Plan B Forum

. .but if you read the NYT around lunchtime today you will have seen this comment from Andrew in Louisville on the 'Turmoil at National Security Council' story. Looks as if I owe ACLU $50. And I need to update my NYT profile.

We will of course see a resignation soon.

I am betting that some of these words will be in the resignation letter:

Family (as in spend more time with)
Distraction (as in the country does not need at this truly historic etc etc)
Name (as in clear my)

Words you will not see:

Russians
Sanctions
Mistake

My bet? $50 to ACLU if I am wrong; $49.99 if I am right.

You realize that his crimes were only pointed out because Jeff Sessions was not AG? And briefly, an honest person was.

Otherwise the GOP lie machine goes into overdrive.



http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/02/ ... tment.html

The Resignation of National Security Advisor Flynn: Thuds and Screams from the Topkapi Palace Department

Topkapi Palace

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: OK:

Did Flynn resign because Bannon decided that he did not want to wage his jihad against Muslims worldwide attached to the ball and chain of a Russian agent of influence?

Did Flynn resign because Pence threatened to invoke Amendment 25 if he did not?

Trump is not only not picking "the best people"; he has no clue what picking the best people would possibl

yrs,
rubato

Good commentary from Charlie Pierce:

• You have to feel just a little bit sorry for them. Here they are, with all their wishes fulfilled. A Republican president, solid majorities in both Houses, one justice away from a Supreme Court of their dreams, and a Democratic Party incapable of mounting any more than token opposition to any of it. It's all right there, inches from their fingertips, and they have Toonces the Driving Cat in the Oval Office, picking fights with department stores and up to his neck in an whirlpool of allegations that his administration is the Kremlin's socket-wrench.

Yeah, Toonces the Driving Cat...I like that...

Read the whole piece here:

• • http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/po ... ns-russia/

Here's what we can now know about this:

1.Trump received the report with the conversation transcripts showing that Flynn, despite what he had said, had in fact had inappropriate conversations with the Russian Ambassador to the US prior to the inauguration on January 26th (I say "inappropriate" rather than "criminal" because The Logan Act has never been enforced...If we're going to start enforcing The Logan Act, I propose that Jimmy Carter should be the first one indicted...)

2.From January 26th till a few days ago, Trump did fuck all about it...

3. Trump was not at all bothered by the conversations themselves. (Or he would have done something other than fuck all about it.)

4.Trump was not at all bothered by the fact that Flynn lied publicly about the conversations. (Or he would have done something other than fuck all about it.)

5.Trump was not even at all bothered by the fact that Flynn lied to the Vice President about the conversations. (Or he would have done something other than fuck all about it. )

6.Trump didn't finally start to do something other than fuck all about it until the existence and substance of the transcripts became publicly known, making the public (and the Vice President, who Trump hadn't told about this even when he found out about it on January 26th) aware both that Flynn had engaged in these discussions, and that he had lied about having them.

Conclusion:

Trump doesn't care fuck all that these conversations happened, he doesn't care fuck all that Flynn lied about having them (even to the VP) he only cares that the whole thing became public...

In fact in a rare display of honesty, in a series tweets since he fired Flynn and even in public remarks he made earlier today, he has made very clear this is the only thing he cares about regarding this whole matter. The only real wrong he sees here, are the leaks that enabled the public to learn both about what Flynn had done, and the fact that Flynn had then lied about what was done.

Poor Michael Flynn is the victim:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump slammed intelligence officials and the media on Wednesday over what he called “very, very unfair” treatment of his ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn and for “illegally leaked” information about reported contacts between his campaign advisers and Russian officials.

Trump’s comments come two days after Flynn was forced to resign for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump aides about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. before the inauguration.

In his first public comments on Flynn’s firing, Trump said it was “really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.” He spoke during a White House news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

45 is a worthless piece of shit . . . worst EVER, and it's not even been a month.

This is a classic case of "the cover-up is worse than the crime"...(It's also very instructive about the nature of the President we have...if any more instruction were needed...)

If Flynn had said, "Of course the issue of sanctions came up in our conversation. We spoke on the day the new sanctions were announced; how could they not have been mentioned? I had no advance knowledge that these new sanctions were going to announced,[which he didn't] and I did not make any commitments to the Ambassador regarding how the new administration would deal with them" [there has been nothing reported that suggests that he did]

This probably would have been a two day story...

