TGHusker

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/17/mike-pence-president-trump-238525 And then Politico has this side of the story. Many conservatives are ready to end the drama and go with the more drama free Pence. PAC created on Pence's behalf https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-17/pence-takes-steps-to-build-war-chest-as-white-house-stumbles

Then why are conservatives on this board calling for his impeachment? They were persuaded by the echo chamber. I'm not persuaded by an echo chamber. I was hoping he would grow in the office and was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Ask Knapp, I'm a pretty conservative guy & a registered Republican. As a student of history, and presidential history in particular, I find Trump to be incapable of fulfilling the role of his job. He does not measure up in so many ways. The argument of temperament during the campaign has been proven true. But it goes far beyond temperament - it goes to his very character. He is not a leader and he most certainly has personality disorders that make him incapable of fulfilling his duties. I had many issues with the previous democratic president but I would not be a man of character if I turned a blind eye towards this republican president. Trump fades in comparison to Ronald Reagan - don't mention them in the same sentence. My issue with Trump isn't totally on policy - there are some I like (which many he has back peddled on) and some I don't like. My issue is his fitness for the office. He has been weighed in the scales and been found wanting as far as I'm concerned.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/trump-classified-data.html A few quotes from this op-ed: Second, most people of drinking age have achieved some accurate sense of themselves, some internal criteria to measure their own merits and demerits. But Trump seems to need perpetual outside approval to stabilize his sense of self, so he is perpetually desperate for approval, telling heroic fabulist tales about himself. “In a short period of time I understood everything there was to know about health care,” he told Time. “A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber,” he told The Associated Press, referring to his joint session speech. By Trump’s own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase “priming the pump” (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought he’d be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies. Which brings us to the reports that Trump betrayed an intelligence source and leaked secrets to his Russian visitors. From all we know so far, Trump didn’t do it because he is a Russian agent, or for any malevolent intent. He did it because he is sloppy, because he lacks all impulse control, and above all because he is a 7-year-old boy desperate for the approval of those he admires. The Russian leak story reveals one other thing, the dangerousness of a hollow man. We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar. Write A Comment “We badly want to understand Trump, to grasp him,” David Roberts writes in Vox. “It might give us some sense of control, or at least an ability to predict what he will do next. But what if there’s nothing to understand? What if there is no there there?” And out of that void comes a carelessness that quite possibly betrayed an intelligence source, and endangered a country.

Agree. Or even Romney would be a 1000x better than some of the names thrown out. (If Romney hadn't blown that 2nd debate, we'd wouldn't be going through this now). However, neither are in the line and cannot be considered. It is what it is.

