It was, even by Trumpian standards, the tweet storm to end all tweet storms, a Category 5 Twitter tempest that began Saturday night at 11 p.m. and didn’t end until noon Sunday — 10 tweets filled with misspellings and errors in which Trump attacked the FBI, Barack Obama, Crooked Hillary, Liddle Adam Schiff and Gen. McMaster, his own national security adviser. Guess who he didn’t attack? That’s right, Russia. Or Putin. Meanwhile his senior aides were advising key allies to ignore Trump’s tweets. Via The Washington Post.
David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, writes in The Atlantic that if there’s anything that Mueller’s indictments of the Russia 13 proves it’s that America is, in fact, under attack and Trump just doesn’t care.
In what may be the easiest fact check of all time, Trump claims he never said that Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 election. To which every fact-checker replies: Oh, let me count the ways. Via The New York Times.
Read the full indictment, via the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
In other Mueller news, former Trump aide Richard Gates agrees to plead guilty and to testify against Paul Manafort. And the beat goes on. Via The Los Angeles Times.
In Parkland, the Stoneman Douglas teenagers are calling BS on adult hypocrisy and the idea that thoughts and prayers work better than new laws and regulations in protecting students from mass killings. Via The New Yorker.
It appears that many of the red flags raised by Nikolas Cruz’s behavior were not missed. The school shooter’s teacher say his problems became apparent in middle school and that school officials worked very hard to get him help. Via The Washington Post.
From The National Review, Kevin Williams writes that the FBI director should be fired for the agency’s failure to follow up on a tip that Cruz wanted to shoot up a school.
There’s a long and sleazy list of situations over the years in which Donald Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, stepped in to protect his boss, doing whatever it took. Stormy Daniels is the least of it. What we can guess is that Roy Cohn would have been proud. Via The New York Times.
LeBron James didn’t just dribble (and pass and shoot) his way to the NBA All-Star MVP award. He also didn’t shut up. And neither did many of his NBA co-stars. Via ESPN.
Photo by Jurgen Appelo, via Flickr: Creative Commons
It’s kind of terrifyingly mesmerizing…watching a sitting U.S. President, his enablers, and his administration meltdown in high def slow motion. I wasn’t around for Watergate, but I can’t imagine the vantage point was as good as ours is right now.
Resignation Countdown has officially started….
A Politico/Morning Consult survey shows Republicans likely to hold on to Congressional majorities and “reinforce the strategy to promote their tax law ahead of November’s midterm elections.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/14/2018-midterm-elections-republicans-take-lead-on-a-generic-ballot.html?recirc=taboolainternal
Some countries, especially in Europe, have managed to restrict immigration without protest “In addition to marriage and ancestry, countries with high barriers to attaining citizen status may have special residency or citizenship tracks for people who fit certain categories, such as being a highly skilled professional or investing substantially in a business enterprise.”.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/121114/5-hardest-countries-getting-citizenshi.asp#ixzz5770EGdrL
The #MeToo movement has claimed another victim and it’s about time: Bill Clinton. That’s right, the former president has become persona non grata in his own party and it’s just too, too funny. “In a year when the party is deploying all their other big guns and trying to appeal to precisely the kind of voters [Bill] Clinton has consistently won over, an array of Democrats told POLITICO they’re keeping him on the bench. They don’t want to be seen anywhere near a man with a history of harassment allegations, as guilty as their party loyalty to him makes them feel about”
It wasn’t always that way, of course, less than three years ago one lesser known Colorado columnist was willing to forgive all his shortcomings if it furthered his misguided political views, “Bill Clinton may have his flaws — some pretty significant ones at that — but you can’t deny the Big Dog his genius. And he has a particular genius for cutting to the chase”
Would that same columnist again welcome Clinton with open arms? We’ll never know because he’s extremely reluctant to acknowledge, much less correct, mistakes.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/14/bill-clinton-metoo-backlash-campaign-407280
More bad news for Democrats. This time the messenger is left-leaning syndicated columnist Eleanor Clift who reports, “Republicans have the edge in fundraising leading up to the November midterm elections”.
But, as Mrs. Clift notes, the really bad news, “is the extraordinary top-to-bottom organization that Republicans have built over time in 30 states while Democrats can point to a similar effort in just three: Colorado, Minnesota, and North Carolina.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-republicans-raised-a-political-iron-curtain-around-30-states?ref=home
Writing in National Interest Ted Galen Carpenter notes that, “Democrats and the broader progressive community argue that a hostile nation worked to defeat Hillary Clinton and install a president that Moscow could influence, perhaps even control. Those allegations have become increasingly shrill and over-the-top.” That’s putting it mildly and if you don’t believe me read the comment that follows this one.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/why-democrats-are-obsessed-russia-24450
Speaking of useful idiots…thanks for the Russian troll propaganda, Comrade Don. May you someday have enough credits for the Order of Lenin.
Jay L. Bird,
2016 Electoral College results:
President Trump 306
Hillary Clinton 232
Get over it!
If those results are clean, Comrade Don, what’s Mueller doing?
Remember my little Russian troll…there’s always the asterisk…forever.
Jay L. Bird,
That’s a good question.
Let me know when he finds evidence of collusion with President Trump’s election campaign. Until then:
2016 Electoral College results:
President Trump 306
Hillary Clinton 232
Get over it!