Ryan, a Washington-based lawyer from the law firm McDermott, Will & Emery who has experience prosecuting criminal cases as an assistant U.S. attorney.

Cohen’s hiring of Ryan as his personal lawyer was first reported by Katy Tur of NBC News.

Cohen’s decision is the latest indication that the Russia probe overseen by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is intensifying and could end up focusing on a number of Trump associates, both inside and outside the White House.

Michael Caputo, a New York-based political operative and radio commentator who served as a senior communications adviser on Trump's campaign, also has hired a lawyer of his own to navigate the Russia probe.

Caputo has retained Dennis C. Vacco, a former New York state attorney general and a partner at the law firm Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman. His hiring also was first reported by NBC's Tur.

On Thursday, Vice President Pence’s office announced that the vice president had hired outside legal counsel, Richard Cullen, to assist him with inquiries from the Mueller investigation as well as congressional committee probes.

During a Friday morning event here in Miami, The Post asked Pence whether he had any comment about hiring his own lawyer. The vice president said only: “It’s very routine. Very routine.”

It is not entirely clear what role Cohen or Caputo might have in the Russia investigation. Cohen, who worked as a lawyer for the Trump Organization for a decade, made an appearance in the dossier compiled by a former British spy. The dossier, which was published online in January by BuzzFeed, alleged that he had traveled to Prague to meet with Russians and coordinate their hacking efforts. Trump has rejected the dossier as “fake news,” and Cohen has vigorously denied its allegations about him, noting he was in California at the time it alleged he had visited Prague.

In January, Cohen was involved in a separate incident that could potentially have drawn the attention of investigators. He has confirmed that he met with a Ukrainian lawmaker at a New York hotel at the urging of a former Trump business associate named Felix Sater. At the meeting, Sater gave Cohen a peace plan that the lawmaker had drawn up for his country that would have paved the way for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Russia after its 2014 military incursion in Ukraine.

The New York Times reported that Cohen said he took the plan and left it in the White House office of then national security adviser Michael Flynn, days before Flynn resigned over his contacts with Russia's ambassador. Cohen told the Post that he had merely recommended Flynn as the proper recipient for the plan but that he had taken the written proposal home and thrown it away.

Caputo, who briefly worked for the campaign, was an ally to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. He lived in Moscow for several years in the 1990s, and briefly held a contract in 2000 with the Russian conglomerate Gazprom Media to improve Russian President Vladimir Putin's image in the United States.

At this rate we'll soon be hearing that the lawyers' lawyers lawyered up too...

(oh, and yay @Destiny, for finding the missing icons!)

Well thanks @fraurosena now I have 'Spam, spam, spam and spam" running through my head.

[sawasdee]

OK, so I really enjoyed this article. The world - and its leaders - are having a grand time taking the piss out of the TT.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-said-foreign-leaders-wouldnt-laugh-at-the-us-now-theyre-laughing-at-him/2017/06/15/de82a340-51da-11e7-be25-3a519335381c_story.html?utm_term=.bc8a8886380c#comments

Spoiler

Quote

Two weeks ago in the Rose Garden, President Trump declared that under his leadership, foreign leaders won’t be “laughing at us anymore.”

Since then, he’s been the butt of jokes in capitals around the world.

In Mexico, former president Vicente Fox posted a profane video on YouTube, mocking Trump’s taste for taco bowls (“they’re not even Mexican!”) and border walls (“Mexico will not pay”) that has been viewed nearly half a million times.

In France, new President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a website titled “Make Our Planet Great Again” and invited U.S. scientists to move there, a week after Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord.

And in Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who sparred with Trump in a testy phone call in February, this week treated a black-tie gala to a snarky impersonation of “The Donald,” referring to the Russia investigation and employing the president’s famous catchphrases.r

The Donald and I, we are winning and winning in the polls,” Turnbull said, prompting hearty laughter from fellow politicians. “Not the fake polls. They’re the ones we’re not winning in. We’re winning in the real polls. You know, the online polls.”

