25th Amendment

A Republican argument for illegitimacy and impeachment

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Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) last weekend became the sole Republican to call for President Donald Trump’s impeachment. While some pundits tried to assert that “the dam is breaking” on impeachment, Rep. Amash was viciously vilified and attacked this past week by fellow Republicans and conservative media who are in thrall to the personality cult of … Read more

Nancy Pelosi owns man-baby Donald Trump

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The most powerful politician in America is not President Donald Trump, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Trump can get none of what he wants — his “big beautiful wall” on the Mexico border, his weak-ass NAFTA 1.1, his mythical infrastructure bill, the required federal budget, etc. — without the support and at least the tacit … Read more

It is time for Congress to act to protect the Special Counsel investigation

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Axios reported Monday morning that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein  “has verbally offered to resign to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, according to a source close to Rosenstein, but as of now, it’s unclear whether his resignation has been accepted.”

Well, that set off a cable news frenzy, so I hear. Headlines blared that Rosenstein had been summoned to the White House where he ws expected to resign or be fired. Rosenstein was filmed arriving and departing the White House.

It now appears that all the excitement was a bit premature: Rosenstein will meet with Donald Trump on Thursday to discuss his future at DOJ.

This all has to do with a New York Times report from Friday, citing sources who were not participants in the room at the time of the conversations reported. Rod Rosenstein Suggested Secretly Recording Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment:

The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.

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Mr. Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Mr. Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and F.B.I. officials. Several people described the episodes in interviews over the past several months, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Mr. Rosenstein’s actions and comments.

The Washington Post, which cites participants who were in the room for the conversations says the remark was sarcastic. NBC News also had a competing account, which includes Rosenstein “joking when he discussed wearing a wire.”

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‘The call is coming from inside the (White) House!’ A bombshell op-ed at The Times

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Bob Woodward’s new book on the Trump administration, Fear: Trump in the White House reveals “an administrative coup d’etat” in White House.

Today we learn, like the horror movie When a Stranger Calls (1979), “The call is coming from inside the (White) House!”

In an unprecedented move, the New York Times has published an op-ed written by an unnamed (anonymous) senior administration official claiming that advisers to the president were deliberately trying to thwart his “misguided impulses” from the inside. Times Publishes Op-Ed From Member of ‘Resistance’ Within Administration. Trump Calls It ‘Gutless’.

Here is this unprecedented essay. I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration:

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

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

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

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

I would know. I am one of them.

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Donald Trump unravels after ‘Fire and Fury’

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If you have not obtained a copy of Michael Wolff’s new book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” — it has sold out everywhere because of Trump’s attempts to ban publication of the book in violation of the First Amendment, which only makes people want to read it all the more — Wolff has provided an extracted column from his book at the Hollywood Reporter to hold you over. “You Can’t Make This S— Up”: My Year Inside Trump’s Insane White House.

This passage struck a particular nerve with Dear Leader:

There was, after the abrupt Scaramucci meltdown, hardly any effort inside the West Wing to disguise the sense of ludicrousness and anger felt by every member of the senior staff toward Trump’s family and Trump himself. It became almost a kind of competition to demystify Trump. For Rex Tillerson, he was a moron. For Gary Cohn, he was dumb as shit. For H.R. McMaster, he was a hopeless idiot. For Steve Bannon, he had lost his mind.

Wolff said in television interviews about his book, everyone around the president “questions [Trump’s] intelligence and fitness for office.” ‘Everyone’ in White House Says ‘He’s Like a Child’:

“Let me put a marker in the sand her,” Wolff said. “100 percent of the people around him” question his fitness.

“I will tell you the one description that everyone gave, everyone has common. They all say, he is like a child,” Wolff said. “And what they mean by that is he has a need for immediate gratification. It’s all about him…He just has to be satisfied in the moment.”

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