Vicious Psychopath Michael Caputo Is Being Paid By The Taxpayers

As you know, Trump only hires the best people. An acolyte first of Ollie North and then of Roger Stone, Michael Caputo was appointed assistant secretary of public affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services by Trump, despite having no experience with healthcare, other than his own very severe mental illness. Instead, he has spent much of his adult life living in Russia trying to polish Putin's image and as a swampy Florida spin-doctor and lobbyist. A sexist pig and overt racist, Caputo's loyalty lies with Putin and Trump, not with the U.S. He is almost universally considered a Russian agent. Although if he ever thought of modeling himself on the characters from The Americans, that was a non-starter from the git-go.

Crazy fascists Stone and Caputo

Yesterday Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb, Lena Sun, Josh Dawsey and Rosalind Helderman wrote about Caputo urging Trump supporters "to prepare for an armed insurrection after a contested election and accused government scientists of 'sedition' in a Facebook Live chat that he described in detail to the Washington Post on Monday."

Trump installed Caputo in April after weighing whether to fire Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar over a series of damaging stories about Trump’s handling of the pandemic, according to three current and former White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe behind-the-scenes discussions. Allies persuaded Trump to not make such a change amid a pandemic, but instead to bring in Caputo, the officials said. (Trump denied reports that he was considering firing Azar at the time.)

Almost immediately, Caputo began exerting control over officials’ public appearances and statements; by early summer, he had extended that scrutiny to scientists. He and an adviser have faced mounting criticism in recent days for interfering with the work of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seeking to change, delay or kill weekly scientific reports they thought undermined Trump’s message that the pandemic is under control. Caputo has also sought to wield influence over when government scientists appear on television, telling officials that he approves such bookings.

Caputo is viewed as a Trump loyalist, but several White House officials said his behavior has been erratic and some of his ideas have been regarded as extreme. For example, he proposed the federal government spend millions of dollars on a professionally directed and produced documentary about the administration’s race to develop vaccines that he wanted to air at film festivals, said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The idea was rejected by White House communications aides.

In the Facebook video, Caputo criticizes government career scientists, the media and Democrats, The Times reported and Caputo confirmed. He said he was under attack by the media and that his “mental health has definitely failed.”

“I don’t like being alone in Washington,” Caputo said in the video, describing “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.”

Caputo also said the CDC, which is part of HHS, had a “resistance unit” that aimed to undermine Trump. Without offering any evidence, he also accused scientists “deep in the bowels of the CDC” of giving up on science and becoming “political animals.”

They “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next,” he said in the video. “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”

He also predicted that Trump would win the election but that Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, would refuse to concede. “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he warned in the video. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing. If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

Several Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT), called late Monday for Caputo’s firing.

“Secretary Azar has a basic responsibility to ensure our public health experts are able to do their jobs, our covid-19 response is not undermined by misinformation or conspiracy theories, and the data used to inform our efforts is free of political interference,” Murray said in a statement.

Noting that Caputo has said the president asked him to oversee a $250 million campaign “intended to help America to get back to normal,” DeLauro said, “We now know this is a propaganda campaign that must be defunded immediately. It is not the mission of the Department of Health and Human Services to get the President reelected.”

House Democrats on the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis also announced that they had launched an investigation into political interference in the CDC’s science reports on the pandemic.

The White House declined to comment on the controversy Monday.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes conversations, a White House official said the president was aware of Caputo’s comments but that his job appeared to be safe for now. Nonetheless, the official said, some advisers were arguing Caputo should be demoted or removed because of concern that he could damage the administration’s efforts to build public confidence in a prospective coronavirus vaccine.

The official said the White House has also recently expanded its coronavirus vaccine messaging team, detailing staffers from other agencies in an “end run” around Caputo.

Senior White House aides have previously warned Caputo that some of his public comments crossed a line. Caputo deactivated his personal Twitter and Facebook accounts on Monday.

HHS released a statement describing Caputo as “a critical, integral part of the President’s coronavirus response, leading on public messaging as Americans need public health information to defeat the covid-19 pandemic.”

Several current and former administration officials have expressed frustration that Caputo seems more focused on the president’s political fortunes than on combating the pandemic. Caputo denied that, saying that while he cares about the president’s electoral prospects, he is most worried about the deaths and suffering caused by the pandemic. He noted he has urged friends to wear masks. “If you don’t wear a mask, you’re part of the problem,” he said in the interview.

...During the video, Caputo said questioners asked whether he would stay in the job because of mounting criticism of his team’s interference in the work of CDC’s weekly scientific missives aimed at the nation’s doctors, known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports. He said he expected to remain in his post.

Caputo was an unusual choice for the top health communications job in the government, especially in the middle of the worst public health crisis in a century. A New York public relations specialist and political consultant, Caputo served as campaign manager to controversial businessman Carl Paladino in his unsuccessful bid for governor of New York in 2010. Caputo began working with Trump in 2014, first to assist Trump’s unsuccessful bid to buy the Buffalo Bills that year and then, in 2016, to assist Trump’s efforts in the Republican primary for president in New York.

Caputo remained in the public eye, particularly after the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in 2017. In frequent interviews, Caputo bemoaned the investigation and the effect it had on Trump allies who faced hefty legal bills as they received subpoenas and requests for interviews with investigators. When the investigation wrapped, Trump hosted Caputo for a meeting in the Oval Office and took pictures with his family.

