The Mooch Is Back In The News-- And It's Hilarious

Scaramucci is campaigning against his old pal-- and boss-- Señor Trumpanzee. Look at this clip of him yapping it up on Fox New with Howie Kurtz today. What a laugh fest! Trump and The Mooch are throwing shit at each other like a couple of crazed monkeys. Trump is so funny-- he's like a TV cartoon character; he should go on a stand-up comedy tour.

I think Anthony is really somebody that's very much out of control. He's a nervous, neurotic wreck," said the Projector-in-Chief. "He called so much, and I said, 'Anthony, I'm sorry. I can't do that. I can't take you in.' And I said, 'You got to stop all these phone calls. Too many calls Anthony.'

Scaramucci was laughing when he watched. It was all in Trump's nervous, neurotic wreck of a brain. The Mooch thinks the GOP should dump him in 2020 and that most people who work for him agree but are too scared to say so publicly.

"He's gone off the rails. He's acting in a way that is completely unstable," The Mooch said about Trump, as though he is different today than he was when The Mooch was supporting him and working for him. "He's literally the opposite of George Washington. When he looks at a news feed or a news search, he's focussing on the name Trump and not the name the United States of America. The guy has completely lost it. As it relates to the culture of leadership inside the White House, the cabinet, the people that he's leading, he doesn't lead them. He thinks that his personal charm is going to fix the China situation, the North Korea situation... when in fact it's the very opposite. Now we're in this perilous situation where he's blending racism into the leadership culture..."

"We recognize that the president is a clear and present danger to the American society, to the American culture. The there many people inside the White House, the cabinet... I would ask the left to lets create an offramp for those people. When you're trying to deprogram people from a cult, one of the first things you have to do is allow them to change their mind..."

Fred Trump's Young Herr... A Racist? How Could It Be?

Yesterday, in his Washington Post column, Greg Sargent wrote that ever since Señor Trumpanzee "launched his candidacy by declaring Mexicans to be 'rapists,' Trump's public racism has often included two additional important elements: an adamant refusal to apologize for it in the face of outrage, and an equally adamant denial that the offending language was racist in any way. Central to Trump’s racism-- and more broadly to Trumpism writ large-- is not just the content of the racism itself. It’s also that he’s asserting the right to engage in public displays of racism without it being called out for what it is."

And he's dragging the Republican Party into the open pit sewer with him. Even the Republicans who have "condemned" his demented racist barrage against AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, have used words and phrases that show what they are really made of:

• Fred Upton (R-MI): "both sides"
• Susan Brooks (R-IN): "ALL...need to raise their level of civility"
• John Katko (R-NY): "vehemently criticized lawmakers on the far left"
• Elise Stefanik (R-NY): "strongly disagree w/ the tactics of the far left socialist Squad"

More typical was Long Island Trump supporter Lee Zeldin who wound up, like Lindsey Graham, denouncing the same 4 women of color for what he called a "blame America first mentality." But speaking of Long Island, another suburban swing-district member, this one a Democrat, Tom Suozzi-- vice chair of the Trump-oriented Problem Solvers Caucus-- just came back from a tour, not with Pence, of the concentration camps on the border. Watch this clip from Morning Joe, where he said he wants to be made an honorary member of "The Squad." Trump has united all the Democrats; too bad the Republicans are so much more reconciled to racism, xenophobia and bigotry than any Democrat. Tom did well-- now everybody in Congress in following Tom's idea to ask for membership in The Squad!




Even genuinely horrible New Jersey Blue Dog Josh Gottheimer, the single worst Democrat in Congress, couldn't quite bring himself to countenancing Trump's vile tweets:

So why are Republicans being such dicks about this? For one thing, Trump's racism polls well with Republicans-- although not so much with normal people. Trump has given left behind Republicans the OK to embrace racism-- and they have... in droves, even if some if them are too obtuse to realize it. Trump's net approval among Republicans rose by 5 percentage points to 72%, after his racist attack on four Democratic female lawmakers. His support among Democrats and Independents has dropped and his overall approval/disapproval remains at 41-55%. Steve Benen tried answering that dick question for the MaddowBlog yesterday (before the House voted). He began by quoting Eugene Robinson: "'Trump is a racist' does not exactly qualify as breaking news. But the silence from prominent Republicans is staggering-- and telling. It amounts to collaboration-- perhaps 'collusion' is a better word-- with the president’s assault on diversity and pluralism. In the coming campaign, you will hear Republican candidates at every level claim to be colorblind and embrace all Americans regardless of race or ethnicity. Do not believe them. Their failure to speak out now tells us everything we need to know about their true feelings."

Members like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had an opportunity to stand up for core principles such as decency and respect, but by all appearances, they were simply too afraid to lead.

Their reticence served as a painful reminder: it really is Donald Trump’s party now.

In practice, Trump operates from the assumption that the key to electoral victory is maximizing racial resentments and reaping the benefits of some Americans’ worst and most divisive instincts. In effect, the president sees value in ripping the country apart, confident that he and people like him will be left with the biggest chunk.

