Search Results for: trump

I feel very bad for the folks in Hawaii who have a big, probably-destructive hurricane bearing down on them. It makes me more frustrated that so many government resources are going towards nonsense and human misbehavior. Helping out our fellow citizens in times of disaster ought to take precedence over everything. Here's some of the everything…

• Hey, you'll never guess who doesn't think anyone should be investigating Donald Trump's personal life and affairs. It's Ken Starr, the guy who thought it was in the public interest to know every minute detail of Bill Clinton's sex life, right down to descriptions of the presidential penis.
• William Saletan lays out the case that Donald Trump betrayed his country and in the process, answers the oft-asked question, "Where's the collusion?" According to Mr. Saletan, it's all in the public record even before Robert Mueller's office files its report.
• The White House is opposing a bill that would make it more difficult for a foreign power to hack our elections. Gee, I can't imagine why they're against that. Adam K. Raymond has the story.
• As Steve Benen points out, Trump is doing everything he can to pretend that he and Michael Cohen were never close. One of these days, Donald Trump Jr is going to be indicted, someone will ask the president to comment and he'll say, "Donald Who?"
• Daniel Larison keeps writing about how Trump is botching up our relationship with Iran. It's turning out that undoing everything Obama did even when you don't have a better alternative is not a great way to formulate foreign policy.
• Ezra Klein points out that one of the key issues on which Trump won in 2016 was stamping out government corruption. It's going to be very difficult to run on that in 2020 if two-thirds of your associates are in prison.

I seem to be unable to turn on my TV without seeing Michael Avenatti. I even thought I saw him in an old Scooby Doo I wrote that was on Boomerang today. The guy's on so much that even Steve Harvey's saying, "Enough, already!"  Well, better him than Kellyanne Conway.

Oh, and by the way: I'm getting real tired of reporters trying to get Sarah Huckabee Sanders to admit that Trump did something wrong.  She's just doing her job.  The problem is that her job is to just keep saying, in answer to every question, "He did nothing wrong.  No charges have been filed."  It's like trying to get the recorded voice on the phone that tells you the time to instead tell you a knock-knock joke.  Sarah's not allowed to say what you want her to say, people!

The latest thing I'm tired of: Trump supporters saying "We've got to unite and function as one!" That would be a nice sentiment if their idea of uniting wasn't that Trump gets to do everything he wants and no one criticizes or investigates him. It's like folks who think the word "compromise" means "We get 100%, you get zero!" Here are some links…

• Daniel Larison explains why Trump's campaign against Iran makes absolutely no sense except that our prez staked out a ridiculous position there and now doesn't know how to back down from it.
• Kevin Drum looks at the numbers and notes that for all the pain and ill will Trump's border crossing policies have caused, they still haven't diminished the number of people who come here illegally from Mexico.
• Mr. Drum also has some interesting thoughts on How to Fight Climate Change and he is now making the point repeatedly that people are taking Trump's tweets way too seriously; that they're just blather to keep his base aroused and that they have little to do with his actual actions.  Well, they might be an indicator of an increasingly unstable mind…
• Trump keeps saying, "U.S. Steel just announced that they are building six new steel mills." Sometimes, he says it's seven or eight. The truth is they're opening no new steel mills but, hey, isn't all that matters is that his supporters cheer him at rallies and believe they're winning?
• I don't have any real firm opinions about the ousting of Alex Jones from certain social media apart from the conclusion that Jones has mastered a tricky duality: He is insane enough to get a certain kind of person to watch him but still sane enough to exploit that attention for big bucks. Anyway, here's Matt Taibbi with some thoughts of the matter of yanking Jones and his Infowars garbage off Facebook, Spotify and other international forums. Me, I haven't quite made up my mind what kind of precedent is being set here and how it might boomerang.
• Charles P. Pierce says that the one constant train of thought in the Trump Administration is that whatever Barack Obama did must be undone…not because it's wrong but because it was his. We may be only weeks from them bringing Osama bin Laden back to life.

Lastly: Just in the ten minutes it took to compose this, I became tired of another thing. It's people who think that there's any meaningful lineage between today's Democrats or Republicans and the parties by those names of long ago. You don't get credit for what people with the same nominal party affiliation did or did not do about slavery or civil rights in a previous century; not if you aren't even consistent with the positions of your party twenty years ago. "My party fought for equality long ago" does not mean you can't be undermining that fight today.