Caputo himself drew the attention of Mueller’s investigators in part because he had had contact with a Russian who offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

In May 2016, Caputo said, a Russian man approached his then-business partner, Sergey “George” Petrushin at an art gallery opening in Florida, claiming to have information that could be helpful to Trump’s campaign. Petrushin connected him with Caputo, who arranged for him to meet with political operative Roger Stone, a longtime friend.

According to the Mueller report, which described the episode, investigators found no link between the Russian man’s outreach and the broader effort by Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.

As a political adviser and public relations specialist, Caputo also had lived for a time in Moscow in the 1990s, where he worked on a campaign reminiscent of “Rock the Vote” on behalf of then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Returning to the United States, Caputo took a contract in 2000 working for the Russian conglomerate Gazprom Media to improve Vladimir Putin’s image in the United States. He later told the Buffalo News that he was “not proud of the work,” adding, “at the time, Putin wasn’t such a bad guy.”

By midday yesterday, Politico reported that Caputo called an emergency staff meeting to apologize for drawing negative attention to the Regime's so-called health care strategy "and signaled that he might be soon departing his role." By the end of the day, the backlash was so intense that Trump is reported-- not confirmed yet-- to have told Azar to order Caputo to "resign" so he can focus on his mental health. He also deleted his Twitter account (Caputo, not Trump). UPDATE: They just announced that Caputo is taking a "leave of absence" until after the election.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Once again, Obama's nefarious non-existent spies have provided us with what some people are saying is an exclusive peek at the Republican Party's 2020 Con-Vention theme song! When reached for comment, party spokescretins Kayleigh McEnany and David Duke told us:

Our fabulous new Republican Party theme song will be available to all card-carrying Republican Party comrades on 78rpm 10-inch record and Edison Cylinder via all Republican campaign websites. And, if you act fast, Sen. Ron Johnson and Sen Chuck Grassley will come sing it at your front door just as soon as they return from their next meeting at The Kremlin for a campaign donation of just $2000. For an additional donation in an undisclosed amount, they will sing it to you via two empty GOYA bean cans connected with stained yellow string.

Trump's Original Suggestions For His Garden Of American Heroes

-by Noah

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the oval office! Fortunately, we at DWT have use of alien tech which enables us to eavesdrop. Imagine our surprise when we went over our recordings and found this oval office dialog. We're proud to publish it as an exclusive. We've identified all of the participants by matching voice prints with known, public statements. Here's a portion. Enjoy!

Kellyanne Conway: Stephen Miller's on the phone for you Mr. President! (Grunt heard) Shall I take that burger tray away?

Traitor Don: Stephen! How was that late night rally you organized in Alabama this weekend? How'd it go?

Stephen Miller: Great attendance, Mr. President. Big numbers and none of that social distancing crap. Although, ha ha, everyone wore a mask, er, hood!

Traitor Don: Heh. Heh. Now that's great to hear. I've got some names for that Garden of American Heroes thing. Tell me what you think. Here goes. Me first. Biggest statue. Lots of hair. Then, I've got George Wallace, Limbaugh, Carlson, James Earl Ray... Vlad wants to be included so he's on. He's almost an American anyway and he's my hero! He has a nice idea for a monument to our partnership. He suggested the Rosenbergs so I've got them too. Not sure who they are but friends of Vlad are friends of mine! I've got Robert E. Lee, and Bull Connor, all four of those Minneapolis cops, real heroes those guys... We should invite them to the convention. They could do reenactments! Wow, wouldn't that be a great idea for a statue? And I see a statue of Wallace standing in a doorway. Conner has a firehose on full! It could be a fountain! With orangey lights! James Earl Ray taking aim! Maybe we could have a kind of booth at my garden where my fans get to shoot at a stand up of MLK on a balcony. My voters would love it. We could even sell red rifles and red bullets with MAGA on them! I've, this'll make you happy too, Stephen, Nathan Bedford Forest. My father told me all about him. He was dad's idol. Maybe we should put my dad on the list. There's no me without him! Lindsey Graham wants to be on the list but I don't know. You know...

Stephen Miller: Yeah, we'll never get the LGBTQ community vote anyway. Who else?

Traitor Don: J. Edgar!

Stephen Miller: No. Uh, a, same as...

Traitor Don: (Sputters) Really? You mean?

Kellyanne Conway: (Laughs) No way!

Traitor Don: But the FBI building is named after him! Damn, maybe that's why... Hey, how 'bout Timothy McVeigh? Now there's a great man who knew how to make a statement. Great ratings!

Stephen Miller: Could be. Something wrong about that place. Is Joe McCarthy on the list?

Traitor Don: Good one, Stephen. That's why I keep you around.

Stephen Miller: Strom Thurmond?

Traitor Don: Wasn't he a Democrat? No Democrats! None!

Stephen Miller: He was but he switched to our side when the Dems went soft on racism in the 60s. Don't worry he was always one of us. You need to add Hiram Wesley Evans, special favorite of mine! We could sell copies of The Rising Storm at the gift shop. And don't forget Q.

Traitor Don: Oh, OK. What about Wernher Von Braun. He was one of Adolf's boys... Space Force! Space Force! Space Force! Yay, Space Force! (Door heard opening and closing) Mikey! Just in time. Space Force! I'm on the phone here with Stephen. We're putting a list of great names for my American Heroes garden. Wernher Von Braun is on it.

Mike Pence: Who?

