Tag Archives: russian

Yet More Shoes Drop in the Flynn Scandal

Mother Jones

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Another hour, another Trump scandal. I can’t keep up. Here’s the latest timeline on Mike Flynn. The three items in italics are new:

August 9: Flynn is hired by the Turkey-U.S. Business Council for $600,000 to help repair Turkey’s image in the US. However, Flynn chooses not to register as a foreign agent on the pretext that he’s just lobbying for a business group that has nothing to do with the Turkish government.

November 18: Trump names Flynn as his National Security Advisor.

November 30: The Justice Department opens an investigation into Flynn’s lobbying activities. Flynn keeps this news to himself for over a month.

December: Flynn has repeated contacts with various Russian officials but doesn’t tell anybody.

January 4: Flynn tells the incoming White House counsel that he is under investigation. Nothing happens.

January 10: In a meeting with Susan Rice, Flynn puts the kibosh on an Obama plan to use Kurdish help to take the ISIS-occupied town of Raqqa—something that his erstwhile client Turkey is opposed to. McClatchy reports: “Members of Congress, musing about the tangle of legal difficulties Flynn faces, cite that exchange with Rice as perhaps the most serious: acting on behalf of a foreign nation — from which he had received considerable cash — when making a military decision. Some members of Congress, in private conversations, have even used the word “treason” to describe Flynn’s intervention, though experts doubt that his actions qualify.” Still nothing happens.

January 26: Acting attorney general Sally Yates warns the White House that Flynn has lied about his contacts with Russian officials, which may have compromised him. Still nothing happens.

February 9: The Washington Post reveals Flynn’s lies about his Russian contacts. Everything is now public.

February 13: Finally something happens. Trump fires Flynn.

February 14: Trump meets with FBI director James Comey and asks him to kill the investigation into Flynn.

March-April: Comey continues the investigation.

May 9: Trump fires Comey.

The new news here is that Trump knew about the FBI investigation far earlier than anyone has reported before. By the time Sally Yates alerted the White House to Flynn’s lying, they had already been warned off Flynn by President Obama and they’d known about the FBI investigation for three weeks. Nonetheless, they did nothing until it all became public.

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Yet More Shoes Drop in the Flynn Scandal

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Report: Top GOP Lawmaker Was Recorded Saying He Thought Trump Was on Putin’s Payroll

Mother Jones

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Another night, another bombshell report about President Donald Trump and Russia.

The Washington Post revealed Wednesday evening that in June 2016, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was secretly recorded telling other top Republicans that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin “pays” Trump. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), who was in the room at the time, apparently ended the exchange moments later by telling those present not to leak what was said.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher R-Calif. and Trump,” McCarthy said, according to the Post, which reports that it obtained and verified a recording. (A spokeman for Rohrabacher denied the allegation; Trump has also denied any coordination with Russia.)

Spokesmen for Ryan and McCarthy told the Post that the exchange was meant as a joke, and there’s no evidence in the story that McCarthy was aware of any evidence to support the claim that Trump or Rohrabacher was on the Russian payroll. Regardless, the conversation provides some insight into what GOP congressional leaders apparently thought about candidate Trump, who by then had essentially secured the Republican presidential nomination.

The Post published this story just as news was breaking that the Department of Justice had appointed a special counsel to investigate ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.

Prior to the discussion of Trump, according to the Post, Ryan and McCarthy had met separately with the Ukrainian prime minister, with whom they had discussed Russian interference in Eastern Europe. Here’s how the Post recounted the recorded conversation, which apparently took place the day after news broke that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked:

“I’ll guarantee you that’s what it is…The Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp opposition research that they had on Trump,” McCarthy said with a laugh.

Ryan asked who the Russians “delivered” the opposition research to.

“There’s…there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy said, drawing some laughter.

“Swear to God,” McCarthy added.

“This is an off the record,” Ryan said.

Some lawmakers laughed at that.

