Twitter should have perma-banned his ass back when he wouldnt let Obama’s birth certificate go.

9/3/2018 9:37:49 PM

Lol, Jack is sympathetic to white nationalists like Richard Spencer and Alex Jones... no chance he’d do anything to Trump.

9/4/2018 9:15:18 AM

I think I'm going to have to read this book:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/04/politics/bob-woodward-book-donald-trump-fear/index.html

9/4/2018 11:46:16 AM

^ most damaging thing to Trump yet

Woodward is credible, unlike Omarosa and Michael Wolff

Quote :

""This guy is mentally retarded," Trump said of Sessions. "He's this dumb southerner," Trump told Porter, mocking Sessions by feigning a southern accent."

9/4/2018 12:12:45 PM

^and I'm not sure that is the worst thing in that article.

9/4/2018 12:19:22 PM

^ i think his supporters might be most hurt by that than anything else

They're probably happy Trump want's to burn our alliances & trade agreements, and bomb other countries indiscriminately.

I think Trump genuinely believes the US can be an island on the Earth, and I think his core supporters believe the same thing.

However, I think we should be reevaluating why we have such a large troop presence, and I understand the diplomatic/strategic implications of this, but it would be nice if we could figure out a better way to exert influence than a massive military presence in other countries. It's sad that Trump is the only one to really question this, but sadder that he's too dumb/evil otherwise to cogently lead a plan to bring change.

9/4/2018 12:23:33 PM

Quote :

"Following Charlottesville, when Trump finally condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis at the urging of aides, he almost immediately said, "That was the biggest fucking mistake I've made" and the "worst speech I've ever given," according to Woodward."

but remember, let's be very clear, he's not a white supremacist and wasn't supporting the nazis in charlottesville

9/4/2018 12:24:29 PM

Quote :

" i think his supporters might be most hurt"

They won't give a shit.

9/4/2018 12:24:50 PM

A large majority of his supporters are southern. I think they would take offense at him making fun of a southerner. He would out himself as a typical yankee.

9/4/2018 12:25:46 PM

They don't care, and they probably won't even hear about the single line from a book they'll never read or hear it cited in their media or FB feed.

Also a lot of/most of his supporters are not even in the south.

[Edited on September 4, 2018 at 12:36 PM. Reason : Big ol nothingburger here]

9/4/2018 12:27:35 PM

But they are exactly the kind of people who would take offense, can't you see that? The same "heritage not hate" folks. The same ones that are butthurt over Silent Sam.

9/4/2018 12:28:50 PM

I guess the real question is "will they believe it?" Because it will just be chalked up to fake news most likely.

9/4/2018 12:31:40 PM

Quote :

"Chief of staff John Kelly describes Trump as an "idiot" and "unhinged," Woodward reports. Defense Secretary James Mattis describes Trump as having the understanding of "a fifth or sixth grader." And Trump's former personal lawyer John Dowd describes the President as "a fucking liar," telling Trump he would end up in an "orange jump suit" if he testified to special counsel Robert Mueller"

9/4/2018 12:40:04 PM

Quote :

"A large majority of his supporters are southern. I think they would take offense at him making fun of a southerner. He would out himself as a typical yankee."

this is adorable. trump's supporters will hate who he tells them to.

9/4/2018 12:55:21 PM

^^I think we gotta flip the script on these people.

“Gawd, the president is such an idiot”

And yet you continued to work for him, run interference for him, and maintained a supportive face in the public eye??? Do you just not have a spine or do you worship power that much. Dont give me that serve your country bullshit either.

[Edited on September 4, 2018 at 1:53 PM. Reason : Im talking post trump, when these asshats start writing books too.]

9/4/2018 1:53:24 PM

My guess is that they would argue that it was better for them stay in their positions as gatekeepers than to allow sycophants to act as rubber stamps on Donald Trump's worst tendencies.

9/4/2018 2:07:31 PM

^
What would you do?

I think it would be a difficult choice at first to try to be a voice of reason or send a message early on. There would have to be a breaking point where you have to quit and then tell the world what you know, Which is what a lot of people seem to do

Saw on twitter trump ordered Assad to be assassinated too, but Mattis ignored this. Crazy to think what crackpot schemes Trump wants or tried to push through that would lead to major incidents...

Makes me worried about all this rumbling on military action in Venezuela, with Rubio shilling for this on Twitter now.

9/4/2018 2:33:10 PM

I likely wouldn't serve as a staff member in the Trump administration. It's difficult to say for someone like General John Kelly, who may have more of an obligation to follow the president's orders; I feel like I would turn a blind eye to staffers leaking to the press, if not leak to the press myself.