Traitor Don: Wernher Von Braun. The rocket guy!

Mike Pence: Oooh, I love rocket guys!

Stephen Miller: Get that idiot queer out of your office. He gives me the creeps.

Kellyanne Conway: We could have a Tomb Of The Unknown Anti-Semite.

Will Trump's Regime Be Remembered For Having Had All The Best People?

From the beginning of his absurd climb to the White House, Trump consistently promised he would hire "the best people." There were people who liked his anti-status quo message but who knew he couldn't handle Washington and may of them were lulled into imagining everything would be fine because they bought the "best people" lie.

Like nearly everything with Trump, the opposite of what he says is more in touch with reality than what he says. He has consistently found the worst people, people like himself. And when someone honest or competent was recommended and slipped it, they were quickly disposed of. Stephen Miller lasted. A neo-Nazi sociopath, Miller is Trump's idea of "the best people."





Yesterday, Washington Post reporter Colby Itkowitz wrote about former Trump chief of staff-- fired-- right-win extremist Mick Mulvaney's critique that Trump chose the wrong people after Mulvaney's appearance on CNN Friday morning.

“If there was one criticism I would level against the president, he didn’t hire very well,” Mulvaney said. “He did not have experience at running government, and didn’t know how to put together a team that could work well with him.”

The conversation came amid this week’s buzz over Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton’s tell-all book about his time in the White House, in which he describes a morally corrupt president fixated on his own political success.

The list of Trump administration officials turned critics is long and includes former defense secretary Jim Mattis, former Navy secretary Richard V. Spencer and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson.

Mulvaney said most of the people now chiding the president are from the military and said, “that’s not the personality that works well with Donald Trump, who is a small-business man who did extremely well.”

Trump famously said during the 2016 presidential election that if he becomes president he would “surround myself only with the best and most serious people. We want top of the line professionals.”

But in the past three and a half years, there’s been high turnover in the White House, and Trump has attacked many of the people he once hired, such as former attorney general Jeff Sessions, whom he now despises.

At an event Thursday at the White House, as reporters were escorted out of the room, one correspondent yelled to the president: “Why do you keep hiring people that you believe are wackos and liars?”-- the names he’s called Bolton.

Trump sat stone faced and ignored the question.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Are we tired of "so much winning" yet?

I'll tell you what I'm also tired of: I'm tired of eople saying that the catastrophic and total failure of the Trump presidency is due only to incompetence. Sure, Trump is a mental case but that does not mean he is incompetent. Quite the opposite in his case. You don't achieve all three items listen in tonight's meme in just one term of office if you are merely incompetent. It takes deliberate malice aforethought. One of the three things mentioned? Yes. Two, maybe. But all three, plus the other things we need not mention here? That takes deliberate planning. If Trump was merely incompetent, those around him would either prevent his actions or prevent his actions from having the effect he obviously desires. Obviously, they were competently handpicked by Trump to be there for his reasons; reasons he no doubt calls "My Plan."

So, the only remaining questions I care about today are: One: Are Trump's insane whims and actions allowed to gain fruition due to an administration of people he placed around himself that is now, if it wasn't before, a hypnotised and brainwashed cult ala Jim Jones or Charles Manson, or, Two: Is he a Manchurian President under the control of others, either inside, outside. Or, Three: Both. If it's number two, it's likely done through blackmail of some sort and, as we all know, there's a strong case for Russian involvement and there always will be no matter how long people try to bury it. The sooner the full truth comes out the better. If the truth stays buried, it will be a metastasizing cancer. Regardless, Trump's words and his actions, such as his deliberate inflaming of the current situation in our city streets and what can only be his deliberate enabling the spread of the coronavirus with all of the cascading destruction and needless loss of life that that has wrought are the definite, proof-positive indicators that he is a total psychopath. Not just anyone could do what Trump has done to this country. It takes a man who has zero empathy of any kind. He is driven by hate and a nihilistic desire for mayhem, as are those who make up the cult around him in the White House. Outside the White House, those who support Trump are drinking a gradual dose of cyanide that will eventually kill them.

And, still, no one in Washington who could do anything about this lifts a finger. In fact, at least half of them lend aid, encouragement, and assistance. Some in Congress thought a mild process of investigation and impeachment would be enough. They tread softly with equally mild words and political diplomacy. Not everyone in Washington is part of the Trump cult but those that aren't are grossly ineffectual and grossly quiet, so afraid of offending anyone that they have made themselves an offense to us all.

Those in Washington who spiritually and physically travel with Trump are obviously essentially as insane as their Dear Leader and are bought, blackmailed, and/or paid for in some manner. They are agents of a cult of chaos. Who else they are agents for is up for speculation, make that limited speculation. Start by pointing to Wall Street, Moscow, Beijing, or Pyongyang. Do that in any order you like. Here at home, start with Lloyd Bankfein of Goldman Sachs and banksters like J.P Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon and Well Fargo's Charles W. Scharf. Include the tool of the Russian oligarchs Moscow Mitch and the other lapdog $enators loyal to him and a rabid dog pack of congresscretins like Devin Nunes. Include the Trump Cabinet. Trace what Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has done with the stimulus money in her control.