For Trump, the global trolling represents a mild rebuke for a president who had lambasted former president Barack Obama as feckless on the world stage and adopted a tough-guy persona aimed at putting “America first.”

Far from being cowed by Trump’s vow to achieve “peace through strength,” fellow world leaders appear emboldened to poke fun at him as a way to bolster their political standing. To a degree, the strategy is similar to one employed by Democrats, celebrities and some Republicans who have calculated that mocking Trump can boost their popularity.

“In the private conversations I’ve had with heads of states and ministers of foreign relations . . . they all feel what Turnbull just basically came out and said: This is, by far, the least capable person ever to sit in the office and it’s appalling they have to deal with him,” said Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, a global risk-assessment firm. “Even in a country that really needs to have a good relationship with the United States, you’re just not willing to deal with it. Your own ego will say, ‘Screw this guy.’ ”

White House officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Foreign leaders have been wrestling with how to deal with Trump’s norm-busting rhetoric since the campaign, when he questioned long-standing U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia, attacked Mexico, Japan and China on trade, and praised Russian President Vladi­mir Putin. Although heads of state tend to shy away from directly weighing in during a campaign, mindful of the need to work productively with whoever wins, some leaders felt compelled to speak out.

Among them were Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who rejected Trump’s suggestion that his government would pay for a border wall, and then-Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who said during a meeting with Obama that the world’s future is about building “bridges, not walls.”

Others held their tongues, hoping to get off to a clean start with Trump after the new president assumed office. But it wasn’t long before some leaders began to lampoon Trump’s testosterone-laden approach to governing.

Perhaps the first to poke her thumb in his eye was Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin, who in February posted a Facebook photo showing her signing a law surrounded by female aides — an image widely presumed as a retort to photos showing Trump signing executive orders flanked almost exclusively by men.

Last month, five Nordic leaders reenacted a photo of Trump where on his visit to Saudi Arabia he put his hands on a glowing globe, except they substituted a soccer ball in place of the orb.

“Who rules the world? Riyadh vs Bergen,” Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg wrote in a caption on social media, saying that she and her colleagues were signaling support for “sustainability goals.”

For Trump, things have gotten so bad that he is now being trolled by those he has gone out of his way to praise, such as Putin, who on Thursday said with a straight face that he would offer asylum to former FBI director James B. Comey. Last month, Trump fired Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, a senior fellow on Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution, said it is not unusual for U.S. allies and partners, especially those in Europe, to oppose U.S. policies or for their politicians to criticize the United States. But she added that “there’s a certain heft, a certain gravity that the preeminent global superpower carries with it in the world. The president embodies that more than anyone else.”

The trolling of Trump “is a bit the opposite of that,” Wittes said. “Does it mean that people don’t take the United States seriously? I don’t know. Maybe it means President Trump himself has demonstrated such a willingness to let it all hang out in public, every stray thought, that if you live such a public life you can’t be surprised if people pick it up and run with it, even if you’re president.”

Australian officials quickly attempted to squash the notion that Turnbull’s channeling of Trump was intended as a rebuke.

The two had tangled during a February phone conversation, during which Trump told Turnbull “this was the worst call by far” and hung up on him. A subsequent meeting between them in New York to clear the air was marred when Trump arrived three hours late.

A spokeswoman at the Australian Embassy in Washington said Turnbull’s remarks had been “taken completely out of context,” emphasizing that he was speaking at an off-the-record roast in the vein of the White House correspondents’ dinner.

Then again, Trump boycotted that dinner two months ago, where he was roasted in absentia by Daily Show comedian Hasan Minhaj.

“It’s questionable whether parodying the president at an event where it was almost certain to get out was a judicious thing to do, given the history,” said Andrew Shearer, an Asia security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served as an adviser to former Australian prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott.

