[T]hese first six months have revealed a central weakness of our system: its dependence on leadership that honors the norms and traditions of our political institutions and understands the necessity of at least appearing to adhere to common values of decency and honesty. [Von Clownstick] and the Republicans in Congress have shown no respect for any of that. It’s a harsh lesson for our country and it may get harsher still. But at least we know now who they really are and what they really believe in: nothing.
Update (July 25): Breitbart News Network
defends Jeff Sessions against attacks from his boss. And John Brennan says attempts to fire Robert Mueller should be
resisted.
I think it's the obligation of some executive branch officials to refuse to carry that out. I would just hope that this is not going to be a partisan issue. That Republicans, Democrats are going to see that the future of this government is at stake and something needs to be done for the good of the future.
I really hope that members of Congress and elected representatives are going to stand up and say enough is enough, and stop making apologies and excuses for things that are happening that I think flout our system of government.
Update (July 27): Senator Graham
sounds pretty serious.
The idea that the president would fire Mueller ― or have somebody fire Mueller ― because he doesn’t like Mueller or Mueller is doing something he doesn’t like... then we become Russia. Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the [von Clownstick] presidency unless Mueller did something wrong.
The president’s not in the business of drawing red lines when it comes to the law. The law is above any presidential red line.
Update (July 31): Matthew Dowd
referred to von Clownstick as a “weak person’s idea of a strong person". And, again, that insecurity makes him
dangerous.
The unmasking of [von Clownstick's] plans to sabotage the nuclear deal began two weeks ago when he reluctantly had to certify that Iran indeed was in compliance. Both the US intelligence as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency had confirmed Tehran’s fair play. But [von Clownstick] threw a tantrum in the Oval Office and berated his national security team for not having found a way to claim Iran was cheating. According to Foreign Policy, the adults in the room—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster—eventually calmed [him] down but only on the condition that they double down on finding a way for the president to blow up the deal by October.
Update (August 1): I don't think Robert Reich is providing verbatim quotes from his
Republican former member of Congress "friend", but it might reflect actual sentiment:
Me: [W]hat are you hearing from your former colleagues on the Hill?
Him: They’re convinced [von Clownstick] is out of his gourd.
Me: So what are they gonna do about it?
Him: Remember what I told you at the start of this circus? They planned to use [von Clownstick's] antics for cover, to get done what they most wanted – big tax cuts, rollbacks of regulations, especially financial. They’d work with Pence behind the scenes and forget the crazy uncle in the attic.
Me: Yeah.
Him: Well, I’m hearing a different story now. Stuff with Sessions is pissing them off. And now [von Clownstick's] hired that horse’s ass Scaramucci – a communications director who talks dirty on CNN! Plus [von Clownstick's] numbers are in freefall. They think he’s gonna hurt them in ’18 and ’20.
....
Him: Lots think he’s fritzing out.
Me: Fritzing out?
Him: Going totally bananas. Paranoia. You want to know why he fired Priebus, wants Sessions out, and is now gunning for Tillerson?
Me: He wants to shake things up?
Him (chuckling): No. The way I hear it, he thinks they’ve been plotting against him.
Me: What do you mean?
Him: Twenty-fifth amendment! Read it! A Cabinet can get rid of a president who’s nuts. [Von Clownstick] thinks they’ve been preparing a palace coup. So one by one, he’s firing them.
Me: I find it hard to believe they’re plotting against him.
Him: Of course not! It’s ludicrous. Sessions is a loyal lapdog. Tillerson doesn’t know where the bathroom is. That’s my point. [von Clownstick] is fritzing out. Having manic delusions. He’s actually going nuts.
Matthew Rosza
shares the skepticism, but it's fun to think this is what we've come to!
It is important to note that some of these predictions seem a tad disconnected from political reality. For one thing, the fact that [von Clownstick] and his right-wing surrogates have been gradually building up a case for firing Mueller suggests that, at the very least, the notion that he could do so should not be dismissed out of hand. Similarly, there is no evidence from other media outlets that [von Clownstick] believed Priebus, Sessions and Tillerson were plotting against him.
Update (August 4): Newsweek
burns Dear Leader with a "
Lazy Boy"
headline.
Seemingly aware that he’s being called lazy, [von Clownstick] described himself in a May 12 tweet as “a very active President with lots of things happening,” which only made him sound like a teenager informing his parents that he’d definitely done his homework. A writer for The Washington Post decided to investigate, using publicly available logs to conclude that [his] schedule was “awfully light…. We are left to make one of two assumptions,” the Post concluded. “[Von Clownstick] either is hiding a lot of his presidential business from the public, or he is not doing much at all.”
Update (August 6): It's amazing that the White House is compelled to respond to the
speculation that the Vice President is organizing a shadow campaign in case von Clownstick is out of the picture.
Pence has engaged in more political activity than vice presidents typically do: He has created his own political fundraising committee and has hosted Republican donors and activists at his residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington.
And yet the New York Times
claims that "multiple advisers to Mr. Pence have already intimated to party donors that he would plan to run if Mr. [von Clownstick] did not". They can claim it's a back-up plan, but I'm pretty sure Reagan never faced this. Fuckface is weak and the best bet is to just push him aside in 2020.
The Vice President has
issued a statement.
The American people know that I could not be more honored to be working side by side with a president who is making America great again. Whatever fake news may come our way, my entire team will continue to focus all our efforts to advance the President’s agenda and see him re-elected in 2020. Any suggestion otherwise is both laughable and absurd.
Yeah, he's
running.
Update (August 7): Paul Rosenberg describes the
methodology of a bully and looks ahead.
What may be in store is an even more profound act of abandonment, with [von Clownstick] increasingly turning his back on the Republican Party as a whole. Now that they’ve joined the Democrats in the Senate by blocking his path to replace Sessions with a recess appointment, the odds favoring a wholesale break like that must surely be rising. [Von Clownstick's] campaign-style rally in West Virginia may be a vivid foretaste of what’s to come: the more solid Robert Mueller’s case against him becomes, the more we will argue that everyone in Washington is being unfair to [Fuckface].
