The last time James Comey captured the national spotlight, he got himself fired and the president earned himself an independent counsel. We’ll have to see what fireworks explode the second time around, but don’t expect the White House to be overly prepared:
Former FBI Director James Comey is about to return to the national spotlight with the release of his memoir next week — but the White House is doing little to prepare for the onslaught, according to two officials.
These officials said it’s understood within the West Wing that laying out an advance media strategy is largely a futile exercise since President Donald Trump could blow up any prepared talking points with a single tweet.
Instead, senior aides are hoping Trump’s trip to South America and subsequent summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago will provide a distraction, as well as an opportunity for the president to appear above the fray.
Imagine working someplace where you know your company is about to be the subject of a sustained period of red-hot international news that will be incredibly damaging to your reputation, but you don’t even bother to think about how to respond because it would be a “futile exercise” to lay out a plan that your boss would just ignore.
Now imagine the exact same environment for setting a policy for Syria or Ukraine or the opioid epidemic, immigration policy or anything else of critical interest to the country.
for Republicans there is one and only one issue of critical interest: tax cuts for the rich. They’ve delivered that.
Steve has a contrarian take on this.
Man, there is no way that Trump will remain occupied by other work, “diplomatic” or otherwise. No fucking way. He made a lengthy statement to the press pool this afternoon where he displayed high levels of hostility and delusions, and Trump will continue to stick his beak into this.
Steve’s expectation “That means (Trump) won’t rage-tweet something that can advance the legal case against him and his staffers…”, is, to put it kindly, not supported by past evidence. Let’s remember that Trump was coming back from his very first major overseas trip when he ineptly conspired with his staff to construct a lie-filled letter “from” Donnie Jr. about the Trump Tower meeting.
That attempt to obstruct justice both fell apart right away in the face of directly contradictory email evidence and it got the White House completely off message- they weren’t effectively talking about the “successes” of the overseas trip any more.
Steve tends to be a pessimist in his analyses, pretty much always hunting for the dark lining of any silver cloud. I blame it on his frequent dives into the rightwing sewers and fever swamps. That said, if you keep in mind his downer bent his takes on what’s happening are generally excellent.
Now moot, as the news is out today that Trump has cancelled his trip, sending Pence in his place.
Trump deliberately stuck inept and corrupt cohorts into his Administration. He chose people who wouldn’t know what they were doing into positions where they could do the most damage. Their numbers were bound to come up sooner or later. He knew it and they did, too.
He is whittling away all of his Cabinet as his ego gets bigger and he believes he can take over and run the country without advice from others. Trump knows more than anyone else and he is too stupid to know what he doesn’t know.
He’s going down. He’ll keep throwing up roadblocks and throwing out advisors, but pretty soon he’s going to run out of ammo and aides. He’s torn the hell out of the White House and he deserves to lose his ill-gotten place there.
Dunning-Krueger all the way down. But, in the end, he can always rely on Petunia and Pals and the other Fox clowns for expert policy advice, doncha know.
I’d be guessing that the next Trump rage is driven by the FBI raid on Trump’s lawyer, not the Comey book.
But we are speculating idly, Mr Bond….
This presidency is just one huge honkin’ flock of black swans, isn’t t?
Honestly, why did this piece need to be written?
Ironically, since T threw Michael Cohen under the bus last Thursday today we see the reporting of FBI raids on Michael Cohen’s office and residence. The raids were under the purview of the southern district US attorney’s office which had Federal subpoenas and indicated that this was a Mueller referral but covered several issues, including Stormy Daniels.
This will be a week where T will simply not be able to focus on Syria, Comey or even Pruitt because he’ll be overwhelmed by the personal threat that just arrived. The question of whether Cohen will flip has just been replaced by when will Cohen flip.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
The Southern District of New York exposure is still federal. Trump can make that go away in 30 seconds.
As for the inevitable state charges to follow, that’s an evil for another day.
NY state has money laundering laws. It will very easy to move his crimes to a state court with possibility of time at Attica. Cohen appears to be moving to that place between hard rocks.
The charges are not money laundering. They are wire fraud, bank fraud & campaign finance. That points to his representation of the Stormy $130,000 but apparently the information is not limited to that.
I have a huge problem believing that an action as serious as the FBI raiding a law office, the law office of the President’s personal lawyer no less, is concerned with nothing larger than the Stormy Daniels brouhaha. He has strong connections to Ukraine, for starters.
He has strong connections to Ukraine, for starters.
Which is what some of it is apparently about. It’s hilarious to that the money in question comes from a guy who also gave millions to the Clinton Foundation. Which is bound to piss Cheeto off!!
Where do you get the evidence that Trump can make this go away in 30 seconds? A Fed’l judge signed off on it, there is no magical wand someone has handed Trump to erase the seriousness of this.
One presumes Dunwoody refers to the presidential pardon power. Which makes the federal charges go away, but not state charges.
One of the reasons he can’t is probably the same as in the Manafort case, where New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman and his staff were quiet partners in the US attorney’s development of the case. The state would be able to assume the prosecution more or less instantly, and the president has no pardon power.
One has to wonder whether he actually understands that.
Given that, in his typically stupid fashion, Trump threw Cohen under the bus and apparently also stiffed him on the $130K, I can think of no rational reason why Cohen wouldn’t flip to save his ass at this point.
All along, Cohen has been hugely loyal to Trump. He has been quoted as saying he would take a bullet for him. Cohen has been more of a fixer than a lawyer in their years together and I suspect he’s been well-compensated.
I predict Cohen will stand by Trump no matter what, because he’ll find a way to believe none of this is Trump’s fault, that the Democrats have been conducting a witch hunt and he is the one who takes the bullet.
Correct, Cohen is the Gordon Liddy of TraitorGate.
The FBI has raided Micheal Cohen’s office. Could be good stuff in there!
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fbi-raids-michael-cohen-office
Home as well, as I understand it. Popcorn time!
You gotta figure that someone who’s been Trump’s fixer (and who else’s, one wonders) for so long must have all kinds of dirty dealings to be dug up, oh, yeh….
Eventually there comes a day when there is no one left to throw under the bus.
this would be a total farce if it wasn’t so sad.
And it would be sad if it wasn’t such a farce.