The Most Anti-LGBTQ Administration In History?

The Republican Convention Trump used Islamophobia to try to coverup Republican homophobia to reassure gay voters that he could be trusted to defend LGBTQ rights. "As your president I will to everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology, believe me."

He also said he is a better friend of gays and that "someday, I believe, that will be proven out, bigly." Is today that day? I could be... since his State Department has decided to deny visas to same-sex partners of diplomats and UN officials. A 30 second phone call to Secretary of State Pompeo, would change that with no fuss at all.

On Monday, Trump's regime started "denying visas to same-sex domestic partners of foreign diplomats and United Nations employees, and requiring those already in the United States to get married by the end of the year or leave the country."

The U.S. Mission to the U.N. portrayed the decision-- which foreign diplomats fear will increase hardships for same-sex couples in countries that don’t recognize same-sex marriage-- as an effort to bring its international visa practices in line with current U.S. policy. In light of the landmark 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, the U.S. extends diplomatic visas only to married spouses of U.S. diplomats.

“Same-sex spouses of U.S. diplomats now enjoy the same rights and benefits as opposite-sex spouses,” the U.S. mission wrote in a July 12 note to U.N.-based delegations. “Consistent with [State] Department policy, partners accompanying members of permanent missions or seeking to join the same must generally be married in order to be eligible” for a diplomatic visa.

But critics says the new policy will impose undue hardships on foreign couples from countries that criminalize same-sex marriages.

Samantha Power, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, denounced the new policy on Twitter as “needlessly cruel & bigoted.”

GOP closet cases in high places-- no help at all

“State Dept. will no longer let same-sex domestic partners of UN employees get visas unless they are married,” she tweeted, noting that “only 12% of UN member states allow same-sex marriage.”

In July, the U.S. mission sent out diplomatic notes to the United Nations and representatives for foreign diplomatic missions explaining the new policy, which reversed a 2009 decision by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to grant visas to domestic partners of U.S. and foreign diplomats. The contents of the diplomatic note were first reported in August by the Washington Blade. The 2009 policy, however, did not allow a heterosexual domestic partner of a U.S. or foreign diplomat to enter the country on a diplomatic visa.

The new policy-- which enters into force Monday-- requires that foreign domestic partners of diplomats and U.N. officials posted in the United States must show the State Department proof of marriage by Dec. 31, or leave the country within 30 days. As of today, domestic partners of diplomats and U.N. officials based abroad will need to show they are married in order to enter the country on a diplomatic visa. The latest policy change, the United States explained in the note, was aimed at ensuring all couples were treated equally.

“The Department of State will not issue a G-4 visa for same-sex domestic partners,” the U.N. human resources chief explained in a note distributed to staff last month. “As of 1 October 2018, same-sex domestic partners… seeking to join newly arrived U.N. officials must provide proof of marriage to eligible for a G-4 visa or to seek a change in such status.”

There are currently at least 10 U.N. employees in the United States who would need to get married by the New Year to have their partners’ visas extended.

The new policy poses a number of risks for same-sex partners, according to Alfonso Nam, the president of U.N. Globe, a U.N. LGBTI staff advocacy organization.

Sam Gillette, writing for People reported that "Two years and multiple anti-LGBTQ policies later, a new book by his former press secretary Sean Spicer reveals that the sentence in Trump’s convention speech was nothing more than empty payback for a political favor." In his book, The Briefing: Politics, The Press, and The President, Spicer asserted that "Trump’s campaign team was on a mission at the time to derail anti-Trump delegates seeking to prevent Trump from becoming the Republican presidential nominee-- a process that 'Never Trumpers' had initiated by signing a petition ahead of the Republican convention. Manafort and his lieutenants went one by one down the list of people who had signed the petition and persuaded them to remove their signatures. How Manafort and company did this was a scene out of 1950s politics-- alternating between carrot and stick and sometimes bat, even, at one point, conveniently making the convention’s parliamentarian unavailable to keep the opposition from formally submitting their petition. The Manafort message was clear: Trump will be our nominee and our next president, and anyone who didn’t want to work to that end could spend the next four years in political Siberia. (No Russia pun intended.)"

The final name that needed to be scrubbed from the petition, Spicer writes, was that of Washington, D.C., delegate Robert Sinners. The book describes an alleged deal between Sinners, who Spicer says told the Manafort team “he wanted Donald Trump to support gay rights,” and senior Trump communications advisor Jason Miller.

“Jason assured Sinners that Trump would be the most ‘inclusive’ candidate the Republican Party ever had,” Spicer writes.

“This is your moment, Robert,” Miller told Sinners, according to the book. “You can deliver this.”

Sinners then reportedly signed “a form that officially removed his name from the petition,” and the deal was done.

“Jason told Sinners Donald Trump’s acceptance speech would acknowledge the LGBT[Q] community, which no other Republican acceptance speech had done,” Spicer writes. “And it did.”

Trump's speech was pure lip-service. Since he occupied the White House his regime has been overtly anti-LGBTQ, from ordering the Defense Department to stop accepting transgender people in the military and having the Justice Department work against the interests of gay families at every opportunity-- such as reversing a policy protecting transgender people from workplace discrimination-- to refusing to follow bipartisan tradition of recognizing Pride Month. The ACLU's legislative director, Ian Thompson, called Trump’s administration "easily the most anti-LGBT administration in at least a generation. They are hard at work trying to dismantle and erase every gain LGBT people have made since 2009."

It's worth noting that the LGBTQ community makes up about 5% of the country-- and about 10 million voters, especially important is close races like Florida (700,000 LGBTQ citizens).

Sean Spicer Quits. Bring On The Next Goon!

-by Noah

The world’s most famous, amazing, and, tremendous insane asylum, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, announced Friday that Sean Spicer would be leaving his podium to spend more time with his imaginary playmates, … or something. Bye, Bye, Spicey. Even you just couldn’t take it anymore.

So, he’s gone. So what. Seems he left his job as Press Secretary because he just wasn’t gonna report to Senor Trumpanzee’s new, slick, “communications” director, Anthony “Mooch” Scaramucci, no how, no way.

