Trump 30: Donald Trump and the Deathly Comb-Over

[fraurosena]

This exemplifies exactly what kind of character the presidunce has.

 

[Howl]

I've never been to the Oval Office, but I'm crying thinking about who is currently in it.  I have a house, a house with windows, lots of windows that I can see out of.  Nice windows, the best.  But I'm still crying, crying tears, big ones, bigly tears roll down my cheeks, because no matter what I see when I look out of my  nice windows, the Oval Office is still occupied by a loser.  Really, so much losing. 

[Howl]

And I'm watching Jake Tapper talking about who might be next to leave/resign/be fired by Trump.  Then I realized, it's like Dancing With the Stars when we (well, at least hubs and I) are breathlessly waiting to see which couple will be going home. 

[Howl]

On 3/13/2018 at 10:26 AM, AmazonGrace said:

Okay now it makes perfect sense. He was fired because of a financial crimes investigation. So of course he is a perfect fit for the Trump campaign https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/973579514419863553?s=19 c

Remember John McEntee, Trumps "body man"?  The guy who was escorted out of the WH without his coat this past Tuesday?  He had financial issues?  No?  It was ages ago in Trump years. Anyway, he has a major gambling problem. 

And what the hell is a body man, anyway. I saw that term used in numerous reports. Is it a body guard? General dogsbody?  A valet? Draws Trump's bath and soaps him up? Did he do Trump's hair in the morning? Bring him perfectly chilled Cokes? 

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

And what the hell is a body man, anyway. I saw that term used in numerous reports. Is it a body guard? General dogsbody?  A valet? Draws Trump's bath and soaps him up? Did he do Trump's hair in the morning? Bring him perfectly chilled Cokes? 

A body man is basically a personal assistant. He (or sometimes she) does whatever the boss needs, be it carry suitcases, providing food, arranging for hotels or transportation, or anything else. Because the body man is in close proximity to the boss and sees/hears everything, in the case of a high political official, the body man needs to have a high-level security clearance.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump is making one thing clear: He likes surrounding himself with people who like him"

Spoiler

If there’s a clear trend in President Trump’s recent decision to remove key advisers, it’s this: He gets rid of them because he doesn't get along with them. As he replaces them with people who seem to be more appreciative of his style, it's apparent that Trump is sharpening his focus on loyalty. But some critics worry that comes at the expense of people who can best do the job.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired because he is too establishment for the president and disagreed with too many of his decisions. They just never clicked, the president acknowledged when he fired him earlier this week.

Now it looks as if Trump has made up his mind to remove national security adviser H.R. McMaster, a three-star general with whom the president has never personally gelled, according to The Washington Post's White House team.

The president is clearly sending a message with these firings: If you don't like me, get out.

One reason McMaster is out, The Post reports, is because the president thought he was boring. Dry. Too serious. “The president has complained that McMaster is too rigid and that his briefings go on too long and seem irrelevant,” my colleagues report.

Trump is a president who often doesn’t read a daily briefing of vital, classified information to prepare for the day, who demands his staff condense memos into one page or use visuals, who openly admits that rather than prepare for a meeting on tariffs with the Canadian prime minister, he just makes up stuff about trade deficits. That almost certainly grates on the meticulous McMaster, whose staff gets up before dawn to help prepare the Presidential Daily Briefing. And Trump appears to have noticed.

Trump and his supporters say the president is running the country like a business, quick to make decisions, hoping to speed up the slow pace of Washington.

“There will always be change,” the president told reporters Thursday. “And I think you want to see change. I want to also see different ideas.”

But as he says that, Trump is installing people who seem much more willing to echo the president's own ideas.

The risk there is that Trump is creating a leadership team of people who are willing to say “yes” to him or mold themselves after him rather than challenge him; people who make pleasing the president their main job rather than doing their jobs. And those very same people may be less qualified than those Trump doesn't like.

Trump decided to replace his economic adviser Gary Cohn, who announced his resignation in part over the president's decision to implement tariffs, with Larry Kudlow, a TV personality who does not have an economics degree and who said “there is no recession” before one of the worst recessions in U.S. history.

After Trump fired Tillerson via Twitter, he announced Tillerson would be replaced with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, someone who raised alarm bells at the CIA for appearing to back off on criticizing Russia to win favor with the president. And who, after echoing the president on Russia, is now extraordinarily close with the president.

“We’re always on the same wavelength,” Trump told reporters Tuesday of Pompeo. “The relationship has been very good. That’s what I need as secretary of state.”

Some of the remaining members of Trump's Cabinet could soon collapse under the weight of self-created ethical issues. Trump is applying the same mind-set on how to replace them: The Post reports he's considering replacing Veteran Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, under fire for a European taxpayer-paid trip with his wife, with a Fox News TV personality Pete Hegseth, who has no government experience. As The Fix's Callum Borchers has pointed out, Trump appears to feel more comfortable with people in the media environment than government.

The problem with Trump's strategy is no one agrees all the time. And in fact, some of Trump's most recent ideas have cost him valuable allies.

His decision to implement tariffs on aluminum and steel imports set off Republicans in Congress, who had until then bitten their tongues on many of the president's other controversial policy decisions.

His public criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the Russia investigation earned him a rare show of defiance from Sessions, who publicly dined that night with his top two department officials in a show of solidarity.

As Trump moves into an apparent new phase of his presidency, he's firing those he doesn’t like and surrounding himself with people he believes appreciate him more. That’s a far cry from Abraham Lincoln’s famous “team of rivals,” a leadership style to which many future presidents would adhere. Trump seems to be building a team of “yes” men who seem more willing to earn the president's favor than to check him.

