Tuesday Reads: Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings and Woodward’s New Book

Posted: September 4, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 59 Comments

Good Morning!!

I had difficulties with my internet connection this morning, so I watched the beginning of the Kavanaugh hearing. The Democrats raised quite a ruckus over the Republicans–and Trump’s–refusal to make documents available from Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush White House. Democrats moved to adjourn the hearing until the documents could be reviewed. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley refused to hold a vote on the motion.

The committee has now begun opening statements by Senators. Awhile ago, Grassley said the committee would adjourn after the opening statements and resume tomorrow. The opening statements are limited to 10 minutes each.

Raw Story: Kavanaugh hearing spirals into chaos as Democrats refuse to let GOP chair read opening statement.

The confirmation hearing for Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, began in chaos as several Democratic senators interrupted the opening remarks.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) tried to welcome Kavanaugh and was immediately interrupted by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).

“Good morning. I welcome everyone to this confirmation hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to serve as associate justice,” Grassley said.

“Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman? I would like to be recognized for a question before we proceed,” Harris said.

“Mr. Chairman I would like to be recognized for a question before we proceed. Mr. Chairman. I would like to be recognized to ask a question before we proceed. The committee received [requested documents] just last night, less than 15 hours ago,” Harris said. “We believe this hearing should be postponed.”

Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ) gave a long speech appealing to Grassley to stop the hearing.

“You are taking advantage of my decency and integrity,” Grassley said.

There was much more after that. I have to at least give the Democrats credit for speaking up.

More from NBC News: Fireworks as Kavanaugh confirmation hearings get underway.

Sen Kamala Harris (D-CA)

The Senate confirmation hearing for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh launched with chaotic scenes Tuesday morning as Democrats pushed to adjourn, and protesters repeatedly interrupted the proceedings.

The Senate confirmation hearing for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh launched with chaotic scenes Tuesday morning as Democrats pushed to adjourn, and protesters repeatedly interrupted the proceedings.

The complaints from Democrats on the panel and protester fireworks that lasted through the hearing’s first hour followed the late-night release of tens of thousands of documents related to Kavanaugh’s time in the George W. Bush White House.

“The committee received just last night, less than 15 hours ago, 42,000 pages of documents that we have not had an opportunity to read, review or analyze,” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said moments after the hearing opened. “We cannot possibly move forward with this hearing.”

Sen. Amy Kobuchar (D-MN)

Sen. Amy Klobluchar, D-Minn., chimed in, agreeing with Harris and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., then added, “Mr. Chairman, if we cannot be recognized, I move to adjourn…we had been denied real access to the real documents we need” and also said that Republicans have turned the hearing into a “mockery.”

Other Democrats began to add to the chorus of concerns, interrupting Grassley. “What are we trying to hide? Why are we rushing?” asked Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

“This process will be tainted and stained forever” if the proceedings were not delayed, said Blumenthal. Grassley eventually denied Blumenthal’s repeated request for a roll call vote to adjourn the hearing.

As the Democratic pushback stretched into the hearing’s second hour, Grassley expressed mounting frustration. “Do you want to go on all afternoon?” he asked the panel’s Democrats.

Much more with background at the link.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)

Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed reports on the withholding of documents on Kavanaugh’s time in the White House: The Justice Department Was Behind The Decision To Keep 100,000 Pages Of Kavanaugh’s Record Secret.

After two days of questions about how it was decided that more than 100,000 pages of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s White House work would be withheld from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s review, the Justice Department took responsibility for the decision on Monday night.

“The Department of Justice, which has advised both Democratic and Republican administrations on the application of the Presidential Records Act and constitutional privileges, was responsible for determining which documents were produced to the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores said….

The news that the documents were being kept from the public and the committee was reported on Friday night, when the lawyer overseeing the review sent a letter to congressional leaders about the final status of his review. The development was just the latest step in a series of fights over the millions of documents from Kavanaugh’s time working in George W. Bush’s White House from 2001 until when he was confirmed to his seat on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA)

The office of former president Bush has been producing some of those documents to the committee in advance of the hearing — a decision that went outside of the usual process for congressional requests under the Presidential Records Act, which is handled by the National Archives.

Instead, lawyers for Bush, led by William Burck of Quinn Emanuel, reviewed the documents requested and then provided the presidential records they found to the Justice Department for review.

“[T]he White House and the Department of Justice have identified certain documents of the type traditionally protected by constitutional privilege,” Burck wrote. “The White House, after consultation with the Department of Justice, has directed that we not provide these documents for this reason.”

I don’t know what the basis is for a claim of “constitutional privilege” or “executive privilege” or why a lawyer who is not connected to the government would be able to make such a claim. Maybe someone else can enlighten me. Senator Dick Durbin said he’d never heard of it.

The mysterious and powerful William Burck of Quinn Emanuel.

The Bush lawyers released 42,000 pages of documents last night, too late for Senators to realistically review the material. Chuck Grassley ludicrously claimed that committee staff for the Republican had reviewed every page of the documents by this morning.

So we’ll see what happens. We know the Republicans are probably going to cram this nomination through, despite what the public wants. The biggest issue is that Kavanaugh would likely vote to overturn Roe V. Wade. According to Aída Chávez at The Intercept: There is No Grassroots Energy Rallying for Brett Kavanaugh. None.

LAST SUNDAY, SEVERAL hundred protestors rallied in Civic Center Park in Denver, Colorado, against President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh. Local reporters were on hand, and the protest earned a two-minute segment on that night’s local CBS broadcast. The “Unite for Justice” rally in Denver was just one of dozens held across the country that same day, and viewers of that evening’s news learned that the rally-goers were taking a stand against confirming a justice who would be the fifth vote to repeal Roe v. Wade.

The network’s attempt at balance, however, was foiled by advocates of Kavanaugh — or, more precisely, the lack of them. The anchor, at the end of the segment, deadpanned to the Denver metro viewership and said, “A pro-life rally was scheduled to run in opposition to the protest, but no one attended.”