I can't always focus on Trump's daily tap dances for his base, convincing them to believe in an alternate reality where he turned around the dreadful Obama economy and having the Russians pick our leaders isn't that bad an idea so long as they pick Trump and Trump-like candidates.  It's like an ongoing disaster right outside my window where, since I can't do anything about it, it's sometimes easier not to look.

On a personal level, it's sad (to use one of Trump's favorite words) to see people I know — including some I like and otherwise respect — giving him a pass on things that outraged them when done by Democrats. One friend of mine has never shut up about the time Obama once misspoke and said in a speech there were 57 states. That, my friend insisted, told us something about the man and his honesty or stupidity or something. Apparently, there was a good chance he could fool all of America into thinking there were 57 states.

But every day, Trump serves up a half-dozen of those. His poll numbers are higher than Lincoln's, you need an I.D. to buy groceries, America is more respected than ever in the world, etc. And it's dismaying to see people buy into it because, you know, staying in power is all that matters. If you haven't visited it lately, here's a link to the database of (currently) 4,229 lies and distortions of the Trump presidency as compiled by the Washington Post. The only response to it from the Trump fans seems to be, "Oh, that's the Washington Post. You can't believe anything they say including what day of the week it is."

That's the same defense mechanism Nixon used. You saw how well it worked there. Here are some other links that might be worth your time…

Kevin Drum points out that despite Trump's insistence that Obamacare is a disaster, defunct, long gone, dying any second now, a failure for 17 years (!) and anything else bad he can find to say about it, it's doing rather well.

Matthew Rozsa attacks the new G.O.P. line that collusion isn't a crime. Uh, doesn't it depend to a great extent on who colludes and for what purpose? There's nothing in the statutes about it being illegal to form a partnership but if you and I form a partnership to bust into houses and steal everything, we just might be breaking the law.

As Jonathan Chait notes, Trump has been bragging about making a deal with North Korea to stop with the missiles and to return the remains of American soldiers. And neither brag stands up to any scrutiny.

Ed Kilgore notes that the Trump Administration is trying hard to undo all the progress that's been made about auto fuel-efficiency standards, especially in California (i.e., the state that Trump hates most and vice-versa). If I had to single out one principle that today's Republican leadership values more than anything, it would not be abortion or guns or immigration. It would be the concept that government must never get in the way of a big company missing out on any opportunity to increase profits. And if that means fouling the environment, fine.

Trump will be real happy one of these days when one or more of his supporters beats the crap out of some reporter. And it won't matter which reporter or what they said or did. Just so long as his team feels like they dominate the press and have power to intimidate it.

And I assume you've heard how a Conservative think-tanker set out to prove that Single Payer would be a financial disaster for this county and wound up proving the opposite. It's changing no minds because in this country, studies are just things to put supposed facts behind our prejudices and we never look at those reports and think, "Hey, maybe I was wrong."

Lastly: Is it my imagination or is Trump now beginning to do an impression of Alec Baldwin's impression of him?  I can remember when Nixon began acting like he'd learned how to "do" Nixon by studying David Frye.  And whenever Bill Clinton was in trouble, he sounded just like Phil Hartman doing Bill Clinton in trouble.  It may be significant that no one ever became noteworthy for doing an imitation of Barack Obama.  Even Obama wasn't that good at it sometimes.

A lot of folks out there who don't like Trump are yearning for the political figure who can fight just as dirty as he can, including all the personal insults and nastiness. Matthew Yglesias is toying with the idea that that person could be Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti. And yeah, it's a remote notion but so was Donald Trump in the White House.

The Republican-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has agreed unanimously that the government of Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to help elect Donald Trump. The response from Trump supporters ranges from "No, no matter what anyone finds, there is no evidence to indicate that" to "So what if they did?" and in a few cases to "Well, if that's true, let's tell them not to do that again." Heather Digby Parton has more.

Meanwhile back in North Korea, Trump's squad is demanding that the government there give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program but doesn't seem to be offering any reason why it should. One wonders if this kind of "negotiation" ever worked for Trump when it was just about condominiums and not the entire future of a nation. Read Daniel Larison about this.

And read him here about how Trump had to be talked out of his idea that we should go to war with Venezuela. How close did this great land of ours come to doing that?

Ezra Klein on Donald Trump's poll numbers. They're not as bad as some think nor as good as others insist.

