How About That OPSEC?

 

Look at that Murderer's Row in the above picture. You've got NSA Mike Waltz, who added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat, you've got very pompous VP JD Vance, SECDEF Pete Hegseth. who let us know America USED to be foolish (whatever we look like now, he will probably have to face in the morning after he's slept it off a bit), Secretary of State Lil Marco (Alleged Adult) Rubio, DNI Tulsi We Don't Compromise Classified Intel Gabbard, and Steve Witlesskopf--who was using his cell phone to join in from Moscow where Putin was making him wait. 

Everyone on that chat should have known better than to be on that Signal chat. If they preferred Signal for some reason, it's hard not to think it was to avoid FOIA. So, they chose being potentially open to access by GRU (known to try to exploit apps like Signal by following people of interest) over institutional transparency. 

Another One Bites the Dust?

 

Some people might think there's a real problem with Pete Hegseth's SecDef nomination once the whistleblower stories about getting kicked out of vet organizations for being a rape-y, drunken peculator start flying and the word starts trickling that he's always drunk at Fox News and the thing where he's an open Islamophobe and Christian Nationalist and you know, how his own mom deplored his serial adultery and abuse of women. 

I think it's really bad when the Trump transition starts floating "Tater Tot Ron" DeSantis as a possible replacement. 

But you never know. After all, if you want to get out there and show you aren't a problem person, just a hard-drinkin' man's man and a hard-lovin' ladies' man and also, you ARE SO completely competent to do a big boy job, you can always go on the propaganda network you work for and have your mom explain it. 

(Don't laugh. Elon Musk's mom tell folks they are just jealous of her smart boy all the time, and no one picks on him anymore. ) 

Flailing in the Scandal Mines

 

I just wanted to highlight this slightly missed major story from the halls of Congress that commenter Dan Kleiner pointed out--Jamie Raskin entered into the record a document that everyone should have already known about from the first impeachment with respects to Joe Biden and Burisma, which was: the supposed bribery is very heavily denied. The response of Jim Comer about this is "yeah, but our very respected tipster Rudy Giuliani never mentioned anything about that." That doesn't feel really probative to me, you guys. I mean, I might be tempted to do foolish things but having my whole investigation rest on the word of Four Seasons Total landscaping guy is a stretch. 

For what it's worth, Rudy Giuliani is about as fallen a human as humans ever get. He defamed election workers, He's liable to get disbarred in DC. He's under a civil lawsuit for some eye-wateringly disgusting sexist shit. I would not, myself, trust the word of perpetually drunken and disheveled former America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani if it came to the goddamn rain without checking out a window. He's a joke, but here's the kind of joke he is:

This man wants to tell everyone they are dumb as hell if they don't think the little baggie of cocaine is Hunter's. Again, like no one else in the world uses cocaine, when My God! They sure do. And also so what if it was his? An addict relapses, news at eleven. It's just a story about a tragedy of how using has a grip on a human's life, it isn't a failure of the Biden Administration. 

We've Found Some Weaponization

 

Trump discussed having the IRS and other federal agencies investigate two FBI officials involved in the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, John Kelly says in a sworn statement. ⁦@nytmike⁩ https://t.co/IIhuPpY19B

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 8, 2023

I remember when, during the Obama years, there was an IRS scandal that turned out not to be one at all--someone at the agency noticed there was a whole ton of new 501 (c) 3 and 4 orgs cropping up and wondered if they were all legitimate non-profits and not actually political and gave that paperwork more scrutiny. It turned out, they weren't even targeting specifically conservative organizations but certain keywords, that included "occupy" as well. The IRS apologized and settled with the organizations and processed all their applications. 

Anyway, conservatives acted like this was the worst, top-down oppression against conservative institutions by the Obama Administration in cahoots with the Deep State that anyone ever saw. It wasn't. But I'm pretty sure the legend remains in the minds of the people who always think the Deep State is in cahoots with Democratic presidential administrations.

Anyway, Trump personally wanted to sic the IRS on people he didn't like. I'm ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN the anti-government weaponization folks in the Freedumb Caucus will get right on that, of course? 

Heh. The House weaponization fixation is about using Congressional oversight (and your tax money) to investigate Biden. No amount of money (they seem to believe) should ever investigate the guy who lied about the 2020 election, cause an insurrection attempt, and stole classified documents.  But they will absolutely get on the lil' baggie of blow and Hunter Biden, because absolutely no one in the White House staff, or with the WH press correspondents, or a tourist from anywhere outside of the White House, even has some coke and smile anymore.

I'm just saying sometimes the hypocrisy really hits one in the face. Or it should hit somebody...

Would I Call it Weaponization?

 

Somewhere, deep down, I feel like nothing is ever over with Republicans. Forget Benghazi or tan suits. They are going to get weird and bring up Chappaquiddick or Alger Hiss or Robert Byrd's Klan connections out of the blue.  So what do I think when Jim Jordan thinks maybe he'll target Hillary Clinton with a new investigation?