Greg Sargent raised a related point yesterday that stood out for me:

As Jacob T. Levy observes, Trump’s repetition of racist and white nationalist tropes is laying waste to the norm, recently observed in both parties, according to which elites signal to white voters (at least nominally) that they should be better than our history.

In so doing, Levy notes, Trump is “changing what Republican voters think it means to be a Republican.” He’s changing their expectations of how Republican politicians should behave.

In that context, the reluctance of GOP lawmakers to condemn Trump’s latest racism becomes a lot more significant.

Quite right. It’s certainly true that many Republican leaders and high-profile members are afraid, not just of Trump’s ire-- note the president’s recent hysterics in response to Paul Ryan’s modest rebukes-- but of his followers and their expectations.

Party officials who believed they’d help set the party’s direction in the Trump era now realize that power is in the hands of one man: a hapless amateur whose rhetoric on race is too often indistinguishable from the angry, racist drunk at the end of the bar.

Republicans aware of their party’s demographic challenges-- the party is increasingly dependent on older white voters, in a nation that’s becoming increasingly diverse-- no doubt realize that Trump is making a risky electoral bet. But instead of pushing for a smarter strategy, most GOP leaders have effectively surrendered and accepted defeat.

The first time Trump was ever in the newspapers, it was because he had broken the law by refusing to rent apartments to people of color in buildings his father had financed with loans from the government that stipulated no racial discrimination would be tolerated. Did you listen to that song in the video up top? That's Ryan Harvey, Ani DiFranco and Tom Morello performing the long-lost Woody Guthrie song, "Old Man Trump." Guthrie had been a tenant at the notorious Beach Haven property in Brooklyn, a cesspool of racism back in the 1950s-- and the reason he wrote the song.

Fred Trump gave gave his son a lot of money and a lot of knowledge about building and selling. But, apparently, that isn't all he taught his young Herr. In 2016, before Trump won the GOP nomination, Will Kaufman wrote a piece for Quartz that shows the Trumpf family through the eyes of one of America's greatest songwriters: Woody Guthrie really did not like Donald Trump's racist dad. In December 1950, Guthrie rented an apartment from the Trumps.

Guthrie’s two-year tenancy in one of Fred Trump’s buildings and his relationship with the real estate mogul of New York’s outer boroughs produced some of Guthrie’s most bitter writings, which I discovered on a recent trip to the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa. These writings have never before been published; they should be, for they clearly pit America’s national balladeer against the racist foundations of the Trump real estate empire.

Recalling these foundations becomes all the more relevant in the wake of the racially charged proclamations of Donald Trump, who last year announced, “My legacy has its roots in my father’s legacy.”

In the postwar years, with the return of hundreds of thousands of servicemen to New York, affordable public housing had become an urgent priority.

For the most part, low-cost housing projects had been left to cash-strapped state and city authorities. But when the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) finally stepped in to issue federal loans and subsidies for urban apartment blocks, one of the first developers in line, with his eye on the main chance, was Fred Trump. He made a fortune not only through the construction of public housing projects but also through collecting the rents on them.

When Guthrie first signed his lease, it’s unlikely that he was aware of the murky background to the construction of his new home, the massive public complex that Trump had dubbed “Beach Haven.”

Trump would be investigated by a U.S. Senate committee in 1954 for profiteering off of public contracts, not least by overestimating his Beach Haven building charges to the tune of $3.7 million.

What Guthrie discovered all too late was Trump’s enthusiastic embrace of the FHA’s guidelines for avoiding “inharmonious uses of housing”-- or as Trump biographer Gwenda Blair puts it, “a code phrase for selling homes in white areas to blacks.” As Blair points out, such “restrictive covenants” were common among FHA projects-- a betrayal, if ever there was one, of the New Deal vision that had given birth to the agency.

...For Guthrie, Fred Trump came to personify all the viciousness of the racist codes that continued to put decent housing-- both public and private-- out of reach for so many of his fellow citizens:

I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project...

And as if to leave no doubt over Trump’s personal culpability in perpetuating black Americans’ status as internal refugees-- strangers in their own strange land-- Guthrie reworked his signature Dust Bowl ballad "I Ain’t Got No Home" into a blistering broadside against his landlord:

Beach Haven ain't my home!
I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain!
And my soul is sadly bent!
Beach Haven looks like heaven
Where no black ones come to roam!
No, no, no! Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!

In 1979, 12 years after Guthrie had succumbed to the death sentence of Huntington’s Disease, Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett published a two-part exposé about Fred and Donald Trump’s real estate empire.

Barrett devoted substantial attention to the cases brought against the Trumps in 1973 and 1978 by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. A major charge was that “racially discriminatory conduct by Trump agents” had “created a substantial impediment to the full enjoyment of equal opportunity.” The most damning evidence had come from Trump’s own employees. As Barrett summarizes:

According to court records, four superintendents or rental agents confirmed that applications sent to the central [Trump] office for acceptance or rejection were coded by race. Three doormen were told to discourage blacks who came seeking apartments when the manager was out, either by claiming no vacancies or hiking up the rents. A super said he was instructed to send black applicants to the central office but to accept white applications on site. Another rental agent said that Fred Trump had instructed him not to rent to blacks. Further, the agent said Trump wanted “to decrease the number of black tenants” already in the development “by encouraging them to locate housing elsewhere.”