And lastly for now: Donald Trump believes 100% in Jim Jordan's innocence against the charges that Jordan ignored or looked the other way in a massive string of sexual crimes. Well, of course. Donald Trump believes 100% in anyone who believes 100% in Donald Trump and he believes 0% in anyone's claims of having been molested by anyone who isn't an enemy of Donald Trump. And as Ed Kilgore notes, that's just how it works with Donald.

Here's Laura McGann with the best article I've read about the incident where Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant. Ezra Klein summarized it as follows: "The Trump administration's position is not that restaurants shouldn't discriminate against people whose life decisions they disagree with. It's that restaurants shouldn't discriminate against the Trump administration." I still don't know what I would have done in this situation but I'll tell you who's really wrong in this case: The Trump supporters who are phoning in death threats and posting hateful reviews of other, unaffiliated restaurants that have names similar to the one that kicked out Sarah.

Trump's current immigration policy isn't much more humane than the one he "fixed."

Fred Kaplan previews the upcoming Trump-Putin summit. It'll be a lot of kissing-up to Donald's role model and a display of, as Kaplan puts it, "Trump's naïve belief that personal relationships — specifically, his own charisma — can transcend national interests." This is, after all, a man who recently said, "If Vladimir Putin were sitting next to me at a table instead of one of the others and we were having dinner the other night in Canada, I could say, 'Would you do me a favor? Would you get out of Syria?' 'Would you do me a favor, would you get out of Ukraine? You shouldn't be there. Just come on.'"

Meanwhile, Kaplan doesn't think muoh of Trump's Space Force proposal, either.

Daniel Larison on how Trump keeps misrepresenting what happened with his North Korea summit, boasting about things in the agreement that aren't really in the agreement.

And getting back to the "border crisis" stuff, Matt Taibbi summarizes what he sees as hypocrisy on all sides. Supporters of Trump's policies keep trying to claim that he's doing nothing that Obama and other Democrats didn't do. That's not true but some of the folks opposing what's happening right now weren't all that uncomfy with at least the mentality behind it, pre-Trump.

Here's Matt Yglesias with a good explanation of the charges being brought against the Trump Foundation. As far as I can tell, Trump and his minions have never offered any proof that the allegations aren't true; just countered with insults and charges of "witch hunt." I'm sure that all the folks who wanted Bill and Hillary tossed in the slammer for every possible infraction by the Clinton Foundation will hold Trump to the same standard. Sure they will…

There is tremendous outrage out there about immigrant families being torn apart. You know who's fine with it? All those folks who told us Gay Marriage would destroy families.

Even Conservatives like Rod Dreher are uncomfy with Trump lionizing Kim Jong Un as a great, talented leader. It makes you think Kim got a dub of the pee tape from Putin.

And of course, no one with a straight face can look at the "agreement" between Kim and Trump and think that Trump got anything but hosed. Well, actually, he got something that he can sell to his followers as a triumph but if Obama had come back with that, it would have been condemned as a Neville-Chamberlainesque bargain. Daniel Larison describes what it actually says.

Josh Marshall says that if Russia had a wish list of what it wanted to see happen in the United States, it would look an awful lot like Donald Trump's agenda: "If candidate Trump and President Putin had made a corrupt bargain which obligated President Trump to destabilize all U.S. security and trade alliances (especially NATO, which has been Russia's primary strategic goal for 70 years) and advance the strategic interests of Russia, there's really nothing more remotely realistic he could have done to accomplish that than what he has in fact done."

Amy Davidson Sorkin on Rudy Giuliani's attack. I doubt there are very many people in this country who think Stormy Daniels' story of an affair with Donald Trump is false. There are, however, those who think they if they deny, deny, deny and attack, attack, attack, the story won't do their boy any real damage. And there is of course, Giuliani who will say anything he's told to say.

Here's a list of all of Robert Mueller's indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation so far. Not bad for a fake witch hunt which hasn't done anything.

Trump is now claiming he's caused some major, for-the-better changes in Iran via the stance he's taken against them. Daniel Larison says this is an outright lie.

And Fred Kaplan tells us what to expect (and not to expect) when Trump sits down with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un this Tuesday in Singapore. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Matt Yglesias explains the new theory of presidential power that Trump's White House is advancing…and why it would give dictatorial powers to our Chief Exec. No one who is for this would have been for this if Barack Obama or Bill Clinton had proposed this while they were in office.

Daniel Larison explains why Trump's tariffs and trade wars are bad ideas that will wind up helping no one be better off.

