Wales2004

He makes Clueless look like a film about geniuses. I can't imagine why he thinks no one in other nations can read about the stupid things he says--especially the foreign leaders with which he's met. That whole dessert bombing fiasco was seen as an insult to President XI and their traditions and the only way he'll ever know is if Fox mentions it during his viewing hours. His best recent lie has to be the Bannon I hardly know one: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/us/politics/trump-steven-bannon-fox-business-news-interview.html I don't know if it's better than the old I know Putin well/I don't know him lies though: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/02/07/does-trump-know-putin-a-chronology/?utm_term=.3f29a7a6131a Yay, he thinks Tillerson is doing a great job. Wait until he finds out what Tillerson said about election meddling and more sanctions. At this point, I think some of his people are just freelancing and making it so that he has to go along with whatever they say.

Whenever Trump has to put up he crumbles like the idiot he is. You pointed out how he backtracked on the currency--a hard deadline will get him every time. Did you read about him practically bragging that he told President XI about his Syrian strike over their dessert of "beautiful" chocolate cake. Simpleton is way too kind of an adjective for that pea brain.

I may be the only one who feels this way but, imo, Obama had a tendency to comment on too many trivial matters (such as Kanye West re Taylor Swift) which basically set the stage for him being expected to have an opinion on many things. There's no doubt that the bar is set low for Trump as all he has to do is be able to stay focused on a teleprompter to appear "Presidential." Unfortunately due to racial and other biases, Obama was under a microscope in ways that his predecessors and the current idiot will never be. Even the self-professed "color blind" people don't get that there is a difference between accepting a person as being totally equal to them as a human and being able to "overlook" race (which is more or less like saying that I am generously overlooking what I subconsciously perceive to be your inferiority). I remember Chris Matthews saying that people in that Appalachians were against Obama and that posed a voting problem for him, and then asking what Obama was going to do about. This because when white people hate you because you're black, you have to find a way to make those white people change their minds. But isn't this the kind of ignorance and stupidity about racism that has prevailed for over a century? Obama got it from all sides. And honestly he was in a no-win situation when it comes to that because you can't please everyone in America happy when it comes to race. But for some reason, there were people who expected him to be the answer. OTOH, Trump is not expected to be the answer to anything. Even his Trumpbots know all they wanted was someone as simple minded as them in charge. Pretty much. I see that Carter Page is chatting with Jake Tapper and Manafort wants to register as a foreign agent to retro-fix his Ukraine issue.

The bigger story is that Russia blocked the UN from investigating Syria's chemical attack so all that Assad must go won't mean a thing without Russia agreeing. Oh look which idiot is now saying NATO is no longer obsolete.

I'm in a different column when it comes to the three named. If it were just that and not a bigger picture to me, but April Ryan is the only one who has the Omarosa/Trump/Spicer thing going. Susan Rice, imo, falls into a category with Obama and HRC as far as Trump and the blame diversion game goes. I may have missed Trump and/or Spicer targeting Maxine Waters so all I know about is Bill O'Reilly's ignorant James Brown hair comments which seems to have elevated her status. I am totally biased against her and hair drama is never going to get me on her or anyone's side. It's too trivial of an issue for me. I respect that it's a big deal for other people. All I can say is that when I was younger I was often criticized over my hair. My scalp was wrecked over a bad perm and I was forced to go to a hairdresser, during my elementary school days, who loved sizzling presses. I was put down for not having "good" hair and I will still never get worked up over hair. For years I've asked my friends what Maxine Waters has done for the people since she's been in office and none of them can tell me but then again, it's probably the same for a lot of those lifers. A friend of mine worked for her and I met her and her son and being nice etc., doesn't make up for inaction. She ticked me off when she decided to hold a prayer vigil over a community hospital closure, when they were warned about violations and that it would be closed if they were not addressed. Also she and Diane Watson were bent over Obama not holding them in high esteem (especially Diane Watson who must have thought he should worship her just because) but that's a whole other issue. That whole 70+ club benefits from their constituents repeatedly voting in them due to their level of comfort with them. Now they're the anti-Trump crusaders empowered by protesters and I'm not impressed. Any expectations came from Obama's willingness to show compassion. Trump doesn't seem like a compassionate person so why should anyone want his fake condolences? There's no point to his expressing sorrow just for us to question his sincerity. The best thing he can do in these situations is to say nothing. He can't use this to score points since the killer wasn't undocumented and hasn't been linked to Islam.

