The Trump White House Shake-Up Begins
The Trump White House loses ts first major staffer, and more are likely to come.
Donald Trump’s Communications Director has resigned amid signs and rumors that there is a major White House shake-up in the works:
WASHINGTON — Michael Dubke, the White House communications director, announced on Tuesday that he is resigning, as President Trump weighs a broader shake-up of his staff in the face of multiple investigations.
Mr. Dubke, a veteran Republican strategist who served three months in the role, said that he offered his resignation on May 18 and agreed to stay on until Mr. Trump completed his first overseas trip, which ended over the weekend. Other staff changes could come by the end of the week, White House officials said.
“The reasons for my departure are personal, but it has been my great honor to serve President Trump and this administration,” Mr. Dubke said in a message to friends. “It has also been my distinct pleasure to work side-by-side, day-by-day with the staff of the communications and press departments. This White House is filled with some of the finest and hardest working men and women in the American government.”
The president’s inner circle has been preparing a series of shifts intended to deal with the growing inquiries into any contacts between associates of Mr. Trump and Russia during last year’s presidential campaign and the transition before the inauguration.
Among those who have been caught up in the probes is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who reportedly explored the possibility of setting up a secret communications channel to Moscow.
A damage control plan assembled by the president’s aides would try to wall off the investigations by setting up a war room inside the White House and enlisting a high-powered team of lawyers outside the West Wing.
Corey Lewandowski, at one point Mr. Trump’s campaign manager last year, and David Bossie, who was deputy campaign manager, are in discussions about whether to come onto the White House staff to handle the political and communications response to the inquiries.
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, who has been the subject of much speculation, would stay on in this situation, but he might lead fewer on-camera daily briefings.
The challenges for any communications adviser to Mr. Trump were on display Tuesday morning as the president returned to Twitter with more provocative messages challenging Germany and Democrats.
“We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Very bad for U.S. This will change.”
He also repeated his contention that the Russia investigation was merely political distraction by Democrats seeking to discredit his Electoral College victory.
“Russian officials must be laughing at the U.S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News,” he wrote.
Advisers have cautioned Mr. Trump about his use of Twitter, with lawyers making the argument that every tweet can be evidence. Diplomats likewise have worried that his Twitter messages can disrupt relations with allies unnecessarily.
But Mr. Trump is resistant to advice from experienced political hands like Mr. Dubke and seemingly unable to allow any slight to go unanswered.
A departure of a senior adviser such as Dubke this early in an Administration — we are, of course, only at Day 131 of the Trump Administration — is highly unusual. But then, we are dealing with perhaps the most unusual Presidency this nation has seen in since the end of World War Two. In addition to the fact that there seems to be a new revelation or allegation against the Administration or people close to Trump on an almost daily basis, the President himself is at historically low job approval numbers for an incoming President. As a result, this Administration finds itself under investigation by both the F.B.I. and Congress and precisely the time when, historically, it ought to be easiest for a President to use the goodwill of the Inauguration to get at least part of his agenda enacted. So far, Trump’s effectiveness in that regard has been quite limited, to say the least. While Trump allies will point to things such as the confirmation of Justice Gorsuch and the House’s successful vote on the American Health Care Act, even those accomplishments are limited at best. But for the Senate majority’s decision to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nomination, Gorsuch would not have been confirmed, for example. As for the AHCA, that bill barely passed the House after initially failing to even make it to a floor vote, and is already clearly ‘dead on arrival’ in the Senate, which is likely to take months before it even comes up with its own health care reform alternative. Given all of that, the fact that the Administration is already losing top advisers and considering a major staff shakeup is not at all surprising.
In any event, Dubke’s resignation, which was apparently given prior to Trump leaving for the trip that he returned from over the weekend, comes just days after reports began to circulate about a coming White House shakeup that could include the return of former campaign officials:
President Trump is reportedly considering a major shakeup to his White House staff and bringing back top campaign strategists over his frustrations by what he sees as his team’s inability to contain the crisis involving alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Lawyers and public relations experts are being recruited, the Associated Press reported Sunday, as new revelations surface about Moscow’s interference and possible improper dealings with the Trump campaign and associates. The disclosures dogged Trump during his first trip abroad since taking office and threaten to overwhelm and stall the agenda for his young presidency.
The latest reports have taken aim at Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner. Kushner is alleged to have spoken with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. about setting up a back-channel communications network with Moscow during the presidential transition.
(…)
While overseas, Trump’s longtime lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, joined a still-forming legal team to help the president shoulder the intensifying investigations into alleged Russian interference in the election and his associates’ potential involvement. More attorneys with deep experience in Washington investigations are expected to be added, along with crisis communication experts, to help the White House in the weeks ahead.
“They need to quarantine this stuff and put the investigations in a separate communications operation,” said Jack Quinn, who served as White House counsel for President Bill Clinton.
Trump believed he was facing more of a communications problem than a legal one, despite the intensifying inquiries, one person familiar with his thinking told the AP.