“No leaks, alright?,” Ryan said, adding: “This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

“That’s how you know that we’re tight,” Rep. Steve Scalise said.

“What’s said in the family stays in the family,” Ryan added.

The Post notes that it’s difficult to tell whether the remarks were “meant to be taken literally.” When initially asked about the exchange, spokesmen for Ryan and McCarthy denied that the statements had been made. After being told by the Post that there was a recording of the conversation, the spokesmen said that it was an “attempt at humor.”

When initially asked to comment on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”

After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said: “This entire year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. No one believed the majority leader was seriously asserting that Donald Trump or any of our members were being paid by the Russians. What’s more, the speaker and leadership team have repeatedly spoken out against Russia’s interference in our election, and the House continues to investigate that activity.”

“This was a failed attempt at humor,” Sparks said.

Another intriguing aspect of this story is involvement of Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer and high-ranking GOP Hill staffer who ultimately entered the 2016 presidential race as an independent candidate with backing from the conservative “Never Trump” movement:

Evan McMullin, who in his role as policy director to the House Republican Conference participated in the June 15 conversation, said: “It’s true that Majority Leader McCarthy said that he thought candidate Trump was on the Kremlin’s payroll. Speaker Ryan was concerned about that leaking.”

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Report: Top GOP Lawmaker Was Recorded Saying He Thought Trump Was on Putin’s Payroll

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NYT’s Haberman: Donald Trump Known as the "Leaker-in-Chief"

Mother Jones

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From Maggie Haberman, Trump whisperer extraordinaire at the New York Times:

It’s good to know that everyone who works for Trump is well aware of the possibility that their boss might blurt out top secret information at any time to anybody. And since Trump is 70 and declining mentally, this will only get worse.

In other news, Trump defended himself this morning against charges that he blabbed top secret information to the Russian foreign minister—though “defend” might not be quite the right word. Like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, he took to Twitter to tell us that he damn well did blab top secret information and it’s totally OK because he’s the president. In doing so, he also seems to have blabbed a bit more about just what the secret is: something to do with explosives in laptop computers. And other evidence suggests the information may have come from Jordan or Israel. So now just about everything is out there. I’m sure Jordanian/Israeli intelligence is pleased.

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NYT’s Haberman: Donald Trump Known as the "Leaker-in-Chief"

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Why Trump’s Firing of Comey Should Be Investigated

Mother Jones

There are multiple investigations of the Trump-Russia scandal underway, including two conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees, one by a Senate judiciary subcommittee, and one (or more) by the FBI. They cover a range of issues: Vladimir Putin’s secret operation to subvert the 2016 campaign to help Donald Trump win, interactions between Trump associates and Russia, ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador (and how the White House handled that controversy, as well as Flynn’s acceptance of foreign payments from Russia and other nations and his other business dealings), and, possibly, the business- and lobbying-related actions of Paul Manafort, who managed Trump’s campaign, and other people close to Trump. Now there is a need for a new investigation that focuses on Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey.

This could well be the most serious inquiry of all because it would raise the sensitive issue of impeachment.

When Trump pink-slipped Comey on Tuesday, his Justice Department released a three-page letter with reasons why Comey should be booted. The justifications were all related to how he managed the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails at the State Department. The criticisms were familiar and old: Comey had gone too far when he first held a press conference in July to declare the investigation was over but harshly criticized Clinton and then informed Congress days before the election that his agents had revived the investigation to review a newly found cache of Clinton emails (which turned out to hold essentially no new information). Of course, Trump enthusiastically praised Comey for his October surprise, because it dealt Clinton a blow in the final days and conceivably helped Trump win. But now, suddenly, Comey’s conduct in that episode is supposedly the grounds for Trump showing Comey the door.

The initial news reports tell another story. Various insider accounts—yes, based on anonymous sources—indicate that Trump’s firing of Comey was motivated, at least in part, by Trump’s anger over the ongoing Russia investigation. Politico reports:

Trump had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

And who was the best target for his anger? Comey.

