The appropriate The Big Lebowski link.
Classic Lebowski stuff! lol
Getting back to the heavy stuff for a moment, though, following up on the previous remarks, I think modern American “conservative” ideology explains a lot about why we have Trump. Those living in Trumpland accept him and whatever he does and will continue to do so because they really don’t think the federal government matters at all except when it comes to nuking foreigners. I think this is also why we’d better not get our hopes up that they’ll turn on him if things in this country go south. It’s just as likely they’ll blame the “administrative state” for an economic or national security emergency and encourage Donny to shake things up even more.
Yes, it’s like the first few months of a family business with no plan, no clear job descriptions, lots of feuding, excuse-making, blaming, and leadership that consists mostly of, “Because I said so!” And it usually ends in bankruptcy. Very soon.
Are we sure they know? If all they watch is Fox and other right-wing media?
However, I think this definitely applies. If liberals are upset, then everything’s good.
True.
Well, today’s outrage is Trump publicly criticizing Sessions for not replacing the acting FBI director. Let’s note that Trump could order Sessions to do that, and in fact is perfectly capable of replacing the acting FBI director personally if he wants since he’s the President of the United States (God help us). I guess I’m twisted into knots but on the whole it’s so bizarre that it just makes me very, very sad. So if that’s what the Republican base voter wanted to get out of a Trump presidency, then hooray for them I guess.
It’s transparently clear Trump wants Sessions to quit and is determined to keep humiliating him until he does. Firing him and replacing him with some New York sycophant who won’t recuse himself and will cheerily fire Mueller would look much worse than if Sessions quits, thus requiring Trump to appoint a new AG. I am sure he has been told of the benefits of a recess appointment in this regard.
I disagree that it’s transparently clear that Trump wants to do anything.
It’s a big mistake, IMO, to read strategy into things that Trump does. In all likelihood he’s just a kid having a temper tantrum. He might or might not want Sessions to quit - or even fire him - in the course of his tantrum. But that doesn’t mean that anything he’s doing is part of any sort of strategy. He’s just frustrated and angry and is expressing his frustration and anger.
In general, assessing Trump’s word and actions by standards that apply to ordinary politicians - or even ordinary people, frankly - is a mistake.
I remember making sort of a mental self-note on the campaign trail and thinking about how Trump paraded around with mostly a group of bizarro non-experts. When he was inaugurated he hired some cranks like Mike Flynn but you could at least argue that Flynn had some fitness for the position in terms of experience (personality’s another matter). But it seems more and more likely that Trump is set to purge his staff and replace it with a bunch of people who will have next to nothing in terms of qualifications. Trump seems comfortable being in the presence of incompetent people because he has to be the smartest guy in the room. People like Tillerson, McMaster, Mattis…they know stuff. Trump doesn’t like that, feels threatened by it. Spicer knew stuff; he just had the unenviably shitty job of trying to do job of managing information while living in a parallel universe. Sessions actually tried to comply with standards of legal ethics because, again, say what one will about Sessions, he is probably a pretty competent lawyer and knows stuff. There are two qualifications to work in the Trump administration: loyalty and deference. Nothing else matters. All of this is made worse by the fact that Trump’s campaign victory in some sense validates his worldview.
It’s hard to see why anyone would want to serve under this administration, at this point. Whatever you wanted to get done, you won’t, and then eventually you’ll be blamed and forced out to cover for the President’s incompetence/criminality.
Why would you agree to do that?
It’s a chance to get back in the spotlight, and the only chance for some. Christie and Giuliani are irrelevant otherwise, and that has to rankle. The idea of having a real office and real power and real attention again has to have some attractiveness.
I assume because they think that there will be some additional perks to the job. People will bribe them for their influence, they will use their influence to direct monies into their personal accounts, stuff like that.
Corrupt people like working for corrupt people, they know they can get away with more.
Democrats in the Senate are hoping to prevent the entire Congress from going on vacation by holding filibusters to prevent Trump from making a recess appointment for AG.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/trump-recess-appointments/?
Sometimes yes and sometimes no.
If Trump had lashed out at Sessions once, I’d agree it would mean little.
Continuous insults and hint-dropping, though, it not an accident. Trump is actually paying attention to the matter.