Particularly if this had been an isolated incident...


But the real, truly disturbing problem is that it's not an "isolated incident" ...


It's part of a piece of a strange and inexplicable attitude of Trump's towards Putin, that goes well back into the campaign, and long pre-dates his election...

An attitude that doesn't even make sense by Trumpian standards...

During the campaign, the fundamental basis of Trump's approach was to demagogue and exploit fears and anxieties that people genuinely felt...

To make con-artist appeals to concerns for which there was a real underlying constituency...

There was never a "Pro-Putin" constituency for him to make that kind of appeal to, and yet it was the one element that he never wavered from or compromised on... (The one plank in the GOP platform that Trump's team insisted on changing was the one pledging material support for Ukraine against Russian aggression...a truly shameful moment in the history of the Republican Party...The Gipper wouldn't just be "turning over in his grave", he'd be spinning out of it at warp speed...)

The list is a long one:

He said he'd "consider" recognizing the Russian annexation of Crimea...

He called NATO "obsolete" and undermined the US commitment to the alliance...

[He did that again recently, even though the truth is that NATO has been actively engaged effectively in working outside of its original intent since the collapse of the Soviet Union; in the Gulf War I, in Bosnia in the early 90s, in Afghanistan...(which was a NATO operation; it was the one and only time that Article 5 was invoked by a member country...the US...after 9/11) in the air campaign that brought down Gaddafi...

In fact if there's one area that NATO can be said to be lacking in today, it's the failure to be strong enough in it's "core competency" and traditional role...deterring Russian aggression in Europe... ]

He's repeatedly talked about the US and Russia somehow joining forces to fight Islamist terrorism, though there's absolutely no evidence that Putin has any interest whatsoever in doing this...(On the contrary, Putin sees Islamist terrorism as primarily destabilizing to The West, and therefore has little problem with it.)

He has twice now, (once during the campaign, and again just a couple of weeks ago, since assuming the Presidency) drawn a moral equivalence between the United States and Putin's regime, equating this murderous thug with the US ...

And in just the past few days, Putin has engaged in flagrant provocations by putting a Russian spy ship off the coast of Delaware, had his fighters buzz a US naval destroyer in the Black Sea, (within 200 yards) and (most egregiously) violated the INF treaty by testing a new intermediate missile system prohibited by that treaty...

Without a single peep from this President, who certainly isn't shy when it comes to going after the press, or Saturday Night Live...

And on and on and on...(I'm sure I've left a lot of stuff out...)

Given this record, it is perfectly understandable that the press, (and more and more of the public and the Congress) want to know...

In Lord Dampnut's famous words:

"What the hell is going on?"

BoSoxGal wrote: . . . worst EVER, and it's not even been a month.

Oh, I don't know...

He's still got to beat James Buchanan, who stood idly by while his country dissolved...

I give Lord Dampnut another couple of weeks before he surpasses him...

On the other hand, when it comes to press secretaries, Sean Spicer has managed to reach the credibility level in just a few weeks that it took Ron Ziegler four years to achieve...

It's a shame that the Republican leadership in Congress appear singularly uninterested in learning the answer to that question.

Scooter wrote:It's a shame that the Republican leadership in Congress appear singularly uninterested in learning the answer to that question.

I agree...

I understand why Ryan and McConnell are holding their noses while this is going on...

They believe that if they can just get past all of this, they'll get some important things done for the country, like entitlement reform, and deregulation of small business...

The argument has been, "Donald Trump will sign any bill we put on his desk"...

What they're missing here (especially Ryan, who really is a decent, rational, human being)

Is that there's no, "getting past all of this"...

Without having a full and complete investigation into the POTUS's strange attitude towards our, (as Mitt Romney so accurately put it ) "greatest geo-political foe"...

Whether or not we move the age for full retirement benefits up six months over 20 years to 70 from 65, isn't particularly important if we have a President who is a Russian (even unwitting) agent of influence...

There needs to be a full and complete investigation into Trump's involvement with Russia...

And it's time for more people in my party than John McCain and Lindsey Graham (and occasionally Marco Rubio) to say so...

Drumph will be impeached by Independence Day 2017.

I don't know why Donald Trump has adopted this attitude towards Putin and Russia...

And I'm very reluctant to accuse The President Of The United States of being a traitor...