As he mulls changes, Trump has entertained bringing his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and former deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, formally back into the fold. Both Lewandowski and Bossie discussed the prospect with the president before his trip, according to one person told of the conversations.
The fact that Trump is talking about bringing back Lewandowski, Bossie, and others is a sign that the Russia investigation is haunting and obsessing him, potentially to the detriment of advancing his actual agenda. According to several reports quoting sources close to the President, Trump was often more focused on day-to-day developments in the Russia investigation than the details of his foreign trip over the course of the nine days that he was overseas, and that his aides spent significant time keeping him busy so that he couldn’t take to Twitter during the trip, thus disrupting what the White House clearly wanted to be a distraction from what has been a month’s of reports that have looked worse and worse for the Administration. Now that he’s back home, the focus seems to have returned to the Russia investigation, and that doesn’t bode well for the agenda as a whole. You don’t bring in lawyers, or people like Lewandowski and Bossie, to help advance an agenda, you bring them in to fight. In this case, that means a fight against the Justice Department, F.B.I., and newly appointed special counsel Robert Mueller as well as against what is increasingly becoming a bipartisan coalition in Congress intent on investigating the continually emerging charges against Trump, not to mention the media that continues to be a favorite target of Trump’s. While that kind of fight may be one that Trump relishes, it isn’t one that he can ultimately win as long as there’s something there to investigate. For better or worse, the Administration is likely to be stuck with for some time to come, probably years, and that will make it increasingly unlikely that any real progress can be made on any of their supposed legislative priorities. Resisting that reality may make Trump happy, and it no doubt will make his core constituency happy, but it’s also likely to contribute to the growing image of a Presidency that is, thanks largely to its own incompetence and actions, slowly but surely headed toward failure.
Dubke won’t be the first senior White House official to walk away in the coming weeks and months, I suspect. Others will follow, whether it’s because they have displeased The Donald or because they have themselves reached the breaking point. At that point, we may start to learn a lot more about what is going on behind the scenes at the White House. If the people who leave are replaced with the likes of Lewandowski and Bossie, then we’re in for a long ordeal and an Administration that is focused more on defending itself than it is on governing and dealing with the potential
Trump is playing a high-level game. Unfortunately, it’s blind man’s buff.
lmao, he is completely delusional.
Well, until they get rid of one White House occupant in particular, nothing much is going to change.
It doesn’t matter who’s in charge of communications if the Idiot in Chief tweets out something that ruins three days of messaging (see: FBI firing, “wire tapp,” etc.)
Rearranging deck chairs on the USS Trumptanic.
You have to wonder if this has taken longer than expected (it’s been rumored for 6-8 weeks) because they haven’t been able to find anyone willing to take the job. The fact that they seem to be going back to the losers from their campaign lends credence to this. My god, these are people that are having trouble getting taken seriously by Fox News! Ok, that’s a joke. Fox News still has Kellyann Conway on, they’ll take anyone Trump sends over.
I am amazed that so many have stayed after being subject to basic humiliation. I’m thinking of Sean Spicer, who was left out of the crowd that met the Pope. Is this just part of the psychological breakdown of White House employees going on there? Doesn’t this mental capture of people say something of the future of the White House and by extension, the country as a whole?
Trump makes Nixon the paragon of mental health.
Note his email about Germany, where he shows again he STILL doesn’t understand how that 2% works. I’m telling you, dementia is setting in with a vengeance.
He hasn’t learned…
Change all the players that he may wish, no matter where he goes, there he is.
The common factor in all his continued failures is: himself.
@MarkedMan:
I suspect there are two factors at play here. The first is that they can’t find anyone competent to take a job in the administration, because no one competent wants to risk severe personal humiliation and career suicide.
The second factor is that Trump is incapable of judging competence, because his only criterion of competence is slobbering devotion to him.
Tell him he has big hands and you have the job, even if you’re a gibbering idiot.
@CSK:
At this rate, Mike Bunge will get an appointment. The ambassador of Wrongolia, perhaps.
“Michael Dubke, the White House communications director”
Nice title, but apparently he didn’t have an actual role in this Administration. I can’t see how “2017 – worked in Trump White House” would be a thing you’d want on your future resume, unless you were the waiter responsible for delivering Diet Coke to the President.
we’re in for a long ordeal and an Administration that is focused more on defending itself than it is on governing
No one is seriously trying to pretend that Donald Trump is the ONLY thing causing problems, are they? He’s faced an onslaught from the media, the intelligence community and the Democratic Party that is stands in stark contrast to the “rally ’round the flag, boys” behavior from the first and third groups after George W. Bush was handed the White House by the Supreme Court.
Mike
HELP WANTED: Various communications staff positions open! Can you lie on a daily, even hourly basis? Can you then deny what you said and tell a completely different story? And change your story yet again depending on the intemperate tweets of a malignant ignoramus? Can you display 100% loyalty while expecting no loyalty in return? Do you enjoy working in an atmosphere of bullying, back-stabbing and impending criminal charges? Do you happen to already have a lawyer on retainer? Then join the Trump Team! Russian speakers +++.