[QUOTE=asahi]
People like Tillerson, McMaster, Mattis…they know stuff. Trump doesn’t like that, feels threatened by it. Spicer knew stuff; he just had the unenviably shitty job of trying to do job of managing information while living in a parallel universe. Sessions actually tried to comply with standards of legal ethics because, again, say what one will about Sessions, he is probably a pretty competent lawyer and knows stuff.
[/QUOTE]
The hire of Anthony “Da Mooch” Scaramucci certainly lends credence to this. Da Mooch has no qualifications for the job at all, but
- He is willing to kiss Trump’s ass.
- He’s a slimy New York finance guy, and Trump feels comfortable around people like that, and
- He got one up on CNN over the Russian hedge fund story, which makes him a knight to Trump.
You underestimate Trump’s capacity for petulance. By all accounts it’s tremendous, and he broods over slights forever.
As I said in the Trump Twitter thread, the problem for Trump is that he’s pissed about The Russia Thing. So he wants to get rid of Sessions and get a new Attorney General who will make The Russia Thing go away. Fire Sessions and the problem is over. Except Kushner and Priebus sat him down and explained to him that he was not allowed to fire Sessions, because firing Sessions won’t make The Russia Thing go away.
But Trump wants to fire Sessions! But Trump can’t fire Sessions! That makes Trump angry! So what does he do next? He complains like a child on Twitter.
If Trump were not an idiot, he’d have said “We welcome this bullshit investigation that will clear our names, now let’s get on with making America great again,” and then shut up about it. Or, he’d fire Sessions, and probably Rosenstein, Mueller, and McCabe too, and dare Congress to do something about it. He’s not tough enough for number 2, and he’s temperamentally incapable of number 1, so he goes on Twitter and complains about how unfair it is.
I saw an interview with Bill Clinton a couple years out of office, and he was talking about the lewinsky/watergate thing. He was talking about how it was compartmentalized, and that most of the day he didn’t think about it, or have anything to do with it, but he would instead put aside a half hour here and there to talk to lawyers and other people to deal with it.
It did effect his presidenting, 'cause he’s human, and has finite attention and time, but they did their best to keep it from being a distraction to the job.
CiC WTF has no such discipline.
What Clinton did which was most effective (IMO) was to repeatedly hammer home the line that the Lewinsky matter was of minor importance (regardless of his guilt or innocence), and that the continued focus on it was distracting his ability to work on behalf of the American people, who had more important issues at stake. This resonated with many people.
It would be much harder for Trump to pull that off, because the worst-case collusion scenario is actually a very serious matter. What he would have to do is to repeatedly emphasize that there’s no hard evidence for any serious collusion, and suggestions otherwise are just partisan witchhunting, AND that he needs to be able to focus on MAGA.
But that’s alien to his personality, and I don’t think he can pull that off. Name-calling and whining about how unfair it is are what comes naturally to him, and that’s what you’re going to get, apparently.
I rise in ire at this whole “loyalty” criticism of the Orangeutan! “Oooh, that so terrible wrong, his brutally unfair and disloyal treatment of JeffBo!”
Liberal hypocrisy! Ever damn one of you is no different, you wipe, you flush, and the paper goes down with everything else when you’re done with it!
This Sessions feud is certainly a wrinkle I didn’t expect, mainly in how it’s pissing off part of Trump’s base who worship Sessions. I forgot or didn’t know he was an architect of Trump’s hard line views and the base that supports that supported Sessions before they supported Trump. Trump is playing with fire here and he probably doesn’t care because he’s so pissed off about the Russia investigation
I think he’s seriously weighing number two but for whatever reason hasn’t pulled the trigger on it. Might be why he’s hounding Sessions so hard – Donny wants Beauregard to be the villain so he can keep his distance and wipe his hands of it. For all we know, he may have already had that conservation with people in his administration - including Sessions - who might have told the Don in no uncertain terms that it would be a ludicrous idea if he did it. In fact I wonder if Sessions has already told Trump “Sorry, but I ain’t touching that one.” Again, Sessions is a former federal prosecutor. He knows he’d be gambling everything he has to follow Trump into that sewer and do his dirty work for him. Sessions isn’t going to fire everyone who’s anyone in the DoJ and Bureau to save someone who’s now flogging him in public. It’s shit like this that really and truly makes me question Trump’s grasp of reality.
There’s also a world of difference between getting a blowjob in the Oval Office and undermining the entire American elections process.