“We do know that he’s thin-skinned, and the risk is that he doesn’t take a joke,” Shearer said of Trump. “I would hope he would.”

 

 

I truly cannot think of any other world leader, let alone US President, that would be subjected to this kind of trolling.

But - tee hee hee

[fraurosena]

3 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Well thanks @fraurosena now I have 'Spam, spam, spam and spam" running through my head.

You're welcome... I guess. I have no idea what 'Spam, spam, spam and spam" refers to... 

(is it a commercial perhaps?)

Nevermind, I just googled it. For your enjoyment (or will it be annoyment?):

 

[onekidanddone]

5 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

You're welcome... I guess. I have no idea what 'Spam, spam, spam and spam" refers to... 

(is it a commercial perhaps?)

What is for dinner?

Quote

 

Fun fact:  This is where the term for annoying multiple emails originated 

Great minds do think alike.  I think we were looking this up and posting at the very same time.

[sawasdee]

@fraurosena Monty Python.

[fraurosena]

Oh, SPAM!

Now we're spamming the spam, spam, spam and spam.

What a spam!

 

[sawasdee]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s outburst of rage just sent the Russia scandal hurtling forward"

  Reveal hidden contents

We are heading toward Donald Trump’s version of the Saturday Night Massacre.

While the details aren’t precisely the same, the parallels are many. A president under a widening investigation for (among other things) possible obstruction of justice. A special counsel targeted by the president’s ire. High-ranking officials in the Justice Department unwilling to put loyalty to the president above their obligations to the country, and losing their jobs because of it. All that’s left is the dramatic round of firings and resignations and the headlong rush toward impeachment.

Richard Nixon didn’t have Twitter, but Donald Trump does. And this morning, he attacked his deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein:

...

In addition to everything else, Trump confirms here the reports from anonymous sources that he is the target of an obstruction of justice investigation. Glad we cleared that up.

What does this have to do with Watergate? Let’s go back to the Saturday Night Massacre. In October 1973, Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, demanded that President Nixon turn over recordings of his Oval Office conversations. Nixon refused, and tried to negotiate a deal that Cox rejected. Nixon then ordered the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused, and resigned. Nixon then ordered the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused, and resigned. Nixon then ordered the next person in the Justice Department hierarchy, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox. Bork agreed. While it would be 10 more months before Nixon himself resigned, the Saturday Night Massacre may have been the point where his determination to obstruct the Watergate investigation became the most clear to everyone in the country.

We aren’t there yet, but let’s take a good look at where we are. There is something serious going on between Trump and Rosenstein, who is overseeing the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, only Rosenstein has the authority to fire Mueller. And it’s plain that Trump would like to rid himself of this meddlesome special counsel; the question is whether he will try. Multiple reports from inside the White House paint a picture of Trump as obsessed with the investigation, railing against Mueller and considering whether to fire him — an act that everyone around Trump knows would be a political catastrophe (and possibly a legal one as well). Here’s just one small sample, from Politico:

Just as he has done publicly on Twitter, Trump has told friends and associates that the investigation is a “witch hunt” and that others are out to get him. “It’s basically all he talks about on the phone,” said one adviser who has spoken with Trump and his top aides.

Last night, Trump took to Twitter to launch an attack on Mueller:

...

And then this morning he goes after Rosenstein, which requires understanding their brief but troubled relationship. By Trump’s own admission, he had already decided to fire FBI director James Comey when he ordered Rosenstein to prepare a report describing Comey’s alleged shortcomings. But when the firing happened, the White House initially claimed that Trump was only taking Rosenstein’s recommendation to fire Comey, in effect blaming Rosenstein for Trump’s decision. Rosenstein was reportedly so angry about it that he threatened to resign.

Here’s the Daily Beast today, confirming how personal this has gotten for Trump:

“He’s furious at Rosenstein, but the list of his people who enrage him is ever-growing,” a longtime Trump confidant, who recently spoke to the president, told The Daily Beast. “He has no qualms about throwing [Rosenstein] under a bus.”