If Hunter Biden wasn't already done to death, why would the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy turning their lonely eyes to Hillary Clinton again hit any different?  I mean, Kevin McCarthy, the current and obviously temporary Speaker of the House explained out loud where people could hear that the email investigation hurt Clinton intentionally. And current crank James Comer admitted in the same vein that the investigation into President Biden's family members is supposed to help Trump. 

He still hasn't found what he's looking for, of course. The GOP can't keep track of their whistleblowers. To the extent they exist they are being paid by Trump insider Kash Patel who is a witness in the Mar-A-Lago document scandal and the first impeachment over the Ukraine president's being extorted. So that's not obviously sleazy as hell, right? 

But in the funny old round world kind of way, it comes out just now that the Trump DOJ was already investigating the Clintons via the Clinton Foundation, and they had nothing. See, unlike Trump's slush fund that he called a charitable enterprise which had to be shut down, and his kids had to go to mandatory don't run a charity as a slush fund school? The Clinton Foundation has been on the up and up. 

So--see how that seems like weaponization? And the thing where Trump get tried in courts and actually has done stuff is not weaponization? And how Durham had nothing, and most Republicans seem to be kind of distracting from 1/6 or the documents scandal by deflecting and whatabouting to other stuff? 

It's like they want to pretend "both sides" are equally as bad and they really aren't. And I would through very gritted teeth like to suggest the media report it that way, because sometimes, there are not two sides to everything (sorry current CNN management!) but one side is actually very bad, even seditious. And even undermines the very concept of rule of law via extreme partisanship. 

And what I mean by that isn't hard at all to see or hear if you're paying attention. 

The GOP Are Who We Think They Are

 

So, when news broke that Herschel Walker was accused of having paid for an abortion and there were receipts, I knew instantly: that wouldn't move the needle. After all, Walker has been rambling in public with sentence fragments that make no sense at all, has claimed multiple personality syndrome, has admitted to holding a gun on his ex and even playing Russian roulette, and has make various statement about his college career, sports, his charity, and what he even does for a living, that are frankly, just not true. 

And the polls vs. current GA. Sen. Raphael Warnock are still awfully close. Republicans have a very high tolerance for fuckery when it comes to people with an "R" after their name. 

I mean, you could look at Roy Moore as an example, or Trump after the TMZ video and multiple allegations of sexual harassment or assault. But it isn't just about sexual allegations. I mean, Steve Bannon conned anti-immigration conservatives out of their money over "Build the Wall" and he still has support. Alex Jones is lying grifter, and he has support. The GOP still has a big tent, it's just really looking a lot like a sideshow. 

So, the image about is from a prayer held over Herschel Walker the very next day wishing him protection and support. The GOP circled the wagons at once and his campaign had record fund-raising. He was clearly a VICTIM! of a vicious left-wing smear of the kind that was entirely true but why did anyone have to be a bastard and TALK about it? Including his conservative son, who had finally reached his limit on discussing his father's messy as hell personal life, and understandably so. 

Dana Loesch probably put it best when she said:

"I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles," she said. "I want control of the Senate!"

Loesch went on to dismiss the significance of the Walker abortion claims in even starker terms.

"If the Daily Beast story is true, you're telling me Walker used his money to reportedly pay some skank for an abortion, and [Sen. Raphael Warnock] wants to use all of our moneys to pay a whole bunch of skanks for abortions," she said. "So, it doesn't change anything for me!"

It doesn't matter what kind of person Walker is, he's a Republican. And even if he was fucking around and paid for an abortion, it's the girlfriend who is the skank (that feels revealing). And "all of our moneys" to fund abortion--she isn't really considering abortion murder so much as the kind of health care she would rather not fund. Not that conservatives ever want to fund medical care. 

TWGB: Why I Don't Give A Frick About the Fricking Laptop

 

Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince, a close ally during the Trump administration, despite objections from the fund’s advisers about the merits of the deal. https://t.co/FDlmrzvYdw pic.twitter.com/OHfyPVHsHN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 10, 2022

For some damn dumb reason, Donald Trump needed to make his daughter and her husband part of his administration. Just the way his business has always been a family business, one might say. This gave them an extraordinary opportunity to enrich themselves, while carrying out "US policy", which could, given all we know, basically mean using the US as the means to facilitate very profitable and extremely unethical relationships for themselves without respect to actual US interests or even global reputation.

This is because Trump and family don't give a shit about those things.  I have nothing but hollow, mocking laughter for people who pretend otherwise, and I'll append the phrase "And they called it 'America First'!" in the same way comedians have delivered the punchline of the infamous dirty joke: the aristocrats.

