That is TV I would SO not tune in for.

This is exactly it. Kelly is keeping the WH out of utter and absolute chaos. If there is any kind of soft landing, it's due to his leadership and handling of Trump I would imagine.

Even with "Duel Of The Fates" playing in the back ground?

Yeah, Kelly is trying to be the Al Haig of this White House.

Personally I'm betting on the KKKeebler elf

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/pol...senate-mueller

And the two Senators got swatted down by the Senate Leadership and most of the other GOP Senators. Seems to be quite a civil war within the GOP ranks on this.

Didn't Graham have a brief flirtation (not a full blown relationship) with sanity at one point, calling out Trump for one of his more egregious outbursts. I take it that was just posturing? Has Donnie promised to open a resort in South Carolina?

I'd like to think Graham is setting Trump up, but I'd probably be wrong.

Graham loves John McCain. I wonder if he is just the teensiest bit conflicted. I always felt like he forced himself to like Trump, thinking they ultimately had the same political agenda. He has been a fairly vocal critic of Trump in the past.

I wonder how many chapters and pages of the inevitable Kelly book are already written, and how much he has already been pledged for by the highest bidding publisher.

I'm not sure there's going to be much market for that kind of tell-all once this is all over. Once he's gone, the country may just want to go into a "now let's never speak of this again" phase for a while. He, and everyone else needs to get out now and get their books out now while we're watching the scandal.

The perfect time, the height of the crisis, is not yet there. I make no prediction as to when it will be. Kelly surely has, or will have, better insight into that, such that he will know when to finalize the book. His view is so much more upclose, and at the same time his personal reputation is still so much better than that of pretty much all with as much proximity to Trump, that he should stand a decent chance of publishing the frontrunner of all the books and films and games that will come out very quickly once the dam breaks.

The books that I'll have no interest in will be from Kelly Ann Conway and the Bitch Queen of the Briefing Room. How could you believe a word from either?

I'd be interested in them.


I could always use more Alpha class material for the backyard bonfire.

"Grand Leader Trump was onboard Air Force One when he was suddenly attacked by a trained alligator sent by ISIS. Subduing the beast with his bare hands, he heroically leapt from the plane to deal with the terrorists infiltrating the White House far below. Air-surfing on the back of the alligator, something only possible for someone with his unmatched skill, he arrived just in time to save Melania from ISIS gunmen. Landing with an athletic roll as the alligator clamped its jaws on the ISIS leader, Grand Leader Trump snatched his weapon and effortlessly cut down the other terrorists."

(Bonus points if you can identify what I roughly adapted this from.)

Ace Rimmer?

What a guy.

So in reality it's President Kelly and Donny, the goofy old prankster of the Whitehouse?

Picture the Incredible Oz as orange instead of green, and also pulling the levers himself as the little man behind the curtain desperately runs around trying to put the levers back the right way.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is a goner, sooner rather than later.

The outcries about how devastating it would be if he got fired only makes people stop and think: wait a moment - it won't be that bad.
The only reason why it hasn't happened yet is because Trump hasn't lined up a sufficiently pliable and suicidal replacement.

Seems obvious to me. The replacement is Lindsey Graham.

Well, Lindsey's obviously campaigning for the job but Donnie likes to hang supplicants out to dry. Remember Big Chris Christie? Rudy Giuliani? They both thought they had big positions in their future.

But will Graham be willing to sign the personal loyalty pledge to Trump? :D

:D Maybe Yakkety Sax.

Only around a year ago.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us...sessions-fired

Trump won't get a hearing for a new AG done quickly, leaving him with Rosenstein in total control.

Yea he is an honest scumbag who supports children's concentration camps but is likely not corrupt in the sense of illegally profiting from his position.

We have gotten a pretty weak definition of not deplorable.

He can just fire Rosenstein as well. There's a precedent for that.
Who's number three at the DoJ these days?

Not a White House person, but another relatively important resignation: Seth Frotman, Student Load Ombudsman, CFPB. On the grounds of "the White House’s open hostility toward protecting the nation’s millions of student loan borrowers."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ouse-hostility

Brian A. Benczkowski who is a Trump loyalist and so dirty that even a Mentos wouldn't help.

Don McGahn will leave in the fall.

At least, that is what Trump has tweeted.

When you get down to it, all this White House needs to function is a fridge refilled daily with Cola Light.

I'd be willing to bet someone else will be ejected from the island before then.

I'll take that wager, if the cutoff point is the midterms.

I'd wager that McGahn will be gone before the confirmation hearings for a SCOTUS nominee are started.

I am not expecteing any bombshells before the election, though.

Sessions is not a good AG. He's racist, and his drug polices are foolish. But, at this point he seems to be willing to protect the Mueller investigation.

Should Trump fire him, he will likely replace him with someone who is just as bad (in terms of being racist/unqualified) but with the side effect that the new person would kill the Mueller Investigation.

So the options are:
- Sessions: Incompetent racist who is allowing Trump's crimes to be investigated
- New AG: incompetent racist who is going to allow Trump free reign to break laws

Except the new AG has to be confirmed. That could be tough with just over two months before the midterm. With Sessions fired, Rosenstein would be in charge in the interim. Trump isn't going to want that, so he'd have to fire Rosenstein too. That didn't work out well for Nixon.

There's a difference...

The political right had more integrity back then. Congress-critters were a little less extremist/partisan, and former supporters/voters were willing to turn their backs on Nixon when watergate came out. Now, Trump has children locked in cages and he still enjoys ~40% support. And while occasionally a republican politician will speak out against Trump, when it comes down it, they will likely fall in line.

If Trump were to fire Sessions (and probably Rosenstien), they may complain (with more empty rhetoric in public, and in private about how it hurts their midterm chance) but I wouldn't be surprised to see republican senators fast track a replacement, lest the Democrats somehow mange to take the Senate in the midterms and they demand an actual competent replacement.

The White House Ethics Advisor has resigned.

His presence was undetectable anyway.

Nah, I don't think Graham is quite subserevant to Trump enough for Donnie.

That story is from November

And then there's this guy, who's not exactly White House but a True Trumper nonetheless:

Well, crappe. It popped up somewhere for me, perhaps he's just now actually going? Dunno.

The Best People.......

ANd the guy being named Ian Smith is just too appropriate......If you remember the history of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe

Yup, I intended to mention that but forgot.

It's another one than the guy from November.

"White House ethics lawyer Stefan Passantino is leaving the Trump administration, a senior White House official told NBC News on Thursday."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...ration-n905031


From the same article: "Passantino — who had been in charge of making sure White House officials complied with government ethics rules"

So yeah:

...in the same way you don't notice a dam until it bursts...

I have often wondered why Sessions has resisted Trump's many insults and demands by continuing to recluse himself from the special investigation and defending, however weakly, the concept of a independent Justice Department. Does Sessions actually possess some vestige of a soul, some remnants of morality after all? It seemed so implausible. But now I think I got it! Despite his denials under oath, Sessions was deeply involved in the collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and realizes that he would be opening himself up to very serious charges of obstructing justice if he does anything to head off the investigation. And, given the latest from Papadopoulos, Session must know that the evidence of his role in the Russian connection is out there and that he has to tread very softly. Better to take no action and have your genitals, character, and intelligence repeatedly demeaned by the POTUS than to give in to Trump and to wake up one morning charged with an easily proven felony.

Thanks, I was suspecting that but hadn't gotten around to looking it up yet.