Scaramucci is a Wall Street hedge fund guy through and through; another former Goldman-Sachs bozo. Those of you who like to watch the bizarre comedy stylings of FOX “News” may have caught him there, spewing the twisted gospel of Trump; so much for draining the swamp. As exemplified by his introductory presser on Friday afternoon, Mooch is impressively slimy. He’s the son the Trumpanzee wishes he had. He looks like the sons, dresses like the sons. He’s just smarter, slicker, and even slimier. If Trump were ever to be reduced to selling used cars, Mooch would be the guy in the late night TV ads.

New member of Politburo/Crime Family

Mooch also seems to do the Trumpanzee hero worship thing even better than Kellyanne Conway. Remember that cabinet meeting where Senor Trumpanzee had his crew praising him over and over? Mooch says all those things Senor Trumpanzee’s massive ego wants to hear and more. Mooch was reading from the script although, in the recent past, he called Trump “a hack politician” and a “big-mouth bully”. But, now that he’s getting a nice check, he went out and backed all of the warped Trumpian world view greatest hits: the news is fake, the hoax stuff, the 3 million (or was it 5, maybe 10!) illegal voters that went for Hillary Clinton. Listening to Scaramucci, you expected him to say Trump shoots a hole in one every damn time he hits the golf course and can bend spoons with his mind while curing your cancer just by gazing at your picture. If Kim Jong-un offers him more money, Moochie will be gone in a second and on his way to a new office in North Korea.

Obviously, once the appointment of Mooch was made, it became even too much for the self-flagellating Spicer to stand for. Even Spicer had his limits. Who knew? Having seen this new boss in his gasp-inducing introductory press conference, I can certainly relate, just as I could relate to Spicey’s feelings about previously being replaced by the Ozark inbred (look at those strange, dull, un-matching eyes) Sarah Huckabee Sanders, or being cruelly shut out of meeting the Pope when Senor Trumpanzee knew that that was the most important thing to him, a professed extremely devout Catholic, in the world. It was the final straw, even for a man who had never shown a sign of self-respect.

Hell, Senor Trumpanzee, who wears his Chinese-made ties down to his knees like a circus clown, even insulted Sean’s clothes while having nothing to say about Kellyanne Conway’s dried mop hair and cartoonish fashion decisions. Things like that had to be bending Spicey’s psyche sideways.

How much could you take? To top it off, I bet Speicy also didn’t want to spend the next few months trying to dodge the onslaught of questions about revolving Attorney Generals and Senor Trumpanzee wanting to pardon himself, his aides, his family, and every mob family in America.

Spicer took a lot because he foolishly believed. He believed the con from day 1. That’s why he took the job. So, he took the insults from his boss, while spinning his boss’s lies. He took the insults from the boss’s family and associates. He took the insults from the world at large. The man might be thick but he had to know he’d made himself a joke to all around him, not just the public. I half-expected him to someday just pull out a knife and start stabbing himself at the podium. Maybe that’s the real reason why the White House stopped broadcasting his press briefings. No one, and by no one, I mean except myself and about 100 million Americans, wanted to see that one.

So, for you Sean Spicer, and you the public, I offer this list of Spicey’s Ten Greatest Hits. It’s just a list of my personal favorites. You may have yours. I’ve been keeping a list since January. There are many others, including his disastrous attempts to talk about the Muslim Ban/Travel Ban not being a ban at all, and, his wearing of his American flag pin upside down. Was that known sign of distress an unconscious call for help? Here you are:

1. His legendary 1st press briefing, the day after Trumpanzee’s inaguration; the one where he repeatedly yelled at, and harangued the press while telling the world that his boss’s inauguration had more attendees than President Obama’s and that of any previous president, especially President Obama’s. Did I mention Obama’s? Kellyanne Conway defended him to Chuck Todd the next day, coining The term “Alternative Facts,” aka the essence of a delusional administration.

2. His February blocking of several news outlets, including the New York Times, and CNN, from having a seat at a press briefing.

3. Back in March, he yelled at respected, veteran reporter April Ryan for the perceived crime of shaking her head at his nonsensical treatment of her question about the administration's dubious image.

4. By the end of March, Spicer was drawing comparisons to Saddam Hussein’s spokesman, Baghdad Bob (Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf), who was known for his predictions and accounts of the American invasion failing miserably. Baghdad Bob, at times, even denied that the invasion had even happened. It was a comparison that was perfect in every way, delusion included. Spicey was perfect for Trump just as Baghdad Bob was perfect for Saddam. I’ll leave the comparison of Saddam and Trump to the future.

5. In April, Spicey claimed that Adolf Hitler never used chemical weapons. This was same great day where he referred to Nazi concentration camps where millions of Jews were gassed as “Holocaust Centers.” He then made his statements worse with each “revised statement.”

6. He dutifully repeated Senor Trumpanzee’s baseless and debunked claims that President Obama had wiretapped him.

7. He also dutifully repeated Senor Trumpanzee’s lies about widespread “voter fraud.” His conscience was gone. His soul was owned by someone else.

8. Spicey will forever be immortalized by Melissa McCarthy’s portrayal of him on Saturday Night Live.

9. Before Senor Trumpanzee chose him as spokesman to the press, Spicey was most famous for playing the Easter Bunny for George Bush.

10. When Senor Trumpanzee fired FBI Director James Comey, Spicey had trouble coming to terms with how he would address such an unpopular and awkward situation. His solution was to hide in the bushes outside the White House. Was this the first sign of a complete nervous breakdown?

Well, we won’t have Spicey to kick around anymore but just think about how Melissa McCarthy feels. Besides, there just might be a gig at the FOX Fantasy News channel, or maybe with the similar Info Wars. I’d rather Spicey have a good, old time religious epiphany, go totally honest, and write a tell-all book. I won’t hold my breath. Do it Spicey. If you don’t you will burn in your Catholic Hell for all eternity. Not only that, Sean, but, you’ll have to listen to Kellyanne and Sarah getting in on in the next burning room with a half goat half man that looks a lot like Donnie Jr.

Whither Thou Goest, Sean Spicer?

