I’m in the mood to loathe
Simply because you’re near me…
nm
Is there a term for when reality mocks satire?
From CNN: President Donald Trump “believes he has the power to” fire special counsel Robert Mueller, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday. “He certainly believes he has the power to do so,” Is no one in his administration correcting him on that? Sounds vaguely familiar. “That’s what he believes”. As if that makes it so.
He probably does, effectively. Congress, at least this Congress, isn’t going to hold him accountable.
Hopefully (though I don’t know that I should hold my breath), we’ll see congress being held accountable.
He also believes he’s doing a good job as president, and that he’s fooling anyone with that orange whip on his head.
This probably deserves its own thread, somewhere, but: yes, Trump obviously believes that he successfully fools people with the cover-up stories and the hair and the bluster (‘we have so many job applicants to be my lawyer/work in the White House’) and all the rest of it.
And this is because, his entire life as a born-rich kid who everyone knew would inherit millions, no one ever called him on his bullshit. Ever.
So he genuinely believes that people are fooled. He has no experience whatsoever of anyone saying to him, ‘you’re kidding, right?!?!!??’ He has only the experience of people saying ‘yes, sir, whatever you say, sir.’
Donald Trump himself is the world’s best argument against inherited wealth.
It’s not that it would be inadvisable for Trump to fire Mueller (and it would be), it’s that he doesn’t have the power to fire him. cf: Nixon and Archibald Cox. And like Eliot Richardson, Jeff Sessions is currently of no inclination to fire Mueller at this stage of the game.
People have tried, but Trump’s response has invariably been a threat of a crippling lawsuit and/or bankrupting the company in question. He’ll have trouble trying to do either of these as President.
Exactly: as an entitled rich kid he learned a couple ways of dealing with problems and just expects those ways to always work.
Because thinking is hard.
…I’m not saying there are no people born to wealth who are of good character. Obviously, there are some such people.
But for the many rich kids who were raised to expect everyone they met to defer to them and flatter them and cater to them–as Trump obviously was–the results are just not good.
So he fires people until he finds someone with their nose stuck far enough up his ass that they’ll fire Mueller. And the people who care about democracy will be trumped (pun intended) by Republican members of Congress.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are a close second and third.
“Covfefe”
Not necessarily. As I understand it, Mueller has to be fired “for good cause” with a justification provided by the DOJ, and he can appeal his firing to the federal courts.
Here’s a blog comment from Booman Tribune laying it all out in great detail.
So, he fires Mueller but legally can’t. But sure as shit, somebody legal somewhere is willing to argue that it is! Right there in the Constitution, plain as day. Then there are two sides to the question, gotta go to court, get it settled. Might take a while to get there, lots of billable hours between here and wherever. And whatever it is, whenever it is, someone will appeal it.
So, the Supremes. And I guess we finally find out just what Mr Roberts is made of…
Inarguable.
The research on ‘entitlement’ is fascinating, by the way. A recent study available with no paywall is at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a19c/6d01005708852ad098386445330d9d66a332.pdf
Lots more are listed at:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2014&q=entitlement&hl=en&as_sdt=0,10
Unrelated to the current discussion, but I thought that it should be noted that it took three months from the point at which Manafort’s home was raided to indictments being issued. It seems likely that the Manafort case was already quite mature at that point and one can assume that the Cohen case is as well (I would be willing to bet that Preet Bharara was already investigating him back when he was fired), so I don’t think we can reasonably expect a faster process than that, unless somehow the South New York department is generally faster than Mueller’s team.
I suspect the difference is that Mueller’s team have a wide, wide range of targets to investigate and have to consider cross-investigation issues. If NY is focussing on Cohen alone it may be able to take a more streamlined approach. But as always I’d rather have the investigation done properly than quickly.
Looks like, if we wondered whether there was anything worth finding in Cohen’s belongings, that the answer is almost certainly, “Yes.”
The privilege check might double the length of time, though.