9/4/2018 3:17:48 PM

They are all (narrowly) denying the quotes of course. Curious if Woodward has the receipts.

9/4/2018 3:27:21 PM

Quote :

"@realDonaldTrump Only the Obama WH can get away with attacking Bob Woodward. 3:04 PM - 1 Mar 2013"

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/307582196196188160

9/4/2018 3:36:44 PM

There really is a tweet for everything.

9/4/2018 4:13:43 PM

^^headexplosion.gif

9/4/2018 4:28:20 PM

Kelly and Dowd are denying everything. I imagine that's so Trump doesn't start WW3. At least I hope that's why.

[Edited on September 4, 2018 at 5:06 PM. Reason : A]

9/4/2018 5:06:17 PM

Quote :

"Curious if Woodward has the receipts."

Sounds like he does to me. From what I've read, it sounds like his book is all firsthand accounts, and that he taped the interviews.

but...

Quote :

"They don't care, and they probably won't even hear about the single line from a book they'll never read or hear it cited in their media or FB feed. Also a lot of/most of his supporters are not even in the south."

Exactly. If they didn't care about any one of literally probably 1,000 things that are vastly worse, they're not gonna care about that. They'll write it off. There is nothing he can DO to alienate many of them, let alone anything he could SAY.

and yes, most of them live in an echo chamber that I don't think people here are appreciating. Most of them are digesting completely different narratives than anyone else. Many of them will never hear about that remark to begin with.

and yes, plenty of his support is not from the south.

9/4/2018 6:22:03 PM

Most of us here are southerners with southern friends and family

If they live in an echo chamber it’s because we let them, I’m hoping you people, especially the white people, are trying to break through in even just a small way...

9/4/2018 11:44:22 PM

Quote :

""Dowd and Trump’s personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, 'went to Mueller's [FBI investigator's] office and re-enacted the mock interview [conducted between Trump and his lawyers to attempt to prepare Trump for an interview with the FBI]' with the hope of convincing Mueller that Trump couldn’t testify because he is a pathological liar. 'He just made something up. That’s his nature,' Dowd reportedly told Mueller. "Dowd then explained to Mueller and Quarles why he was trying to keep the president from testifying: 'I’m not going to sit there and let him [Trump] look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas [foreign leaders] are going to say, "I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?" ' ”"

This is cracking me up the more I read it

IT almost seems suspicious the the person I’ve always assumed Trump to be is exactly the person the quotes from this book depict him as.

I’m thinking about Puerto Rico too and how thousands of people are dead, worst natural disaster in terms of death count in a thousand years for America; it makes sense our completely incompetent leadership is at least partially to blame. Who know what other danger were in that we don’t even know about.

9/5/2018 3:00:40 AM

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/05/trump-said-us-intel-sources-are-people-who-sold-their-souls-report.html

9/5/2018 1:02:34 PM

https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1037425555128438784?s=21

Um, wow. Uncharted territory now..

9/5/2018 3:43:52 PM

Didnt read it, but is it possible this is David Dennison leaking to the press??? If we see Trump go on a twitter rampage about how even his interns are out to get him, I’m gonna be pretty skeptical.

9/5/2018 4:10:38 PM

^^^, ^^^ jesus

^^ holy fuck. not that all of that isn't obvious by now, but it's startling to see it said so forthrightly from within his inner circle.

^ Not a fucking chance. Don't think Trump could have written it, linguistically, and in any case, he isn't self-aware enough and certainly not capable enough of withering self-critique.

[Edited on September 5, 2018 at 4:34 PM. Reason : ]

9/5/2018 4:11:43 PM

^^
The Times knows who it is, they wouldn’t let the President anonymously publish a letter like that

Aren’t we now in a constitutional crisis? How is it acceptable for the person we elected to not actually be the person in charge? (Isn’t this a form of a coup???)

The closest scenario on my memory is Reagan and his dementia, but this was near the end of his presidency, and theoretically his handlers were carrying out his intentions.

Instead now we have an unelected group of people pushing their own agenda, ostensibly in the interests of the country.

[Edited on September 5, 2018 at 4:47 PM. Reason : ]

9/5/2018 4:46:44 PM

whoever wrote that NY Times op-ed can go fuck themselves along with trump

what a load of horseshit. just burn it all down already.

[Edited on September 5, 2018 at 4:55 PM. Reason : .]

9/5/2018 4:54:23 PM

I couldn't have put how I feel about Trump in better words than this person.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

He's done some good things, but the bad outweighs the good.

9/5/2018 4:54:42 PM

I use “David Dennison” loosely, more as a term to denote a pre-planned leak. This could easily have been Stephen Miller or Kellyanne writing this so Trump has something to whine about and distract with.

