It's on

President Trump on Wednesday ripped former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon for his incendiary criticism of the president and his family published in a new book.

In a blistering statement issued by the White House, Trump said Bannon has "lost his mind" and claimed he had “no influence” within the West Wing.

“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,” Trump said. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”

[...]

"Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books," Trump said.

"Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was," the president added.

[...]

The president’s statement came as part of a full-court press by the White House against the book.

“This book is filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a subsequent statement. “Participating in a book that can only be described as trashy tabloid fiction exposes their sad, desperate attempts at relevancy.”

[...]

Trump’s tone on Wednesday stood in stark contrast to his reaction after Bannon’s departure from the White House.

"I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton - it was great! Thanks S” he tweeted at the time.

  The Hill

Old Lard Ass is going to be pretty busy striking back after Ivanka reads that book to him. It's much more than just Bannon claims.

Here are a couple more that are out already:

President Trump called former acting Attorney General Sally Yates "a c---" before firing her, according to an explosive new book about the Trump administration.

An excerpt of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” obtained by MSNBC contained the anecdote.

“Trump conceived an early, obsessive antipathy for Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates,” the book reads. “She was, he steamed, ‘such a c---.’”

  The Hill

And...

Hoo boy.  Old Lard Ass won't sleep tonight.

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

Doug Jones heeds the calls of the people who put him in office

Reported to be the only black chief of staff for a Democratic Senator.

Good for Doug Jones.  Now let's see him actually fight for those constituents in real terms.

Imagine that

And black people all over America have another moment of confirmation that theirs is a different world from White America.

“The grand jury room looks like a Bernie Sanders rally,” my source said. “Maybe they found these jurors in central casting, or at a Black Lives Matter rally in Berkeley [Calif.]”

Of the 20 jurors, 11 are African-Americans and two were wearing “peace T-shirts,” the witness said. “There was only one white male in the room, and he was a prosecutor.”

[...]

“That room isn’t a room where POTUS gets a fair shake.”

  Page Six

Cue the Republicans and Trumpettes clamoring even louder about a rigged investigation.

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

UPDATE:  Did Old Lard Ass  himself "leak" this Grand Jury information?

Fusion GPS would like to clear the air on the Steeele Dossier

Republicans won't release the GPS testimony transcripts, and instead, keep using GPS to tarnish the Clinton campaign and to support their own false claims about the Russia investigation. GPS is tired of it.

In the year since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier — the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia — the president has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter. His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.

We are happy to correct the record.

[...]

Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm, Fusion GPS. In those sessions, we toppled the far right’s conspiracy theories and explained how The Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton campaign — the Republican and Democratic funders of our Trump research — separately came to hire us in the first place.

We walked investigators through our yearlong effort to decipher Mr. Trump’s complex business past, of which the Steele dossier is but one chapter. And we handed over our relevant bank records — while drawing the line at a fishing expedition for the records of companies we work for that have nothing to do with the Trump case.

Republicans have refused to release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony, even as they selectively leak details to media outlets on the far right. It’s time to share what our company told investigators.

[...]

As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp.

  NYT

Who are we talking about here? Papadopoulos? Someone else?

The intelligence committees have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign. Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.

This is a favorite from the Karl Rove playbook. Accuse the other party of doing what you're doing (or what you are, or how you've been duped) before they can accuse you of it. We see it time and time and time again.

We suggested investigators look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank and others that were funding Mr. Trump’s businesses. Congress appears uninterested in that tip: Reportedly, ours are the only bank records the House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed.

We told Congress that from Manhattan to Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and from Toronto to Panama, we found widespread evidence that Mr. Trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians in arrangements that often raised questions about money laundering. Likewise, those deals don’t seem to interest Congress.

Those Congressional investigations are utterly worthless. Not to worry, though. Mueller's team has subpoenaed all those pertinent records.

Finally, we debunked the biggest canard being pushed by the president’s men — the notion that we somehow knew of the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower between some Russians and the Trump brain trust. We first learned of that meeting from news reports last year — and the committees know it. They also know that these Russians were unaware of the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s work for us and were not sources for his reports.

Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert. But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?

[...]

What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I.

We did not discuss that decision with our clients, or anyone else. Instead, we deferred to Mr. Steele.

[...]

After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary. We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power. We did not, however, share the dossier with BuzzFeed, which to our dismay published it last January.

[...]

Congress should release transcripts of our firm’s testimony, so that the American people can learn the truth about our work and most important, what happened to our democracy.

