Search Results for: trump

I've tried unsubscribing to these things but I continue to get them. Maybe I continue to get them because I've tried unsubscribing to them…

Mark, you've been identified as one of President Trump's BEST supporters, and we wanted to reach out to let you know about your EXCLUSIVE offer.

President Trump originally authorized a 600%-MATCH on all contributions, but we're SO CLOSE to CRUSHING our $30,000,000 End-of-Month Goal that he's decided to up the stakes. FOR ONE HOUR: all contributions will be 700%-MATCHED!

That's right, Mark. When you make your next contribution, it will make 700% MORE of an impact.

This offer is only available for the NEXT HOUR, so you need to act fast.

Please contribute ANY AMOUNT RIGHT NOW to help us CRUSH our End-of-Month Goal and your gift will be 700%-MATCHED.

The President will be reviewing the updated list of Deadline Donors later tonight. Will he see your name on it?

I don't quite get how this works. Trump says to his guys, "Tell them that for every $100 they give, we'll get $700 instead of $600." Who from? It makes it sound like Trump is donating the money to himself but only on the condition that I send some money first. If I don't send him the $100, he won't give himself the other $600.

And this e-mail arrived in my e-mailbox around 4:00 in the morning so by the time I saw it, the one hour was long over. So I guess now if I were to give him the $100, he wouldn't give himself the extra money so what's the point? Oh, if only he'd made his generous offer to himself good for six hours.

But I do believe Trump's personally going to look over the list of donors tonight and notice that my name is not on there. And he's going to turn to some aide and say, "What's with Evanier? He used to be one of my BEST supporters." And maybe someone will gently break the crushing news to him that I've never given him a nickel and I've always thought he was a horrible, destructive human being.

George T. Conway on what you have to believe in order to believe Donald Trump deserves four more years in the White House instead of a longer stretch in prison.

They keep writing me…

Have you always wanted one of our ICONIC Make America Great Again Hats?

Well, you're in luck. President Trump just hand-signed one of them and, because you've always been one of his best supporters, he specifically requested that it go to YOU.

All you have to do is contribute ANY AMOUNT before 11:59 PM TONIGHT and you'll automatically be entered to win this BRAND-NEW 2020 Make America Great Again Hat that was signed by YOUR President.

We're only offering this exclusive opportunity to 700 Patriots — make sure you're one of them.

So let me see if I have this right: Donald Trump signed a hat and said, "Here — make sure this gets to Mark Evanier. He's one of my best supporters!" This makes me think that maybe the president isn't very well-informed or aware.

But instead of sending me the hat he wants me to have, his campaign staff has decided to put it into a raffle and let 700 people compete for it — and we all have to make some sort of donation before Midnight tonight. That doesn't seem fair.

What they should have done, so as to not waste this man's precious time — time he could be spending on the golf course or selling beans — is to tell him, "Mark Evanier is not one of your best supporters. He thinks you're a terrible incompetent and an awful human being who belongs in prison." I hope they do this but I hope they break it to him gently.

I just found this in my e-mailbox…

Mark,

I've been involved in many races over the years and never before have I witnessed a President who is as dedicated to serving this Nation and its people as President Trump.

I took some time to review our vital End-of-Month results, and while we hit our $25,000,000 goal, I noticed that your name was MISSING from the list of donors.

JULY END-OF-MONTH DONOR FILE
SUPPORTER: Mark Evanier
END-OF-MONTH DONATION: $0

President Trump told me you've been a HUGE supporter since DAY ONE, so I was surprised to see you missed this opportunity to help us WIN BIG. Your support is vital to our movement, which is why I've been authorized to EXTEND your 600%-MATCH.

For 1 HOUR ONLY your gift will be 600%-MATCHED!

Please contribute $42 in the NEXT HOUR and your gift will automatically be 600%-MATCHED.

Bill Stepien
Campaign Manager
Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.

I don't understand. Donald Trump has been so truthful about the economy and his taxes and the screw-ups managing The Pandemic and his relationships with folks like Stormy Daniels and Jeffrey Epstein and how much of The Wall has been built and his relationship with Putin and his conversations with the Ukraine and what Article II of The Constitution means and who really pays for his increased tariffs and what the Mueller Report said and where Hurricane Dorian was expected to hit and how windmills cause cancer and all those other things…

But why would he tell his campaign manager that Mark Evanier has been a huge (excuse me — a HUGE) supporter since Day One?

