Kelly talks to the New York Times

Don't hold your breath, Sarah.  I'm not even sure it would make much difference if he did.

John Kelly: On the list of Trump's "enemies from within."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A mystery solved

I have always wondered how Trump went from belittling Kim Jong Un and rattling the nuclear sabres to "falling in love" with him and treasuring (not to mention stealing from the White House records) a flattering letter from Kim.  I found out today when Charlie Sykes (and Molly Jong-Fast) interviewed Michael Schmidt (of the New York Times) about the new afterward to his book wherein he discusses John Kelly's woes as Trump's Chief of Staff.

Schmidt tells the story of how Kelly and Pentagon officials attempted to talk Trump down from firing nukes on North Korea or push Kim to starting a war.  They told him thousands of people would die, and that didn't bother him.  They told him it could destroy the economy, and that didn't bother him.  Finally, Kelly hit on the only thing that has ever made an impact on Trump: flattery.  Kelly talked to Trump about how he's the ultimate dealmaker, and if he could placate Kim, it would make Trump the only president in history to be able to do it.  Voilà!  Also explains Trump's ensuing bragging that we would have gone to war with North Korea under Obama, but he, Trump, saved us.

Schmidt says Kelly's days consisted entirely of dealing with a man who was dumber and more narcissistic than he could have ever imagined ("I didn't know they made people like that."), and who would come down to the Oval Office late every morning obsessed with whatever he had seen on TV that morning.  Kelly gets up at 3:30 am every day to watch cable news in order to be prepared.

I suppose the world is lucky Kelly lasted as long as he did in that position.  It must have been absolutely excruciating and exhausting.

Trump's generals

Trump told his new chief of staff, John Kelly—like Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general—about his vision for Independence Day. “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade,” Trump said. [...] He explained with distaste that at the Bastille Day parade there had been several formations of injured veterans, including wheelchair-bound soldiers who had lost limbs in battle.

Kelly could not believe what he was hearing. “Those are the heroes,” he told Trump. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are—and they are buried over in Arlington.” Kelly did not mention that his own son Robert, a lieutenant killed in action in Afghanistan, was among the dead interred there.

“I don’t want them,” Trump repeated. “It doesn’t look good for me.”

[...]

“So, what do you think of the parade?” [Paul Selva, an Air Force general and the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] asked Selva. Instead of telling Trump what he wanted to hear, Selva was forthright.

“I didn’t grow up in the United States, I actually grew up in Portugal,” Selva said. “Portugal was a dictatorship—and parades were about showing the people who had the guns. And in this country, we don’t do that.” He added, “It’s not who we are.”

Even after this impassioned speech, Trump still did not get it. “So, you don’t like the idea?” he said, incredulous.

“No,” Selva said. “It’s what dictators do.”

[...]

It turned out that the generals had rules, standards, and expertise, not blind loyalty. The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”

“Which generals?” Kelly asked.

“The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.

“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.

  New Yorker

Also, they lost the war they started. But, hey.

“No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military.

[...]

Kelly made an unsuccessful last-ditch effort to persuade Trump not to replace him with Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina who was serving as Trump’s budget director. “You don’t want to hire someone who’s going to be a yes-man,” Kelly told the President. “I don’t give a shit anymore,” Trump replied. “I want a yes-man!”

General Mark Milley drafted a resignation letter after the Lafayette Square fiasco, in which he said:

The events of the last couple weeks have caused me to do deep soul-searching, and I can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country.

Milley should have resigned and publicized that resignation letter. Or gone on TV and proclaimed to the American people what he saw happening and let Trump fire him.

This is a New Yorker article, so it's a bit lengthy, but it's also quite interesting. Read the whole thing here.

Text of the Milley resignation draft letter:

I regret to inform you that I intend to resign as your Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thank you for the honor of appointing me as senior ranking officer. The events of the last couple weeks have caused me to do deep soul-searching, and I can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country. I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.

Second, you are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people—and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people. The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.

Third, I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal. All men and women are created equal, no matter who you are, whether you are white or Black, Asian, Indian, no matter the color of your skin, no matter if you’re gay, straight or something in between. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, or choose not to believe. None of that matters. It doesn’t matter what country you came from, what your last name is—what matters is we’re Americans. We’re all Americans. That under these colors of red, white, and blue—the colors that my parents fought for in World War II—means something around the world. It’s obvious to me that you don’t think of those colors the same way I do. It’s obvious to me that you don’t hold those values dear and the cause that I serve.

And lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships. That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Bingo

President Trump’s head popped up during his top-secret intelligence briefing in the Oval Office on Jan. 28 when the discussion turned to the coronavirus outbreak in China.

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

[...]

Ten days later, Trump called Woodward and revealed that he thought the situation was far more dire than what he had been saying publicly.

  WaPo

Why didn't Woodward tell us then? Oh, yeah. Book. Money.

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis.

