All Things Trump: Is it over yet?

[Sean Hayden]

...uh, gaslighting?

[Tyrannical]

Trump is boring, he hasn't started WWIII yet. Hoping next four years is less lame.

[Tero]

AG Bill Barr to Dispute DOJ Inspector General’s Finding That Russia Probe Was Justified: WaPo

[Tero]

Trump makes orgasmic Lisa Lisa noises at rally making fun of Lisa Page

[JimC]

Just like the nasty boys in primary school - perfect for the mental age of his followers...

[Joe]

First time I ever heard a President fake an orgasm. Sounds like an impeachable offence to me.

[Sean Hayden]

I wish the deep state would pull its head outta its ass. They're pathetic. The old feds could've shut down the worst of the Republicans with a single threatening phone call. It's almost like they've got nothing on these clowns. --sad

[pErvinalia]

The CIA assassination squad needs to up its game.

[Joe]

Where's J. Edgar Hoover when you need him? I guarantee he'd have his hands on Trump's tax returns and the pee tapes!

[Sean Hayden]

--exactly

But it wouldn't be enough, would it? He could shoot someone...

[Tero]

Trump mortgages from Russia will come out

[Joe]

--exactly

But it wouldn't be enough, would it? He could shoot someone...

Hoover was old school Deep State. He made his bones in the Palmer raids and was director from Coolidge to Nixon, and none of those Presidents dared touch him. He died in office and is the only civil servant to have lain in state. I was in high school and remember what a big deal it was.

He would have owned Trump.

Heck, Nixon was scared of the guy and they were friends. He even said so on the White House tapes!

[L'Emmerdeur]

Two years ago, I noted an article on how the Trump administration was gutting the US State Department diplomatic corps. Though the overt efforts decreased somewhat with Tillerson's departure, the depletion of personnel has continued. In conjunction with a drastic drop in applicants for the service, it is now apparent that the long term harm done to one of the most important elements of the US government will take several years to be repaired.

'Trump Is Waging War on America’s Diplomats'

Last year, just before Halloween, Lewis Lukens, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in London, visited a pair of English universities where he spoke about the importance of international cooperation, beseeching students not to “swipe left” on the historic “special relationship” between the U.K. and America. The speeches were—according to a copy of the remarks that Lukens provided to GQ—fairly anodyne, reprising all the things Americans and Brits had learned from each other, all the ways we’ve helped each other over the years, disagreements notwithstanding. At the time, things between the two countries had been strained—in part because President Trump had attacked British leaders, including Prime Minister Theresa May and London Mayor Sadiq Khan—but Lukens, the second-most-senior American diplomat to the United Kingdom, had a request for the students who had gathered to see him: “Don’t write off the special relationship.”

A week later, Lukens says, his boss, the U.S. ambassador Woody Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune and a Trump political appointee, told him that he was done, firing Lukens from his post seven months ahead of when he was scheduled to leave for a new assignment. After nearly 30 years as a foreign service officer, his State Department career was over. The reason? Lukens says he had unwittingly committed a fatal error in his speech: He had mentioned former president Barack Obama.

...

When Tillerson was fired by tweet and his successor, Mike Pompeo, vowed to bring the “swagger” back to the State Department, he reversed many of Tillerson’s slash-and-burn policies. Still, foreign service veterans say, the damage was done.

What’s more, the attrition continues unabated. Career foreign service officers work long hours in difficult conditions, making less money than they would in the private sector. Often, they are driven by their sense of mission—say, promoting American values abroad—but when President Trump began attacking the pillars of American national security and smearing diplomats by name on Twitter, “suddenly,” says one senior foreign service officer who was pushed out on a scheduling technicality, “the equation didn’t make sense anymore.” What had started as a trickle of people leaving at the highest levels—often, people who were close to retirement—has turned into a flood of mid-career and junior officers heading for the door. The departure of top talent, people who had decades’ worth of wisdom that could have passed on to people below them, as well as the exodus of mid-level officers who had years to go before their retirements, will continue to resonate for quite a while, says Nicholas Burns, a retired career foreign service officer who is now at the Harvard Kennedy School. “That gap will show up years later,” he told me.

“What’s striking is both the decapitation of the State Department and the loss of people who should have been the next leadership of the department,” says the foreign service officer who was forced out. “It’s a hollowing out of the foreign service. You can’t replace those mid-level people easily at the numbers at which they’re losing them. That will take a generation to rebuild.”

...

In fact, recruitment has already fallen off dramatically. Ten years ago, in 2009, about 21,000 people took the test to join the American foreign service. Today, according to AFSA’s [American Foreign Service Association] analysis of internal State Department data, that number is just over 9,000—less than half. And that was before the impeachment inquiry began.

All of this has created alarming gaps all over the world. Trump was slow to fill diplomatic appointments, and with time a clear preference has emerged for “acting” secretaries and ambassadors who are accountable not to the Senate but to him. According to AFSA, 20 ambassadorships remain unfilled. One-third of foreign service jobs in overseas U.S. embassies and consulates sit empty. The work of filling those jobs has ground to a halt because of impeachment proceedings.

[Scot Dutchy]

Footage appears to show world leaders joking about Trump at Nato summit

Group including Macron and Johnson appear to be discussing US president (including Rutte)

A video has emerged that appears to show world leaders including Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron joking about Donald Trump at the opening of this week’s Nato summit in London.

Footage shows the leaders at a function at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday evening. Johnson asks Macron: “Is that why you were late?” before Trudeau interjects: “He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top”.

Trudeau adds: “Oh, yeah, yeah yeah. He announced … ” before he is cut off by Macron, who speaks animatedly to the group. Macron’s back is to the camera and his words are inaudible.

It is never said whom the group are talking about, but the exchange could relate to the US president, who is known for his long, rambling press conferences and who had an unscripted 50-minute back and forth with reporters on Tuesday.

As he did at last year’s Nato meeting, Trump has thrown out normal summit protocol and used his appearances with allied leaders to field dozens of questions from the world’s media.

The Queen hosted world leaders at a reception at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday night to mark 70 years of Nato cooperation, as protesters gathered outside, rallying against Trump and his perceived interest in the NHS in a US-UK trade deal and Nato.

After an edited cut in the film, the footage later shows an incredulous Trudeau telling the group, which also included Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands, and Princess Anne: “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.”

[pErvinalia]

Nasty nasty people.