Take Don, Jr (please!).  It appears that the boy determined to be too stupid to collude when he actually received an email offering dirt on the opposition that basically said: We are from the Russian government and we're here to help you, was actively passing on methods on how to subvert the lost election and overturn it in his father's favor.  Before the election was actually called, as if he knew (because eveyone did) that his dad would lose and didn't care whether it was "rigged" or not, because of course he didn't.

Don't Stand So Close to Me

 

Bill Barr is said to have gotten several briefings about the investigation, at least partly to ensure that the then-attorney general didn’t inadvertently find himself standing next to Matt Gaetz at any public events https://t.co/03A5WDAYb8

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) April 2, 2021

Gaetz used cash apps allegedly to pay for the company of women and showed nudes of women he was with to his colleagues, even apparently on the House floor. So, long story short: he wasn't really going out of his way to cover up that he was skeevy, either. He also may have used campaign funds, because, why not make everything worse? 

I guess I'm saying it looks bad.

Gaetzgate it is, then

I want to preface this with two quick, semi-funny things that happened lately, which are, in quick order: Matt Gaetz Tweeted in response to Elon Musk's play on words that his scandal would be called "Elongate" with the suggestion that his own scandal should be called "gaetzgate" and the rumor that Gaetz wouldn't be running for congress again, but might take a role at Newsmax. 

That's what the literature folks call "foreshadowing", I guess, because Rep. Gaetz is apparently part of an investigation into something to do with sex trafficking--it's murky, and Gaetz helped the picture in its murkiness by going on Tucker Carlson and performing a quick study in how not to do professional reputation rehab on the fly. 

Actually, all Gaetz's responses to the story are weird as hell, but just to break it down, we have on one hand a story about one sexual relationship with one 17 year old that seems to have possibly emerged as a part of a story about another Florida politician engaged in sex trafficking. 

On the other hand, what Gaetz's statements seem to have done is implicate himself into a scandal involving not one underage girl, but possibly more than one, an attempt to paint himself and his family as victims of an extortion plot that involves some kind of sting operation with an old-fashioned "wire" (I don't think anyone duct tapes solid state gear to their chest hair anymore, but I could be wrong as I am a cavegirl) and sort of tried to enmesh his friendly on-air media rehab counselor, Tucker Carlson, in his shit by saying stuff like, "We've had dinner together, you, me, your wife and one of my victims..." (like, not verbatim, but that's how f'd up it sounded) and like, "bitches, right?" (also not verbatim, but he implied Tucker Carlson was also accused of creepy sex stuff, and since Carlson knew exactly what he was talking about, well. then).

Oh, and he implied there were possibly pictures of him with underage prostitutes which was not at all a thing alleged yet, so I guess, way to get out in front of that one!

So, I guess we need to confront that Gaetz might not be the sharpest tool in the shed and also has troubling judgment. Like, very troubling judgment. As in, I don't even get what his deal is, but it's definitely some kind of deal, there, and I'm not even usually one to judge. And he's good friends with Jim Jordan, and if I haven't said it yet enough, that guy's a coward and a creep. 

Now, this might not be going anywhere, but let's keep in mind, it started under the Trump Administration and was opened by Bill Barr, so there had to have been a real story, there, not some political beef. Although who knows if the Trump Administration wasn't low enough to leverage support by making members of congress vulnerable that way--even presumably tame and even well and truly owned-seeming ones. And maybe that explains a lot of how Trump got his support from some of his most rabid followers anyhow: leveraging the compromised, or at least, providing them an umbrella. He after all was never particular about who he did business with. Even to an extent that should have long ago scandalized his Qultists. 

So, I guess we're having Gaetzgate, now. 

TWGB: We Could Call it "Floodgate"

This feels like it's going to be one of those weekends where the news just doesn't stop--given the penchant for the media to call scandals by names ending in "-gate", maybe we could call what's going on now, "Floodgate", for the deluge that is now pouring out. 

Regarding TrumpWorld, I've had a little maxim: "It looks bad because it is bad." The White House meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak back in May 2017 looked bad. We knew it was bad when Trump admitted firing Jim Comey to slow the Russia investigation--that was bad! But just now we're hearing that Trump also said that he did not mind Russia meddling in US elections because the US meddles in the elections of other countries. As in, everybody does it, so, um, keep doing it?

It's funny that this part of the conversation never leaked--we were assured instead that the conversation was "wholly appropriate". Maybe Trump convinced people that was a "perfect conversation" too?

This cynical attitude reminds me a lot of how Trump responded to Bill O'Reilly, comparing the United States to Russia, in regards to Putin having journalists killed. He said then "There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?" As if who doesn't have the odd reporter killed every now and then? Way of the world!  Given the inappropriate things he says in front of a camera with everyone watching, can we really be stunned if his one-on-one interactions are hair-raising?

The White House has known this, apparently since the beginning. We are also now learning that information regarding calls with many world leaders were treated differently after there had been a couple of leaked transcripts. This apparently includes to Vladimir Putin and Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Well, naturally. My best guess for why the air-tight restriction to prevent leaks? It's because they "look bad". And it's because the general situation....is bad.

