Pompeo Pays The Piper, Potentially

Trump regime Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo is under investigation again, this time for his Hatch Act violations in delivering a speech at Dear Leader's National Convention two months ago.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under investigation for potentially violating a federal law that forbids federal employees from engaging in political activity while on duty or while inside federal buildings over his address to the Republican convention in August. 

The Office of the Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency, launched a probe into Pompeo's speech to the Republican National Convention while on a taxpayer funded trip to Jerusalem on August 25, according to two House Democrats. 

It is the second investigation into potential Hatch Act violations that the OSC has opened into Pompeo, whose use of resources and decision-making at the State Department, along with his wife's, have triggered a series of investigations by the agency's inspector general. 

"Our offices have confirmed that the Office of Special Counsel has launched a probe into potential Hatch Act violations tied to Secretary Pompeo's speech to the Republican National Convention," Rep. Ellot Engel, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House Committee on Appropriations, wrote in a joint statement. 

"This information comes on the heels of reporting that OSC is also looking into Secretary Pompeo's stated commitment to rush out more of Hillary Clinton's emails by Election Day and as the Secretary has misused State Department resources on his speech tour of swing states," the Democrats said. 

"As we get closer to both this year's election and his own inevitable return to electoral politics, Mike Pompeo has grown even more brazen in misusing the State Department and the taxpayer dollars that fund it as vehicles for the Administration's, and his own, political ambitions," the lawmakers said. 

The State Department did not return requests for comment.

 

Pompeo may be one of the most corrupt members of Trump cabinet (and that's really saying something in this rogue's gallery) and keep in mind Pompeo hasn't even been on the job the full four years, taking over for the disastrously incompetent former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson in early 2018.

 

Of course, getting rid of various inspectors general and replacing them with cronies is only one reason Trump ripped up protections for civil service employees last week.  Expect a lot more corruption -- and for the office investigating Pompeo to be curiously understaffed to zero -- should Trump win a second term.

Last Call For Trump Goes Viral, Con't

As the US comes up on 200,000 dead from COVID-19, journalist Bob Woodward's book on the Trump regime, "Rage", confirms that Trump knew the virus was deadly back in February, but downplayed it on purpose, wasting months that could have saved thousands of lives.

President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and "more deadly than even your strenuous flus," and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book "Rage." 

"This is deadly stuff," Trump told Woodward on February 7.

In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known. "Pretty amazing," Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus was maybe five times "more deadly" than the flu.

Trump's admissions are in stark contrast to his frequent public comments at the time insisting that the virus was "going to disappear" and "all work out fine."

The book, using Trump's own words, depicts a President who has betrayed the public trust and the most fundamental responsibilities of his office. In "Rage," Trump says the job of a president is "to keep our country safe." But in early February, Trump told Woodward he knew how deadly the virus was, and in March, admitted he kept that knowledge hidden from the public.

"I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

If instead of playing down what he knew, Trump had acted decisively in early February with a strict shutdown and a consistent message to wear masks, social distance and wash hands, experts believe that thousands of American lives could have been saved.

We now know, in his own words, what Trump is guilty of.

Donald Trump intentionally misled the nation on the threat of COVID-19.

Frankly, this should be the end of Trump, but if there was any chance of his resignation it would have happened years ago. Luckily, we have an election in order to make that happen. In case you need a recap:

The startling revelations in "Rage," which CNN obtained ahead of its September 15 release, were made during 18 wide-ranging interviews Trump gave Woodward from December 5, 2019 to July 21, 2020. The interviews were recorded by Woodward with Trump's permission, and CNN has obtained copies of some of the audio tapes. 

"Rage" also includes brutal assessments of Trump's presidency from many of his former top national security officials, including former Defense Secretary James Mattis, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Mattis is quoted as calling Trump "dangerous" and "unfit" to be commander in chief. Woodward writes that Coats "continued to harbor the secret belief, one that had grown rather than lessened, although unsupported by intelligence proof, that Putin had something on Trump." Woodward continues, writing that Coats felt, "How else to explain the president's behavior? Coats could see no other explanation."

The Director of National Intelligence thought Donald Trump was compromised by Putin.

Trump fired him as a result.