@Pch101: The ambassador of Wrongolia,
First, the joke is “ambassador TO Wrongolia.” A U.S. President can’t appoint ambassadors OF other countries, even fictional ones.
Secondly, I wonder if it’s going to take losing the upcoming special election in Georgia to shake some people from their “I’m right, no matter how many times I’m wrong” conceit. Nothing’s worked so far for Bill Kristol, but I’d hope at least some of the folks around here are better than that.
Mike
OT, but you know how a few numbnuts have already given trump credit for recent economic data and stock market performance? Anybody got a preview of how they’re going to turn around and blame Obama when one or both of those reverses? I know it’s coming, I’m just curious what particular stupid form it will take.
@MBunge:
This will shock you but elections do not determine truth. Truth is its own thing.
Price won that seat 62-38% last year. I lived in Georgia. If the GOP wins a House seat in Georgia, that it won by 20+% last year, that’s not really gonna be great cause for us liberals to reexamine our worldview.
This is perfect. A crippled Trump presidency really is the best outcome.
Yeah, Trump’s probly better than Pence, and he’s wrecking the GOP brand on a daily basis. Long-term, that’s good for the country, even though it sucks in the short term. Trump’s going to get to replace one or more of Kennedy/RBG/Breyer, but his pick wouldn’t be substantively different from Pence’s.
@teve tory :
Since I highly doubt he gives a damn either way, it probably *is* Pence’s pick (or Ivanka or Jared’s or whomever he talked to last). It’s not like he’s got a preference or anything; he’ll approve whomever they tell him is a good pick.
My sense on the ground in the US is that we are witnessing a historic realignment in the Republican base, driven by an increased winner-take-all globalized world that is seeing the already wealthy and the highly educated everywhere make great gains, compared to their poorer compatriots. In practical terms, financially stressed poor whites sensing that they are at risk of losing their place in society’s hierarchy (populist alt-right) are trying to wrestle control of the Republican Party from wealthy whites who tend to favour the wealthy and educated, even if they aren’t all white (traditional conservatives). At the same time, they fiercely define themselves as being against race traitors and collaborationist whites (Democrats) who “sell out” by pretending to welcome increased diversity in order to retain power themselves.
In other words, poor whites worry about having no party to represent them, with the traditional GOP being too pro-rich, and the Dems too cosmopolitan, so they want to rebrand the GOP along ethnic lines as being a pro-white (regardless of wealth) party. This is why you see less emphasis on punishing takers and more policy directed against punishing non-whites (Muslims, immigrants, Hispanics, Blacks, etc.).
A self-identified “far-right” coworker, who is very educated and reasonable, hates Trump with a vengeance. I blew his mind when I told him that his party is evolving under his feet and that it’s increasing being dominated by the same takers that he rails against.
@Lounsbury:
Trump is gut shot. Do we want him hanging by his heels? Or is it better to watch as he drags his bleeding carcass across the snow? I can live with either final outcome, but the bloody dragging option has the added advantage of harming the Republican Party, so, on balance, cool. Unless of course the jackass starts a war.
@MBunge:
“No one is seriously trying to pretend that Donald Trump is the ONLY thing causing problems, are they? He’s faced an onslaught from the media, the intelligence community and the Democratic Party that is stands in stark contrast to the “rally ’round the flag, boys” behavior from the first and third groups after George W. Bush was handed the White House by the Supreme Court.”
————————
LOL!
I realize that September 11, 2001 was a long time ago – not long after the Earth and dinosaurs were created – but, Bush was inaugurated on about January 20, 2001 and September 11, 2011 was about 8 months thereafter, and THAT was when Americans rallied around the flag, not when Bush was installed by the Supreme Court.
By the way, do you think Republicans would have rallied around Obama in a similar ‘September 11th’ circumstance? Or do you think that Republicans would have opened multiple investigations of Obama? These Republicans, this House? I put my money on a permanent Republican investigation.
@teve tory:
Remember how W. did that, and trashed the GOP’s brand at the end of his administration? Everyone thought the GOP was going to own that epic mess for years. And yet 2 years later, the GOP doubled down, and came screaming back with an even more hardcore version of the same policies and personalities, and they started racking up the wins.
A more hardcore version of Trump’s agenda scares the hell out of me. But I am just noting the voting public’s remarkable amnesia, and remarkable ability to forgive the GOP over and over again (while still bringing up Ted Kennedy and Chappaquidick where the Democrats are concerned). This is a combination of the GOP’s voting base, who are remarkably loyal and motivated and focused, as well as a critical amount of politically squishy centrist voters who just seem to drift back and forth with the prevailing political narrative … and don’t hold the GOP accountable for more than an election cycle.