Hindsight is 50-50

How @alfranken got railroaded: my story here https://t.co/zNzRMPRoa2

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) July 22, 2019

While I really think Jane Mayer generally does great work, this piece does nothing for me. I felt like Tweeden's political bias was irrelevant to whether or not her claims should be taken seriously at the time, and still do. I think it was pretty clear at the time that conservative media was positively gleeful about reporting a liberal senator as having been accused of sexual harassment, and that dynamic, while interesting, isn't surprising to us after years of their paying attention to "but Bill Clinton's penis" (which was, in its day, somehow even more ubiquitous than "but Hillary Clinton's emails").

What remains the case is that there were more allegations, that numerous senators called on Franken to resign, that he made that decision himself, that once he resigned, no further investigation was going to happen (or would satisfy the right wing radio scandal-mongers) and that looking back in anger, regret, or anything else will simply never tell us "what might have been". Hindsight isn't 20/20, it's 50-50.

For me, the bigger picture was the accused sexual harasser/rapist in the White House, the accused pedophile Roy Moore, and the ability to take seriously claims that we believe and stand with women who report sexual harassment on the left. It couldn't be a "both sides" issue. Life isn't fair.

I think Franken was right to resign when he did instead of dragging it out, and I can totally understand his regret now, just as I can understand how his friends and supporters feel about that. I think it definitely is that case that right wing media cynically seized on it, and whether it was true or not never would have mattered, and the same people who wanted Franken's scalp, would go on to defend Kavanaugh or any other conservative figure under allegation of sexual wrongdoing. We don't know what would have happened had anything been just a little different.

And for what it's worth, people who want to blame any of this on Senator Gillibrand can pretty much stuff it.

Because Losing the House and Firing Sessions Wasn't Enough

Slowed down the @Acosta encounter to show the FOUR times the White House staffer touched HIM... not the other way around. Unclear if she's been suspended. pic.twitter.com/gBhlR2r5P1

— Sarah Burris (@SarahBurris) November 8, 2018

Trump, when he feels cornered, acts like a tantrum-y little baby and lashes out like one. Everybody should have recognized this by now. With subpoena-power in the hands of Democrats and the likelihood that some real shit could go down, now, Trump with huge obviousness had his flunky, General Kelly, go "You're fired!" at Sessions and made him sign his own "at the request of the President" resignation.

This is how he rewards Sessions' loyalty for being the first major endorsement, working on Trump's campaign, and actually taking a little heat off press inquiries about the Russia investigation by recusing. Now, that loyalty might have had everything to do with loving to be in charge of performing legal racisms, but to give Sessions his due, he didn't do anything specifically wrong to get on Trump's bad side except to acknowledge his legal limitations. But as everyone needs to know, and some indicted and pled-out people already have cause to suspect, loyalty with Trump is a one-way street. You can be as loyal to Trump as the law will allow and quite a few ways it won't, but in the end, if you ain't useful enough to His Nibs, you get the brush.

But that story, the furthering of the obstruction of justice that is the Sessions' firing and the ramifications thereof and the whole thing where Rod Rosenstein isn't in charge of the Mueller investigation and doesn't this mean Mueller's thing is all in danger, is a whole blog post for another time. This is about cheap-jack press trumpery--this thing where Trump keeps fucking with the press for no other reason than it makes them pay more attention to him.

Jim Acosta has been a Trump target for a while. So, I kind of tend to agree with Leah McElrath that this press stunt, where a WH aide tries to grab for Acosta's mic and it somehow gets turned into a story about Acosta being the aggressor, looks a lot like a set-up. The aide marched up to him with purpose while he was speaking, and reached at him several times. He protected his mic, but was not poking at her--it was the other way around!

And then the White House fuxxors with his press pass and Sarah Slanders has to use some Infowars version of what happened to make a case for why. You all know Infowars--they are the guys who think Obama has a weather machine and every school shooting is crisis actors. They are exactly who legit players would turn to for straight footage. (Eyeroll, please!)

So, what's going down here is, instead of talking about how the Democrats taking the House is bad for Trump, or how it's really damn suspicious that a white nationalist is visiting the White House (and isn't it racist of Yamiche Alcindor or April Ryan to even bring this up--well, no, isn't it racist of Trump to play the game where women of color are the real racists?) or how Trump is furthering his obstruction of justice behavior by firing the guy who is sort of permitting the investigation into his earlier obstruction of justice, or how all of this warrants more investigations which we will now get, we're going to talk about whether Jim Acosta got a bum rap, but only for about a minute, before the next big outrage, because this is how Trump plays news cycles, and his wee culty-brained folks let him.

But let the record of your own damn eyes stand--she, little and young and deliberately chosen I think to be the one to go up and do it, swiped for Acosta's mic and got in the way of his expressive hand, perhaps, and looked up at the podium at "Daddy Trump" to see if she was noticed doing a very good job.