We get to fire Trump in less than eight weeks.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein takes to CNN for long read piece on Donald Trump's phone calls to foreign leaders, and how they are so awful, how Trump is such a belligerent numbskull, that even his most basic interactions with our allies and our enemies are nearly all perfect examples of major national security breaches by and of themselves.

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations. 

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest. 

These officials' concerns about the calls, and particularly Trump's deference to Putin, take on new resonance with reports the President may have learned in March that Russia had offered the Taliban bounties to kill US troops in Afghanistan -- and yet took no action. CNN's sources said there were calls between Putin and Trump about Trump's desire to end the American military presence in Afghanistan but they mentioned no discussion of the supposed Taliban bounties. 

By far the greatest number of Trump's telephone discussions with an individual head of state were with Erdogan, who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump, according to the sources. Meanwhile, the President regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America's principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was "stupid."

Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia's autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, "great" accomplishments as President, and the "idiocy" of his Oval Office predecessors, according to the sources. 

In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him -- Trump -- would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. "They didn't know BS," he said of Bush and Obama -- one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders. 

The full, detailed picture drawn by CNN's sources of Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders is consistent with the basic tenor and some substantive elements of a limited number of calls described by former national security adviser John Bolton in his book, "The Room Where It Happened." But the calls described to CNN cover a far longer period than Bolton's tenure, are much more comprehensive — and seemingly more damning -- in their sweep. 

Like Bolton, CNN's sources said that the President seemed to continually conflate his own personal interests -- especially for purposes of re-election and revenge against perceived critics and political enemies -- with the national interest. 

To protect the anonymity of those describing the calls for this report, CNN will not reveal their job titles nor quote them at length directly. More than a dozen officials either listened to the President's phone calls in real time or were provided detailed summaries and rough-text recording printouts of the calls soon after their completion, CNN's sources said. The sources were interviewed by CNN repeatedly over a four-month period extending into June. 

The sources did cite some instances in which they said Trump acted responsibly and in the national interest during telephone discussions with some foreign leaders. CNN reached out to Kelly, McMaster and Tillerson for comment and received no response as of Monday afternoon. Mattis did not comment. 

The White House had not responded to a request for comment as of Monday afternoon. 

One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.

The piece is long, with Bernstein's usual attention to detail, a story researched over several months with multiple named and anonymous sources within the Trump regime itself confirming the facts. It is also a crushing indictment of the Trump regime, and in particular, of Trump himself.

The people who come out looking the worst here are once again the people who enabled Trump time and time again, who knew of this behavior and not only did nothing to stop it, they encouraged it in order to keep him happy, placating a man so unstable and fragile that he remains incapable of anything that isn't of a transactional nature that directly benefits him and his ego.

Pathetic, the whole lot.

They need to go to jail.

Last Call For Bahama Drama

Is this regime even capable of not being absolute garbage in every aspect?  Like, is everyone involved in the Trump universe an amoral grifting asshole who operates by transactional relationships with everyone else?

A CBS News investigation has uncovered a possible pay-for-play scheme involving the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump's nominee for ambassador to the Bahamas. Emails obtained by CBS News show the nominee, San Diego billionaire Doug Manchester, was asked by the RNC to donate half a million dollars as his confirmation in the Senate hung in the balance, chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod reports.

When Hurricane Dorian ravaged the Bahamas in September, Manchester wanted to help. So the San Diego real estate developer, who prefers the nickname "Papa Doug," loaded up his private jet with supplies and headed for the hard-hit Caribbean country where he owned a home – and hoped to soon be serving as U.S. ambassador.

A Trump supporter, Manchester donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. He was offered the Bahamas post the day after Mr. Trump was sworn in. Manchester said Trump told him, "I should probably be the ambassador to the Bahamas and you should be president."

Then, for two and a half years, Manchester's nomination stalled in the Senate.

His Bahamas relief trip caught the attention of the President. Trump tweeted, "I would also like to thank 'Papa' Doug Manchester, hopefully the next Ambassador to the Bahamas, for the incredible amount of time, money and passion he has spent on helping to bring safety to the Bahamas."

Three days after the tweet, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel hit up Manchester for a donation. It was no small sum. In an email, obtained exclusively by CBS News, she asked Manchester, "Would you consider putting together $500,000 worth of contributions from your family to ensure we hit our ambitious fundraising goal?"

The Aristocrats!

"Did you feel like they were putting the arm on you?" Axelrod asked.