Guthrie had written that white supremacists like the Trumps were “way ahead of God” because

God don't
know much
about any color lines.

Guthrie hardly meant this as a compliment. But the Trumps-- father and son alike-- might well have been arrogant enough to see it as one. After all, if you find yourself “way ahead of God” in any kind of a race, then what else must God be except, well, “a loser?” And we know what Donald Trump thinks about losers.

One thing is certain: Woody Guthrie had no time for "Old Man Trump."

We can only imagine what he would think of his heir.

More cheeseburgers, please by Chip Prosser

Now, imagine this: some people are just finding out Trump is a full-fledged racist this week... for the first time. Really! In fact... remember The Mooch? I do believe he's known Trump for decades and was, very briefly, even White House communication director for him. He says he's afraid Trumpanzee may be turning into a racist. "I don’t think the president is a racist. But here’s the thing, if you continue to say and act in that manner, then we all have to look at him and say, OK, well, maybe you weren’t a racist, but now you’re turning into one." Mooch, what's the cut-off point? How many times exactly?

Remember The Mooch? From Oyster Bay? Like Steve Israel?

Everyone who was looking forward to The Mooch being one of the Trumpanzee ringmasters for years was disappointed when Chief of Staff John Kelly made Trump fire him after just 10 days. What a tragedy for late night comedy! The Mooch should write a book. Thursday evening, Vanity Fair's William Cohan gave him some pretty bitter notes about those 10 hilarious days that he'll be able to use in writing it if his memory weakens. The title should get some clicks: "Fucking Sith Lord," "Horrific Leakers," and "Berserkazoid Craziness": The Mooch Recalls His Brief Shining Fortnights at the Center of American Politics. The Mooch still has his head planted firmly up the Trumpanzee butt, and is vehemently attacking Trump's enemies. "Could Anthony Scaramucci," asks Cohan incredulously, "actually talk his way back into the West Wing? In Trumpworld, stranger things have happened."

He was a Goldman Sachs hedge-fund scumbag but he says DC is worse. "I want you to imagine the worst person that you’ve met on Wall Street, the most ruthless and the most diabolical," he told Cohan, who he's known for a decade. "That’s the best person in Washington. That’s the Eagle Scout of Washington."

Reince Priebus was the Señor T chief of staff at the time and the Eagle Scout of Washington immediately started undermining him, dubbing him the "Rancid Penis" behind his back. In the mind of the Mooch, "Priebus had the society broken up into 'Always Trumpers' and 'Never Trumpers,' and he was trying to flood the White House staff, as the chief of staff, with 'Never Trumpers,' and trying to figure out ways to blockade, slow down, and keep out, particularly of the White House, the 'Trumper-Trumpers.'"

“So, when the president turned to me and said he wanted to give me the O.P.L. job, I got a call from Reince: ‘Don’t take the O.P.L. job. You can be the finance director for the R.N.C. Stay at your company.’ Blah, blah, blah. I said, ‘No, no, no. I’m gonna take the O.P.L. job. I want to work with the president.’ How many times in my life am I gonna be able to work in the White House and work for the president of the United States? And Reince’s answer was, ‘Actually, I’m gonna do everything I can [to help you].’ He did say this because he’s a Washingtonian. That’s what they do to you, they say, ‘golly gee’ to your face and they act like Richie Cunningham to your face. They’re Richie Cunningham and they’re Opie from The Andy Griffith Show, but they’re the fucking Sith Lord behind your back. They’re hitting you with a lightsaber behind your back.” In fact, according to Scaramucci, Priebus disinvited Scaramucci’s parents from the January 22 swearing-in ceremony for the new White House staff.

Other members of the White House inner circle are saying The Mooch is delusional and making this crap up. He and Bannon were at each other's throats and still harbor grudges. Bannon, who called some of his accusations "laughable," was lambasted in the article. Mr. Mooch: "I helped Bannon through the three months that he was on the campaign, and we had a good relationship. But Bannon turns on me, because Bannon is ultimately railing against the swamp, but he’s actually a cock of the swamp. He’s the creature from the Black Lagoon, Bannon. He acts more swamp-like than any person that’s ever become a Washingtonian. So for all of his railing on the swamp, he is literally the pig in George Orwell’s Animal Farm that stands on his two legs the minute he gets power. He is the creature from the Black Lagoon." He accused Bannon and Priebus of leaking non-stop: "What was going on was absolute berserkazoid craziness: internecine warfare, leaks every 13 seconds, Bannon leaking on everybody, Priebus leaking on everybody, total chaos in the White House, total disorganization."