Abortion opponents’ inability to gather even a handful of counter protesters in Denver made for an awkward aside, but it also underscored the near total absence of organic grassroots energy from a supposedly rabid anti-choice movement. As the Senate began confirmation hearings Tuesday, the politics of the nomination are being shaped by a myth that has been constructed over decades by a small minority of fervent abortion rights opponents: that the country is evenly divided when it comes to abortion.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)

In reality, the politics are lopsided. Voters want Roe protected by more than a 2-1 margin, and even oppose overturning it in states like North Dakota, where Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is up for re-election. The opposition that does exist, meanwhile, is concentrated among a minority of hardcore Republicans who consider it a moral travesty to vote for Democrats — not the kind of voter Heitkamp could win over by supporting Kavanaugh.

All of this has been evident for years, yet the sophisticated political antenna of Democratic leaders in Washington suddenly fail them when it comes to reading polls on the question of abortion. Instead, Democratic leadership is worried about the political consequences for Democrats in red states who vote no. If all Democrats vote no, Republicans would need to win Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, Republicans from Maine and Alaska, respectively, who publicly support abortion rights.

Click on the link to read the rest.

In other news, people are already talking about Bob Woodward’s book on the Trump White House, which is scheduled for release next Tuesday. The Washington Post: Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency.

John Dowd was convinced that President Trump would commit perjury if he talked to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. So, on Jan. 27, the president’s then-personal attorney staged a practice session to try to make his point.

In the White House residence, Dowd peppered Trump with questions about the Russia investigation, provoking stumbles, contradictions and lies until the president eventually lost his cool.

Bob Woodward

“This thing’s a goddamn hoax,” Trump erupted at the start of a 30-minute rant that finished with him saying, “I don’t really want to testify.”

The dramatic and previously untold scene is recounted in “Fear,” a forthcoming book by Bob Woodward that paints a harrowing portrait of the Trump presidency, based on in-depth interviews with administration officials and other principals.

Woodward depicts Trump’s anger and paranoia about the Russia inquiry as unrelenting, at times paralyzing the West Wing for entire days. Learning of the appointment of Mueller in May 2017, Trump groused, “Everybody’s trying to get me”— part of a venting period that shellshocked aides compared to Richard Nixon’s final days as president.

A bit more:

A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.

Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.

Again and again, Woodward recounts at length how Trump’s national security team was shaken by his lack of curiosity and knowledge about world affairs and his contempt for the mainstream perspectives of military and intelligence leaders.

At a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19, Trump disregarded the significance of the massive U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, including a special intelligence operation that allows the United States to detect a North Korean missile launch in seven seconds vs. 15 minutes from Alaska, according to Woodward. Trump questioned why the government was spending resources in the region at all.

“We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told him.

After Trump left the meeting, Woodward reconts, “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’”

I’d say that’s being generous. a sixth grader would surely be able to understand that explanation. Read more at the WaPo.

What else is happening? What stories are you following today?

Lazy Saturday Reads: Happy Caturday!

Posted: September 1, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | 12 Comments

Paul Klee: Cat and Bird, 1920

Good Morning!!

I’m not watching the McCain funeral, but on Twitter I see that Meghan McCain took it to Trump, and the audience loved it. Except for Jared and Ivanka, who should have stayed home.

Meanwhile Trump sent out a bunch of ugly tweets and then left the White House in golf attire.

I had heard he was going to Camp David, but I guess not.

Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the Washington Post/ABC poll that showed Trump’s disapproval rating at 60 percent. Today another poll replicates those findings. Investor’s Business Daily: Trump’s Approval Number Nose-Dives, Dems’ Blue Wave Might Be Building: IBD/TIPP Poll.

Just 36% say they approve of the job President Trump is doing, a 5-point drop from last month, according to the latest IBD/TIPP poll. Fifty six percent disapprove of Trump’s job performance, up from 53% the month before.

The drop in Trump’s approval rating comes after a spate of bad news, including the conviction of his former campaign chairman on eight counts of fraud and a guilty plea on campaign finance charges by Trump’s former lawyer, which sparked a torrent of impeachment talk. Trump also caught flak for his handling of Sen. John McCain’s passing….

Arthur Rackham: By Day She Made Herself into a Cat

The broader IBD/TIPP Presidential Leadership Index plunged 11.6% to 40.4. That’s one of the biggest monthly drops since IBD started tracking this index in January 2000. The proprietary Leadership Index combines results from several questions on approval, favorability and strength of leadership….

Trump lost significant ground on job approval with Republicans this month, which fell from 83% last month to 76% this month. Among independents, Trump’s approval dropped 4 points to 33%. Democratic approval has never been above the low single digits.

He also saw a big drop in support from men (it went from 49% last month to 40% today). His backing among women, however, barely changed. It’s currently 32%….

His support among rural dwellers plunged 15 points — going from 60% to 45%. It fell 7 points among suburban voters to 35%.

Yesterday, George Papadopoulos submitted his sentencing memo to the DC district court, and it contained some interesting information about Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions. CNN reports:

Convicted former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos has publicly contradicted Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ sworn testimony to Congress, saying both Sessions and Donald Trump apparently supported his proposal that Trump meet with Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign, according to a court filing late Friday night.

“While some in the room rebuffed George’s offer, Mr. Trump nodded with approval and deferred to Mr. Sessions who appeared to like the idea and stated that the campaign should look into it. George’s giddiness over Mr. Trump’s recognition was prominent during the days that followed,” Papadopoulos’ lawyers wrote in a court filing Friday. Papadopoulos’ legal team said that he has shared with special counsel Robert Mueller his recollections of the March 31, 2016, meeting.

Cat Devouring a Bird, Pablo Picasso

Sessions, when asked about that meeting under oath, said that he “pushed back” on the idea of the Putin summit. CNN previously reported that Trump “heard him out,” according to another adviser in the room, when Papadopoulos proposed the idea and offered to help execute it.

Another lie by Sessions to Congress. And yesterday we found out that Mueller is pursuing such offenses. Emptywheel: Among Other Things, Sam Patten Plea Signals That Mueller Referrals Will Include False Congressional Testimony. (Dakinikat wrote about Patten yesterday also.)