He wants all sycophants, all the time.

[Toothfairy]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump is making one thing clear: He likes surrounding himself with people who like him"

  Reveal hidden contents

If there’s a clear trend in President Trump’s recent decision to remove key advisers, it’s this: He gets rid of them because he doesn't get along with them. As he replaces them with people who seem to be more appreciative of his style, it's apparent that Trump is sharpening his focus on loyalty. But some critics worry that comes at the expense of people who can best do the job.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired because he is too establishment for the president and disagreed with too many of his decisions. They just never clicked, the president acknowledged when he fired him earlier this week.

Now it looks as if Trump has made up his mind to remove national security adviser H.R. McMaster, a three-star general with whom the president has never personally gelled, according to The Washington Post's White House team.

The president is clearly sending a message with these firings: If you don't like me, get out.

One reason McMaster is out, The Post reports, is because the president thought he was boring. Dry. Too serious. “The president has complained that McMaster is too rigid and that his briefings go on too long and seem irrelevant,” my colleagues report.

Trump is a president who often doesn’t read a daily briefing of vital, classified information to prepare for the day, who demands his staff condense memos into one page or use visuals, who openly admits that rather than prepare for a meeting on tariffs with the Canadian prime minister, he just makes up stuff about trade deficits. That almost certainly grates on the meticulous McMaster, whose staff gets up before dawn to help prepare the Presidential Daily Briefing. And Trump appears to have noticed.

Trump and his supporters say the president is running the country like a business, quick to make decisions, hoping to speed up the slow pace of Washington.

“There will always be change,” the president told reporters Thursday. “And I think you want to see change. I want to also see different ideas.”

But as he says that, Trump is installing people who seem much more willing to echo the president's own ideas.

The risk there is that Trump is creating a leadership team of people who are willing to say “yes” to him or mold themselves after him rather than challenge him; people who make pleasing the president their main job rather than doing their jobs. And those very same people may be less qualified than those Trump doesn't like.

Trump decided to replace his economic adviser Gary Cohn, who announced his resignation in part over the president's decision to implement tariffs, with Larry Kudlow, a TV personality who does not have an economics degree and who said “there is no recession” before one of the worst recessions in U.S. history.

After Trump fired Tillerson via Twitter, he announced Tillerson would be replaced with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, someone who raised alarm bells at the CIA for appearing to back off on criticizing Russia to win favor with the president. And who, after echoing the president on Russia, is now extraordinarily close with the president.

“We’re always on the same wavelength,” Trump told reporters Tuesday of Pompeo. “The relationship has been very good. That’s what I need as secretary of state.”

Some of the remaining members of Trump's Cabinet could soon collapse under the weight of self-created ethical issues. Trump is applying the same mind-set on how to replace them: The Post reports he's considering replacing Veteran Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, under fire for a European taxpayer-paid trip with his wife, with a Fox News TV personality Pete Hegseth, who has no government experience. As The Fix's Callum Borchers has pointed out, Trump appears to feel more comfortable with people in the media environment than government.

The problem with Trump's strategy is no one agrees all the time. And in fact, some of Trump's most recent ideas have cost him valuable allies.

His decision to implement tariffs on aluminum and steel imports set off Republicans in Congress, who had until then bitten their tongues on many of the president's other controversial policy decisions.

His public criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the Russia investigation earned him a rare show of defiance from Sessions, who publicly dined that night with his top two department officials in a show of solidarity.

As Trump moves into an apparent new phase of his presidency, he's firing those he doesn’t like and surrounding himself with people he believes appreciate him more. That’s a far cry from Abraham Lincoln’s famous “team of rivals,” a leadership style to which many future presidents would adhere. Trump seems to be building a team of “yes” men who seem more willing to earn the president's favor than to check him.

He wants all sycophants, all the time.

He is so self centered. 

[MarblesMom]

Ya know, even when working for the evil corporations, when a tenured exec was getting the ax, we always, always took into consideration his/her retirement date and worked around it.

[hoipolloi]

Someone tweeted the following at tRump in the wake of firing McCabe from the FBI;

[Howl]

22 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

A body man is basically a personal assistant. He (or sometimes she) does whatever the boss needs, be it carry suitcases, providing food, arranging for hotels or transportation, or anything else. Because the body man is in close proximity to the boss and sees/hears everything, in the case of a high political official, the body man needs to have a high-level security clearance.

So you wouldn't want this guy sitting at home moping, thinking, where am I going to get money  to pay my gambling debts or money to gamble some more?  No, you would NOT want someone in this situation to be offered a ghost written tell-all book deal with a hefty advance.  No, you would not.  What to do, what to do? You make his sad little gambling debts go away, and immediately give him a job working for Trump's 2020 campaign, which is a gamble in itself. 

[fraurosena]

I am beyond angry. I am beyond furious. I am beyond enraged. 

Even the fucking moronic dentist who killed Cecil the lion is on this fucking council.

Reality Stars, Trophy Hunters, and Gun Boosters: Meet the Trump Administration’s Wildlife Conservation Council

Quote

The Trump administration has launched a commission at the Interior Department to promote big-game trophy hunting and the “economic benefits that result from US citizens traveling to foreign nations to engage in hunting.” The council, which will cost taxpayers $250,000 a year, is charged with making recommendations to Secretary Ryan Zinke about removing barriers to importing trophy hunting animals—such as the recently overturned ban on elephant and lion trophies from some countries—and relaxing legal restrictions on hunting and importing endangered species.