As Jonathan Chait notes, "Many Republicans started the process believing 1) President Trump did not demand investigation in return for aid but that 2) doing so would be unacceptable. They now believe the opposite on both points." And that's what happened. When they thought he hadn't done it — or at least that that couldn't be proven — they said it would be a very bad, even criminal thing for Trump to do. But now that it's pretty obvious he did it, it's no big deal, just politics as usual and certainly not an impeachable offense.

Mr. Chait has also written this article about why he thinks Bernie Sanders is not the guy to defeat Donald Trump and Willam Saletan wrote this article arguing the same thing. My opinion doesn't mean a whole lot and it is very much subject to change…but right this minute, I think they're probably right. And neither article even mentions another problem, apart from the Socialist label that Sanders has as a candidate: His age and his recent heart attack. There's a lot of grueling campaigning ahead and any medical problems could become a big election issue. Remember how much traction Trump claimed when Hillary had a cold.

But do read Eric Levitz on why the Democratic party needs to embrace or at least accept support from those who may not be as ideologically pure as some of us might like. I think this is a very wise, important observation. It will be of special interest to those who believe (and I don't think I do) that Trump will cry "Foul!' and refuse to accept defeat, and that if we want to get him to actually vacate the Oval Office, he has to be beaten by a landslide. That's all for now.

Heather Digby Parton reminds us that Donald Trump and his administration are merely carrying on a grand presidential tradition of lying about a war they think we should be in. Trump and his people are just doing a worse job of it than usual.

Heather Digby Parton might well be described as a left-wing pundit. Here, right-wing pundit Rod Dreher says pretty much the same thing.

Up is down, black is white, right is left and Donald Trump is saying that he's making Obamacare better and Democrats are trying to destroy it. Read Jonathan Chait for all the details and while we're at it, here's the Associated Press fact check on the subject.

Why are crazier and crazier actions and claims coming out of the White House? Steve Benen thinks it's because everyone who could talk sense into this president has either quit or been ousted.

And lastly: William Saletan says "In foreign policy — as in morals, trade, criminal justice, fiscal policy, and the rule of law — Republicans have no firm principles. Sometimes they stand for human rights and against tyranny. Sometimes they ignore human rights and defend tyrants. But rain or shine, you can count on Republicans to attack the patriotism of Democrats."

Fred Kaplan discusses how Trump and those around him have decided to pretend that Article I of The Constitution doesn't exist or that Trump has the power to override it…or something. This is another one of those "If Obama had done that…" matters.

Most of the writers over at the American Conservative website seem pretty unhappy with Trump engaging Iran as he has, and also with the position that Congress has no right to declare or stop war, nor should they even be providing oversight over the Executive branch. Here's Daniel Larison, again saying a lot of the same things Fred Kaplan is saying. Also, read Rod Dreher.

Yet another investigation of Hillary Clinton — this one urged on by Mr. Trump — has failed to find any trace of those actual crimes that her detractors claim were so obvious and undeniable. I remember some of them, when Trump was elected, saying it was only a matter of weeks until Ms. Clinton would be doing hard time. And you have to kinda think there's nothing Donald would love better than Hillary in the slammer unless it was throwing Barack in there with her.

And you may remember that I've said here, probably on more than one occasion, that one of the phoniest, nastiest accusations anyone can make in the political world is to say that someone "hates America." It's like, "Never mind what he's said or done. I've looked into his heart and I know he hates America." And I think I also wrote about the similar hollow insult that was hurled at so many folks who opposed the Vietnam War and wanted to bring our troops home, soon and safe. That was the charge that "they hate our troops." Well, now we have Republican senators saying that "Democrats love terrorists." It's another thing you say about some opponent when you have nothing real to say about them.

William Saletan says that Mike Pompeo is lying about the lethal drone strike on Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Of course he's lying. That's in his job description.

Fred Kaplan suggests that the problem with finding a diplomatic solution to the situation with Iran is that no one around Trump wants that, perhaps because none of them has any idea how to do that.

Daniel Larison believes that "Congress must vote to cut off all funding for a war with Iran." They won't but they should.