…another sleazy influence peddler, Sam Patten, just pled guilty to a FARA violation. As his criminal information lays out, he pled to serving as an agent of Konstantin Kilimnik and Serhiy Lyovochkin without registering under FARA. His plea agreement (which notes he first made a proffer to Mueller’s team on May 22, meaning this is another investigation that has been going on months that is being finalized in the last days of August) included a cooperation agreement.

More interesting details, however, are the descriptions of the other crimes he is being excused from, which appear in the statement of the offense.

Gertrude Abercrombie: The Stroll

There has been plenty of discussion of Patten’s funneling of foreign money into Trump’s inauguration funds. Quoted in the post:

To circumvent the foreign donation restriction, PATTEN, with the knowledge of Foreigner A, solicited a United States citizen to act as a “straw” purchaser so that he could conceal from the [Presidential Inauguration Committee] that the tickets for the inauguration were being paid for from a foreign source. The straw purchaser paid $50,000 for four inauguration tickets. The straw purchaser paid that sum one day after receiving from [Begemot Ventures] a check signed by PATTEN in the sum of $50,000. In turn, [Lyovochkin] had paid [Begemot] for the tickets though a Cypriot account. [Kilimnik and Lyovochkin] another Ukrainian, and PATTEN were allocated the four inauguration tickets. Thereafter, PATTEN attended a PIC even in Washington, D.C. with Foreigner B.

[….]

Less sexy, but procedurally more important, is the revelation that Patten also lied to SSCI.

In or about January 2018, the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) sought PATTEN’s voluntary testimony on various topics. In advance of that testimony, the SSCI sought various pertinent documents from PATTEN.

Marc Chagall: Man at Table, 1911

In or about January 2018, PATTEN testified before the SSCI. Both before and during his testimony, PATTEN misled the SSCI in that he intentionally did not provide SSCI certain documents that could lead to revelation of him causing and concealing the foreign purchase of the PIC tickets, described about, and gave false and misleading testimony to avoid disclosing that he had caused and concealed foreign money to be paid to the PIC. In addition, PATTEN provided misleading testimony about his representation of foreign principals in the United States, so as to conceal his violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Finally, after the interview, PATTEN deleted documents pertinent to his relationships with the above-described foreign principals.

As noted, this is one of the additional crimes that Patten will avoid being charged for by pleading to the FARA charge. Reportedly, SSCI made its own criminal referral, based off different comments.

So anyone who lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee could be in Mueller’s crosshairs, including Don Jr.

The brilliant Natasha Bertrand wrote about Sam Patten way back in April: A Suspected Russian Spy, With Curious Ties to Washington.

A longtime Republican operative with ties to the controversial data firm hired by President Donald Trump’s campaign team also has a nearly two-decade-long friendship and business relationship with a suspected Russian intelligence agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, who has landed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s crosshairs.

The Washington-based operative, Sam Patten, would not tell me whether he has been interviewed by Mueller’s team as part of their investigation into Russia’s election interference and potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. But Patten said that his relationship with Kilimnik—a former officer in Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) who worked closely with Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, for over a decade—has “been thoroughly explored by relevant government entities.”

Patten’s long friendship with Kilimnik—which stems from their time working together at the International Republican Institute in Moscow between 2001 and 2003—would likely be enough to draw scrutiny from Mueller, who appears to have homed in on Kilimnik as a potentially significant link between the Trump campaign and Russia. The special counsel’s office alleged in a court filing late last month that Kilimnik still had ties to Russian intelligence services in 2016, and that his conversations with Gates in September of that year are relevant to the investigation. Manafort and Gates’s arrival to the campaign team coincided with the most pivotal Russia-related episode of the election: the release of emails that had been stolen from the Democratic National Committee by hackers working for the GRU, Russia’s premier military-intelligence unit.

Read the rest at The Atlantic.

Dakinikat also wrote yesterday about Trump’s latest DOJ nemesis Bruce Ohr. Here’s a piece about him by Craig Unger: Understanding Trump vs. Bruce Ohr: Think Russia’s top crime boss, Semion Mogilevich.

Geoffrey Ellis: Jumping Cat, 2013

It has been noted that Ohr had ties to the notorious Christopher Steele dossier and that his wife worked for Fusion GPS, which hired Steele, a former British agent, to investigate Trump. But there is quite likely another reason which could trouble Trump even more: Ohr’s job in the Justice Department involved facing off against Russian crime boss Semion Mogilevich whose operatives have been using Trump branded properties to launder millions of dollars for more than three decades. If the FBI’s investigations turn toward Trump’s ties to Russian organized crime, which is entirely foreseeable, the president may be interested in trying to delegitimize those efforts as he has attempted with other aspects of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. What the public should also understand is how Mogilevich has served as an agent for Vladimir Putin’s efforts in the United States and abroad.

If one tracks Trump’s ties to Russia, the name Mogilevich pops up more than any single name, beginning in 1984 when alleged Mogilevich operative David Bogatin bought five condos in Trump Tower for $6 million in cash. Over the years, no fewer than 1,300 Trump-branded condos were sold in all cash purchases to anonymous shell companies—the two criteria that set off alarm bells among anti-money laundering authorities.

If one tracks Trump’s ties to Russia, the name Mogilevich pops up more than any single name, beginning in 1984 when alleged Mogilevich operative David Bogatin bought five condos in Trump Tower for $6 million in cash. Over the years, no fewer than 1,300 Trump-branded condos were sold in all cash purchases to anonymous shell companies—the two criteria that set off alarm bells among anti-money laundering authorities.

Read the rest at Just Security. I’ve been reading Unger’s book House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia for the past couple of days. It’s really interesting.

Once again, Natashe Bertrand is on point. She posted this story a couple of days ago: Trump’s Top Targets in the Russia Probe Are Experts in Organized Crime.

Norbertine Bresslern-Roth: Two Cats linocut print

Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissmann. Andrew McCabe. President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest “Democrats” engaged in a partisan “witch hunt” led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trump’s attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia….