Stupid may fall under Section 4 of amendment 25 as he may be considered totally unfit for the office he holds. This OP-Ed agrees with me from the NYT -not my favorite rag but when they are right, they are right and you have to be adult enough to look at the reality of the current situation. FIRST SECTION FOUR: Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office. NOW PART OF THE OP-ED One does not need to be a Marvel superhero or Nietzschean Übermensch to rise to this responsibility. But one needs some basic attributes: a reasonable level of intellectual curiosity, a certain seriousness of purpose, a basic level of managerial competence, a decent attention span, a functional moral compass, a measure of restraint and self-control. And if a president is deficient in one or more of them, you can be sure it will be exposed. Trump is seemingly deficient in them all. Some he perhaps never had, others have presumably atrophied with age. He certainly has political talent — charisma, a raw cunning, an instinct for the jugular, a form of the common touch, a certain creativity that normal politicians lack. He would not have been elected without these qualities. But they are not enough, they cannot fill the void where other, very normal human gifts should be. There is, as my colleague David Brooks wrote Tuesday, a basic childishness to the man who now occupies the presidency. That is the simplest way of understanding what has come tumbling into light in the last few days: The presidency now has kinglike qualities, and we have a child upon the throne. It is a child who blurts out classified information in order to impress distinguished visitors. It is a child who asks the head of the F.B.I. why the rules cannot be suspended for his friend and ally. It is a child who does not understand the obvious consequences of his more vindictive actions — like firing the very same man whom you had asked to potentially obstruct justice on your say-so. A child cannot be president. I love my children; they cannot have the nuclear codes. But a child also cannot really commit “high crimes and misdemeanors” in any usual meaning of the term. There will be more talk of impeachment now, more talk of a special prosecutor for the Russia business; well and good. But ultimately I do not believe that our president sufficiently understands the nature of the office that he holds, the nature of the legal constraints that are supposed to bind him, perhaps even the nature of normal human interactions, to be guilty of obstruction of justice in the Nixonian or even Clintonian sense of the phrase. I do not believe he is really capable of the behind-the-scenes conspiring that the darker Russia theories envision. And it is hard to betray an oath of office whose obligations you evince no sign of really understanding or respecting. Which is not an argument for allowing him to occupy that office. It is an argument, instead, for using a constitutional mechanism more appropriate to this strange situation than impeachment: the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows for the removal of the president if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet informs the Congress that he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and (should the president contest his own removal) a two-thirds vote by Congress confirms the cabinet’s judgment. The Trump situation is not exactly the sort that the amendment’s Cold War-era designers were envisioning. He has not endured an assassination attempt or suffered a stroke or fallen prey to Alzheimer’s. But his incapacity to really govern, to truly execute the serious duties that fall to him to carry out, is nevertheless testified to daily — not by his enemies or external critics, but by precisely the men and women whom the Constitution asks to stand in judgment on him, the men and women who serve around him in the White House and the cabinet. Read the things that these people, members of his inner circle, his personally selected appointees, say daily through anonymous quotations to the press. (And I assure you they say worse off the record.) They have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpitate with contempt for him, and to regard their mission as equivalent to being stewards for a syphilitic emperor. It is not squishy New York Times conservatives who regard the president as a child, an intellectual void, a hopeless case, a threat to national security; it is people who are self-selected loyalists, who supported him in the campaign, who daily go to work for him. And all this, in the fourth month of his administration. This will not get better. It could easily get worse. And as hard and controversial as a 25th Amendment remedy would be, there are ways in which Trump’s removal today should be less painful for conservatives than abandoning him in the campaign would have been — since Hillary Clinton will not be retroactively elected if Trump is removed, nor will Neil Gorsuch be unseated. Any cost to Republicans will be counted in internal divisions and future primary challenges, not in immediate policy defeats. Meanwhile, from the perspective of the Republican leadership’s duty to their country, and indeed to the world that our imperium bestrides, leaving a man this witless and unmastered in an office with these powers and responsibilities is an act of gross negligence, which no objective on the near-term political horizon seems remotely significant enough to justify. There will be time to return again to world-weariness and cynicism as this agony drags on. Right now, though, I will be boring in my sincerity: I respectfully ask Mike Pence and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to reconsider their support for a man who never should have had his party’s nomination, never should have been elevated to this office, never should have been endorsed and propped up and defended by people who understood his unfitness all along. Now is a day for redemption. Now is an acceptable time. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/opinion/25th-amendment-trump.html?_r=0

That is the funniest I've seen in a long time. I at first didn't notice the baby's face and then I DID!

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/17/jack-welch-impeachment-of-trump-would-blow-the-market-away.html Jack Welch chimes in on CNBC: Welch gives Trump a "D minus" on his management of the White House but an "A" on the policy front and in his Cabinet and Supreme Court picks. He says he'd also give Trump an "A" for boosting morale among businesses and consumers.Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric who has President Donald Trump's ear, told CNBC on Wednesday that an impeachment would crush the stock market. "An impeachment proceeding would blow the market away," Welch said on "Squawk Box." Welch also said Trump's firing of James Comey as FBI director was a "rookie mistake." He added, "You don't make any friends doing it the way [Trump] did it." "I think without question we have a guy that's on the right agenda with crappy management practices," Welch said, giving the president a "D minus" on his management skills. Trump needs to unite all the different factions in the White House, get to the bottom of the media leaks, and get back to his message of "Make America Great Again," he added. While no fan Barack Obama's policies, Welch said the former president ran a tight ship. "They spoke with one voice." The botched Comey firing is an example of Trump's inexperience in running a bureaucracy, the executive chairman of Jack Welch Management Institute said.