At that time, Trump was telling the nation that the virus was no worse than a seasonal flu, predicting it would soon disappear and insisting that the U.S. government had it totally under control.

[...]

Trump admitted to Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimized the danger. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

[...]

[Infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci] at one point tells others that the president “is on a separate channel” and unfocused in meetings, with “rudderless” leadership, according to Woodward. “His attention span is like a minus number,” Fauci said, according to Woodward. “His sole purpose is to get reelected.”

Fauci is sure to be shitcanned now.

In their final interview, on July 21, Trump vented to Woodward: “The virus has nothing to do with me. It’s not my fault.”

[...]

Aside from exploring Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” covers race relations, diplomacy with North Korea and a variety of other issues that have arisen during the past two years.

The book also includes brutal assessments of Trump’s conduct from former defense secretary Jim Mattis, former director of national intelligence Daniel Coats and others.

[...]

On June 3, two days after federal agents forcibly removed peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square to make way for Trump to stage a photo opportunity outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, Trump called Woodward to boast about his “law and order” stance.

Why is the idiot calling Bob Woodward, ffs?

In another conversation, on June 19, Woodward asked the president about White privilege, noting that they were both White men of the same generation who had privileged upbringings. Woodward suggested that they had a responsibility to better “understand the anger and pain” felt by Black Americans.

“No,” Trump replied, his voice described by Woodward as mocking and incredulous. “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”

[...]

In another conversation about race, on July 8, Trump complained about his lack of support among Black voters. “I’ve done a tremendous amount for the Black community,” he told Woodward. “And, honestly, I’m not feeling any love.”

[...]

Trump shared with Woodward visceral reactions to several prominent Democrats of color. Upon seeing a shot of Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California, now the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, calmly and silently watching him deliver his State of the Union address, Trump remarked: “Hate! See the hate! See the hate!” Trump used the same phrase after an expressionless Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) appeared in the frame.

[...]

“I don’t think Obama’s smart,” Trump told Woodward. “I think he’s highly overrated. And I don’t think he’s a great speaker.” Trump added that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un thought Obama was “an asshole.”

[...]

Even as U.S. intelligence chiefs warn that North Korea is unlikely to ever surrender its nuclear weapons and that Trump’s approach is ineffective, the president told Woodward that he is determined to stay the course and dismissively says the CIA has “no idea” how to handle North Korea.

“I met. Big fucking deal,” Trump told Woodward, waving off criticism of his three face-to-face meetings with Kim. “It takes me two days. I met. I gave up nothing.”

Foreign affairs experts say Trump gave up much — including by postponing and then scaling back the U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea that had long angered North Korea, as well as by granting Kim the international stature and legitimacy the North Korean regime has long craved.

And here's why Trump is enamored of Kim (who obviously knows just how to play Trump):

Kim welcomed Trump’s overtures with over-the-top prose in letters. Kim wrote that he wanted “another historic meeting between myself and Your Excellency reminiscent of a scene from a fantasy film.” And he said his meetings with Trump were a “precious memory” that underscored how the “deep and special friendship between us will work as a magical force.”

In another letter, Kim wrote to Trump, “I feel pleased to have formed good ties with such a powerful and preeminent statesman as Your Excellency.” And in yet another, Kim reflected on “that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honor of that day.”

[...]

Trump remarked that he was awestruck meeting Kim for the first time in 2018 in Singapore, thinking to himself, “Holy shit,” and finding Kim to be “far beyond smart.” Trump also boasted to Woodward that Kim “tells me everything,” including a graphic account of Kim having his uncle killed.

Trump did not share his letters to Kim — “Those are so top secret,” the president said — but Woodward obtained them independently. He writes that Trump sent Kim a copy of the New York Times featuring a picture of the two men on the front page. “Chairman, great picture of you, big time,” Trump wrote on the paper in marker. (Trump falsely boasted to Woodward: “He never smiled before. I’m the only one he smiles with.”)

[...]

“It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them,” he told Woodward. “You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?”

[...]

“I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody — what we have is incredible.”

Woodward writes that anonymous people later confirmed that the U.S. military had a secret new weapons system, but they would not provide details, and that the people were surprised Trump had disclosed it.

They couldn't possibly be surprised. He blabs everything he's told - if he was paying attention and if he can remember it.

Mattis quietly went to Washington National Cathedral to pray about his concern for the nation’s fate under Trump’s command and, according to Woodward, told Coats, “There may come a time when we have to take collective action” since Trump is “dangerous. He’s unfit.”

That time passed a long time ago, bub.

Mattis told Coats, “The president has no moral compass,” to which the director of national intelligence replied: “True. To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”

[...]

Coats, a former senator from Indiana, was recruited into the administration by Vice President Pence, and his wife is quoted as recalling a dinner at the White House when she interacted with Pence.

“I just looked at him, like, how are you stomaching this?” Marsha Coats said, according to Woodward. “I just looked at him like, this is horrible. I mean, we made eye contact. I think he understood. And he just whispered in my ear, ‘Stay the course.’ ”

[...]

