Dangerous Lies

No one is above the law and the president of the United States should not be allowed to lie about a lawful, and necessary, investigation.

This was a coup. This was an attempted overthrow of the United States government. ... I think it's far bigger than Watergate. I think it's possibly the biggest scandal in political history in this country. Maybe beyond political. … This was a coup. This wasn't stealing information from an office in the Watergate apartments. This was an attempted coup.

Is this a threat to arrest anyone involved with the "coup"? That's how a dictator would deal with his political enemies.

Update (May 6):  There are some other dangerous signs out there--let's hope these don't become serious disputes. Laura Clawson:

[Fuckface von Clownstick] is grappling with the end of the Mueller investigation, and it’s getting scary. One minute [he] is insisting that he was completely exonerated by the Mueller report, and the next he’s showing just how terrified he is of Robert Mueller testifying before Congress. But the really worrying part is when [Dear Leader] suggests he should get two extra years in the White House to make up for the time he was under investigation.

And the Speaker of the House has a warning.

Nancy Pelosi predicted this weekend that [Orangeman] may not step down from power if he is defeated in the 2020 election.

[Pelosi cautioned] that unless Democrats defeat [Manbaby] by a margin "so big" that the legitimacy of the election is beyond dispute, the president could challenge the outcome.

Pelosi's solution is to run a center-left campaign and avoid impeachment. In an interview with Matthew Rozsa, Allan Lichtman disagrees.

[W]e have a rogue president who cannot be checked by what Nancy Pelosi is proposing. The only way to check this president is to hold him accountable, to strike at his power and his brand — and that can only be done by beginning an impeachment investigation. The argument that the House should not impeach because the Senate might not convict is constitutionally unsound, politically unsound and morally bankrupt.

Update (May 15):  Heather Digby Parton notes that the push to "investigate the investigators" is a form of intimidation and control.

[T]here can be no doubt about the chilling effect these investigations will have on FBI and intelligence officials throughout the government. They will think hard before they take another close look at [von Clownstick's] crimes going forward.

On a political level, Republicans are running a familiar game which nobody should toss off as mere partisan warfare. It's a crucial aspect of [Dear Leader's] re-election strategy. If they can engage the mainstream media and throw everything they have at it, they may succeed at confusing the public and convincing them that all this smoke they're blowing means there must be a fire.

Update (May 17):  Another dangerous lie:

My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!

Update (May 21):  In Orangeworld, war crimes are to be rewarded. Heather Digby Parton:

Pardoning those who committed the crimes he explicitly endorsed on the campaign trail is just fulfilling one of his most important campaign promises. War criminals are his heroes.

And Ohio supporter Darrell Franks loves it.

What I want from a president is the rest of the world to look at him and go, "Don’t mess with that guy, he will get even".

Update (May 28):  James Comey explains why the Fuckface claim that the Russian investigation amounts to treason is such an enormous lie.

In April 2016, that adviser talked to a Russian agent in London, learned that the Russians had obtained “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails and that the Russians could assist the [von Clownstick] campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to Clinton. Of course, nobody from the ... campaign told us this (or about later Russian approaches); we had to learn it, months after the fact, from an allied ambassador.

But when we finally learned of it in late July, what should the FBI have done? Let it go? Go tell the [Republican] campaign? Tell the press? No. Investigate, to see what the facts were. We didn’t know what was true. Maybe there was nothing to it, or maybe Americans were actively conspiring with the Russians. To find out, the FBI would live up to its name and investigate.

Update (June 5):  In calling out "treason", Dear Leader actually named names of people who would presumably be facing execution. Meanwhile the Weak Bully is pissing off business leaders by threatening tariffs against Mexico. Heather Digby Parton:

The tariff ultimatum was made against the advice of just about everyone in the [von Clownstick] administration — except, that is, for Stephen Miller, the president's hard-line anti-immigrant adviser. The Atlantic reports that White House aides say this all stemmed from [Fuckface's] anger over Robert Mueller's appearance at the Justice Department last week, quoting an unnamed adviser who said, "Whenever a negative story comes around, his instinct is to pivot to immigration or trade. It’s kind of like his safety blanket." This was a twofer. [Von Clownstick] felt insecure so he shook up the financial markets and threatened to damage a vast segment of the American economy to make himself feel better. What's a little economic turmoil — and an unexpected tax on businesses and consumers — when the president needs his blankey?

Update (July 27):  I'm trying to keep up with the list of dangerous lies.

I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.

Update (July 28):  Paul Street suggests an appropriate response to this "fascist-style disdain for democratic and constitutional norms".

If we, the people, are serious about stopping [Dear Leader] and (more importantly) the system that hatched [him], we’ll take to the streets en masse to engage in extensive and unrelenting civil disobedience.

Update (August 14):  Dear Leader has no qualms about spreading conspiracy theories, even if it puts innocent people at risk due to his followers. Amanda Marcotte:

We can't know whether [Fuckface] is acting out of a guilty conscience. But whatever the reason for his behavior, it's a serious problem that the president of the United States casually retweets lunatics and tosses off false accusations of murder.

Update (June 27, 2020):  It's interesting how Fuckface can drop a charge of treason against Barack Obama and then the New York Times comes out with this:

American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there.

The intelligence finding was briefed to [von Clownstick], and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March. ... [B]ut the White House has yet to authorize any step.

Update (June 28, 2020):  Naturally Dear Leader needs to deny receiving any briefing about the Russian bounties otherwise the inaction does appear to be treason. Other Administration officials also deny any knowledge. Only Russia denies actual bounties. And yet even Representative Liz Cheney is asking the White House for answers about the plot.

Why weren’t the president or vice president briefed?

Could Fuckface be lying? Does the sun rise in the east? Jeremy Bash:

[I]ntelligence and national security leaders don’t appear to be rebutting the basis of the intelligence, but they appear to be saying the president and other senior leaders at the White House were not briefed, which I find totally inconceivable and totally noncredible.

Update (June 29, 2020):  VoteVets says Putin owns Fuckface. And Heather Digby Parton speculates on Dear Leader's knowledge of the situation.

Considering [his] lack of empathy for the 128,000-plus people who have died of COVID-19 in just four months, I think there's also a good chance that his aides told him about this, he only halfway listened and didn't much care. After all, it's obvious that [Fuckface] is more concerned about saving the statues of dead Confederate generals than he is about saving the lives of American citizens.

Late today, AP reports that the original briefing on Russian bounties was not in March this year, it was March of 2019 and was given by John Bolton.

Update (July 2, 2020):  Amanda Marcotte says there's an obvious reason Dear Leader doesn't want to do anything about Russian bounties to kill U.S. troops.

[He] wants Russia to help him cheat in 2020, just like they helped him cheat in 2016, and he's willing to do whatever he can to make sure that happens. If the price requires the blood of American soldiers, then so be it.

Update (July 13, 2020):  Gerald Sussman denounces hysteria over Russia.

The latest claim about Russia, that it sponsored a Taliban assassination program in Afghanistan, has been carried by all the troll farm mainstream media despite the absence of any confirmed evidence. On its face, the story is absurd, as Russia has been extremely hostile to the Taliban – among other reasons for the fundamentalist Islamic group’s active support of the Chechnyan uprising inside Russia.

Update (July 30, 2020):  David Masciotra says the obsession with Russia is based on a delusion.

[T]he posture that everything was going swimmingly with American democracy before [Putin] and Julian Assange screwed it up is willful blindness and stupidity. As long as liberals obsess over Russia, they will remain unable or unwilling to confront the escalating crises of their own country.