Trump’s latest obsession is with Bruce Ohr, a career Justice Department official who spent years investigating Russian organized crime and corruption—an expertise he shared with another Trump target named Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who provided valuable intelligence on Russia to the State Department and the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force prior to authoring the Trump-Russia dossier in 2016. Ohr and Steele met in 2007, according to The New York Times, and stayed in touch as a result of their shared interests and mutual respect. Trump has tweeted about Ohr nearly a dozen times this month alone, complaining about his relationship with Steele and Ohr’s wife’s past work for Fusion GPS—the opposition-research firm that hired Steele in 2016 to research Trump’s Russia ties.

“How the hell is Bruce Ohr still employed at the Justice Department?” Trump wrote on Thursday. “Disgraceful! Witch Hunt!”

Trump’s fixation with seeing Ohr ousted from the Justice Department could be perceived as yet another attempt to undermine the credibility of the people who have investigated him. It could also be interpreted as an attack on someone with deep knowledge of the shady characters Trump and his cohort have been linked to, including Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob boss, and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate close to Putin who did business with Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Incidentally, another Manafort associate, the Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, admitted that he only managed to be in business because Mogilevich allowed him to be, according to a leaked 2008 State Department cable.)

Read the whole thing at The Atlantic.

Those are my recommended reads for today. What stories are you following?

Tuesday Reads: The Pariah “President”

Posted: August 28, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , | 25 Comments

Trump refuses to answer repeated questions about the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Good Afternoon!!

I know no one here will find this statement surprising, but Trump has no clue what being “president” is all about. The traditional job of president is not to alienate our country’s closest allies, gin up racism and hatred, inflame partisan divisions, attack freedom of speech and press, and disrespect anyone who refuses to genuflect before him. Presidents are supposed to try to unite the country, heal divisions, and show leadership in difficult times. Not this so-called “president.”

Ashley Parker at The Washington Post: President non grata: Trump often unwelcome and unwilling to perform basic rituals of the office.

Shunned at two funerals and one (royal) wedding so far, President Trump may be well on his way to becoming president non grata.

The latest snub comes in the form of the upcoming funeral for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), which, before his death, the late senator made clear he did not want the sitting president to attend. That the feeling is mutual — Trump nixed issuing a statement that praised McCain as a “hero” — only underscores the myriad ways Trump has rejected the norms of his office and, increasingly, has been rejected in turn.

Less than two years into his first term, Trump has often come to occupy the role of pariah — both unwelcome and unwilling to perform the basic rituals and ceremonies of the presidency, from public displays of mourning to cultural ceremonies.

In addition to being pointedly not invited to McCain’s funeral and memorial service later this week — where former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush will both eulogize the Arizona Republican — Trump was quietly asked to stay away from former first lady Barbara Bush’s funeral earlier this year. He also opted to skip the annual Kennedy Center Honors last year amid a political backlash from some of the honorees and has faced repeated public rebuffs from athletes invited to the White House after winning championships.

“We’re not talking about a president going and having a rally in a state that voted against him,” said Tim Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University who previously served as the director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “We’re talking about a president who can’t even go and participate in a ritual where presidents are usually welcomed, and that is one of the consequences of his having defined the presidency in a sectarian way.”

Noah Bierman at The LA Times: Two funerals and a wedding: The shunning of Donald Trump.

Sen. John McCain’s decision to exclude President Trump from his funeral is an extraordinary moment on its own, a posthumous rebuke from an American icon who regarded the presidency as sacred, and believed its current occupant defiles that office.

Yet Trump’s exclusion from such high-profile events of mourning and celebration — where American presidents are typically counted on to stand in for an entire nation — is emerging as a pattern over his 19 months in office.

In April, Trump was asked to stay away from the funeral of Barbara Bush, wife to one president and mother of another, leaving it to former Presidents Clinton and Obama to serve as national consolers to the Bush family. In December, he opted to skip the president’s traditional attendance at the annual Kennedy Center Honors gala after several of the artists being feted threatened a boycott.

The British royal family dispensed with inviting foreign dignitaries to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in May partly to avoid having to invite Trump, whom Markle had attacked as “divisive” and “misogynistic.” Trump canceled the usual White House celebration for the NFL’s Super Bowl champions when he learned most of the Philadelphia Eagles players were unwilling to attend. Only months earlier the Golden State Warriors had passed on their own invitation to celebrate their 2017 NBA championship title at the White House.

Bierman notes that Trump rants about his rejections by “elites,” but at the same time he’s wounded by them.

The baby-man “president”

Trump’s pique “is genuine. None of it is a put-on,” said Michael Caputo, a former political advisor. “He has the same deep and abiding disdain for the elites that each and every one of the ‘deplorables’ have today.”

The resentment was a constant throughout his career in business and entertainment, where he was dismissed as more of a boastful, tabloid-seeking showman than the serious mogul he believed himself to be.

“I am sure that he is aggravated that the political establishment still will not accept him,” said one longtime friend who asked not to be identified given the sensitivity of the subject. “What he really doesn’t understand is that their objection is cultural as well as political and that they will never accept him.”

But critics say Trump created the isolation by his occasionally outrageous behavior, by reveling in a politics that feeds conspiracy theories, humiliates rivals and disdains basic notions of civility.

“He lacks any kind of humility. He kind of takes pride in kicking people around. So when people then strike back, he shouldn’t be disappointed, because in many ways he’s asked for it,” said Leon E. Panetta, who served in Congress and in the Clinton and Obama cabinets.

Just look at his childish reaction to the death of John McCain.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

President Trump reversed course and ordered that the U.S. flag be flown at half-staff for the rest of the week to mark the death of John McCain, after drawing fire from lawmakers and veterans groups who said the Republican senator hadn’t been appropriately honored….

White House battled with Trump over whether to keep the flag lowered until McCain’s burial.

The White House initially lowered its flag to half-staff on Saturday but returned it to full-staff by Monday morning. It was lowered to half-staff again Monday afternoon, shortly before Mr. Trump released his statement. The president’s proclamation covers the White House as well as all federal buildings, military bases and embassies.