When Dan Coats considered resigning because of Trump’s handling of Russia, Pence urged him to “look on the positive side of things that he’s done. More attention on that. You can’t go.”

[...]

“Not to mention my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals,” Trump told White House trade adviser Peter Navarro at one point, according to Woodward.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is quoted by Woodward as saying, “The most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots.”

Look in the mirror, you smug dipshit.

Kushner was a frequent target of ire among Trump’s Cabinet members, who saw him as untrustworthy and weak in dealing with heads of states. Tillerson found Kushner’s warm dealings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “nauseating to watch. It was stomach churning,” according to Woodward.

[...]

Woodward writes that Kushner advised people that one of the most important guiding texts to understand the Trump presidency was “Alice in Wonderland,” a novel about a young girl who falls through a rabbit hole. He singled out the Cheshire cat, whose strategy was endurance and persistence, not direction.

More like Malice in Wonderland.

UPDATE:

Imagine doing it twice in two years.

UPDATE:

Jesus H Christ!  He made the phone calls himself!

UPDATE:

Regarding John Kelly

Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

[...]

That is the single most poignant moment in Jeffrey Goldberg’s soon-to-be-legendary piece in The Atlantic. Except for the likely instant intervention of the Secret Service, I don’t know how John Kelly didn’t flatten the vulgar talking yam right there at Arlington. But John Kelly didn’t do that. In fact he stayed with the administration*, eventually taking a promotion from Secretary of Homeland Security to White House chief-of-staff. Kelly became the face of cruel and stupid immigration policies at the country’s southern border, defended the president* when the latter made similarly insensitive remarks to a Gold Star widow in Florida and then called Rep. Fredrica Wilson “an empty barrel” when she called the president* out for it, spoke warmly of Robert E. Lee and the armies of the Confederate States of America, and ultimately left the administration* to take a job with a firm that runs the largest detention facility in which “unaccompanied” migrant minor children are held. And John Kelly did all of this after the president* made those graceless remarks about Kelly’s son while standing aside the young man’s grave.

  Charles P Pierce

All that.

Yes, the president*’s remarks about all the “losers” and “suckers” who died in Belleau Wood are grotesque—although, to be fair, he isn’t entirely wrong about World War I. Yes, the idea that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago avoided a trip to a military cemetery in France because rain might have damaged his coiffure is both sad and hilarious. Yes, his obsession with John McCain, which continues to this day, apparently, is the product of a bent and twisted mind. And yes, his apparent revulsion at the sight of wounded veterans is unbecoming in a president of the United States. All of these things are true. But all of these things were true at the time. Kelly and the president* went to Arlington five months into the president*’s term. Kelly worked for the president* for another year and, since then, until just now, he has maintained his silence as the president*’s assault on the rule of law and the Constitution only intensified. All of them—Kelly, H.R. McMaster, James Mattis—have been Good Soldiers rather than patriots. (Mattis did call the president* a threat to the Constitution in another Goldberg piece that ran in June. Of this year. Barn. Lock. Missing horse.)

Yep.

I do not expect political courage from the likes of Mitch McConnell or Ben Sasse. I expect it of men who have demonstrated physical courage under extreme circumstances, but never has the difference between battlefield courage and political courage been more clearly drawn. I am glad that Goldberg has written this piece. I’m glad it’s out in the world. I’m glad that people are outraged about it, and I’m glad for whatever role it may ultimately play in lifting this scourge from the land. But I am sorry, and angry, that it has come to this, in 2020, when the vandals are still on a rampage that seems as though it can only end in annihilation.

Belleau Wood

This is the story of the battle that resulted in the American WWI cemetery in France that Trump refused to visit, opting instead to sit in his hotel room and watch TV while General Kelly went in his place.

The cemetery there was the expected site of a Trump visit on Nov. 10, 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of the armistice to end World War I, which also coincided with the 243rd birthday of the Marine Corps.

Inclement weather grounded Trump’s helicopter, the White House said, preempting his visit. Other U.S. officials did attend.

A century and a few months before then, Belleau Wood was a living nightmare of muddy and rocky terrain, bristling with lurking enemies.U.S. Marines under [1st Sgt. Daniel] Daly were pinned down under fire and running short on ammunition. German soldiers in June 1918 had seized the initiative in a summer blitz toward Paris, and in the ledger of what can be counted, the enemy had it in spades: the guns and the numbers.

Daly, already a two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor in other wars, ground his boot heels into the French-countryside mud and ordered his men to attack.

“Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” he walloped, instantly inscribing the words into Marine Corps legend.

[...]

U.S. commanders moved up two Army divisions to counterattack, including the 2nd Division — which had an unusual element of an attached brigade of U.S. Marines.

The soldiers and Marines settled along the wood and braced for the onslaught of several German divisions heading straight toward their line. Friendly troops evacuated, confusing the Marines, who were told by a French commander that they should retreat.

