同情特朗普

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https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/15/james-mattis-and-trump-reportedly-on-the-outs-ny-times-reports.html
 
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Former Vice President Joe Biden Saturday night told the audience at the Human Rights Campaign’s National Dinner that he wished he trashed President Trump sooner.

“Barack and I agreed we would be quiet for the first year to let the new administration get up and running,” Biden said. “God forgive me,” he said, making the sign of the cross over his chest.

He also said he wished he had shown support for gay marriage earlier in his political career.

“It was very late. It was very late,” Biden said.

Biden, 75, said that when he sat down with “the team” for then Sen. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign to discuss joining the ticket he agreed. “I would not affirmatively make the case [for gay marriage], but if I was asked, I would not remain silent,” he said.

In May 2012, Biden appeared on “Meet the Press” and signaled support for marriage equality, prompting Obama to do the same.

Biden recalled that not everyone on the campaign – Obama was running against Republican Mitt Romney – was happy about his show of support. He told a campaign operative, “I’ll make you a bet,” arguing that the “American people were already ahead of us.”

They were, he recalled, with polls saying 57 percent of the country supported same-sex marriage.

He made a similar point over and over again as he addressed the crowd of around 3,000 at the Washington Convention Center.

Speaking of laws that allow gay people and trans people to be fired he said, “And here’s what I want to remind you all, the American people are better than this. They will not support it.”

He did, however, warn of the dangers a Trump administration posed.

Biden said it was Trump’s Charlottesville response last August that made him stop holding his tongue.

“You can boo if you want, but no clapping,” he instructed the crowd, as he talked about the “goons” that showed up in the Virginia town, spitting the same “anti-Semitic vile” that was expressed in Nazi Germany.

When the audience did start booing he told them to stop.

“Look, get serious guys, so hush up,” he said. “This is deadly earnest, we are in a fight for America’s soul.

“What has become of us? Our children are listening and our silence is complicit,” he said.

Both Biden and his wife Jill, who introduced the former veep, characterized Trump as a bully.

“The president uses the White House as a literal bully pulpit,” Biden said at one point.

Biden appeared at the dinner as speculation heats up that he’ll run for president in 2020. He has another big event in D.C. next week for his Biden Cancer Initiative, and is also expected to campaign for Democrats through the fall.

Not to be outdone, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), another likely 2020 Democratic hopeful, showed up early to the dinner and was the first person to walk the event’s white carpet. Booker grabbed a mic and gave a brief pep talk. A short while later, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), another rising Democratic star, walked the carpet, beaming as a super fan yelled “I love you!” at the California senator.

Celebrities attending were eager to hear Biden’s remarks.

“I’m a huge Joe Biden fan,” said Awkwafina of “Crazy Rich Asians fame.” “I’m kind of nervous,” the rapper and actress admitted about the possibility of meeting the ex-vice president.

Figure skater Adam Rippon also said he was excited to see Biden as they both came from Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Andrew Gillum, the progressive candidate who won the Democrats’ gubernatorial nomination in Florida, said he looked forward to Biden’s speech, but wasn’t ready to endorse a 2020 run.

“Well, I support him as a person that he is,” Gillum told The Post. “I think he has served our country well. I look forward to his next move.”

https://nypost.com/2018/09/15/biden-i-wish-i-had-spoken-out-against-trump-sooner/
 
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President Trump’s declaration that “I don’t have an attorney general” was not merely the cry of an executive feeling betrayed by a subordinate.

It was also a raw expression of vulnerability and anger from a president who associates say increasingly believes he is unprotected — with the Russia investigation steamrolling ahead, anonymous administration officials seeking to undermine him and the specter of impeachment proceedings, should the Democrats retake the House on Nov. 6.

In a freewheeling and friendly interview published Wednesday, Trump savaged Attorney General Jeff Sessions, mocking the nation’s top law enforcement official for coming off as “mixed up and confused” during his Senate confirmation hearing and for his “sad” performance on the job.

Though Trump has long railed against Sessions, both publicly and privately, for recusing himself from overseeing the Justice Department’s Russia probe, the president’s comments to Hill.TV brought his criticism to a new level.

“I don’t have an attorney general,” Trump said. “It’s very sad.”

Publicly, at least, Trump is going through the ordinary motions of being president. He met with the visiting president of Poland and on Wednesday toured the flood-ravaged Carolinas to survey damage from Hurricane Florence. He also prepared to hit the campaign trail with rallies in Nevada on Thursday and in Missouri on Friday, and next week he will host scores of foreign dignitaries at the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan.