The bold - so sad at this point. You have to be a big not to see it at this point. Everyday there is a new issue.

I originally posted on this thread that I thought the repubs may have to act quickly in 2018 or make the situation work through the midterms - so that the Repubs can get all they can out of his election. I now think or I now hope they realize that he is more of a millstone around their neck at this point - pulling them all under. Trump may be persuaded to 'develop a health issue' as a face saving move vs facing impeachment or having Pence and others declare a Amendment 25 section 4 emergency.

Sounds like a huge personality disorder - Amendment 25 section 4 where are you. Surely there are some republicans and not just Dems talking about removing him wtout impeachment behind the scenes.

He wants to hire the Best -.... as long as they agree with him. The best leaders make sure they have people on their staff who aren't yes men but who will speak the truth without fear of reprisal to help the leader with seeing beyond his blind spots. Trump believes he has no blind spots and ultimately only his opinion really matters. The kind of leader you describe above is very insecure - the type that has to prove his manhood - the kind that could place us in danger.

It is called ruling by chaos. Every day there is something new - distraction everywhere and denials, accusations, etc. This is no way to govern. So much partisanship - as you mentioned it is one big game - a gotcha game. I think McMasters needs to go under oath before the same committee investigating the Russia 'stuff' and talk specifically about every portion of the Post story. This Russia story won't go away and the quick we as a nation deal with it truthfully the better off we are. If it means Trump is clean - fine or if it means Trump has dirty (besides small) hands then fine - the facts have to come out. The Repubs need to realize for their own 2018 election, they will be painted as obstructionists unless they deal honestly with this issue. Providing cover for Trump is only prolonging the issue and not removing the infectious splinter. Besides, what loyalty do these congressmen have to Trump? They replace Trump with Pence and they can still carry out their agenda. It looks bad but voters have short memories if you deal wt an issue timely and honestly.

Can't have it both ways: Trump said Hillary wasn't qualified to be president based on the emails - that she couldn't be trusted wt classified info. It appears Trump cannot be either. Looking at McMaster's 'denial' today you have to see he didn't contradict anything the Post story said regarding the 2 specific points he brings up- he however did not address the real issues - Where our sources compromised ? He distracted us with 2 items but didn't address that the city was exposed where the source was. I believe Scotter Libby went to jail for far less. If the Post story is true, Pence needs to step in go into the oval office with others and ask the President to resign for the sake of the country. Otherwise, all chaos will break out. Not likely to happen and even less likely for Trump to respond by resigning. But the grownups need to take control otherwise we have to assume there are none. Funny in a not funny way how things have flipped: 2012 Repubs accused Obama of getting too close to Russia with his "I'll have more flexibility after the election' open mic comment to Russian PM. 2012 Debate - Romney said Russia was our greatest geo-political threat. Obama said that was 1980,s policy and that ISIS was the threat 2016 Dems say with the Hillary emails - nothing to see here. Now Dems say Russia is the threat Republican's ignore / defend Trump's actions - nothing to see here Both sides have flipped flopped on Comey

Maybe they bugged the oval office He picked the wrong departments (FBI and CIA) to pick on by publically questioning their processes, results and discrediting their leaders. How do you spell STUPID?