But Acosta didn't touch her at all intentionally, he was just protecting his mic, because questioning the president is his job. End of story.

UPDATE: I don't think our young lady that Sarah Slanders calls an intern is that, at all.

UPDATE:  Westerhout debunks this:

Raiding the TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

There's just something about a raid on Trump's personal attorney and the deputy national finance chairman of the RNC (or at least, he was--maybe not so much anymore) and Stormy Daniels pay-off patsy that perks me right up. It's not very usual to see a raid that goes after various documents at a president's lawyer's office, home, and the hotel room were he happens to be staying.

You just don't. I take people more experienced in these things at their word that this is a serious development that suggests Cohen has got himself into something deeper than just the Daniels pay-off situation (although that in and of itself might touch on campaign finance violations, bank fraud, bribery and intimidation if Daniel's recollection of being personally threatened bears out). I recall in Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury reading that Steve Bannon had indicated that there might be rather a large number of similar arrangements, but that still doesn't quite seem like what would call down this kind of activity. 

It kind of reminds me of the raid of Paul Manafort's offices and home and whatnot. Deputy AG Rosenstein and special counsel Mueller seem to be proceeding from a pretty high confidence that there was a "there" there in pursuing connections between Manafort and Russia.  What they uncovered was sufficient to indict him for a buttload of money laundering and it looks like he was up to some damn unsavory shenanigans for the benefit of then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (which included, interestingly enough, smear campaigns against political rivals and a certain US Secretary of State). I doubt Cohen was into anything that deep, but he did arrange for a 20 minute Trump speech to be made in exchange for a $150K contribution to the Trump Foundation by a Ukrainian billionaire, right at the beginning of Trump's campaign. 

Laundering contributions by foreign nationals through one's foundation in return for speeches in what is an apparent attempt to gain influence? Gosh--where have I heard of such a thing before?

Anyhow, and this is all very slap-dash, since the last damn TrumpWorld Grab-bag I've filed, Guccifer 2.0 turned out to be probably GRU and was in contact with Roger Stone and WikiLeaks seems to have been communicating with him, too, and Stone either did or didn't have foreknowledge about Wikileaks', um, leaks, maybe someone heard from George Papadapolous in a nightclub that Jeff Sessions wanted him to go after dirt on Clinton (the Papadapolous guy either needs a big operational security lecture or to start attending AA). Basically, there were a lot of people in the Trump orbit who were really all about those damn emails. None of it looks like a big old smoking gun that of course the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russian agents mind you. It looks like a pattern of just not being terribly particular where dirt on Clinton came from. And odd connections with Russians keep coming up.

Of course, we'll doubtless learn more about what this Cohen situation anon, and it does seem like this particular development has POTUS exceptionally rattled. It may be that this really does just boil down to the bizarre ethic compromise of paying off an adult film actress to keep shtum over a one-night stand, but then again, even that points to a takeaway from the Steele Dossier--that Trump could be subject to blackmail over his sexual business. 

Aw, Screw it, Fire Pruitt!

One might have expected that there was something a little weird about Pruitt when he wanted the $43k soundproof booth in his office, or when he alleged that he really needed to fly first class because people said mean things to him when he flew coach. But I really think this past few days' worth of revelations has exceeded all expectations regarding a man and his grift. The sweetheart condo rental deal made between Pruitt and the wife of a lobbyist who had projects subject to the approval of Pruitt's office is pretty dodgy once the details come into focus, and his deliberate staff manipulations look an awful lot like an abuse of power. Little details like wanting to use the sirens on his motorcade to get through traffic more quickly when he was running late, or noting that he not only had a deep discount on his Capitol Hill digs, but fell behind on paying for it, seem almost comical, but point to a truly cavalier attitude towards government service. 

But what is frankly amazing is that, despite all this, Pruitt's effectiveness in dismantling the EPA's regulatory abilities outweighs what one might suppose would seem an embarrassing appearance of corruption. All in all, a touch of corruption doesn't seem to be all that new a detail in Pruitt's bio, to the extent that it becomes clear that the Trump Administration and it's admirers may feel that Pruitt's corruptibility is a feature, not a bug. What else can one make of the rumor that Trump is considering not just not firing Pruitt, but considering him as a replacement for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

Because if a person is not merely corrupt, but almost comically so, why wouldn't someone with Trump's obvious baggage want to have him running the Department of Justice?

I could be wrong--Fridays are made for firings in TrumpWorld, after all, and many an official has found themselves getting the axe after getting the "full confidence of the President" guarantee. It's possible that the Samantha Dravin/Rob Porter leaking angle will eventually do Pruitt in in a way that the misuse of taxpayer funds has not. But seeing Senators Cruz and Paul come to Pruitt's defense and blame his scandals on the media makes me wonder if we might be about to see an experiment in just seeing if this can be "weathered out". 