The members of the International Wildlife Conservation Council, which is holding its first meeting Friday, include a reality-TV safari hunting guide, a former beauty queen, gun industry representatives, members and affiliates of a controversial trophy hunting group, and a veterinarian associated with an exotic animal breeding facility in Florida that sells endangered animals to roadside zoos.

“It’s really embarrassing,” says Masha Kalinina, the international trade policy specialist for the wildlife department at the Humane Society International. “I just question the qualifications of each and every one of these people. Notably missing from this trophy hunting council are legitimate representatives of the conservation community with proper scientific credentials and a record of successful conservation programs, along with wildlife law enforcement experts and biologists who have no financial stake in promoting trophy hunting.”

The council’s charter calls hunting “an enhancement to foreign wildlife conservation and survival.” Along with pushing to relax imports of trophy animals, it will also review the way the US complies with an international treaty designed to protect endangered plants and animals that guides regulation of the exotic animal trade. But the membership of the council seems heavily weighted toward people who think the best way to conserve wildlife is to kill it.

Indeed, the country’s largest trophy-hunting lobby seems to have an outsized role on the council. Of the 16 IWCC members, at least 10 have an affiliation with Safari Club International, which represents wealthy big-game hunters who often tangle with the Fish and Wildlife Service over permits to import of game trophies from overseas, particularly for endangered species. The advocacy group, with 50,000 members, frequently lobbies Congress and federal agencies to fight environmental regulations. It sued to overturn the Obama-era ban on importing elephant and lion trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. The Trump administration ended the ban earlier this month, despite the president’s earlier objections and comments that elephant hunting is a “horror show.”

Perhaps SCI’s most famous member is Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who got into hot water in 2015 for killing a lion named Cecil who lived in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park and was being studied by scientists at Oxford University. Palmer was never charged with any crimes, but the killing helped drive public opinion even further against trophy hunting. A Marist poll that year showed that nearly 90 percent of Americans are opposed to big-game hunting, and more than 60 percent believed it should be banned.

SCI’s political action committee supported President Donald Trump’s election and Zinke’s US Housecampaigns in Montana. The principal deputy director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Greg Sheehan, who is effectively running the agency in the absence of a congressionally confirmed director, oversees the IWCC. He is an SCI member and attended the group’s convention in Las Vegas last month when it awarded its “professional hunter of the year” honors to a South African man who has been fined for leading hunts of endangered black rhinos.

SCI’s president, Paul Babaz, is now a member of the IWCC. Another SCI-affiliated member, Mike Ingram, was a co-founder of a short-lived nonprofit set up in 2016 by Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. that was accused of selling access to the president. The Trump brothers themselves are well-known trophy hunters who caused a stir when photos surfaced of them in Zimbabwe with the carcasses of dead trophy animals, including a leopard and an elephant.

Don Jr. appears to be keeping tabs on the new wildlife council. When Cameron Hanes, a professional bow hunter, announced his appointment to the IWCC on Instagram in January, Don Jr. congratulated him, writing, “well done and well deserved. As I’ve spoken about numerous times @realdonaldtrump has always given opportunities to those who deserve it not just those whose turn it is.”

Other members of the council are affiliated with the gun industry, including Peter Horn, a vice president of Beretta and former president of SCI, and Erica Rhoad, the director of hunting at the National Rifle Association.  

Befitting the Trump administration, the Interior Department has appointed a number of reality TV stars to the wildlife council. Among them is Ivan Carter, a safari hunting guide and regular speaker at SCI events who’s frequently identified in press accounts as having been born in “Southern Rhodesia,” the former British colony that became Zimbabwe. Carter, who bears a faint resemblance to Crocodile Dundee, has hosted the Dallas Safari Club’s Tracks Across Africa TV show on the Outdoor Channel and his own Outdoor Channel show, Carter’s W.A.R.

Another member, Denise Welker, killed an elephant in Botswana on one of Carter’s safari hunts. She received an award last year from SCI underwritten by the NRA, andher husband is the co-chair of SCI’s Africa record-keeping committee. Then there’s Olivia Nalos Opre, a former Mrs. Nebraska who judges the televised Extreme Huntresscompetition for female trophy hunters, hosts other hunting shows, and does trainings for the Dallas SCI. Keith Mark, also on the council, co-hosted a hunting show with former professional wrestler Shawn Michaels.

One of the only members of the council who appears to have any scientific expertise is Jenifer Chatfield, a veterinarian who specializes in zoo medicine. But she, too, is not without a business interest in the animal trade. Chatfield is the staff veterinarian and vice president of the 4J Conservation Center in Florida. The private, for-profit center is run by Chatfield’s father, John Chatfield, an exotic animal breeder whose outfit previously sold animals to Texas hunting parks known as “canned ranches,” where people pay large sums to kill endangered animals within the fenced confines of the ranch.

John Chatfield is a co-founder of the Zoological Association of America, a group that offers accreditation to roadside and other private zoos that can’t meet the animal welfare standards of the more rigorous Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Animal welfare advocates have criticized the ZAA for protecting shady exotic animal breeders. The 4J Conservation Center holds a permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service that allows it to trade in captive-born endangered species within the United States. The Department of Agriculture has cited 4J for unsafe and unsanitary conditions that violate the Animal Welfare Act.

“It’s like a puppy mill for lemurs,” says Delcianna Winders, a vice president at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

In 2013, a red kangaroo escaped from the 4J center and had to be chased down by state wildlife officials, who shot it with tranquilizer darts. The kangaroo died two hours later. Later, an inventory showed that Chatfield had more than 60 kangaroos in pens on the compound.