Then there's National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien who glibly turns a blind eye to our nation's problem with racism and racists themselves while he blames "far left agitators" for the current protests while covering for the administration's white supremacist friends. To him and his colleagues in the White House, Antifa people are terrorists but not the White Nationalists in our streets, whether they are in uniform and wearing a badge or not. O'Brien, like most of his kind, is a fine example, a very fine example, of someone who belongs in a padded cell instead of the White House. In fact, turn Trump's new Bunker Bedroom into a padded cell and throw the whole White House staff in there. Can you imagine being locked in a room with O'Brien, Stephen Miller, Kellyanne, and that new ditz brain Kayleigh McEnany? I can almost see Pence in the corner staring catatonically off into a world only he knows.

I can't end this post without a special mention of Secretary Of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff General Mark Miller. Both men marched along with their Dear Leader right through Lafayette Park to St. John's Church with Trump on Monday. They might as well have been locked arm in arm with him. Their action was an endorsement of their boss treading on the Constitution and us all by violently dispersing the crowd of peaceful protesters and clergy. In so doing, he pointedly politicized our military and sanctioned its use against peaceful American protesters right on American soil. Both must be very proud. Esper has since made a quarter-hearted hint that maybe he was an asshole, but hey, Esper, we heard you the first time! Milley on the other hand had even dressed up in his combat fatigues for the march across the park. Big man, General, big man. In doing so, Milley involved the military in an overt political act and made himself a complete disgrace to his alma mater, West Point. No apology has come but who would expect such a thing from such a man? A Japanese General who did the same would commit the ritual suicide of Hari-Kari. I'd send Milley a set of knives, but Milley has made it plain that he lacks the character to use them for their proper purpose. Instead, he would no doubt stab a protester. Instead of people like Esper and Milley, we used to have true patriots running the Pentagon; true patriots regardless of their personal political affiliation. Esper and Milley have willfully abdicated their responsibilities and thrown any ounce of patriotism they may have once had into the garbage.

Any sane and observant person has always seen what Trump is, what he wants to be, and what he wants to turn America into but he has a lot of very sick helpers. To assemble a team like that does take a measure of competence. They see their job as to catapult the sadism.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Well, Mr. Bunker Boy, you want your picture everywhere? I got your picture right here. Here you are going for a stroll on the Constitution in Lafayette Park, a people's park named after a man who came a great way just to fight tyrants like you. Secret Service aside, I see some of your White House Nazi scumbags right behind you, too.

Mike Pompeo-- Far Worse Than You Probably Think

On Saturday, Wall Street Journal reporter Vivian Salama wrote that Philip Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs "was set to tell House impeachment investigators Saturday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other top officials stymied a show of solidarity for the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine after President Trump had her removed." He's another one who knows are about the quo in Trump's Ukrainian quid pro quo and he's going to prove deadly not just for Trump but for Pompeo as well. Since Trump didn't invent Pompeo, I want to remind you about him if you have a minute. We've been writing about him since 2010, ever since the Koch brothers managed to get him into Congress as another one of their personal emissaries (like Mick Mulvaney) on Capitol Hill. In 2011 the Washington Monthly introduced the newly-elected Kansan as the The congressman from Koch Industries. At the time, Steve Benen presented him as a freshman "trying to kill a consumer-product-safety database, allowing Americans to go online and access free information about the safety records of household products. The measure was easily approved with bipartisan support, but the freshman Republican perceived it as anti-business. After all, if consumers are made aware of potentially dangerous products, Americans might not buy them. How can the manufacturers of those products make a profit under conditions like that? As it turned out, the Koch brothers were the ones who wanted the online consumer-product-safety database scuttled, and Pompeo was happy to do their bidding-- he represents the district where Koch Industries is located, and the Koch brothers and their political action committee were his most generous campaign contributors."

Back then I didn't know much about Pompeo, who most Americans never heard of 'til Trump plucked him out of Congress early in 2017 to run the CIA. Other than the well-established fact that he's a virulent racist, all I knew about him was that he was a multimillionaire Teabagger and total corporate shill who's long been in bed with the Koch Brothers-- his top campaign donors through various front groups they control and fund and who placed one of their employees, Mark Chenoweth, as his chief of staff.

When Trump decided to appoint him Secretary of State in 2018, every Democrat but conservative butt-wipes Claire McCaskill (MO), Joe Manchin (WV), Joe Donnelly (IN), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Doug Jones (AL) and Bill Nelson (FL) voted against confirmation. McCaskill, Donnelly, Heitkamp and Nelson faced the voters that year and, despite it being a Democratic wave election, all 4, unable to explain votes like that, were defeated for reelection. During his first election, Pompeo called his Democratic opponent, state Rep. Raj Goyle, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, a "turban topper" who "could be a muslim, a hindu, a buddhist etc who knows." No doubt that kind of vicious racism went into Trump's decision to name him Secretary of State.





Garrett Graff, writing yesterday for Wired reported how the Ukraine mess has derailed Pompeo's out-sized political ambitions. He wrote that anyone watching this month's interview for a Tennessee TV station, "you could almost see Mike Pompeo’s political life flash before his eyes as he sat for seven minutes, almost unblinking, under withering cross-examination by-- of all people, he must’ve thought-- a local Nashville TV reporter."