Bannon tried to convince Scaramucci that he wasn’t up to the job. “He says to me, ‘You’re not equipped. This Russia thing, you won’t know how to handle it properly, you won’t know how to communicate it. Reince and I want to offer you a number of different jobs. Come and see us at 9:30 in the morning in the chief of staff’s office.’

“I tell Bannon, ‘O.K. I’m happy to go see you at 9:30.’ I go to the White House-- I have my badge. I go upstairs and say hello to Ivanka. [She says,] ‘Are you ready?’ I say, ‘I’m totally ready, no problem.’ I go downstairs. I have a 30-minute meeting with Reince and Bannon. And Priebus is now, he’s pulling the Howdy Doody, Richie Cunningham delivery and ‘Oh golly gee shucks, we’re friends.’ I’m like, ‘Reince, we can spare the ceremony. I know that you dislike me. I now dislike you. You can spare the ceremony.’ I said, ‘I’m looking at the two of you jamokes. If my network took a shit it would be the combination of the two of you. I’m very, very frustrated with the two of you, I’m going to tell you right now.’”

At 10 A.M. on July 21, they headed into the Oval Office to see Trump. “He’s hot. Jared is in the office, Ivanka, me, Sarah [Huckabee Sanders], Hope [Hicks], and the two jamokes. The president is hot. He says, ‘Scaramucci is going to come in, he’s going to be the comms director.’ He’s dictating a press release to Sarah who is writing it all down, and then he turns to Priebus and he says, ‘I don’t want him reporting to you. He’s going to report directly to me. I don’t want him tainted with your stench. I know the two of you guys have been leaking on me and leaking on other people in the administration, and I want it to stop, and this guy’s in charge now. He’s going to fix the Comms Department; he’s going to fire the leakers.’ They are now super pissed. They walk out. I go the other way with Sarah, and then Sarah’s as white as a ghost. I’m getting the stern looks of anger and hatred from Sean Spicer. I’m like, ‘I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that for. If you want to work with me that’s great, and if you don’t that’s fine too.’ He goes into the president’s office and he resigns. He comes back and he announces that he’s resigned, and I said, ‘O.K., that’s great.’ Trump’s irritated. He says, ‘These guys are unbelievable. I gave them the job of a lifetime, they’re letting everybody down. They’re letting me down.’” (Spicer could not be reached for comment.)

...Even though, according to Scaramucci, Kelly did not officially fire him until 9:37 A.M. Monday morning, he said he knew by 7:14 A.M. that he had been fired. “How do I know at 7:14 on Monday that I’m getting fired?” he said. “Nick Ayers, who is now the new chief of staff for Vice President Pence, is trying to reach me on the White House bat phone. I had been issued an encrypted phone. When you’re talking to the president or the vice president or people inside the West Wing, you do not use your personal cell phone. You’re issued a White House-encrypted cell phone. O.K., no problem. I’ve got the White House-encrypted cell phone. Nick Ayers is texting me on my regular phone, saying, in effect, ‘Hey, Mooch, why aren’t you answering the White House-encrypted bat phone?’ ‘O.K., let me turn it on.’ I turn it on. It’s inoperable. There’s no e-mail and there’s no cell service. They’ve disconnected my phone. Now I know I’m getting fired, but I’m just waiting for it. You know what I mean?” (Ayers did not respond to a request for comment.)

He was sitting in his small White House office when he got invited to Kelly’s swearing-in as the new chief of staff. “They swear in the chief of staff,” he said. “They’re sitting in those two chairs, the president and Kelly. They’re doing photos. Then the Cabinet meeting starts. I’m getting ready for the Cabinet meeting. I go back to my desk. Kelly’s assistant comes in, ‘Chief of Staff Kelly would like to see you.’ I walk in. I was thinking that I’m not gonna go to the Cabinet meeting, because if I’m fired and it’s still Priebus’s White House—and this was the irony of the day, the thing does not leak. But if it’s Priebus’s White House, every journalist now knows that I’ve been fired. But it’s not Priebus’s White House anymore. It is actually John Kelly’s White House. And guess what? The thing doesn’t leak. Kelly’s first act is he calls me into his office and says, ‘I need to let you go.’

“Wow,” the Mooch told him. “That’s super disappointing.”

“You know you made a huge mistake last week and these words that you used, which they recorded and got you on tape, you’ll never recover from that,” Kelly replied. “I know this town. I’ve lived in this town a long time, and you’ll never recover from it.”

Scaramucci wasn’t so sure. “I think this town is a lot different today,” he said. “The president recovered from remarks. I know I’m not the president, but if you give me a chance, I’ve put a whole comms plan together,” showing Kelly the document he had in his hand.

“I’m really sorry,” Kelly told him. “I have the full authority of the president. I’m sure you’re gonna want to go in and see him, but you need to know that you don’t need to do that. Him and I spoke about this, and this is our mutual decision.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that to you, sir,” the Mooch replied. “You’re the chief of staff. If you don’t want me here, no sense in me being here. I’m not gonna go around you to the president.”