This is pretty terrible--the guy definitely seems shady as hell and should be out! But if Trump starts tossing every shady person working for him...who is he going to have left?

Trump is Having an Angry Weekend

CNN's latest reporting about Trump's weekend: He's "watching TV" and "getting riled up by his sons who are encouraging him to go harder on FBI" pic.twitter.com/BlRlHzC2AB

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 18, 2018

I think it's a little bit astonishing that after being relatively satisfied with the Mueller indictments and Deputy AG Rosenstein's press conference, and then a nice photo op with Broward County first responders (since he and Melania were already in the neighborhood) followed with a Studio 54 disco party but, sadly, no golfing!! Trump allowed himself to get all riled up by his two large adult sons and go a-Tweeting in the most disgraceful manner.

This collection is where Trump, annoyed at his press, starts blaming others for shit. He blames Democrats for not passing DACA (they are the minority party in Congress, and he himself actually ended DACA) and not passing gun control (see also--the minority party but they tried). He blamed the FBI for not catching "all the signals sent out" by Nikolas Cruz and blames this on the focus on the Russian meddling the ine 2016 election (specifically, the "collusion") but seems unaware that with 35K employees, the FBI can do numerous things at once, and that there really is no legal way of holding someone on suspicion of being really screwed up and dangerous forever--it isn't a crime to just be screwed up and owning guns. There was little they could actually do there because maybe the laws are kind of lax regarding dangerous people getting guns?  Seriously--using the 17 dead bodies in Florida to fig-leaf the investigation into his campaign ad Russia is damn low.

He also wants General McMaster to go beyond what the indictments or what Rosenstein said and publically waive him from allegations that the election results were impacted or...various conspiracy theory bits of glurge that I term the "Trump trots". If you are familiar with the "gish gallop", the Trump trot is the same thing, only a stickier mess of nonsense delivered by Tweet by a US President.  The Democratic party or the DNC never would have colluded with Russia to...smear Hillary Clinton and install Trump--that's just a fucking stupid thing to allege. There's no sign they did anything at all to boost Hillary Clinton during the election. Also, Uranium One is just really dumb and already debunked an awful lot. The Steele Dossier is not debunked, but holds up. The rest of the tweets that burbles about "Speeches, Emails, and the Podesta Company!" is just sad. Really sad. Throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Donald Trump doesn't seem to get that he is in office right now because these bullshit things got pushed even though they should not have mattered. Trump got paid large money for Wall Street speeches, just like Hillary Clinton. His transition team and his White House staff are using private email trust me. Also his son in law Jared (let me amend this here form) Kushner is not only not supposed to have a security clearance, but is requesting lots of classified info. 

What Trump is saying is bullshit, but he isn't thwarted, because he is apparently quite peevish:

Here we go--he references the dumb "pallets of cash" thing he swears he saw on Fox News which never happened to pretend there is a scandal about the thing where the US refunded Iran money they paid us for weapons they never got. He's just a bit mistaken as to what happened there.

He insults House Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff for a thing he hasn't said. And then he disgracefully lies about his long-held position regarding Russian meddling, which has been that Trump treated it as entirely a hoax. He hasn't admitted their wrongdoing even still, is blaming everyone else in sight, and never has either brought the additional sanctions requested by Congress or suggested any other punishment. In fact, I kind of think being back on his bullshit about why the FBI is supposedly wasting their time with the Trump connection to Russian meddling is, in a very real way--more obstruction, very much along the lines of firing Comey quite obviously for his attention to Trump's Russian connections.

Although I have not ever really figured out when Trump was at his smartest, I can safely say that the experience of angry Trump is fairly dumb. The position of President is stressful enough as it is--but most likely more so for a person woefully uninformed with a staff he either distrusts or which is also incompetent and probably not suitable to be there either.

This sort of thing is very sad and transparently an admission of knowledge of guilt and rank incompetence on his part.

The President Believes his Own Hype

For some reason, releasing the HUUUUGE four-page memo which had been hyped to the rafters as an explosive indictment of the FBI doesn't seem to have released the earth-shattering Ka-Boom! that the President was expecting. This might have something to do with it being badly over-hyped by people who hadn't even read the thing--like Seb Gorka confidently saying that the abuses by the FBI would be revealed to be a 100 times worse than those that started the American Revolution. Really?

You might come to think that a partisan Fox News assshat was running the press on this entire debacle, and you'd probably be on to something. 

This sort of thing left the White House's designated adult, John Kelly, to try and caution that it might not do all the things that were printed on the label.  But the memo got dumped on Friday after Trump gave it what I assume was a light skimming, and determined it didn't matter at all what it actually said, so long as there was good coverage of what is was supposed to say.  The memo focuses on what were supposed to be terrible omissions of fact regarding the FISA warrant that lead to surveillance of Carter Page. The text of it lays out a case, but it is both brief and one-sided.  Consider the basic claim that the Steele dossier was part of the request--part, but not all. Carter Page has been on the radar of US intelligence since 2013. Consider also that the warrant was regularly renewed--we are supposed to be impressed by the names of the folks who signed those renewals without noting that each warrant had to have fresh justifications--in other words, the situation had to remain informative and relevant. 