Based on the bold in this quote, it is clearly apparent that the child is in command in this WH and the adults can only react. The information allegedly disclosed here appears to be of an extremely sensitive nature. According to the Post, President Trump’s own aides “appeared to recognize immediately that Trump had overstepped and moved to contain the potential fallout” by contacting the directors of CIA and NSA. The Post does not report whether the White House also notified the foreign ally who provided the information of the compromise. the child reveals himself in his impulsivity and boasting: Fourth, it really matters why Trump disclosed this information to Russian visitors. The story is vague on this point. But the question of why Trump acted as he did will matter a great deal to how the political system absorbs this news. The implication of the Post story is that Trump acted impulsively and in a boasting kind of way. If that’s right, the matter is egregiously bad. (TG: He acts like this is a game ): quote: In his meeting with Lavrov, Trump seemed to be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat. “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” Trump said, according to an official with knowledge of the exchange. Deep, Deep questions that need to be evaluated: But there are important questions on which Congress and the public will need clarity before deciding how to act. Did the disclosure serve a national security purpose, even in Trump’s mind? That is, if the President made a strategic judgment to release certain information in exchange for some anticipated gain, even if that judgment is wildly wrong, that is potentially less bad that if this is merely an example of loose lips sinking other countries’ ships–and our own country’s intelligence relationships. In other words, what Trump thought he was doing might well inflect whether we should see this as an act of carelessness, an act of carelessness bordering on treachery, or an act of judgment (even if misjudgment) of the sort we elect presidents to make. With this, Trump just dropped any justification to investigate, to cast judgment on Hillary and her email issue. It pales in comparison in its ramifications: Fifth, this may well be a violation of the President’s oath of office. Questions of criminality aside, we turn to the far more significant issues: If the President gave this information away through carelessness or neglect, he has arguably breached his oath of office. As Quinta and Ben have elaborated on in some detail, in taking the oath President Trump swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” to the best of his ability. It’s very hard to argue that carelessly giving away highly sensitive material to an adversary foreign power constitutes a faithful execution of the office of President. Violating the oath of office does not require violating a criminal statute. If the President decided to write the nuclear codes on a sticky note on his desk and then took a photo of it and tweeted it, he would not technically have violated any criminal law–just as he hasn’t here. He has the constitutional authority to dictate that the safeguarding of nuclear materials shall be done through sticky notes in plain sight and tweeted, even the authority to declassify the codes outright. Yet, we would all understand this degree of negligence to be a gross violation of his oath of office. If the repubs don't start looking more deeply into Trump's unfitness to be president, then I'd have to conclude they are co-conspirators - using the office for their own gain and purposes (even if it means passing needed or desired legislation): Congress has alleged oath violations—albeit violations tied to criminal allegations or breaches of statutory obligations—all three times it has passed or considered seriously articles of impeachment against presidents: against Andrew Johnson (“unmindful of the high duties of his oath of office”), Richard Nixon (“contrary to his oath”), and Bill Clinton (“in violation of his constitutional oath”). Further, two of the three articles of impeachment against Nixon alleged no direct violation of the law. Instead, they concerned Nixon’s abuse of his power as President, which, like the President putting the nuclear codes on Twitter, is an offense that can only be committed by the President and has thus never been explicitly prohibited in criminal law. There’s thus no reason why Congress couldn’t consider a grotesque violation of the President’s oath as a standalone basis for impeachment—a high crime and misdemeanor in and of itself. This is particularly plausible in a case like this, where the oath violation involves giving sensitive information to an adversary foreign power. That’s getting relatively close to the “treason” language in the impeachment clauses; it’s pretty easy to imagine a hybrid impeachment article alleging a violation of the oath in service of a hostile foreign power. So legally speaking, the matter could be very grave for Trump even though there is no criminal exposure. The White House and NSC Director and SOS deny: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/classified-information-ISIS-Oval-Office/2017/05/15/id/790275/ National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster on Monday said The Washington Post report claiming President Donald Trump revealed highly classified information to two top Russian officials last week is "false." McMaster gave a brief statement to reporters outside the White House shortly after 7 p.m. ET, saying, "There is nothing that the president takes more seriously than the security of the American people. The story that came out tonight as reported is false." Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov "reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation," McMaster, who was present at the meeting, said. "At no time, at no time, were intelligence sources or methods discussed." Trump also did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known, he said, noting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell, who also were present, have said the same thing. "Their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources," he said, referencing the Post report that did not name its sources. "I was in the room; it didn't happen," McMaster said, before turning to walk back into the White House, ignoring shouted questions from the press. End quote It will be more than interesting to see where this takes us. The WH is in full justification mode now. The ball is in the hands of the Congress.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats expressed concern about the report. (Post story of Trump sharing classified info wt the Russians) GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters the Trump White House "has got to do something soon to bring itself under control and order." He described the White House as "on a downward spiral." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York also called the story "disturbing," adding, "Revealing classified information at this level is extremely dangerous and puts at risk the lives of Americans and those who gather intelligence for our country." http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/trump-russia-secret-classified/2017/05/16/id/790347/ The bold " YOU THINK!'