-by Noah

President Trump is reportedly considering limiting press briefings. Of course, he is. His desire to work his corruption and his incompetence in as much shadow and secrecy as possible should come as no surprise. Trump has taken note of how fellow Republican, $enate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is working on their Trumpcare bill in secret and he’s decided that turning Republican governance completely into a black hole of secrecy is the way to go.

Spicy, we hardly knew ye...

Remember when Trump said he had the best words? Well, the Trumpanzee’s ”Best Words” guy, Sean Spicer, is all but gone. The White House says Spicy is interviewing potential replacements.

Yeah, I know, Sean Spicer was always obviously, “gone.” Spicy is or was one helluva gone guy. He’s got quiet an imagination. He sees people, live people, people that just aren’t there. We realized that on his first day on the job when he spoke about the inauguration “crowd.” Spicer begat a whole cottage industry of memes.

Spicer is an unintentional master of the surreal and a court jester. But, he is gone, as in no longer in his job. The job he elevated to high Orwellian comedy. The job that he was born to fill! He was press secretary of the most famous lunatic asylum of all time. Looks like we won’t have him to kick around anymore.

Will Spicer ever face the press again? How long before Steve Bannon or Reince Priebus announces that Spicer has been sent to a farm in the country where he can happily play and frolic all day with all the other former press secretaries?

Soon, we will be wondering...

Has anyone seen my old friend Sean? Can you tell me where he’s gone? Did Kellyanne Conway cook him up in a big black pot in the Rose Garden and eat him? Has he been thrown in the dungeon on Elba to party with Napoleon’s ghost?

Has he been disappeared? Will Spicer be found buried in the concrete foundation of a Trump Tower in Swaziland, Fredonia or The Duchy of Grand Fenwick? Has he been quietly made President Trump’s new envoy to an isolated Amazon tribe, or emissary to the spirits of some off the map South Seas volcano? Will he return? Will he ever return? Will his fate remain unknown?

OK. I guess the world needs to accept the abrupt departure of Spicy, but did it have to be this way? Already, the Great White Asylum has announced that there will be no more live Spicy Shows. No More! Oh no! Instead, they said there would be “press conferences” with no audio and no visuals. It’s not just no Spicy. The asylum would control the vertical and the horizontal because reality is so passé in Trumpworld. I guess in the world of the outer limits, it was bound to happen. But, to never witness the surreal dark comedy stylings of Spicy ever again? That’s harsh.

You knew Spicy’s days were numbered, when Trump, knowing that Spicy is a devout Catholic, shafted him during the recent Trump Insult The Allies Tour by not letting him even meet the Pope and shake his hand. It’s a measure of Spicer’s foolishness that he didn’t quit then and there, but I guess he needed a ride home.

I know the Trumpanzee decided that Spicy was no longer up to the gig. It’s doubtful that any clown on Trump’s vast roster of wackos would be. Trump, himself, can’t handle the job. You can’t expect a person as insecure as Trump to surround himself with people that might outshine him.

But couldn’t they have been kinder to Spicy?

Instead of not letting him speak to the press anymore, couldn’t they have still let Spicy still come out to the podium. He could have referred all questions to his imaginary 6-foot rabbit friend Harvey.

Spicy himself, has experience as a bunny so that seems to fit. What harm would it do? We’re already way beyond that point. The bottom line would still be the same.

Who better than the rabbit Harvey to represent today’s Trumpian Nut House. An ephemeral, phantom spokesperson who doesn’t really exist drawing endless alleged “alternative facts” from some Rose Garden wormhole that leads to an alternate universe. SNL’s Melissa McCarthy? A mime? The Duck Dynasty weirdo? A Fox “News” intern? A Russian whore? Chris Christie still wants a job with Trumpy and he’s already proven that he’ll lower himself to any level. Perhaps you have a relative locked away in a padded cell who’d fit right in. Who would Putin choose?

Alas, for now, it won’t be Harvey. It will be the single digit IQ Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Meanwhile, Spicer and his imaginary rabbit friend, the only friend he has left, will interview those potential replacements. Who wants the job? Feel free to apply. If you include a picture of yourself with a screwdriver embedded in your forehead, your application will probably go right to the top of the pile.

Spicy’s future...

I expect that, in the distant future, Spicy may be found in a D.C. alley one night. He will have miraculously escaped exile, adopted a new identity, but failed as a FOX “News” host. His only friend, Harvey, will always be close by, even though no one else sees him; just like all those people no one but he and Trump saw at the 2017 inauguration, or all those 3 million illegal Clinton voters.

The Trumpy-The-Clown Comedy Hour Returns To Prime Time TV

Republican commentator David Frum was busy on Twitter this weekend: "The White House has a communications problem: it doesn’t tell the truth. The way to fix the problem is not to hire more skillful liars. However, a communications strategy based on telling the truth is not practical when the truth is more lethal even than an exposed lie." According to the latest polling about two-thirds of Americans don't believe Trump's gaslighting or any of his bullshit. His spokespeople, Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway and that sociopathic daughter of Mike Huckabee's, are all laughing stocks who are widely considered entertainment figures, not sources of worthwhile information. After just 4 months in the White House Trump is talking about going dark. He told Fox's fake TV judge that he thinks it's a "good idea" to not have press conferences, unless he does them himself every two weeks.



Over the weekend, the Associated Press reported that Trump is mistrustful of his staff, frustrated and increasingly isolated. He sounds like Nixon weeks before he was forced to resign. Trump doesn't trust anyone but Ivanka and her moron husband plus Uday and Qusay and his longtime bodyguard. Julie Pace explained that just 4 months in and Señor Trumpanzee "has become distrustful of some of his White House staff, heavily reliant on a handful of family members and longtime aides, and furious that the White House’s attempts to quell the firestorm over the FBI and congressional Russia investigations only seem to add more fuel." It all came to a head this week when he went rogue and fired Comey without any kind of White House consensus-- or preparation. His communications staffers found out an hour before they had to try to justify the outlandish move and his chief strategist found out the same way Comey did-- on a random TV screen.

When the White House’s defense of the move failed to meet his ever-changing expectations, Trump tried to take over himself. But he wound up creating new headaches for the White House, including with an apparent threat to Comey.

“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning.

