Trump Should Be Thankful

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He’s screwed up enough this week already he should be grateful for the four-day weekend. Otherwise who knows how much damage he’d have done by Friday, like lose Nebraska in a poker game.

Let’s review.

Monday a federal judge blocked Trump’s new “asylum” policy and added a rebuke:

“Whatever the scope of the President’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” wrote the judge, whom President Barack Obama nominated to the federal bench in 2012. Tigar reasoned that the “failure to comply with entry requirements such as arriving at a designated port of entry should bear little, if any, weight in the asylum process.”

The Trump administration said Tuesday it will continue to press the matter in court.

In Trump’s typical style, he called the 9th Circuit a “disgrace” and the judge an “Obama judge.” Then Chief Justice John Roberts spoke up.

Chief Justice John Roberts is pushing back against President Donald Trump for his description of a judge who ruled against Trump’s migrant asylum policy as an “Obama judge.”

It’s the first time the Republican-appointed leader of the federal judiciary has offered even a hint of criticism of Trump, who has previously blasted federal judges who ruled against him.

Roberts said Wednesday the U.S. doesn’t have “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” He commented in a statement released by the Supreme Court after a query by The Associated Press.

It also strikes me that if Trump wants to further pursue the matter in court,  pissing off the entire federal judiciary isn’t a smooth move.

But there’s more. There’s so much more.

After his cowardly butt kissing of Saudi Arabia yesterday, he did it again today. This is one of his morning tweets:

Greg Sargent wrote today,

In this case and many others, Trump is not being “frank” about his real priorities, and he is not putting America first. He’s putting his own naked self-interest over what’s good for America, and prioritizing the real-world policy realization of his own prejudices and hatreds over any good-faith, fact-based effort to determine, by any discernible standard, what might actually be in the country’s interests.

At the very least, he probably assumes lower oil prices make him look good. But there must be more. How much money does he owe the Saudis? Where are these transactions hidden? For that matter, what about the Russians? We need some good money-launderings sleuths looking into this.

Wait a minute – House Intelligence Panel Hiring Money-Laundering Sleuths!

The House intelligence committee’s incoming Democratic majority is taking its first steps to follow Donald Trump’s money, The Daily Beast has learned.

The committee is looking to hire money-laundering and forensic accounting experts, three sources familiar with the plans confirm to The Daily Beast. One Democratic committee office said the purpose of the potential new hires is to examine unanswered financial questions about Trump and Russia, but their work could apply broadly across the panel’s intelligence oversight.

Also this week:

President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.

Charles Pierce:

Here’s the thing. If we’re still following the Constitution, as soon as the president* finished asking the question, he was guilty of a high crime and liable to impeachment and removal from office. It doesn’t matter that it never happened, or that McGahn talked him out of it. Given his position, the very suggestion by the president* that the Justice Department behave as his personal Praetorian Guard is an obstruction of justice and an abuse of power. McGahn should’ve walked that conversation over to Robert Mueller’s place as soon as he left the Oval Office. However, he didn’t, and the Times leaves us with this little land mine deep in the story.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further.

It is? We’re “unclear” whether the president* actually acted on this notion, compounding his felonies, and we’re “unclear” whether investigations of Clinton and Comey might be underway right now. That’s one fcklord of a cliffhanger right there, NYT.

Meanwhile, there are a growing number of court challenges to Matthew Whitaker’s appointment as acting Aggorney General. Oh, and what about her emails?

So, yeah, the Creature should be thankful tomorrow is a national holiday and people will be watching football and stuffing themselves on turkey and not paying attention to him.

15 thoughts on “Trump Should Be Thankful”

  1. Loved Trump's line, "Every case we file in the 9th circuit, we get beaten".

    It would never occur to him he needs a better case or better lawyers. Or enough brains to bring the case to court in the first place.

  3. There's something afoot for Friday or next week according to Rachael Maddow. Filings from early this week requested an unexplained 10-day delay in filing. There's also something sealed in front of a panel of judges in DC – and the only Trump appointee to that court panel has recused. 

    Trump is more and more unrestrained in the West Wing. The love letter to MBS of Saudi Arabia would not have been released in the 3rd-grade format in Trump's first year. Outside the WH, there are still pros in the DOJ, Pentagon and State Dept. Mattis has refused to expand the role of the military on the border to do police functions. Whittaker is (IMO) being warned by subordinates in DOJ that overt acts leave a trail, and if the WH is charged with obstruction, so will any government employees who participated in illegal acts. The history from the Nixon era is pretty clear. (Nixon's A/G went to prison.) My opinion is that anyone who cam get Senate conformation to the A/G position is going to do a Sessions and draw back from any overt action resulting in a free trip to jail.