Regarding exercise (which I don't do enough of) I found these 2 articles on Newsmax setting up the debate: Who do you believe: We have Trump http://www.newsmax.com/US/trump-exercise-wear-down-battery/2017/05/15/id/790240/ Or Science http://www.newsmax.com/Health-News/heavy-exercise-slower-aging/2017/05/15/id/790190/

https://twitter.com/reuterspolitics/status/861172831895334912 Trump's big talk during the primaries of China being a currency manipulator was just cover for what he would do once he got into office. Point the finger over there to distract the voter, once in office he changes his tune, says China is great will help us wt N,Korea and by the way may family can also profit from the relationship. What a con man.

The really scary part is that these "true believers" are petrified for the exact opposite reasons they should be. Yes, -- there may be a few of his policies that I wanted him to implement with Congress but I'm not petrified because those haven't gone through or because of his back peddling - that is minor in comparison to his lack of judgment, lack of self control, the growing reality that he is trying to hide something, the ineptness of his leadership and his white house staff, etc and etc. His back peddling and not keeping campaign promises is only a symptom of deeper character issues that he is displaying daily.

Op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Yes, Tribe is every liberal's favored constitutional law professor, but he is respected generally. His thoughts on impeachment here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-must-be-impeached-heres-why/2017/05/13/82ce2ea4-374d-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html?utm_term=.08e1a6fe7c77 The time has come for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice. The remedy of impeachment was designed to create a last-resort mechanism for preserving our constitutional system. It operates by removing executive-branch officials who have so abused power through what the framers called “high crimes and misdemeanors” that they cannot be trusted to continue in office. No American president has ever been removed for such abuses, although Andrew Johnson was impeached and came within a single vote of being convicted by the Senate and removed, and Richard Nixon resigned to avoid that fate. Now the country is faced with a president whose conduct strongly suggests that he poses a danger to our system of government. Ample reasons existed to worry about this president, and to ponder the extraordinary remedy of impeachment, even before he fired FBI Director James B. Comey and shockingly admitted on national television that the action was provoked by the FBI’s intensifying investigation into his campaign’s ties with Russia. Even without getting to the bottom of what Trump dismissed as “this Russia thing,” impeachable offenses could theoretically have been charged from the outset of this presidency. One important example is Trump’s brazen defiance of the foreign emoluments clause, which is designed to prevent foreign powers from pressuring U.S. officials to stray from undivided loyalty to the United States. Political reality made impeachment and removal on that and other grounds seem premature. No longer. To wait for the results of the multiple investigations underway is to risk tying our nation’s fate to the whims of an authoritarian leader. Comey’s summary firing will not stop the inquiry, yet it represented an obvious effort to interfere with a probe involving national security matters vastly more serious than the “third-rate burglary” that Nixon tried to cover up in Watergate. The question of Russian interference in the presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign go to the heart of our system and ability to conduct free and fair elections. Consider, too, how Trump embroiled Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, despite Sessions’s recusal from involvement in the Russia investigation, in preparing admittedly phony justifications for the firing on which Trump had already decided. Consider how Trump used the vice president and White House staff to propagate a set of blatant untruths — before giving an interview to NBC’s Lester Holt that exposed his true motivation. Trump accompanied that confession with self-serving — and manifestly false — assertions about having been assured by Comey that Trump himself was not under investigation. By Trump’s own account, he asked Comey about his investigative status even as he was conducting the equivalent of a job interview in which Comey sought to retain his position as director. Further reporting suggests that the encounter was even more sinister, with Trump insisting that Comey pledge “loyalty” to him in order to retain his job. Publicly saying he saw nothing wrong with demanding such loyalty, the president turned to Twitter with a none-too-subtle threat that Comey would regret any decision to disseminate his version of his conversations with Trump — something that Comey has every right, and indeed a civic duty, to do. To say that this does not in itself rise to the level of “obstruction of justice” is to empty that concept of all meaning. Obstruction of justice was the first count in the articles of impeachment against Nixon and, years later, a count against Bill Clinton. In Clinton’s case, the ostensible obstruction consisted solely in lying under oath about a sordid sexual affair that may have sullied the Oval Office but involved no abuse of presidential power as such. But in Nixon’s case, the list of actions that together were deemed to constitute impeachable obstruction reads like a forecast of what Trump would do decades later — making misleading statements to, or withholding material evidence from, federal investigators or other federal employees; trying to interfere with FBI or congressional investigations; trying to break through the FBI’s shield surrounding ongoing criminal investigations; dangling carrots in front of people who might otherwise pose trouble for one’s hold on power. It will require serious commitment to constitutional principle, and courageous willingness to put devotion to the national interest above self-interest and party loyalty, for a Congress of the president’s own party to initiate an impeachment inquiry. It would be a terrible shame if only the mounting prospect of being voted out of office in November 2018 would sufficiently concentrate the minds of representatives and senators today. But whether it is devotion to principle or hunger for political survival that puts the prospect of impeachment and removal on the table, the crucial thing is that the prospect now be taken seriously, that the machinery of removal be reactivated, and that the need to use it become the focus of political discourse going into 2018.

