A story about a pathetic man's downfall [34 Felony Convictions]

[Francisco 2.0 32426]

Jonathan Swan's Episode 2 dropped a bit ago:

 

https://www.axios.com/trump-lawyers-biden-election-victory-debf79bc-750b-457b-a736-789b501d62a7.html?utm_campaign=organic&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=twitter

 

Spoiler

Episode 2: Trump stops buying what his professional staff are telling him, and increasingly turns to radical voices telling him what he wants to hear. Read episode 1.

President Trump plunked down in an armchair in the White House residence, still dressed from his golf game — navy fleece, black pants, white MAGA cap. It was Saturday, Nov. 7. The networks had just called the election for Joe Biden.

In the Yellow Oval Room, the same room where FDR learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, stewards brought hors d’oeuvres on trays while Trump gathered his closest political advisers to assess what options he had left.

Top aides including campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior adviser Jason Miller, conservative political activist and external Trump adviser David Bossie, and Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager, leveled with him. As they saw it, he had one last long shot at victory. It would require them to win enough outstanding votes in Arizona and Georgia to squeak home in those two states, and to win a legal challenge to election practices in Wisconsin. 

"You have a 5% to 10% chance of this happening," Clark told the president. "But all of these things have to go right.” Trump listened calmly and told them their plan was worth a shot. 

But it would never get off the ground. Plan B, driven by Rudy Giuliani and a parallel track of conspiracists, was already coming together, unfolding before the original advisers' own eyes.

It would soon overtake the campaign's legal operation, feeding the president false claims including the idea that the election could be overturned. 

On the day after the election, Nov. 4, top staff including Stepien, Clark, Miller, general counsel Matthew Morgan and Jared Kushner had gathered at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. They believed this would be a serious search for a path to 270 electoral votes through credible legal challenges.

Then Giuliani, Sidney Powell and a swelling conspiracy crew marched into the room — literally.

These two groups — the professional staff and the Giuliani cabal — filled in around one long, rectangular table in a conference room walled in by frosted glass. The pattern repeated itself the day after that and the day after that.

A bizarre routine set in. These meetings would begin with official staff raising plausible legal strategies. Then Giuliani and Powell, a lawyer with a history of floating “deep state” conspiracy theories, would take over, spewing wild allegations of a centralized plot by Democrats — and in Powell's view, international communists — to steal the election.

Bewildered campaign aides would look around the table at one another, silently asking what the hell was going on. One would invariably shuffle out of the room, followed by another a few minutes later. Then another. Then another. The professional staff would reconvene in Stepien's office, about 20 yards down the hall.

Eventually, Giuliani would realize that he and his crew were alone in the conference room. He'd walk down the hall and knock on the glass outside Stepien's office, where about eight aides had squeezed onto a pair of couches. "You guys, where did you go?" Giuliani would say. "This is serious!" 

Asked to provide comment on this reporting, which was confirmed by two sources in the room, Powell said in an emailed statement to Axios: "Your story is materially false, but I'm sure the 'elitist and consultant class' that make millions of dollars lying to the American people are behind it and will push that propaganda." Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials including Clark, Morgan and Bossie, who played a key role in Trump's 2016 victory, spent many hours trying to stop the former New York mayor from running to the press or the president and muddling the campaign's legal approach. But they were outmatched, and Trump was tweeting his own spiraling conspiracies.

The numbers in Pennsylvania and Georgia kept getting worse. Top officials knew the election was getting away from them. Even the Giuliani-free meetings were overcome with paralysis.

The White House became a strange ghost town in the days after the election. Trump's schedule — already unstructured — became more so. It was impossible to shift his focus from his grievances about the election to important policy matters. In conversations in the Oval Office, Trump would occasionally slip and seem to acknowledge he lost, saying, "Can you believe I lost to that fucking guy? That fucking corpse?" 

Most in the West Wing, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, understood that Trump had lost. But nobody confronted him directly with that unpleasant news. Instead many on the staff chose to avoid him.

Some of the senior staff argued that Trump should spend this post-election period claiming credit for the GOP's strong congressional performances in the elections and to burnish his legacy, by talking about his achievements in office and the pace of the Operation Warp Speed vaccine development. But Trump wouldn't allow his team to move on. To be around him meant you had to accommodate some measure of denial. 

Senior White House staff and health officials maintained a standing 9 a.m. “COVID huddle” in the Roosevelt Room. They talked through the vaccine rollout, which would continue into 2021. Left unsaid was that they had lost the election and wouldn’t be around to see it fully through. Aides could only discuss the reality of Trump's loss in more private settings.

Trump's closest aides said they wanted to give him space to experience all the stages of grief. But he rarely made it past the denial stage. And many of his aides made themselves scarce, worried that if they found themselves in the Oval Office they could be sucked into conversations that could force them to incur hefty legal bills down the track.

