Is that a very firm vice president you've got there or are you just happy to see me?

Mother will be so happy. :jaw-dropp

Not Safe for dinnertime

Trump basically called the Metoo movement a bunch of liars in a tweet today.

Luckily, none of them voted for him.

Poor Hope Hicks, though, about to be exiled from Stockholm.

That is the only crime as far as Trump is concerned.

The problem here is that you have to remember how arrogant and aggressively stupid and uninformed Trump is. Lots of his closest staff can not get real security clearances like Kushner. So why is Trump going to care about one more?

FBI weighs in.

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-...-idUSKCN1FX27D

So who is next then ? Will it be Kelly ?

This 'controversy' has actually managed to go from last week into this week, and the cable news is still beating the drum about it.

I get the feeling someone else is going to have to pay the price for this, and I am going to guess that someone is going to be Kelly.

Also, Tillerson did his year, I'll predict he'll be gone soon of his own accord.

I find it entirely plausible that if The PDJT wasn't actually President, he wouldn't be able to get a full security clearance for himself.

Plausible? More of a certainty.

All the "we Love Kelly" rhetoric ,someone is going have to pay for the f--- up than the whole Porter affair has become, and Kelly is the likelist candidate.
Hicks is safe because she might just know too much about the ties with Russia to be fired....

IMO Kelly is safe because President Trump loves him a general. IMO the only way that Kelly goes is if he resigns (and there were suggestions a few months ago that he was an honourable man who might do just that - I reckon the veil has been lifted on that one), or if there's a scandal that even the Trump Administration cannot wriggle out of (like Flynn, though a I suspect Flynn today would be fine.

The latest update on WH turnover from Rachel Maddow. One year since Michael Flynn, this is getting harder and harder to fit legibly on screen. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...dae8ba054d.jpg

That's an unfortunate time to be taking a screenshot there.
She looks like she's smelled something bad.

Imagine if they fired everyone who couldn't qualify for security clearances how much longer the list would be.

That would be the Trump administration. It's fetid, kind of like, you know, a swamp.

A swamp? It's more like a sewage pond, with an aerator that failed a month ago and wasn't repaired. A swamp would smell absolutely wonderful by comparison.

in defense of Rachel ...

It is rather difficult for one to avoid bad facial expressions when one is discussing just about anything dealing with the Trump Administration.

Hey, he is getting rid of the swamp.

You dump enough toxic radioactives into it, that swamp is history!

It's like I've said before, he's getting rid of it from the top.

Once he starts it Now that he has it overflowing then some of it will be is being gotten rid of.

Jeff Sessions

H.R. McMaster?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/polit...use/index.html

That's "Session".

I would look forward to his book. His "Dereliction of Duty" is one of the best books about how America got into the huge mess that was Vietnam I have read.

I don't see a future for McMaster as a general officer. He'll be cutoff at the knees wherever he goes with his entire command assuming he was fired and promoted. That's a pretty toxic place to be for a commander. Right now he's the guy who struggled valiantly to keep the train on the tracks. That's not a bad place to from which to exit.

Kushner is back to looking good as the next to exit. The Hair said he'd let Kelly decide on his clearance. Sort of a public washing of hands.

Here is a relevant article on point:
https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/967535620309561349

And here are some wonderful speculations as to how deep the rabbit hole goes:
https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/967487830694944768

And it's not like he does not have other options. He wrote a well reviewd and well regarded book on Vietnam, and I think the news networks would love to have him as a commentator.

Thanks much, I noticed that bit too.

Trump will always prevaricate when there is any sort of really tough decision that needs to be made.

Of course, the thing he fears most is that someone might ever hold him accountable for something.

Of course, his whole image of a decisive decision maker is a bunch of bull, as one look at his record shows.
One of the best descriptions of Trump I have read is "A Weak man's fantasy of a Strong man".

At this point either Kushner stays and eats it for public corruption or he goes home and then eats it for public corruption. If Mueller hasn't worked out a state charge in New York with the State AG, I'll dance naked on my front porch and sing ""Natural Woman".

In a sensible administration, Kushner would be out on his ass after collaborating with Russians, sucking up to Chinese business interests, failing to obtain a permanent high-level security clearance, and getting crossways with the National Security Advisor and the WH Chief of Staff.

We may not be living through a sensible adminstration, however.

How about leaving important things off his disclosure forms repeatedly?

Obviously they are only important when it becomes known he left them off, so he didn't have any reason to think they were important before then.

Definently Kushner.
Question is will he go Joe Valachi on Donny?

I guess he'd see plusses and minuses

On the minus side, he might lose some money.

On the plus side, he's spent more time with Trump than most and he's already independently wealthy, so it might just be worth it. Trump's behaviour is such that the more you know of him, the less likeable he becomes.

Didn't see this one coming - looks like it will be Hope Hicks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/u...-director.html

Hope Hicks, the White House communications director and one of President Trump’s longest-serving advisers, said Wednesday that she was resigning.
...
She did not say what her next job would be, and her departure date was unclear, but it is likely to be in the next few weeks.

ETA my favorite story:

"'Get the machine!'" Trump would yell, according to the authors. "And Hope would take out the steamer and start steaming Mr. Trump’s suit, while he was wearing it! She’d steam the jacket first and then sit in a chair in front of him and steam his pants."

But one day, Hicks forgot the steamer, and Trump was livid.

"God d----t, Hope!" Trump exclaimed. "How the hell could you forget the machine?"

The authors wrote, "It was a mistake she would never make again."

If Hicks is out.then we need to get a betting pool started on Kushner or Sessions.....

Sessions will go before Jarod, is my bet.

Hicks is out, now everybody is reporting it.
Like putting a model who had no Public Relations or News experience as communications director was a good idea....
Not meant to be a slur on models, but still..

Models should have at least some experience with public relations and the press - their job is to help maximize media attention to the products they present.

In a thousand years, I wouldn't have guessed Hope Hicks.

There is a huge difference between showing up and smiling nicely for the Camera, and planning and running a major public relations/information campaign...and Hicks had NO experience with the latter, let alone running the biggest and most important PR/Information office in the world....

Particualry with the rumors she was a go between in the Trump's campaign alleged dealing with the Russians......

My god, you're gunning for Kellyanne Conway's job aren't you?



;)

I have this fantasy that she resigned because Mueller flipped her, but I think that's unlikely. My best guess is that, in connection with her testimony yesterday, she told her lawyers something incriminating and they advised her she had to quit.

According to Columbia University’s School of Journalism and Public Affairs, “Steam my pants!” is something every White House communications director should expect to hear early and often.