The 4J center has loaned lemurs to a Tampa zoo, where Jenifer Chatfield experimented on them. In 2006, she published the results of a study in the Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine in which the lemurs were anesthetized and given as many as 50 shock treatments to force them to “electroejaculate” for artificial insemination collections. The procedure causes the animals to suffer from a “urethral plug” that can be fatal; these plugs were removed with forceps. Chatfield was testing a technique to prevent the blocks. Two years after the study, the zoo lost its accreditation for, among other things, trading animals with unaccredited facilities.

Reached by phone, Jenifer Chatfield referred questions about her appointment to the council to the Interior Department, which did not respond to a request for comment. John Chatfield could not be reached for comment.

Wildlife conservation and animal welfare groups and more than 60 scientists and economists have written to the Fish and Wildlife Service to protest the council and its membership. They argue that the way it was created violates federal law because of the lack of a balance of perspectives, its potential for capture by special interests, and the absence of public benefits. PETA’s Winders says the council’s creation is “openly defiant of the Federal Advisory Act, which requires a host of things, one of which is balanced representation, and this reads like a who’s who of hunting interests. I think we will see some legal challenges to this committee before long.” Indeed, on Wednesday, the wildlife conservation group Born Free sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for refusing to release documents related to the council’s creation.

Fuck those fucking fuckers with a ten foot pole. Sideways.

 

[fraurosena]

10 hours ago, Howl said:

So you wouldn't want this guy sitting at home moping, thinking, where am I going to get money  to pay my gambling debts or money to gamble some more?  No, you would NOT want someone in this situation to be offered a ghost written tell-all book deal with a hefty advance.  No, you would not.  What to do, what to do? You make his sad little gambling debts go away, and immediately give him a job working for Trump's 2020 campaign, which is a gamble in itself. 

... or you might simply rehire him.

White House weighs rehiring fired Trump aide McEntee

Quote

Senior White House officials are mulling bringing President Donald Trump’s personal aide and body man John McEntee back into the administration just days after he was abruptly escorted out of the West Wing.

White House chief of staff John Kelly told aides during a Friday morning senior staff meeting that there are tentative discussions about finding a role for McEntee in the administration, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The person added that Kelly and others in the West Wing believe McEntee has been unfairly maligned in the media.

A second administration official and a person close to the White House confirmed that aides have talked about rehiring McEntee, though it’s unclear how advanced those discussions are.

White House aides were shocked when McEntee, one of Trump’s most trusted aides, was let go earlier this week. In a sign of his status with the president, he was immediately hired as a senior adviser for Trump’s reelection campaign.

The exact reasons for McEntee’s dismissal are still unclear, but multiple people familiar with the issue said it pertained to his propensity for high-dollar gambling, as The Washington Post reported Thursday night. The Post noted that the gambling wasn’t illegal, but there were concerns it made McEntee a potential security risk.

It’s unclear what McEntee would have to do to reassure White House officials ahead of his possible return, and aides said discussions about rehiring him are still in the early stages.

Administration officials have privately expressed deep frustration about the initial reporting on McEntee’s departure. CNN and other news outlets said earlier this week that McEntee was under investigation for “serious financial crimes.”

McEntee is beloved among many of Trump’s senior staff and he is one of the rare West Wing aides who has won the president’s trust. A former University of Connecticut quarterback who gained notoriety for a viral trick shot YouTube video, McEntee joined the Trump campaign as a volunteer in 2015. He was a regular presence at Trump’s side until his departure this week.

White House spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment. McEntee couldn’t be reached for comment.

 

[Howl]

re: Wildlife Conservation Council

A week ago I would have said nothing about the Trump administration surprises me any more. Nothing.  They've hit bottom. I was wrong.  They are not even close to the bottom for continuing to ooze sleaze and insult and degrade every decent thing on the planet.    I mean, Cecil the Lion's murderer?  

I'm going to let this sink in and comfort myself knowing that for every outrageous thing they do, more people decide, Enough! I'm going to vote blue!  

ETA: I just watched a bunch of SNL Weekend Updates and The Californians to make myself right.  It helped. 

 

 

[Rachel333]

He's been upset this weekend.

"Hardened Democrats" 

[Howl]

Note the frantic intensity of these tweets.  The Mother Lode is buried in the financials of the Trump family business vis-à-vis Russian banks, Russian oligarchs, Putin, Russia Russia Russia RUSSIA!

As I mentioned, Mueller already has access to Deutsche Bank records and he knows where those lead.  By itself, that may or may not be enough. 

And do a little self examination here on how inured we've become to the absolute unhinged insanity of tweets being generated by the president of our country.  

When/if any results do come out of the Mueller investigation that don't exonerate Trump, I simply don't know what Trump's base will do.  Armed insurrection?  It's not out of the realm of possibility that they'll attack whoever they perceive to be at the heart of their grievances. 

[fraurosena]

So true!

Without enablement, the presidunce would not be in office.

[candygirl200413]

But don't worry guys his aides have taken him back to the golf club 

 

[Rachel333]

Also, does Trump really not understand that someone can take notes on a meeting right after it happens, not just during the meeting,  and that Trump not seeing it doesn't mean it didn't happen?

[laPapessaGiovanna]

44 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

Also, does Trump really not understand that someone can take notes on a meeting right after it happens, not just during the meeting,  and that Trump not seeing it doesn't mean it didn't happen?