Trump's most devoted aides did whatever they could to buck up his spirits, even if it meant indulging his delusions. Sometimes it was hard to tell if they were humoring Trump or had tipped over into fantastical thinking themselves. In late November, the head of the Presidential Personnel Office, Trump's former body man John McEntee, told colleagues they ought to get together to discuss second-term priorities. Not many were enthusiastic.

Biden was declared the winner of Arizona on Nov. 12, by more than 11,000 votes, a margin that was uncatchable. At that point, the core campaign team told Trump his pathway was dead. In retaliation, Trump stopped listening to them. Giuliani was gaining influence, speaking directly with the president and demanding to be put in charge.

On Nov. 13, Clark was in the Cabinet room of the White House with Stepien, Miller and campaign aide Erin Perrine for a meeting on communications strategy when deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino summoned Clark into the Oval Office to settle a legal question.

Trump had Giuliani on speakerphone, and Giuliani, seemingly unaware of Clark’s arrival, was trashing the campaign staff's legal strategy in Georgia — and floating a debunked conspiracy theory about rigged Dominion voting machines. 

"Hey, I've got Justin in here," Trump interrupted. "What do you think, Justin?" Clark laid out the legal process in Georgia and told the packed Oval Office that Georgia state law barred requesting a recount until after an election is certified.

"They're lying to you, sir!" Giuliani erupted.

"We're not lying," Clark shot back. "You're a fucking asshole, Rudy."

The following night — without notifying his campaign staff — Trump tweeted that he was putting Giuliani in charge of his legal challenges, along with pro-Trump lawyers Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Jenna Ellis.

Republican National Committee officials were not happy about this. They rejected a request to fund TV commercials claiming the election was "stolen.” But they greenlit a press conference on Nov. 19, a debut for the new legal team.

It played like a B movie. Black sweat, apparently from hair dye, rolled down Giuliani's face as he rambled about a supposed Democratic conspiracy to rig the vote in major cities. Powell, once a respected federal prosecutor, alleged an international communist plot by Cuba, China, Venezuela, George Soros, and the Clinton Foundation. 

Senior party officials were mortified but felt helpless. This was the Giuliani show now. The barbarians were in the Oval. The rest of the Republican Party was just along for the ride.

 

 

[WhatTheBuck 28797]

1 hour ago, Nolacycling said:

Bulk sales

Volume! Volume! Volume! I’m Crazy Donald and my pardons are priced to MOVE!

[TwiceHorn 31534]

31 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Jonathan Swan's Episode 2 dropped a bit ago:

 

https://www.axios.com/trump-lawyers-biden-election-victory-debf79bc-750b-457b-a736-789b501d62a7.html?utm_campaign=organic&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=twitter

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Episode 2: Trump stops buying what his professional staff are telling him, and increasingly turns to radical voices telling him what he wants to hear. Read episode 1.

President Trump plunked down in an armchair in the White House residence, still dressed from his golf game — navy fleece, black pants, white MAGA cap. It was Saturday, Nov. 7. The networks had just called the election for Joe Biden.

In the Yellow Oval Room, the same room where FDR learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, stewards brought hors d’oeuvres on trays while Trump gathered his closest political advisers to assess what options he had left.

Top aides including campaign manager Bill Stepien, senior adviser Jason Miller, conservative political activist and external Trump adviser David Bossie, and Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager, leveled with him. As they saw it, he had one last long shot at victory. It would require them to win enough outstanding votes in Arizona and Georgia to squeak home in those two states, and to win a legal challenge to election practices in Wisconsin. 

"You have a 5% to 10% chance of this happening," Clark told the president. "But all of these things have to go right.” Trump listened calmly and told them their plan was worth a shot. 

But it would never get off the ground. Plan B, driven by Rudy Giuliani and a parallel track of conspiracists, was already coming together, unfolding before the original advisers' own eyes.

It would soon overtake the campaign's legal operation, feeding the president false claims including the idea that the election could be overturned. 

On the day after the election, Nov. 4, top staff including Stepien, Clark, Miller, general counsel Matthew Morgan and Jared Kushner had gathered at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. They believed this would be a serious search for a path to 270 electoral votes through credible legal challenges.

Then Giuliani, Sidney Powell and a swelling conspiracy crew marched into the room — literally.

These two groups — the professional staff and the Giuliani cabal — filled in around one long, rectangular table in a conference room walled in by frosted glass. The pattern repeated itself the day after that and the day after that.

A bizarre routine set in. These meetings would begin with official staff raising plausible legal strategies. Then Giuliani and Powell, a lawyer with a history of floating “deep state” conspiracy theories, would take over, spewing wild allegations of a centralized plot by Democrats — and in Powell's view, international communists — to steal the election.