“Retreat, hell! We just got here!” said Capt. Lloyd W. Williams, according to some accounts, also becoming lore among Marines.

The battle began June 6, and a swirling mass of rifle butts, bayonets and artillery rounds churned through the wood for weeks as the Americans repulsed waves of German soldiers clawing for any foothold.

Part of the strategy, Lt. Clifton B. Cates, 24, would later write his mother, was to dislodge U.S. positions with chemical weapons.

“We were shelled all night with shrapnel and gas shells,” wrote Cates, a future Marine Corps commandant. “It was mustard gas and a lot of the men were burned.”

[...]

One Marine, Gunnery Sgt. Fred W. Stockham, was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for giving his gas mask to a wounded comrade whose mask had been shot off. Stockham died of gas poisoning.

[The battle began June 6.] All Germans had been driven from Belleau Wood by June 26. Four days later, the 6th French Army issued an order renaming Belleau Wood “Bois de la Brigade de Marine.”

  WaPo

Meaning Marine Brigade Woods, of course.

The U.S. forces and Germans both had about 10,000 casualties, mostly wounded, but including 1,811 American dead. And it transformed the Marine Corps into a force that stepped into grander battles after fighting smaller skirmishes for years.

[...]

The force “must be considered a very good one and may even be reckoned as storm troops,” one German commander said.

[...]

[US Marine] units that trace their lineage back to the fight still wear a fourragère, a braided green cord on their dress uniform that was originally bestowed by the French military.

Trump being Trump

Lashing out at John Kelly.

I know John Kelly. He was with me — didn’t do a good job, had no temperament — and, ultimately, he was petered out.

  NYT

He had no temperament? Was he dead?

He got, he was exhausted. This man was totally exhausted. He wasn’t even able to function in the last number of months.

That's what Trump does to everybody who tries to work with him.  That's what he does to us all.  Exhausts us.

He was sort of a tough guy. By the time he got eaten up in this world. It’s a different world than he was used to. He was unable to function. And I told him, “John, you’re going to have to go. Please give me a letter of resignation.” And we did that. And now he goes out and bear — bad mouths.

Did he try to say "bears false witness against me"?

Now there are people that are jealous. There are people that are upset that they’re not here anymore. There are people — we’ve done an incredible job. The virus came in, and now we’re doing an incredible job again.

Turns on a dime. From Kelly to his own imagined great success.

We’re going to build it up bigger than it was before the virus came in. But I don’t know that it was him. I haven’t seen that. I mean, I see anonymous. But it could have been a guy like a John Kelly because he was — just so you understand.

And right back again. Keep up, people.

He was a very — you look at some of his news conferences, what happened to him — he got eaten alive. He was unable to handle the pressure of this job. This job was a tough job. Mark Meadows is doing a great job. But Kelly was unable to do that.

I imagine Kelly is eaten up alright.

John F. Kelly left the White House barely on speaking terms with President Trump. In the months since, Mr. Kelly, a retired four-star general and former White House chief of staff, has stayed mostly silent as other senior military figures have publicly and harshly criticized the president.

Much to the consternation of friends and associates who have been pushing him to speak out, Mr. Kelly continued his silence on Friday about a report in The Atlantic that the president had privately referred to American troops killed in combat as “losers” and “suckers.”

Mr. Kelly refused on-the-record interview requests about his recollection of comments Mr. Trump had reportedly made when Mr. Kelly was with him on a 2018 trip to France.

So why did Trump attack him?

According to the report, the president said that he had decided against visiting a cemetery for American soldiers killed in World War I because “it’s filled with losers,” and that Marines slain in combat at Belleau Wood were “suckers” for getting killed.

The article also reported that during a 2017 visit to Arlington National Cemetery, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kelly stopped to pay respects at the grave of Mr. Kelly’s son, Second Lt. Robert Kelly, a Marine who was killed at age 29 in Afghanistan in 2010.

“I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” the magazine reported that Mr. Trump had said to Mr. Kelly about his son’s service and sacrifice.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

John Kelly tales

Kelly should have told it himself, and a long time ago.

The day after President Trump fired FBI boss James Comey, the president phoned John Kelly, who was then secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, and offered him Comey's job, the New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael Schmidt reports in his forthcoming book, "Donald Trump v. The United States."

"But the president added something else — if he became FBI director, Trump told him, Kelly needed to be loyal to him, and only him."

"Kelly immediately realized the problem with Trump's request for loyalty, and he pushed back on the president's demand," Schmidt writes.

[...]

Special counsel Robert Mueller never learned of this information because the president's lawyers limited the scope of his team's two-hour interview with Kelly.

  Axios

Kelly could have offered it.

And who still think James Comey was lying about Trump's demand that Comey pledge loyalty to Trump?

"Kelly has told others that Trump wanted to behave like an authoritarian and repeatedly had to be restrained and told what he could and could not legally do."