For a White House accustomed to bouts of chaos, Trump’s handling of Comey’s firing could have serious and long-lasting implications. Already Trump’s decision appears to have emboldened the Senate intelligence committee investigating into Russia’s election interference and the president’s associates, with lawmakers announcing a subpoena for former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Comey’s allies also quickly made clear they would defend him against attacks from Trump, including disputing the president’s assertion that Comey told Trump he was not personally under investigation.

Several people close to the president say his reliance on a small cadre of advisers as he mulled firing Comey reflects his broader distrust of many of his own staffers. He leans heavily on daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as Hope Hicks, his trusted campaign spokeswoman and Keith Schiller, his longtime bodyguard. Schiller was among those Trump consulted about Comey and was tapped by the president to deliver a letter informing the director of his firing.

Trump confidants say Bannon has been marginalized on major decisions, including Comey’s firing, after clashing with Kushner. And while Trump praised chief of staff Reince Priebus after the House passed a health care bill last week, associates say the president has continued to raise occasional questions about Priebus’ leadership in the West Wing. Still, Priebus was among the tight circle of staffers Trump consulted about Comey’s firing.

Trump spent most of the week out of sight, a marked change from a typically jam-packed schedule that often includes multiple on-camera events per day. Even when aides moved ahead on an executive order creating a voter fraud commission-- a presidential pet project that some advisers thought they had successfully shelved-- Trump signed the directive in private.

More than a lack of momentum on major policy goals, Trump is said to be seething over the flood of leaks pouring out of the White House and into news reports. He’s viewed even senior advisers suspiciously, including Bannon and Priebus, when stories about internal White House drama land in the press.

A dozen White House officials and others close to Trump detailed the president’s decision-making and his mood on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss private conversations and deliberations.

After Trump decided to fire Comey, he was told by aides that Democrats would likely react positively to the news given the role many believe Comey played in Hillary Clinton’s defeat last year. When the opposite occurred, Trump grew incensed-- both at Democrats and his own communications staff for not quickly lining up more Republicans to defend him on television.

Much of Trump’s ire has been focused on the communications team, all of whom were caught off guard by Comey’s ouster. He increasingly sees himself as the White House’s only effective spokesperson, according to multiple people who have spoken with him. By week’s end, he was musing about cutting back on the White House’s televised press briefings.

Two White House officials said some of Trump’s frustration centers on what he views as unfair coverage of his decisions and overly harsh criticism of press secretary Sean Spicer, as well as deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders, who led much of the response to Comey’s firing. Aides said Trump does not believe his team gave contradictory stories about his decision to fire Comey, despite the fact that the White House’s explanation changed dramatically over a 48-hour period.

Trump is mulling expanding the communications team and has eyed hiring producers from Fox News, according to one White House official.

White House officials had hoped last week’s House vote would give the president a much-needed burst of momentum and infuse new energy into efforts to fully overhaul the “Obamacare” health law and pass a massive tax reform package. Aides were also eager for Trump’s first foreign trip, a high-stakes blitz through the Middle East and Europe.

But the blowback from Comey’s firing left the White House reeling once again. Trump’s visible anger and erratic tweets prompted a reporter to ask Spicer on Friday if the president was “out of control.”

“That’s, frankly, offensive,” Spicer said.

As NY Times ace reporters on the Trump beat explained over the weekend, working for Trump always means looking like a liar or a fool. I've also mentioned that eventually it will make them all (look like) traitors to the United States. Señor Trumpanzee, they wrote, "has never shown any reluctance to sacrifice a surrogate to serve a short-term political need, so he apparently did not think twice this week about exposing a series of staff members to ridicule as he repeatedly shifted his explanation for firing James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director... [He's] more in need of effective spokesmen than ever, and aides say he is considering a broad shake-up of his team. But his career-long habit of viewing his public protectors as somewhat disposable, on vivid display after Mr. Comey’s sudden ouster, has not exactly been an incentive to step into the firing line on his behalf." Certainly Giuliani, Lewandowski and Christie could all attest to the fact that loyalty for Trump is a strictly one-way street.

“Trump is putting a lot on the backs of his spokespeople, while simultaneously cutting their legs out from underneath them,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and a former adviser to Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. “There is nothing more discouraging or embarrassing for a spokesman than to have your boss contradict you. In political communications, you’re only as good as your credibility.”

The view that the communications dysfunction begins at the top of the White House organizational chart is bipartisan.

“The most hazardous duty in Washington these days is that of Trump surrogate because the president constantly undercuts the statements of his own people,” said David Axelrod, a communications and messaging adviser to President Barack Obama.

“You wind up looking like a liar or a fool, neither of which is particularly attractive.”

...[T]he president’s mood, according to people close to him, alternates between grim frustration with Washington and his news coverage, and a belief that his own political capital is regenerative. Mr. Trump saw that running against strong headwinds in the campaign worked for him, and he has frequently reverted to that playbook.

On Friday, Mr. Trump unleashed a barrage of bellicose Twitter posts on the Comey firing, but the first had a whisper of contrition, a backhanded admission that he had sent his team out to defend him with flawed, inaccurate and easily debunked information.

“As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” he wrote early Friday.

In private, however, Mr. Trump was not in a mea culpa mood. He was still raging over what he viewed as Mr. Comey’s “witch hunt” against him-- and blaming the bipartisan condemnation of his action on the failures of his embattled and overworked communications team.

Mr. Trump is growing increasingly dissatisfied with the performance of his chief of staff, Reince Priebus; the communications director, Michael Dubke; and Mr. Spicer, a Priebus ally, according to a half-dozen West Wing officials who said the president was considering the most far-reaching shake-up of his already tumultuous term.

He has been especially critical of Mr. Spicer, they said, openly musing about replacing him and telling people in his circle that he kept his own press secretary out of the loop in dismissing Mr. Comey until the last possible moment because he feared that the communications staff would leak the news.

Mr. Spicer’s blustery style mimics Mr. Trump’s, but people close to both men said he has not developed an especially close relationship with the president and has failed to use the self-protective tools that savvier Trump aides have adopted.

That seems to be changing. On Friday, Mr. Spicer prefaced much of what he said at the daily briefing with, “The president’s statement.” And while Mr. Trump has raised the Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle to allies as a possible press secretary, he has spent several hours with Mr. Spicer this week, praising his television “ratings” during the briefings.