Bewildered campaign aides would look around the table at one another, silently asking what the hell was going on. One would invariably shuffle out of the room, followed by another a few minutes later. Then another. Then another. The professional staff would reconvene in Stepien's office, about 20 yards down the hall.

Eventually, Giuliani would realize that he and his crew were alone in the conference room. He'd walk down the hall and knock on the glass outside Stepien's office, where about eight aides had squeezed onto a pair of couches. "You guys, where did you go?" Giuliani would say. "This is serious!" 

Asked to provide comment on this reporting, which was confirmed by two sources in the room, Powell said in an emailed statement to Axios: "Your story is materially false, but I'm sure the 'elitist and consultant class' that make millions of dollars lying to the American people are behind it and will push that propaganda." Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials including Clark, Morgan and Bossie, who played a key role in Trump's 2016 victory, spent many hours trying to stop the former New York mayor from running to the press or the president and muddling the campaign's legal approach. But they were outmatched, and Trump was tweeting his own spiraling conspiracies.

The numbers in Pennsylvania and Georgia kept getting worse. Top officials knew the election was getting away from them. Even the Giuliani-free meetings were overcome with paralysis.

The White House became a strange ghost town in the days after the election. Trump's schedule — already unstructured — became more so. It was impossible to shift his focus from his grievances about the election to important policy matters. In conversations in the Oval Office, Trump would occasionally slip and seem to acknowledge he lost, saying, "Can you believe I lost to that fucking guy? That fucking corpse?" 

Most in the West Wing, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, understood that Trump had lost. But nobody confronted him directly with that unpleasant news. Instead many on the staff chose to avoid him.

Some of the senior staff argued that Trump should spend this post-election period claiming credit for the GOP's strong congressional performances in the elections and to burnish his legacy, by talking about his achievements in office and the pace of the Operation Warp Speed vaccine development. But Trump wouldn't allow his team to move on. To be around him meant you had to accommodate some measure of denial. 

Senior White House staff and health officials maintained a standing 9 a.m. “COVID huddle” in the Roosevelt Room. They talked through the vaccine rollout, which would continue into 2021. Left unsaid was that they had lost the election and wouldn’t be around to see it fully through. Aides could only discuss the reality of Trump's loss in more private settings.

Trump's closest aides said they wanted to give him space to experience all the stages of grief. But he rarely made it past the denial stage. And many of his aides made themselves scarce, worried that if they found themselves in the Oval Office they could be sucked into conversations that could force them to incur hefty legal bills down the track.

Trump's most devoted aides did whatever they could to buck up his spirits, even if it meant indulging his delusions. Sometimes it was hard to tell if they were humoring Trump or had tipped over into fantastical thinking themselves. In late November, the head of the Presidential Personnel Office, Trump's former body man John McEntee, told colleagues they ought to get together to discuss second-term priorities. Not many were enthusiastic.

Biden was declared the winner of Arizona on Nov. 12, by more than 11,000 votes, a margin that was uncatchable. At that point, the core campaign team told Trump his pathway was dead. In retaliation, Trump stopped listening to them. Giuliani was gaining influence, speaking directly with the president and demanding to be put in charge.

On Nov. 13, Clark was in the Cabinet room of the White House with Stepien, Miller and campaign aide Erin Perrine for a meeting on communications strategy when deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino summoned Clark into the Oval Office to settle a legal question.

Trump had Giuliani on speakerphone, and Giuliani, seemingly unaware of Clark’s arrival, was trashing the campaign staff's legal strategy in Georgia — and floating a debunked conspiracy theory about rigged Dominion voting machines. 

"Hey, I've got Justin in here," Trump interrupted. "What do you think, Justin?" Clark laid out the legal process in Georgia and told the packed Oval Office that Georgia state law barred requesting a recount until after an election is certified.

"They're lying to you, sir!" Giuliani erupted.

"We're not lying," Clark shot back. "You're a fucking asshole, Rudy."

The following night — without notifying his campaign staff — Trump tweeted that he was putting Giuliani in charge of his legal challenges, along with pro-Trump lawyers Powell, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Jenna Ellis.

Republican National Committee officials were not happy about this. They rejected a request to fund TV commercials claiming the election was "stolen.” But they greenlit a press conference on Nov. 19, a debut for the new legal team.

It played like a B movie. Black sweat, apparently from hair dye, rolled down Giuliani's face as he rambled about a supposed Democratic conspiracy to rig the vote in major cities. Powell, once a respected federal prosecutor, alleged an international communist plot by Cuba, China, Venezuela, George Soros, and the Clinton Foundation. 

Senior party officials were mortified but felt helpless. This was the Giuliani show now. The barbarians were in the Oval. The rest of the Republican Party was just along for the ride.

 

 

"We're not lying," Clark shot back. "You're a fucking asshole, Rudy."