I wonder why Mr. Steele waited until after the election and then informed McCain (and why he chose McCain).  Steele is not an American citizen and had no obligation to alert the FBI, but I'm wondering why he decided to hold the information back until after the election.  Did he think it wouldn't matter if Trump lost the election and figured he would?  Or was there another reason?  And who gave the document to Buzzfeed, and why in January?  McCain - because that's when he got it?  Just curious.

And you thought Glenn Beck was a nutter

You were right, of course, but here's the champion...

 I am getting darned sick of misleading headlines.

What Jones actually says is just as "shocking" (but could well be true - or at least a good idea.)

Can you call that being "on drugs" if it's against your will or even knowledge? Whatever, I think I read somewhere that he has 12 Diet Cokes every day. That in itself can't be good for you. He does seem sometimes, however, that he's medicated. I doubt it's being done to him on the sly, though.

Anyway, if you aren't already familiar with Alex Jones, this article gives you a quick summary into the kind of stuff he peddles.   And I think Trump watches his program.

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

Such respect

Such respect that they aren't even allowed to come into the US because they're Muslims from Iran.

And, just when is "the appropriate time"?  And what will that support be?  Stay tuned for the next episode of Donald Trump in the White House.

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

Maybe Trump will actually read a book

Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book [Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House] seen by the Guardian.

Bannon, speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

  Guardian

I've always thought it would be moneylaundering, too, but I also think now that there will indeed be at least some people who get nailed for helping Russia interfere with the election.

[The book] will be published next week. Wolff is a prominent media critic and columnist who has written for the Guardian and is a biographer of Rupert Murdoch.

[...]

[Wolff] told the Guardian in November that to research the book, he showed up at the White House with no agenda but wanting to “find out what the insiders were really thinking and feeling”. He enjoyed extraordinary access to Trump and senior officials and advisers, he said, sometimes at critical moments of the fledgling presidency.

[...]

[He] lifts the lid on a White House lurching from crisis to crisis amid internecine warfare, with even some of Trump’s closest allies expressing contempt for him.

That book is going to set a world record for sales, isn't it?

Bannon, who was chief executive of the Trump campaign in its final three months, [...] is a central figure in the nasty, cutthroat drama, quoted extensively, often in salty language.

He is particularly scathing about a June 2016 meeting involving Trump’s son Donald Jr, son-in-law Jared Kushner, then campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York.

[...]

Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: “The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers.

“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”

Why would they, though? And, Bannon himself, given his position in the campaign and following in the White House might have known about some of these things, his contrary relationship with Kushner notwithstanding. And if he did, he's in trouble, too. Or else he's also cooperating with Mueller. Kushner must be shitting his britches these days. If he's not so arrogant he thinks his relationship with Trump will land him a get out of jail free card.  Which it might, I suppose.  Until it comes to state crimes involving his businesses.  As I understand it, Trump can only pardon federal crimes.

“You realise where this is going,” [Bannon] is quoted as saying. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner … It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

[...]

“It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”

[...]

The rancour between Bannon and “Javanka” – Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump – is a recurring theme of the book.

[...]

Trump is not spared. Wolff writes that Thomas Barrack Jr, a billionaire who is one of the president’s oldest associates, allegedly told a friend: “He’s not only crazy, he’s stupid.”

I think we're all aware of that now, but do you think Barrack will deny he said it?

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

Both Walsh, and Trump’s longtime pal Tom Barrack (quoted as calling Trump “crazy” and “stupid”), both claimed they were quoted inaccurately.

  The Daily Beast

As hard as it is to believe, it's worse than we thought

When President Donald Trump sat down for dinner on September 18 in New York with leaders of four Latin American countries on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly, anxieties were already running high.

[...]

Trump had volunteered that he was considering a “military option” in Venezuela as that country’s last vestiges of democracy disappeared. Amid the international furor over his vow to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea in the same golf-course press conference, the news that the president of the United States was apparently considering going to war with its third-largest oil supplier had gotten relatively little attention. But the leaders from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Panama invited to the dinner remembered it well.

[...]

“Rex tells me you don’t want me to use the military option in Venezuela,” the president told the gathered Latin American leaders, according to an account offered by an attendee soon after the dinner. “Is that right? Are you sure?” Everyone said they were sure. But they were rattled.

[...]