With question after question, WSMV’s Nancy Amons grilled the increasingly uncomfortable secretary of state about the terrible week he’d been having-- the resignation of a top lieutenant, one of the few career foreign service officers who had steadied Pompeo’s ship at state; President Donald Trump’s surprise decision last week to abandon the Kurdish allies who had helped defeat ISIS in Syria and leave them to face annihilation at the hands of a Turkish invasion; the controversy over the recall of the ambassador to Ukraine, who also that day was testifying on Capitol Hill about the alleged conspiracy theory-laden smear campaign that had ended her assignment in Kyiv early; and about the mysterious role of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, and his mission this year to get Ukraine to investigate the Biden family, possibly in exchange for US military aid.

It probably wasn’t what Pompeo had expected while he was in Tennessee speaking to a Christian conference-- the type of friendly audience Pompeo has increasingly sought. As he’s traveled the country over the last year, the secretary has made a point of engaging with local media (whose questions are generally friendlier) and, not coincidentally, the encounters have the potential to be more helpful to the political future Pompeo seems to be carving out for himself as Trump’s heir apparent.

During a spring swing through Iowa, he did four local radio interviews and more recently has been courting the local press in Kansas, his adopted home state, where he’s keeping open the possibility of running for US Senate next year. Yet given this fall’s momentous events-- much of which involves a budding impeachment inquiry for Pompeo’s boss that has Pompeo himself in the middle of the scandal-- the local TV news interview was far more challenging. The secretary of state, all but visibly seething, muttered non sequiturs, repeated vacuous talking points, and at one point told Amons it sounded like she was working for the Democratic National Committee. In fact, she was doing journalism, trying to pry the truth from one of the administration’s fiercest defenders.

Last month, as news of a whistle-blower from the intelligence community began to circulate in Washington, it would have been hard to find someone in the Trump orbit whose political future seemed brighter than Mike Pompeo's. The 55-year-old former congressman from Kansas has deftly navigated the chaos atop the executive branch to position himself as the Trump administration’s unicorn-- the almost mythic figure who has lasted inside the president’s inner circle. This is, after all, a government where senior officials come and go sometimes by the week. But Pompeo actually earned a promotion along the way, moving from CIA director to secretary of state.

Nearly three years into the administration, Pompeo effectively is the last man standing, having outlasted and vanquished all rivals for Trump’s ear on foreign policy, the president’s tireless, give-no-quarter chief crusader, a political pugilist in a role normally reserved for thoughtful diplomacy, a happy warrior Trump dispatched to tongue-lash European allies over China and Huawei, to scold Iran over its nuclear ambitions, to glad-hand with North Korea, to boost Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, to reassure Saudi Arabia that its relationship with the Trump administration would remain copacetic, despite the government’s alleged killing of US resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and to clean up with Denmark in the wake of Trump’s aborted effort to purchase Greenland.

Pompeo learned along the way that there was only one way to survive under Trump: to be as enthusiastic about Trump as Trump himself. Or, as Pompeo summed up his daily job to me in one of our conversations, “you go execute and you do it with all the energy and heart and passion and integrity you can muster.” Anything less, after all, and one might face the ignominious end of his predecessor, Rex Tillerson-- who was reportedly sitting on the toilet when he got a call informing him he was about to be fired by presidential tweet. As one former senior intelligence leader said when I mentioned Pompeo, shaking his head: “He’s made his deal with the devil.”

The deal he’d made, after all, was clear. Pompeo was a man in a hurry, standing uniquely astride the three critical strands of the modern GOP: the Kansas Koch brothers who have funded much of the party’s next generation; evangelical Christians, a group that has remained fiercely loyal to Trump; and Trump’s red-hat-wearing, red-meat-loving MAGA “America First” nationalist base. Before the Ukraine scandal engulfed Washington, it appeared that his loyal service to Trump had left Pompeo, perhaps better than anyone, in first position for the shadow primary to succeed Donald Trump in 2024 as heir apparent.

But when the details of the whistle-blower complaint emerged-- that Trump, working with Giuliani, had been trying to pressure Ukraine to drum up dirt on the Bidens and also to chase a widely debunked conspiracy theory that Ukrainians, not Russians, hacked the 2016 election-- Pompeo’s role in the controversy has grown with nearly every passing day.

After an initially ambiguous statement, the secretary of state finally admitted that he’d listened in real time to the now infamous July 25 telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, where the US president leaned on Zelensky to help Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr smear Hunter Biden. He’d heard, in real time, Trump utter the phrase “I would like you to do us a favor, though,” the smoking-gun utterance that caused such consternation inside the White House, intelligence community, and Justice Department as word spread of Trump’s conversation and tipped House Democrats over the edge to begin a formal impeachment inquiry.

Damning text messages exchanged by two State Department officials added fuel to the controversy, as did the congressional hearing about the State Department’s rushed recall of ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Pompeo’s decision not to speak out on behalf of those caught up in the scandal and not to defend the integrity of career foreign service officers was reported to have ultimately triggered the resignation this month of Michael McKinley, a State Department lifer whose appointment to Pompeo’s inner circle last year was initially seen inside the department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters as a hopeful sign.

Add in the fact that nearly all of Trump’s foreign policy goals that Pompeo has championed appear unfulfilled-- from Iran, North Korea, and China to the unfolding debacle in Syria that Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence were dispatched last week to calm-- and the growing calls from the intelligentsia in Washington for Pompeo to resign, and it’s hard not to imagine that by the time he sat down to face Amons that Pompeo was wondering whether the implicit deal he’d made with Trump would lead him to the White House-- or, like nearly all others who have served this president, his eventual embarrassing ouster?