Then we get this report from ABC News:

The senior Justice Department official with ultimate authority over the special counsel’s probe of Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election has privately acknowledged to colleagues that he may have to recuse himself from the matter, which he took charge of only after Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ own recusal, sources tell ABC News.

Those private remarks from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are significant because they reflect the widening nature of the federal probe, which now includes a preliminary inquiry into whether President Donald Trump attempted to obstruct justice when he allegedly tried to curtail the probe and then fired James Comey as FBI director.

Rosenstein, who authored an extensive and publicly-released memorandum recommending Comey’s firing, raised the possibility of his recusal during a recent meeting with Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, the Justice Department’s new third-in-command, according to sources.

If Rosenstein is considering recusal, it’s because of his role in the Comey firing — which, let’s not forget, Trump admitted both on national television and in a conversation with Russian officials in the Oval Office that he did out of unhappiness with the Russia investigation. Rosenstein could become a witness in the obstruction investigation, which would make it problematic for him to be overseeing Mueller. The authority would then fall to Brand. Is Trump going to go after her next? What happens if he orders her to fire Mueller? Would she resign in protest like Richardson and Ruckelshaus, or follow orders like Bork?

Let’s step back and try to grasp everything that’s going on here. The president of the United States is waging an inept public relations campaign against the special counsel’s investigation — not the particulars of it, because we know very little about the avenues Mueller is exploring and what he has discovered, but the very fact that he is being investigated at all. As he always does, Trump goes on the attack in personal ways. He seems to divide the world into those who are loyal to him on one hand and enemies on the other. James Comey’s fate may have been sealed when Trump asked him to pledge his loyalty and Comey refused (that is Comey’s account; the White House says it never happened).

While Trump is erratic and impulsive much of the time, he seems particularly so with regard to this investigation. In some limited way it’s understandable — no president likes being investigated — but it seems to be pushing Trump to particular heights of irrationality. If you were trying to limit the investigation and its political fallout and not antagonize the prosecutors, it would be utterly insane to send out these kinds of tweets. Trump’s staff and lawyers are surely begging him to stop. But they can’t control him. There may be people who are willing to stand up to him and tell him that he’s making a mistake, but he’s obviously not willing to listen.

In an ordinary scandal, you have some initial set of misdeeds, and then possibly a coverup that adds more misdeeds that could themselves be criminal. In the Russia scandal we could have those two sets of actions, but on top of them we have a paranoid, infantile president seemingly determined to put himself in ever-greater political and legal jeopardy. The more we learn about how deep Mueller’s investigation is reaching, the higher the chances that Trump will, in a moment of rage, order Mueller to be fired. If you think things are dramatic and absurd right now, just wait — it’s going to get worse.

"...an inept public relations campaign..." Yeah, that pretty much describes this administration.

Thank you, @GreyhoundFan That was a brilliant article - and articulated the flailing nature of this 'presiduncy'.

Surely he can't survive much more of this? America is being shamed daily. And many in the world are questioning its democracy.

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Oh, SPAM!

Now we're spamming the spam, spam, spam and spam.

What a spam!

Yes, we are spamming FJ over spam. Spam, by the way is disgusting. I worked with a guy who would heat a Wonder Bread and Spam sandwich and stink up the office. UGH

[fraurosena]

7 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Yes, we are spamming FJ over spam. Spam, by the way is disgusting. I worked with a guy who would heat a Wonder Bread and Spam sandwich and stink up the office. UGH

Spam is nauseating and absolutely gross. I mean, that slobbery gelatin....  

And poor you, I can't imagine having to sit in an office with that horrible stench...

By the way, did you know someone tried to combine it with oreo's?

 

[sawasdee]

Did you know that Spam is the most popular meat product in the Philippines?

And even here in Thailand, we have at least ten different versions in every supermarket..