Those who have managed to stay in Mr. Trump’s orbit over a period of time have developed unique adaptation skills.

Campaign aides learned not to lean too much on his accounts of events, steering away from unequivocal public pronouncements unless they could point to his words.

Mr. Trump’s four-decade career in real estate, casinos and entertainment has given him a sense, associates say, that a tacit agreement exists between him and the people who work for him: In exchange for the wealth, fame and power he conveys to them, they agree to absorb incoming fire directed at him.

“With Mr. Trump, it’s pretty simple: Once he makes up his mind on something, that’s it,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump political adviser who remains close to the president’s team.

“You either work for him” or quit, Mr. Nunberg added.

Or hide under the bed... or in the bushes.



This morning, Mike Allen asserted at Axios that Trump is angry at everyone on Team Trump and mulling a shake-up in an upcoming episode. The idea would include going the boot to Reince Priebus, Bannon, Don McGahn and Spicy Spice.

"The advice he's getting is to go big-- that he has nothing to lose," the confidant said. "The question now is how big and how bold. I'm not sure he knows the answer to that yet."

If Trump follows through, his innermost White House circle would shrink from a loop to a straight line of mid-30s family members with scant governing experience: Jared and Ivanka. So while the fighting and leaking might ease, the problems may not because it's the president, not the staff, calling the shots.

One note of caution: Trump often talks about firing people when things go south and does not follow through on it. So it's possible these conversations are his way of venting, and seeking reassurance.

And it all could take a while: Trump heads out on his first international trip at the end of the week. Also, there's an internal argument for minimizing drama by cutting people out of the information flow rather than firing them. So the existing structure may get "one more college try," a trusted adviser said.

Friends say that if Trump goes with a grand shakeup, his implicit message would be: "I get it. I'm moving on. I get that I can do a better job." A top aide added: "He's never going to say he did a bad job."

The sources say Trump feels ill-served by not just his staff but also by several of his Cabinet officials. Trump has two complaints about Cabinet members: Either they're tooting their own horns too much, or they're insufficiently effusive in praising him as a brilliant diplomat, etc. Among the cross-currents:

• His friend Wilbur Ross at Commerce this week took what was perceived as a victory lap on a China trade announcement that does little new in actuality.
• Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a big announcement about increasing prison sentences, at the same time that Jared is working on criminal-justice reform.
• HHS Secretary Tom Price shares the blame for the glacial pace of health-care legislation.

No Cabinet member is expected to go this soon, but a West Wing shuffle looks likely. One obstacle to recruiting new top aides is finding people who would have real clout with a president not prone to enforced order.

The Trumpanzee Regime And ProPublica-- Like A Vampire To Sun Light

A couple days ago, Spicy Spice babbled gratuitously that "Just because a left-wing blog makes the point of something changing, doesn’t mean it actually happened." It was referring to some ethical questions about the Trumpanzee family-- ethical questions Trump's attorney, Alan Garten, has already admitted were being dealt with-- having been reported by ProPublica. I suppose Spicy doesn't want to admit he knows what ProPublica is, despite the fact that they've won 3 Pulitzers for journalism and that they're respected by all "sides," at least by anyone looking for objective reality in reportage.

When ProPublica was founded a decade ago, Paul Steiger of the Wall Street Journal was hired as editor in chief. Questioned about the fledgling organization's ability to stay unbiased, Steiger told Jim Lehrer on Newshour that "Coming into this, when I talked to Herb and Marion Sandler [the founders, who are Democrats], one of my concerns was precisely this question of independence and nonpartisanship... My history has been doing 'down the middle' reporting. And so when I talked to Herb and Marion I said 'Are you comfortable with that?' They said, 'Absolutely.' I said, 'Well, suppose we did an expose of some of the left leaning organizations that you have supported or that are friendly to what you've supported in the past.' They said, 'No problem.' And when we set up our organizational structure, the board of directors, on which I sit and which Herb is the chairman, does not know in advance what we're going to report on."

The organization is, simply put, an independent nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. They responded to Spicy's gratuitous insult with a tweet story:

Trump Gets So Upset When He's Exposed As The Kleptomaniac He's Been All His Life

Saturday, Trumpanzee woke up, chopped up and then snorted a couple of Adderalls and started with the morning ritual-- his nasty, childish, mastabatory tweeting. One claimed that the NYTimes is fake news and that it had apologized to His Trumpiness. The fake news-- or in the Regime's own terms, #AltFacts-- is that it ever apologized to him for anything. Interestingly, the latest poll from PPP asked people who had more credibility, The Times or the Trumpanzee. 51% of people chose The Times; 42% chose the orange-hued orangutang. In fact, among self-identified "moderates," that number is 61% for The Times and just 30% for Trumpy-the-Clown.

Some people assumed-- inaccurately-- that it was The Times editorial against his endangered Department of Education nominee, the ultra-odious Betsy DeVos, that got him going about The Times again. The editors urged a decent Republican in the Senate-- I don't know what they've been smoking-- to join Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and every single Democrat-- to deny DeVos confirmation Monday. They just need one more. But that's a hopeless task. Once electorally vulnerable Dean Heller (R-NV) said he was voting for DeVos, the battle was, in effect, over. There are no other decent Republicans in the Senate, despite what The Times editors may wish. "The extra Republican vote," they fantasized, "could come from one of several independent-minded senators; one candidate is Lamar Alexander, an expert on public schools who actually owes the country a good turn because of his failure as chairman of the committee vetting Ms. DeVos to question her closely and to give more time to her critics. There are few more telling examples of Mr. Trump’s disdain for the federal government’s critical role in lifting up America’s schoolchildren than his choice of Ms. DeVos. She has spent years funneling her inherited fortune into a campaign to replace the nation’s traditional public schools with federally funded charter schools, regardless of the latter’s performance, and supporting vouchers, which help families send children to private or parochial schools and drain funds from public schools that need more, not less, support. Mr. Alexander didn’t give senators much time to question Ms. DeVos, but it was sufficient to reveal her near-total unfamiliarity with public education law, standards and even problems. A conservative ideologue, she fell back on most policy questions to an assertion that states should make their own rules, even on settled matters of federal law, like access for handicapped children."