Trump's memory and attention span are known for being short, he probably can't imagine that there are people who perform much better than him.

[fraurosena]

WaPo's Fact-checking Trump’s error-filled tweetstorm about the Mueller probe. 

Quote

In a series of tweets March 17 and 18, President Trump made a number of inaccurate or misleading statements about the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. As a reader service, here’s a quick guide to his claims.

The House Intelligence Committee made no such conclusion. The Republican majority offered a preliminary set of conclusions, released in a one-page summary of a draft 150-page report, which said they found “no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy” between the Trump campaign and Russia. Democrats on the committee have said the investigation was still incomplete and key witnesses had not been interviewed. The House panel investigation has been deeply split along partisan lines from the start, in contrast to a parallel Senate probe.

The president’s sweeping attack on the FBI, Justice and the State Department appears to mostly refer to former FBI Director James Comey, who Trump fired in 2017, and former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who was fired late on March 16 for allegedly authorizing disclosures about the details of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

Comey, after he was fired, passed a memo concerning a conversation with Trump to a professor, in hopes, he said, that it would be disclosed to the media. The reference to State is more obscure, but it may refer to contacts between two State Department officials and Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the “dossier” that alleged connections between Trump and Russia.

The question of McCabe’s wife’s political activities emerged during the campaign and Trump constantly has gotten it incorrect. The timeline shows any connection to Hillary Clinton is pretty thin, though McCabe claims that Trump brought up his wife in almost every conversation.

On March 12, 2015, Jill McCabe, a hospital physician, announced her candidacy for the Virginia Senate. The political action committee of then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a close Clinton ally, gave $452,500 to McCabe, and the state Democratic Party gave her campaign an additional $207,788. That was about one-third of the $1.8 million budget for her campaign.

Meanwhile, on March 2, 2015, the New York Times first reported on Clinton’s email server setup while she was secretary of state. At the time, McCabe’s husband, Andrew McCabe, was running the FBI’s Washington, D.C., field office.

In July 2015, the FBI launched a criminal investigation of Clinton’s server. The D.C. field office provided resources and personnel to the email probe. In September, Andrew McCabe moved to the FBI’s headquarters, taking the No. 3 position.

In November 2015, Jill McCabe lost her race. Three months later, in February, Andrew McCabe became the FBI’s deputy director and part of an executive team overseeing the Clinton email probe.

In any case, it’s hard to see how McAuliffe would know that the husband of someone he was supporting in a Virginia legislative race was going to be promoted months later.

In 2016, reports emerged that the FBI was investigating $120,000 of donations to the McAuliffe’s campaign and inauguration made by U.S.-based companies controlled by Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang. No charges have been filed.

There are so many things incorrect in this single tweet that it’s hard to know where to begin.

First, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was appointed because Trump fired Comey and then went on television and suggested it was because of the Russia probe. That left the Justice Department little choice but to appoint an independent prosecutor. (Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, so the decision was made by deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.) Mueller’s probe has yielded concrete evidence of Russian meddling, including the indictments of Russian individuals and entities.

Second, the investigation did not start with the dossier written by Steele. (Steele was working for political research firm Fusion GPS, which has a contract with a law firm that worked for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.) Instead, it was a tip from the Australian government, which notified U.S. authorities about a drunken conversation between a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, and an Australian diplomat in May.

Papadopoulos claimed the Russians had “political dirt” on Clinton. The memo released by the Republican majority of the House Intelligence Committee, which Trump has approvingly cited, confirms the counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling began in July, 2016, because of the tip about Papadopoulos. The information in the dossier only came to the attention of the FBI later.

Third, there is no evidence the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application to monitor Carter Page was used to spy on the Trump campaign. On Sept. 26, 2016, Page announced he was taking “a leave of absence” from the campaign. On Oct. 21, the FBI sought and received a FISA court order to begin surveillance on Page. So that was just days before the election — and after Page was no longer part of the campaign.

The order is renewed at least three more times over the next year, meaning that the FBI is able to convince the judges — all appointed by Republicans — that surveillance continues to provide assistance to investigators.

As for the probe being a “witch hunt,” the number of guilty pleas and indictments so far demonsrate that Mueller is finding evidence of malfeasance.

This tweet is prompted by a passage in McCabe’s statement defending himself against charges of unauthorized leaking about the Clinton investigation: “I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. As deputy director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter.”

During May 2017 testimony, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Comey two key questions: “Director Comey, have you ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?”

Comey replied: “Never.”

Then Grassley asked: “Question two, and relatively related: have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?”

Comey replied: “No.”

Whether Comey’s answer was untruthful may turn on the question of authorization. McCabe asserts he had the authority to have the conversation with the reporter and that Comey was “aware of the interaction.” But he does not say Comey authorized the conversation — and Grassley did not ask if Comey was aware of anyone in the FBI acting as an anonymous source.

Trump jumped to the conclusion that Comey lied. Nevertheless, Comey’s emphatic responses may cause him trouble.

Just because McCabe supposedly did not take notes, he still could have summarized the conversations for a memo immediately after the conversation. Comey had a practice of emailing his summary to a few close aides, thus creating a record and time stamp. The time between the conversation and the record of it would be an important part of establishing the memo’s credibility.

Mueller is a registered Republican, as is the man who appointed him, Rod Rosenstein. Publicly available voter registration information shows that 13 of the 17 members of Mueller’s team have previously registered as Democrats, while four had no affiliation or their affiliation could not be found, The Washington Post reported.