White House officials said they prodded Mr. Trump for two days to put out a kind word about Mr. McCain. Mr. Trump resisted, and viewed the news coverage of the former senator’s death as over-the-top and more befitting a president, according to people familiar with the situation. They said cable networks’ focus on the flag controversy came at the expense of more coverage of Mr. Trump’s trade deal with Mexico.

Trump is wrong, of course. The flag has been kept at half-staff until the interment of other prominent Americans, most recently for Senator Ted Kennedy and former First Lady Barbara Bush.

One of the reasons Trump despised John McCain was because of his vote against repealing the ACA, but why is he given all the credit for the bill’s defeat? If it hadn’t been for two Republican women, Susan Collins and Lisa Merkowski, McCain’s no vote would have been meaningless. That’s one of the simple truths about the lionizing of McCain that Holly Baxter points out at The Independent: Why can’t anyone be honest about John McCain’s legacy?

It is difficult to encapsulate a political legacy without sliding into enraged hyperbole or saccharine fawning. With John McCain, it is even harder.

That’s because we’re not in Kansas anymore, politically speaking: in the surreal presidential landscape we’ve found ourselves in, it seems almost quaint to refer to McCain as a dinosaur or a right-wing reactionary, or to say that his cruel streak could sometimes be shocking. After all, he called his wife a “c***” on the campaign trail only once (reportedly reacting to being gently teased about his thinning hair); he only joked about the teenage Chelsea Clinton being the “ugly” love child of Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno. It’s not like he said he could grab any woman “by the pussy” because he was famous; it’s not like he dismissed Mexicans as “rapists”. So what’s the problem?

Republican presidential candidate John McCain waits to be introduced at a campaign rally at the Crown Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina on October 28, 2008. AFP PHOTO / Robyn BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

The very fact that a sitting US president made such shocking remarks, however, shouldn’t blind us to the fact that McCain had some very serious flaws. His Chelsea/Hillary Clinton barb continues a long tradition of dismissing women in politics because of their perceived bad looks. (Remember the “plain facts and plain faces” propaganda against women’s votes during the Suffragette movement, and the depictions of them as ugly harridans who wanted to participate in democracy because they couldn’t get husbands?) Needless to say, the memory of McCain’s mean jibe very probably underpins the reason Chelsea Clinton recently defended Barron Trump against media nastiness, tweeting pointedly that he should be “allowed to have the private childhood he deserves”.

Words are just words, but McCain’s voting record where women’s rights are concerned speaks for itself. He voted to restrict abortion and, in 2015, to defund Planned Parenthood if it carried on providing abortions to women with unwanted pregnancies. We know that votes like these can lead to serious consequences: deaths from backstreet abortions, increased levels of poverty, the perpetuation of cycles of social and economic inequality. McCain also voted against the Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act in 2014: the bill was an effort to ensure women could access contraception and gynaecological services without being denied healthcare benefits by their providers because of those providers’ “beliefs”. Nor was he prejudiced against women only when it concerned contraception or abortion: he also voted against a bill that would have made it illegal to discriminate against female employees with the same experience being paid less their male counterparts doing exactly the same job.

Read the rest at The Independent.

More articles to check out, links only:

Literary Hub: Rebecca Solnit: Why the President Must Be Impeached.

NYT: Bruce Ohr Fought Russian Organized Crime. Now He’s a Target of Trump.

NYT: Kushner Companies and Michael Cohen Accused of Falsifying Building Permits to Push Out Tenants.

Natasha Bertrand at The Atlantic: Devin Nunes’s Curious Trip to London.

Vice News: This toddler got sick in ICE detention. Six weeks later she was dead.

What else is happening? What stories are you following today?

Lazy Saturday Reads: What Does the Allen Weisselberg Immunity Deal Mean?

Posted: August 25, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Summer Afternoon (Tea in the Garden), Théo van Rysselberghe

Good Afternoon!!

This has been a disastrous week for Trump. The Guardian summarizes: Trump’s terrible week: stunning news and whispers of impeachment.

…even by the standards of the Trump universe, this week has been a blur. And at its heart was a single, devastating hour on Tuesday 21 August that effectively turned the president of the United States into an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal crime….

…first, there was Rudy Giuliani. Trump’s lawyer, the former New York mayor, set the tone last Sunday with an Orwellian comment on the NBC network’s Meet the Press. Asked whether the president would give his version of events in testimony to Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Giuliani warned of a perjury trap and said: “Truth isn’t truth.”

Monday passed with just an embarrassing White House event to celebrate ICE during which Trump

…said that a border patrol agent, who is Latino, “speaks perfect English” as he beckoned him to the stage. He also misstated the acronym for US Customs and Border Protection at least eight times, referring to it as “CBC”, as in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

On Tuesday, the shit really hit the fan.

But then came, to use primary election parlance, Super Tuesday. At around 4.30pm, in courtrooms 200 miles apart, a pair of Trump associates delivered a one-two punch that stunned the White House and revived whispers of impeachment.

In New York, Trump’s longtime lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen implicated the president in a crime to influence the 2016 presidential election. Pleading guilty to dodging taxes and campaign finance violations, he alleged that Trump directed him to pay hush money to prevent two women – a Playboy model and pornographic actor – speaking out about extramarital affairs.

In Alexandria, Virginia, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was found guilty of eight tax and bank fraud charges and could now spend the rest of his life behind bars – unless Trump chooses to pardon him.

On Wednesday morning, Fox aired Trump’s interview in which he claimed that the campaign finance violations Cohen had pleaded guilty to were not crimes and that it should be illegal for people accused of crimes to turn states evidence in order to reduce their sentences. Then on Wednesday night he watched Tucker Carlson’s show.

There he saw a spurious Tucker Carlson report pushing a white nationalist conspiracy theory that white farmers in South Africa are being persecuted and murdered in Zimbabwe-style land grabs. Trump tweeted his outrage and promised to consult the state department, whose own human rights report on South Africa had made no mention of the issue.