[WhatTheBuck 28797]

40 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

With Trump it’s easy to imagine that level of disconnect. I’d expect nothing else from a sociopath who had National Guard troops use rubber bullets, flash grenades, and chemical irritants to clear a crowd of peaceful protesters so he could conduct a photo op of him holding a bible he’s never read in front of a church he doesn’t attend. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

This relates to those of you who mentioned family members under the sway of the cult; most will tune out if their devotion is intense, but it's just under ten minutes of a really good talk. FWIW, the 'dude' is Matthew Cooke; his twitter is here: https://twitter.com/thematthewcooke

 

 

[Red Five 40885]

1 hour ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Cool.

 

It's impossible to overstate how much better a place the world would be now without Trump's twitter the last four years.

Well, without Trump himself too obviously.

[TwiceHorn 31534]

This from that guy's feed.

Not surprising.

After seeing all the Capitol videos, that mob was more uniformly violent, unruly, and dangerous across the board than any "BLM" protest I saw, which just had a few skirmisher types at the front line causing problems.

[Jack Straw 2954]

3 hours ago, Pancho said:

Welp...

 

 

“yeah, but what about something a Democrat did in the 1950s?”

-FCHorn 

[pyrohornIII 4818]

25 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

This relates to those of you who mentioned family members under the sway of the cult; most will tune out if their devotion is intense, but it's just under ten minutes of a really good talk. FWIW, the 'dude' is Matthew Cooke; his twitter is here: https://twitter.com/thematthewcooke

 

 

He's excellent.  But too many big words and phrases the cult won't understand.   Love to see some shorter sound bites, more elementary.  Thanks for bringing him to our attention.

10 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

This from that guy's feed.

Not surprising.

After seeing all the Capitol videos, that mob was more uniformly violent, unruly, and dangerous across the board than any "BLM" protest I saw, which just had a few skirmisher types at the front line causing problems.

And it's been proven more than a few of those skirmishes were instigated by Proud Boys and their ilk to make BLM looks more violent and destructive than they were.

 

[jimmyjazz 46116]

2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Yeah it’s a Groupon 

That would be a "Groupardon", right?

[NAVY 6747]

15 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

My good friends, lumping huge numbers of people together by race or age or region or party they vote for is how we got in this mess. I feel the same way when someone in my age group makes a snide or condescending remark about Milennials. 

To the rabid right, anyone who didn't vote for Trump is an ebil lib at best and a radical, socialist, reverse-racist-who-won't-let-me-say-the-N-word-even-though-Ns-use-it-all-the-time enemy of the Americans who want their country back. Among the Trump voters, that's almost the quaintest of their bad qualities. Sedition and insurrection are the worst.

You are correct and I apologize. I could have written that much better. Thanks for the gentle push to be better 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20486]

10 hours ago, elfenix said:

trumpkins abandoning trump

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-supporters-betrayed_n_60016777c5b62c0057bc11ab

 

3 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Took them long enough. 

Trump is a traitor and a coward for not doing what Trump would do!

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20486]

Lindsey Graham is still a piece of shit:

 

 

[Xminus6 790]

4 hours ago, Bookman said:

Just cross-posted this in the Rudy thread:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/trump-pardons.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

But Hunter Biden!

[TexasEd 8077]

1 hour ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

This relates to those of you who mentioned family members under the sway of the cult; most will tune out if their devotion is intense, but it's just under ten minutes of a really good talk. FWIW, the 'dude' is Matthew Cooke; his twitter is here: https://twitter.com/thematthewcooke

 

 

Agree with @pyrohornIII that this needs to be soundbites.  The BLM part in the middle needs to be the last thing for my step dad that is an OG Birther posting comparisons of Michelle O and Melania T that call the lady that hates Christmas classy.  I was so tempted to post a censored version of Melanie's nude photos as response.  He needs the BLM thing last.

[TexasEd 8077]

10 hours ago, elfenix said:

trumpkins abandoning trump

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-supporters-betrayed_n_60016777c5b62c0057bc11ab

If you read through it they are abandoning Trump for not being committed to Treason and giving up when he saw his neck on the line.

They are doubling down on the radicalization.  They will find a new Fuhrer. 

[TwiceHorn 31534]

19 minutes ago, TexasEd said:

Agree with @pyrohornIII that this needs to be soundbites.  The BLM part in the middle needs to be the last thing for my step dad that is an OG Birther posting comparisons of Michelle O and Melania T that call the lady that hates Christmas classy.  I was so tempted to post a censored version of Melanie's nude photos as response.  He needs the BLM thing last.

I really wish we could find the pix of Melania with sharpies in her ass.

[JimmyJames 12271]

11 minutes ago, TexasEd said:

If you read through it they are abandoning Trump for not being committed to Treason and giving up when he saw his neck on the line.