Nine of the 17 made political donations to Democrats, their contributions totaling more than $57,000. The majority came from one person, who also contributed to Republicans. Six donated to Hillary Clinton.

Federal regulations prohibit the Justice Department from considering the political affiliation or political contributions of career appointees, including those appointed to the Special Counsel’s Office. So Mueller is legally prohibited from considering the political affiliations of the people he has hired.

It’s worth noting that Trump himself was big donor to Democrats, including seven times for Hillary Clinton, before he decided to run for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump switched his party registration at least five times; he was a registered Democrat from 2001 to 2009.

 

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus. Of course he has.

Trump made senior staff sign nondisclosure agreements. They’re supposed to last beyond his presidency.

Quote

Back in April 2016, when the notion of Donald Trump in the White House still seemed fanciful, The Post’s Robert Costa and Bob Woodward sat down with Trump, and Costa, at one point, raised the subject of the nondisclosure agreements for employees of which the candidate was so fond.

Costa: “One thing I always wondered, are you going to make employees of the federal government sign nondisclosure agreements?”

Trump: “I think they should. . . . And I don’t know, there could be some kind of a law that you can’t do this. But when people are chosen by a man to go into government at high levels and then they leave government and they write a book about a man and say a lot of things that were really guarded and personal, I don’t like that. I mean, I’ll be honest. And people would say, oh, that’s terrible, you’re taking away his right to free speech. Well, he’s going in.”

Reader, it happened. In the early months of the administration, at the behest of now-President Trump, who was furious over leaks from within the White House, senior White House staff members were asked to, and did, sign nondisclosure agreements vowing not to reveal confidential information and exposing them to damages for any violation. Some balked at first but, pressed by then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and the White House Counsel’s Office, ultimately complied, concluding that the agreements would likely not be enforceable in any event.

The nondisclosure agreements, said a person who signed the document, “were meant to be very similar to the ones that some of us signed during the campaign and during the transition. I remember the president saying, ‘Has everybody signed a confidentiality agreement like they did during the campaign or we had at Trump Tower?’ ”

At that time, in February or March of 2017, the source said, “There was lots of leaking, things that just weren’t true, and a lot of things that were true and should have remained confidential. The president’s point was that they [staff] would think twice about that if they were on the hook for some serious damages.”

Moreover, said the source, this confidentiality pledge would extend not only after an aide’s White House service but also beyond the Trump presidency. “It’s not meant to be constrained by the four years or eight years he’s president — or the four months or eight months somebody works there. It is meant to survive that.”

This is extraordinary. Every president inveighs against leakers and bemoans the kiss-and-tell books; no president, to my knowledge, has attempted to impose such a pledge. And while White House staffers have various confidentiality obligations — maintaining the secrecy of classified information or attorney-client privilege, for instance — the notion of imposing a side agreement, supposedly enforceable even after the president leaves office, is not only oppressive but constitutionally repugnant.

Unlike employees of private enterprises such as the Trump Organization or Trump campaign, White House aides have First Amendment rights when it comes to their employer, the federal government. If you have a leaker on your staff, the cure is firing, not suing.

“This is crazy,” said attorney Debra Katz, who has represented numerous government whistleblowers and negotiated nondisclosure agreements. “The idea of having some kind of economic penalty is an outrageous effort to limit and chill speech. Once again, this president believes employees owe him a personal duty of loyalty, when their duty of loyalty is to the institution.”

I haven’t been able to lay hands on the final agreement, but I do have a copy of a draft, and it is a doozy. It would expose violators to penalties of $10 million, payable to the federal government, for each and any unauthorized revelation of “confidential” information, defined as “all nonpublic information I learn of or gain access to in the course of my official duties in the service of the United States Government on White House staff,” including “communications . . . with members of the press” and “with employees of federal, state, and local governments.” The $10 million figure, I suspect, was watered down in the final version, because the people to whom I have spoken do not remember that jaw-dropping sum.

It would prohibit revelation of this confidential information in any form — including, get this, “the publication of works of fiction that contain any mention of the operations of the White House, federal agencies, foreign governments, or other entities interacting with the United States Government that is based on confidential information.”

As outlined in the document, this restriction would cover Trump aides not only during their White House service but also “at all times thereafter.”

The document: “I understand that the United States Government or, upon completion of the term(s) of Mr. Donald J. Trump, an authorized representative of Mr. Trump, may seek any remedy available to enforce this Agreement including, but not limited to, application for a court order prohibiting disclosure of information in breach of this Agreement.”

This is so ridiculously excessive, so laughably unconstitutional, that I doubted, when it first came my way, that anything like it was ever implemented — only to do some reporting and learn otherwise.

Ordinarily I would insert a response from the White House, but this is no ordinary White House: It dealt with my numerous requests for comment, to the press office and the counsel’s office, with complete silence.

The draft made its way to me after I wrote a column observing that Trump’s silence-buying and silence-compelling days were done. Now we know that he imported these bullying tactics into the White House. Which raises the obvious question: Why is he so consistently frantic to ensure that no one knows what goes on behind closed doors?

Begs the question, did the presidunce sign them? Or was that space left blank, like a certain other NDA we know?

[GreyhoundFan]

Because the government's main job is to line Dumpy's pockets: "Exclusive: Defense Dept. charged nearly $140,000 at Trump branded properties"

Spoiler

Defense Department employees charged just over $138,000 at Trump branded properties in the first eight months of Donald Trump's presidency, according to a CNN review of hundreds of records.

Charges on the department-issued Visa cards, which span from Honolulu to Washington, DC, are the most recent evidence that taxpayer money flows to Trump's company, once again emboldening critics who say these payments violate ethical norms and possibly the US Constitution.