Of course [von Clownstick] won’t be abandoning the GOP, in his telling — the party will be abandoning him. It’s the same old psychopathic fiction that won him election in the first place. The number of people still buying it may be decreasing considerably, but there are still enough of them to fragment the country disastrously. It’s just what a psychopath would want: a new source of excitement.
Update (August 8): It's tricky
maneuvering for a V.P. Obviously they can't say there will be a primary challenge, but it is a way of applying pressure to step aside.
Few Republican operatives believe that Pence would challenge [von Clownstick] in the 2020 Republican primary election. But at the same time, Republicans privately concede that [von Clownstick] could be the first president since Richard Nixon to leave office mid-term or not to seek re-election — either for political or personal reasons. Pence would be ill-advised not to prepare for an early [Fuckface] exit, as unlikely as it may be, they say.
Update (August 11): I hope this is somewhat
reassuring, but
how weak can he get?
Agency heads and lower-level bureaucrats appear to have concluded that the combination of [von Clownstick's] impulsive nature and short attention span means that the president’s sometimes random commands can – and should – be safely ignored.
Update (August 12): Pathetic.
Twice a day since the beginning of the ... administration, a special folder is prepared for the president. ...
These sensitive papers, described to VICE News by three current and former White House officials, don’t contain top-secret intelligence or updates on legislative initiatives. Instead, the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of [Fuckface] on TV looking powerful.
Update (August 23): While something
dramatic isn't ruled out, Andrew Levine
wonders if anything can rid us of our
man-baby leader.
Even moderate Republicans are not, by any means, people whose good sense and moral decency can be assumed. Sadly, however, the fate of the world depends on what Republican voters think.
And that depends, in turn, on the extent to which they are able to resist what might be called WTF fatigue. ...[W]hat seemed outrageous a year or even eight months ago now seems barely worth mentioning.
And, really? It's only the
recent behavior that's troublesome?
[von Clownstick's] recent behavior, culminating in the unrestrained, 77-minute rally in Phoenix, has some commentators wondering whether [Fuckface] is fit to serve as president.
Update (August 28): Jeremy Binckes
quotes Rick Wilson.
There are six or seven senators now, who, when [Fuckface von Clownstick] says things, the response will be, "Go fuck yourself". I suspect one of the senators who has reached his limit is this guy named Mitch McConnell you may have heard of. [Von Clownstick] is forcing him to spend enormous sums of money now to defend his incumbents. He’s always having to fight defense because of [Fuckface von Clownstick].
Update (August 31): An anonymous
source claims that von Clownstick's
mindset is "the worst it's ever been".
He feels like this is not what he signed up for, and his accomplishments are being underplayed. He just looks around and says, ‘When is this going to get better?’
When you
resign.
Update (September 1): From a Fox News
poll:
Respondents were asked how well certain words described the president. For “bully,” 39 percent chose “extremely,” 14 percent chose “very” and 20 percent went with “somewhat.”
For the word “unstable,” 33 percent selected “extremely,” 11 percent chose “very” and 16 percent agreed with “somewhat.”
Just 27 percent said he was “not at all” a bully while 38 percent said he was “not at all” unstable.
Update (September 5): Aw, is the
Big Baby going to
cry?
Update (September 7): How
unstable?
[F]or the first time in his flailing presidency, [von Clownstick] reached out to Democrats and abandoned the hardcore conservatives who have supported him most loyally. Devoid of principles and political loyalties, [Fuckface] doesn’t care about coherence.
In the psycho-social vocabulary of the right, [von Clownstick] reduced Ryan and McConnell to “cucks,” contemptibly weak men. This soothes the president’s needy ego at the same time it undermines the Republican agenda and his own administration.
So because he's angry at the Republican leadership, Democrats now seem likely to get what they want on the
debt ceiling, funding the
government, and even
DACA? It seems the
Republicans are
unhappy about this
deal. But a just released campaign (?) ad
attacks Democratic leaders anyway.
Update (September 8): Bob Cesca
thinks von Clownstick screwed himself on that deal with Democrats.
Once again, [Fuckface] seems to think he’s this brilliant dealmaker, but even when it comes to the thing that’s synonymous with his brand — the “art of the deal” — he knows nothing. It seems as if everything he does is counterproductive to his own self-preservation. Weirdly, he doesn’t even seem to realize the jeopardy he’s put himself in by undermining the congressional leadership of his own party.
[He] is only “strongly approved” by around 24 percent of voters. Appearing to favor the hated Democrats could potentially erode the 16 percent of voters who only “somewhat approve.” If [von Clownstick] drops below a 30 percent approval rating, it could signal the GOP to finally cut bait and walk away — maybe even triggering some Republican support for impeachment.
Weak and dumb. In view of
upcoming Republican Congressional
retirements, this is a great quote obtained by a New York Times reporter:
Not all are moderates. Conservatives are tired of this shit too.
Update (September 10): Like most of the country, von Clownstick is
annoyed with Republican leadership in Congress. But he's apparently "
upbeat" over the news coverage of the deal with Democrats. According to an
unnamed Republican:
He fucked us.
Update (September 12): More about that
deal.
Update (September 24): Interesting how
Fuckface has no problem
criticizing the right of
black athletes to
protest. What does the
national anthem stand for if not
free speech?
Update (September 25): Free speech for white Nazis, but black athletes need to
shut the fuck up.
Chauncey DeVega:
[O]ne cannot help but notice that he displays more rage toward black men who dare to exercise their First Amendment rights than he does towards neo-Nazis and white supremacists who maim and kill innocent Americans.
Update (October 4): Rex Tillerson
reportedly called his boss a "
fucking moron". In other news, he also called the sky "blue".
Update (October 8): Carl Bernstein
claims that Republicans in Congress doubt von Clownstick's fitness for office and implies that they don't think this presidency will survive.
Also, retiring Senator Bob Corker
responds to an attack from Fuckface.
It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.
And in an interview with The New York Times, Corker
backs up what Bernstein reported.
Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here. Of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.
He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.