A White House personnel guy then showed up. “He’s like, ‘Thank you so much for helping us here. Priebus was a disaster.’ I said, ‘No problem.’ He says, ‘If you’re O.K. with it, I have to escort you out.’ I said, ‘Absolutely. No problem. If you don’t mind, because I’m so high-profile at this point, I’d like to go out the East Wing exit, over by Treasury. Are you cool with that?’

“Yeah, no problem,” he said. “That’s fine, Mooch, no problem."

The Mooch told me that while it was “very painful” going through it, after six months “on the other side of it,” he thinks it was “an unbelievably phenomenal experience.” He continued, “You want to talk about the education of Anthony Scaramucci? I learned that the swamp is probably a gold-plated cesspool with no drain. You understand what I’m saying? You can’t drain the fucking thing. It’s a gold-plated cesspool, and you got cesspool operators in there that know how to slow down disruptors like Donald Trump.”

...The Mooch’s tumultuous days did not alter his perception of Donald Trump. “My point is this guy’s a winner,” he said, warming to his subject. “He’s been winning his whole life, and he’s not a choke artist. He’ll hit the shot.” Then he was fully taken with his reverie. “The shot’s going in,” he continued. “Michael Jordan, that last shot in the championship, he wanted the ball. That’s Trump.” Somewhere, an orange-hued president is nodding enthusiastically.

What a fucking dummy! Ever watch Bravos' Princesses Long Island? Worst show ever made. Worse than Shahs Of Sunset. It's long gone; one horrible season... like The Mooch, the male embodiment of the mentality behind that show. I wonder who will play The Mooch in the Trumpanzee sit com.

In Memory Of Anthony “Mooch” Scaramucci

-by Noah

The Mooch is gone. Well, he’s at least gone from his temp job at America’s number one show “Asylum White House”. He’s Fired! Maybe he should have pleaded that “it was just locker room talk.”

Moochie only lasted 10 days, but, hey, what a fab 10 days it was! Now, he’s been escorted out the gate. I suspect Senor Trumpanzee, the man who hires “the best people”, will soon point to the ouster of The Mooch as an example of his promised draining of the swamp.

Even people as completely classless as those who are currently soiling the Alternative Fact world of the White House with their every breath and step may have felt The Mooch’s language and demeanor were just a bit too much (emphasize ‘just a bit’). More than likely though, what probably bothered them was not his behavior but the fact that so many people outside of the mental asylum at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. were offended and objected to it. So, the beloved Moochie had to go.

Let us not forget: you are who you hire. The person in charge of any institution will always hire those he or she feels most comfortable with. That Mooch got the job in the first place speaks to the character of the man who prides himself for being able to “grab pussy” with impunity and walk through a locker room of undressed, under-aged models simply it’s his show. Creepy.

A thought: Since the Washington Post has just revealed that Senor Trumpanzee actually dictated Donnie Jr.’s first statement about his meeting with the Ruskies, might we assume that Senor Trumpanzee was also dictating Moochie’s foul statements? After all, we know that he was telling Sean Spicer what to say.

So, what happens now? Sure, comedians are disappointed. Mario Cantone’s appearance on Comedy Central’s “The President Show” was very promising but what now? Cantone has other talents but he was a perfect Mooch. Sad.

The Mooch was apparently fired by Senor Trumpanzee’s new Chief of Staff, General John Kelly. Good move General, but before people give the General too much credit, let’s remember that he reportedly is and has been very friendly with the man who would be fascist dictator for quite some time. Despite what the mainstream media is saying about John Kelly being an “honorable man”, being a friend of Donald Jackass Trump speaks volumes to me about Kelly’s judgment and character, so MSM, please stop with the bullshit.

What will happen to The Mooch? Who cares? Even his wife has had it. She’s divorcing him. He’s a loser, a tremendous loser. The only question about the wife is why would anyone marry him in the first place?

Maybe the quixotic Trump will bring Moochie back in time for 2018’s White House Easter Egg Hunt. Then, since Sean Spicer is no longer around, he can fill Spicey’s old role and dress up in that easter bunny costume. Then, he’ll probably encourage the staff to steal all the candy from the kids, as if they’d need encouragement. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t surprise me if Moochie took a lot of yoga lessons with his lifetime goal in mind.

As I said in my post about Spicey leaving: bring on the next goon.




Addendum:

While there are some rumors--in the right-wing media-- about co-President/Gen. Kelly installing Kellyanne Conway as the new spokesperson/communications director of the Trump administration, perhaps this guy is the best fit at Asylum White House:

The Well-Oiled Cage Match

Here Politico publishes this really good report on A Trumpanzee Sans Political Party when the news crashes down on all of our heads that General Kelly forced Trumpy-the-Clown to fire his soul-mate, alter-ego and consiglieri-for-a-week-- better than Queen For A Day-- Señor The Mooch. I'm just going to make believe The Mooch is still among the quick and the machine is indeed well-oiled and the chaos... well there's no making believe about the chaos, is there?