"No, I didn't. That's part of politics. It's unbelievable. You give and you give and you give and you give some more and more and more," Manchester said.

"Does any part of you feel if you had just cut the check for $500,000 that you would be the ambassador to the Bahamas?" Axelrod asked.

"No, because first of all, you have to get out of committee and you have to be voted on the floor," Manchester said. "It's a big process."

The Senate confirmation process is exactly what Manchester quickly addressed. He wrote back to McDaniel's request for $500,000, "As you know I am not supposed to do any, but my wife is sending a contribution for $100,000. Assuming I get voted out of the [Foreign Relations Committee] on Wednesday to the floor we need you to have the majority leader bring it to a majority vote … Once confirmed, I our [sic] family will respond!"

"You know what this looks like," Axelrod said.

"Well -- it looks like it to you. But it's not the facts," Manchester said. "My wife gave out of separate funds and she in fact loves Donald Trump."

As usual, a couple of observations.

One, the US ambassador post to the Bahamas was essentially left open for 30 months because Trump couldn't find anyone to buy it, I guess.  This is what the US State Department is on a post-Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo world with most of the career diplomats having been purged.  There's just lackeys and posts to be filled by those who can give Trump's campaign half a mil.  And yes, I understand ambassadorships have gone to big donors in the past for both parties, but now it's a requirement.

Two, this doesn't even make the top 25 Trump regime scandals so far.  Really, it doesn't.  That should bother everyone on the freakin' planet.  This regime is so debased that it has become a parody of itself, the blatant corruption is now utterly normalized and accepted as how America does business in 2019.

America's still a country built on 400 years of slavery, pillage, and white supremacy.  Trump didn't change that at all.  We just reverted to the historical mean.  Growing up in the 80's and 90's and seeing the Soviet Union go down made my generation think that things were going to get better, and for a while they did.

Oh, and speaking of diplomats...

Several GOP lawmakers were more “shaken” by the testimony from State Department aide David Holmes than they publicly let on, according to one top congressional GOP source.

Behind closed doors, many expressed frustration that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland would place a call to President Trump in a public restaurant, and are concerned that Holmes’ testimony was the most convincing argument for Trump’s direct involvement in the campaign to pressure Ukraine.

Holmes’ testimony is also making some GOP members worry about how far Sondland will go in his public testimony Wednesday.

Two senior Republican sources said that some House Republicans are also worried about how Sondland will handle himself at Wednesday’s hearing. The sources pointed out that Sondland is not an accomplished diplomat and one source added he believes Sondland was unprepared and ill-fitted for the job as US ambassador to the EU.

According to multiple State Department and former State Department officials, he was not well regarded by the US diplomatic community.
House Republicans are also increasingly worried about the political fallout from the hearings overall and the impact of multiple witnesses who are career professionals.

They are especially concerned about the reaction from independent voters and suburban women voters who are watching Trump attack witnesses both on Twitter and on television.

Sondland is being set up for crucifixion.  We'll see if he can help his case by telling the truth about Trump, or whether he goes down in flames.  As for David Holmes, the staffer for Ambassador Bill Taylor who overheard Trump's telephone tirade in a Ukraine restaurant, he will be testifying on Thursday, so if Sondland decides to lie this week, he's going to get burned before the week is out.

On national TV, no less.

Stay tuned.

Last Call For It's Nobody's Business But The Turks

We've reached the point now where the Trump regime is coming apart, and the wall of silence that protected Trump until now has cracked wide open and the White House is leaking like Niagra Falls with stories of Trump's previous misdeeds flowing out into the DC swamp.

President Donald Trump pressed then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to help persuade the Justice Department to drop a criminal case against an Iranian-Turkish gold trader who was a client of Rudy Giuliani, according to three people familiar with the 2017 meeting in the Oval Office. 

Tillerson refused, arguing it would constitute interference in an ongoing investigation of the trader, Reza Zarrab, according to the people. They said other participants in the Oval Office were shocked by the request. 

Tillerson immediately repeated his objections to then-Chief of Staff John Kelly in a hallway conversation just outside the Oval Office, emphasizing that the request would be illegal. Neither episode has been previously reported, and all of the people spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the conversations. 

The White House declined to comment. Kelly and Tillerson declined to comment via representatives. Another person familiar with the matter said the Justice Department never considered dropping the criminal case. 