Last month, Comey appeared before the House intelligence committee, and his testimony put Trump in a bad spot. Comey noted that the FBI had no information to support Trump’s baseless charge that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump before the election. He was practically calling Trump a nut or a liar. Then Comey, in an unprecedented move, revealed that the FBI had been investigating interactions between Trump associates and Russia since last July. It was a stunning moment: the FBI chief disclosing his bureau was running an investigation that could lead to his boss, the president. All of this showed the Trump-Russia scandal was still on fire.

Naturally, Trump was enraged. He has dismissed the Russia story as fake news and a hoax. Comey said it was nothing but.

If Trump fired Comey to impede the Russia investigation, he possibly engaged in obstruction of justice. That is a crime. That is a case for impeachment. In fact, the first of the three articles of impeachment filed by the House judiciary committee against Richard Nixon in 1974 was for obstruction of justice. That article listed as one reason for impeachment: “interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees.”

Trump certainly appears to have tried to interfere with the Russia investigation by dismissing Comey.

A congressional investigation of Trump’s action is warranted. There are White House and Justice Department officials who can be questioned on this subject. They can be asked how the firing was discussed and handled by administration officials. (Congress might also want to ask Comey about the President’s claim, in his termination letter to the FBI director, that Comey had assured Trump on three occasions that he was not a target of the bureau’s investigation.) There may be documents to subpoena. (One side issue: how could Attorney General Jeff Sessions participate in this decision, as he did, if he recused himself from anything to do with the Russia investigations because he had lied about his own meetings with the Russian ambassador?)

This is not simply a personnel matter. Trump does have the right to fire Comey. But if this was done to smother an investigation, Trump may have violated the law, defending himself and not the Constitution. He knows why he did this—and presumably so do Sessions and assorted White House and Justice Department officials. Congress needs to step in and guarantee for the American public that the president has not abused his power and obstructed justice to protect himself. And there are several committees in the House and Senate that could assume this critical mission. With Trump’s firing of Comey, the Trump-Russia scandal has moved from a tale of a foreign power undermining American democracy to the story of a president possibly doing the same.

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Why Trump’s Firing of Comey Should Be Investigated

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Trump Defends Decision to Fire Comey and Accuses Democrats of Hypocrisy

Mother Jones

In a series of early morning tweets Wednesday, President Donald Trump angrily defended his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, taking aim at Democrats for criticizing the stunning development.

Trump’s response comes hours after he similarly railed against Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), after the Senate Minority Leader appeared to suggest the White House was orchestrating a cover-up by firing the man charged with leading an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including possible collusion by Trump associates.

Trump’s stated justification for the firing, which cites Comey’s unfair treatment of Hillary Clinton, has been lambasted by Democrats. After all, Trump frequently praised Comey’s actions, saying it “took guts” to reopen the bureau’s probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server less than two weeks before the election. And as recently as last month, the president indicated he supported the former director.

According to reports, however, Trump had been increasingly furious over the ongoing investigations into possible ties between Trump associates and Russia and what he saw as Comey’s failure to defend him.

Dozens of lawmakers, including some Republicans, are now calling for an independent prosecutor to move forward with the probe.

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Trump Defends Decision to Fire Comey and Accuses Democrats of Hypocrisy

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Sally Yates Just Contradicted Trump’s Defense of Michael Flynn

Mother Jones

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Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates on Monday contradicted a key White House talking point about the circumstances surrounding retired Gen. Michael Flynn’s firing from his role as White House national security adviser.

Testifying at a high-profile Senate hearing, Yates noted that on January 26, she had warned White House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about conversations Flynn had with the Russian ambassador during the the presidential transition period. Yates repeatedly emphasized during the hearing that she warned McGahn that Flynn’s misrepresentations could make him vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Nonetheless, President Donald Trump didn’t fire Flynn until 18 days after Yates’ warning.

