Unfortunately, in time the unwillingness of anyone even remotely competent to work in the Trump administration will have a real cost for us all.
Don’t bet on that.
I think it’s a good thing. It shows that SOME people out there still have some scruples. Also, imagine the damage they can do, if someone actually knows what they are doing. Maybe the gross incompetence is what protects us at this point.
The other point that I’ve seen mentioned is that staffers in the White House may not be able to talk to Trump or give him advice about the Cohen thing, because his relationship with Cohen is not Government related.
They work for the President on the federal payroll, not for Donald Trump, businessman. His dealings with Cohen are likely all personal.
Plus self-preservation, of course. Who wants to get dragged into Trump World just as the Feds are sniffing around?
That means Trump is increasingly isolated in the White House, on an issue that has potentially a major impact on his presidency.
Yeah…That great “Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence” description.
As Seth Meyers pointed out on his show recently, if a tape didn’t exist, Trump would have no reason to say anything other than “what are you talking about?”
His responses to the suggestion that it’s real are the equivalent of a wife asking her husband if he’s cheating on her, and the husband answering, “it would really suck if you found out about that.”
Have they formed a political action group? Can we get a volunteer to go to a meeting and report back?
Would that be an oral report?
It shows how smart Mueller is. By setting up a second front, even if Trump fires him the New York investigation will go on during the resulting firestorm. It seems to be unclear if the people in NY could get fired, but if they were for investigating Cohen someone could write up an indictment of Trump the next day.
Trump thinks he is smart but the FBI and prosecutors are outmaneuvering him like crazy.
Bet he wishes he said no comment about the question on him and Stormy Daniels.
I have been somewhat surprised that he hasn’t made a move on Jeff Sessions and/or Rod Rosenstein yet. He’s obviously thought about it but for whatever reason avoided pulling the trigger. I suspect that this might also be why he wants to be around fewer “experts” and wants fewer “adults in the room” and instead would rather surround himself with people who reinforce his instincts.
I agree: Mueller has opened up a second front on Trump and it makes his situation more desperate. But if we’ve learned anything over the past few years it’s that Trump doesn’t typically back down; he lashes out like a cornered, wounded lion. And right now he’s fighting for his survival and the survival of his family enterprise. Comey was right: he is like a crime family boss in a lot of ways. And he plays by his own rules.
Picturing Trump storming about the White House shouting “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Mueller?!?”
I don’t understand Trump’s concern. Surely McConnell’s told him by now that he has nothing to fear from a Republican congress’s reaction to this investigation.
I guess he remembers what happened when he fired Comey. With his approval rating numbers now finally back to 45-50% (depending on the poll), maybe he’s a little hesitant to pull the trigger. Then again, maybe this is about the time when he feels confident enough to do just that. Impossible to know what’s rolling through his head at this point.
I imagine only tumbleweeds
That would require the fat orange idiot to have read a book. It’s more like him shuffling around the White House mumbling: “No collusion… Witch hunt… You’re the puppet…”
I always found Trump’s non-denial denial of “the pee pee tape” in this interview very odd. His phrasing, his excuses, the “weasel words”…
From the interview with Ainsley Earhardt:
“It’s made up. Never existed. Never happened,” Trump continued, speaking specifically about the unverified report regarding the prostitutes. “And the reason I say that so strongly because nothing is ever going to show up. There’s never going to be a tape that shows up. There’s never going to be anything that shows up. Now, I would be very embarrassed if a tape actually showed up, saying something like that. It would be double embarrassed because I’m saying there is no tape. There is no event. I was never even in that room for that period of time.”
He wishes. Rasmussen has been fairly reliably skewed for years, you really do need a composite model like this to get a better feel for where any politician sits.
Arrogance and lack of smarts are not mutually exclusive.
This is meaningless, basically. Trump never let anyone give him meaningful advice or listened to anyone, ever. Well, no one other than Steve Douche-y, of course.
Meh, he ALWAYS speaks using weasel words and con-man phrasing.