Zarrab was being prosecuted in federal court in New York at the time on charges of evading U.S. sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. He had hired former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Giuliani, who has said he reached out repeatedly to U.S. officials to seek a diplomatic solution for his client outside the courts. 

The president’s request to Tillerson -- which included asking him to speak with Giuliani -- bears the hallmarks of Trump’s governing style, defined by his willingness to sweep aside the customary procedures and constraints of government to pursue matters outside normal channels. Tillerson’s objection came to light as Trump’s dealings with foreign leaders face intense scrutiny following the July 25 call with Ukraine’s president that has sparked an impeachment inquiry in the House. 

The episode is also likely to fuel long-standing concerns from some of Trump’s critics about his policies toward Turkey and his relationship with its authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Zarrab’s release was a high priority for Erdogan until the gold trader agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in New York.

This by itself would be a massive scandal under any other circumstances: a sitting Oval Office occupant asking the Secretary of State to get Justice to drop an ongoing federal case involving a foreign national who was allegedly helping Iran evade sanctions would be the death knell of any administration.

It's simply "Wednesday" here in Trumpland.

Both Tillerson and Kelly need to be subpoenaed immediately about this.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Not to be outdone by the NY Times this weekend with their story on the FBI's investigation into Donald Trump as a Russian asset, the Bezos Post brings us Greg Miller's story on Trump's insanely suspicious acts of trying to completely avoid his own people when it comes to what he's discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

Trump did so after a meeting with Putin in 2017 in Hamburg that was also attended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. U.S. officials learned of Trump’s actions when a White House adviser and a senior State Department official sought information from the interpreter beyond a readout shared by Tillerson.

The constraints that Trump imposed are part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.

As a result, U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years. Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is thought to be in the final stages of an investigation that has focused largely on whether Trump or his associates conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. The new details about Trump’s continued secrecy underscore the extent to which little is known about his communications with Putin since becoming president. 

Former U.S. officials said that Trump’s behavior is at odds with the known practices of previous presidents, who have relied on senior aides to witness meetings and take comprehensive notes then shared with other officials and departments.

Trump’s secrecy surrounding Putin “is not only unusual by historical standards, it is outrageous,” said Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state now at the Brookings Institution, who participated in more than a dozen meetings between President Bill Clinton and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. “It handicaps the U.S. government — the experts and advisers and Cabinet officers who are there to serve [the president] — and it certainly gives Putin much more scope to manipulate Trump.”

A White House spokesman disputed that characterization and said that the Trump administration has sought to “improve the relationship with Russia” after the Obama administration “pursued a flawed ‘reset’ policy that sought engagement for the sake of engagement.”

So not one, but two red alert level stories this weekend on Trump very possibly being a Russian asset makes me believe very very much that Mueller's report includes evidence that Donald Trump is being manipulated by Russians if not by Putin himself, and that Moscow has direct leverage over a compromised leader of the US.

Remember that yesterday, we found out that NY Times story on the FBI investigation, as Charles Pierce points out, deliberately uses the word "publicly" to describe the evidence so far against Trump.  That's a brutal caveat.

This is not a word chosen idly, not in a piece as judiciously written as this one. Clearly, the Times printed pretty much all it was given by its sources, but the implication of that "publicly" is that investigators likely know far more than what appeared in the newspaper.

Otherwise, "publicly" is empty verbiage. To have written simply that, "No evidence has emerged that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government official," would have sufficed for the purposes of journalistic balance. But by dropping that fatal "publicly" in there, the Times and its sources likely are giving us a preview of coming attractions. (Judging by his manic episode on the electric Twitter machine on Saturday morning, the president* knows this, too.) And the one thing about which we can all be sure is that is whole megillah is nowhere near as weird as it's going to get.

If that's really where Mueller's report is going, then things are going to get very serious, and very soon.  The groundwork is being laid at this point, and I honestly think Trump is so terrified of being exposed as a Russian asset that he's completely invested now in this shutdown as a way to seed as much chaos as possible in the workings of government bureaucracy, as well as serving as a warning to everyone detailing just how much damage he can do to the country and its people.

Maybe Trump will go down.  But the country will burn along with him.  If he can't remain the man in the Oval Office, then maybe there won't be a country to be leader of.  Either way, both pieces taken together plus the recent behavior of Trump himself, indicate to me that something catastrophic for the Trump regime is coming and with a quickness.