Quite the practiced liar, isn't he? More people should get to know what kind of a stinking pile of diarrhea Pompeo is. Lindsay Wise, also writing for the Wall Street Journal, noted that Pompeo had talked with Charles Koch on Friday about quitting as Secretary of State and running for the open Kansas Senate seat. That's him in Nancy Ohanian's drawing-- Disorganized Crime-- third from the left, between William Barr and Señor Trumpanzee himself:

What's Better, An Incompetent Trump Or A Competent Trump?

Auschwitz Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

"Trump," wrote Philip Bump in his Washington Post column yesterday, "appears to simply be making the figure up." What figure? Does it matter? Trump makes everything up. (So does Biden, but not as much). Bump was talking about how Trump consistently lies about his approval numbers, "touting a 93% approval rating from Republicans. The first iteration of that figure that we found came from a straw poll conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which is a bit like foxes claiming to be overwhelmingly popular after surveying people at a furry convention. It’s like asking about support for the Second Amendment at a gun show. In June, though, Trump tacked on a percentage point. He first claimed to have 94% support from Republicans during a news conference with then-British Prime Minister Theresa May. Our fact-checkers looked into it, determining that there was no public poll showing anything of the sort. If it was an internal campaign poll, it hasn’t been made public (our fact-checkers asked). Since then, though, 94% has supplanted 93% in Trump’s rhetoric, with his touting this purported number over and over and over again."

Lying is Trump's modus operandi. (Biden's too, but not as much.) As Max Boot wrote in his own Post column in the same edition, "Trump inherited more than $400 million from his father and invested in one failed business after another." New polling, he reports, "shows voters aren’t buying Trump's bullshit as much as they once did," not about anything.

Another Post reporter, Karen DeYoung, wrote on Sunday night that Trump's regime is in a shambles policy-wise. She wrote that the bumbling non-leader some call "president" had screwed up Afghanistan even more. "Plans for U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, in keeping with President Trump’s pledge to end the war there, were thrown into confusion Sunday, following Trump’s decision to call off a secret meeting he planned with Afghan and Taliban leaders to secure a peace deal. Competing versions of what led to the cancellation of the meeting and, at least temporarily, any further U.S.-Taliban negotiations, exposed internal administration tensions that have flared as a deal seemed near in recent weeks. Those tensions have pitted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose chief negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, said a week ago that agreement 'in principle' had been reached after 10 months of talks with the militants, and Trump national security adviser John Bolton, who opposed the talks."

Trump, she reported, is "likely to move ahead with the planned initial withdrawal, regardless of the apparent collapse of negotiations." Trump had been the main person pushing for the Camp David meeting-- on the anniversary of the 9/11 debacle no less. "Trump," she wrote, "thinks his personal style can persuade anyone, and that he has seen the possibility of a substantial Afghan withdrawal as a major plus for his reelection campaign... The Taliban said that the decision to end the U.S.-Taliban peace process for now would 'lead to more losses for the United States,' spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement. 'Its credibility will be affected, its anti-peace stance will be exposed to the world, losses to lives and assets will increase.'"

Sounds like a real shit-show, right? And it most ways it is. Trump's colossal incompetence is one of the biggest scandals of the long list of scandals that has made this the worst presidency in American history. (There are new virtually no serious historians who disagree that Trump is the worst occupant of the White House ever, worse than Hoover, worse than Nixon, rose than Buchanan, worse than Taylor and Tyler, worse than Harding... just the worst. 

Mark Gamba, the progressive mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon who is running for a congressional seat held by right-wing Blue Dog Kurt Schrader confirmed what the historians are all saying: "Trump is the worst, most corrupt President, certainly in this century and arguably in the history of the country. The damage he’s done to our international relationships will take many years to repair. The damage he’s caused to civility, decency and public discourse is tearing the country apart. The damage he is doing to the future of the planet by avoiding strong climate action may be the crime of the millennia. I suspect that he is in deep with the Russian banks because no one else will loan him money after all the bankruptcies. That explains the pandering to Russia, and his dismissal of their intervention in our elections. The Republicans always paint themselves as more patriotic, but how patriotic is it to prop up a president this corrupt, who is likely in bed with one of our enemies? The shocking loss to Trump has made the democratic leadership gun shy and unwilling to begin formal impeachment inquiries. It’s time to put people into office that are not so twisted up by their own machinations and those of the opposition that they can’t even recognize their duty to their country. If I were in Congress right now, I would be calling for formal impeachment inquiries. There is far too much on the line for anything less."

But there is one way that Trump has proven to be a fast learner-- he's figured out how to corrupt the entire government, something that doesn't surprise any serious Trump-watchers. Jonathan Chait: "Trump came to the presidency a complete novice to government and often found his corrupt, authoritarian impulses frustrated by its bureaucracy. But he is slowly learning how to control the machine that has stymied him. This is the story of 2019, as Trump has replaced institutionalists attempting to curtail his grossest instincts with loyalists happy to indulge them. It is playing out across multiple dimensions. This is the through-line between several seemingly disconnected episodes from the last several days." And that isn't the worst of it!

Increasingly, Republicans are dispensing with the fig leaf and flaunting their complicity. Putting money in Trump’s pocket by booking his properties has become a symbol of partisan solidarity. It is a signal of support both to the president and to fellow Republicans or business clients that you are on the ins with the boss. “President Trump has really been on the side of the Evangelicals and we want to do everything we can to make him successful,” one Evangelical leader tells the Times. “And if that means having dinner or staying in his hotel, we are going to do so.” Aggressive lack of curiosity has given way to open boasting of the quid pro quo arrangement.