They are doubling down on the radicalization.  They will find a new Fuhrer. 

There will not be another fuhrer. It’s all trump. 
 

I don’t think people have come to understand how big of a hero trump became to these people way before he was even a candidate with his Obama birther lie.
 

He was the only one willing to speak their truth; that Obama was an illegitimate black Muslim president who was there to marginalize good white Christians and transform the country into a black and brown horde that would replace them just like what was happening in Europe.  
 

To them trump is the chosen one and he must not fail. The only possible response to people who believe that is to use the full force of the law against them and to severely punish those who choose to break the law in the name of Trump, including trump himself. There’s no “healing” until that happens. 

[Biff Tannen 45724]

37 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

The only possible response to people who believe that is to use the full force of the law against them and to severely punish those who choose to break the law in the name of Trump, including trump himself. There’s no “healing” until that happens. 

This is extremely important and something we cannot forget in the coming months and years. We will fail if this does not occur. 

[Kyrie Eleison 9312]

my neighbor is a retired radiologist who’s been flying a Trump flag or 2 since we moved in a couple of years ago (the neighbor on the other side of him is the former Ambassador to Sweden underneath Clinton, so we have him boxed in).

so just now...like 10 mins ago...i’m cleaning out my garage, and the ambassador saunters by (he has a prosthetic leg so maybe not saunter) and we’re shooting the shit and whatnot as i’m putting Christmas shit away, and we hear “GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING SHIT ARGA BARGA BALONGA DING DONG!!!” coming from the radiologist.

we get all wide eyed and peak around the corner and he’s dismantling his entire flag pole with Trump propaganda flags still attached and throwing that shit in the street.

we smiled and waved...lulz.

[Brisketexan 105309]

There will not be another fuhrer. It’s all trump. 
 
I don’t think people have come to understand how big of a hero trump became to these people way before he was even a candidate with his Obama birther lie.
 
He was the only one willing to speak their truth; that Obama was an illegitimate black Muslim president who was there to marginalize good white Christians and transform the country into a black and brown horde that would replace them just like what was happening in Europe.  
 
To them trump is the chosen one and he must not fail. The only possible response to people who believe that is to use the full force of the law against them and to severely punish those who choose to break the law in the name of Trump, including trump himself. There’s no “healing” until that happens. 

Great post, and an important thing to remember: this movement is a continuation of the insane drive of “real Americans” to push back against the unthinkable - normalizing and even allowing into the highest office in the land “not real Americans” as fully equal, capable, and entitled to all of the legal and social status of “real Americans.”

It’s more than just a matter of racism...but racism is an essential element of it. And Trump is the id of that movement.

But here’s where I disagree - they’ll find another standard-bearer. It’s about the fear and hatred, not the person.

[Hagbard Celine 10918]

@Kyrie Eleison what pray tell elicited the explosive capitulation on an early sunday afternoon?  nothing really has happened this morning, other than the 2nd swift axios article...... ????

Edited January 17, 2021 by Hagbard Celine

[jimmyjazz 46116]

8 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

@Kyrie Eleison what pray tell elicited the explosive capitulation on an early sunday afternoon?  nothing really has happened this morning, other than the 2nd swift axios article...... ????

I think his radiotrumpist neighbor finally turned on Duh Furor.

[Kyrie Eleison 9312]

[mention=671]Kyrie Eleison[/mention] what pray tell elicited the explosive capitulation on an early sunday afternoon?  nothing really has happened this morning, other than the 2nd swift axios article...... ????

no idea. i assume the light came on after willingly bending over for a smoove 4 year butt fucking. or maybe he saw his two neighbors conversing about last weekend’s blizzard and whatnot and his narcissism assumed we were talking about how he fell for the grift.

who knows...entertaining nonetheless.

he’s really a good guy, just encapsulated and unable to think past step 1. after having done med-mal litigation back in the day i find that completely natural.

dude his protestations were loud enough that my lovely wife came outside thinking i’d fucked something up and hurt myself.

[Guest Lobo]

It would be funny to me if Trump died on MLK Day.  Just throwing that out there into the ether.  

[Kyrie Eleison 9312]

no mas asta de bandera.

[Foosters 17884]

34 minutes ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

 “GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING SHIT ARGA BARGA BALONGA DING DONG!!!” 

What's Dan Bongino got to do with it?

[Guest Lobo]

2 minutes ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

no mas asta de bandera.

Poor little Trumper, probably kept up with you for a mile or so.  Look, I'll go back for the remains...

[Brisketexan 105309]

no mas asta de bandera.

See your gear - did you hunt this morning? Pescado and I did, with his boy. He made a nice shot to drop a big gad, and we ended up with a light mixed bag of greenwings, a gad, and a wigeon. The birds flew for 12 minutes, fast and furious, then shut down. Really thought we’d see more.