Betsy DeVos’s nomination is not about making public education more effective, or helping publicly schooled children succeed; it’s about blowing up the system without a clue as to what comes next. Mr. Alexander was secretary of education himself, from 1991 to 1993, and he ran for president twice, speaking out against the influence of money in politics. And while he went way easy on Ms. DeVos in the hearings, he surely knows better than to place her in a job of such importance to the country’s future.

The editors then landed some gratuitous slaps at Scott Pruitt, Tom Price and Steven Mnuchin, Trumpanzee’s picks to head the EPA, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Treasury. But Trump is primarily concerned with Trump, not Betsy DeVos or anyone else. Sure, he wants to "win," but, again, that's about him, not them.

No, what got him into a foul mood yesterday was a report by Susanne Craig and Eric Lipton calling him out on his lies about separating himself from his businesses. His attorneys and advisors have urged him to take at least the appearance of ethics seriously. He has consistently refused to do any such thing. And now, as they reported yesterday, "records have emerged that show just how closely tied" the most corrupt and crooked, self-serving monstrosity ever installed in the White House "remains to the empire he built."

While the president says he has walked away from the day-to-day operations of his business, two people close to him are the named trustees and have broad legal authority over his assets: his eldest son, Donald Jr., and Allen H. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer. Mr. Trump, who will receive reports on any profit, or loss, on his company as a whole, can revoke their authority at any time.

What’s more, the purpose of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust is to hold assets for the “exclusive benefit” of the president. This trust remains under Mr. Trump’s Social Security number, at least as far as federal taxes are concerned.

Since his election, there have been widespread calls for Mr. Trump to sell his assets and put the proceeds in a blind trust. He has resisted those calls, stressing that the president has no legal obligation to do so.

While the trust structure, outlined in documents made public through a Freedom of Information Act request by ProPublica, may give the president the appearance of distance from his business, it drew sharp criticism from experts in government ethics.

“I don’t see how this in the slightest bit avoids a conflict of interest,” said Frederick J. Tansill, a trust and estates lawyer from Virginia who examined the documents at the request of the New York Times. “First it is revocable at any time, and it is his son and his chief financial officer who are running it.”

...The most immediate test of Mr. Trump’s legal moves to separate himself from his company, the Trump Organization, pertains to the ownership of the new Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office Building in Washington.

The trust documents, which were prepared last month, argue that “all beneficial ownership in the licensee previously held by Donald J. Trump, personally, now is held derivatively and beneficially by The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust,” which is legal language intended to suggest that Mr. Trump no longer has a personal tie to the hotel lease.

A provision in the 2013 lease for the building, held by Mr. Trump and his three oldest children, appears to prohibit a federally elected official, including the president, from benefiting from it.

But lawyers who specialize in federal contracts say the trust arrangement simply creates an additional legal step between Mr. Trump and the hotel-- meaning he will still profit from it.

Robert H. Sitkoff, a professor at Harvard Law School, said the new details in the trust documents were unlikely to resolve the apparent legal problems with the Old Post Office site.

“Formally he is no longer the owner, but functionally he still is,” he said.

Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, the ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who has called for a congressional investigation into the lease, said he remained unsatisfied that Mr. Trump had addressed his conflicts. “This is smoke and mirrors,” he said of the new documents.

Trump Press Secretary Spicer Spawns A Cottage Industry Overnight!

by Noah

Who said Trumpinsky wouldn't create new jobs? Well, Americans are hard at work today. It seems the Trump White House has created a whole new industry overnight. Since White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's Saturday-afternoon speed-lying freakout extravaganza, a whole new cottage industry, a cottage industry of Spicer memes, has exploded on social media.



I predict these memes will soon be turned into lawn signs, window signs, and bumper stickers. If not, they should be, immediately! It's up to you. Join in! Heaps of disdain, derision, and zero tolerance are called for!



For you, dear readers of DWT, I have compiled the text from these memes below. I would especially like to thank my various Facebook friends, London's Daily Mail, Bustle, the BBC, and the Huffington Post. Sean Spicer's lost grip on reality has inspired parody twitter accounts such as #SeanSpicerFacts, from which many of the twitter memes below came. Many of the Spicer memes have managed to capture not only his style but also his overuse of the word "period," which he seems to think turns his lies into truths.



Some words need to be spoken and spoken loudly. These are the "best words." It's true! People are saying! Believe me! Fantastic words! Some nice pix, too!

The Beatles, INCLUDING John & George, played the inaugural concert and President Trump applauded them with his HUGE HANDS #SeanSpicerSays

#SeanSpicerSays that the lying media does not mention the 1,000,000 invisibility cloaks issued to the crowd on inauguration day.

Donald Trump was the first person to walk on the moon, despite what the dishonest media claimes. #SpicerFacts

I have to say that this one is highly unlikely, for obvious reasons. I think if the man who keeps a book of Hitler's speeches by his bedside could really go visit Adolf, he would just praise him as a fantastic person and ask him for some tips on governing.

Of course Donald Trump went back in time and killed Hitler with his bare hands. The crooked media just won't report it. #SeanSpicerSays

Everyone knows that Beyonce was the weak link in Destiny's Child. Period. #SpicerFacts

Some well-known celebs are joining in the fun. First, Courtney Love Cobain:

I've NEVER done any drugs in my life nor have I ever swore in public nor smoked a cigarette. #alternativefact

Then, from Stephen Colbert:

@SeanSpicer gave the BIGGEST press briefing in HISTORY! Period! 1.5million reporters there: SCHOOLED! CAPSLOCK MEANS IT'S TRUE! #SUCKITfacts

Officer, I am not drunk. I am alternative sober. #alternativefacts

The earth is flat. Period. #FakePressSecretary

Regarding the dishonest media, to quote Melania Trump, "When they go low, we go high". Period. #SeanSpicerFacts

Jar Jar Binks is the best Star Wars character. Period. #SeanSpicerFacts

Donald Trump won the popular vote if you exclude all of the Hillary Clinton voters. #SeanSpicerFacts

That was not Three Doors Down. It was The Rolling Stones. Period. #SeanSpicerFacts

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength -- George Orwell, 1984 #alternativefacts

President Trump has captured and killed Bin Laden with his own two massive hands. #SpicerFacts

I am a Nigerian prince in need of a small loan. My enormous assets are frozen. Will email you soon. Period.