Jeff Flake is an Arizona Republican senator who's considered vulnerable inside-the-Beltway and who's always fighting with Trumpanzee. He just wrote a book about Trumpanzee: Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. They hate each other. But the DSCC is determined to run the single worst Democrat in Congress-- corrupt Blue Dog Kyrsten Sinema-- against him. She's probably the only Democrat who can't beat him. Schumer seems to have a penchant for finding them. Sinema may be destined to embody a freakish 2018 combination of Patrick Murphy, Ann Kirkpatrick, Evan Bayh, Patty Judge, Ted Strickland and, last but far from least Katie McGinty-- the horrible cast of characters Schumer selected who guaranteed the most Democratic-friendly electoral table in a decade would turn out to be a Republican feasting ground. Anyway, Flake was on NPR with Steve Inskeep yesterday saying the kinds of things that might lead one to believe-- wrongly-- that he's not a rubber stamp for Trumpanzee. But Flake is a total Trump rubber-stamp, slavishly so. His FiveThirtyEight Trump adhesion score is 95.5%. Fellow Arizonan John McCain is a more respectable 86.7%-- about the same as Rand Paul's 88.6-- and even political cowards like Rob Portman, Bob Corker and Lindsey Graham are less Trumped-up than Flake. nevertheless... Senator Flake:

I do think that we made the ground fertile for somebody like President Trump to come along, and I think that now we've abandoned many of our principles-- like free trade and American leadership around the world-- but also we've become a coarser party. Being a conservative isn't just adopting conservative policies. I think it matters in terms of demeanor and comportment.

I certainly recognize the frustrations that people have. I feel and hear it every day... People are concerned about their jobs, their economic future. They wonder if their kids will have the same economic opportunities that they've had, and I think Donald Trump kind of spoke to that.

But I think as conservatives, our first obligation is to be honest with people and telling factory workers for example-- it's always easier for a politician to point to a shuttered factory and say "That's because of free trade. That's because Mexico took those jobs, or China did." But what is not recognized is that it's largely been productivity gains and automation. We manufacture twice as much as we did in the 1980s with one-third fewer workers and those productivity gains will continue. Globalization has happened and the question is: Do we harness it for our benefit or are we left behind by it?

He says he's "not blaming this lack of principle, or where we are, solely on the president. He's more the culmination of it... I'm very troubled about where the Republican Party is now. It seems that we've been compromised, but this time by different forces-- those of populism and protectionism, isolationism, xenophobia and I'm concerned about how we remain a governing party with those principles."

And on Face the Nation Sunday, Flake said Republican leaders like McConnell and Ryan who don't call out Trumpanzee on his criminal behavior are complicit in that behavior.



Now, on to Tim Alberta's podcast for Politico (again, after Preibus was fired but before The Mooch got the heave ho), which suggests Trump took out his hatred of Ryan on Priebus.

There is no question, however, that Priebus’ absence will echo loudest on Capitol Hill-- particularly in the speaker’s office. Ryan’s team had heard whispers for months of Priebus’ possible departure, but the news was nonetheless a dagger, especially on the heels of a health care defeat and at the dawn of tax-reform season. Ryan and Priebus, both Green Bay Packers fans and local beer loyalists, have been friends for decades; Ryan’s former chief of staff, Andy Speth, was Priebus’ college roommate at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Priebus was the first call Ryan made when things got hairy this year, and vice versa. Working with a West Wing that contains few other true allies-- and with a volatile president who has viewed him suspiciously ever since the speaker accused him of making “the textbook definition of a racist comment” about a Hispanic-American judge-- Ryan saw Priebus as his staunchest ally and bunker mate. And now he’s gone.

"This no longer seems accidental. Trump has, since taking office, consistently referred to Republicans as though he is not one himself-- it’s invariably ‘they’ or ‘them.’ Unlike past presidents of his party, Trump entered the White House with few personal relationships with prominent Republicans: donors, lobbyists, party activists, politicians. This liberated him to say whatever he pleased as a candidate, and by firing Priebus, Trump might feel similarly liberated. The fear now, among Republicans in his administration and on Capitol Hill, is that Trump will turn against the party, waging rhetorical warfare against a straw-man GOP whom he blames for the legislative failures and swamp-stained inertia that has bedeviled his young presidency. It would represent a new, harsher type of triangulation, turning his base against the politicians of his own party that they elected.”

“Things have not yet escalated to that point. But some, including officials in his own administration, took the dismissal of Priebus as a signal that Trump is willing to go rogue against the GOP. Only a day after announcing Kelly as his new chief of staff, the president let loose on Twitter, calling out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not changing the Senate’s filibuster rules and saying Republicans “look like fools” for not doing so. He also tweeted that Democrats are “laughing at” the GOP. In a final taunt, Trump tweeted that Republican senators would be “total quitters” if they move on from health care following last week’s failed repeal vote.

More and more, Trump talks as though there are Democrats and Republicans-- and him, a party of one. If unchecked, this poses an existential threat to the GOP.