The CNN analysis found military personnel spent more than a third of the total amount, or $58,875.69, on lodging and food at what appears to be Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. Most of the expenses generally align with the 25 days the President spent at his Florida club from February to April.

"With the DoD's... spending at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties, and Trump's refusal to divest from his sprawling business empire, once again we find the President's hand deep in the taxpayer's pocket," said Ryan Shapiro, co-founder of Property of the People, a nonprofit that advocates for greater government transparency. The group provided CNN with more than 360 pages of travel records obtained after suing the department under the Freedom of Information Act.

Thomas Crosson, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, told CNN that the records represent all the department's charges made at Trump properties during that period.

Like all modern U.S. presidents, Trump always travels with aides from the armed forces. The department did not include receipts for the Mar-a-Lago stays. CNN asked Crosson for more details, including the purpose of the expenses, and the room rates the agency paid. Crosson also said that, in general, limits on government spending at hotels can be waived for reasons like proximity to a meeting location or the need to be there to support the president.

The White House and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.

Some of the costs coincide with an April 6, 2017, visit Trump made to the exclusive club. That evening, the President met with military leaders and ordered a missile strike on Syria, an attack Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross later joked was "in lieu of after-dinner entertainment." Two identical food charges for $89.88 appear on Defense Department cards the day after the strikes. The records also show a total of $12,339.60 billed for lodging on the same day the President ended his four-day visit.

Defense Department Visa transactions also appear for other Trump-owned properties, including $9,618.78 at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club just after he spent four days there in early May.

Some of the charges CNN reviewed do not overlap with presidential trips, including 113 at the Trump International Las Vegas Hotel totaling $35,652.44. Trump owns that hotel, and licenses his name for others including one in Panama City where $17,102.55 was charged. The hotel's owners have since removed his name from the property.

As with the Mar-a-Lago records, the department did not provide room rates or itemizations for these stays but some are around the time when the city hosted military conferences or when Vice President Mike Pence visited.

Trump has retained ownership of his company, despite handing control of it to his sons when he took office. There is little transparency in The Trump Organization's operations since it is privately held and Trump has not released his tax returns.

Some watchdog groups, former government ethics officials and Democrats say the President's businesses shouldn't accept any taxpayer dollars. They argue it fosters corruption because government officials could frequent Trump's hotels and golf courses to gain the President's favor.

The former head of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, told CNN that, during his time in office, he made "very specific recommendations" the President stop visiting properties owned by his company and announce White House officials would not visit those properties.

"You see him holding financial interests -- that leaves us unable to know whether decisions are motivated by policy aims or by personal financial interests," Shaub said.

At the time, the White House said Shaub did not raise the issues when he was in office.

"He never once raised travel, passive holdings or other ethics issues involving the President in a single discussion with the White House counsel or deputy counsel overseeing ethics and compliance," the White House said in July.

Some critics say the payments may violate a provision of the Constitution known as the domestic emoluments clause.

The clause "has always been strictly enforced because you don't want the President playing favorites," Norman Eisen, a CNN political commentator and an ethics adviser to President Barack Obama. Eisen has "We know that Cabinet officials try to ingratiate themselves with the President by telling Trump how much they love his properties. Who's to say that's not influencing Trump's decisions?"

Eisen has filed court briefs in emoluments lawsuits against the President.

Other emoluments experts argue Trump's company is allowed to accept money for hotel rooms and food without breaching the Constitution.

"These sorts of business transactions through the Trump Organization are not emoluments," said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston. "An emolument does not extend to business transactions for value, rather an emolument is a profit for the discharge of office."

Blackman has joined suits on the issue in support of the President.

He says the clause intends to prevent conflicts like a state government paying a current president to lobby on its behalf.

Legal scholars will continue to debate the definition of an emolument but the new revelations of payments to Trump's businesses come as his administration is scolding Cabinet secretaries for embarrassing stories about questionable ethical behavior at their agencies, a source familiar with the meetings told CNN.

"Even if legal, (that) does not mean you should do it -- always consider optics," a document prepared by the White House reads.

The Defense Department says it provided documents for all charges at Trump properties between January 20 and August 31, 2017, however there were no receipts for about 95% of the total $138,093.23 in expenditures. It did release extensive "Trip Record Summaries" for some stays at Trump branded properties in Miami, Panama and Washington, DC.

In Miami, those records show room rates ranged from $119 to $270 a night.

The summaries that include receipts indicate they were booked through a travel website called "FedRooms."

"FedRooms provides hotel rooms to federal government travelers on official business that meet Federal Travel Regulation... requirements," the General Services Administration website says.

The documents that Property of the People obtained are part of a large project to illuminate how much taxpayer money is flowing to the Trump Organization. The group's effort has produced other examples. Last month CNN reported at least one employee for the General Services Administration spent $900 for a stay at Trump's Washington hotel, which is housed inside a building the agency oversees.

In October CNN found the US Secret Service paid Mar-a-Lago $63,700 between roughly February and April of 2017. The payments were also categorized as hotel costs on government expense forms.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Newly Emboldened, Trump Says What He Really Feels"

Spoiler

For months, President Trump’s legal advisers implored him to avoid so much as mentioning the name of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, in his tweets, and to do nothing to provoke him or suggest his investigation is not proper.

Ignoring that advice over the weekend was the decision of a president who ultimately trusts only his own instincts, and now believes he has settled into the job enough to rely on them rather than the people who advise him.