“We felt like it was critical we get this information to the White House, in part because the vice president was unknowingly making false statements to the public and because we believed General Flynn was compromised in respect to the Russians,” Yates said. “To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians,” she added.

But Yates went even further, telling senators that she’d informed McGahn that Flynn’s “underlying conduct” was “problematic in and of itself.” She declined to specify the “underlying conduct” in question, but it’s likely a reference to communications between Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, reportedly concerning sanctions the Obama administration had imposed on Russia.

Yates’ characterization of Flynn’s conduct as problematic appeared to challenge previous White House efforts to argue that there was nothing improper about Flynn’s underlying actions and that he was only fired because he had misled Pence.

On February 14, for example, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, “When the president heard the information as presented by White House counsel, he instinctively thought that General Flynn did not do anything wrong, and the White House Counsel’s review corroborated that…The issue here was that the president got to the point where General Flynn’s relationship—misleading the Vice President and others, or the possibility that he had forgotten critical details of this important conversation had created a critical mass and an unsustainable situation.”

Similarly, on February 16, Trump said, “There was a certain amount of information given by Flynn to Vice President Pence…And I was not happy with the way that information was given. He didn’t have to do that, because what he did wasn’t wrong, what he did in terms of the information he saw…When I looked at the information, I said, I don’t think he did anything wrong. If anything, he did something right…But he didn’t tell the vice president of the United States the facts, and then he didn’t remember. And that just wasn’t acceptable to me.”

When asked Monday about Spicer’s comments, Yates said she could not speak to how he’d determined that there was nothing wrong with Flynn’s actions. “He didn’t reach that conclusion from his conversation with us,” Yates said.

Shortly after the hearing concluded, Trump blasted Yates’ testimony as “old news.”

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Sally Yates Just Contradicted Trump’s Defense of Michael Flynn

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Evening Garbage Roundup

Mother Jones

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Apropos of my previous post, Natasha Bertrand points out that at the exact same time the Russian RISS think tank recommended a messaging change to focus on voter fraud, Donald Trump suddenly started talking about “rigged elections.” I’m sure it was just a coincidence:

And there’s also this about Jon Ossoff’s near-victory in Georgia last night:

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in an interview Tuesday in Louisville, Ky., said he didn’t know much about Mr. Ossoff, a 30-year-old former House staffer. Mr. Sanders said he isn’t prepared to back Democrats just because of a party label. “If you run as a Democrat, you’re a Democrat,” he said. “Some Democrats are progressive and some Democrats are not.”

Asked if Mr. Ossoff is a progressive, Mr. Sanders, an independent who challenged Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary, demurred. “I don’t know,” he said.

I know how touchy this subject is, but come on. Ossoff is obviously no fire breather, but he’s been the center of progressive attention for weeks now. Would it kill Sanders to spend a few minutes learning who he is and what he’s about—and whether that’s good enough for an endorsement? If Sanders wants to be a party leader—and he’s given every indication that he does—he needs to pay more attention to this stuff. He can start here.

UPDATE: There were originally three items in this post. The third one was a tweet about something Mike Huckabee said, but the tweet has since been deleted because it misrepresented Huckabee’s comment. I’ve deleted the reference to it.

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Evening Garbage Roundup

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Reuters: Putin-Controlled Think Tank Created Plan to Interfere With US Election

Mother Jones

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Reuters reports that Vladimir Putin personally directed RISS, a Russian think tank, to develop plans to interfere with the US election:

A Russian government think tank controlled by Vladimir Putin developed a plan to swing the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump and undermine voters’ faith in the American electoral system, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters.

….The first Russian institute document was a strategy paper written last June that circulated at the highest levels of the Russian government but was not addressed to any specific individuals. It recommended the Kremlin launch a propaganda campaign on social media and Russian state-backed global news outlets to encourage U.S. voters to elect a president who would take a softer line toward Russia than the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the seven officials said.

