I bet Señor Trumpanzee wishes he had given a Russophile and suck-up like Devin Nunes the DNI job instead of ex-Senator Dan Coats (R-IN), who he nominated and who is now serving. Nunes is, after all, an unpatriotic self-server. Is "anti-patriotic" a word? In the House Intelligence Committee on Friday, Nunes defeated an attempt by the Democrats to subpoena Trump's interpreter at his Helsinki meeting with Putin, an idea proposed by Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA). Adam Schiff proposed it to the Intelligence Committee and Nunes refused to recognize Schiff’s motion, adjourned the committee to huddle with all the Republicans in secret and then reconvened. The committee then voted along party lines, 11-6, to shit-can Schiff’s proposal.Meanwhile Bloomberg reported yesterday that Putin told Russian diplomats that he made a proposal to Señor T in Helsinki "to hold a referendum to help resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but agreed not to disclose the plan publicly so the U.S. president could consider it... Details of what the two leaders discussed in their summit in Helsinki, Finland, remain scarce, with much of the description so far coming from Russia... If Putin’s account of Trump’s reaction is accurate, it would suggest a more flexible approach than the U.S. has shown to date on the issue. At the Helsinki meeting, Trump also agreed to consider a Putin request to question the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow over U.S. campaign-finance violations that critics say Trump should have dismissed outright."So far Putin hasn't confirmed or denied that he has proposed a similar referendum for citizens in Alaska west of a line starting at Anchorage, going through Fairbanks and ending in Barrow. Citizens in Nome and Bethel are likely to be concerned once this leaks out.As everyone knows by now Trump asked Bolton to invite Putin to Washington in the fall, presumably right before the midterms. Trump said he's looking forward to meeting again with him to "begin implementing" whatever it was they discussed during their summit.Putin is leaking information that in the wake of the summit with the imbecilic Trump that the two of them have reached some mysystrerious agreements that no one knows about and that there is no record of. Apparently neither Trump nor the White House-- ket alone the State Department (remember then?) have confirmed any substantive agreements between the two countries.Jonathan Chait, who is certainly onto Trump's gaslighting, wrote in New York Magazine that in in Trumplandia, Russia is a Friend and Journalists Are The Enemy. He wrote that the Trumpanzee is "depicting the news media, not Russia, as the genuine adversary of the public, while repeating his most authoritarian formulation for it ('enemy of the people,' a Soviet term that prefigured arrest or liquidation)."
Trump met secretly with Vladimir Putin, endorsed his denials of having hacked Democratic emails to help elect Trump, blamed his own country rather than Russian aggression for poor relations, praised Putin’s “offer” to interrogate an American diplomat he loathes for having stood up for human rights, and is announcing that American journalists rather than Russia are the true enemy.
So who gets fired first, Coats or Kelly? The NY Times reports that Trumpanzee's "disastrous performance since his news conference alongside Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has sent West Wing morale to its lowest level since the Charlottesville fiasco almost a year ago. 'People are just depressed,' said one Republican close to the White House. 'Nobody wants to take on the public heat of resigning right now, but there are a bunch of people who were thinking maybe they’d leave after the midterms who are very seriously starting to consider accelerating their timetable.'"If the Times' reporting is correct-- and I'm mistrustful about everything and anything that comes out about Michael Cohen-- I bet Trump would fire Cohen even before Coats and Kelly. The Times reported that Cohen "secretly recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model [Karen McDougal] who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump... The F.B.I. seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen’s office... The recording’s existence further draws Mr. Trump into questions about tactics he and his associates used to keep aspects of his personal and business life a secret. And it highlights the potential legal and political danger that Mr. Cohen represents to Mr. Trump." From all the polling I've seen, only normal people care about any ofd this. Trump's based doesn't. He was 100% correct when he said he moron base would still support him if he went out into the middle of 5th Avenue and shot someone. Earlier today Jonathan Swan reported that Michael Cohen is being more open about questioning Señor Trumpanzee's fitness for office. Like most people, he's wondering if Trump is a traitor. We have a chicken/egg situation now: "The Trump-Cohen relationship broke down a while ago, but now the investigation of Cohen is heating up-- with the NYT reveling that Cohen secretly taped Trump-- the two have dispensed with the public pretense of loyalty. The question of what Cohen knows about Trump is now a far more compelling question than it was in the days when Cohen would tell anybody who'd listen that he'd take a bullet-- and, no doubt, lie-- for his boss."