A former senior U.S. official with whom I spoke was briefed by ministers from three of the four countries that attended the dinner. “Without fail, they just had wide eyes about the entire engagement,” the former official told me. Even if few took his martial bluster about Venezuela seriously, Trump struck them as uninformed about their issues and dangerously unpredictable, asking them to expend political capital on behalf of a U.S. that no longer seemed a reliable partner. “The word they all used was: ‘This guy is insane.’”

[...]

The jarring reality of their encounters with Trump has at times been even more disturbing to America’s friends and allies than the initial news accounts have suggested. When he went to dinner with leaders from fellow NATO member states in May, for example, Trump had already given a speech that was being roundly criticized by allies for failing to reaffirm America’s normally unquestioned commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the mutual defense provision that is at the heart of the alliance Trump has called “obsolete.” And news was making the rounds of an equally disastrous private meeting he had earlier in the day in Brussels with the leaders of the European Union. But what was not reported at the time was that even after all of that, some European leaders came away most disturbed by what Trump said at their private dinner. “He was very tough and very outspoken in his intervention,” a European diplomat in attendance confirmed to me about the meal. Another European attendee said Trump at the dinner was “unlike anything they’ve ever heard” in such a setting. “All this bluster and blasting. He walks in and starts talking, breaking china all over the place.” And to top it off, Trump left early.

[...]

Over the course of the year, I have often heard top foreign officials express their alarm in hair-raising terms rarely used in international diplomacy—let alone about the president of the United States. Seasoned diplomats who have seen Trump up close throw around words like “catastrophic,” “terrifying,” “incompetent” and “dangerous.” In Berlin this spring, I listened to a group of sober policy wonks debate whether Trump was merely a “laughingstock” or something more dangerous. Virtually all of those from whom I’ve heard this kind of ranting are leaders from close allies and partners of the United States.

[...]

[A] conversation, with Jared Kushner, the presidential son-in-law who had been given an expansive international portfolio ranging from restarting Middle East peace talks to dealing with Mexico and China, was just as troubling [a European diplomat related]. Kushner was “very dismissive” about the role of international institutions and alliances and uninterested in the European’s recounting of how closely the United States had stood together with Western Europe since World War II. “He told me, ‘I’m a businessman, and I don’t care about the past. Old allies can be enemies, or enemies can be friends.’ So, the past doesn’t count,” the official recalled. “I was taken aback. It was frightening.”

[...]

The dysfunction continued to plague Trump’s foreign policy team as the tumultuous year came to an end. “It’s a snake pit,” a senior Republican who has remained in close contact with many of the players told me in early December. “There are personality tensions between the president and Tillerson, between the president and McMaster, between McMaster and Tillerson. It’s broken and it’s going to have to be fixed one way or another. It can’t go on like this.”

[...]

I recently met a senior general of a U.S. ally at a conference. What was it like to deal with Trump’s government, I asked? “It’s a vacuum, a void,” he said. “There’s a complete inability to get answers out of American counterparts who don’t know what policy is.” An international diplomat who has worked extensively on hot spots such as Afghanistan and Iraq told me he has been to Washington five or six times in recent months. His normal contacts at the State Department were so out of the loop, “Frankly, they were asking me, ‘What do you think the White House thinks?’”

[...]

The Latin Americans who met for dinner with Trump in September told the former U.S. official afterward that maybe they should invite the Chinese into the region instead.

  Politico

And they'd probably be wise to do so.

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

A tiny bit of good news

Orrin Hatch is stepping down.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the longest-serving Senate Republican, announced Tuesday that he will retire at the end of the year, rebuffing personal pleas from President Trump to seek an eighth term and paving the way for Mitt Romney, a critic of Mr. Trump’s, to run for the seat. Mr. Hatch’s decision marks another political setback for Mr. Trump, who lost a Senate seat in Alabama after his preferred candidates were rejected. He also faces an exodus of Republicans from both chambers of Congress and has been warned of a political typhoon in November.

[...]

Mr. Hatch was under heavy pressure from Mr. Trump to seek re-election and block Mr. Romney. Last month, Mr. Trump flew with Mr. Hatch, who has emerged as one of the president’s most avid loyalists in the Senate, on Air Force One to Utah for a day of events that was aimed entirely at lobbying the senator to run again. At the request of the senator, the president announced that he was vastly shrinking two of Utah’s sprawling national monuments, reversing decisions made by Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

  NYT

And look how he repays him.

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

Seriously, it cannot get worse

I know I've THOUGHT that before.  But I'm certain of it now.  Surely this is the bottom.

And, he gets second place, too.

AND third.