It was one more white grievance dog whistle to add to all the rest. The South African government issued a swift rebuke and summoned US officials. Patrick Gaspard, the former US ambassador to South Africa, described the intervention as “astounding and deeply disturbing”. He said: “I can draw a line from the irresponsible statements he made in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville and him lifting up tropes from white nationalists in South Africa.”

On Thursday,

It emerged that David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc, which owns the pro-Trump National Enquirer, had been granted immunity to provide information about Cohen and Trump’s involvement with payments to the two women who allege sexual affairs. The Associated Press added fuel to the fire by reporting thatthe Enquirer kept such secrets locked in a safe, lending it extraordinary power.

That night, the New York Times reported that the Manhattan district attorney’s office was considering pursuing criminal charges against the Trump Organization and two senior company officials in connection with one of the hush money payments.

The coup de grâce came with the news that Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Organization had been given immunity to testify against Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

Clearly the news about Weisselberg is the most damaging to Trump, but it’s not clear exactly kind of immunity the long-time “financial gatekeeper” has. According the The New York Times, it’s limited to the case against Cohen .

The person briefed on the deal said that it was narrow in scope, protecting Mr. Weisselberg from self-incrimination in sharing information with prosecutors about Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, who pleaded guilty on Tuesday to tax and campaign finance charges. The latter charges stemmed from payments during the campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. It was not, the person said, a blanket immunity extending beyond the information he shared, and Mr. Weisselberg remains in his job at the Trump Organization.

Allen Weisselberg

Mr. Weisselberg figured into the charges filed against Mr. Cohen this week, having facilitated the processing of what prosecutors described as “sham invoices” at the Trump Organization, through which Mr. Cohen was reimbursed for the money he had paid to quiet one of the women alleging an affair with Mr. Trump, the pornographic film actress Stephanie Clifford.

It sounds like it’s use immunity, which protects Weisselberg from being prosecuted based on the specific information he provided about the hush money deals. It’s likely that Weisselberg indicated he would take the fifth and prosecutors used immunity to force him to talk. Weisselberg could still be charged with a crime if investigators find independent evidence that he was involved in criminal activities. If he’s eventually charged with a crime, Weisselberg might agree to cooperate fully with prosecutors, but so far that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Nevertheless, the fact that prosecutors have gotten testimony from the man who supposedly “knows where the bodies are buried” in the Trump Organization is huge. And some knowledgeable writers are claiming Weisselberg has agreed to cooperate fully and are speculating about what he could reveal about Trump.

On Twitter, Renato Mariotti says he would be surprised if Weisselberg only got use immunity.

Obviously he knows a hell of a lot more than I do.

Luppe B. Luppen (AKA @NYCsouthpaw) and Hunter Walker at Yahoo News: For Trump, Allen Weisselberg may be the man who knew too much.

Prosecutors investigating Trump’s inner circle reportedly now reportedly have a limited deal with Weisselberg, who has provided testimony against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. If his cooperation expanded, it could play a crucial role in multiple ongoing investigations.

According to the Wall Street Journal, federal prosecutors granted immunity to Weisselberg in exchange for information about payments to Cohen, which were made to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign in order to suppress their stories of alleged affairs with Trump….

The Associated Press subsequently reported that the immunity deal was “restricted to Weisselberg’s grand jury testimony last month in the Cohen case.”

What could Weisselberg reveal if he were forced to cooperate fully?

If Weisselberg decided to fully open his kimono and reveal all he knows, the federal investigation in the Southern District of New York would be the most obvious potential beneficiary. However, in some ways, the nature of that office’s interest in Trump is the most mysterious. As of Friday afternoon, it is not known what other subjects that federal investigation is pursuing. If Trump Organization executives, or even the president, are in its cross hairs, then Weisselberg could offer key insights.

Special counsel Mueller’s investigation, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is another potential beneficiary. For Mueller’s investigators, Weisselberg could detail the nature and extent of the financing the Trump Organization has received from sources connected to Russia. He could also offer them insight into any investments or potential investments Trump has made either in Russia or with Russian partners. A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment for this story.

Weisselberg could also potentially be a valuable material witness in the New York attorney general’s state-level investigation into President Trump’s charitable foundation. In June, New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation alleging a “pattern of illegal conduct,” including “willful self-dealing.” Weisselberg has long been the treasurer of the Trump Foundation. In preparation for its lawsuit, the attorney general’s office conducted a lengthy interview with Weisselberg and obtained his emails. The investigators allege that Weisselberg collaborated with Trump and campaign officials in advance of the 2016 Iowa primary to use the charity’s funds to benefit the campaign.

At The New Yorker, the very knowledgeable Adam Davidson has more:

As the C.F.O., Weisselberg tracked the money that came into the Trump Organization and the money that went out of it, former employees told me. I often found myself wondering what the Weisselberg part of the operation looked like. (I called and e-mailed him a few times, but, not surprisingly, never heard back.) Some told me he had a couple of bookkeepers, but that he personally handled most of the paperwork. Weisselberg knew who was paying or lending money to Trump, and he knew to whom Trump was giving money. When Trump became President, he placed his business interests in a revocable trust overseen by his son Donald Trump, Jr., and Weisselberg….

Trump with his wife, daughter, Karen Mcdougal (far right) and other playboy models.

This summer…Weisselberg’s role in the organization came into sharper focus. In a recording that Michael Cohen made of a conversation he had with Donald Trump about a payment to keep secret an affair, Cohen described setting up a shell company to pay hush money during the 2016 campaign to Karen McDougal, a woman who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. This week, Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign-finance laws, in part by setting up this secretive payment. He said that he knew at the time that it was illegal to secretly make a payment for campaign-related activity, but he did so anyway at Trump’s direction. Strikingly, Cohen makes it clear on the tape that Weisselberg also knew about the shell company and payment. “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up,” Cohen explains to Trump.

It is difficult to hear the tape and not wonder how Weisselberg developed this particular expertise and whether he had deployed it before.