Lastly: I don't usually find anything I think is linkworthy on Reason, the prominent Libertarian site, but you might want to read Matt Welch. He says, "The truth, which literally hurts, is that every administration lies about war, particularly (though not only) about its reasons for initiating deadly force." I think he may overstate his case a bit…but only a bit.

I had a nice week or so of pretending he wasn't there but eventually, we all have to get back to reality. Here are three reminders…

First up: Daniel Larison reviews how Trump's approach to Iran and North Korea has basically been to do almost nothing — and certainly nothing that's been effective — but to keep telling the American people he's solved those problems. But he hasn't. Money quote from Larison…

The problem here is not just that Trump gambled on bad policy goals and lost, but that he is determined to lie to the public about those policies for as long as he can. Trump has made sure that neither the Iranian nor the North Korean government can trust him, and he has proved to the American people that we can't trust him, either. His foreign policy initiatives fail in no small part because no one believes what he says and no one is willing to take a chance by trusting him to honor the commitments he makes.

Secondly: Jonathan Chait reminds us that Trump is still waging war against CNN because, as Chait puts it, "its message is not controlled by his loyalists." He also likes to lie about the ratings of anyone in that category. It reminds me of a blog post that famed zillionaire Richard Branson wrote back in 2016…

Some years ago, Mr. Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted. Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people. He didn't speak about anything else and I found it very bizarre. I told him I didn't think it was the best way of spending his life. I said it was going to eat him up, and do more damage to him than them. There must be more constructive ways to spend the rest of your life.

Finally for now, Steve Benen tells how Trump's claims and predictions about the stock market do not relate to reality or even to each other. Quote from Benen…

Part of the problem with Trump's boasts is that he often sees the market as a real-time political barometer tied directly to developments in D.C. If the major indexes are on an upswing, the president sees it as proof of his genius. If they're declining, he insists his political opponents are to blame for the downturn. The result is routine incoherence.

The other day, I saw a clip of John McCain in something on CNN and I couldn't help think the following: That if he was still alive, he would already have been the first Republican senator to support the impeachment. Just a thought.

First of all, as a proud half-Jewish person, I'm looking at this…

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday to interpret Judaism as a nationality and not just a religion, a move that the Trump administration believes will fight what they perceive as anti-Semitism on college campuses, a White House official said.

I understand neither the reasons nor the possible ramifications for this and as far as I can see on the Internet, that quandary's kind of unanimous. The folks in favor of it are in favor of it because Trump's in favor of it. The ones opposing it are opposing it because Trump's in favor of it. And an insufficient number of Jews seem to have been consulted before the decision was made.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that two articles of impeachment are in Mr. Trump's future. Daniel Larison of the American Conservative explains why they are not only valid but necessary. Here's an excerpt…

The case for Trump's impeachment seemed quite strong more than two months ago, and the evidence provided to the House's impeachment inquiry has strengthened it further. The president's abuse of power is not in dispute. It is clear that he used the powers of his office in an attempt to extract a corrupt favor for his personal benefit, and this is precisely the sort of offense that impeachment was designed to keep in check. It doesn't matter if the attempt succeeded. All that matters is that the attempt was made. It is also undeniable that he has sought to impede the investigation into his misconduct. The president has committed the offenses he is accused of committing, and the House should approve both articles of impeachment.

No, they probably have no chance of passing the Senate…but then the articles voted against Bill Clinton had no chance of passing that Senate and were about a lesser matter and not one Republican thought that was a reason not to go to trial. My guess is this is not the only time this president will be impeached. My guess is the narrative will become "He commits crimes, Republicans protect him, he commits more crimes…" And the 2020 election becomes about only whether the country is fine with that.

As Jonathan Chait points out, when the charges against Trump were first made, prominent Republicans assumed they could never be proven with any certainty so they said, "That would be troubling if true." Now that the charges have been proven with as much certainty as there is about anything in Washington, they've had to switch to "No, that is not troubling."

Meanwhile: The Justice Department has released a 434-page inspector general's report on the origin of the FBI probe into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia. It's a something-for-everyone bonanza and everyone's out there spinning whatever they can spin to their advantage. It's amazing how one report could be so right about everything bad it says the other side did and so wrong when it says my side did anything bad. Glenn Kessler straightens out a lot of the spin for us. And so it goes…

I'm not sure which I'm getting more tired of: People who are sure Donald Trump will win a second term or people who are sure he won't. One group will see their expected outcome but I think the "being sure" part is foolish.