[elfenix 34332]

 

Apparently this shit is going through. Letting the loser sit in the palace for months with control over anything long term is a huge mistake and needs fixing.





The NSA is ‘moving forward’ to install Michael Ellis, a former GOP operative, as its top lawyer, the agency said Sunday
By Ellen Nakashima

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/the-nsa-is-moving-forward-to-install-michael-ellis-a-former-gop-operative-as-its-top-lawyer-the-agency-said-sunday/2021/01/17/b8430e8c-58e2-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html

[Kyrie Eleison 9312]

See your gear - did you hunt this morning? Pescado and I did, with his boy. He made a nice shot to drop a big gad, and we ended up with a light mixed bag of greenwings, a gad, and a wigeon. The birds flew for 12 minutes, fast and furious, then shut down. Really thought we’d see more.

i did but scratched. weather has the birds flooding the middle of my pond for me to look at...gotta figure out a way to get where they wanna be. that’ll require a floating blind, probably a converted pontoon boat. which gives me a badass project.

glad y’all got a few. we’ll do it soon.

[Pato del Muerto 52584]

Seems odd for any of them to be turning  against Trump, seeing as how he was hand chosen by god.  I’m sure they’ll work out some narrative that saves continuity of thought. 

[Biff Tannen 45724]

22 minutes ago, elfenix said:

Apparently this shit is going through. Letting the loser sit in the palace for months with control over anything long term is a huge mistake and needs fixing.





The NSA is ‘moving forward’ to install Michael Ellis, a former GOP operative, as its top lawyer, the agency said Sunday
By Ellen Nakashima

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/the-nsa-is-moving-forward-to-install-michael-ellis-a-former-gop-operative-as-its-top-lawyer-the-agency-said-sunday/2021/01/17/b8430e8c-58e2-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html
 

Quote

Ellis was selected under pressure from the White House, people familiar with the matter said at the time. The move drew criticism from national security legal experts as an attempt to politicize a career position.

 

It comes just a few days before President Trump leaves office, and complicates the Biden administration’s options for immediately replacing him, former officials said.

They don't expound on the last sentence any further.  If dotard could lean on the NSA, not sure why Biden can't.

[atomheartbevo 89787]

7 hours ago, trauma babe said:

He's cheap, so it makes sense.

They can save money if they move themselves.

 

[Beau Vine 54412]

[elfenix 34332]

15 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

They don't expound on the last sentence any further.  If dotard could lean on the NSA, not sure why Biden can't.

must have changed - earlier the story explained that it's a civil service position rather than a political appointee position so has to go through normal civil service procedures to fire him. 

[Pato del Muerto 52584]

1 minute ago, elfenix said:

must have changed - earlier the story explained that it's a civil service position rather than a political appointee position so has to go through normal civil service procedures to fire him. 

Is this the normal civil service hiring procedure?

[Biff Tannen 45724]

7 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

While funny, the idea that he owns a Tesla is ridiculous.

[Orale 1087]

7 hours ago, Eskimohorn said:

All this Jewish talk based on a 40-year ethnic joke from a spoof movie written, directed, and produced by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker.

In any case, the Trump accomplishments might not even fill a leaflet. The Trump library curators have their work cut out from him.

I went to the Bush library at SMU a couple years ago and it was so depressing. Just failure after failure on full view at his own library. I briefly felt sorry for Bush, but the moment passed. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13523]

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

It would be funny to me if Trump died on MLK Day.  Just throwing that out there into the ether.  

Could you imagine the trump children running down Pence to get that pardon. 

[Bevo in VA 342]

46 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

They don't expound on the last sentence any further.  If dotard could lean on the NSA, not sure why Biden can't.

NY Times had a similar article but also included the following:

 

Quote

Mr. Ellis’s allies had pushed for him to be installed before President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is inaugurated. While it will be difficult to fire Mr. Ellis under Civil Service rules, the Biden administration could easily reassign him to another, less important post.

While not ideal, I am assuming the guy is going to get re-assigned on Day 1 to some other important position like "Head of Janitorial Services."

 

As to the question about whether this was normal civil service hiring practice, from what I have seen it looks like it was a posted opening where several candidates were interviewed for the opening.  Although it has been reported that the other candidates scored higher on the interview, at that stage of the process, the hiring authority usually has discretion on the hire.

[WhatTheBuck 28797]

46 minutes ago, elfenix said:

must have changed - earlier the story explained that it's a civil service position rather than a political appointee position so has to go through normal civil service procedures to fire him. 

Heaven forbid that we should deviate from established norms. That’s just unheard of. 

[kevwun 15873]

They will work around Ellis and the first time he fucks up, he will get fired.  If he is so Trumpy, that shouldn't take long.  Civil service or not, when someone isn't good at their job, it's not hard to fire them when you are motivated to do so.