It seems that the evidence against Trump is all classified so they need someone to flip in order to move this along more quickly. He should ask Comey to resign because that won't at all raise more suspicions.

He doesn't need a staff when he's got Jared. It's amazing how he can claim the infighting is media lies and then turn around and say that he told Bannon and the others to work it out. Now it's back down to who is out the door first (Reince Prebus appears to be safe for now) and who is going to flip first (Carter Page is delusional so I doubt it will be him but then again...). Loyalty must be a one-way street in Trumpville.

So now Trump is publicly pretending that he barely knew Steve Bannon when he joined his team. Either they've worked out some kind of deal/plan or Trump thinks he can take cover. He should do the smart thing and go away but he's far from smart and the notion that he thinks he can triumph over the people who put him in place just demonstrates his ignorance. Manafort is now caught in a huge lie regarding the Ukraine https://apnews.com/20cfc75c82eb4a67b94e624e97207e23. Carter Page https://apnews.com/5bf4c269b9a243a495761130524d2cd4/Report:-US-sought-to-monitor-Trump-adviser-last-summer Spicer has the day off and maybe that will blow over and maybe not. Nunes' lie has seemingly been uncovered. Tillerson is not too swift (and that's an understatement) http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/tillerson-asks-why-americans-should-care-about-ukraine.html At least Mulvaney is being honest http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/trump-budget-director-wants-high-inequality-not-low-deficit.html And Bill O'Reilly is taking a spring break from which he may not return, if you believe this http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/is-bill-oreilly-going-off-the-air.html

The debt situation probably made it and will most likely continue to make it quite tricky. This is one reason why I don't understand why Trump continually mouthed off about China when he was campaigning. Now he apparently thinks he can use North Korea as a threat in negotiations. In Trump world he might have the upper-hand but not in the real world and I don't think he's ever going to understand that fact. Bannon has done all he can to help throw the media and everyone else off the TrumPutin trail because he's delusional enough to think that Putin is going to assist with his master plan to get rid of Islam. Trump charged into the White House ready for action and created a great deal of chaos. The past couple of days seems like a slow down but here's something he's winning at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/10/us/politics/trump-golf-course-getaways.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

I can't imagine any competent leader of a nation taking this bloviating ignoramus seriously. MAGA must have some hidden meaning that includes setting America back globally and domestically. They can reshuffle staff all they want because as long as he's in charge they will continue to have the same problems. This: Trump’s extraordinary instinct for television is matched by his appetite for it. He rarely sleeps, The Washington Post reported, and instead “watches enormous amounts of television all through the night.” During the presidential campaign, he told Chuck Todd, the Meet the Press host, that he got military advice by watching “the shows” on cable. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/when-a-reality-tv-president-goes-to-war/522519/

@Roman just for you AP reports that Russia knew of the Syrian chemical attack in advance : https://apnews.com/19772be1238e49fbb62c509a5b659b3d/Official:-Russia-knew-in-advance-of-Syrian-chemical-attack?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP

I've said this before and I still believe it is a distraction to get the gullible media of the TrumPutin story and also to make them push headlines that make Trump appear to be tough on Putin/Russia without any real action being taken, since tough talk is all it takes. Consider this: Putin was given advance notice of the strike and in turn notified Assad Assad went back to using the strip shortly after the strike so the damage was clearly minimal Trump has stock in Raytheon which supplied the missiles and now that stock has climbed so Trump benefited financially from the strike as well Why the rush? Is it possible that his impulsive ways and ignorance can lead to devastation in the region? Yes, because it's a win-win for him and Raytheon and it gets the media off the Russian trail so he might order a strike here and there to prove that he's "Presidential" as Fareed Zakaria proclaimed with stars in his eyes. Assad and Putin have no issue with killing some innocent people to flex and get what they want and Trump can apparently do it with the media's blessing since they don't care whether there are casualties, as long as they convince themselves it's for the greater good. Meanwhile China and Russia are the beneficiaries of the puppet masters pulling Trump's strings. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-wiretaps-russia-20170410-htmlstory.html For those of us who realize that ousting Bannon could be devastating for Trump there's this: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/10/the-trouble-with-trump-s-white-house-is-donald-trump.html?via=desktop&source=twitter Lindsay Graham saying in his own way what a waste of $60 million that airstrike was: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/sen-graham-assad-saying-f-you-trump-flying-bombed-airfield-n744326