Now some of Trump's staunchest supporters are having their doubts. When Ann Coulter is almost ready to say that the Never Trumpers maybe right, you know Trump is in deep do-do. Matt Drudge, is also 'nervous'. The Drudge report was a non-stop campaign ad for Trump during the primaries and GE. http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/14/ann-coulter-is-worried-the-trump-haters-were-right/ So there’s no wall, and Obama’s amnesties look like they are here to stay. Do you still trust Trump? Uhhhh. I’m not very happy with what has happened so far. I guess we have to try to push him to keep his promises. But this isn’t North Korea, and if he doesn’t keep his promises I’m out. This is why we voted for him. I think everyone who voted for him knew his personality was grotesque, it was the issues. I hate to say it, but I agree with every line in my friend Frank Bruni’s op-ed in The New York Times today. Where is the great negotiation? Where is the bull in the china shop we wanted? That budget the Republicans pushed through was like a practical joke… Did we win anything? And this is the great negotiator? This Op Ed was referred to by Coulter in the quote above. I copied it in full because it is spot on and insightful. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-a-la-mode.html?_r=0 Frank Bruni You heard it here first: James Comey was fired because during his White House dinner with Donald Trump, when dessert arrived, he noticed that the president had two scoops of ice cream to his one, and dared to remark on it. Don’t believe me? O.K., I did make it up. But it’s as credible a claim as most of what came from White House officials, going all the way up to Vice President Mike Pence, in the hours after Trump canned Comey last week. Pretty much every reason they gave was utterly dismantled, if not by F.B.I. agents, who rejected the contention that they had turned on Comey, then by enterprising reporters or by the president himself in his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. Seldom has an administration operated in such a transparently dishonest, determinedly self-destructive and spectacularly inept fashion. That ineptness may be the scariest takeaway of all. I began with ice cream because it really is central to understanding this. Bear with me. Two days after Comey’s ouster, Time magazine published a cover story that revolved around a recent evening that a few of its journalists spent with Trump at the White House. Dinner was served. Trump got a different, more colorful salad dressing than theirs. His chicken had extra sauce on the side. With his pie came a double helping of vanilla. With theirs, a single. By the magazine’s account, there was no explanation. None was needed. He’s the president and you’re not. One scoop of imperiousness. Another of insecurity. Top generously with impulsiveness. That’s Trump’s sweet spot, the real driver of his decisions. Comey’s dismissal was the definitive confirmation. It satisfied the president’s emotional appetite, at least at that moment. It undermined all else. And it put the lie to the stubborn hope that there’s a core of shrewdness beneath his antics and a method to his madness. Mostly, there’s a raging, pouting child. For all of the negative news coverage that he receives, there has also been a strand of analysis that insisted on, or at least sought, a silver lining to the golden-haired huckster. It reflected all the rationalizations that I heard from Americans who had voted for Trump or were willing themselves to see some upside to his election: The tweets weren’t merely splenetic. They were strategic, providing distractions when he needed them most. He was amoral, sure, but that was part and parcel of his craftiness, which could do the country some good. He was a liar, yes, but the best deals and the bent truth often went hand in hand — and he was a deal