"The butt of global jokes": who might this be? (Talk Trump)

[Scot Dutchy]

Who would eat him?

[Tero]

Lock up Ivanka!

There is the general impression among Trumpists that Hillary's emails leaked. But most of the election era leak was from Dem headquarters and Podesta.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podesta_emails

[Animavore]

Can't link to WaPo because they've decided they don't want foreigners, but it looks like House Dems are planning to investigate Ivanka.

[Tero]

Sad old man:
The myth holds that Trump is a tough guy who fights back. In fact, he is a fragile man running out of safe places to hide.
https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/11/20/opinio ... cnn.com%2F

[Animavore]

From that-

Beyond his finances, Trump fears being revealed to be a naïf who has been outplayed by others with power. In the case of the Saudi killing of American-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump seems afraid to listen to the audio evidence Turkish officials handed over to the United States. He seems to be in denial about what his brutal pals are willing to do.

Trump's first overseas trip as President began with a stop in Riyadh, where he joined in a ceremonial dance and went all in with one of the most repressive regimes on Earth.

The desperation in Trump's denial, whether it has to do with Khashoggi's killing or domestic politics, can be seen in the tortured effort he makes to persuade us that what we see with our own eyes isn't true.

The results of the 2018 election are a perfect case in point. Trump's instinct brought him to frame the election as a "tremendous success," even as his party lost control of the House and he became vulnerable to the opposition for the first time in his presidency.

Trump likely failed to detect the nation's displeasure with him, and his party, because he is apparently afraid to go anywhere outside the parts of the country where he's sure to draw an adoring crowd. (His did make a brief trip to California after the campaign in the wake of the deadly wildfires.)

The America he saw at his rallies was whiter, more rural and less educated than America overall. Obviously wary of any place where he wouldn't be hailed as a hero, he didn't hold a single rally in the Northeast or on the West Coast. In both those regions, Republicans suffered major election losses. If timid Trump had taken the risk of going to these places, he might have had a more realistic sense of how he is faring. But information that runs counter to the narrative he prefers may make him uncomfortable.

He has absolutely nailed the coward, Donald Trump.

[Seabass]

Orange man bad. How will Rationalia's most ardent defender of liberal democracy (who is totally not right-wing, conservative, or Republican!) defend this autocratic bullshit? I suppose he'll just write it off as fake news, since it didn't come from a reputable source like Laura Loomer or Mike Cernovich.

Trump Wanted to Order Justice Dept. to Prosecute Comey and Clinton

WASHINGTON — President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.

The encounter was one of the most blatant examples yet of how Mr. Trump views the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. It took on additional significance in recent weeks when Mr. McGahn left the White House and Mr. Trump appointed a relatively inexperienced political loyalist, Matthew G. Whitaker, as the acting attorney general.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further. But the president has continued to privately discuss the matter, including the possible appointment of a second special counsel to investigate both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Comey, according to two people who have spoken to Mr. Trump about the issue. He has also repeatedly expressed disappointment in the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, for failing to more aggressively investigate Mrs. Clinton, calling him weak, one of the people said.

continued:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/us/p ... tment.html

(alternative sources in case of paywall or geoblocking)
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-w ... on-2018-11
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... mey-report
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/20/politics ... index.html
https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18105462 ... er-justice
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-wan ... mey-report

[pErvinalia]

Unlikely this true, as Trump is the most liberal president we've had in a long time. So liberal.

[L'Emmerdeur]

It's not illegal for the president to ask about using the law enforcement power of the federal government for his own personal vendettas!

[Seabass]

Trump to foreign dictators: murder and dismember our journalists as you please, so long as you keep buying weapons from us.

WASHINGTON — President Trump defied the nation’s intelligence agencies and a growing body of evidence on Tuesday to declare his unswerving loyalty to Saudi Arabia, asserting that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s culpability for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi might never be known.

In a remarkable statement that appeared calculated to end the debate over the American response to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, the president said, “It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

“We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” Mr. Trump added. “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

His statement, which aides said Mr. Trump dictated himself and reflected his deeply held views, came only days after the C.I.A. concluded that the crown prince, a close ally of the White House, had authorized the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and columnist for The Washington Post.

In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/worl ... hoggi.html

Trump calls Saudi Arabia a ‘great ally,’ discounts crown prince’s responsibility for Khashoggi’s death
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html

[L'Emmerdeur]

CIA: Saudi ruling prince MBS ordered murder of Khashoggi.

Donald Trump: Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but their money is what's important.

AP: About that ...

[pErvinalia]

To be honest, as I mentioned previously in one of the Trump threads, getting hung up on this while ignoring the long running and large scale human rights abuses committed by the Saudi regime is a bit ridiculous. This one has just caught the imagination of the world press, for obvious reasons.

[pErvinalia]

Lock her up!
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/20/66946033 ... -house-bus

[Scot Dutchy]

Trump must be earning a fortune from the Saudi's. His son-in-law is in it as well taking all the back handers that's going.

[Tero]

Yeah but the blacks and Latinos and Muslims! Ja ämmät ei ruve pressaks!
Why Trump Supporters Believe He Is Not Corrupt

What the president’s supporters fear most isn’t the corruption of American law, but the corruption of America’s traditional identity.
On Wednesday morning, the lead story on FoxNews.com was not Michael Cohen’s admission that Donald Trump had instructed him to violate campaign-finance laws by paying hush money to two of Trump’s mistresses. It was the alleged murder of a white Iowa woman, Mollie Tibbetts, by an undocumented Latino immigrant, Cristhian Rivera.

On their face, the two stories have little in common. Fox is simply covering the Iowa murder because it distracts attention from a revelation that makes Trump look bad. But dig deeper and the two stories are connected: They represent competing notions of what corruption is.
Cohen’s admission highlights one of the enduring riddles of the Trump era. Trump’s supporters say they care about corruption. During the campaign, they cheered his vow to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. When Morning Consult asked Americans in May 2016 to explain why they disliked Hillary Clinton, the second-most-common answer was that she was “corrupt.” And yet, Trump supporters appear largely unfazed by the mounting evidence that Trump is the least ethical president in modern American history. When asked last month whether they considered Trump corrupt, only 14 percent of Republicans said yes. Even Cohen’s allegation is unlikely to change that.

Once you grasp that for Trump and many of his supporters, corruption means less the violation of law than the violation of established hierarchies, their behavior makes more sense. Since 2014, Trump has employed the phrase rule of law nine times in tweets. Seven of them refer to illegal immigration.

Why were Trump’s supporters so convinced that Clinton was the more corrupt candidate even as reporters uncovered far more damning evidence about Trump’s foundation than they did about Clinton’s? Likely because Clinton’s candidacy threatened traditional gender roles.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... VgfLMs--vE

[Tero]

He does not get it. The November election was the end of his wall
CONGRESS
Stalemate on Trump’s wall amid threat of shutdown
Both parties are refusing to bend, with a government funding deadline two weeks away.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/ ... wn-1009349