A dozen people close to Mr. Trump or the White House, including current and former aides and longtime friends, described him as newly emboldened to say what he really feels and to ignore the cautions of those around him.

That self-confidence has led to a series of surprising comments and actions that have pushed the Trump presidency in an ever more tumultuous direction.

Long wary about publicly expressing his belief in the death penalty for drug dealers, he proposed it at a rally in Pennsylvania. “Probably you will have some people that say that’s not nice,” he said.

He bragged about making up an assertion in a conversation with the leader of a close ally, Canada, and called a reporter a “son of a bitch.”

He barreled ahead with a plan to meet with the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, to the dismay of much of the diplomatic corps.

He vanquished the economic aides he had previously seen as having more stature than he did by announcing he would go ahead with tariffs on certain imports, alarming key allies.

And then this weekend he seemed to raise the possibility of dismissing Mr. Mueller.

“This could be the manifestation of growing confidence,” said Roger J. Stone Jr., one of the president’s oldest confidantes.

Projecting strength, control and power, whether as a New York developer or domineering reality television host, has always been vital to Mr. Trump. But in his first year in the White House, according to his friends, he found himself feeling tentative and anxious, intimidated by the role of president, a fact that he never openly admitted but that they could sense, people close to the president said.

This, after all, is someone for whom leaving the security of Trump Tower and moving to Washington and the White House was a daunting prospect. Even now, as he has grown more comfortable in the job, he rarely leaves the White House unless he is certain the environment will be friendly, such as at one of his own properties. Rallies are rarely scheduled in areas that could invite large protests.

For months, aides were mostly able to redirect a neophyte president with warnings about the consequences of his actions, and mostly control his public behavior.

Those most able to influence him were John F. Kelly, the retired Marine general turned chief of staff, and Gary D. Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive and director of the National Economic Council. And few people had more ability to blunt the president’s potentially self-destructive impulses than Hope Hicks, his communications director, who has been one of his closest advisers since the earliest days of his 2016 campaign.

Some of Mr. Trump’s allies have said that Mr. Trump was trapped in a West Wing cage built by Mr. Kelly, and has finally broken loose.

The reality is more complicated, his closest aides say. They say Mr. Trump now feels he doesn’t need the expertise of Mr. Kelly, Mr. Cohn or Rex W. Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil executive he made secretary of state. If he once suspected they were smarter or better equipped to lead the country and protect his presidency, he doesn’t believe that now.

Two of those men are now on their way out. And Mr. Trump has an ambiguous relationship with the third, Mr. Kelly, whom he alternately assures that his job is secure and disparages to other people. Ms. Hicks is leaving the White House in the coming days, a departure that has caused concern among his allies about how he will cope without her in the long term.

Outside the White House, there are few friends the president will listen to. Some of them warned him to back off his tariffs plan, telling him that he would undo what he had accomplished with the tax bill. Mr. Trump said he didn’t agree, and that was that.

But Mr. Trump’s moods have always been like storm clouds passing quickly over a desert island, and aides say that has not changed. Contrary to descriptions of a constantly fuming, beleaguered president, friends and advisers say Mr. Trump is more at ease than he has been in some time. What seems like unchecked chaos to almost everyone else is Mr. Trump feeling he is in his element.

“He seems more relaxed, believe it or not,” said Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican who spent several hours with the president during two St. Patrick’s Day events on Thursday.

“I would say it’s a combination of being more relaxed and also being frustrated by the fact that he feels like a lot of what he didn’t succeed at, or what hasn’t worked, is that he wasn’t allowed to be Trump,” he said.

His close allies, like Representative Mark Meadows, the North Carolina Republican who is the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, believe the president is finding his stride and learning how to navigate Washington.

“I see it more as a function of just, ‘O.K., I’ve taken a year to understand the different dynamics within a broad array of personalities,’ and so now it’s all about putting together a team to go the distance for the next three years,” Mr. Meadows said.

Perhaps.

Warnings of dire consequences from his critics have failed to materialize. When Mr. Cohn announced that he was resigning, the predictions were that the stock market would plummet. There was only a minor dip by the end of the next day.

And on North Korea, even the grayest of foreign policy beards have conceded that Mr. Trump might be able to accomplish something.

“The president has his own original style, and it’s unlikely to be changed at this stage of his life,” Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, said in an interview. “But it also is conducive to bringing forward opportunities like this Korean conversation. It is not what we traditionalists would have recommended in the first place.

“But I have to say, when I have thought it through, and how it could play out, it could restore a political initiative to us, and could compel a conversation with countries” otherwise disinclined.

Some worried aides are less sanguine. They view the weekend’s attacks on Mr. Mueller and the F.B.I. as a particularly disturbing taste of what they believe could come. They say privately that Mr. Trump does not understand the job the way he believes he does, and that they fear he will become even less inclined to take advice.

It remains to be seen whether his attacks on Mr. Mueller are anything more than an effort to define the terms of the public conversation about the investigation, and the parameters of an interview with the president that the special counsel is seeking.

But the possibility that Mr. Trump would be emboldened enough to fire Mr. Mueller was raised on Sunday by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Such a move, Mr. Graham said on CNN, would be “the beginning of the end” of the Trump presidency.

 

[Howl]

13 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“This could be the manifestation of growing confidence,” said Roger J. Stone Jr., one of the president’s oldest confidantes.

Who probably behind the scenes is aggressively goading Trump to fire Mueller. 

[fraurosena]

30 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

they fear he will become even less inclined to take advice.

 

In a sense this might be a good thing. Given enough rope...