None of these stories by itself has the singular drama of a Teapot Dome or a Watergate. Indeed, the mere fact that there is so much corruption prevents any single episode from capturing the imagination of the media and the public. But it is the totality of dynamic that matters. A corrupt miasma has slowly enveloped Washington. For generations, both parties generally upheld an assumption that the government would abide rules and norms dividing its proper functioning from the president’s personal and political interests.

The norm of bureaucratic professionalism and fairness is a pillar of the political legitimacy and economic strength of the American system, the thing that separates countries like the U.S. from countries like Russia. The decay of that culture is difficult to quantify, but the signs are everywhere. Trump’s stench is slowly seeping into every corner of government.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I hope that it will be that I showed up every day and I did the very best job that I could to put forward the president's message... to do the best job that I could to answer questions. To be transparent and honest throughout that process and do everything I could to make America a little better that day than it was the day before.

Cue the laughter. Throw the tomatoes. That was republican icon and be best liar Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying how she wanted to be remembered back in December just before Christmas, a kind of Christmas present of laughter to, or more importantly, at America. Now she's quitting and it's Bring On The Next Goon time.

Even those who have dedicated their lives to evil have a breaking point, sometimes. Was her boss's treasonous "collusion please" interview with George Stephanopoulos the bridge too far? Hard to believe since SHS had already shown that she's a true believer and had no problem making up alternate realities to protect dear leader. It's not like she ever disagreed with him on anything but, there is the cumulative burden of having to be a lightning rod for one such as Trump, every damn day after damn day. She'd already cut down her public appearances three months ago. That led some people to wonder if she had a physical health issue to go with her more obvious mental health problems.

So what now, for Sarah? Will she now go work for Judge Roy Moore in Alabama? While I see her as ending up on some Florida carny row biting the heads of chickens, the story is that SHS is going back to the shithole state from which she came, aka Arkansas. Trump tweeted that she should run for governor. Certainly, the bar is low enough, but maybe she'll just go back home and join her brother in torturing dogs, or, join her father in being a top champion of homophobia. Perhaps she could be a press secretary for a local KKK chapter. The vistas are wide open for Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And, she'll have no problem getting service in the restaurants in Little Rock.

And I hope to be remembered as a virgin.
- Stormy Daniels, in her eye-rolling response to Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Everyone's Sorry-- Except Trump, Who Isn't Sorry For Anything

Did you watch Jake Tapper's CNN show Sunday? Is this what the primary is going to be about-- a parade of unaccomplished candidates apologizing for their unsavory pasts? Then it all becomes a test of who you believe and who you think is just an opportunist faking it. (Gillibrand is the worst so far-- refusing to apologize for destroying Al Franken's career, while making up the crappiest excuses for why she espoused xenophobic, racist, gun-loving policies as a House member-- basically blaming her constituents and demonstrating how she was/is a complete sociopath.) Tulsi was on the show too, but she sounded more credible and authentic in her apologies to the LGBTQ community for "offensive and hurtful statements" in the distant past.

I wonder if interviewers will spend much time speaking with Joe Biden about his slavish devotion to banksters? His handling of the Anita Hill testimony? His "hands on" behavior towards women? The 1994 crime bill? His grotesque anti-integration agenda back in Delaware? His crusade for mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. Here he is in 1989 attacking Bush from the right for being soft on crime. [And he's OFF!] Yeah... ultimately it will be Biden who's the sorriest of all.

And Biden's not the only candidate with a weak criminal justice record. I haven't heard anyone-- at least not on TV-- take on Kamala Harris for her wobbly record as California Attorney General, particularly in regard to letting Mnuchin off scott free. Lara Bazelon, former director of Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent, in the NY Times last week: "Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as district attorney and then the state's attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors."

Christopher Cadelago wrote a piece for Politico about The I'm Sorry Democratic Primary:

Gabbard issued her apology this week in a video after the past remarks resurfaced with her presidential ambitions. CNN published statements and reports from earlier in her career, including a 2002 quote in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin where she spoke about working against same-sex marriage with her father’s anti-LGBT organization. Also included was a Gabbard quote from her time as a state legislator, when she advocated that “as Democrats, we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”

“In my past, I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, they were very hurtful to the people in the LGBTQ community and to their loved ones,” Gabbard said in the apology video.



For Gillibrand, who announced her plans to seek the White House Tuesday on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the questions she now faces trace back to her political rise in 2006. That year, she won an underdog challenge to Republican then-Rep. John Sweeney in a GOP-heavy, overwhelmingly white New York district.

In the House, Gillibrand earned an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association; opposed driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants; and, according to a CNN report, opposed “amnesty for illegal immigrants” and voted to increase funding for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to work with local law enforcement on deportations. Those and other past Gillibrand positions, including wanting to make English the official language of the U.S., were recounted in painstaking detail by Maddow.

The liberal host didn’t hold back in her introduction, referring to Gillibrand’s political “transformation.”

“She has been on her own party’s right,” the popular MSNBC host said. “She has been on her own party’s left.”

Gillibrand, for her part, said she came to realize the errors of her ways when she became a senator and met with the Brooklyn family of a slain teenager-- a story she often cites to explain her shift on gun control. “And now, I’ve been a leader on these issues,” the senator added, noting her support for universal background checks and bans on assault rifles and large magazines.