Here there be dragons.

Meat The Press, Con't

Over the weekend, Trump regime Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once again picked a fight with the CIA, declaring that there was "no direct evidence" of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's involvement in the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo doubled down Saturday on the United States' support for Saudi Arabia and declined to comment on a CIA assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was involved in journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder. 

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Pompeo again noted a lack of direct evidence linking bin Salman to Khashoggi's murder. 

"I have read every piece of intelligence that's in the possession of the United States government," Pompeo said. "And when it is done, when you complete that analysis, there's no direct evidence linking him to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. That is a accurate statement, it is an important statement, and it is a statement that we are making publicly today." 

When asked if the CIA has a high confidence of the de facto Saudi leader's involvement, Pompeo told CNN, "I can't comment on intelligence matters."

Today the CIA decided to make Pompeo look like the fool he is.

The C.I.A. has evidence that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, communicated repeatedly with a key aide around the time that a team believed to have been under the aide’s command assassinated Jamal Khashoggi, according to former officials familiar with the intelligence.

The adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, topped the list of Saudis who were targeted by American sanctions last month over their suspected involvement in the killing of Mr. Khashoggi. American intelligence agencies have evidence that Prince Salman and Mr. Qahtani had 11 exchanges that roughly coincided with the hit team’s advance into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where Mr. Khashoggi was murdered.

The exchanges are a key piece of information that helped solidify the C.I.A.’s assessment that the crown prince ordered the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Virginia resident who had been critical of the Saudi government.

“This is the smoking gun, or at least the smoking phone call,” said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. official now at the Brookings Institution. “There is only one thing they could possibly be talking about. This shows that the crown prince was witting of premeditated murder.”

Honestly, Pompeo should have known better.  The man was Trump's CIA Director in 2017 before taking over State for the departed and unmissed Rex Tillerson in April 2018.  If anyone in the Trump regime (besides current CIA head Gina "I love torture" Haspel) should be aware of what the CIA is capable of doing when it comes to backing up public analysis that something happened abroad, it's Pompeo, and he jumped directly on this land mine anyway.

I guess the guy's not that bright, because at this point pretty much every other foreign intelligence agency is 100% convinced that the Crown Prince ordered Khashoggi's murder too.  Pompeo must have known that the CIA would have leaked existence of a smoking gun to the press within a day or two, and that's exactly what happened.

This will not end well for the Saudis, or for Pompeo, frankly.

Trump Flew Over The Coup-Coup Nest

What is it with Republican regimes and plotting South American coup attempts all the damn time? Donald Trump sure has more in common with Reagan/Bush CIA hijinks than he lets on, now that we have this NY Times story exposing a secret US coup attempt in Venezuela.

The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, according to American officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks.

Establishing a clandestine channel with coup plotters in Venezuela was a big gamble for Washington, given its long history of covert intervention across Latin America. Many in the region still deeply resent the United States for backing previous rebellions, coups and plots in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil and Chile, and for turning a blind eye to the abuses military regimes committed during the Cold War.

The White House, which declined to answer detailed questions about the talks, said in a statement that it was important to engage in “dialogue with all Venezuelans who demonstrate a desire for democracy” in order to “bring positive change to a country that has suffered so much under Maduro.”

But one of the Venezuelan military commanders involved in the secret talks was hardly an ideal figure to help restore democracy: He is on the American government’s own sanctions list of corrupt officials in Venezuela.

He and other members of the Venezuelan security apparatus have been accused by Washington of a wide range of serious crimes, including torturing critics, jailing hundreds of political prisoners, wounding thousands of civilians, trafficking drugs and collaborating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

American officials eventually decided not to help the plotters, and the coup plans stalled. But the Trump administration’s willingness to meet several times with mutinous officers intent on toppling a president in the hemisphere could backfire politically.

Suddenly that drone attack on Maduro last month allowing him to consolidate power and crack down militarily while the nation's economy disintegrates is bathed in a whole new light.  The military intervention that Trump openly bragged about in August of 2017 fell apart fantasitcally, and now we have a failed state on our hands in real time.

What will Republicans do about it?  Will there be any oversight?

Of course not.  Not in this banana republic.