Update (October 11): Corker's comments
may just be the
start. Gabriel Sherman
reports that
several people close to the president have recently told me in private: [Fuckface] is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”
It just gets more and more disturbing. Lucian Truscott says the "
new normal" is driving him crazy.
This stuff is making my head hurt. I live in constant fear. Right now, I’m afraid to turn on the TV and see what the monciferous me-man in the White House has done since I sat down to write this.
Update (October 12): Heather Digby Parton
doesn't sound optimistic.
There's a cry for help coming from inside the house -- the White House. Everyone can hear it, but nobody can figure out how to disarm the crazy man who's holding the country hostage. He has no intention of surrendering.
Update (October 14): Howard Fineman
reminds us that the moron's administration is still causing lots of damage.
The tweets are a useful distraction ― a kind of air cover for his carpet bombing of federal policy and programs.
In quick succession, the president and his small but focused dead-end gang have used administrative diktats to wreak havoc on clean air rules, immigration procedures, Obamacare and the Iran deal.
There is a
theory that the
medical remedy might end up being preferred over the political remedy.
Update (October 15): Mental health practitioners discuss a
duty to warn, but Williams Rivers Pitt doesn't see the
25th Amendment saving us anytime soon.
Update (October 16): THIS is the week he went
rogue?
Update (October 17): What a
fucking asshole.
[Fuckface von Clownstick] is now exploiting the death of Chief of Staff John Kelly’s son, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010, to prop up his recent lie about President Obama’s record of calling bereaved families of fallen soldiers.
A
low class
piece of shit.
[Von Clownstick] was asked about the criticism McCain leveled at him this week, in which [McCain] lashed out at “half baked, spurious nationalism” that’s being “cooked up by people who had rather find scapegoats than solve problems.”
“People have to be careful because at some point I fight back. You know, I’m being very nice. I’m being very, very nice. But at some point I fight back and it won’t be pretty.”
Someday, there
won't be anybody left that he hasn't pissed off.
Update (October 18): Words fail. He
claimed Obama didn't call Gold Star families. Which is a lie. When his
callous remarks to a widow were overheard by a Florida member of Congress, he accused her of lying. The soldier's mother sets it
straight.
“[He] did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” Cowanda Jones-Johnson told The Washington Post on Wednesday.
Update (October 21): John Kelley
disgraces himself
defending his boss.
Update (October 23): The press secretary defends Kelley's lies about the widow by saying it's "inappropriate" to criticize a general. General David Petreaus
disagrees.
[A]t the end of the day, we are fiercely protective of the rights of Americans to express themselves, even if that includes criticizing us.
Update (October 24): It's nice to know
a few Republican Senators have some balls.
John McCain:
One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America. And the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur. That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.
Bob Corker:
He’s obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president. I think at the end of the day, when his term is over, I think the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth-telling, just the name-calling ― I think the debasement of our nation will be what he’ll be remembered most for. And that’s regretful.
Jeff Flake:
We must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set up at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals, we must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.
It’s time for our complicity and accommodation to the unacceptable to end. Were the shoe on the other foot, would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior? Of course we wouldn’t.
The White House responds with debasement and attack.
I think that the people both in Tennessee and Arizona supported this president. And I don’t think that the numbers are in the favor of either of those two senators in their states.
Update (October 28): Heather Digby Parton is
less impressed with these Senators noting they all voted to
overturn a rule from the Consumer Protection Finance Bureau allowing class-action lawsuits against banks.
That perfectly illustrates one very important point about all this feuding within the Republican Party: It has very little to do with policy.
[T]hese Republicans are not having a big change of heart about what they want to do. They are simply waking up at last to the fact that their base could not care less about their "ideology." All those years of dog-whistle racism, nativism and white nationalism, with obscure references to freedom and small government and "family values," worked all too well. Their voters heard it loud and clear and figured out that all the blather about tort reform and death taxes were winks and nods toward what was really important: the culture war. At last the true-blue culture warriors have their own loony commander in chief and he's fighting it out in the open.
Parton notes that Republicans are fairly
united behind Dear Leader.
What separates heretics like Flake, McCain and Bob Corker from the rest is simply the fact that they have spoken out against [von Clownstick's] erratic, obnoxious, unprofessional and frankly dangerous behavior.
[HIs] coalition may be shrinking, but he still has the support of tens of millions of Republicans who have proven that they don't really care about policy. They just want to "win," by which they mean punish or destroy their perceived liberal enemies. [Fuckface] is their man, and the GOP establishment for the most part is happy to go along. Those taxes won't cut themselves.
[T]he best way to sort this all out is at the ballot box. The only way to know whether [his] election was a historical fluke, or whether a plurality of Americans really want to continue down this dark and dangerous path, is for the voters to make their wishes known.
If the nearly 60 percent of Americans who disapprove of [Fuckface von Clownstick] and his "movement" don't come out to vote after all this, then we probably deserve what we get.
Update (November 12): Without comment:
Japan, South Korea and China all welcomed the first-year president with open arms, dawning him with praise and hosting celebrations in his honor. The Associated Press reported that [von Clownstick] has attended military parades and extravagant dinners, and is apparently relishing the pageantry.
The over-the-top flattery appears to be a calculated play by Asian leaders, who undoubtedly know that [Fuckface] appreciates admiration.
Flattery can get you
anywhere.
“By not confronting the issue directly, and not acknowledging to Putin that we know that you’re responsible for this, I think he’s giving Putin a pass,” former CIA Director John Brennan told CNN. “And I think it demonstrates to Mr. Putin that [Fuckface von Clownstick] can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and to try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint.”
I don't know--maybe the U.S. president
does believe his own intelligence agencies.
Update (November 13): Heather Digby Parton
describes Dear Leader this way:
He has spent the last week demonstrating to the world that the United States is led by a man who is so shallow and vain he can easily be outsmarted by any world leader willing to flatter him and put on a show.
Update (November 25): How big a loser do you have to be to lie about how you "
took a pass" on the recognition?
The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6.
Update (December 6): Despite
nearly universal
condemnation, the U.S. embassy in Israel is officially moving to Jerusalem.