Initially when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, we heard that 64 people had been killed. More recently, we're hearing that the actual number is 4,645 which is quite a jump. So which is it? Probably neither, says Washington Post truth seeker Glenn Kessler. He thinks it's more like 1,000 which is still horrifying but not as horrifying as 4,645 but still indicative of a government that doesn't care about human life.

Here's another view of John McCain, this one from a reporter who has covered him a lot. And lastly…

Since he took residency in the Oval Office, Trump has uttered 3,251 false or misleading statements. You know…in a way, that's kind of impressive.

Some folks are upset this morning that Trump is saying "everyone agrees" he should get the Nobel Peace Prize for a peace that has barely begun to happen. What they don't get is that Trump means everyone on Fox News agrees he should get it. It's just the way the guy talks. Everything he does is perfect. Everyone agrees. What is that lying media talking about when they suggest otherwise? Meanwhile, in other Fake News…

• Joe Conason on why pulling out of the Iran deal might not be good for America but it could be great for Russia. Of course.
• And Daniel Larison writes at some length here and here why it'll be bad for America. Apparently, the main reasons the Iran agreement is "the worst deal ever" in the eyes of Trump and folks like John Bolton are that (a) Obama negotiated it and (b) it somehow doesn't make Iran cease to exist.
• George Will says Donald Trump is not the worst person in our government. That honor, he argues, now belongs to Mike Pence. Frankly, I think the difference between Trump and Pence is about as meaningful as the difference between the Chicken McNuggets at McDonald's and the Crispy Chicken Nuggets at Wendy's.
• Frank Rich is asked if Trump will face any political penalty for his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear pact. Rich replies, "Honestly, I doubt Trump will still be in office when the full fallout of this blunder is felt. The blunder, one should add, is not only to pull out of a deal that was working but also to have no "better deal" (or policy at all) to take its place. But the interesting political piece about both this decision and the onrushing summit with Kim Jong-un is that Trump has persuaded himself that big bold foreign policy moves, however harmful to America and its allies, will rescue him from the rampaging scandal at home."
• A number of corporations gave huge, suspicious cash amounts to Michael Cohen…for what? Andrew Prokop runs us through some of their explanations of what they thought they'd be getting for that money.

So here's what I'm wondering about. We get this steady stream of stories about Trump off-camera being pissed about this or furious about that…stories that obviously have been leaked by sources within the White House. Who's leaking these and how have they been able to remain within the White House?

Here's a thought I had the other day: Once Donald Trump became President of these United States, he had at his disposal the greatest array of investigators in the country as well as access to darn near every state secret and file in the government.  Did he say to someone, "Find me proof that Barack Obama was born in another country and that the birth certificate he released was a forgery"?

Granted, if Obama was born in Kenya and did have someone whip up a fake document, that might be unprovable…but maybe somewhere in some file previously unavailable to Trump, there is some evidence.  Did D.J.T. order a search for it?  Why the hell would he not?  His base would love it if he even hinted there is such proof.

• Our top story tonight is Frank Rich's long, long essay that flows from the new Broadway production of Tony Kushner's long. long play, Angels in America.  It's about Roy Cohn, who might not be the worst human being who ever lived but he's still not too far from the bottom of the species.  Cohn was a mentor of Donald J. Trump and Mr. Rich finds stunning and obvious similarities between the two men.
• Trump says that the White House Correspondents' Dinner ought to be discontinued.  Any time I find myself on the same side of an issue as that man, I naturally must question my own wisdom…but no, I still think it's a pernicious institution.  I just think that for different reasons.  I think the press and politicians should not be intermingling as if the different roles they play are just make-believe they engage in for the public.  Trump just thinks it's treasonous to make fun of the President unless, of course, it's not him.
• Laura McGann says that the reason some people are so outraged about Michelle Wolf's jokes about Sarah Huckabee Sanders is that so many of them were accurate — unlike, say, a Huckabee Sanders briefing.
• Matt Yglesias reminds us that impeaching Donald Trump does not poll well and could easily backfire on Democrats.  Personally, I think…well, you know what I think of the guy currently squatting in the Oval Office but I have no stomach for the trials and legal machinations of impeachment, especially if there is no reasonable expectation of success.  I also don't think Mike Pence would be that much better for the nation.  All that could, of course, change with future revelations…and does anyone think there won't be future revelations?  Trump wouldn't be working overtime to discredit the press if he wasn't expecting future revelations.
• Nathan M. Jensen asks, "Do Taxpayers Know They Are Handing Out Billions to Corporations?"  I think the answer is no…and for some reason, when you tell them that, they kind of shrug and say, "Whatever."  They aren't quite so indifferent when they think their tax dollars are going to help poor people buy groceries.
• Daniel Larison explains why it's stupid to try and rewrite the nuclear deal with Iran.  But hey, it's an Obama accomplishment and in Trumpworld, deals are just things that obligate the other guy, not us.