Good news: “Mike Bunge: Missing the Point” has been renewed for another season. The producers expect that this ironic comedy program will not be lacking for content for the foreseeable future.
@Rick Zhang :
Exactly. For many, “white” =/= “taker” no matter how long they’ve been on the dole. The whole selling EBT for cash thing they like to rail about minorities doing? Soda is consistently in the top 5 items bought (usually #1) and its because it substitutes as cash in places. I’ve see dirt poor pale as the moon kids buy boxes of Haagen-Daz every month then resell them on the street for a third of the price. Their parents are around the corner doing the same with soda and snack food. Absolutely none of them would consider themselves takers but rather as taking advantage of a “stupid system” or even as mini-entrepreneurs. God help the latino they see do it, though – he’s probably an #*$*$($ illegal that’s stealing their hard-earned tax dollars!!!! …. that they’d be paying if they actually worked, mind you.
It really is going to come down to money, the same way it does time and time again in history. Trump and his kind are riling up the masses for personal gain but the masses are expecting their due. You can only put off the hungry, angry mob for so long before they bite the hand that hits them. The color of their skin didn’t save Marie Antoinette or the Tzar. Neither did their wealth.
@KM: The list is going to come from the Federalist Society, and I doubt it much matters which individual from the list is picked. Going to be Interesting Times in 5 years after Roe is done and it’s back to the states, or, (less likely) criminalized nationally, like an Anti-Roe.
@KM:
A friend of mine worked with a a German who grew up in the dying days of WWII, during the fall of Berlin to the Soviets. He recounts this story:
“When news the Russians appearing at seelow heights threw his subway platform into panic
And finally someone yelled stop! At the top of his lungs
and it turned out to be a grizzled vet
And he explained
We will win
Because we must win
Because if we lose and the Russians did even a fraction of what we did in Russia
There wouldn’t be any Germans left living
And the platform went completely silent”
The same can be said of poor whites suddenly turning up at the GOP’s doors to claim the dividends of white privilege.
We must win. If we lose and get treated half as badly as we did to the poor blacks, we’d all be doomed.
We are all faced with hurricane-like woes today: Health care; financial/jobs; illegal immigration; crippling regulations; serious conflict potentials with a number of nations; and, moral degradation. In the midst of this, liberals and progressives are running a vendetta against Trump, hindering any coordinated solutions to the threats we face, because they resent his election and the turning back of progressive steps, and moreover, they cannot swallow Trump’s peculiar ways of communicating or his attitudes. The children speak, and the polarization deepens!
Meanwhile, the woes are marching on in our society without a smidgeon of help from the Left, who spend their days ranting and vilifying Trump, and fighting against his initiatives, instead of finding ways to cope with the woes–and Trump too!
It appears to be a given that liberals and progressives do not care for our Constitution, and would rather rewrite it in their image of a utopia, and ultimately a tyranny of elites. Secular Humanism anyone?
Woe is us! We have been there before with eight years of Obama and obstruction then also.
@mannning :
What’s the matter? You guys WON!!, remember? Why do you need help when you finally have the power you’ve been aiming for all decade? You had all these ideas and plans and stuff. Go on, try them out on your own. Surely conservatives are not afraid to take responsibility for what happens?
@mannning:
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
@KM: They have the house, and the senate, and the presidency, and the governorships, and the legislatures, and appointed 5 out of 9 SCOTUS members, but everything’s going wrong because of the dang ‘ol Left.
Manning is unintentionally arguing that conservatives are the most comprehensively incompetent people to ever hold office.
@mannning:
“In the midst of this, liberals and progressives are running a vendetta against Trump, hindering any coordinated solutions to the threats we face, because they resent his election and the turning back of progressive steps, and moreover, they cannot swallow Trump’s peculiar ways of communicating or his attitudes. The children speak, and the polarization deepens!
Meanwhile, the woes are marching on in our society without a smidgeon of help from the Left, who spend their days ranting and vilifying Trump, and fighting against his initiatives, instead of finding ways to cope with the woes–and Trump too!”
You must have slept through the Obama administration. That is the only possible explanation for this comment.
@Moosebreath: That’s not the only explanation. Traumatic brain damage. Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. Moderate-to-severe mental retardation. Schizophrenia.
I suppose another qualification for joining Team Trump is the willingness to become a Zoloft junky.
I can see Spicer and Co. gobbling them like M&Ms.
@mannning: Wow! That’s the most incredible amount of whining I’ve seen since the Orange Mange was complaining about how he was the “most persecuted politician ever”…I mean, where to begin? The list of problems you start with? Trump himself is making most of those worse…and to call anyone else a “child” is rich as our juvenile commander in chief acts like a spoiled crybaby on Twitter on a regular basis…oh, excuse me, his “peculiar ways of communicating or his attitudes”… *SNICKER*
…and the fellow traveler of the people who are in complete control of the federal government doesn’t get to complain about how “the Left” isn’t giving them any help…oh please! Suck it up and grow up! Your crew controls everything, why aren’t they making the changes you want? Oh, and in case you didn’t know, there is an ongoing investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russians…it would be wise for you to focus more on that and less on any alleged bad behavior from “the Left”…
Mannning’s new rap album will be entitled It Takes a Congressional Minority of Democrats to Hold Us Back.
aka “This ship is sinking and I’m heading for the exits – while I have some plausible deniability left – before the subpoenas start showing up”
@mannning:
Hey, genius, what happened to Trump fixing everything On Day One?