When asked about an interview where he said "I don't have an attorney general," President Trump said he's "disappointed" with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. (The Washington Post)

Behind the scenes, however, Trump is confronting broadsides from every direction — legal, political and personal.

The president, as well as family members and longtime loyalists, fret about whom in the administration they can trust, people close to them said, rattled by a pair of devastating, unauthorized insider accounts this month from inside the White House. A senior administration official penned an anonymous column in the New York Times describing a “resistance” within to guard against the president’s impulses, while Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear,” offers an alarming portrait of a president seemingly unfit for the office.

“Everybody in the White House now has to look around and ask, ‘Who’s taping? Who’s leaking? And who’s on their way out the door?’ It’s becoming a game of survival,” said a Republican strategist who works in close coordination with the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.

Some of Trump’s allies believe he has legitimate cause for worry.

“The president should feel vulnerable because he is vulnerable — to those that fight him daily on implementing his agenda,” Stephen K. Bannon, a former chief White House strategist, wrote in a text message.

Alabama nominated by President Barack Obama. “He wants a consigliere, not an attorney general. On the one hand, it’s a pitiful thing to watch, but it’s also deadly serious, because the attorney general does not protect the president. The attorney general protects the American people. And the fact that we have a president who doesn’t understand that is alarming.”

A former White House official was similarly disturbed. “It is a complete disgrace the way that Trump is acting like a schoolyard bully against Sessions,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share a critical opinion.

In the interview, Trump belittled Sessions, whom he has previously dubbed “Mr. Magoo” and, according to Woodward’s book, dismissed as “mentally retarded.”

“He went through the nominating process and he did very poorly,” Trump said of Sessions’s Senate confirmation hearing. “He was giving very confusing answers, answers that should have been easily answered. And that was a rough time for him, and he won by one vote, I believe. You know, he won by just one vote.”

Trump went on to question Sessions’s self-recusal from the Russia investigation.

“He said, ‘I recuse myself, I recuse myself,’ ” Trump told Hill. TV. “And now it turned out he didn’t have to recuse himself. Actually, the FBI reported shortly thereafter any reason for him to recuse himself. And it’s very sad what happened.”

It was not clear what Trump meant.

Career Justice Department ethics officials had told Sessions he had to step aside from any campaign-related investigations because he had been a top campaign surrogate and met with the Russian ambassador.

FBI officials would not have been among those providing advice. Then-FBI Director James B. Comey said at a congressional hearing that he was aware of nonpublic information that he believed would force the attorney general to step aside before Sessions did so, though he declined to specify what those facts were.

After taking yet another public tongue-lashing from the president, Sessions gave a speech Wednesday to law enforcement officials in Waukegan, Ill., in which he effusivelypraised Trump.

“Under his strong leadership, we are respecting police again and enforcing our laws,” Sessions said, according to his prepared remarks, which a DOJ spokesman said he delivered. “Based on my experience meeting with officers like you across the country, I believe that morale has already improved under President Trump. I can feel the difference.”

Even as Sessions was dutifully showering compliments upon his boss, Trump was unwilling to throw him a lifeline.

“I’m disappointed in the attorney general for many reasons,” Trump told reporters before leaving for North Carolina. “You understand that.”
 
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(CNN) President Donald Trump ran down Jeff Sessions in a Tuesday interview with Hill.TV in some of his most demeaning and personal language to date, insisting "I don't have an attorney general" and adding: "It's very sad."
Trump also noted that his long-running dissatisfaction with Sessions wasn't based solely in the AG's decision to recuse himself from the ongoing Justice Department probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election -- and began with his performance in the confirmation hearings. Said Trump:

"[Sessions] went through the nominating process and he did very poorly. I mean, he was mixed up and confused, and people that worked with him for, you know, a long time in the Senate were not nice to him, but he was giving very confusing answers. Answers that should have been easily answered. And that was a rough time for him."

So. Trump a) says he doesn't have an Attorney General b) believes Sessions did "very poorly" in his confirmation hearings c) thinks Sessions was "mixed up and confused" and 4) sees the whole thing as just "very sad."

There appears to be a very simple solution available to Trump here: He could fire Sessions. After all, Trump made his name and his fame on firing people -- at least on a reality TV show. And it's not as though Trump is averse to overhauling his senior advisers -- he's already parted ways with his first secretary of state, head of the EPA, Health and Human Services Secretary and Veterans Affairs chief (among many others) in his first 20 months in office.

And yet, Trump just won't do it. He seems set on trying to shame Sessions out of office -- why would you stay in a job where your boss constantly insults you publicly? -- but won't pull the trigger on jettisoning Sessions himself.