And we have every reason to think it did, because Carter Page is, as a bygone tv game show might have stated, "the weakest link". There have been great reasons for Carter Page to be under surveillance because of a really weird connection to the Russian government. And we still learn fun thins about him to this day, like how he boasted that he really was a Russian adviser. To the Kremlin. Like, he was working for them. 

This is hardly the hill that I think anyone would want to go to war with a federal agency on. And yet here is Trump in the above screen-cap of a Tweet, quoting a WSJ editorial that alleges a central point of Trump's lie that the FBI tilted the election to Hillary Clinton, who lost the election. Because we are supposed to believe that the FBI always really loved Hillary Clinton. Louis Freeh sending G-men to rifle her underwear drawer for Rose Law Firm receipts going on twenty-odd years ago, in what world is that a goddamn thing? 

Trump might like to think this thing has absolved him, and that, as Hannity's godforsaken show keeps implying, the Mueller investigation should be shuttered because collusions hasn't been positively confirmed. This only works for people who can't or don't read. Among people who do read, DJT Jr's email thread regarding affirmatively accepting a meeting with a person said to be representing Russia pushing dirt on Clinton that was obviously obtained through hacking with a side discussion on (sanctions) adoptions remains a pretty good whiff of collusion, as does Trump Sr's constant signal boosting of WikiLeaks. The four page memo might make a suggestion that a better pretext should have existed for a warrant to have been granted on Carter Page (which doesn't, in hindsight, even look like that great a suggestion), but one of the larger narratives that it was supposed to feed, that the Trumpists rely on, is actually quite exploded. 

One who reads the memo learns that the Steele dossier, is not, actually, per the memo, the reason for the Trump/Russia investigation. And the FBI people who were supposedly not pro-Trump enough got reassigned. As if the FBI actually tried to make a wall between personal relationships and investigations. The memo mentions that George Papadopoulos talking to an Australian diplomat was the tip off, and Strzok was reassigned. These things actually negate some of the conspiracy theory bullshit that has been out there.

Maybe between the not as bad as could be SOTU address and this memo, his poll numbers will go up a smidge. But just between you and me and the universe--Trump is not absolved and the investigation is nowhere near over. And if he keeps this naked kind of open consideration of firing folks investigating his very own malfeasance alive, and goes on to carry it out by firing Wray or Rosenstein, this is a deep problem that should, let you all know that every piece of this Trump Russia connection story was real. And he is guilty of so many things, but believing his hype was always a big part of them.

Rep. Blake Fahrenthold Used Taxpayer Funds for His Sexual Harassment Settlement

He used $84K in a sexual harassment suit. As with the Joe Barton thing, I sort of really hope no one tweets any nude selfies of the Congress critter in my direction. Also, I forsee a sexual harassment claim on the up. Revisited, or, another, more liberated claimant.

UPDATE: Rep. Barbara Comstock, R, VA, has made the sensible suggestion that the millionaire representative could repay the taxpayers and resign to make up for his unacceptable bullshit. I see her point.

UPDATE 2: Heh. This just reminded me of Sen Susan Collins going off on him for being sexist.

UPDATE 3: No, I'm serious-there is probably more where this came from.

Stating my Possibly Unpopular Opinion Re: Rep. Barton

There are a couple of things about l'affaire Barton that I think, just being a reasonable person, don't seem all that scandalous. He divorced in 2015. He had some consenting relationships with adult women. He sent them communications of a sexual nature. One of the women seems to have felt some way about having competition, and shared material that was intended to remain private. He advised her beforehand that this was a bad idea and not without repercussions.

Here's the thing--releasing a graphic video or photos of someone in an intimate situation because it screws with them when that person did not want it out and about is called "revenge porn". It is a crime in many states, and a damn nasty trick to pull on someone. All things considered, if he and the individual who released the material had a relationship that was cool and consensual at one point, and he felt like opening up in this way, turning around and using his vulnerability against him is just not cool, whether he is a US Congressman or a total political hack or has garbage opinions about the environment or health care, or any other thing totally not related to a naked video of Rep. Joe Barton making the rounds on social media.  He's a person who has a right to not have his private shit thrown out in the street like this.

I also have a problem with the body-shaming comments getting made about a video that was not ever made for mass consumption--also not cool, not necessary, not really an apt criticism. A dude in his 60's with a mostly desk-related job might not be your idea of pleasing to the eye. Got it. But he never made that for you. He made that for someone he thought would appreciate it and not actually release it to the broader public, because why in the hell would someone do that?