You people control the entire government. All of it. And yet, somehow, it’s still the fault of liberals. Classic Republican self-pity. Classic refusal to accept responsibility.
You elected a fwcking imbecile. A mentally incapable ignoramus. A treasonous, criminal piece of human sh!t. . . and it’s our fault when things go wrong.
You people really are pathetic.
@HarvardLaw92:
Well, the first tell-all book gets the best advance.
@michael reynolds:
The survivors of the Titanic all professed to feel incredible guilt at having survived while so many others perished, but to my knowledge none of them even hinted that – given the chance at a do-over – they’d have acted any differently.
The best way to win a round of Russian roulette (snicker) is simply to decide not to play. This guy was the first – he won’t remotely be the last. We’ll eventually be left with just the True Believer™ idiots to go down with the ship.
And that’s just fine with me …
@mannning:
I’m starting to think you weren’t actually on the level when your main complaints about Obama were that he lied to much and used too many executive orders.
@teve tory: “how they’re going to turn around and blame Obama when one or both of those reverses”
Easy as pie–
It will work for international policy, economics, domestic issues, defense, anything you can name. The howling masses are already primed for it from the steady diet of “the Democrats hate America and want to destroy it” they get in the echo chamber.
@mannning:
I genuinely expected this paragraph to end with the phrase “precious bodily fluids”.
Dude, seriously, have you read the Constitution, as originally drafted? It was all about elites running the country. You Could Look It Up.
Yes, please. (Which is also in tune with that pesky Constitution…)
@mannning:
Wait a minute.
Your people control the entire federal government – The House, the Senate, the Presidency, the Supreme Court – and yet ‘liberals and progressives’ are to blame for Republican and conservative actions to exclude liberals and progressives from any part of the ‘coordinated solutions to the threats we face’?
Setting aside ideology for a moment, electing Donald Trump is the most embarrassing thing Americans have collectively done to themselves in the past 70 years.
“The worst self-inflicted damage to the country since the secession of the South” is what I have taken to calling it.
Mannning is under the impression that the only way that his hero Trump can rule the country is if he has complete control.
In other words, Mannning wants a dictatorship. He’s an aspiring fascist. Even the mere presence of liberalism is completely intolerable.
At the risk of creating an echo chamber, I would advise reasonable people here not to engage with trolls. It’s nigh impossible to convince someone to change their core values online. Rather, try to build bridges to reasonable moderates or generally apathetic people in real life. The committed alt-right who comment on here have already drank the kool-aid and are beyond salvation.
More likely than not they’re paid trolls by RT or Breitbart and want to muddy up discourse and rile you up rather than participate in any meaningful discussion.
…moral degradation…Trump’s peculiar ways of communicating…
@Rick Zhang:
There are a lot of stupid Americans who willingly cast dumb votes, say dumb things, think dumb thoughts, and post dumb content for free. I would presume that Mannning is one of them. They don’t need to be paid; they volunteer for it.
The one poster who gives me serious doubts is “Jake” the link spammer, which very well may be an SEO bot.
@Rick Zhang:
I don’t know the actual numbers, but I suspect the number of lurkers is far greater than the number of performers. And yes, we’re all performing to some extent. Leaving an argument unchallenged is a mistake, I think, so long as some percentage of the audience might be likely to be taken in.
I don’t mind a troll, I just wish we had better ones.
@michael reynolds: Our trolls are deplorable. Or Deplorables. Maybe both.
A comment or two in response:
There is no argument that the Republicans, with majorities in the congress and the presidency, have not performed well; certainly not what I expected to happen by now.
It is clear that congressional Democrats and their supporters in the media have done all they can think up to derail Trump.
It is also clear that Trump is his own best enemy, and stokes the fires at every turn. I do not have a book on Trump’s lies yet, as I do for Obama’s, but if he does lie now he loses my respect.
What I am concerned with is the business of the nation that is not moving forward as I hoped it would, despite the anger, distaste and dismay of Trump’s many enemies. We need to have a well-functioning military; we need to have affordable healthcare; We need to address the national debt; we need jobs and training for the open jobs that exist today; and on and on… I believe Trump has been trying to move us forward in all of these areas, but is meeting stiff resistance, even in his own camp, on health care, for instance, and defense budgeting, too. Some of this resistance may well be chalked up to pure dislike of Trump himself.