Later, Maddow said she was struck to hear Gillibrand tell CBS’ “60 Minutes” that she was essentially embarrassed by her previous positions on immigrants.

“Well, I don't think it was driven from my heart. I was callous to the suffering of families who want to be with their loved ones, people who want to be reunited with their families,” Gillibrand said.

Looking back, she added, “I really regretted that I didn’t look beyond my district and talk about why this is an important part of the United States story, and why it’s an important part of our strength.”

And there's Cory Booker. Is he going to start apologizing for his coziness with Wall Street? How about his charter school support, which he was up to again over the weekend.

Wouldn't you rather hear candidates saying something like this instead of whining about being sorry about their miserable records? Guess who said this: "When so many others have abdicated their responsibility, it's on all of us to breathe fire."

One of the many things Trump is never sorry about is the swampiest administration in American history. The worst and most ignorant "executive" always surrounds himself with people even stupider than he is. In his new book, Let me Finish, Chris Christie wasn't complementary about most Trump staffers or the staff in general. Nothing we didn't already know, but...

Donald so urgently needed the right people around him and a solid structure in place... Far too often, he’s found himself saddled with the riffraff.

Instead of high-quality, vetted appointees for key administration posts, he got the Russian lackey and future federal felon Michael Flynn as national security adviser. He got the greedy and inexperienced Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

He got the high-flying Tom Price as health and human services secretary. He got the not-ready-for-prime-time Jeff Sessions as attorney general, promptly recusing himself from the Justice Department’s Russian-collusion probe. He got a stranger named Rex Tillerson as secretary of state…

He got the Apprentice show loser Omarosa Manigault in whatever Omarosa’s job purported to be. (I never could figure that one out.)… Too few Kellyanne Conways. A boatload of Sebastian Gorkas. Too few Steven Mnuchins.

One Kellyanne is way more than enough. Ditto for Mnuchin, who should actually be in prison. But the rest of the assessments all seem right on. But don't mix up the Chris Christie book with the Cliff Sims White House tell-all, Team of Vipers. Who's sorry now? Former Trump chief of staff John Kelly? "This is the worst fucking job I’ve ever had. People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired. If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place."

History Will Curse Anyone Who Works For Trump-- Just The Way History Curses Hitler's Enablers

Generals Kelly and Mattis have left the room

Happy New Year! No one wants to work for Señor Trumpanzee-- and certainly not running the Defense Department. No one in that world respects Trump in the slightest or even considers him remotely human. On the other hand, they respect Jim Mattis a lot. Yesterday, writing for Politico, Blake Hounshell and Daniel Lippman reported on Trump's desperate search for a new Secretary of Defense by noting that "The chatter among people familiar with the selection… is that few outside the administration want the job of replacing Jim Mattis as defense secretary, given the president’s decision to yank American troops out of Syria and other recent moves." The other day retired 4-star General Stanley McChristal explained why he wouldn't work for Trump. It just took Cadet Bonespurs a matter of hours-- and a few snorts of chopped-up Adderall-- to lash back like a rabid dog:

We may be stuck with another actor playing the part for a while, crooked Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan. Far right Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Generals David Petraeus and Jack Keane turned down the job. Petraeus told the BBC that his views don’t align with President Trump’s on foreign affairs. "I think there does have to be policy alignment and I’m not sure that exists, I’m afraid." I'm sure this tweet from the asshole-in-chief went over especially well with the generals yesterday:

So if Trump can't get Shanahan confirmed, he could turn to Dan Coats or... does Jared have time in his busy schedule? You know what would be hilarious? If Trump winds up appointing the first closet case to run the Pentagon, Lindsey Graham-- even though the two of them don't see eye to eye on much to do with defense or foreign policy. Señor T spent New Year's Eve day bathing in self-pity and tweeting his unhinged and bathetic bullshit. He's got to be removed and any member of Congress who doesn't help needs to be defeated ASAP.

Is The Failing, Treasonous NY Times Trying To Drive Trumpanzee Insane?

Did you ever doubt that Trumpanzee called Jeff Sessions a retard? Why? Once Melania almost left him because, referring to his youngest son's autism on Howard Stern's radio show, he called Barron a retard. After she flipped out, he said he didn't mean Barron, but Donald, Jr. Yesterday, the Daily Beast confirmed that Trump is always calling Sessions a retard. Trump, wrote Asawin Suebsaeng, "definitely believes-- and has said so out loud-- that his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is a "retard."

Two people with direct knowledge of Trump’s comments tell the Daily Beast that they have heard the president mock Sessions-- a frequent target of his cyber-bullying and degradation-- as mentally deficient, personally annoying, and “retarded” and a “retard.”

Today, the NY Times editorial page explained that it was "taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers."

Honestly it was shocking and, no doubt, Trump is simultaneously trying to find out who it is while assuring his retarded supporters that it's fake news. (Yes, of course I apologize; I just couldn't help myself.) Ready to ready a few excepts from I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration? This seems exciting a book-worthy: "I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." I hate all this referencing of him as "president." People should either say "the occupant of the White House" or, if they must, :the illegitimate president," which is far more accurate than the "president." I usually call him Señor Trumpanzee.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma-- which he does not fully grasp-- is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

...From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

Do you think our "president" is sleeping tonight?

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

...Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until-- one way or another-- it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

...There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.