Pissing off most of the world is what he does best.
Update (December 21): The
great deal maker:
[Fuckface von Clownstick] threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of a draft United Nations resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Update (December 24): The
recent deference shown to Dear Leader has Sarah Kendzior wondering if he's engaging in
blackmail.
The RNC was hacked. We don’t know what happened with those e-mails. ... [W]e know that [Fuckface] has a long track record of blackmailing and threatening those who he sees as his political opponents. That goes back throughout his entire career.
I think what concerns me most is that they seem afraid. They seem unable to stand up for themselves. They lack all dignity.
Update (December 26): Senator Jeff Flake had no problems voting against ACA and for tax cuts, but he
doesn't rule out running for president in 2020. Again, it seems to be
objectionable behavior, not policy, at
issue.
When you look at some of the audiences cheering for Republicans, sometimes, you look out there and you say, ‘those are the spasms of a dying party'.
When you look at the lack of diversity, sometimes, and it depends on where you are, obviously, but by and large, we’re appealing to older white men and there are just a limited number of them, and anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy.
I do believe if the president is running for reelection, if he continues on the path that he’s on, that that’s going to leave a huge swath of voters looking for something else.
Update (December 29): Delusional or
trolling?
Mr. [von Clownstick] said he believes members of the news media will eventually cover him more favorably because they are profiting from the interest in his presidency and thus will want him re-elected.
"[A]ll forms of media will tank if I’m not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes."
"So they basically have to let me win."
Update (January 3, 2018): Michael Wolff
reports that von Clownstick never wanted to be president. He
quotes Steve
Bannon on the meeting Junior had with the Russian lawyer.
The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside [the] Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers.
Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.
The chance that [Junior] did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.
And the
response:
Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.
But Bannon seems to know the score.
This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking [von Clownstick] goes right through Paul Manafort, [Junior] and [the son-in-law.]
Update (January 6, 2018): A lawyer for von Clownstick tried to
stop publication of Michael Wolff's book and threatened legal action against
Bannon. That led to an
early release and of course it's now Amazon's best seller. But Andrew O'Hehir
takes Wolff's work with a grain of salt.
Update (January 7, 2018): Dr. Brandy Lee thinks we are facing a "
public health emergency" due to the
mental state of Fuckface. Tweets like this are part of the alarm.
[T]hroughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.
Update (January 8, 2018): Don't we all deserve this kind of
schedule?
Copies of [Fuckface's] private schedule reveal that he often starts his days with three hours of "Executive Time" from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. That includes watching TV, tweeting and making phone calls.
Update (February 5, 2018): Dear Leader is
unhappy that Democrats didn't clap along during his speech.
Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.
Senator Tammy Duckworth
responds:
We don’t live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. I swore an oath ― in the military and in the Senate ― to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to mindlessly cater to the whims of Cadet Bone Spurs and clap when he demands I clap.
Update (March 1, 2018): The Chief of Staff is arguably the second-most powerful person in the world. But, of course, John Kelly is just "
joking" to celebrate the importance of DHS.
The last thing I wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life, being the secretary of Homeland Security, but I did something wrong and God punished me, I guess.
Update (March 2, 2018): When I first saw this headline, I thought, "But it's only the 2nd".
The 16 Most Insane [von Clownstick] Scandals—This Month
But of course referring to February. Yet, how often do we have to read this kind of
stuff:
Morale is as bad as it's ever been. The good people are being driven crazy.
Heather Digby Parton
echos the sentiment.
[Fuckface] and his White House are unraveling. The chaos and corruption are getting worse and there's no end in sight.
We have a
bully who's more interested in
attacking actors than
defending the United States.
Update (March 4, 2018): The Washington Post
adds their own
reporting.
Morale is the worst it’s ever been. Nobody knows what to expect.
How delusional is he?
Two advisers said the president repeatedly tells aides that the Russia investigation will not ensnare him — even as it ensnares others around him — and that he thinks the American people are finally starting to conclude that the Democrats, as opposed to his campaign, colluded with the Russians.
Meanwhile, Fuckface has this to say
about Chinese President Xi Jinping at a fundraiser.
He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.
Update (March 8, 2018): As the investigation closes in, Dear Leader might get desperate yet Heather Digby Parton
doubts Republicans will ever turn on him.
[T]hey got their big beautiful tax cuts and have set federal agencies to stripping the nation of rules and regulations that serve the common good, so they have been more than satisfied with their decision.
Nonetheless, [Fuckface] is very high-maintenance with all the craziness and misbehavior and legal problems. A handful of Republicans may even feel a bit restless at night knowing they've enabled an immoral and unstable leader who is making America into a pariah nation, but for the most part they've made their peace with him for the sake of reckless economic plunder. There was no raging against the dying light of conservative movement ideology for them. And never say Republicans don't know how to compromise. They've compromised their entire so-called belief system.
Update (March 15, 2018): This is the "leader of the free world"
arguing with Justin Trudeau
about trade deficits.
I didn’t even know. ... I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’
Just
making up shit.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of State found out he was fired by reading a
tweet.
Update (March 17, 2018): Dear Leader fired the deputy director of the F.B.I. two days before his retirement. John Brennan
responds:
When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you.
Update (March 18, 2018): Gary Leupp is
skeptical about collusion, but isn't a fan of Fuckface either.
It is hard to find hope. The good things include the appropriate decline of U.S. prestige as a world power, and the enhancement of multilateralism; the appropriate drop in respect among the masses globally for the U.S.; the mass disillusionment of the people in the corrupt U.S. political process and corporate press; the radicalization of youth who become increasingly supportive of socialism.
Update (March 21, 2018): Fuckface is
angry about a leaked warning from his staff, "DO NOT CONGRATULATE", which he did
anyway in a call to Putin after the Russian presidential election. Now we get to
play the game of who did it and why.
Update (March 26, 2018): Kellyanne Conway's husband is
suddenly tweeting like crazy.
Update (April 2, 2018): Dear Leader tweets out the
announcement of a new Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The White House says the current secretary quit. That guy says he was fired. The White House still insisted he quit.