Why not? Here are a few theories:

1) He's afraid of antagonizing Republican senators
While there has been some slippage in the unified support that GOP senators have expressed for Sessions, he remains someone that his former colleagues like and want to see stay in the job. At the top of that list is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "I have total confidence in the attorney general," McConnell said earlier this month of Sessions. "I think he ought to stay exactly where he is." Trump needs the support of Senate Republicans on any number of issues -- most importantly (and front of mind) the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Getting rid of Sessions looks like an unnecessary provocation.

2) He's been told it would make him look guilty on Russia
The biggest ongoing story in Washington -- and in the country -- is the probe being run by special counsel Robert Mueller. Since Sessions has recused himself from that probe, he can't exercise any control over it. But firing Sessions would allow Trump to choose a not-recused attorney general who could then, theoretically, either end the investigation or seek to bring it to a timely end. But, to do so -- particularly after firing then-FBI Director James Comey last year and repeatedly asserting that the entire investigation is a hoax, a witch hunt and illegal -- would make Trump look like he is trying to hide something or obstruct the investigation. It runs directly counter to his assertion that he has done nothing wrong and has nothing to hide.

3) Republicans can't confirm a replacement
Confirming an attorney general is never an easy task for any president in any context. The nation's top law enforcement officer has a massive amount of influence and power over the way in which the country is policed, and, because of that power and profile, the president's pick is often a controversial one. Now, consider that the current attorney general presides over a department not only investigating the interference of a foreign power on our elections (and the possibility that members of the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to make it happen) but one that has also come under attack from the President for allegedly housing a "deep state" conspiracy out to get him. Short of picking a member of the Senate as his next AG -- and maybe not even then -- it's very hard to see how Trump could get his attorney general pick confirmed in short order.

4) The election is in 48 days
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an on-again, off-again Trump whisperer, seemed to be sending the President a clear signal about Sessions' future earlier in September. "That's an important office in the country and after the election, I think there will be some serious discussions about a new Attorney General," Graham told reporters. The message was simple: You can fire Sessions. Just not yet. The concern among Republican strategists -- and some senators like Graham -- is that Trump firing Sessions any time before the election would roil an electorate that already looks to be shaping up against Republicans.

It may well be a combination of these factors that has kept Trump from telling Sessions to get out. What's clear is that something -- or multiple somethings -- are stopping Trump from doing it. He goes right to the edge ("I don't have an attorney general") but yet never leaps off.
 
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/19/donald-trump-final-days-220139

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What if, after having moved into the White House and gotten comfortable, Donald Trump refuses to check out when his term ends?

Preposterous, you say. No president, not even Trump, would dare to defy 200-plus years of political tradition—not to mention the Constitution—to illegally overstay. But how sure can we be that our norm-busting president won’t attempt to shatter this inviolable standard, too? He and his lawyers have already advanced the specious legal idea that the chief executive can’t be charged with obstruction of justice, thereby placing him above the law. Who’s to say that Trump’s legal advisers might construct some pretext—a national security crisis or charges of election fraud—that would place him above the Constitution and cement his place in the Oval Office?

The fear that a president might not go at his appointed time has a precedent. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, encouraged by columnist Walter Lippmann, contemplated taking dictatorial powers at the beginning of his first administration, but then reconsidered. Almost a half-century ago, the prospect of impeachment and conviction sent President Richard Nixon’s innate paranoia to a sub-basement of suspicion and distrust. As the lights started going out around him, he raged, he drank, and raged some more. In one sober moment, he called CBS News reporter Nancy Dickerson in the middle of the night to ramble on and on about how the press was mistreating him.

According to reporter Seymour Hersh, Nixon intimates began to believe that he was contemplating some sort of a coup d’état to maintain power. An unnamed member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Hersh that in one meeting Nixon called himself “the last hope” and claimed that the “eastern elite was out to get him.” Said the four-star officer: “His words brought me straight up out of my chair. I felt the president, without the words having been said, was trying to sound us out to see if we would support him in some extra-constitutional action. He was trying to find out whether in a crunch there was support to keep him in power.”

The officer and others told Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger of their Nixon anxieties. Nixon had centralized military power in the White House, often cutting his previous secretary of defense, Melvin Laird, out of the chain of command, giving some credence to the worry that he might issue an extreme order. Schlesinger investigated what sort of countermeasure the military could take if Nixon ordered Marines or other Washington-billeted troops to block his removal after impeachment and conviction. “Schlesinger’s overriding concern, in case a crisis did arise, was the possibility that the armed forces would follow their inherent loyalty to the Commander-in-Chief,” Hersh wrote.

