Jake Tapper

On CNN yesterday, Jake Tapper reminded CNN viewers that regardless of White House claims to the contrary, Trump doesn't have a "communications problem," he has "a facts problem and the facts are bad for the president, so he seems to be trying to change them by lying." The describes more than just the Ukraine scandal. And it describes more than just his presidency. It describes the man's entire life. He's been lying about everything-- big and small-- since the first time he appeared in the New York Times, October 16, 1973.

I have a good friend who's in his mid-20s, a brilliant scientist, currently studying glaciers in Greenland. He's very good at working on the global cryosphere and, especially in on glaciology, his specialty. But outside of his field, he's like a 12 year old. He runs around Greenland in a t-shirt or, when he remembers, a sweatshirt.

I bet Señor Trumpanzee wishes he had never retweeted black wing-nut comedian Terrence K. Williams. Williams is a conspiracy-theorist-for-pay and Trump is... well, many things, but more than anything else, a projectionist. The retweet was a huge discussion on the Sunday talking heads shows this morning. The White House sent Kellyanne Conway to Fox News Sunday to try to defend Trump's latest gaffes.

In his State of the Union interview Sunday with Jake Tapper, Justin Amash (I-MI), Amash was steadfast in his position that it isn't Trump-- who he obviously detests-- that caused him to leaved the GOP but Congress itself. He told Tapper he had made the decision to leave the party before he called for Congress to begin the impeachment process and before Mueller issued his report. While Tapper kept trying to get him to say something negative about Trump, Amash wanted to make the point that he "had concerns with the Republican Party for several years.

"Look at him," a senior Democratic congressman told me recently, less in disgust and more in pity, "he needs a crane to get him out of that chair. He's just let himself go..." Jim Clyburn (D-SC) may be in the worst shape of the three, but Clyburn is the "baby" of the the geriatric triumvirate at the top of the House Democratic caucus. Steny Hoyer turns 80 a week from next Friday. Pelosi's 80th isn't for another 9 months. Meanwhile, Clyburn won't even turn 79 til next month! It's absolutely insane that the 3 of them haven't retired. Do they think they're all that indispensable?

This morning, Mitt Romney told Jake Tapper on CNN that he doesn't feel the Senate is ready to remove Trump but that Justin Amash was courageous when he called for Trump's impeachment. "I respect him. I think it’s a courageous statement. But I believe that to make a case for obstruction of justice, you just don’t have the elements that are evidenced in this document... The American people just aren’t there. And I think those who are considering impeachment also have to look at the jury, which would be the Senate.

The Green New Deal is complicated and partially abstract and certainly not easy to understand for an idiot. It's aspirational too. Medicare-For-All isn't as complicated, but it's complicated too. You know what's not complicated? Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a semi-livable wage. That;'s pretty straight forward. But it's something that infuriates conservatives almost as much as the Green New Deal and Medicare For All do.

Jake Tapper: "Do you think [Biden's behavior toward women] is disqualifying for him?" Lucy Flores: "For me it's disqualifying."by Thomas NeuburgerListen to the clip above in which Lucy Flores talks with CNN's Jake Tapper about Joe Biden's "completely inappropriate" behavior toward her and other women. It certainly sounds from Tapper's remarks that Joe Biden is very likely to announce his presidential campaign soon.

No love lost, but late yesterday, Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey, wrote that Señor Trumpanzee's management of the shutdown, which they are kind enough to remind us is his first foray in divided government, has exposed as never before his shortcomings as a self-proclaimed great dealmaker.

I'm not the only one who's noticed that Trump would have probably been happier as a TV critics than as a failed, illegitimate fake-president. And, sure enough, former White House aide Cliff Sims' new book, Team of Vipers described Trump as he watched TV in his private dining room off the Oval Office: "He consumed TV like the late Roger Ebert must have watched movies...