"Aside from questions of the law, Kelly has told others that one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO — a move that Trump has repeatedly threatened but never made good on, which would have been a seismic breach of American alliances and an extraordinary gift to Putin."

"Kelly has said that having to say no to Trump was like 'French kissing a chainsaw.'"

[...]

Mueller's team wanted to know whether Trump had a role in the firing of the acting FBI director Andrew McCabe and whether Trump was saying anything about prosecuting Comey."

"Trump was indeed discussing prosecuting Clinton and Comey, and McGahn had written a memo to Trump detailing why he should not be pressing the Justice Department for such a prosecution."

Too little, too late, folks.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

On Feb. 23, 2018, White House counsel Don McGahn sent a two-page memo to Chief of Staff John Kelly arguing that Jared Kushner's security clearance needed to be downgraded, the New York Times' Michael Schmidt reports in his forthcoming book, "Donald Trump v. The United States."

Schmidt reports directly from the confidential McGahn memo for the first time, describing how Kelly had serious concerns about granting Kushner a top-secret clearance in response to a briefing he had received related to the routine FBI investigation into Kushner’s background.

[...]

The details of the highly sensitive intelligence that raised alarms with Kelly are not revealed in the McGahn memo or in Schmidt's book.

[...]

"By reducing Kushner's clearance from top secret to secret, McGahn and Kelly had restricted Kushner's access to the PDB, the closely held rundown provided by the intelligence community six days a week for the president and his top aides, and other highly sensitive intelligence that exposed sources and methods."

[...]

"McGahn conceded [in the memo] that Trump could if he chose simply disregard any security concerns and circumvent any standard procedures and grant Kushner the security clearance himself."

  Axios

Exactly. Trump would have told Kushner everything. And now that I set that down in black and white, I realize that Trump did not pay attention to his briefings, as reported by several others, and he couldn't possibly remember anything he did hear. So, maybe that did in fact restrict Kushner's access.

President Trump ultimately intervened to ensure Kushner got his top-secret security clearance.

He needed somebody in his family to get the information so he didn't have to concern himself with it.

A show of hands

Eleven of President Trump’s most senior advisers met in the White House Situation Room in early May 2018 and were asked to vote on family separations, two officials in attendance told NBC News. The meeting was led by senior advisor Stephen Miller, who reportedly expressed anger toward then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

[...]

The meeting came about a month after the Trump administration instituted the “zero tolerance” policy.

During the meeting, Nielsen reportedly said there weren't enough resources to separate parents, prosecute them and reunite them with their children quickly.

[...]

Miller alleged Nielsen was stalling before he called for the show-of-hands vote. Most voted in favor of family separations, though Nielsen did not, officials told NBC News.

No adviser argued in the meeting that the action would be immoral, as those claims “fell on deaf ears” in the White House, one official said.

[...]

An invitation list for the meeting with the vote obtained by NBC News included then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Nielsen, Miller, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, ex-Under Secretary of Defense John Rood, then-White House chief of staff John Kelly, White House deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell, then-White House counsel Don McGahn and Marc Short, who at the time was White House director of legislative affairs.

[...]

Days after the meeting, Nielsen signed a memo instructing Homeland Security Department employees to prosecute all immigrants who crossed the border illegally, including parents with children.

[...]

A federal judge ordered the families to be reunited, but there was no plan to track the children or reunite the families, the two former officials said. As a result, it took months to reunite some families, and some parents were deported without their children.

[...]

White House spokesman Judd Deere said told The Hill in a statement that the show-of-hands vote “is absolutely not true and did not happen.”

Health and Human Services Department spokesman Michael Caputo told NBC News, “This never happened.”

  The Hill

I have no doubt it did happen. Trump is all about taking names.

Bolton book bits

During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China critics in the United States. But Bolton writes in a book scheduled to be released next week that “Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats.

“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

[...]

Bolton’s 592-page memoir, obtained by The Washington Post, is the most substantive, critical dissection of the president from an administration insider so far, coming from a conservative who has worked in Republican administrations for decades and is a longtime contributor to Fox News. It portrays Trump as an “erratic” and “stunningly uninformed” commander in chief, and lays out a long series of jarring and troubling encounters between the president, his top advisers and foreign leaders.

  WaPo

And where was Mr. Bolton during the impeachment hearings? That's right. Holding out against testifying.

Bolton recounts numerous private conversations Trump had with other leaders that revealed the limits of his knowledge. He recalls Trump asking Kelly if Finland is part of Russia. In a meeting with then-British Prime Minister Theresa May in 2018, a British official referred to the United Kingdom as a “nuclear power,” and Trump interjects: “Oh, are you a nuclear power?” Bolton adds that he could tell the question about Britain, which has long maintained a nuclear arsenal, “was not intended as a joke.”

[...]

During a NATO summit in the summer of 2018, Bolton recounts a moment when Trump had decided to inform U.S. allies that the United States was going to withdraw from NATO if allies didn’t substantially increase defense spending by January.