Ultimately, the specter of a Nixon coup inspired Schlesinger to instruct the Joint Chiefs of Staff to execute no White House order without his countersignature. Nixon never gave any such orders, and his aide-turned-biographer Jonathan Aitken later described Schlesinger’s move as “the wildest over-reaction of Watergate.” Nixon’s reaction when told the tale: “Incredible.”

Compare Trump to Nixon. Like Nixon, Trump has sought to curry favor with the military, stacking his Cabinet with generals. Former CIA Director John Brennan has called him “unstable, inept, inexperienced, and unethical,” and temper-tantrums in public and on Twitter have caused him to be branded as a hothead. Trump’s current chief of staff, John F. Kelly, has described him as “off the rails,” according to Bob Woodward’s book Fear: Trump in the White House. Woodward, who reported on Nixon’s ouster in The Final Days, compares Trump’s paranoia to Nixon’s in his new book.

Trump has repeatedly bruised the rule of law with his words and actions, so why not the Constitution? Earlier this year, when a lawful search warrant was served on his attorney, Michael Cohen, Trump said, “I just heard they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys.” This week, he claimed hyperbolically that he doesn’t have an attorney general because his AG won’t run the Department of Justice like a windup toy for him, and he called the Federal Bureau of Investigation a “cancer in our country.” This is strong meat! He claims that the special prosecutor’s investigation, which has returned eight guilty pleas and one conviction, is a “witch hunt.” He has used the presidential pardon to reward political allies such as Joe Arpaio and Dinesh D’Souza. L’Etat, C’est Moi could be incorporated into the Trump coat of arms.

Trump laid the groundwork for contesting the legitimacy of the 2020 election during the 2016 campaign, blaring his distrust of the election process nonstop. “They even want to try and rig the election at the polling booths, where so many cities are corrupt and voter fraud is all too common,” he said. In the final debate with Hillary Clinton, he declined to say whether he would accept the results of the election, a position he was still voicing on Election Day. “I want to see what happens, you know, how it goes,” Trump said. Even after winning, Trump repeatedly asserted—with no proof—that 3 million to 5 million noncitizens had voted in the 2016 election, and that their illegal ballots cost him the popular vote. Once inaugurated, he impaneled his now-abandoned Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to investigate his bogus allegations.

Trump appears to have conveyed his disparaging views about voting integrity to his political base. According to one 2017 poll, half of all Republicans surveyed favored postponing the 2020 election until new standards made it certain that only eligible American citizens could vote. Respondents who agreed with Trump’s untruths that he won the popular election and that millions of ballots were cast illegally were the most likely to support the idea of postponing the election.
This isn’t the first time the idea of postponing the federal election has surfaced. In 2004, the Department of Homeland Security asked the Department of Justice whether the government could put off an election in the case of a terrorist strike. No such legal mechanism was found, and the outrage generated by the inquiry prompted Congress to pass a resolution, 419-2, declaring that nobody could shelve an election.

So if Trump couldn’t postpone an election, could he just ignore it? The nation would erupt, of course. Even great numbers of his supporters would abandon him. But never underestimate Trump’s audacity. In 2016, he reserved the right to reject the results. The fact that he won made his rejection moot. But what scenario might play out in 2020 if Trump lost but denied the results? Would he endlessly filibuster the states for recounts? Appeal to the Supreme Court and ignore its ruling by claiming squatters rights to the White House?

Not even Trump would go that far, right? Even though he’s taught us to expect the worst from him, I’d like to think that he’d pack the Bekins van and move back to Trump Tower after losing. But what about the long shot of the House impeaching him and the Senate convicting him? Would he honor those judgments? Again, I’d like to think so, but my faith wobbles. His sense of victimhood, displayed daily on Twitter, predicts that he might interpret his constitutional defenestration as a coup by the Deep State, a coup that justified his counter-coup. Trump’s backers—see these pieces in the American Conservative and the Federalist as well as a commentary by Bill O’Reilly and an interview with Steve Bannon—have already poured the foundation for such a notion with their talk of the “coup against Trump.” Likewise, all the talk about using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office can’t help but have boosted his baseline paranoia.

The president’s cheerleading for anti-democratic authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, Xi Jinping and Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and the mutual admiration pact he’s signed with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un does not bode well for an orderly transition of power in 2020 or 2024 or whenever his eviction notice is served. Because nothing is off the table when Trump’s operating, let’s hope current Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has read deeply from the Nixon histories and has issued the appropriate order to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
 
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