The NYT has a pretty substantial recent history of breathlessly publishing anything, without a critical review, from insider sources.

I also don’t buy the pieces overall argument. Its fine to work from the inside, but at some point, a point which I believe we passed months ago, an individual must stand up to Trump and tell him exactly how stupid he is and how bad he’s fucking up, flip a desk, quit, and then tell the press everything. At some point that is the only appropriate response.

A lot of people in the Trump admin are gonna be trying to save their public image in the next few months. Don’t let them.

[Edited on September 5, 2018 at 5:02 PM. Reason : .]

9/5/2018 4:58:27 PM

Quote :

"I also don’t buy the pieces overall argument. Its fine to work from the inside, but at some point, a point which I believe we passed months ago, an individual must stand up to Trump and tell him exactly how stupid he is and how bad he’s fucking up, flip a desk, quit, and then tell the press everything. At some point that is the only appropriate response."

They are using this situation to advance the Koch agenda (by their own admission in this op-ed). They're "resisting" anything that threatens this agenda. They do not give a shit about you.

[Edited on September 5, 2018 at 5:05 PM. Reason : .]

9/5/2018 5:02:46 PM

Someone realized "Trump administration official" doesn't quite burnish the ol' resume.

9/5/2018 5:18:35 PM

Nope, don't buy it, these are rats fleeing a sinking ship.

9/5/2018 5:21:22 PM

Someone related to Pence
https://twitter.com/jamescdownie/status/1037441482469335043

9/5/2018 5:53:32 PM

adultswim is 100% correct. This person loves he awful policy Trump is executing when it lines up with corporate (or Koch) interests.

The person isn’t wrong but it’s self-serving and will be a way for that person to eventually wash their hands of Trump and stay in the conservative DC elite club after this is over.

It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better though.

9/5/2018 6:32:12 PM

moron nailed my thoughts. I knew some of this was going on, just not quite to this extent. The soft coup might be preferable to letting Trump fully have the reins, but it is dangerous in the precedent it sets. This has got to be resolved, by his removal.

9/5/2018 6:52:15 PM

Session probably wrote that op-ed piece

9/5/2018 8:25:50 PM

lol!

9/5/2018 9:00:50 PM

My money is on Rick Perry.

9/5/2018 9:09:12 PM

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/this-is-a-constitutional-crisis/569443/

Quote :

"Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis. If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath."

[Edited on September 5, 2018 at 10:09 PM. Reason : .]

9/5/2018 10:08:38 PM

I tend to agree with this.

9/5/2018 11:44:17 PM

Obviously whoever wrote this was an idiot for thinking they would be a hero for essentially running an unaccountable shadow gov

But what if it is Pence, technically he was elected and it wouldn’t be so outlandish for him to take the reigns.

Still cowardly to stay quiet all this time, but less of a crisis since technically he was elected

9/5/2018 11:53:52 PM

Ehh. I think it's really bad in multiple ways, no matter what.

...but let's be clear, invoking the 25A would be a crisis. Holy shit, I have no idea what the fallout would be. I think it would be a lot worse than impeachment, which itself would be ugly.

Keeping him obviously isn't a win, either. I think it should be viewed as a non-starter. Aside from all the things that are getting fucked up in the day-to-day, Trump's impact on the office of the Presidency may prove ruinous in terms of precedent. The same could be said of his cabinet's efforts to thwart him--and these 2 things are in competition. The less of one you have, the more of the other you'll have.

Might an actively recalcitrant cabinet and staff, biding their time to see where the Mueller investigation and 2018 midterms lead, arguably be the least bad option? See if a resignation can be forced (best) or political landscape shifted to allow impeachment (next best), while throwing wrenches into the gears in the meantime, and getting a few things you want enacted? If neither of those work, then grit your teeth, close your eyes, and push the big, red 25A button?

9/6/2018 3:14:46 AM

This is nothing more than a message to the non-crazy midterm voters to vote Republican and not worry about trump because they're still moving the agenda forward and there are senior members in his administration to control him, nothing more. It's not a resistance or any of that bullshit. The author knows that Trump is unfit and is complicit in keeping him in office.

9/6/2018 7:30:50 AM

^

9/6/2018 9:05:41 AM

But the people didn't elect the author. What they're doing, while I agree with some of it, is completely off the rails. I don't care whose side they're on. They're undermining a sitting president, no matter how batshit crazy he is.

Trump does need to worry about a deep state, but it isn't coming from the FBI or CIA, it's coming from his own administration.

9/6/2018 10:57:15 AM