The Next War On The Board

AP's Josh Goodman brings us the story of how Donald Trump was about to get American involved in yet another illegal, costly, and inhumane invasion, this time in Venezuela.

As a meeting last August in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions on Venezuela was concluding, President Donald Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?

The suggestion stunned those present at the meeting, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom have since left the administration. This account of the previously undisclosed conversation comes from a senior administration official familiar with what was said.

In an exchange that lasted around five minutes, McMaster and others took turns explaining to Trump how military action could backfire and risk losing hard-won support among Latin American governments to punish President Nicolas Maduro for taking Venezuela down the path of dictatorship, according to the official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.

But Trump pushed back. Although he gave no indication he was about to order up military plans, he pointed to what he considered past cases of successful gunboat diplomacy in the region, according to the official, like the invasions of Panama and Grenada in the 1980s.

The idea, despite his aides’ best attempts to shoot it down, would nonetheless persist in the president’s head.

The next day, Aug. 11, Trump alarmed friends and foes alike with talk of a “military option” to remove Maduro from power. The public remarks were initially dismissed in U.S. policy circles as the sort of martial bluster people have come to expect from the reality TV star turned commander in chief.

But shortly afterward, he raised the issue with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, according to the U.S. official. Two high-ranking Colombian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing Trump confirmed the report.

Then in September, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Trump discussed it again, this time at greater length, in a private dinner with leaders from four Latin American allies that included Santos, the same three people said and Politico reported in February.

The U.S. official said Trump was specifically briefed not to raise the issue and told it wouldn’t play well, but the first thing the president said at the dinner was, “My staff told me not to say this.” Trump then went around asking each leader if they were sure they didn’t want a military solution, according to the official, who added that each leader told Trump in clear terms they were sure.

Eventually, McMaster would pull aside the president and walk him through the dangers of an invasion, the official said.

Taken together, the behind-the-scenes talks, the extent and details of which have not been previously reported, highlight how Venezuela’s political and economic crisis has received top attention under Trump in a way that was unimaginable in the Obama administration. But critics say it also underscores how his “America First” foreign policy at times can seem outright reckless, providing ammunition to America’s adversaries.

The problem isn't that Trump was talked out of invading Venezuela.

The problem is that the people that talked Trump out of it, H.R. McMaster and Rex Tillerson, are both long gone and have been replaced with far more belligerent advisers.

There's going to come a point very soon where Mueller and/or the Senate Intelligence Committee reveals its findings, and it will be a very bad time for Donald Trump.  He will of course want to lash out and distract Americans from this news.

A nice little war would get the job done.  North Korea and Iran would draw global condemnation, but Venezuela, non-nuclear, full of people needing "liberation" from leftists?

American leaders have done it before.

They'll do it again.

Mad Dog In The Doghouse

Not that Trump's decision Friday to officially drop joint military exercises between the US and South Korea didn't already prove this beyond a doubt or anything, but yes, Defense Secretary James Mattis is clearly getting the Rex Tillerson treatment these days as his Pentagon tenure appears to be increasingly in trouble.

Defense Secretary James Mattis learned in May from a colleague that President Donald Trump had made the decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal, and scrambled to get his boss on the phone before a formal announcement was made. It wouldn't be the last time he was caught off guard by a presidential announcement.

A month later, Mattis was informed that Trump had ordered a pause in U.S. military exercises with South Korea only after the president had already promised the concession to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Last week, Trump again blindsided and overruled his defense secretary by publicly directing the Pentagon to create a sixth military branch overseeing operations in space.

The way these recent presidential decisions on major national security issues have played out, as detailed by current and former White House and defense officials, underscores a significant change in Mattis's role in recent months. The president is relying less and less on the advice of one of the longest-serving members of his cabinet, the officials said.

"They don't really see eye to eye," said a former senior White House official who has closely observed the relationship.

It's a stark contrast to Trump's early enthusiasm for the retired four-star Marine general he proudly referred to as "Mad Dog." And while the two men had disagreements from the start — on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects, for instance — Trump still kept Mattis in the loop on major decisions and heeded his counsel.

"He's never been one of the go-tos in the gang that's very close to the president," a senior White House official said. "But the president has a lot of respect for him."

In recent months, however, the president has cooled on Mattis, in part because he's come to believe his defense secretary looks down on him and slow-walks his policy directives, according to current and former administration officials.