Which is kind of where judgment does come into this situation. When you send any material digitally to someone else, you run the risk of it being reproduced or forwarded to who knows how many other people. Being a person in his political position, he should have been well aware of the risk to his reputation if it ever came out--but he was being trusting. He just didn't think. Things being what they are, though, one always has to be thinking.  And I guess I can see where social conservatives may see this in a different light than I do.

There is precious little overlap between me and Barton politically, but I think he's getting some blowback about this story and its framing that is not entirely fair. It's not about him--it's about whether this is ever a way anyone should try to screw over a romantic/sexual partner if things end poorly. And I say this is not OK. If he's in jeopardy related to his job, it should be because he's said dumb stuff about wind being a finite resource or that we should apologize to BP over the Gulf oil spill, or has nonsense ideas about workers' rights and minimum wage and other right wing claptrap. It should be at the ballot box he gets his, and not over this.

Unless it turns out he sent that to be creepy or abusive to someone who never wanted it or some garbage like that. But the story so far doesn't seem to make him out to be that guy.

UPDATE: I guess it might be a factor in considering Barton's overall ethics that he was likely still married when he began his relationship, but this really still wouldn't have any bearing on whether it's appropriate to digitally pimp someone's business.

The Charge of the Trump-World Grab-Bag

There is a kind of deflection-play that is being used by the GOP when it looks like a scandal is going to go "Boom!", you know? Paul Waldman described it pretty well, using the childhood comeback "I know you are but what am I?"  Republicans have been using this tactic for years. I don't know how long I've been watching iterations of "You can call this Republican policy racist when Senator Byrd was in the Klan?" or "Yeah we're climate change deniers but Al Gore takes airplanes" or just randomly shouting "Chappaquiddick!" when some shit comes up, I dunno, like the Foley intern thing or Hyde, Livingston, and Gingrich, affairs, or Dennis Hastert being a pedo, or Larry Craig's airport bathroom cruising, or Bob Packwood's (really--that name is too on the nose for satire) sexual harassment or whatever.  David Vitter in a diaper. We're supposed to believe Democrats are equally as bad as, because, "Squirrel!" 

What I'm saying is, we're not supposed to notice that many of the major scandals in American politics, like Watergate and Iran/Contra and ignoring the intel on al-Qaeda, and invading Iraq without real proof of WMD and Abu Ghraib and whole entire nomination and election of Donald Trump at all given the outlandish quantities of dirt thereupon, are GOP productions, because  "what about" Whitewater, the saga of the Travelling Clinton Johnson, the nonsensically and disrespectfully-attributed deaths of Vince Foster and Seth Rich, and, for some dumb reason, a uranium company deal that had very little to do with Hillary Clinton and a tired twiddly two-step about whether the DNC can actually pay money for opposition research.
 

No Chaos in this TrumpWorld Grab-Bag!

Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2017

Before I get down to the news of a busy news day, I just want to ruminate on the above Tweet--do you ever, in the midst of saying glowing things about your various blessings, really feel the need to say something like, "and by the way, my job is totally secure" or "and my marriage is stronger than ever" if there wasn't an inkling something was wrong? That's how I'm reading the above Tweet--"Things are going so great: Ignore the mess!" It's almost as if Trump is either certain enough of his own hoodwinking prowess to believe he can Jedi Mind-Trick the appearance of chaos away by merely saying so, or has finally begun to accept "Hey, maybe this does look kind of bad" into his outlook.

But as I said some time ago: It looks bad because it is bad. Trump's problems are revealed through bad news, not "fake news". That news might be coming out because of leaks, but those leaks attest to something about the nature of his administration, that his staff feels the need to try and shape the narrative by letting bad news out, even if it might be damaging to the president or other members of his circle. That is pretty extraordinary, but not a problem of "spin". It's a problem of actual deficiencies in leadership and competency in staffing. It's the girders, not the paint.

Take the departure of Anthony Scaramucci, bombastic almost-Communications Director, as a case in point. He was named to the position 10 or 11 days ago depending upon your take, but -15 days from when he was officially to take office. In that time, he prompted the resignation of Press Secretary Sean Spicer, forced (one could believe) the firing of COS Reince Priebus, and launched a tirade of unique and memorable scatological importance. (One of the things that fascinates me about the infamous call to Ryan Lizza is that, despite having said many things on the record that anyone else abiding by the idea that a communications professional might have prefaces with "off the record", actually did ask for something he said to be off the record during the exchange, from what I understand. How the hell bad was that part, given all the other parts!?) But my question is--how did he get there and why?

The answer might be Javanka and specifically to target Priebus. That's some manipulative stuff. This is the kind of thing one could hope will be managed by appointing a more discipline-oriented character in the form of John Kelly to Chief of Staff.  This is especially true if he actually is given freedom to manage. But I still suspect at least some members of Team Trump are going to rankle at stern step-dad Kelly coming in and trying to be the boss of them. (Just a theory. In other news, Priebus seems to have been undermined by micro-management at the top. Just sayin'.)