Until . .
The White House on Monday changed its story about David Shulkin’s departure from the Department of Veterans Affairs, acknowledging he didn’t voluntarily quit.
Of course, the bigger story is the drive to
privatize V.A. health services.
Shulkin:
It seems that these successes within the department have intensified the ambitions of people who want to put V.A. health care in the hands of the private sector. I believe differences in philosophy deserve robust debate, and solutions should be determined based on the merits of the arguments. The advocates within the administration for privatizing V.A. health services, however, reject this approach. They saw me as an obstacle to privatization who had to be removed. That is because I am convinced that privatization is a political issue aimed at rewarding select people and companies with profits, even if it undermines care for veterans.
Update (April 11, 2018): From a New York Times editorial:
Mr. [von Clownstick] has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado.
Those methods may be proving to have their limits when they are applied from the Oval Office. Though Republican leaders in Congress still keep a cowardly silence, Mr. [Fuckface] now has real reason to be afraid.
And on the day the Speaker of the House announced that he
won't seek re-election, an unnamed member of Congress
unloads on Dear Leader.
[H]e’s taking us all down with him. We are well and truly fucked in November.
The shit will hit the fan if [he fires Mueller] and I’d vote to impeach him myself. Most of us would, I think. Hell, all the Democrats would and you only need a majority in the House. If we’re going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherfucker.
Update (April 19, 2018): Rumors of a primary challenge are popping up again.
And
when was the last time an incumbent had to
face this?
In interviews [by CNN] with a cross-section of more than two dozen GOP lawmakers, ranging from rank-and-file members, conservatives and party leaders, many refused to say they'd back [Dear Leader's] re-election bid.
Update (April 23, 2018): Jonathan Greenberg
documents how Fuckface has
never been nearly as rich as he always claimed to be.
[I]t took decades to unwind the elaborate farce [von Clownstick] had enacted to project an image as one of the richest people in America. Nearly every assertion supporting that claim was untrue. [Fuckface] wasn’t just poorer than he said he was. Over time, I have learned that he should not have been on the first three Forbes 400 lists at all. In our first-ever list, in 1982, we included him at $100 million, but [Orangeman] was actually worth roughly $5 million — a paltry sum by the standards of his super-monied peers — as a spate of government reports and books showed only much later.
Update (May 7, 2018): Gary Leupp
summarizes all of Dear Leader's many worries. Aw--did the whole "running for president" thing backfire on him?
Update (May 14, 2018): A politically
motivated decision by Fuckface has now cost
at least 55 lives.
Israeli troops shot dead dozens of Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border on Monday as the United States opened its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, a move that has fueled Palestinian anger and drawn foreign criticism that it undermines peace efforts.
Update (May 28, 2018): On a day to remember (not that I do much to observe the day), Fuckface has no sense of
decency.
VoteVets, a group representing some 500,000 veterans and their families, bashed as “appalling” the president’s self-promotion as well as his decision to wish families of fallen veterans a “happy” day. The group was also furious at the Republican Party’s effort to essentially fundraise off Memorial Day by offering a 25 percent discount on official [von Clownstick] campaign merchandise ― “Use Code: Remember.”
Update (June 15, 2018): Ah, ha, ha, ha.
Because everyone
thinks I'm already an
authoritarian.
[Kim Jong Un] speaks and people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.
I’m kidding. You don’t understand sarcasm.
Update (June 19, 2018): John Kelly is apparently fed up with his job as chief of staff and is
quoted as saying that “he may as well let the president do what he wants, even if it leads to impeachment – at least this chapter of American history would come to a close."
Update (June 22, 2018): Tom Arnold is looking for damaging tapes for a TV show and
met up with Michael Cohen.
I say to Michael, ‘Guess what? We’re taking [Fuckface] down together,’ and he’s so tired he’s like, ‘OK,’ and his wife is like, ‘OK, fuck [him].’
Also, in order to put a
check on an out-of-control president, George Will urges his readers to vote
against Republicans this year.
Update (June 26, 2018): A Wall Street Journal editorial
blasts an unnecessary
trade war that's already causing job losses in the U.S.
Good luck to Republicans running on the [von Clownstick] tariffs in November.
Update (July 5, 2018): Max Boot
joins George Will in rooting for Republican
defeat.
[We] used to belong to a conservative party with a white-nationalist fringe. Now it’s a white-nationalist party with a conservative fringe.
[T]he Republican Party must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.
And Heather Digby Parton
notes that a few Republican Senators are grumbling about the tariffs but lack the courage to confront von Clownstick.
[Fuckface] simply doesn't understand what he's doing, and until Congress steps in and does its job, he will continue to do whatever he wants. He is unrestrained by reality because he's in so far over his head that he can't see it.
At this point you have to wonder if Republicans don't simply hope that Democrats win a congressional majority in November and do their dirty work for them.
A lot of voters are simply knee-jerk conservatives (unless you ask
specifics) and they love Dear Leader because he's as uninformed as they are.
Update (July 11, 2018): Ralph Peters
notes Fuckface is afraid to say anything critical of Putin while offering
plenty to our NATO allies.
I just think the Russians have the goods on this guy, and that's the only explanation I can come up with. But in the meantime, we are faced with real damage, real immediate and perhaps some irreparable damage to this greatest of alliances, NATO. And it was fascinating to me today to watch Angela Merkel and Macron dealing with [von Clownstick]. It was like watching psychiatrists patiently deal with a disturbed child.
Update (July 12, 2018): Neil Baron argues that
financial gain is the main motivation Dear Leader cultivates a relationship with Putin. And Brad Reed
discusses a Financial Times report on how Russian money may have been laundered through von Clownstick's Toronto hotel. So Fuckface doesn't care
how much of an idiot he appears to be as long as Vladimir is happy.
Update (July 15, 2018): Is it seriously true that
incompetent Fuckface is lying
even more than he has been?
Update (July 17, 2018): James Comey also
endorses voting for Democrats in the next election.