The dynamic was exacerbated with Trump's announcement in March that he had chosen John Bolton as national security adviser, a move Mattis opposed, and Mike Pompeo's confirmation as secretary of state soon after.

The president is now more inclined to rely on his own instincts or the advice of Pompeo and Bolton, three people familiar with the matter said.

There's no question now that Bolton and Pompeo are running our military policy on the Middle East, North Korea, Iran, China, Russia and Europe.  Whether or not he'll make enough noise on the way out the door may play a role, but at this point there's no reason to believe that Mattis has any clout anymore.  This is exactly what happened to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Also, compare Mattis, who is repeatedly overruled and marginalized by Trump, to EPA head Scott Pruitt, who by all rights should have been fired months ago for his obvious corruption and incompetence, but he's still riding high as Trump loves the guy because he's doing what Trump wants.

Maybe Mattis will survive the way Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly has, by keeping his mouth shut and rolling over.  But Kelly, Mattis and Tillerson were supposedly the "adults in the room" keeping Trump's authoritarian impulses in check.  If anything, Trump is riding roughshod over them, and they are doing nothing while Trump calls for the end of due process.

Tillerson is gone, replaced by the totally subservient Pompeo.  Kelly has rolled over completely, not that he wasn't a seething racist to begin with like his boss.  Now we learn Mattis has effectively been replaced by John Bolton's mustache.  The "moderating influences" on Trump by the professionals are completely gone.

Now we have Trump unleashed upon the world.

 

Throwing The New Guy In The Deep End

There's no rest for the wicked as newly confirmed Trump Regime SecState Mike Pompeo is already off on his first leg of the "Sorry We Didn't Have A Secretary Of State For Two Months" Tour and is already trying to put out fires in the Middle East.

As Saudi Arabia considers digging a moat along its border with Qatar and dumping nuclear waste nearby, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Riyadh on his first overseas trip as the nation’s top diplomat with a simple message: Enough is enough.
Patience with what is viewed in Washington as a petulant spat within the Gulf 

Cooperation Council has worn thin, and Mr. Pompeo told the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, that the dispute needs to end, according to a senior State Department official who briefed reporters on the meetings but who was not authorized to be named. 

Last June, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led an embargo by four Arab nations of Qatar, accusing the tiny, gas-rich nation of funding terrorism, cozying up to Iran and welcoming dissidents. Years of perceived slights on both sides of the conflict added to the bitterness. 

Mr. Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex W. Tillerson, spent much of his tenure trying to mediate the dispute, which also involved Egypt and Bahrain, but without success. The Saudis, keen observers of Washington’s power dynamics, knew that Mr. Tillerson had a strained relationship with President Trump and so ignored him, particularly because Mr. Trump sided with the Saudis in the early days of the dispute.

But Mr. Pompeo is closer to Mr. Trump and thus a more formidable figure. And in the nearly 11 months since the embargo began, Qatar has spent millions of dollars on a Washington charm offensive that paid off earlier this month when its leader, Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, had an Oval Office meeting with Mr. Trump during which the president expressed strong support for the tiny country.

So Mr. Pompeo came here to deliver the same message to Mr. Jubeir at an airport meeting Saturday afternoon; to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later that night; and to King Salman in a meeting planned for Sunday: Stop. 

Confronting Iran, stabilizing Iraq and Syria, defeating the last of Islamic State, and winding up the catastrophic civil war in Yemen are seen in Washington as increasingly urgent priorities that cannot be fully addressed without a united and more robust Arab response. 

Mr. Pompeo arrived in Riyadh on the same day that Houthi forces in Yemen shot eight missiles at targets in the southern Saudi province of Jizan, killing a man. The fusillade was the latest sign that Yemen’s blood bath is a growing threat to the region.

I'm thinking that the Saudis are going to continue to tell the State Department to go screw themselves because they know they can go over Pompeo's head to Trump the same way they did with Rex the Wreck.  It's sad that at this point everyone is freely admitting how awful Tillerson was at this job, and that how Pompeo is actually an improvement somehow, but the point is that the real problem with America's foreign policy is Donald Trump, and until that changes, nobody's going to take us seriously.

Qatar might get a break, but the Saudis do love picking on them, and Trump does love a bully, so who knows?