(I wouldn't even accuse Jimmy Carter of that; as badly as he fucked up, he meant to do his best for the country....)

But in this case, I think it's an open question...

We need a bi-partisan and honest investigation to this...

He was a traitor before he became POTUS - does that help?

I think it's greed, pure and simple. Trump has never in his life done anything that wasn't primarily for his own, personal, material benefit. Leading a kleptocracy has made Putin wealthy and powerful beyond his--Trump's-- wildest dreams and the Donald wants him some of that wealth and power for his own self. Being the chief kleptocrat in a nation with even more wealth than the nation Putin leads must seem to Trump to be an obvious path to that goal: everything else is collateral damage.

Who cares if Betsy DeVos is Secretary of Education, (a fairly unimportant position; 99 percent of education decisions are made at the state and local levels) if we have a President who is in the pocket of the Russian oligarchs?

In this case, we need to know not just, "What did the President know, and when did he know it?"....

We need to know, "What did the President owe, and who did he he owe it to?"...

Interesting and thought-provoking interview with Evan McMullin:

Evan McMullin, former #NeverTrumper
candidate, on why America needs a new
conservative movement

"If this is to be the nature of the Republican Party, it’s time for something else."

---

Updated by Sean Illing | @seanilling | sean.illing@vox.com | Feb 15, 2017, 9:40am EST[/i][/size]

The Republican Party has surrendered to Donald Trump. One could make a monograph of the quotes (here and here and here and here) from leading Republicans claiming Trump wasn’t fit for office until he became the nominee, at which point they fell in line.

So far, they have continued to placate Trump in office, regarding him as a vehicle for their agenda. There are, of course, notable exceptions like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Ben Sasse. But the vast majority of the party, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, remains anchored to Trump.

Anti-Trump Republicans have had few representative voices. During the campaign, Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer and investment banker from Utah, stepped up and ran as an independent presidential candidate. McMullin’s campaign became a lodestar for conservatives who opposed Trump’s bigotry and bombast. He made a strong run to challenge Trump for Utah’s six Electoral College votes. Ultimately, Trump won Utah easily, capturing 45 percent of the vote; McMullin earned 21 percent.

Since the election, McMullin has persisted in his opposition to Trump. In December, he penned a piece for the New York Times describing Trump as an authoritarian threat to the Constitution:

In our nation, power is shared, checked and balanced precisely to thwart would-be autocrats. But as we become desensitized to the notion that Mr. Trump is the ultimate authority, we may attribute less importance to the laws, norms and principles that uphold our system of government, which protects our rights. Most dangerously, we devalue our own worth and that of our fellow Americans.

In this interview, I ask McMullin about his criticisms of Trump and the Republican Party. I ask him how his views have evolved since Trump took office a few weeks ago, and whether he thinks congressional Republicans are guilty of cowardice. Finally, I ask him if he thinks the Republican Party is salvageable after this kind of capitulation. If not, is it time for a viable third-party alternative?

Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

• Sean Illing
  How do you view this ongoing rift between Donald Trump and the intelligence community?
  
  Evan McMullin
  I believe it’s a pretty serious rift. Donald Trump’s relationships and policy ideas are themselves dangerous, and so people whose business it is to protect the country and to have extensive experience doing that are naturally going to have misgivings about what they see in President Trump.
  
  Sean Illing
  It’s hard to flesh out the implications of a trust gap between a sitting president and the intelligence community.
  
  Evan McMullin
  One of the implications will be that critical information won’t flow in the direction it needs to flow. So, as it’s already been reported, Donald Trump wouldn’t attend intelligence briefings on what was going on in the world. He has not received his briefings regularly — that’s extraordinary, and yet it’s already happened. Then, on the side of the intelligence organizations, they’re going to be concerned about sharing certain information with Donald Trump because of the likelihood that information would make it to Vladimir Putin’s regime in Moscow.
  
  Sean Illing
  It’s an indication of how far beyond the bounds we’ve gone that a statement like that can even be made. Our own intelligence community is afraid of sharing information with the president of the United States for fear that it might leak to the Russians.
  
  Evan McMullin
  I agree — it’s incredible. I would never have believed that we would see this kind of thing in our country.
  
  Sean Illing
  Trump’s first stop after being inaugurated was CIA headquarters. Presumably there to improve his relations with the intelligence community, Trump instead stood in front of a wall honoring dead CIA officers and bragged about his crowd numbers and his intelligence. What was your reaction to this?
  