Update (August 16, 2018): Dear Leader
revoked John Brennan's security clearance for
saying things like "[the] claims of no collusion are, in a word,
hogwash". In defense of Brennan, William McRaven
wrote:
I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.
Update (August 20, 2018): Don McGahn was allowed to
cooperate with special counsel despite his owns doubts on the wisdom of that choice which then lead him to fear he was being set up by Fuckface. But, no worries.
The White House counsel and his attorney eventually came to determine they had “overestimated the amount of thought” [von Clownstick] put into his legal strategy.
Update (August 23, 2018): What is going on when a national leader finds it necessary to
tweet this at one o'clock in the morning?
NO COLLUSION—RIGGED WITCH HUNT!
Update (August 25, 2018): Are we
living in a
mobster movie?
I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It's called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal.
Update (September 4, 2018): I guess we need to be glad that
maybe presidents don't have all the power we think they have. A
tweet from Brit Hume:
Woodward’s accounts of chaos and dysfunction in the [White House] suggest [Dear Leader] has been repeatedly restrained by advisers from his most reckless impulses. And to think there are never-[Fuckfacer's] on the right who think good people should not serve this president. Good thing they do.
Update (September 5, 2018): Not completely sure what to
make of an op-ed in the New York Times published anonymously but
attributed to a "senior official" in the administration.
The dilemma — which [Fuckface] does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.
Cenk Uygur
argues this is not insubordination due the dangerous instability Dear Leader presents.
Update (September 6, 2018): Heather Digby Parton
thinks this internal "resistance" hasn't really been all that effective.
This anonymous official makes a point of taking credit for all the supposedly excellent things this administration has managed to accomplish ... That suggests this is really a political document meant to reassure all those suburban Republicans the party is currently bleeding away into feeling some confidence that even though [Dear Leader] is a bit of an embarrassment, there are good establishment Republicans in the White House making sure their needs are being taken care of. They can relax; the party has things well in hand. There's no need to panic and do something silly like vote for Democrats in November.
Update (September 10, 2018): Binoy Kampmark
bemoans the lack of focus on substance.
[This] presidency has proven to be a set of publicity driven punctuations and blows, riddled by distractions contrived and accidental. Controversy and accusation characterise the next revelation, the next announcement that might throw journalists off the scent, confounded enemies off the trail. The presidency as spectacle, the White House as erratic film studio, is the means by which this particular president survives. Assaults and accusations are missiles seeking to find their mark, missing at the last moment, and the publicity vultures do the rest. Distraction is everything.
The show must go on, substance or not. The insurrection must continue.
Update (September 16, 2018): Is the base finally getting
tired and feeling
insulted?
Bill Maher:
The polls for him are going down. The looks on the faces at the people at his rallies. I think the magic is gone. They’re bored, he hasn’t written new material.
Conmen traditionally skip town. He’s working the same town. And eventually even his people catch up.
Timothy Eagan:
A raft of new polls show that some of the most hard-core [supporters] are starting to get a clue.
It didn’t go over well in Alabama that [Fuckface] reportedly called his ’Bama-bred attorney general, Jeff Sessions, ‘a dumb Southerner’ and ridiculed his accent.
Update (September 26, 2018): They're
laughing at
us.
Update (October 1, 2018): This from Dear Leader whose own brother died from alcoholism and referring to the drinking habits of his Supreme Court nominee.
I can honestly say I've never had a beer in my life ... it's one of my only good traits.
Can you imagine if I had, what a mess I'd be? I'd be the world's worst.
Update (December 11, 2018): Fuckface threw a temper tantrum over The Wall in a televised meeting with Democratic leaders about the continuing resolution for the budget.
Jennifer Rubin:
It is not clear how [von Clownstick] could have appeared more irrational and unhinged.
Update (December 20, 2018): Jamelle Bouie has a great line
referring to Dear Leader's willingness to take credit for a government shutdown over the wall he won't get.
The spectacle of [Fuckface] holding himself hostage to achieve one of his goals is a darkly comic example of a vital but still underappreciated fact of American politics: The president and his administration are exceptionally weak.
Update (December 21, 2018): Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis
announced his resignation and
now conservatives say it's time to
panic. Just another
crazy week watching Dear Leader
fall apart.
Mattis' resignation is being reported as a protest against the withdrawal from Syria. Jim Acosta
reports Fuckface is pissed over the media coverage that Mattis was the last "adult in the room".
And so the president, once again, irritated by this notion here in Washington that he is sometimes in need of adult daycare.
And now a partial government shutdown (after
changing his mind due to
pressure) begins a standoff that he
can't win.
According to a "close ally":
He's scared. He's scared of Mueller. He's scared of his base. He sees it all crumbling around him.
Update (December 23, 2018): There's a
narrative getting
out (I hope not just wishful thinking) that Dear Leader is
facing the end. Robert Reich again sites "my friend, the former Republican member of Congress".
He’s a dangerous menace. He’ll be gone. And then he’ll be indicted, and Pence will pardon him. But the state investigations may put him in the clinker. Good riddance.
Meanwhile, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman
portray a person with
severe mental
problems.
[Mr. von Clownstick] has grown more sure of his own judgment and more cut off from anyone else’s than at any point since taking office.
He rails against enemies, who often were once friends, nursing a deep sense of betrayal and grievance as they turn on him.
“Why is it like this?” he has asked aides, with no acknowledgment that he might have played a role.
More recently, the president has told associates he feels “totally and completely abandoned,” as one put it, complaining that no one is on his side and that many around him have ulterior motives. That extends even to his son-in-law.
The days are filled with conflict, much of it of his own making. More advisers are heading for the door. The divisions are widening, not closing.
Update (December 24, 2018): Robert Kuttner
wonders if members of Dear Leader's own party are finally ready to take responsibility.
Republicans in Congress may conclude they need to reign [him in], based on one of three considerations. First, his policies are doing serious damage to the national interest. Second, he is a madman. Third, he is humiliating them politically and has become a partisan liability.
Alas, the first two considerations have been all too evident since before [Fuckface] took office. But in his first two years, [he] was too convenient an ally for Republicans to have acted.