The simpleton media is beyond stomach churning for me. They try to rephrase idiotic things Trump says into sensible statements and pretend that he actually has a foreign policy. It reeks of their desperation for normalcy and in doing so they are giving the public a very false picture of what's really going on. People may want to pretend otherwise but it's best not to pretend that he's ignorant when it comes to policies and has no interest in learning (and maybe even can't). While they're fawning, Putin's plan is moving right along. I wouldn't be surprised if this somehow gets spun into how we need to cooperate with Russia as justification for lifting the sanctions. Putin will have Trump salivating over how he can wipe out ISIS as Putin uses him to dominate Europe. Oh look at us planning an air strike or something:

I read earlier that Steve Bannon was the source of that. Okay so I know I am wrong for this but I cannot stop laughing at this headline: Pat Robertson: I’m Being Dominated By Homosexuals http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/04/03/pat-robertson-im-being-dominated-by-homosexuals/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

I'm missing something, what did they do or say? I cannot say that I've paid enough attention to or have heard enough about David Frum to have formulated an opinion on him but I found this a good read: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/04/seven-lessons-from-trumps-syria-strike/522327/

This was done as another distraction and to pretend that Trump has placed himself at odds with Putin who was told ahead of time so that he could warn Assad. There is absolutely no reason to rush into something like this without careful planning and it accomplishes nothing except giving the media a new object over which to endlessly drone so that they forget about Trumpco's treachery.

If Gowdy can find a way to tie Trump's treachery into Benghazi and make it HRC's fault then he'll be pleased. IA that Bannon is all about nothing since he can be added back at anytime. I think Nunes falls into a different category as he may have become a liability with some of the negative attention he's gotten here in good old CA. Sure he's pretty much rendered the HPSCI ineffective so the three-headed replacement will try to continue the runaround and distract game but no one's taking them seriously at this point. Schiff and Swalwell will continue to try to get to the bottom of this regardless and I believe they will find a way to get the truth out despite the Trump stonewall. I do think that the SSCI and the FBI will be serious about this and I don't think Trump is going to be able to break the IC so all may not be lost. It may be a slow and tedious road but I believe he's going down. Does he really think telling lies about what Elijah Cummings said is going to benefit him in some way?

Awww it's so sweet that Tom Cotton is trying to blame weak Obama for Russian hacking. Isn't it true that this is all his fault? I thought all we learned was how stupid 62 million voters are but not to be outdone by the masses, there's Paul Ryan trying to hold onto Devin Nunes whose cover-up of the cover-up isn't going so well. Wouldn't it be just swell for them if Trump gets to abscond with millions in taxpayer dollars while they are made to suffer the consequences of their idiocy in standing by their man? Today Ted Yoho (R-Fla) hitched a ride on their buggy with his defense of Nunes on the grounds that Nunes (an elected official mind you) works for Trump because well... When questioned asked if he doesn't work for his constituents Yoho said he works for both. Hmmm I wonder if he thought that way last year...not really. Try to catch a clip of Clinton Watts in the minute he explained to the SIC that the Russians are easily spreading fake news because there's a conspiracy theorist in the WH who they dupe into spreading it for them by buzzing all around his twitter. On and North Carolina did put through a watered down bill on which the NCAA ought to call them out. Jack of All Trades Jared Kushner's doesn't get this former employee's endorsement: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/30/i-worked-with-jared-kushner-hes-the-wrong-businessman-to-reinvent-government/?utm_term=.ecf4594bd4da

TrumPutins are going to have fun today because Putin says the election meddling is fictional and they'll have to process that the operation went further than DNC hacking. At least the State Dept. isn't pretending to care about human rights: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/state-department-drops-human-rights-as-condition-for-fighter-jet-sale-to-bahrain/2017/03/29/6762d422-1abf-406e-aaff-fbc5a6a2e0ac_story.html?utm_term=.958b15fca73e#comments Anyone taking Omarosa seriously didn't see how she actively sabotaged Kwame on The Apprentice. I didn't read this, I was amazed that someone thought she was worth this effort: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/omarosa-manigault-is-in-trumps-white-house-because-of-her-loyalty-but-what-is-she-doing-there/2017/03/29/9079294a-0387-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_omarosa-750a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.ff2744dd503d Paul Ryan is even more of a joke than I thought. He's still trying to spin for Nunes. It took them some time to come up with it's a "whistle blower-type person" which I guess is supposed to shield him from being the source of "fabricated" leaks. But telling media that Trump who claims not to apologize for anything was very apologetic to him for tweeting to watch Pirro because he thought she was going to deliver a monologue about Russia. Spinning faster than a salad spinner before adding Russian dressing. They want the NCAA money so they just may get something done to placate because this has cost them in championship series revenue and the NBA All Star Game. At least GE's CEO is standing up for climate change policy: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-climate-change-immelt-236671