The longer this running attack mode lasts the less we will get done, and as far as I am concerned, the Left has a full share of causing these delays and disruptions, as they are looking to 2018 to recover their majorities and reinstall their favorite programs. Let us hope that there is no serious crisis within the next year or two, where this malaise and infighting is responsible for real harm to the nation.
Someone said he had doubts about my comments on Obama’s lies and EO’s. This is obviously from left field. Obama did lie, a lot! It is Obama’s EO’s that Trump is reversing with EO’s because Obama’s contents were so harmful to the nation, especially small businesses.
@mannning:
IF???
NOW???
Seriously, there aren’t enough Ws, Ts, and Fs in the multiverse to form a sufficient reaction to this.
Congratulations. You have truly outdone yourself.
@Rick Zhang: Manning has been posting this crap since the Bush Jr era. He’s not a paid troll he’s just a true believer that defaults to blaming the liberals for everything. It is ALWAYS the liberals fault.
I still think that manning was the basis for the tyrell performance you see here occasionally.
@mannning:
Republicans had, what, 17 candidates for president last year, some of whom were of the “get things done” school.
Donald J. Trump distinguished himself from all of them.
Some truth for you, dude: Trump isn’t going to do the things you want, and the things he does do will not be good for us.
(And don’t worry about “the left” either. They don’t appear to exist IRL and their online counterparts occupy themselves with little more than bitching about all the white people they see on TV.)
@mannning:
Here’s the link to Trump’s current total of 586 lies. He is unquestionably the biggest liar in the history of the presidency. He is such a prolific liar there really is no number two.
You elected a horrible human being. You elected the worst person in modern times, utterly destroying Nixon’s legacy as a crook. And at least Nixon was competent. And not an ignoramus.
You made a mess, Mannning. You and your pals took a huge sh!t on the living room rug and now you want to blame everyone else for pointing it out. No. Fwck you, you did this, you did long-term damage to the country you pretend to love. Your president is a stain on American history and honor. You are responsible for that. Not the Left, not me, you, you stupid, stupid man.
@michael reynolds:
And they’re such obvious, indefensible lies.
My favorite: “No politician in history — and I say this with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly.” Which he said with a straight face as if it were true, as if a reasonable person may go “Yeah, you know….he’s right.”
But Trump deserves more credulity not less?
It’s hilarious how Manning, who appears to believe in virtues, can stand behind Trump, who is the least virtuous person I could think of. Trump is a complete pig. Then again, this can be said for the vast majority of the religious right and most Republicans, but the hypocrisy is rather blatant in Trump’s case.
Blaming “the Left” for any of the ongoing stupidity is just the extra icing on the cake.
@mannning:
My friend, I fail to see how the Left has caused any of the delays.
(1) Healthcare? Republicans have the numbers, they can do it without a single Democratic vote, and yet, as yet, some Republicans have declined to sign on to the AHCA as the House wrote the bill.
(2) Tax Reform? Right now, linked to the AHCA bill. See above, no Democratic votes needed.
(3) Infrastructure Spending? See (1) and (2) above.
(4) New Supreme Court Justice? Done. McConnell got rid of the filibuster restriction – done. Very little delay.
Where has the Left been the cause of any of Trump’s problems? How has the Left impeded progress on the Republican agenda? As far as I can see Trump is the only one who has stalled the Republican agenda.
Mannning et. al. just support my position that the Republican party is a club for stupid people.
Many Republicans believe “facts” that are simply not true. We’re not talking about differences of opinion here — this is a matter of them believing things that are false and that can be easily debunked.
This is why the right feels the need to have its own media. The purpose of their media is to shelter them from reality. Snowflakes, indeed.
@James Pearce:
With respect to your favorite Trump lie: Is there any better illustration than that quote of Trump’s lethal combination of utter ignorance, raging insecurity, vanity, and pathological solipsism?
@al-Alameda:
We live in an era where this is just accepted: that huge policy changes should be done without reaching out to the opposition in any way. But IRL for our entire history it was accepted that true, meaningful change needed to have wide support. It is why Obama spent months trying to woo Republicans for the health car plan. But the Repubs put their “team” over their country, toadies to a man.
If the Repubs reached out to Dems, I would bet they could gain 35-40 votes in the house by loosing 20-30 Republicans without too much difficulty. They could probably lose 7 or 8 Repub Senators and gain 12-15 Dems. Or at least they could have at the beginning of the Trump presidency. I think that well is too poisoned now.
@mannning:
Hope Hicks, is that you?
@mannning: “I believe Trump has been trying to move us forward in all of these areas, but is meeting stiff resistance, even in his own camp, on health care, for instance,”
And you believe this based on what? The plan that Trump is pushing moves us forward on health care by slashing nearly a trillion dollars out of Medicaid to give a 600 billion dollar tax cut to the wealthiest people and corporations in America.
If you believe that Trump is trying to “move us forward,” you are either ignoring everything except his tweets, you are a blind follower of anything that calls itself Republican, or you’re an idiot.