Edited January 17, 2021 by kevwun

[TexLonghorn 5671]

3 hours ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

"ARGA BARGA BALONGA DING DONG!!!”

Yeah, but being this well-spoken, this guy is obviously towards the top of the trumpist education-level pyramid.

[Francisco 2.0 32426]

Jonathan Swan's Episode 3 dropped an hour ago:

 

https://www.axios.com/trump-off-the-rails-descent-into-madness-fd169833-9052-473d-87f5-7a1a4ffffb8f.html

 

Spoiler

President Trump was sitting in the Oval Office one day in late November when a call came in from lawyer Sidney Powell. "Ugh, Sidney," he told the staff in the room before he picked up. "She's getting a little crazy, isn't she? She's really gotta tone it down. No one believes this stuff. It's just too much."

He put the call on speakerphone for the benefit of his audience. Powell was raving about a national security crisis involving the Iranians flipping votes in battleground states. Trump pressed mute and laughed mockingly.

"So what are we gonna do about it, Sidney?" Trump would say every few seconds, whipping Powell more and more into a frenzy. He was having fun with it. "She really is crazy, huh?" he said, again with his finger on the mute button.

It was clear that Trump recognized how unhinged his outside legal advisers were. But he was becoming increasingly desperate about losing to Joe Biden, and Powell and her crew were willing to keep feeding the grand lie that the election could be overturned. 

They were selling Trump a seductive but delusional vision: a clear and achievable path to victory. The only catch: He'd have to stop listening to his government and campaign staffs, to cross the Rubicon and view them as liars, quitters and traitors.

Trump's new gang of advisers shared some common traits. They were sycophants who craved an audience with the president. They were hardcore conspiracy theorists. The other striking commonality within this crew was that all of them had, at one point in their lives, done impressive, professional, mainstream work.

Rudy Giuliani once was "America's Mayor," hailed for his handling of 9/11. Powell was a successful attorney who defended Enron. Michael Flynn was a decorated three-star general whom Obama fired and then Trump brought back as his national security adviser, before firing him and ultimately pardoning him. Lin Wood was a nationally known defamation lawyer. Patrick Byrne made a small fortune launching the internet retailer Overstock.com.

One exception was Jenna Ellis. She had a thin legal resume, and had in the 2016 campaign season used adjectives like "idiot," "boorish," "arrogant," "bully," and "disgusting" to characterize Trump and his behavior. But during Trump's presidency, she pushed her way into his inner circle, powered by levels of televised obsequiousness remarkable even for Trumpworld.

Powell and Wood distinguished themselves with their extremism. Even Giuliani began distancing himself, telling anyone who'd listen that Powell didn't represent the president. But Trump promoted Powell as part of his team, and even though he had privately admitted to aides that he thought she was "crazy," he still wanted to hear what she had to say.

"Sometimes you need a little crazy," Trump told one official.

While Trump's campaign team — experienced attorneys such as Justin Clark and Matt Morgan — were scrutinizing issues such as signature verification and access to room monitoring for vote counting, Powell was appealing to Trump's personal mantra to "Think Big!"

She presented the president with a sweeping, multinational conspiracy of foreign interference at a scale never seen before in American history. The fact that she had no evidence that could hold up in court was a minor detail.

Powell and Flynn told Trump he couldn't trust his team. That appealed to a paranoid mentality that always lurked beneath his surface: The FBI was corrupt. His CIA was working against him, and his intelligence community was, too. Why else weren't they showing him the evidence that China, Venezuela, Iran and various other communists had stolen his election win?

To help him bypass these obstacles, they'd need Trump to give them top-level security clearances so they could get to the bottom of the "stolen" election. Trump liked this idea. Why not make Powell a special counsel in charge of election fraud? Why not give her and Flynn the clearances?

Trump's professional staff had learned over time that they had to pick their moments to fight back. On the question of Powell, chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone were of one mind: No way was she getting a top secret clearance.

Powell and Flynn sent Trump advisers documents they said contained the evidence of this far-reaching conspiracy. To the White House staff, it was gibberish — the rantings of a QAnon devotee. But these documents — perhaps the most deranged materials to reach a modern U.S. president — found their way to the West Wing.

According to documents obtained by Axios, Powell and her crew advised Trump that a foreign conspiracy to steal the election involved a coordinated cyberwarfare attack from China, Russia, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

In arguments in front of Trump in the Oval Office, White House officials pushed back aggressively.

What Powell was claiming to have uncovered would have been the greatest foreign attack in American history. Yet the U.S. intelligence community had seen no evidence of it.

But Powell had an answer for that too: The reason Trump hadn't heard about this from his intelligence officials was because they were actively subverting him and hiding crucial information from him.

His dog whistle to QAnon conspiracy theorists — a curiosity prompted once he learned they "love Trump" — dated back to at least the summer. 

On July 1, 2020, Trump met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Todd Young of Indiana and top political aides in the Oval Office for an update on Senate races. Trump was holding a printed slide deck showing the latest key data points, like polling and cash on hand, for the closely watched Colorado Senate race between Republican Cory Gardner and Democrat John Hickenlooper.

Trump looked at the deck and immediately said, "How about that primary last night?" 

QAnon-enthusiast Lauren Boebert had won the Republican primary for Colorado's 3rd Congressional District. Consensus in the room was that Boebert's victory was a stunner. The president then addressed McConnell. "You know she’s a believer in that QAnon," he said. "Are you familiar with that, Mitch?" McConnell sat there stone-faced. He didn't move a muscle.

"You know, people say they're into all kinds of bad things and say all kinds of terrible things about them," Trump added. "But, you know, my understanding is they basically are just people who want good government."

The room fell silent. Nobody knew how to respond. 

Then all of a sudden Meadows burst out laughing. "I have heard them described a lot of ways, but never quite like that," he said. The meeting participants broke down laughing. "In terror, quite candidly," said a source in the room.

Powell filled the Trumpian Venn diagram between conspiracy theorists and sycophants. She offered the comforting deceptions that Trump was craving in his desperate post-election days and that the people on his team who had actual experience in election law refused to serve him.

In the false and baseless theory she crafted, America's enemies had used two CIA programs — a foreign surveillance program called the "Hammer" and a cyberwarfare weapon called "Scorecard" — to steal U.S. elections. 

Her evidence was based on claims from a California computer programmer with a long track record of hawking fantastic-sounding technology. Powell and Flynn claimed that the CIA had been using these programs nefariously since 2009. 

Documents her team shared with Trump advisers falsely claimed that top Obama administration intelligence officials John Brennan and Jim Clapper — both enemies of Trump's — had illegally commandeered Hammer to advance Obama's supposed ambition of turning America into a communist client state. They further claimed that Brennan and Clapper had taken the program's source code with them when they left office. China had now mysteriously acquired Hammer, Powell argued.

They described this as an act of war during in an Oval Office appearance on Dec. 18. No response should be considered too bold, they said. Trump needed to use the full force of the U.S. government to seize Dominion voting machines and catch the "traitors."

That an American president was even entertaining any of this, raised questions about the state of his mind and his capacity to fulfill his duties.

The evening before that meeting, Giuliani had phoned his old friend, Ken Cuccinelli, second in command at the Department of Homeland Security, asking him whether DHS could seize voting machines. "No," Cuccinelli told Giuliani, politely but firmly. His department did not have that legal authority.

By this point, Trump was mainlining conspiracies. Many of his longest-serving advisers had all but given up trying to reason with him.

His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, billed once by Newsweek as the most influential presidential relative since Bobby Kennedy, receded from the discussions when it came to countering the crazies. Once Giuliani took over, Kushner subsided from view, trying to cut last minute deals in the Middle East and burnish his foreign policy legacy. This frustrated some of his colleagues. Serious intervention was required on the domestic front.

Whether Trump himself was still in charge, or had ceded decision-making to the bottom feeders, was at least an open question.

 

 

[cactusflinthead 27601]

34 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

QAnon-enthusiast Lauren Boebert had won the Republican primary for Colorado's 3rd Congressional District. Consensus in the room was that Boebert's victory was a stunner. The president then addressed McConnell. "You know she’s a believer in that QAnon," he said. "Are you familiar with that, Mitch?" McConnell sat there stone-faced. He didn't move a muscle.

How you liking her now Mitch?

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

A few pages ago, someone wondered what was going on in Trump's world in the remaining few days before the inauguration....

https://www.captiongenerator.com/2107062/The-Final-Days#.YATf2Z3VwpQ.link

[High Plains Drifter 11052]

10 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

or church.

 

[Guest Lobo]

It amazes me that the man lived in New York for 65 years within 5 blocks of 10 churches and never managed to become a member of a single one of them and yet is the darling of the Evangelical movement.  The 3 neighborhoods he lived in in his nearly 3/4 of a century in New York and D.C.......he never even accidentally entered a church.  But yet, I am told...he was chosen by God to lead us. 

[conVINCEd 21469]

7 minutes ago, Lobo said:

It amazes me that the man lived in New York for 65 years within 5 blocks of 10 churches and never managed to become a member of a single one of them and yet is the darling of the Evangelical movement.  The 3 neighborhoods he lived in in his nearly 3/4 of a century in New York and D.C.......he never even accidentally entered a church.  But yet, I am told...he was chosen by God to lead us. 

He had a lot of phone calls and meetings.