So what would it have been like if Trump had shown up at the White House Correspondents' Dinner? Well, it might have gone something like this…

In the pantheon of columnists I follow, my two go-to guys for war-related stuff are a liberal (Fred Kaplan) and a conservative (Daniel Larison). Neither thinks any good will come from our new air strikes against Syria though Larison seems to me to be the more outraged of the two…

• Read this Kaplan column and then this one and then this one.
• And then read this Larison column and then this one and then especially this one.
• And if you want to get terrified of what may result, read Matt Taibbi.
• In other news, we have a wide array of columns about what an incredible failure Paul Ryan was as Speaker of the House…unless, of course, all that matters to you is that rich people pay less in taxes no matter what it does to the deficit and the social safety net.  Read Matthew Yglesias, Tara Golshon, Jamelle Bouie and (again) Daniel Larison.
• Joe Conason thinks Trump is about to do something very bad to Veterans.
• And Martin Longman finds eerie similarities between Richard Nixon in his last days in office and Donald Trump in these days in office.

With all this going on, it's easy to forget that the re-trial of Bill Cosby is well under way.  They're up to the part where various alleged victims tell what Cosby did to them and Cosby's lawyers try to brand those accusers as liars and opportunists.  Coming soon: The part where Cosby is portrayed as an old, sick blind man who did so much good for so many that it would be cruel to send him to prison and therefore to his death.

The Rasmussen Poll usually favors Republicans and it's now saying Trump's popularity is fairly high. No doubt he thinks that's the only one that matters…and will until it tells him something he doesn't like. For what little it may be worth, I don't think the measure of any politician's popularity means a lot until such time as there's a named alternative to them. Asking "Would you rather have [name of elected official] or some unnamed alternative who isn't even running yet?" is different from asking folks if they'd prefer a named alternative. You not only can't beat something with nothing, you can't even measure preference against nothing.

Here are some articles I read today which you might want to read today…

• Trump has been hammering Amazon — gee, I wonder why he'd attack a company owned by Jeff Bezos — and insisting they don't pay high-enough postal rates. Here's what that's all about and why he's probably wrong.
• Fred Kaplan wonders (and has a theory) about who made the single worst decision of the Iraq War. There were a lot of "worst" decisions made during that mess but only a couple of folks who could have made the real "worst one."
• William Saletan tries to get to the bottom of how John Bolton, Trump's incoming national security adviser, feels about Muslims and Islam. As you'll see, this is not an easy thing to figure out.
• A political theorist offers political theories as to why Trump's base doesn't seem to care if he's corrupt. I think it's a lot simpler. They hate not having one of "their guys" in power so much that they're willing to overlook anything.
• Jonathan Chait explains why Trump signs a budget then denounces it as terrible. It's because if he said it was great, then he'd have to take some responsibility for what results from it.
• Charles P. Pierce on how Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's idea of democracy is to not hold elections he fears Republicans will not win. And hey, what's more democratic than not letting people vote?

Like you, I'm aghast at some of the lies and personal attacks being hurled at the young survivors of the Parkland school shooting. Some people will say or do anything just to deny an opponent a smidgen of Higher Moral Ground…or even Equal.

Haven't done one of these for a while. Trump doing something harmful and outrageous is feeling less and less like news. It's like getting up each morning, as I often do, to find that raccoons have pooped in my back yard. (There are times when it seems like they're coming from all over the city to do this. I've started leaving out Cottonelle for the dear creatures.)