Now that [von Clownstick] has cost Republicans the House and promises further political embarrassment, let’s hope that sheer expedience gets their attention where principled concern for the republic failed.
Update (December 26, 2018): Michelangelo Signorile
urges Democrats to hold firm on the government shutdown battle.
[C]aving in will embolden [Fuckface] in his temper tantrums — and embolden members of his extremist base to continue to threaten him in order to get their way.
Update (December 27, 2018): Amanda Marcotte
says Dear Leader thinks he's sticking it to the liberals, but that he's
likely to lose in the end.
Government shutdowns, in other words, appear to be about as popular as neo-Nazis: More popular than you'd hope, unfortunately, but still strongly disliked by the majority of Americans.
The Democratic response to all this, therefore, should be a stalwart refusal to budge on the issue of border wall funding. The reality is that if weren't about the border wall, [Fuckface] would find some other reason to create drama and have a government shutdown showdown, because generating pointless conflict is the only thing he really knows how to do.
[Manbaby] is best dealt with on the emotional level where he lives -- that of a toddler throwing tantrums. That means letting him cry it out until he's tired, instead of giving him what he wants. As with a toddler, giving into tantrums only reinforces the idea that tantrums work, which only means the toddler will ramp it up the next time. Same story with [Fuckface]: If he gets his symbolic border wall money, that will just encourage him to keep shutting down the government. The only thing that will scare him off this tactic in the future is a major defeat.
Update (January 2, 2019): Julian Epstein
says Fuckface now has to deal with a Speaker of House who is "a lot smarter than he is". It looks like Nancy Pelosi has a
winning strategy to handle the government shutdown -- simply pass the bill the Senate passed two weeks ago. Matthew Chapman:
That leaves McConnell with two choices. He can bring the original bill to the floor for near-certain passage, after which [Dear Leader] will be forced to either surrender or veto it and once again take credit for the shutdown. Or, he can block the bill from going to a vote at all, and share the blame with [Fuckface] for the shutdown as, in the other chamber of the Capitol, Pelosi and House Democrats cast themselves as the sole adults who are trying to get the government reopened and back to work.
Let's not forget this
exchange between Pelosi and Dear Leader on December 11.
You will not win. The fact is you do not have the votes in the House.
Nancy, I do.
Well, then let's take the vote and find out.
Later he brags about proving her wrong. He didn't even see it was a trap.
Update (January 3, 2019): What is Senator Lindsey Graham
trying to do by pushing Dear Leader to
fight for a compromise on the wall?
If he gives in now, that's the end of 2019, in terms of him being an effective president.
That's probably the end of his presidency.
Update (January 4, 2019): The House did
pass the same spending bills approved by the Senate last month.
Senator McConnell so far is
refusing to allow a vote.
Update (January 7, 2019): Democrats are looking to put
pressure on McConnell by blocking other bills until there's a vote on the budget. Meanwhile, Manbaby hasn't quite
cried himself out yet. And Heather Digby Parton
describes the most
troubling tactic.
[H]e's threatening to declare a national security state of emergency and unilaterally deploy troops with Pentagon funding to build the wall. This is a shocking idea, but it shouldn't be too much of a surprise. ... He has already demonstrated a willingness to declare a phony national security crisis which he will then "solve" by invoking extraordinary powers granted to the presidency. There is little reason to doubt he will do it in this case.
It will ultimately be up to the five conservative Supreme Court justices to decide if they have the power to step in when the president is clearly concocting a fraudulent emergency for his own reasons. I wouldn't bet money on them making the right decision.
Update (January 9, 2019): The
tantrum continues. Some Republicans seem
worried, but others insist the Senate would
never override a veto. Amanda Marcotte
thinks Fuckface cares too much about what certain people think of him.
If Fox News is trying to help [Dear Leader] out by keeping him invested in this border wall fight, it's backfiring. This foolish gambit is starting to do damage to the voters that he's decided are the only ones that matter, while angering the rest of the country even more. If Fox News really wants to bail out its boy, it's time to give him a break. The right-wing house network needs to let [Manbaby] tell a face-saving lie without getting his border wall funding, and finally let him and the country move on to other things.
Update (January 11, 2019): Matt Fuller
speculates that a declaration of a "national emergency" may be the only way out of the
deadlock--no matter what the
cost--and assuming the order would be tied up in court for years.
The point is, Republicans may not love [Manbaby] going around Congress, but they don’t seem willing to do anything real to block him at this time.
There is
some sign that Fuckface is backing off the idea. A
few Republicans are speaking
against it.
Update (January 14, 2019): When Manbaby
cries out, "I will never, ever back down", does it mean we are close to the end or not?
Update (January 18, 2019): Heather Digby Parton
explains how Manbaby doesn't know anything about negotiating.
[Fuckface] doesn't seem to realize that demanding what he wants and then getting up and saying "bye-bye" when the other side doesn't immediately agree isn't actually negotiating. He's shown more than once that his word is no good so nobody can trust him. Last year he agreed to a complex and difficult immigration deal in which both sides were able to win some priorities. He not only backed out after having agreed, he did it in a rude and dismissive fashion. This year he signed off on a Republican continuing resolution to avoid a shutdown and then cowered in the face of right-wing media commentators like Coulter, reversing himself at the last minute. How do you make a deal with someone like this?
Update (January 24, 2019): The Senate
failed to reach cloture on competing bills to fund the rest of the government.
Also, Democrats can call it a "
smart wall" but Cenk Uygur
points out they have the leverage to get something big (permanent DACA?) in exchange. It won't even be a physical wall and they
still should get something important because Fuckface is tanking in the polls.
Update (January 25, 2019): Heather Digby Parton
describes the Wall as a symbol of our political divide.
Indeed, it appears that one can fairly well determine what a person's values and beliefs about what America stands for simply by asking their position on the wall.
And today, Manbaby backed down and will
allow the
government to be funded for the next three weeks without money for the wall, though he's still
pushing for it. A 35 day tantrum--all for nothing. MSNBC
notes the Democratic bill in the Senate got more votes yesterday.