Trump wins another news cycle, as no one talks about the specifics of him selling out America to Russia or about any aspects of Putin-Gate in general. Lucky for us Bob Mueller is still on the job working away with his team of sleuths and prosecutors.

The Wheels Are Coming Off The Never Very Well-Oiled Machine

Putin may not get the sanctions lifted but if one of his goals in using Russian internet capacity to put Trump in the White House was to wreck American democracy... everything is moving along just fine. Trump's management style is beyond belief-- but, alas, undeniable. I wonder why people hang onto their jobs in the Regime. It isn't going to end well for most of them.

The Mooch has only been in his job as Trumpanzee Communications Director for a matter of hours and it sounds like he's in the midst of a nervous breakdown... or something far worse. The NY Times' Peter Baker reported late yesterday that "The internal rivalries of the White House spilled out into stark public view on Thursday as President Trump’s new communications director publicly attacked the chief of staff, calling him a 'paranoid schizophrenic' leaker and vowing to get him fired."

Anthony Scaramucci, who was installed as White House communications director last week over the objections of the chief of staff, Reince Priebus, in the morning called into CNN to say that the two men were at odds and to dare Mr. Priebus to deny being a leaker. By the evening, The New Yorker had posted an interview quoting Mr. Scaramucci using vulgar language to describe Mr. Priebus.

“Reince Priebus-- if you want to leak something-- he’ll be asked to resign very shortly,” Mr. Scaramucci told the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza in an angry, profanity-laced telephone call on Wednesday night. Mr. Scaramucci suggested that he believed that Mr. Priebus was leaking information to damage him. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” he said.

In the same telephone call, Mr. Scaramucci disparaged Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, who also warned against hiring him as communications director. “I’m not Steve Bannon. I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country.”

Mr. Scaramucci later released a statement but did not apologize. “I sometimes use colorful language,” he said on Twitter. “I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for @RealDonaldTrump’s agenda.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new White House press secretary, said she had nothing to add to the statement. Mr. Priebus and Mr. Bannon had no immediate comment.

The phone call underscored the depth of divisions within the West Wing, which have only widened with Mr. Scaramucci’s arrival. Not only did Mr. Priebus and Mr. Bannon oppose his appointment, but Sean Spicer resigned as press secretary in protest.

Mr. Scaramucci was angry about what he saw as leaks targeting him. Mr. Lizza had posted a message on Twitter on Wednesday night reporting that Mr. Trump and Mr. Scaramucci were having dinner at the White House with Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and a strong supporter of the president, and Bill Shine, a former Fox executive. Mr. Scaramucci called Mr. Lizza unsolicited to demand that he identify his source.

When Mr. Lizza would not, Mr. Scaramucci said, “O.K., I’m going to fire every one of them, and then you haven’t protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks.”

Mr. Scaramucci was also mad about a story on Politico reporting his financial disclosure form. In a Twitter post on Wednesday night shortly after his conversation with Mr. Lizza, Mr. Scaramucci said the “leak” was “a felony” and that he would be contacting the F.B.I. and Justice Department to seek an investigation. He then included Mr. Priebus’s Twitter handle, which several officials in the White House interpreted as meaning that he suspected the chief of staff.

On Thursday morning, he telephoned into CNN and agreed that he was at loggerheads with Mr. Priebus, comparing them to Cain and Abel, the biblical sons of Adam and Eve whose conflict led to Cain murdering Abel. He challenged Mr. Priebus to deny being a leaker.

“We have had odds. We have had differences,” Mr. Scaramucci said. “When I said we were brothers from the podium, that’s because we’re rough on each other. Some brothers are like Cain and Abel. Other brothers can fight with each other and get along. I don’t know if this is reparable or not. That will be up to the president.”

But the leak he was complaining about was no leak. Lorraine Woellert, Politico’s reporter on the story, explained that she simply requested the financial disclosure form through normal channels and was provided it by a government agency as required by federal law. Mr. Scaramucci deleted his Twitter message but posted a new one referring to a story by the news outlet Axios suggesting that he wanted Mr. Priebus investigated.

Needless to say, the Washington Post had a team on this White House meltdown as well. "The cinematic infighting that has consumed the White House in recent days," they wrote, "was pushed into public view on Thursday, exposing the West Wing as the political equivalent of a New York-accented reality television show that runs on a raucous mix of drama, machismo and suspicion."

The new communications director-- Anthony Scaramucci, a flashy New York financier who brags that he and Trump “started out as friends”-- has been trying to oust White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in a foulmouthed campaign fueled by months of brewing animus. Scaramucci accused Priebus of leaking to the media about behind-the-scenes maneuverings and his own personal finances, but his broader intent is to purge senior advisers and low-level staffers who he suspects are not adequately loyal to President Trump.

In an interview with the New Yorker published Thursday, Scaramucci called Priebus a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac” and claimed that the former Republican Party chairman will “be asked to resign very shortly” in a sweep that he warned could eventually involve much of the staff.