    I think the wheels are coming off this week – they will be clearly off by the first of the year. The momentum will carry Trump for some distance as he demands Congress and his cult disbelieve the facts. Trump loyalists will begin to jump next year in Congress and where poll numbers will go is anybody's guess – down, but how far? Trump's main goal will be to secure the re-nomination at all costs, because the only defense against the legal charges will be to blow up the Constitution completely and shut down investigations which can't lead to charges until Trump is out of office!

    One other thought – Trump was (reportedly) asking about Pence's loyalty. Odd, because Pence has been the most creepy Trump toady in the administration. Is there some uncertainty that Pence would issue a pardon for Trump when things get to that point? Even Trump knows Pence is riding the Trump train for his own purposes. Will Pence stay loyal after the facts come out even to the point of political suicide. (Ford's career ended with the Nixon pardon.) Is a VP shakeup for a guaranteed pardon the last card Trump intends to play?

  4. There is weird stuff going on. Rachel keeps talking about very secret, closed court sessions going on in DC – where a Trump appointed judge recused himself, probably because he has knowledge of Trump's activities during the election. One of her guests opined that this is probably grand jury related, maybe even Trump fighting a subpoena.

    She noted that Trump's schedule has been extremely light since the election. One day he only 1) received the White House Christmas Tree, and 2) had lunch with VP Pence. That was the whole day. This was after the questions he answered "all by himself" for Mueller.

    One of my hunches, is that Trump may be getting ready to leave office and putting Pence in charge. Sounds crazy, but it's possible. I intuit that there's a mountain of crime and corruption that he's hiding, and he knows it's going to come out in 2019.

    Whatever the real story, there is a lot of secret activity going on right now that is almost not making the news at all.

  5. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!

    Is he talking about going lower with oil prices or with going lower into the moral abyss?

  6. moonbat…I hope your hunch pans out. It would make sense that Senate Repugs would let him slip out the door rather than having to held to account for themselves in the case of an impeachment. Trump's situation doesn't look like he can sustain another 2 years of scrutiny. I know he finds a degree of safety in constant litigation, but I'm pretty sure he knows he's in a battle he can't win.

  7. Moonbat wrote something similar to what is stuck in twit filter. (I guess.) There's stuff going on that will blow the wheels off the Trump wagon this year. The Maddow report is a hint of that. The wagon will continue on it's own momentum for some time, but Republicans are going to find it.

    Trump does not think there is any legal jeopardy while he is president. I think his current strategy is to get reelected and further consolidate unconstitutional power in the West Wing. He may know that if plan A doesn't work, he's got to pull a Nixon and get a commitment for a pardon from the VP. This will work for Trump but such an agreement (ascent to power in exchange for a pardon) is  corrupt abuse of power which could land the new president in jail. Trump doesn't want to hope for such a deal – he's going to demand an explicit agreement which the VP should not make (if he wants to stay out of jail). So I think Swami is  right – Trump may be nervous that a new VP would have the power to shaft Trump by doing nothing and letting the DOJ prosecute. (Will Ivanka be the next VP?)

     

  8. January, 2019, should be very interesting.

    I'll hold off on opining until the House is in the Democrat's control.

    And then:

    "LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!!!!!"

  9. Trump is thankful for how terrific he is, actual quote from yesterday:

    "President Trump said Thursday that he is thankful "for having a great family and for having made a tremendous difference in this country."

    “I’ve made a tremendous difference in the country,” Trump said. “This country’s so much stronger than it was when I took office and you wouldn’t believe it.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_vKu2xoJaM

  10. Trump says this country is so much stronger since he took office.  He's right, i don't believe it.

  11. Here's a comment I just saw online referring to Corsi's upcoming indictment….thought I would share it. It's kinda cute.

    "Every time Mueller makes an indictment, an angel get's it's wings"

     

  13. Oh Uncledad, I don't have any energy for arguing.  I wouldn't believe it and I don't believe it.  That ought to please everyone.  Trump can't remember what he said anyway.

  15. Uncledad:  I suspected you were being a little facetious.  On the other hand, if you have an inner Trump, it might be time to see an exorcist.

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