Here are some articles I've read in the last twenty-four hours or so about what's going on in Trumpworld…

• Here's a piece Fred Kaplan wrote about National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. Assuming McMaster is fired, as most are assuming, we're going to be hearing a lot about that firing for months after.
• Matt Yglesias has finally found an issue on which Democrats and Republicans can agree: We all hate Mitch McConnell.
• Jonathan Chait suggests a possible reason that Donald Trump is behaving like a very guilty man. That possible reason does not seem to have occurred to many of his supporters.
• I'm thinking of making everyone in my life sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement where if they say something about me I don't like, they have to pay me $10 million dollars. But I'll wait to see how well that works out for Mr. Trump.
• Daniel Larison believes, as I do, that the Iraq War was a serious mistake and a serious crime. Alas, too many people just don't accept the premise that the United States doesn't make serious mistakes (except maybe when your political opponents are in power) and our leaders don't commit serious crimes.
• Sinan Antoon, a native of Iraq, tells what it was like from his perspective.
• I think I disagree with articles like this one that says Trump lies to his base because he thinks they're stupid.  I think he lies to them because he understands that they emotionally like the results they think they're getting so they'll play along with him.  Back when President Obama's position was that he was kinda/sorta against Gay Marriage, a lot of us played along with that because we sensed he was playing a long-term game that would eventually get us what we wanted on that issue.
• Amy Davidson Sorkin is trying to figure out why Trump is playing the Stormy Daniels case the way he's playing it. We may understand that better when we find out what it is he's trying to stop her from revealing. I'm guessing it's that in the heat of passion, he shouted out his own name and then fired her.
• And Paul Krugman discusses how Trump is surrounding himself with people who believe that if tax cuts for the rich don't help the economy…try, try again.

I assume you all watched John Oliver last Sunday or that you've caught one of the replays. In these Times of Trump, we are very fortunate to have a man who can find that much humor in that much bad news.

I haven't done as many of these lately because, frankly, even I'm getting tired of stories about how incompetent and dishonest the guy and his administration are. And here's one opinion I've come to which I'll pass along for what little it may be worth: Those who are predicting what Robert Mueller will do and when he will do it are speculating blindly. It sure looks to me like all the leaks are coming from the Trump side, none from Mueller's office. He'll tell us what he's doing when he's good and ready. Now, this…

• Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner and other members of Trump's mob seem to have been violating the Hatch Act.  I'm sure Trump will take immediate action to discipline them.
• As the New York Times editorial writers point out, Trump sure loves them dictatorial leaders who rule for life and can silence their critics.
• Daniel Larson thinks Trump's decision about tariffs was (a) a bad one and (b) arrived at almost on a whim.  This is not a good way of running the country.
• And William Saletan tells us how much other Republicans don't like them.  For once, they're not following Donald like sheep.
• How come Paul Ryan so fiercely backs Trump on just about everything?  Jonathan Chait has a good explanation: "[Ryan] was inculcated at a young age with the works of theorists like Ayn Rand, George Gilder, and Jude Wanniski, all of whom share a belief that the core mission of political life is to protect the earned wealth of the rich from political redistribution by the masses."

And I see that Trump's top economic advisor, Gary Cohn, is jumping ship. He got his big corporate tax cut and now he doesn't want to take the blame for what happens next. Can't wait to hear Trump's next speech about loyalty.

Last week was not a good week for Donald Trump. Given how many shoes seem to be droppable in his many and varied scandals, I suspect we'll be saying that for most weeks to come. Here's some stuff…

• Nate Silver attempts to answer the unanswerable question as to how much Russian meddling had to do with Trump winning the presidency. He doesn't really know and I doubt anyone ever will.
• A year ago, correspondents for Slate made a lot of predictions about Trump's first year and now it's time to score how they did. Not bad, guys…
• Obama's chief economist Jason Furman thinks Trump's forecasts for the American economy are absurd. One wonders if anyone's chief economist (including Trump's) really believes them.
• Trump's National Security Adviser Says Proof of Russian Election Meddling Is "Incontrovertible." Trump apparently says that's Fake News and we shouldn't listen to his National Security Adviser. Is it? If so, why is this person his National Security Adviser?
• Since it's Presidents Day, the New York Times asked scholars to rank our presidents, best to worst. Trump did not do well even among Republican scholars. I always regard any of these rankings as click bait and not much more but if you're baited to click, here's the link.
• Thomas Friedman dives into the theory that Trump is either being blackmailed by Russia, could be blackmailed by Russia or is really, really foolish with regard to Russia. I'm not sure which one I'd fear most.
• Must Trump testify in Robert Mueller's investigations? Joe Conason thinks he does and Conason's probably right. Which doesn't mean he will.

John Oliver had a strong season-opener last night, focusing on the hard-to-argue premise that Trump is becoming the most mocked and ridiculed person on this planet. If you didn't see it, the show reruns many times this week. I suspect once a week at Comedy Central, they have a little ritual where everyone responsible for letting Oliver get away gathers in a room and they just kick each other for forty-five minutes.