A second institute document, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election. For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral system’s legitimacy and damage Clinton’s reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, the seven officials said.

According to Reuters, there’s no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded in this. It was purely a Russian operation. Nor did the RISS plans say anything about the release of hacked emails. “The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin.”

So we have the RISS plan. We have the email hacks, which were far more extensive than initially reported. We have the RT cable network and the Sputnik news agency, which specialized in anti-Clinton stories. We have the Russian troll factory in St. Petersburg writing pro-Trump tweets under hundreds of aliases. We have thousands of Russian Twitter bots to make sure the tweets went viral. We have Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear and dozens of other covert Russian operations. We have Guccifer 2.0. We have DCLeaks.com. And finally, Russia appears to have used Wikileaks—either wittingly or unwittingly—for maximum exposure of all its hacks.

That’s a pretty big operation. Did it work? We’ll never know, but given how close the election was, the answer is probably yes.

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Reuters: Putin-Controlled Think Tank Created Plan to Interfere With US Election

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Former Trump Adviser Can’t Recall If He Discussed Sanctions With Russians

Mother Jones

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Did Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, speak to anyone in Russia about the United States potentially lifting sanctions imposed on Vladimir Putin’s government when he was in Moscow during the campaign last summer? Not at all, but, then again, maybe.

That’s what Page said during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America Thursday.

Page’s comments came days after the Washington Post reported that the FBI had obtained a secret order from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Page’s communications last summer. To obtain that warrant, known as a FISA warrant, the FBI would have had to persuade a judge that there was probable cause to suspect that Page had been acting as an agent of the Russia government. The Post described the revelation as the “clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents.” Page has not been accused of any crimes, and he has repeatedly denied he ever acted as an agent for any foreign power.

Page visited Russia last July—reportedly with approval from the Trump campaign—and gave a speech at the New Economic School in Moscow criticizing US policy toward Russia. He left the campaign in September amid allegations that he had privately communicated with Russian officials during the trip. Page denied those allegations. On ABC Thursday, Page acknowledged that he briefly said “hello” to one of the school’s board members, when Stephanopoulos asked whether he had met with anyone in the Russia government or connected to Russian intelligence.

Stephanopoulos also asked Page whether he had ever told any Russians in the United States or abroad that Trump “would be open to easing sanctions on Russia.”

“Absolutely not,” Page replied at first.

Stephanopoulos followed up: “Never? Not once?”

“I never offered that,” Page said again. “Nothing along those lines. Absolutely not.”

Then Page seemed to reconsider his response. “I mean—it may—topics—I don’t remember—we’ll see what comes out in this FISA transcript,” he said. “I don’t recall every single word that I ever said. But I would never make any offer or intimate anything.”

“But it sounds like from what you’re saying it’s possible that you may have discussed the easing of sanctions,” said Stephanopoulos.

“Something may have come up in a conversation,” Page responded. “I have no recollection, and there’s nothing specifically that I would have done that would have given people that impression.”

Pressed again by Stephanopoulos on whether he had discussed easing sanctions with any Russians, Page said, “Someone may have brought it up—I have no recollection. And if it was, it was not something I was offering or that someone was asking for.”

Page’s comments on ABC follow an interview he gave Wednesday to CNN’s Jake Tapper, in which Page said that during his Russia trip he spoke with students, scholars, and business people about the 2016 campaign. Page told Tapper that he had never had any “direct conversations” with anyone in Russia about the possibility of Trump ratcheting back on sanctions:

TAPPER: When you went to Russia last summer, did you ever talk to any Russian about the Trump campaign or about the Clinton campaign or about the 2016 election in general?

PAGE: No Russian official. I was speaking at a university, and I spoke with many scholars and students and parents that were at the graduation celebrating their kids’ achievements. Other than that, nothing.