“We will walk out, and not defend those who have not [paid],” read a message Trump dictated to Bolton. [The DOJ] filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block [Bolton's book's] publication by alleging that it contains classified material. Bolton’s attorney has said the book does not contain classified material and that it underwent an arduous review process.

[...]

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday that the tome still contained classified information.

[...]

The request for electoral assistance from Xi is one of many instances described by Bolton in which Trump seeks favors or approval from authoritarian leaders. Many of those same leaders were also happy to take advantage of the U.S. president and attempt to manipulate him, Bolton writes, often through simplistic appeals to his various obsessions.

[...]

In May 2018, Bolton says, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan handed Trump a memo claiming innocence for a Turkish firm under investigation by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York for violating Iranian sanctions.

“Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,” Bolton writes.

Bolton says he was so alarmed by Trump’s determination to do favors for autocrats such as Erdogan and Xi that he scheduled a meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr in 2019 to discuss the president’s behavior. Bolton writes that Barr agreed he also was worried about the appearances created by Trump’s behavior.

And Bolton believed that?

Bolton cites personal conversations with Trump confirming a “quid pro quo” on Ukraine that Trump had long denied, including an August meeting in which Trump allegedly made the bargain explicit.“He said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all Russia-investigation material related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over,” Bolton writes.

[...]

[H]e writes that he found Trump’s decision to hold up military assistance to pressure newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “deeply disturbing,” and that he tried to work internally to counter it, reporting concerns to Barr and the White House Counsel’s Office.

Asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Shows how clueless Bolton was/is.

In the memoir, Bolton describes the president's advisers as frequently flummoxed by Trump and said a variety of officials — including Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Bolton himself — all considered resigning in disgust or frustration.

Yes, we can see how disgusted Mike Pompeo has been.

Even some of the president’s most loyal advisers hold a dim view of him in private, he writes.

[...]

“He second-guessed people’s motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government,” Bolton writes, always looking to “personal instinct” and opportunities for “reality TV showmanship.”

Tell us something we can't see for ourselves.

After Trump completed a phone call with South Korea’s president ahead of the 2018 Singapore summit with North Korea, Pompeo and Bolton shared their disdain for the president’s handling of the conversation, he writes. Pompeo, having listened in on the call from the Middle East, told Bolton he was “having a cardiac arrest in Saudi Arabia.” Bolton shared his similar disappointment with the call, describing it as a “near death experience.”

[...]

Bolton attributes a litany of shocking statements to the president. Trump said invading Venezuela would be “cool” and that the South American nation was “really part of the United States.” Bolton says Trump kept confusing the current and former presidents of Afghanistan, while asking Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to help him strike a deal with Iran. And Trump told Xi that Americans were clamoring for him to change constitutional rules to serve more than two terms, according to the book.

Well, some of them are.

He also describes a summer 2019 meeting in New Jersey where Trump says journalists should be jailed so they have to divulge their sources: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags,” Trump said, according to Bolton's account.

Bolton describes in depth the feuding and backbiting among Trump’s cadre of advisers, as well as referring dismissively to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s efforts to get involved in domestic and foreign policy issues. Almost every adviser — including Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former defense secretary Jim Mattis and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley — comes under the scalpel. By contrast, Bolton seems to hold himself in high regard and admits few mistakes of his own.

LOL. What a surprise.

For Trump, Bolton writes, one singular goal loomed above all: securing a second term.

“I am hard pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton writes.

Bolton says Trump said he wanted out of Afghanistan during his second year instead of his third year so he could blame his predecessor for the war. Screaming about the border wall in a meeting with top advisers in 2018, Trump described why illegal immigration had to go down and the wall had to go up, according to Bolton’s book.

“I got elected on this issue and now I’m going to get unelected,” Trump said, startling those around him.

[...]

Though Trump approved of a proposal from Bolton to publicly declare the United States recognized [Venezuela's Juan] Guaidó rather than [elected president Nicolas] Maduro, within 30 hours Trump was already worrying that Guaidó appeared weak — a “kid” compared to “tough” Maduro — and considering changing course. “You couldn’t make this up,” Bolton writes.

In describing his White House experience on Russia-related issues, Bolton presents a picture of a president who is impulsive, churlish and consistently opposed to U.S. policy designed to discourage Russian aggression and to sanction Putin’s malign behavior.

[...]

He describes in detail the events leading up to the widely panned Helsinki summit in July 2018, when Trump sided with Putin against U.S. intelligence agencies over Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

[...]

Soon after he arrived at the White House, Bolton said Kelly gave him a warning. “You can’t imagine how desperate I am to get out of here,” Kelly said, according to Bolton’s book. “This is a bad place to work, as you will find out.”

Throughout the book, he describes Trump and top advisers repeatedly slashing each other, lying to each other and maneuvering to gain advantage.