  Evan McMullin
  I thought it was disgusting. I also felt sorry for him in a way. He’s a deeply fragile person, and authoritarians tend to be deeply insecure and deeply fragile. He was standing among American heroes, both the symbols of them on the wall and the living heroes in that room, and he chose to speak about himself and promote himself. It’s characteristic of who he is.
  
  In some ways, it was good for that to happen. It was good for him to make that distinction. For him to show up that way, I think he demonstrated clearly to the personnel at the [CIA] the type of man that he is. He revealed his true nature directly to them in their building and in front of a great symbol of their sacrifices.
  
  Sean Illing
  He didn’t reveal his nature at the agency on that day; he just affirmed it, as he has since he launched his presidential campaign over a year ago. To your credit, you were one of the first Republicans to take a strong stand against Trump early in the campaign. What did you see then?
  
  Evan McMullin
  I thought he demonstrated some authoritarian tendencies that I’d seen elsewhere in the world as an intelligence officer. I believed he was exploiting some real challenges that some Americans are facing economically and otherwise, and I’d seen authoritarian leaders do that overseas as well. It seemed very clear to me that Trump was cut from the same cloth.
  
  Given my experience with autocrats and authoritarian overseas, it was my responsibility — if no one else would do it — to speak up.
  
  Sean Illing
  You mentioned your experiences overseas with similarly authoritarian-minded leaders. Do any in particular come to mind?
  
  Evan McMullin
  Some of the tactics he uses and some of his rhetoric is really commonplace among authoritarians across regions and time. It’s a lot of the authoritarians he spoke about in the campaign and said he respected — Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, to name a few. These kinds of leaders draw from a familiar playbook that’s very well-established and quickly understood by people who make a study of it, people who witness it, or people who are themselves wired as authoritarians. I think Donald Trump is one of the latter.
  
  Sean Illing
  Your focus on tactics is noteworthy. With Trump, it seems it’s about power for power’s sake, not fidelity to an ideology or worldview.
  
  Evan McMullin
  He respects power. It’s entirely about power — more specifically, his own power. It’s a fundamental departure from the foundational ideas of our country, which are that all men and women are created free and that government derives its power only from the people and that power remains accountable to the people. The fact that the power remains accountable to the people means that that power continues belong to the people, and in that, they remain free despite their obligations to civil society or to society more generally.
  
  Sean Illing
  And Trump is a departure from this tradition?
  
  Evan McMullin
  His belief is that power does not ultimately belong to the people but rather to him. He and other authoritarians talk about their popular support, and they often misrepresent their popular support. Their rhetoric is centered around the idea that they are deriving their power from the people. Most often, that’s not actually the case, which puts them in a difficult position because poll numbers and election numbers demonstrate that they are not supported by the majority, and that jeopardizes their quest for personal power.
  
  So that’s why you see Donald Trump and other authoritarians attacking electoral systems and the results of elections, because they need to do that when the results are at odds with their rhetoric. But the fact that they do this shows that they don’t actually believe their power derives from the people.
  
  Sean Illing
  Given everything you’ve just said, given the stakes, can you explain or defend the cowardice of congressional Republicans before Trump?
  
  Evan McMullin
  I can’t defend that. I won’t defend that. You served in the military, right?
  
  Sean Illing
  I did.
  
  Evan McMullin
  I imagine you learned this in the military and probably also as a former political theory professor: The truth is that most people don’t understand authoritarianism. It’s new to them. A lot of Americans are simply unprepared to recognize it and unprepared to recognize its dangers. I think the same thing applies to most members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
  
  Of course we see most of the opposition coming from the left, from the Democratic side in Congress, which is really more about policy issues, and that’s fine. That’s what they should be doing. They disagree with some of the policy initiatives of Trump and the Republicans, and they’re opposing those things. But there are few who understand the danger of Trump based on his authoritarianism, of the true threat he poses to our country’s system of government and ultimately to our basic rights.
  
  Sean Illing
  I’m not sure the Democrats and Republicans are even remotely comparable in this respect.
  
  Evan McMullin
  No doubt there are differences. As far as the Republicans are concerned, many of them don’t understand the threat. On top of that, Republicans stand to gain some policy wins through Trump’s presidency, and that’s something that authoritarians will often do. That is, because they want some political support, they identity groups of people they can favor and whose interests they can advance — that’s how they get people to go along with the agenda. And that’s what we see happening with Donald Trump.
  