Here’s what Davidson has to say about Weisselberg’s immunity deal:

The Journal story and other news coverage suggest that Weisselberg has narrow immunity, related, solely, to the payments that Michael Cohen made to silence two women with whom Trump had affairs. With evidence of that crime in hand, prosecutors can subpoena other records from the company. If they have a reasonable basis to believe another crime has been committed, they can ask Weisselberg about it. Weisselberg, fearing jail time himself, could broaden his coöperation. The fact that Weisselberg has “flipped”— and may flip further—could shift the calculus of other figures in the Trump orbit as well. Weisselberg is a big fish—perhaps the biggest fish of all. Fearing that Weisselberg might implicate them in a crime, any cronies, dealmakers, attorneys, and others who might want to exchange information for leniency from prosecutors, will now do so.

If you’re interested in what kinds of crimes Weisselberg might know about, I’d suggest reading the entire article as well as Davidson’s other New Yorker pieces about Trump’s business dealings.

What else is happening? What stories have you been following?

 

Thursday Reads: An Illegitimate and Embattled “President”

Posted: August 23, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | 30 Comments

Johann Hamza – Reading on a terrace

Good Morning!!

This morning the illegitimate “president” appeared on his favorite TV program, “Fox and Friends.” During his interview with Ainsley Earhardt, he sounded like a cross between an aging mob boss who with dementia and small child who believes the world revolves around him and his needs. Some lowlights:

Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine: Trump Tries to Deny His Crime With Cohen, Confesses by Mistake.

[On Tuesday], President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, confessed in open court to committing a crime at Trump’s direction. The crime is violating campaign finance law, by using Trump’s personal funds for a campaign-related expense (paying hush money to his mistresses)….

Trump insisted he is in the clear because the payments “weren’t taken out of campaign finance … They didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me.”

That is not a defense. That is why it’s a crime. If the money came from the campaign, it would have been legal.

In the clip Trump says that he tweeted about the payments, as if that has some kind of deep significance.

Matthew Yglesias at Vox:

In context, Trump appears to be trying to say that this exonerates him, but the opposite is the case — you can’t just evade campaign finance rules by paying for your campaign expenses with non-campaign funds. If you could, the rules would be meaningless….

Girl on a red carpet, by Felice Casorati (1883-1963)

…while a private citizen is free to make a secret hush money payment to his former mistress if he likes, a political campaign is required to disclose what it’s spending money on. If Trump had reported a cash payment to Stormy Daniels to the Federal Election Commission, that would have naturally raised questions about why he was paying her and somewhat defeat the purpose of making hush money payments in the first place. So what Trump and Cohen seem to have decided to do is avoid using campaign money, thus allowing them to avoid disclosure rules.

But just like lying on the disclosure form would be illegal and refusing to do the disclosure would be illegal, paying for campaign expenses out of a non-campaign account and then declining to report that as a contribution to the campaign is also illegal.

Simply put, there is no legal way to spend money on your election campaign without disclosing that fact.

But Trump also argued in the interview that all politicians commit campaign finance violations and it’s really no big deal.

He also indicated he’s thinking of pardoning Paul Manafort because everyone in Washington does the things that Manafort was convicted of this week. USA Today:

Trump, during the interview, tried to dismiss some of the eight charges Manafort was convicted in, saying he was guilty of things everyone in Washington “probably does.”

“I would say what he did, some of the charges they threw against him, every consultant, every lobbyist in Washington probably does,” the president said.

La partition by H. Richir.

Trump discussed prosecutors “flipping” people accused of crimes to get evidence on bigger fish, and said this practice is “unfair” and should be illegal. He seemed to suggest that Michael Cohen is weak for pleading guilty while Manafort is courageous because he refused to turn on Trump.

Trump said his longtime fixer was just “one of many” lawyers he had who helped him handle both big and small deals over about a decade. He characterized Cohen working for him only “part-time.”

“I always found him to be a nice guy,” Trump said. But that has changed, he said, because investigators found crimes tied to Cohen’s taxi businesses, leading to his former lawyer “flipping.”

Cohen had a choice, Trump said. He could receive a harsh sentence or “make up stories” and “become a national hero.”

The president said the two campaign violations aren’t even crimes, information he learned from watching TV news, he said….

“I know all about flipping,” the president said. “Everything is wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is.”

He added “it’s not fair” and “it almost ought to be outlawed” because it encourages people to “make up stories.”

Of course Trump took the opportunity to bash the media. Hollywood Reporter: Donald Trump Obsesses Over Press “Lunatics” In ‘Fox & Friends’ Interview.

“The New York Times cannot write a good story about me.  They’re crazed.  They’re like lunatics,” he whined to Ainsley Earhardt.

He ticked off his list of complaints:

His summit with North Korea ruler Kim Jong Un was “a great success.”

“And if you remember, the only thing [the press] got me on, they said ‘he spoke , he met’… I didn’t give him anything.  I gave him nothing except sanctions, okay?” Trump said.

“My meeting with Putin was a tremendous success, I got killed by the fake news. They wanted me to go up and punch him in the face.  I said I want to get along with Russia.  I want to get along with everybody.”

By Vladimir Volegov

“NATO, I raised of hundreds of billions of dollars from these countries that weren’t paying, they were delinquent, they weren’t paying their bills. The press doesn’t like to talk about that, the press talks about the fact that I insulted a lot of the leaders because I was strong on the fact that they had to pay.”

The only thing on which he is doing badly, Trump said, is “the press doesn’t cover me fairly.”

Trump also threatened that if he were impeached the economy would go down the tubes. The Associated Press reports:

President Donald Trump says he believes the economy would tank if he were to be impeached.

Trump was asked in an interview with “Fox & Friends” if he believes Democrats will launch impeachment proceedings if they win the House this fall, as many suspect.

He says, “If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor.”

Trump says Americans would see economic “numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.”

But Trump is also expressing doubt that that would ever happen.

He says, “I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job.”

The Fox interview was taped early yesterday. Late last night the Wall Street Journal broke the news that David Pecker, Trump’s long-time friend and publisher of The National Enquirer is cooperating with the Southern District of New York in the Cohen case.