Update (January 26, 2019): Conservatives are
comforting themselves by calling the end of the shutdown a "short-term surrender to Democrats".
Update (January 28, 2019): Amanda Marcotte
notices that while Fuckface failed spectacularly on the stated purpose of the shutdown, it did have the secondary benefit of delaying all those investigations Democrats want to start.
Update (February 11, 2019): How are those
tariffs working out for you?
Midwestern farmers are filing the highest number of bankruptcies in a decade, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data.
Also, Amanda Marcotte
explains why the budget negotiations are going nowhere.
The "problem" [Fuckface] wants to stop — a supposed crime wave coming in over the border — exists only in his head. The "solution" he offers is symbolic, with no practical value. ... [I]t's tough for congressional Republicans to work up much enthusiasm to fight for a wall, because they know it's pointless and only serves to gratify the ego of the reality TV star they made their leader.
Update (February 15, 2019): A budget compromise was
passed by Congress, but since Manbaby
didn't get what he
wanted, he
declared a
fake National Emergency to fund the Wall.
Even Ann Coulter knows it's a
scam to let his voting base think he's
doing something. The
lawsuits are already starting and Fuckface even
admitted he "
didn't need to" declare the
emergency. Cody Fenwick
explains how
badly Dear Leader lost.
One reason [his anti-immigrant allies are] mad is that, even though the bill provides some funding for border barriers (not a concrete wall), it gives local communities input over this construction — essentially allowing them to veto anything they don’t like. And since border communities generally vote Democratic and largely hate the idea of a wall, they may oppose much of this construction altogether. So it’s not even clear if all or most of the 55 miles of new border barriers will, in fact, be permitted.
Update (March 3, 2019): It looks like there are
just barely enough Republican Senators (Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, and Thom Tillis) willing to defend the constitution against von Clownstick's fake national emergency. The real test comes after the veto.
Update (March 14, 2019): Turns out
twelve Republican Senators were
willing to tell Fuckface "no": Lamar Alexander, Roy Blunt, Susan Collins, Mike Lee, Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, and Roger Wicker. Tillis
chickened out. Cody Fenwick
notes how the vote is a mixed bag.
The willingness of such a large number of Republicans to rebuke [Dear Leader] on one of his central issues showed that the president’s control over his party is notably weak. On the other hand, the fact that the overwhelming majority of GOP Senators will accede to an effort that, had President Barack Obama done it, would surely have sparked calls for impeachment, shows that the party’s claims to be driven by ideology rather than the rank pursuit of power is largely hollow.
Update (March 15, 2019): The Congressional rebuke was
vetoed as expected.
Update (April 9, 2019): Only in this administration can
someone lose their job for
refusing to break the law.
[Fuckface] reportedly told Nielsen he wanted to stop accepting asylum seekers into the country and to restart separating immigrant families, but she said the law would not allow these policies. This, it seems, is why he chose to fire her.
Update (May 8, 2019): Again, how are those tariffs working out?
At least six Agriculture Department economists quit on a single day in April after claiming that the administration was retaliating against them for publishing reports showing that [von Clownstick's] tariffs have hurt farmers.
Update (May 16, 2019): Young Turks
reports on a FOX News interview with a woman who explained just how much Dear Leader is fucking over farmers. They are losing contracts they've had for years which will be very hard to get back.
Update (June 10, 2019): After Fuckface had to abandon a
ridiculous idea to put tariffs on Mexico, Nancy LeTourneau
analyzes his negotiation "skills" and quotes Tim O'Brien:
Trying to govern by threat and blunt force isn’t really governing at all, and if enough bluffs get called, the players on the other side of the table tend to stiffen their spines. That’s not a good scenario for anyone involved, because a predictably unpredictable person lacking self-confidence, restraint and principled, courageous advisers may eventually try burning things down just to prove his point.
Update (July 27, 2019): A 5 to 4 Supreme Court
ruling allows the administration to usurp the authority of Congress and spend a Pentagon allocation on the Wall.
Update (August 1, 2019): Linda Greenhouse
explains the issue.
The Supreme Court permitted the ... Administration to violate a federal statute and quite likely, the Constitution itself.
Update (August 21, 2019): After the Log Cabin Republicans
announced they support the re-election of Fuckface von Clownstick, board member Jennifer Horn resigned.
There is no world where I can sit down at the dining room table and explain to my children that I just endorsed [him] for president. It is contrary to everything that I have ever taught them about what it means to be a good, decent, principled member of society.
And Eugene Robinson
hits Dear Leader hard on growing
evidence that he is "melting down. Again." We see the same pattern over and over again.
The astonishing thing is that the president of the United States is, let’s face it, raving like a lunatic — and everyone just shrugs.
The truth is that we don’t have an actual presidency right now. We have a tiresome reality show whose ratings have begun to slide — and whose fading star sees cancellation on the way.
Update (September 5, 2019): The Pentagon has
deferred several construction projects to shift money to the border wall.
Update (September 6, 2019): I've been wondering how Fuckface can get away with overruling Congress, but Jeffrey St.Clair
sees a bright side:
[We] should thank [Dear Leader] for setting a useful precedent that will make it that much easier to transfer the rest of the Pentagon’s budget to fund national health care.
Update (October 15, 2019): Bob Cesca
describes "pathetic weakness".
The details of these crimes, including and especially the selling-out of American sovereignty, all serve to highlight the reality that [Fuckface] doesn’t think he can win without cheating. On some level, he believes he requires outside help with his election, and he’ll do anything to get it.
Update (December 31, 2019): With an
editorial in Christianity Today calling for Dear Leader's removal from office, there seem to be
cracks in his evangelical
support.
Update (June 27, 2020): A U.S. Court of Appeals panel
ruled 2 to 1 against the transfer of military funds to the border wall.
The Executive Branch lacked independent Constitutional authority to authorize the transfer of funds.
These funds were appropriated for other purposes, and the transfer amounted to ‘drawing funds from the Treasury without authorization’ .... Therefore, the transfer of funds here was unlawful.
Update (October 11, 2020): A 2 to 1 decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled again that diverting military funds for the border wall is illegal.