maker above all. He flouted norms, but that might be precisely the purgative our politics needed. Commentators strained to spot and savor any flicker of something more dignified. Remember the accolades for his address to a joint session of Congress? All he’d done was the commander in chief equivalent of chewing with his mouth closed. But no sugarcoating can survive the developments of the past few weeks. Congress approved a budget agreement at stark odds with Trump’s wish list, revealing that he’s no ace negotiator after all. It could have been titled “The Artlessness of the Deal.” The House passed health care legislation that blatantly contradicted his incessant promises of terrific, inexpensive coverage and betrayed the hard-luck Americans whose champion he purported to be. The Senate made clear that it was going nowhere anyway. He’s not coming to anyone’s rescue, just giving the Trump-Kushner clan a loftier status and more leverage for enriching themselves. He’s not draining the swamp. He’s globalizing it. And to top it all off: the Comey fiasco, which will be remembered as a case study in misjudging a situation, mismanaging the easily foreseeable fallout and achieving the exact opposite of one’s aims. If this is private-sector savvy, give me a bloated government bureaucracy any day. Trump reportedly thought that Democrats, so sour on Comey themselves, wouldn’t balk at his exile. No way. Trump’s aides tried to use a hastily composed memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as cover. Big oops. With no media plan in place, they tripped over their own inventions and exaggerations. And Trump bumbled into a horrendously timed photograph of an all-smiles meeting of him in the Oval Office with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister. Please show me the shrewdness in any of that, or in a tweet on Friday that ratcheted up his battle with Comey — who, mind you, has seen any and all evidence of Russian meddling in the election and left behind many loyalists in the bureau. For a president paranoid about the leakiness of his ship, this was like making a beeline for the nearest iceberg. Please show me the strategic wisdom in threatening to cancel White House press briefings because Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders can’t be expected to achieve “perfect accuracy” at the rostrum. None of us are asking for “perfect accuracy.” Mere plausibility would wow us at this point. And the farther away the media is kept, the more we’re convinced that something is being hidden from us, and the harder we dig. Trump wanted to move past all the insinuations of collusion between his campaign and Moscow, but the attention to that has only intensified, as have the accusations of a cover-up. We already knew that the president had no shame. Now we also know that he has no game. He handed Democrats yet another cudgel. He tightened the bind that Republicans are in (though their sustained indulgence of him remains a thing of absolute wonder). He lengthened the odds against getting much in the way of meaningful legislation done. He looked defensive, not decisive. He shrank, just when it didn’t seem possible for him to get any smaller. Write A Comment He’s 70, but if we’re talking about deeds and not digits, psychological maturity instead of epidermal sag, he’s our youngest president ever, with the frailest ego. Aides feed him his information in easily digested bites: pictures, charts. They whisper sweet grandiosities in his ear. They devise strategies to shield him from upset and work around his ever-shifting moods. They cross their fingers and they tremble. So do I. And when I picture him at that Time magazine dinner, with a portion bigger than anybody else’s, I don’t see him on a throne. I see him in a highchair, keeping his audience guessing about just how much ice cream he’ll fling against the wall.