David Pecker, the chairman of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, provided prosecutors with details about payments Mr. Cohen arranged with women who alleged sexual encounters with President Trump, including Mr. Trump’s knowledge of the deals….

By Aaron Abraham Shikler

Investigators quickly zeroed in on Mr. Cohen’s relationship with American Media, including its role brokering deals on behalf of Mr. Trump. Mr. Pecker had been an open supporter of Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Prosecutors say Mr. Pecker offered to help keep quiet negative stories about Mr. Trump that might come to the National Enquirer, a practice in the business known as “catch and kill.”

American Media executives were involved in both hush-money deals that formed the basis of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to campaign-finance violations, prosecutors said on Tuesday. One was a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford—a former porn star who goes professionally by Stormy Daniels—as part of an agreement to keep her from publicly discussing an alleged affair with Mr. Trump. The payment was first reported by The Wall Street Journal in January.

The second was a $150,000 payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal for her exclusive story of an alleged extramarital affair with Mr. Trump, a story that was purchased by American Media in August 2016 at Mr. Cohen’s urging, and then never published. The payment was first reported by the Journal in November 2016.

The story doesn’t seem to be behind the paywall–at least I got through. It’s very interesting; it’s mostly about what led Cohen to plead guilty and implicate Trump. Here’s just one more tidbit:

On April 5, days before the raids, Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One he didn’t know about the payment to Ms. Clifford, and referred questions about the matter to Mr. Cohen. “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” Mr. Trump said. “Michael is my attorney.”

Mr. Cohen, who that night was staying aboard the yacht of Trump donor Franklin Haney, which was docked in Miami, grew irate on the ship soon after Mr. Trump made his remarks distancing himself from the Clifford payment, according to a person familiar with the episode. Mr. Cohen was swearing loudly as others on the boat were sipping their drinks, the person said.

By Dennis Perrin

More on the Pecker story from The Washington Post: Trump campaign, tabloid publisher hatched plan to bury damaging stories, Cohen prosecutors allege.

In August 2015, David Pecker and Michael Cohen hatched a plan to help a mutual friend in need.

Donald Trump had launched his improbable presidential campaign just two months earlier. His relationship with New York tabloids had been legendary through two divorces. Embarrassing stories about the former reality-show star were a regular occurrence.

But now Trump was in a crowded primary against establishment Republicans. Pecker, the chief executive of a tabloid publishing company; Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer; and at least one member of the Trump campaign came up with a system that month to bury negative stories about the candidate, according to charging documents made public in connection with Cohen’s guilty plea Tuesday.

According to the documents, Pecker assured Cohen that he would help deal with rumors related to Trump’s relationships with women by essentially turning his tabloid operation into a research arm of the Trump campaign, identifying potentially damaging stories and, when necessary, buying the silence of the women who wanted to tell them.

The charging documents allege that Pecker and his company, American Media Inc., owner of the National Enquirer, were more deeply and deliberately involved in the effort to help the Trump campaign than was previously known. AMI also played a key role in the effort to silence adult-film star Stormy Daniels, prosecutors allege.

Read the rest at the WaPo.

Young girl reading, 1960, Palmer C. Hayden

Maggie Haberman reports in her latest gossip column that Trump was subdued after Tuesday’s monumental events:

On Air Force One on Tuesday night on the way back from a rally in West Virginia, Mr. Trump repeatedly minimized the news, telling aides that the legal developments were not about him, but about Mr. Manafort and Mr. Cohen. He also groused over the optics of the rally, telling a person close to him that the crowd seemed flat and that some chairs were empty….

People who have known Mr. Trump for years pointed out that he has never been as cornered — or as isolated — as he is right now, and that he is at his most dangerous when he feels backed against the wall. They pointed to his reaction after the “Access Hollywood” tape of him boasting of grabbing women’s genitals was released in October 2016. Mr. Trump responded by parading Bill Clinton’s female accusers in front of Hillary Clinton at the presidential debate in St. Louis, and acted like a man with nothing to lose.

This dynamic has led Mr. Trump to publicly praise — and privately muse about pardoning — Mr. Manafort.

I’ll end with this piece at Politico by Michael Kruse: ‘He’s Unraveling’: Why Cohen’s Betrayal Terrifies Trump.

He has called himself a “great loyalty freak.” He has said he values loyalty “above everything else—more than brains, more than drive.” And one of his greatest strengths, at least of a certain sort, always has been his ability to engender unwavering, slavish, even sycophantic allegiance. But it’s also been so brutally, consistently one-sided, and the Cohen flip brings to the fore the fragility of Trump’s transactional brand of loyalty and potentially its ultimate incompatibility with the presidency. This is not some tabloid or Twitter tit-for-tat. The stakes are of course incomparably higher. And Trump’s long span of quiet about Cohen was so out of character it suggested even he understands the reality of his legal jeopardy. For the first time, it appeared, a once biddable lapdog had turned around and bitten the boss—hard.

“He is terrified,” Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio told me early Wednesday morning. “This is 40 years of deceit coming home to torment him.”

Former Trump casino executive Jack O’Donnell called the current situation “a dangerous road” for Trump. “For once in his life,” O’Donnell told me a little before 9 a.m., “he should listen to his advisers, and just keep his mouth closed.”

“Once in a while, and that is very, very rarely, Trump does what he is told,” former Trump Organization executive vice president Barbara Res said around the same time. “I am sure he is chomping at the bit to lash out at Cohen, but we all know that would be disastrous.”

And then …

… he started tweeting (and talking).

Evidently unable to restrain himself, he urged his nearly 54 million followers in a sad bleat of a tweet to not hire Cohen, as if this were a moment for a Yelp-like review of an attorney. He impugned his truthfulness as well as his fortitude, and he dubiously concluded that Cohen’s admitted campaign finance violations allegedly committed in concert with the president himself “are not a crime.”

“He is unraveling,” Res said.

Read the rest at Politico.

So . . . I wonder what horrors will happen today? What are you reading and hearing?

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