We actually told all Inauguration attendees our preference was that they arrive on Saturday, wear pink and march. #SpicerFacts

That's it for today. Coming soon (probably Thursday): Kellyanne Konartist memes!

MEMES OF THE ORANGE WHITE HOUSE INSANE ASYLUM

"News Flash! Spicer! Conway! The Trump White House Is Now Officially An Insane Asylum" (1/23)
"Trump Press Secretary Spicer Spawns A Cottage Industry Overnight!" (1/24)
"Kellyanne Conway Memes: Crazy Lady Now Roams The Halls Of The White House, America’s Newest Insane Asylum" (1/26)

#

News Flash! Spicer! Conway! The Trump White House Is Now Officially An Insane Asylum

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is on the job.

by Noah

That the Trump White House has become a home for crazy people shouldn't come as a surprise to any sane observer of the events of recent years. Face it: We've seen the Republican Party cross over the edge of sanity since the dawn of the Tea Party. That was the point where it became apparent that the Republican Party had fully become the Crackpot Party. I don't need to recount the Bizarro World antics of the likes of Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Louie "The Bestiality Guy" Gohmert, Paul LePage, et al. Their numbers are legion, and they have been parading across our TV screens for years like the sideshow freaks they are.

Nixon's "last press conference" (oops!)

In fact, if you're a glutton for punishment, you can trace the origins of this thing of total lunacy the Trumpies call a movement back through the Reagan years all the way to President Nixon. Nixon was a raving maniac who we learned literally ran through the corridors of the White House screaming his head off. Even before he was elected president, America had evidence that Nixon was severely paranoid and given to delusion. Think: "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore" (Nov. 7, 1962, at what he said was his "last press conference," after his California gubernatorial loss). Eventually, his White House taping system proved once and for all that he was a racist and, even more, an anti-semite.

So, really, the precedent for a President Trump or someone like him was set long ago. Most of America, with the help of the mainstream media myth machine, just chose not to see it.


1968-69: THE NIXON PODS DESCEND ON DC

I lived in Washington, DC, in all but the last of the Nixon years. The Nixon government aside, I saw the change in the population of Washington as it moved from the LBJ years to the Nixon years. To say the least, no one I chose to associate with had much if any regard for either man. We could look at LBJ and give him his due for ramming civil-rights and voting-rights legislation through Congress, but there was also his role in escalating the Vietnam War. Nixon, on the other hand, had no redeeming qualities other than the creation of the EPA. Please note that all three of the positives I just mentioned are things that today's republicans hate with all their being.

What I found most disturbing about Washington in those days was that when Nixon took over, you could see a marked difference in the kind of people that were coming to town to replace the LBJ people. I'm not talking just about cabinet people; I'm talking about the massive numbers of department staff and support staff that come along with the tide when a new president comes in. With Nixon it was an influx of crewcut, wound-tight, pole-up-the-ass types, people who were stuck in a world view of 1953, 15 years out of date; people who really did still believe that Commies lurked in every shadow and that the Earth is only 6000 years old.

These people feared a world where males had sprouted long hair. Which made them easy to terrify in the streets of Georgetown, especially after the horrific crimes of the Manson Family, and I admit that I personally had some fun with this. You could just stare at them and they'd start walking on eggshells. Dumb fucks that they were, they thought that any guy with hair over his ears was carrying a machete.

The Nixon types also hated those who hated war. War was big business for them, plus it was waged against Commies. Understand: The word Commies didn't necessarily mean Communists in the literal geopolitical sense. To them a "Communist" was anyone who didn't agree with their myopic, narrow-minded view of things. To the vast majority of them, both bread and people should only come in one color: white.

Today's republicans aren't that much different. Sure, it's harder to tell them from normal people just by fashion differences. I mean, can you tell those Duck Dynasty freaks from a death-metal band or the Manson gang? But if you notice that wound-tight thing, substitute "Muslim" for "Commie," and listen to the various bigotries they express, it's really the same. The difference now is that there seems to be a larger concentration of them in the general population. Either that or they just feel bolder and more entitled to act out in civilized society. Then again, it could be because social media and more TV and stations have given them a platform where they can reach each other easily and egg each other on.


SO HERE WE ARE NOW IN 2017

Russia is still an enemy of the United States. Only now that's OK with republicans 'cause the Russians helped put their guy in the White House. The Republican Party went over the cliff and dropped down so low that, to them, there's not a thing wrong with that. They got so insane that they put party over country like no party has ever done before. They got so insane that they embraced a man who is obviously severely mentally ill and now he is our president. If Nixon ever wanted a president in the White House that made him look sane by comparison, he's got him. Somewhere in Hell, a great burden has been lifted from his shoulders.

It has now gotten so bad that on Saturday afternoon, when I was in our kitchen and heard an angry, shrieking madman on the TV in our living room, I had to stop what I was doing and see what the commotion was about. At first I thought maybe the authorities had arrested some bonkers terrorist at some airport somewhere. Maybe my wife was watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Vincent Price's House on Haunted Hill.


"Don't try to escape! You can't!"

But no, it wasn't a movie. It was Comrade Trumpinsky's press secretary, Sean Spicer, channeling the Orange Fascist himself. He was clearly off his meds, and was a thing to behold -- emphasize thing.

He wasn't wearing a straitjacket, but you could be forgiven if you remembered it that way. That's how intense the crazy shooting out of his mouth, eyes, and entire body language was as he berated and tried to intimidate the assembled press. Mere words cannot do this bizarre incident justice. And this was just his first day! He made a lasting and credibility-destroying impression. It was a tantrum for the ages. I have never seen Facebook explode over an ongoing event like it did with this one.

What set Spicer off was the press coverage of the Trump inauguration, particularly the reporting of the simple fact, verifiable by aerial photographs that we have all seen by now, and verifiable by photographs of the empty seats along the parade route, that President Obama's crowd was bigger than President Trump's crowd. Freud would have a field day with this. Obviously Trump had sent Spicer out to combat this reality that Trump cannot deal with and is not mentally equipped to deal with. His megalomania and massive insecurities get in the way.