I guess we're not talking about Putin-Gate so... The Mooch and Señor Trumpanzee are succeeding, right? And Priebus is o-u-t. (And The Mooch's wife filed for divorce a few hours ago.)

Guest Post From... The Mooch

The Mooch didn't write this while Hadrian was building his wall to keep the Picts out of Britannia. It was just a year and a half ago when the Trump Regime's now-Communications Director decided he had to issue an alert and warning to the American people... about the inherent evil of the Republican Party and their deranged, crackpot leader, The Donald. Keep in mind while reading it that The Mooch, always politically incoherent, has given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions not just to Señor Trumpanzee Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and (especially his beloved) Scott Walker but to corporate establishment Democrats Hillary Clinton, Kirsten Gillibrand, Harry Reid, Joe Lieberman, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Jon Corzine, Kathleen Rice and, of course, Rahm Emanuel.

The Bankruptcy and Restructuring of the Republican Party
-by The Mooch,
January 13, 2016

"Of those men who have overturned the liberty of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by playing an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants."
-Alexander Hamilton, Federal No. 1

At the end of the current election cycle, the Republican Party will be forced to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Unbridled demagoguery has driven the GOP to an inflection point from which there is no turning back. If a populist prevails in the primary, as appears increasingly likely, the party faces either devastating defeat in the general election or a new, unrecognizable identity. In either scenario, a large swath of the GOP electorate will be forced to eat crow and reevaluate its affiliation. Call it, if you will, a moral debt restructuring, one caused by the reckless behavior of a man who knows a thing or two about bankruptcy.

We are in the midst of an ideological Civil War, one pitting American values of hope, empowerment and self-reliance against defeatist attitudes of fear, entitlement and victimization. Ronald Reagan lifted people up by prioritizing limited government, states’ rights, low taxes and free markets, but today’s GOP voters have responded most enthusiastically to candidates driving people apart with hate speech and alarmism. After winning only 27% of the Hispanic vote in 2012, Republican leadership set out an agenda to make the party more inclusive. Populist candidates have instead chosen to pander to disaffected voters by doubling down on nationalist rhetoric-- and so far poll numbers appear to positively reinforce such a position.

Politics, like investing, isn’t a game of right and wrong. It’s a results-oriented business, both in terms of winning elections and governing effectively. But as Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson will tell you, national poll numbers at this stage of the process mean very little. Barry Goldwater delivered on his promise to bring out the silent majority with his populist rhetoric in 1964, the only problem is it voted against him in a landslide. The ultimate proof in the pudding will be who gets the nomination, and how he performs in the general election.

Given how much Americans have been misled over the last decade, it’s no wonder they’re having a hard time separating straight-talk from misinformation. That robust economic recovery? They don’t feel it. The Affordable Care Act? It made their health insurance more expensive. Daesh, another word for ISIS, is contained? They don’t live under a rock. You can’t blame Americans for gravitating toward politicians who look and sound different than the ones who have repeatedly failed to deliver on promises of hope and change. When faced with a threat, whether economic or terrorist, it’s easy to resort to cynicism. It’s cathartic to get angry. But more than ever, we must resist the urge to betray the values on which our great nation was founded. More than ever, we need courageous, aspirational leadership to reestablish the purpose of America.

You must understand the motivation for people to offer a rebuke of the status quo, both in the United States and globally. It’s much more economic than it is social. We need leaders with a strong command of fiscal issues who can empower Americans to lift themselves out of poverty. The long-term security plan in the Middle East must also be based on economic solutions to give citizens a viable alternative to extremism. In a recent Business Executives for National Security (BENS) trip to Afghanistan, I attended a military briefing where the General disclosed that 80% of those who join the Taliban do so in order to feed their families, not to fulfill a religious fantasy.

The sad irony in the rising tide of nationalism is that America is a democracy founded by immigrants on the premise of religious freedom. The hard work of immigrants throughout our history has created the economic power from which we derive our global sphere of influence. America has never been a closed society; each of us has a powerful, aspirational story about our parents or grandparents coming to build a new life in this great land. There is no doubt we need to secure our southern border and ensure the vetting process for all immigrants is air-tight, but betraying common decency out of primeval fear reeks of World War II-era attitudes that led to the internment of Japanese-American citizens and rejection of European-Jewish refugees-- events that are a stain on our history. America has always accomplished far more acting as courageous frontiersmen than weak reactionaries.

After a bombastic debate season, everyone is looking forward to seeing real decisions made in primaries and caucuses. Substance matters more as we get closer to actual votes being cast. New Hampshire will be especially important because the state has many moderates, and independents can vote on either primary ballot. To win Iowa or New Hampshire, it might actually be better to poll worse nationally. Seeing the deep GOP field whittled down will be a welcome sight that allows for more direct confrontation of the styles in this race.

Democracy is a device that ensures the people shall be governed no better than they deserve. I know America deserves better. Our great nation was founded as a land of opportunity where huddled masses could emigrate to make better lives for their families. Lately, though, it has too closely resembled the ancient lands with storied pomp from which our ancestors fled.

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.