@al-Alameda: “Where has the Left been the cause of any of Trump’s problems? How has the Left impeded progress on the Republican agenda?”
Don’t you understand? They’ve used to most pernicious weapon known to mankind… they’ve criticized. And the Republicans simply can’t stand up to that kind of terrible pressure. They’ve got to be adored at all times. If someone disapproves of them, then they’ll just take their ball and go home and forget all about transferring the bulk of the nation’s wealth to the top one percent.
@wr:
The above options do not exclude one another. Just sayin’
@mannning: What’s always interesting to me about guys like you is that you don’t want the left to do anything until the time for blame comes. At that point, you either want the left to shoulder it or share it. In this case, it’s all on you, the Donald, and the GOP contingent in Congress. You have the votes, you have the majority, you have both houses, and a Scalia replacement. If you guys can’t run it because you’ve no ideas or desire to come up with any, that’s on you, not the left. Sorry, no sale.
Also, I would consider looking into whether the GOP actually SHARES your stated goals. Just sayin’…
manning likes to talk in platitudes without understanding the real policy being debated, much like his favourite politician Mr. Trump.
Could it be that Republican senators are slowing Trump’s policies because they are genuinely bad? It’s called being accountable to the people they represent. If they pass the austerity budget and the health care bill as written, real people will suffer.
Occam’s Razor would tell us that Mannning is a dolt.
Not much reason to belabor the point.
@Rick Zhang:
Anything’s possible, I guess.
In this thread you can observe the utter hatred and unwillingness of Dems/Libs/Progs to do anything, anything that would smack of supporting the Repub agenda and Trump. The legislature grinds to a halt, and virtually nothing will get done to support the people. This is obstructionism at its worst. The razor thin majority in the senate, and the recalcitrant Repubs in the house are not serving the people very well, either.
When you let hatred take over your sense of fair play and duty to the people you have crossed the line, and should not be trusted with the powers of elected office and positions in the “deep state”. When you flaunt the Constitution and try to work around it as Obama did, you do not work in the best interests of the nation. When you insult the average guy as is quite often the case here, you are showing your elitist nature, and the whole mess seems to be scripted by Alinsky and Cloward-Piven, if not also Gramsci and distain for our Constitution. When you bias the education of K12 and college students with liberal pap in the direction of indiscrimination and relative morality, you are hurting their future and limiting their possibly favorable impact on the nation. When you support atheistic or agnostic thought and apply it to the conduct of the government and religious affairs you are most often impacting the majority negatively. When you use the power of the office to meddle illegally in the personal affairs of the people and out them, you are violating the Constitution.
Is this the America you really want? I do not!
@mannning:
You want to be the overseer on the plantation, and for the only feedback to be “Yes, massa!”
Screw you.
@mannning:
You are unresponsive.
@mannning:
Yes, I do very well remember that Republicans declined to get anything done to support the people for about 6 years.
That said, absent the support of straw men Antonio Gramsci and Saul Alinsky, I again ask you:
Well?
@mannning:
No one is stopping you from worshiping His Royal Assness, the Lord Trump.
@mannning:
“In this thread you can observe the utter hatred and unwillingness of Dems/Libs/Progs to do anything, anything that would smack of supporting the Repub agenda and Trump.”
Yes, they are following the example the Banana Republicans set during the Obama Administration, with you cheering them on every @%$*^ step of the way. So spare us your crocodile tears.
@mannning:
If I hadn’t seen you comment here semi regularly for at least 5 years I would ask if you had just woken up from a coma. Look back over your own comments from 1-8 years ago. If you can’t see the mind boggling hypocrisy in your current stance, then you need to find some professional help fast.
@mannning:
It’s worth going over this in more detail.
Health care: Obamacare has cost less than expected, reduced the deficit, covered over 20 million people and improved Medicare’s financial outlook. The largest danger to health care is from the GOP & Trump.
Financial/jobs: We had solid job growth through Obama’s presidency. The largest danger here is Trump & the GOP damaging our long term future outlook by making foolish choices in trade, health care, climate change, etc
Illegal immigration: peaked before Obama took office, has been flat or negative since then. Biggest danger is immigration continues to decline and hurts our population and GDP growth
Crippling regulations: a meaningless statement used to fool the rubes, such as yourself
International conflicts: Yes, you are correct that Trump is a grave danger and leaving him in power is the height of irresponsibility
Moral degradation: Crime is near historic lows, young people are doing better than ever. The opioid epidemic is a challenge, but the biggest risk there is the GOP & Trump killing Medicaid and treatment options.
All in all, seems like you might want to expand on why you think these things are problems, maybe after you take a timeout to read through Trump’s lies. You wouldn’t shut up about Obama’s, but you seem to be giving Trump a pass for worse. I wonder why someone who also was a birther would care about one of those, but not the other?
@mannning: This isn’t a site where we wail about the evils of Liberals and Alinsky and atheists, and everyone nods piously. We deal in reality here. You come across as a closed-minded loon.