At one point, Bolton says he learned that Kushner was going to be calling the finance minister of Turkey because he was also Erdogan’s son-in-law.

“I briefed Pompeo and Mnuchin on this new ‘son-in-law channel’ and they both exploded. Pompeo was furious, Bolton writes, “because this was one more example of Kushner’s doing international negotiations he shouldn’t have been doing (along with the never quite ready Middle East peace plan).”

For extended periods of time, Trump kept telling different advisers they were in charge of border policy, according to Bolton’s book. One day in 2018 in the Oval Office, Kelly purportedly learned that Kushner was calling Mexican authorities when he barged into the Oval Office and said so.

“Why is Jared calling Mexicans?” Kelly asked loudly, according to the book. “Because I asked him to. How else are we going to stop the caravans?” Trump responded.

In November 2018, Trump came under fire for writing an unfettered defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, littered with exclamation points, over the killing of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. But according to Bolton’s book, the main goal of the missive was to take away attention from a story about Ivanka Trump using her personal email for government business.

“This will divert from Ivanka,” Trump said, according to Bolton’s book. “If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.”

[...]

Describing the conflict in Afghanistan, Trump said: “This was done by a stupid person named George Bush.”

[...]

When Bolton recounts the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore, the first summit of U.S. and North Korean leaders in history, Bolton castigates Trump’s diplomatic efforts, saying the president cared little for the details of the denuclearization effort and saw it merely as a “an exercise in publicity.”

He describes it extensively — including what Kim and his advisers say, and what Trump and his advisers say in return, giving a fly-on-the-wall account of a historic event.

“Trump told . . . me he was prepared to sign a substance-free communique, have his press conference to declare victory and then get out of town,” Bolton wrote.

Which is exactly what we witnessed.

In the months following the summit, Bolton described Trump’s inordinate interest in Pompeo delivering an autographed copy of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” on CD to Kim during Pompeo’s follow-on visit to North Korea. Trump had used the term “Little Rocket Man” to criticize the North Korean leader but subsequently tried to convince Kim that it was a term of affection.

“Trump didn’t seem to realize Pompeo hadn’t actually seen Kim Jong Un [during the trip], asking if Pompeo had handed” the CD, wrote Bolton. “Pompeo had not. Getting this CD to Kim remained a high priority for several months.”

I'm sure Sir Elton is flattered.

"Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear." - Mark 4:9

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

I had been wondering why Trump was suddenly coming down hard on China over coronavirus and assumed it was just because he was trying to deflect criticism, but now I'm thinking there was more to it than that.  He knew what Bolton's book would say about him being China's bitch.

Jesus, he just can't quit

He's not finished.

I read all I could take.  Also, you're going to need a magnifying glass.

"Super Star lawyer" my ass.  The guy writes letters in Comic Sans.  Appropriately.  One of the early clowns in Trump's car.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

That didn't take long

P.S. He has to lie about EVERYthing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Also, reports were that Mattis quit.  This is from Trump last December:








UPDATE:

Kelly will be getting his own nasty tweet.

UPDATE:

I love that picture.  Even Kim Jung Un is thinking, what the fuck is he doing?

UPDATE:  He just can't quit.

Jesus wept

Former California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher confirmed in a new interview that during a three-hour meeting at the Ecuadorian Embassy in August 2017, he told Julian Assange he would get President Trump to give him a pardon if he turned over information proving the Russians had not been the source of internal Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks.

In a phone interview with Yahoo News, Rohrabacher said his goal during the meeting was to find proof for a widely debunked conspiracy theory: that WikiLeaks’ real source for the DNC emails was not Russian intelligence agents, as U.S. officials have since concluded, but former DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered on the streets of Washington in July 2016 in what police believe was a botched robbery.

  Yahoo

Why is Rohrabacher admitting it?  Did Assange have a recording?

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham immediately denounced the claim about a pardon discussion with Assange as a “complete fabrication,” adding that the president “barely knows Dana Rohrabacher” and has “never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject.”

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. The barely knew him defense.

Rohrabacher said that not only did talk of a Trump pardon take place during his meeting, but he also followed up by calling then White House chief of staff John Kelly to discuss the proposal. He did not, however, ever speak to Trump about it, he said.

“I spoke to Julian Assange and told him if he would provide evidence about who gave WikiLeaks the emails I would petition the president to give him a pardon,” Rohrabacher said. “He knew I could get to the president.”

Oh, well, that's different.

When he spoke to Kelly, the then chief of staff was “courteous” but made no commitment that he would even raise the matter directly with the president. “He knew this had to be handled with care,” Rohrabacher said, and that it could be spun by the news media in ways that would be “harmful” to the president. In fact, Rohrabacher said he never heard anything further from Kelly about the matter, nor did he ever discuss the subject directly with Trump.

Any bets on whether Rohrabacher got a message from a Trump henchman after Assange made the claim of what to say to the press?