Spicer managed to set some sort of record for speed lying as he spat out an incredible five lies in just five minutes. You can click here for the specifics. It was engrossing. It was both hard to look and hard to look away. I was watching a man disintegrate on national TV.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo had this to say:

On the one hand it is chilling, bizarre, un-American to see the President's spokesman begin the term excoriating and threatening the press, telling demonstrable lies, speaking with a palpable rage in his voice. On the other, the President and his toadies are on the second day almost vanishingly small. They are embarrassing themselves. They look silly. They look ridiculous. It is hard to be intimidated by ridiculousness. I suspect this will be the abiding duality of the Trump presidency.

Yes, they look ridiculous, and yes, they are embarrassing themselves. But sadly for them and everyone in the world, they have no idea that this is how they come off, just as those who voted for Trump have no idea how this seems to the moral and the sane. Even former press secretaries from both major parties took issue with Spicer's behavior.

The thing is, of course, that Trump and his toadies are taking millions of naïve, wounded, and gullible Americans right over the cliff with them, and the rest of us are at risk of being collateral damage. While this bit of Saturday-afternoon horror theater was going on, I checked the FOX "News" twitter feed, where Trump's army of brainwashed souls, in an orgasmic state, were cheering Spicer on in his ranting insanity. There were a lot of "About time!" and "Hell yeah!" shout-outs to Spicer. To them, a star was born.


Is Sean Spicer counting hockey crowds now too? Maybe it was the very same "million and a half people" President Trump saw at his inauguration who packed Dallas's American Airlines Center for Saturday's Stars loss to (ahem) the Washington Capitals. [Click to enlarge.]

Reading the FOX Twitter feed offered a glimpse at the total Opposite World these brainwashed crazies live in. The danger is that they want to make the rest of us live in their world. It's like they've already gone through the looking glass and blown right past, into a state of ultimate denial. This is way beyond "O.J. didn't kill Nicole" stuff. This is alternate-reality creation that allows them to rationalize and justify, consciously or unconsciously, the criminality of what they have just done to their own country and the world.

Trump's lost souls are trying to reverse the polarity of reality itself. It may be that the only way to deal with these people is to constantly throw their vile bullcrap right back in their faces until their heads explode from brain-hemorrhaging apoplexy. Disdain, derision, and zero tolerance should be the order of the day.


"ALTERNATIVE" REALITY INVADES SUNDAY-MORNING TV

The Sunday morning news-talk shows like Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and "This Week With George Stephanopoulos brought out Trump's mistress of spin, Kellyanne Konartist. On This Week she made the point that (crowd) size doesn't matter while saying that it was "completely unacceptable" for the media to call Sean Spicer a liar. Well, Kellyanne, I'll go ya one further: If Spicer keeps it up, soon the word spicer will be synonymous with liar.

But it was on Meet the Press that Kellyanne reached the heights of crazy that republicans adore her for, claiming that Spicer wasn't lying, he was just presenting "alternative facts"!



It's really something when you are a republican so disingenuous that even a republican water carrier like Chuck Todd puts you on the hot seat. Still, I have to give Ms. Konartist credit. She is very good at her job and proved it in the campaign. She can also go on TV and erect a stonewall like nobody's business. Maybe Trump can send Kellyanne to the Mexican border and she can just talk any would-be "illegals" away.

I took some amusement from the moment where Kellyanne appeared to flip off Chock Todd UK-style with a two-finger F-U salute. Was it intentional, or am I making up some of that famous "fake news" that is all the rage?



To be fair -- and, like I say, I'm always fair -- I do want to address the bit of unfortunate real fake news that Ms. Konartist brought up on Meet the Press. There was lots of chatter from republikook circles over the weekend about a "fake news" report on the bust of Martin Luther King being removed from the Oval Office (now declared by me to be the Offal Office for the duration of Trump's hopefully short term).

In fact, the bust was not removed. It turns out that it was obscured by someone standing in front of it. The reporter who wrote the story should have at least taken a better look. The righties are focusing on this incident as an example of what they term "fake news." Fair enough, but there is a much more serious underlying issue at play here. The issue is: Why would we assume that President Trump would remove the MLK bust. It's only natural to assume that he would because of his previously demonstrated feelings towards African-Americans, which include his having them removed from the floors of his casinos, the rabid support he received from KKK and other white supremacy groups worldwide, and many of his own words.

[Click to enlarge.]

The silver lining in this is that, if Trump was going to remove the MLK bust, a likely scenario, he will now have to think twice about it. I take pleasure in knowing that, when he is in his new office, he will have to look at something he'd rather not see. Oh well, funny how things can work out! Maybe he can just paint it gold or cover it with a handy white hood.


ANDY BOROWITZ OFFERS A TAKE ON THE SPICER STORY

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- A man who was described as “visibly deranged” eluded the Secret Service on Saturday and gave a five-minute press conference at the White House.

The man, who somehow obtained White House credentials in order to bypass security, unloaded a delusional and paranoid rant that left a room full of experienced reporters shaken.

“We were all very, very scared,” Tracy Klugian, a reporter who witnessed the incident, said. “The things he was shouting made absolutely no sense, and he seemed to just get angrier and angrier.”

After a stream-of-consciousness tirade in which he accused the reporters of being part of a far-reaching conspiracy to distort reality, the man abruptly walked off “before he could do any real harm,” a Secret Service spokesman said.

Reporters who left the White House called the incident the scariest five minutes of their lives and said that they were grateful it did not escalate further.

“We were all terrified that, at some point, he was going to ask us if we had any questions,” Harland Dorrinson, a reporter, said. “None of us wanted to say anything that would set him off.”

MEMES OF THE ORANGE WHITE HOUSE INSANE ASYLUM

"News Flash! Spicer! Conway! The Trump White House Is Now Officially An Insane Asylum" (1/23)
"Trump Press Secretary Spicer Spawns A Cottage Industry Overnight!" (1/24)
"Kellyanne Conway Memes: Crazy Lady Now Roams The Halls Of The White House, America’s Newest Insane Asylum" (1/26)

#