Indeed! How dare these Dems/Libs/Progs! Who do they think they are, not wanting to throw millions of people off of their health insurance to give rich people more tax breaks…who do they think they are, not supporting a cruel budget that would hurt the poorest among us…who do they think they are, not supporting a lying buffoonish charlatan…
@mannning:
Oh FTLOC, climb down from the cross, Agnes, and find your smelling salts … 🙄
@mannning:
Where’s your fondness for Dems/Libs/Progs, manning?
Either demonstrate that you don’t hate Dems/Libs/Progs or finally tell the truth for once on this site and own up to being a hypocrite.
@mannning: And this is your chance to get your wish–if only the majority in Congress will give you what you want. But as for me and mine, we don’t share your world view and even though I might want similar goals, I disagree passionately enough about how to achieve them that I can’t see a path to reconciliation. So, you are actually quite fortunate to be able to accomplish your aims without our help. My suggestion is that you quit whining about how unfair I am and get to work going around me. I’m not stopping you; I don’t have the votes in Congress to.
@Grewgills: Having just woken up from a coma is still a possible explanation in Mannning’s case, I think.
@HarvardLaw92:
FTLOC? For the love of Covfefe?
Complete legislation, not reconciliation votes, require 60 filibuster-proof votes to pass, which means such major legislation would require at least 7 Dems plus the VP to pass. Since the Dems seem to vote in a block, the needed votes will most likely not be forthcoming. This hurts both the healthcare and tax reform efforts now before congress, and the House reconciliation route slices things up into phases in an almost incomprehensible manner. Few seem to believe that phase 2 would ever pass. The Senate is bumping along with no sense of urgency.
So we are stuck with the rapidly fading Obamacare, and no replacement to pick up the difference will be available. Fundamentally, the Dems are blocking reform of healthcare and tax reform with no 7 or more crossover votes in sight.
The Titanic is sinking, and no help is near.
@mannning:
Yeah, the parties vote in a block. That’s normal and expected and not at all controversial.
Which is the point of Demo opposition efforts. They don’t want to help Republicans kick 23 million people off their health insurance and they’re really not that concerned with giving rich people a tax cut.
Again, this is normal and expected and not at all controversial.
Here’s a tactic I think you’d probably support: Compromise.
There is room to improve healthcare, but the meeting will be in the middle, not waaaay over there on the right (or left).
There is also room to reform taxes, but again, the meeting will be in the middle, not waaaaay over there on the right (or left).
Would you support a compromised health/tax reform effort even if it means you won’t achieve all of your aims?
@mannning:
Good thing the GOP would NEVER do something like this. Imagine if the republicans voted in a block and prevented any of the president’s priorities from being passed for 6 years. That would make them even worse than the horrible democrats that have been voting in a block (except when they didn’t) for a few months now. Your keen insight into why this is the fault of the democrats voting together based on their priorities, rather than the fault of republicans that refuse any compromise other than with their freedom caucus is enlightening. Please do continue and don’t forget to forward your newsletter.
@mannning:
You do realize that ACA (Obamacare) is being forced to fade, Republicans do not want to maintain cost-payment subsidies and as such are forcing insurance companies to increase premium costs.
As reported by Anna Matthews of the Wall Street Journal, about one week ago>
This being played out elsewhere in the country. Republicans are unwilling (among themselves, let alone Democrats) to improve ACA and continue to support premium costs.
Again, this situation is entirely a construct and result of Republican Party preferences to destroy as much of ACA as possible, for the general purpose of redistributing tax resources from those millions of citizens most in need of health insurance and health care to the wealthiest citizens who have access to all health care resources.
@James Pearce:
My answer is a resounding YES, if both parties make sound compromises and benefit the people.
The labels placed on the healthcare efforts, Obamacare and Trump care should probably be ditched in favor of another catchy name to remove the stigmas attached to those names. At the moment, I can’t come up with a name that doesn’t sound trite, but someone will, I hope.
The serious problems with almost any approach seems to require some form of government subsidy or tax deduction for those who cannot afford the premiums. Either mechanism puts the cost burden on the taxpayer for a substantial amount, since the disadvantaged probably have little or no income or insufficient income for a deduction to matter, thus requiring a further subsidy. Plus, the needed coverage for catastrophic illnesses, mostly for the elderly, argues for Medicaid. In this event I do not see what mechanism will lower health costs at all.
Thus it seems that we taxpayers will be obligated to pick up the slack no matter what, which appears to move us ever closer to a single-payer approach, and not really lower the costs of care and prescriptions.
@mannning:
How about: “Survive Until Medicare Care”
How about simply Medicare, with suitable modifications to its provisions?
@mannning: Well those bills do have real names. What you call “obamacare” is actually called “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” which is usually shortened to “Affordable Care Act”. What you call “trumpcare” is actually called “American Health Care Act”.
@mannning: That was shot down heavily by the GOP..
Single-payer with or without some form of optional additional insurance is the future.