This is such an unconventional, volatile presidency that I wouldn't wager he'll even be president by my birthday, which is next March. You know what I do feel certain of? That the current Ukraine mess won't drive him from the White House but that there will be more scandals of equal or greater magnitude that will emerge before Election Day…probably many more if/when some arm of government gets its mitts on his tax records. There was a time we never thought Nixon supporters would abandon him but eventually, it looked like he'd bring down his entire party…and they did.

Here are a few articles worth reading, starting with Daniel Larison, who notes that for all his self-promoted rep as a "great negotiator," Trump has done nothing in the area of foreign relations but fail, fail, fail. Here's an excerpt in case you're too feeble to click on the link…

He has no respect for diplomacy, and he doesn't understand how diplomacy works, so it is not surprising that he is so bad at it. Instead of securing new agreements, he has squandered a real opportunity with North Korea, and he has deliberately stoked tensions with Iran. He foolishly took ownership of a regime change effort in Venezuela that has yielded nothing but more suffering for people in Venezuela. For all of his empty blather about building a better relationship with Russia, he has scuttled one arms control treaty with Moscow and seems determined to scrap New START as well. His signature move of reneging on agreements in an attempt to force more concessions from other parties has consistently backfired and left the U.S. in a worse position than when he started. Trump has shown that he can burn down the diplomatic achievements of others, but all that the U.S. has to show for his efforts is ashes and smoke.

Meanwhile, as Republicans come up with new explanations of how Trump did nothing wrong vis-à-vis Ukraine, William Saletan keeps pointing out how these explanations are themselves damning to the guy in the Oval Office. The new justification for his actions is that Ukraine was out to bring him down. And how were they doing that? By cooperating with legitimate U.S. investigations of the Trump administration. Quote…

The revenge theory starts with a May 23 meeting at the White House. A delegation of Trump appointees and a Republican senator, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, had just returned from Ukraine. They told Trump that Zelensky, who had just been inaugurated, was launching an unprecedented campaign against corruption. If Trump had cared about corruption, the delegation's report would have moved him. It didn't. He fixated instead on the idea that Ukraine was out to get him.

Lastly, Rudy Giuliani may have stopped inflicting friendly-fire damage on his client Donald Trump by staying off TV talk shows but "America's Mayor" still has a Twitter account. As Aaron Rupar notes, the Bizarro version of Perry Mason is doing Trump damage with his latest tweets. Lovely.

Matthew Yglesias provides an overview of what Donald Trump has accomplished in his first three years in office. It's not a bad list if you think the purpose of the government is to make things better for the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and defenseless.

Politifact itemizes six key findings in the public impeachment hearings.

Here's a report from another Fact Checker. Trump keeps claiming that whatever election tampering and mail-hacking was done in the 2016 election came from Ukraine, not Russia, and involved a Ukrainian company called Crowdstrike. Even his closest aides have told him this is wrong in so many ways, including the fact that Crowdstrike is an American company. The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler would like to award sixteen of his paper's non-coveted Pinocchios to Trump but must settle for the maximum of four. This is a good item to forward to any friends who'll tell you that Trump never tells lies. They'll probably argue that it's not a lie if he really believes it.

Is Trump really trying to dial back U.S. involvement in foreign wars? If you go by his speeches, the answer is yes. But as Daniel Larison notes, if you look at what Trump actually does, you get a very different picture.

And Bob Cesca lays out how the defense of Trump's actions in the quid pro quo matter is crumbling as more and more facts undermine it. Enoy.

William Saletan blows a gaping hole in Trump's defense. His defenders have been pointing to two conversations he's been reported to have had, both stating that he wanted no quid pro quo for releasing the money to Ukraine. "See?" they say. "He told his associates the opposite of what you're charging him with wanting!" Okay…but as Saletan points out, those statements were both made after Trump learned that the Whistleblower had blown his whistle and reported Trump was demanding the quid pro quo. It's like Charlie Manson, after he learned he'd been fingered for the Tate-LaBianca killings, telling everyone, "I told Tex not to murder anyone in that house!"

This will matter a lot to the Trump backers who are willing to accept evidence he committed a crime. I'm guessing that in this great country of ours, there must be at least ten or eleven such people.