TAPPER: I didn’t ask Russian official, I just asked any Russian because obviously, Russians, as you know in Russia, people are affiliated with private industry but they also do work with the government, et cetera.

PAGE: Sure.

TAPPER: So—but you did not talk to any Russian at all other than students and parents and scholars about the presidential election?

PAGE: I met a few business people, but no negotiations about anything in terms of anything related to the campaign whatsoever.

TAPPER: Well, I’m not talking about negotiations, but as long as you bring it up, I mean, have you ever conveyed to anyone in Russia that you think President Trump might have been more willing to get rid of the sanctions that were imposed against Russia after they invaded and seized Crimea, which I know are sanctions that you oppose and you think are ineffective. Did you ever talk with anyone there about maybe President Trump, if he were elected—then-candidate Trump, would be willing to get rid of the sanctions?

PAGE: Never any direct conversations such as that. I mean, look, it’s—

TAPPER: What do you mean direct conversations? I don’t know what that mean, direct conversations.

PAGE: Well, I’m just saying no—that was never—I’ve never said, no.

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Former Trump Adviser Can’t Recall If He Discussed Sanctions With Russians

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Today’s Idiocy Roundup

Mother Jones

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There’s so much to learn in the world. A couple of days ago, for example, the Department of Health and Human Services issued this statement regarding CSR subsidies for Obamacare:

The New York Times report is inaccurate. The administration is currently deciding its position on this matter. We have not been contacted by Democrats to help save Obamacare, perhaps because they consider Obamacare to be a losing cause. Democrats need to help solve this failed Obamacare plan.

That sounded really aggressive for an agency statement, and I was a little surprised. How had they picked up the Trump style and rhythm so perfectly? Today I learned the answer via Politico:

Two administration officials said the HHS rebuttal was personally ordered by an incensed Trump, who feared that the Times story hurt his negotiating position. Trump took the unusual step of calling HHS Secretary Tom Price to dictate a blistering statement that challenged the story and swiped at Democrats, one senior administration official said.

Today Trump made his position even clearer. Insurers will most likely pull out of the exchanges or jack up premiums if CSR payments are halted, and Trump said explicitly that he was willing to do this if Democrats didn’t come to the table. I’m not a world-class negotiator or anything, but isn’t it sort of unusual to talk openly about your threat to personally blow up Obamacare unless Dems knuckle under? That makes it hard to subsequently blame Democrats, doesn’t it?

In other news, I’m not the only one who’s been learning new things. A few weeks ago Trump announced that health care was a lot more complicated than he had thought, and today he explained that Chinese President Xi Jinping schooled him on North Korea too:

Mr. Trump said he told his Chinese counterpart he believed Beijing could easily take care of the North Korea threat. Mr. Xi then explained the history of China and Korea, Mr. Trump said. “After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” Mr. Trump recounted. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power” over North Korea,” he said. “But it’s not what you would think.”

This is probably something I would have kept to myself, but maybe that’s wrong. I suppose Trump is setting a good example by showing that you’re never too old to listen and learn.

What else? There was this:

That was quick! Hooray for NATO! However, it’s unclear what produced this change of heart. Was it the influence of H.R. McMaster? The alleged Russian collusion in Syria’s use of chemical weapons? Or did the NSA pick up some sigint of Vladimir Putin mocking Trump?

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal today, Trump also said he’s changed his mind and now supports the Export-Import bank. He’s also thinking about reappointing Janet Yellen as chair of the Fed. And this:

Asked how he has changed since taking office, the former businessman—who as a candidate touted his ability to cut deals—said: “The magnitude of everything is so big, and also the decisions are so big. You know, you’re talking about life and death. You’re not talking about ‘you’re going to make a good deal.’”

Huh. The presidency isn’t just about making good deals. Since that was basically Trump’s sole alleged qualification for the office, I wonder what role he now thinks he’s going to play?

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Today’s Idiocy Roundup

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