I agree with someone I heard on TV this morning. He said that while nothing has been proven...yet...that he has committed a crime, he sure is acting like someone who is guilty. Exactly, and even if he is innocent he's acting like someone who is mentally unstable and unfit for the position he is in. Exactly. I hope N Korea doesn't do anything stupid right now - Trump is liable to nuke the h... out of them.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/333031-trumps-comey-firing-sets-off-new-round-of-leaks Leaks galore. This admin is failing from within - sounds like a mutiny. There is little loyalty to this man because he is all about himself. Those who connected to him in hopes of using him to promote their agenda will soon be cutting bait and looking for another dock to hitch to. At a moment of crisis, the White House looks surrounded on the outside and divided on the inside. “It’s total chaos,” said one former transition team official with close ties to the administration. “It’s image-making on the inside and people trying to protect themselves. There is a deep streak of paranoia among staff. The communications team sh#t the bed on the Comey firing and now the war with the FBI has them all scared and throwing each other under the bus. "Thank God I don’t work there. If I did, I’d be dialing up my attorney.”At a moment of crisis, the White House looks surrounded on the outside and divided on the inside. “It’s total chaos,” said one former transition team official with close ties to the administration. “It’s image-making on the inside and people trying to protect themselves. There is a deep streak of paranoia among staff. The communications team sh#t the bed on the Comey firing and now the war with the FBI has them all scared and throwing each other under the bus. "Thank God I don’t work there. If I did, I’d be dialing up my attorney.”

This has a very "Peter denies Jesus in the courtyard" feel, doesn't it? Peter is asked three times if he was one of Jesus' disciples and he denies it three times, making Jesus' prediction come true. I can see how Trump could consider himself another leader in the mold of Jesus. He's nutso that way. Regarding your question, where is it a point of contention? I don't think Comey denied this, or responded to it in any way. The only person pushing this narrative is Mister Twitter, far as I know. LOL...I actually had thought of the Peter/Jesus story too. I don't think Comey has responded because it's came out after he was fired...(I believe). McCabe was asked about it yesterday in the intelligence hearing. He emphatically stated that no member of the FBI would ever tell someone if they were or weren't under investigation. I think someone else from the intelligence community said the same thing yesterday. Then, Trump sends this tweet out about the conversation possibly being "taped". It just seems like for some reason Trump is pushing this narrative and everyone else involved is denying it and Trump becomes more and more belligerent about it. It just doesn't make sense to me. He is going to explode into a mental basket case. Time to look at the 25th Amendment Section 4 So, what’s Article 4 to the 25th Amendment? In the abstract, the amendment itself is about presidential succession, and includes language about the power of the office when a president is incapacitated. But Digby recently highlighted the specific text of growing relevance: “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” And what does that mean exactly? Well, it means Congress isn’t the only institution that can remove a president from office between elections. Under the 25th Amendment, a sitting vice president and a majority of the executive branch’s cabinet could, on their own, agree to transfer power out of the hands of a sitting president. At that point, those officials would notify Congress, and the vice president would assume the office as the acting president. And what if the challenged president wasn’t on board with the plan to remove him/her from the office? As Vox recently explained, “If the president wants to dispute this move, he can, but then it would be up to Congress to settle the matter with a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses would be necessary to keep the vice president in charge. If that threshold isn’t reached, the president would regain his powers.” http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-the-25th-amendment-suddenly-getting-so-much-attention

Ok, I couldn't get the video to play and that is my Senator Langsford on the screen. What did it say in a nutshell? Thanks