This revelation by the press of when Trump knew the jig was up and it was time to start lying about his orders would qualify as the latest Bad News for Donald Trump. I would guess our latest Donald Trump Outrage would be his new insistence that there's a plot among Liberals to rename Thanksgiving. Actually, there is such a plot but it's among Big Retail Companies to rechristen it "The Opening Day of Christmas Shopping."

Well, at least Trump can take comfort in one thing. He may not be in as much trouble as Rudy Giuliani. But then Rudy must need the money. Have you any idea what it costs these days to live under a bus?

A couple of times on this site, I've suggested that Trump might not make it to the final presidential ballot. That's not a real prediction on my part but doesn't it seem a wee bit more possible this week? This whole business with Ukraine won't knock him off but a few more of these scandals could do it. So could a total meltdown/breakdown that convinces much of America he's mentally unstable and he seems to be getting ever-closer to that. So could a lot of things.

The most interesting revelation for me this week was not that Trump ordered the deal to release the funds in exchange for an investigation of the Bidens. We all knew that…or thought we did. I was surprised it was proven as decisively as it was, leaving his defenders with precious little wiggle room to insist it had never happened. I was also surprised that it came out that what Trump wanted was not the investigation so much as an announcement that they'd launch an investigation. It wasn't necessary for them to actually investigate. He knew they'd never find anything. What he wanted was to be able to refer to "the corrupt Joe Biden whose whole family is under investigation." And then he'd allude to damning dirt he'd seen that was being uncovered but we'd never see it. As this article reminds us…

During the height of Donald Trump's relentless birtherism in 2011, the reality TV star claimed he had personally sent investigators to Hawaii to uncover information about President Barack Obama's birthplace and boasted that they couldn't "believe what they're finding."

Of course, we never saw all the dirt they found. We never even saw evidence that Trump has ever sent anyone to investigate…but that's his playbook. Ukraine would have investigated the Bidens the same way. It would be great irony if Trump got himself impeached trying to destroy Biden…and then Biden wound up not being his opponent and he had to start ginning up stories about the corrupt Elizabeth Warren, the corrupt Bernie Sanders, the corrupt Pete Buttigieg…

I'm starting to think launching this feature was a mistake on my part. Three-fourths of the news sites on the Internet have turned into little Trump Dumps, listing Yesterday's Bad News for Donald Trump and Yesterday's Outrage by Donald Trump. Doing it daily also forces me to spend time reading those sites and there are some days when I'd rather just forget he's there and he has so many people hating each other. The last few days I've had an intermittent headache and while he's not the cause of it, he sure ain't helping.

I couldn't follow all of the hearings today but my impression is that this is the game he and his defenders are playing. If it feels familiar, that may be with how much it resembles the way O.J. Simpson's lawyers made it possible for him to walk. They couldn't argue the facts of his case. They offered no alternate theory of who'd killed those two people if it wasn't Simpson. In fact, after the case was over and O.J. was acquitted, several of those lawyers and others who supported him said they would blow the case wide open with books revealing who really dunnit.

None of them did. Well, F. Lee Bailey eventually published one that was high on conjecture and devoid of facts…but the point is that no one had an even semi-credible argument that someone else killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. Simpson got away because they convinced the jury that there was "something wrong" with all the evidence. They couldn't really say what it was they made that jury generally distrust the whole prosecution and they set O.J. free because to those jurors, a frame-up felt highly likely. It was feelings over facts.

The way this parallels what we're seeing now — and I'm not claiming this is an exact match — is that Trump's defenders are attacking the process and the witnesses saying "something's wrong." No matter how many fact witnesses (and even the not-a-transcript that Trump released) corroborate what The Whistleblower said, they argue that he is evil, he is biased, he is a Never-Trumper, he has always had it in for Donald, etc., and so he's tainted everything that followed. (A "Never-Trumper," by the way, now seems to be anyone who has ever indicated that he or she thinks D.J.T. has ever done anything that wasn't brilliant and perfect and more successful than everyone else.)

In other words, if the process proves Trump committed an impeachable offense, the process cannot be trusted because it involves people who think Trump committed an impeachable offense.

Anyway, there are ten bazillion sites where you can read what was said in the hearings today and why it's so damning to anyone who cares about facts over feelings. I'm going to go lie down and I won't think about Trump except to come up with a new name for this feature without the word "Daily" in it.