  Sean Illing
  We need leaders to be better than we are, and such leaders are lacking. As Vox’s Ezra Klein wrote last week, our only hope at this point is that Congress will do its job and check Trump’s overreaches.
  
  Do you have any confidence that they will do this?
  
  Evan McMullin
  The only confidence I have in that possibility comes from my hope that the American people will make it a political imperative, that Republicans and Democrats will stand up in defense of our democracy and our norms and institutions. That’s what must happen.
  
  In the future, I believe the American people must be far more politically and civically engaged, identifying wise and honest leaders and promoting them in office more proactively, rather than taking a more passive approach as they’ve done for decades. Clearly, that is no longer acceptable.
  
  The dangers are too real and too omnipresent.
  
  Sean Illing
  Are we staring down a constitutional crisis?
  
  Evan McMullin
  It’s hard to say. I think Donald Trump is clearly challenging our Constitution. I think the thing to watch right now is how he responds to rulings from the judiciary. Does the executive branch obey them? Does he respect them even if he disagrees with them? Does he as the chief executive officer of the country instruct the executive branch to obey those rulings, or will his rhetoric continue to undermine the legitimacy of the judiciary?
  
  I don’t think we’re in a constitutional crisis just yet, but I do think Donald Trump’s rhetoric and the rhetoric of the administration is such that we may be headed there.
  
  Sean Illing
  I worry about what happens when this administration is confronted by a foreign policy crisis or a major domestic terror attack. I don’t say this lightly, but Trump appears deeply unstable to me. The potential for catastrophic overreach is utterly terrifying.
  
  Evan McMullin
  I think you’re right. I’m very concerned that Donald Trump would take advantage of a crisis to assert more control to usurp power over the American people. I also believe the administration is trying to overwhelm the American people with a variety of actions and controversies to desensitize us to the erosion of our liberties but then also to be able to accomplish more than if they tried to roll things out slowly, one by one.
  
  Sean Illing
  There does seem to be a kind of “shock and awe” campaign afoot.
  
  Evan McMullin
  At the end of the election, there was a lot of concern about the Russians’ efforts to influence our elections. And then that story sort of disappeared amid all the daily trivialities and distractions. We’re only talking about it again because of the latest allegations around Michael Flynn.
  
  But there are multiple controversies coming from the administration. Meanwhile, they are rushing through a range of executive orders. There’s a reason they wouldn’t go through the normal process with their sweeping immigration ban. They knew that there would be objections. They knew as soon as they start to engage with the various departments about the intentions of the administration, there would be leaks and opposition would grow before they could institute an executive order. I believe that was by design.
  
  Sean Illing
  I take it you don’t buy any of the administration’s talking points about why they needed to move swiftly and in secret?
  
  Evan McMullin
  You have Trump saying things like, we have to move quickly; if we didn’t move quickly, then so many bad people would pour into the country. Well, there’s no real evidence of that, because we already have immigration systems designed to protect against that. They’re not foolproof, but they’ve had the benefit of many years of experience and adjustment since 9/11 and even before that. And so we don’t have this urgent problem where people are pouring into the country to do us harm.
  
  Sean Illing
  So what becomes of the conservative movement? Is the Republican Party salvageable after this capitulation?
  
  Evan McMullin
  I think that already it’s necessary for a new conservative movement, which is something we talked about on the campaign. We started that, and it exists. There are people out there who identify as conservatives, not Republicans. Whether a new party emerges on the right will depend largely on how Donald Trump governs. If he continues to govern the way he said he would govern and the way he is actually governing, then the prospects for a new party on the right increase.
  
  But I think the election demonstrated that people were not yet ready for that. Donald Trump was most unpopular in the Mountain West where toward the end of the campaign we spent a lot of time. Ultimately, he won — not by much, but he won. Republicans ultimately chose Donald Trump, even in places where his approval rating was very low. If that’s the case, if people are willing to vote for a candidate that they so dislike and so distrust, then they’re not quite ready for a new party.
  
  But if he continues to govern as an authoritarian, there will be some on the conservative side that say, enough is enough. If this is to be the nature of the Republican Party, it’s time for something else.

http://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/2 ... -community