All Things Trump

[Brian Peacock]

Trump hinting that lil' Kim pulling out of peace talks is all China's fault, though Pompi disagrees - for now.

[Tero]

The art of the scam:
So Far, Donald Trump Has Negotiated Zero Successful Deals
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/ ... ful-deals/

[Tero]

Trump admin fails to withdraw main drug blamed for opioid crisis:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... due-pharma

The FDA and DEA have the power to do this

[Sean Hayden]

You want Trump to remove drugs from the market? --really?

Personally I'm tired of the everything but the kitchen sink approach. Do you think it's a winning one?

[Brian Peacock]

[Forty Two]

Trump admin fails to withdraw main drug blamed for opioid crisis:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... due-pharma

The FDA and DEA have the power to do this

Oh. My. God. The Trump admin failed to make Oxycontin illegal?

Is there no level to which they will not stoop? They literally want people to become addicts!

I can't wait for the Democrats to win the White House, so that Oxycontin will be quickly removed from the market.

[Forty Two]

Broccoli Rob is really reaching on this one...

There isn't a violation of the Constitution here. Trump is allowed to ask the DOJ to turn documents over to Congress. He can declassify anything he wants. The DOJ works for the President. This is not an issue.

It's not "treason" for Russia to have dirt on Hillary Clinton, for someone to know about it, and for someone to be glad about it. What the fuck is Broccoli Rob talking about here?

There is nothing improper about wanting to see the alleged evidence against one. This is basic stuff. So much in the way of allegation is floating around - at some point there ought to be someone putting a card on the table.

[Brian Peacock]

Except apparently he's not turning them over to Congress, but only to certain Republican members of Congress. I'd say there is something fundamentally wrong in using presidential privilege to so blatantly favour one's own party for such obviously personal reasons - but I'm sure someone will remind me that democrats do bad things too.

[Animavore]

Trump's attempt to protect his fee-fees by creating an echo chamber of obsequious worship on Twitter is rejected.

A federal district court judge on Wednesday ruled that President Trump can't block people from viewing his Twitter feed over their political views.

Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, said President Trump’s Twitter account is a public forum and blocking people who reply to his tweets with differing opinions constitutes viewpoint discrimination, which violates the First Amendment.

The court’s ruling is a major win for the Knight Foundation, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of seven people who were blocked from the @realDonaldTrump account because of opinions they expressed in reply tweets.

Buchwald, who was appointed by President Clinton, rejected Trump’s argument that the First Amendment does not apply in this case and that president’s personal First Amendment interests supersede those of plaintiffs.

She suggested in her 75-page opinion that Trump could have ignored his opponents’ reply tweets.

“No First Amendment harm arises when a government’s 'challenged conduct' is simply to ignore the [speaker],” as the Supreme Court has affirmed ‘that it is free to do,’ ” she wrote.

“Stated otherwise, 'a person’s right to speak is not infringed when government simply ignores that person while listening to others,' or when the government ‘amplifies’ the voice of one speaker over those of others.”

http://thehill.com/regulation/389021-ju ... on-twitter

[Forty Two]

What's the source for that? I saw that several Republican members of Congress wrote a letter to Trump, asking him to direct certain documents to be turned over to members of Congress, or to have members of congress allowed access to review those documents. I did not see as where that was limited only to Republicans or where Trump actually directed that documents be turned over just to Republicans. I could be wrong, though.

[Brian Peacock]

It's been all over the place. Top of my Google list is today's LA Times article about the President asking the DOJ to investigate his conspiracy theories...

... More concerning is a statement released by the White House on Monday after Trump met with Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly. The statement said that Kelly would set up a meeting, now scheduled for Thursday, at which officials of intelligence agencies and members of Congress would "review highly classified and other information they have requested."

This was apparently a reference to documents the president's allies in the House have been seeking from the Justice Department, including information about an informant who spoke to Trump campaign personnel known to have dealt with suspected Russian agents. The informant, a retired U.S. academic living in England, seems to have morphed in the imagination of some Trump supporters into a spy planted inside the campaign by his enemies in the Obama White House — an idea Trump floated again on Tuesday.

If the Justice Department judges some information to be too sensitive to release, it shouldn't change its opinion simply because the president applies pressure. It's also troubling that the only two congressmen, both Republicans, will attend the meeting: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) and Troy Gowdy (R-S.C.). Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has led the effort to obtain the records...

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editoria ... story.html

[Animavore]

I notice James Comey's book is no. 1 here in Ireland. Good to see people are interested in the corrupt, incompetent, ignorant joke of a President and the circus he has surrounded himself with.

Watching the US government right now is like watching one of those reality TV shows were you're left cringing in embarrassment for the contestants who are themselves devoid of shame.

[Forty Two]

It's been all over the place. Top of my Google list is today's LA Times article about the President asking the DOJ to investigate his conspiracy theories...

... More concerning is a statement released by the White House on Monday after Trump met with Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly. The statement said that Kelly would set up a meeting, now scheduled for Thursday, at which officials of intelligence agencies and members of Congress would "review highly classified and other information they have requested."

This was apparently a reference to documents the president's allies in the House have been seeking from the Justice Department, including information about an informant who spoke to Trump campaign personnel known to have dealt with suspected Russian agents. The informant, a retired U.S. academic living in England, seems to have morphed in the imagination of some Trump supporters into a spy planted inside the campaign by his enemies in the Obama White House — an idea Trump floated again on Tuesday.

If the Justice Department judges some information to be too sensitive to release, it shouldn't change its opinion simply because the president applies pressure. It's also troubling that the only two congressmen, both Republicans, will attend the meeting: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) and Troy Gowdy (R-S.C.). Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has led the effort to obtain the records...

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editoria ... story.html

It's not a conspiracy theory. Nobody disputes that at least one, maybe more, persons were planted in the Trump campaign as an informant. The only question is whether there was a reasonable basis for doing so in the first place, or whether it was motivated by politics. I'm not sure why it wouldn't be appropriate to investigate how the FBI came to do what it did, and whether political actors may have been the impetus for it.

When I suggest that there shouldn't have been a special counsel appointed, because there was no probable cause that Trump or the campaign did any "colluding" or had anything to do with illegal Russian activities, people told me here that the allegations were very important and that we investigate in order to find the evidence. If that's true, then I fail to see why investigating the political motives and machinations that started or may have started the investigations in the first place would be out of line.

With regard to the documents, they aren't being turned over to Republican members of Congress. Republican members of Congress asked for the access, and they're going to this meeting where they get to look at some stuff that the DOJ will let them see. I am not aware of a Democrat Congressman wanting to go who is being frozen out. If that's the case, though, I would certainly be in favor of Democrats going to. In fact, I think the whole idea of Congressmen going to the offices of the DOJ to look at documents under the watchful eyes of intelligence agency folks is absurd. The documents should be released to everyone. If there is a real concern about intelligence issues, and not the usual bullshit, then appoint a federal judge as a special master to review each claim for national security concerns.

[Brian Peacock]

"Planted" s entirely misleading here, and the entire point relies on that misapprehension. But I guess you'll accept the point that this presumed evidence is not being made available to Congress?

[Forty Two]

"Planted" s entirely misleading here, and the entire point relies on that misapprehension. But I guess you'll accept the point that this presumed evidence is not being made available to Congress?

I do accept that, but Trump would like it released. It's his opponents that are saying it's improper to disclose. And that's the problem. It should be made available to Congress, but the DOJ is resisting it. Trump could declassify it, but his opponents are waiting for him to do that so they can claim that he is acting inappropriately in that regard (probably treasonously, if you as, them).