It was negotiations with a toddler. “Wall! Wall! Mine! Wall!” And Grampa Pence sitting there like, “Oh, he’ll calm down and we’ll let him watch Fox News…”
Not as severe as it would have been a couple of decades ago. For them, that was something like three wars ago, and most Vietnamese alive today were not born until after the war, so to them it’s ancient history. That’s not to downplay the situation – 1.5 million to 3 million dead, depending on the source, is nothing to sneeze at – but having spent time in Vietnam myself this century, there’s not much preoccupation with it. Still, I have not personally known any Vietnamese refugee who has returned, but I’ve not heard any horror stories either, and lots of former US soldiers who fought there are welcomed.
EDIT: I don’t want them deported however.
WaPost has a good summary of the current state of the ClusterFuck.
Ivanka has an ethics lawyer?
Please raise your hand if you think you need an ethics lawyer.
What needs to be done is to surround the entire family with a group of nuns with rulers.
I don’t quite know how to characterize it. Pelosi tells him that his current, friendly House won’t give him the votes, and his response is, “I could get the votes in 10 seconds in the House if I wanted them.” It is bizarre to go braggadocio on such a plainly false claim. Pubbies and fundamentalists already had an impenetrable streak, but for the POTUS to be so divorced from reality goes beyond partisanship. Yah I know it has been like this all along, but the incoming Speaker of the House is making the most fundamentally basic of true claims and he flatly denies her. I am surprised to still be surprised!
Don’t miss this Twitter photo taken just after the meeting in the Oval Office.
Way to invite an unarmed man to a gunfight…
I first saw that meeting with the sound turned down, and it is really fascinating to see the body language without distraction - the two adults focusing primarily on each other, and Trump wildly waving his arms in the back trying to get them to PAY ATTENTION to him!
BTW, anyone seen this great Mick Mulvaney clip yet?
Apparently because he is a Senate confirmed head of the OMB, Trump just idioted his way into having the first chief of staff who can be obligated to testify before Congress.
Heh. I saw the Pence criticism as well, but watching the full video, Pence didn’t really jump out at me. He’s the Veep. He didn’t say anything. Ok, so what? If he is a Dick Cheney behind-the-scenes mastermind kind of Veep, he doesn’t show it, and anyway that isn’t what the job is supposed to be. I don’t agree with Pence on much but I don’t generally have the knives out for him either- he whallopped Tim Kaine in the Veep debate just by having a grip on himself, and maybe that’s why I give him more benefit of the doubt that just about anyone in this foolish administration.
If I got any impression off of him at all, it was that he was thinking, “The haters are wrong. This job* is* worth a bucket of warm piss.”
You realize that the non-immigration crime rate for undocumented immigrants is way, way lower than it is for the Trump family don’t you?
This is amazing.
Also (from the same thread), apparently, due to his continuing status as Senate-confirmed-OMB-head, emails he sends as CoS may be subject to FOIA requests:
Hell, a typical Mob family has a lower crime rate than the Trump family.
The immigrant rights organization No More Deaths recorded Border Patrol agents dumping out water that had been left in the desert for immigrants coming through the desert after crossing the border. And just coincidentally, i’m sure, one of the members of the organization was arrested right after the video was made public, allegedly for helping immigrants to illegally cross the border
Some inbred dingleberry on a horse and likes his own flag er I mean Ryan Zinke will be riding off into the sunset at the end of the year.
A real saint of the environment, he probably’s dreaming about subpoenas, or something, and figures, well…
Nice little exchange between Hari Srinavasan and Jeff Greenfield on PBS tonight. When Greenfield mentioned how Trump’s gone through more communications directors than Spinal Tap had with drummers, and then added how every time when you think you’ve seen the extreme to which our politics can reach, the line is then pushed back even further, Hari responded, with slightly cocked eyebrow, “And there might be more Spinal Tap references yet to come, thanks, Jeff.”
I don’t think I’ve heard anything that spirited from Hari before, which is refreshing, and giving me hope that the media will begin to tell it more like it is. Yeah, yeah - I get the whole fuckin slippery slope argument that going further in that sort of direction will lead more to editorializing rather than objective news reportage, (coughFauxcough) but fuck it now - we are in exceptional times, now, with a leader-in-chief who constantly lies, and, as it’s been pointed out many times at the dope already, (and bummy yeah I’ll reiterate) the shit’s gotta get called out now.
Well now I’m dying to know what the other Spinal Tap references could be. Wall along the southern border that’s only 18-inches high due to typographical error? Trump brags at a cabinet meeting about a report filed by his interns that claims he cultivates “an unbelievably sexy environment?” Confirmation that he got lost on the way to the dining room at Mar-a-Lago?
I would pay $1000 to a charity of the SDMB’s choice if Melania says “You don’t do the President in Dubly, you know.”
ETA: Heck, I’ll cough that up if Melania, Sarah, Kellyanne OR Ivanka says it.
There’s a fine line between genius and stupidity?
this one seems obvious.
Good point. And their shysters usually stay out of jail.