Or is the fact that Dana Rohrabacher is a total twit the simple answer?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's just a huge catfight now

Click here

Click here

And........................

Bill Barr!

In an exclusive interview, Attorney General Bill Barr told ABC News on Thursday that President Donald Trump "has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case” but should stop tweeting about the Justice Department because his tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job.”

  ABC

Don't you think he should be telling that to His Lardship and not to the world on ABC? I smell trouble coming.

When asked if he was prepared for the consequences of criticizing the president – his boss – Barr said “of course” because his job is to run the Justice Department and make decisions on “what I think is the right thing to do.”

Better ask His Lardship about what his job is.

“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody ... whether it’s Congress, a newspaper editorial board, or the president,” Barr said.

We'll see about that.  Barr also said, "It's time to stop tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.  He's going to get called to the oval office, isn't he?

"I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”

You undercut yourself, Billy Boy.

The interview is here.

And he probably can't understand why Bill Barr wouldn't be happy to be congratulated for it in a Trump tweet.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE 2/14:

Reminding Bill Barr who's boss.

UPDATE:  Matthew Gertz was right:

Feud

One of many.

Speaking at the Sea Island Summit, an event in Georgia organised by the conservative Washington Examiner, [former Chief of Staff General John] Kelly said that on leaving, he had said: “Whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man’ – someone who won’t tell you the truth.”

[...]

“Someone has got to be a guide that tells [the president] that you either have the authority or you don’t, or ‘Mr President, don’t do it,’” Kelly said. “Don’t hire someone that will just nod and say, ‘That’s a great idea Mr President.’ Because you will be impeached.”

[...]

CNN reported that the US president denied Kelly’s remarks.

“John Kelly never said that,” Trump said, according to CNN. “He never [said] anything like that.

“If he would have said that I would have thrown him out of the office. He just wants to come back into the action like everybody else.”

The White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, confirmed Trump’s response: “I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President.”

  Guardian

This is the woman who thought it was a good idea for Melania to go out in public in a jacket emblazoned with the words "I really don't care."

She knows genius.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The swamp recycles

On Wednesday, former Defense Secretary James Mattis rejoined the board of General Dynamics, a massive defense contractor whose IT division works with the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) on issues related to the “needs of unaccompanied children.” Mattis joins John Kelly, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary and White House Chief of Staff, as former Trump cabinet members who helped implement the zero tolerance policy and now stand to benefit from its continued effects and Trump’s immigration policy.

  CREW

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh! Shock! Whatever

President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.

The disclosure of the memos contradicts statements made by the president, who told The New York Times in January in an Oval Office interview that he had no role in his son-in-law receiving his clearance.

  NYT

Just under three weeks ago Ivanka was telling an interviewer that the idea was nonsense. The whole family is a bunch of lying crooks.

Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, also said that at the time the clearance was granted last year that his client went through a standard process.

[...]

The day that Mr. Lowell described Mr. Kushner’s process as having gone through normal routes, aides to Mr. Kushner had asked White House officials to deliver a statement from Mr. Kelly supporting what Mr. Lowell had said. But Mr. Kelly refused to do so, according to a person with knowledge of the events.

[...]

Asked on Thursday about the memos contradicting the president’s account, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said, “We don’t comment on security clearances.”

They already did, Sarah! And they lied.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Mr. Lowell, said on Thursday: “In 2018, White House and security clearance officials affirmed that Mr. Kushner’s security clearance was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone. That was conveyed to the media at the time, and new stories, if accurate, do not change what was affirmed at the time.”

They don't change what was affirmed, no. What was affirmed was a lie, though, ffs.

It is not known precisely what factors led to the problems with Mr. Kushner’s security clearance.

Gee, I wonder if it had anything to do with his family's business trying to secure loans from foreign governments, or that they were selling visas to Chinese for investments, or that they received millions in investments from Israelis when Jared was headed to Israel in 2017, or that Saudi prince MBS bragged he had Jared in his pocket, or perhaps that he had to amend his disclosure of foreign connections SF86 form multiple times because "his assistant" failed to put down everything, or that he failed to mention meeting with the head of a Russian state-owned bank and with the Russian ambassador, asking for a secret back door channel in the Russian embassy.  Did I miss anything?

House Democrats are in the early stages of an investigation into how several Trump administration officials obtained clearances, including Mr. Kushner.

Mr. Trump’s precise language to Mr. Kelly about Mr. Kushner’s clearance in their direct conversation remains unclear. Two of the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s discussions with Mr. Kelly said that there might be different interpretations of what the president said. But Mr. Kelly believed it was an order, according to two people familiar with his thinking.

Precisely the way Michael Cohen said Trump operates in his testimony yesterday. Also the way James Comey described it. And Andrew McCabe. Like a mob boss. Letting you know what he wants without spelling it out.

When this is one day - hopefully! - all over, attorney Abbe Lowell is going to be disgraced and Sarah Sanders is going to be a pariah.

Dump Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 3/1: