What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[jimmy olsen]

Trum must be pulling his hair out over statements like these. His mafia like loyalty obssessed mind can't comprehend it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/07/19/senators-ask-trump-nominees-aid-russia-probe/491585001/

WASHINGTON — Two of President Trump's nominees for high-level intelligence jobs promised the Senate Intelligence Committee to cooperate with the panel's Russia investigation, even if the information they uncover proves damaging to Trump.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked the president's nominee for assistant secretary of Treasury for intelligence and analysis whether she will make it a top priority to investigate Russia's use of shell corporations to launder money in the U.S. even it leads to "ties to the president's business, family or campaign."

"I will take the intelligence wherever it goes," promised nominee Isabel Patelunas, a longtime analyst for the CIA, at a committee hearing Wednesday.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, along with the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, are investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

Both Patelunas and Susan Gordon, the president's nominee for principal deputy director of national intelligence, were asked by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., whether they would commit to working with the committee on its Russia investigation.

"I certainly will, sir," Patelunas responded. Gordon, who is also a career CIA officer, promised to do the same.

Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also pressed Gordon and Robert Storch, Trump's nominee to be inspector general of the National Security Agency, about how they can stop leaks of classified information by NSA contractors.

The most famous of those leaks came in 2013, when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked classified information about NSA surveillance programs, including the mass collection of phone records from millions of Americans who weren't suspected of any terrorist activity.

While members of Congress generally denounced Snowden's actions, his revelations led lawmakers in 2015 to pass the USA Freedom Act, which ended the controversial bulk collection of data.

In addition to the Snowden case, there have been two other major leaks by NSA contractors. In early June, a 25-year-old federal contractor was arrested in Georgia in connection with a classified NSA report on Russian election interference published by the online publication The Intercept.

The report said that Russian military intelligence conducted a cyber attack on at least one supplier of voting software and sent phishing emails containing malicious software to more than 100 local election official just days before the 2016 election, The Intercept reported.

"Do you commit to us ... to try to figure out how to plug this problem?" Burr asked Gordon, who said yes.

"I believe unauthorized leaks of classified information are always damaging," she said, adding that they are "not in this nation's interest."

Storch also promised Feinstein that he would look into the problem and evaluate the NSA's security.

"I absolutely would pledge to you that it is something we would explore," Storch said.

[jimmy olsen]

Books are already coming out about the race.

https://www.axios.com/go-inside-trumpworld-with-devils-bargain-book-2461321962.html

Go inside Trumpworld with "Devil's Bargain" book

First look at a hot passage from a book out today by Josh Green of Bloomberg Businessweek, "Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency":

"Both campaigns battled for a group of voters who would ultimately decide the race. ... Trump's data analysts gave them a nickname: 'double haters.' These were people who disliked both candidates but traditionally showed up at the polls to vote. They were a sizable bloc: 3 to 5 percent of the 15 million voters across seventeen battleground states that Trump's staff believed were persuadable.

"Early on, many indicated support for third‐party candidate Gary Johnson. But after a series of televised flubs, ... they largely abandoned him. ... Many refused to answer pollsters' questions ... These were the voters Clinton had hoped to shear off from Trump with her 'alt-right' speech in August. ... Comey's letter had the effect of convincing the double haters to finally choose."

How the "double haters" voted: The national exit poll found 18% of voters had an unfavorable opinion of both Trump and Clinton. Those voters went 47% for Trump, 30% for Clinton.

Other nuggets from Josh Green's book:

•Trump thought governing was going to be easy: "I deal with people that are very extraordinarily talented people," he told Green, just after wrapping up nomination. "I deal with Steve Wynn. I deal with Carl Icahn. I deal with killers that blow these [politicians] away. It's not even the same category. This" — he meant politics— "is a category that's like nineteen levels lower. You understand what I'm saying? Brilliant killers."

•"Bannon was prepared to sic the alt-right on Paul Ryan if he tried to steal the GOP nomination from Trump at a brokered convention: 'Pepe's gonna stomp their ass,' [Bannon] said, referring to the racist frog."

•Early on, Chuck Schumer was deeply worried that Bannon's nationalism might fracture the Democratic coalition: "I know what you're doing, and I'm not going to let it happen," the Senate Dem leader told Bannon in the early days of the administration.

•Schumer feared Trump would begin by pursuing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that would neatly align with Trump's "builder" image, produce tangible benefits, win over union voters Democrats rely on, and stand as a testament to what "America first nationalism" could mean.

•Trump blew up at Paul Manafort over a N.Y Times story saying the campaign chairman received $12.7 million in cash from a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine: "How can anybody allow an article that says your campaign is all fucked up?"

[jimmy olsen]

McCain has brain cancer.

[mongers]

McCain has brain cancer.

Oh dear, I guess that would explain his recent 'erratic'* behaviour.


* I say erratic, but it's still ten times more rational that Trump.s

[CountDeMoney]

McCain has brain cancer.

Trump likes people that don't have brain cancer.

[Ed Anger]

LOL, Trump regrets picking Sessions.

MUH SAFE SENATE SEAT

[CountDeMoney]

"Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president," he added. "How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, 'Thanks, Jeff, but I'm not going to take you.' It's extremely unfair — and that's a mild word — to the president."

"Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else," Mr. Trump said.

"Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers," the president said. "He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren't."

[Valmy]

Oh boy. Crazytown.

[Oexmelin]

The whole interview excerpts are just amazing. In a bad way.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-interview-transcript.html

[CountDeMoney]

The man is his own suicide bomber.

[Admiral Yi]

TRUMP: [Comey] said I said "hope" — "I hope you can treat Flynn good" or something like that. I didn't say anything.

But even if he did — like I said at the news conference on the, you know, Rose Garden — even if I did, that's not — other people go a step further. I could have ended that whole thing just by saying — they say it can't be obstruction because you can say: "It's ended. It's over. Period."

[Monoriu]

I give up trying to reject the hypothesis that he is incompetent and dishonest. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Interesting he gave the interview to The Fake News (tm) New York Times.  For all his bluster, he still craves the legitimacy and reputation of the Gray Lady.

[CountDeMoney]

Interesting he gave the interview to The Fake News (tm) New York Times.  For all his bluster, he still craves the legitimacy and reputation of the Gray Lady.

The man's psychological profile has all the complexity of a pop-up book.

[CountDeMoney]

They still haven't put his portrait up in the Federal buildings I'm in.  Secretary?  Check.  Agency head?  Roger that.  But the two other spots for POTUS and the HPVeep are just squares of discoloration on the wall.