I still think there are GOP members who want Trump gone and aren't interested in shielding him and especially not at their expense. The leaks will continue from everywhere. And I'm sure the TrumPutins are going to try to figure out how they can break the SIC. Burr is clearly not going to be as amateurish as Nunes, who is now trying to blame the Democrats because he thinks everyone has the intelligence of the Trumpkin society. Maybe he's taking his cues from Trumpidiot who said the Dems would be crawling on their knees to him and has temporarily switched to we're going to work together and this is going to be easy. Democrats would be smart to keep their distance from anything resembling cooperation with him on health care and other major issues. Everyone around him is a candidate for collateral damage. Maybe Mark Warner will be able to keep the SIC on track. Right now, I feel as if they all know what the end result should be and they're simply figuring how to get there in a way that is going to stick.

I am a tad bit dismayed to see how Devin Nunes can lie about seeing evidence and be defiant about not showing it to his fellow committee members, cancel everything, and bring the whole thing to a screeching halt without there being any consequences for his actions at all. I really hope whatever he's hiding is exposed sooner rather than later and that this whole thing blows up in his and his cohorts faces, including Paul Ryan. Hopefully the Senate Intelligence Committee will do a better job and their chairman won't turn out be an obstructionist as well. Unfortunately next up includes this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/karen-pence-is-the-vice-presidents-prayer-warrior-gut-check-and-shield/2017/03/28/3d7a26ce-0a01-11e7-8884-96e6a6713f4b_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_no-name:homepage/story&utm_term=.c60564c36203 I do kind of think that they will be much easier to neutralize than Trump since unlike him they actually have an agenda that is spelled out clearly enough to attack. Trump is all over the place with his flip flopping and contradictions that is both chaotic and extremely tiresome.

Oh don't worry. In the opening scene of Bigly, the true story of America's first CEO and his epic failures, he'll be the one switching his avatar to Mike Pence then Paul Ryan and finally Howdy Doody.

I cannot recall the first time I saw him. He's happily residing in Trumptopia for now. I don't know whether he's a lifer or simply going with the flow and I don't suppose it matters. I just don't think he adds anything to panel discussions at all. I guess I am biased because I prefer Republican analysts who aren't pretending Trump is some open-minded forward-thinking individual who knows what he's doing and will take a loss well and try again. While Alex Castellano was spinning because in this life, anything that is bad for the Republicans has to be infinitely worse for the Democrats, Matthew Dowd suggested that Trump ought to take a look in the mirror.

Here's another reason to add to the shrinking job pool: http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/27/us/refugees-jobs-drug-testing/index.html

@DramatistDreamer I wouldn't waste any time on Hugh Hewitt. Maybe he's a glass half-full kind of guy because he was sitting there yesterday putting a positive spin on the shenanigans and saying how Gorsuch was the story they should be talking about but it was getting lost because well, apparently healthcare is more important to some people. Anytime I hear one of them open their mouths and claim that Obamacare has driven up premiums, I am thoroughly convinced that they've spent their lives shielded from the reality of how insurance companies work (or business for that matter). They don't get that if they totally deregulated that prices would be even higher for less. Once upon a time Minute Maid orange juice came in a 64 oz carton and now it's down to 59 oz and the price went up instead of down. Pepsi didn't just abandon the 24 oz 6-packs because they were looking to make society healthier. They charge the same and higher for 16 oz. Life would be so tough and enlightening if any of them had to live in the "real world." Oh, and they're the ones orchestrating the collapse of Obamacare by pulling ads, cutting out essential parts, etc., and proudly bragging about its impending demise because we should all celebrate the pain and suffering of the people (or customers as Jared Kushner sees citizens).