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Republicans are now well into making their move against Robert Mueller this week.  I talked a few days ago about House Republicans shutting down their investigation of Trump/Russia, and predicted it would be the political cover the GOP needed to move against Muller.  It wasn't a particularly bold prediction to make, Trump's lawyers tipped their hand last Saturday in saying they wanted to cut a ridiculous deal where Muller agreed to end his investigation if Trump granted Mueller an interview.

We know what events triggered the move too: the grand jury testimony of former Trump campaign consultant Sam Nunberg combined with news that Mueller had subpoenaed financial documents from the Trump Organization itself earlier this year.  All sides know Mueller is closing in, which brings us to the present.  First, Senate Republicans are now on board with the House GOP on a new special counsel to go after the FBI and the basis of Mueller's investigation.

Four Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday sought the appointment of a second special counsel to aid the Department of Justice inspector general in probing the FBI's use of the so-called Steele dossier in its surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide.

The Judiciary panel's chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), was joined by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in requesting that DOJ name a special prosecutor to zero in on possible mishandling of the FBI's Russia investigation prior to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Specifically, the quartet raised concerns about the FBI's relationship with Christopher Steele, who compiled a dossier of verified and unverified intelligence alleging a Russian effort to compromise now-President Donald Trump.

Grassley and Graham, who previously requested that the DOJ open a criminal probe of Steele's conduct, on Feb. 28 asked DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz to probe the department's handling of investigations into Trump transition or campaign officials, as well as the Trump administration before Mueller's appointment. Horowitz has been investigating possible DOJ misconduct related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation since early 2017.

The Republican senators noted in their Thursday letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that under current law, "the Inspector General does not have the tools that a prosecutor would to gather all the facts, such as the ability to obtain testimony from essential witnesses who are not current DOJ employees."

"Thus, we believe that a special counsel is needed to work with the Inspector General to independently gather the facts and make prosecutorial decisions, if any are merited," the Republicans continued. "The Justice Department cannot credibly investigate itself without these enhanced measures of independence to ensure that the public can have confidence in the outcome."

And if that's not enough, now we get to the heart of the matter: the Trump regime today is openly suggesting that it's time for Jeff Sessions to fire Robert Mueller.

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, told The Daily Beast on Saturday morning that he hopes Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will shut down the Mueller probe.

Reached for comment by email about the firing of former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, sent The Daily Beast the text of Trump’s most recent tweet on the subject, which applauded the firing. Then he wrote that Rosenstein should follow Sessions' lead.

“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd then wrote.

He told The Daily Beast he was speaking on behalf of the president, in his capacity as the president’s attorney.

Dowd also emailed the text below, which is an annotated version of a line from a well-known 20th century play:

“What's that smell in this room[Bureau}? Didn't you notice it, Brick [Jim]? Didn't you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room[Bureau}?... There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity[corruption]... You can smell it. It smells like death.” Tennessee Williams — ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’

Rosenstein is overseeing the probe because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from matters related to the 2016 campaign.

Dowd is now saying that he wasn't officially speaking in capacity as the lawyer to the office of president, but this is as close as you're going to get to  "Will no one rid me of this troublesome Mueller?" as it gets until it happens.

Here's my theory:  Tillerson being fired while on the crapper was done for two reasons: Trump wants a war to distract the American public, and he wanted to put pressure on Jeff Sessions.  Note Trump and the GOP have now asked Sessions to do three things, fire McCabe and deny him his full retirement benefits, appoint a special counsel to investigate the FBI and the Mueller probe, and fire Mueller.

Sessions has done one of the three now.

The question now becomes how long before he does the other two?  And when he does, what will the American people do when the GOP shrugs and goes along with it?

Terminus Mortuus Est Rex

The Trump regime spring cleaning dirtying continues, and this one's big: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is out, with CIA Director Mike Pompeo taking over.

President Trump has ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and plans to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him as the nation’s top diplomat, orchestrating a major change to his national security team amid delicate negotiations with North Korea, White House officials said Tuesday.

Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled diplomat cut short his trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington.

Pompeo will replace him at the State Department, and Gina Haspel — the deputy director at the CIA — will succeed him at the CIA, becoming the first woman to run the spy agency, if confirmed.

In a statement issued to The Washington Post, Trump praised both Pompeo and Haspel.

“I am proud to nominate the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, to be our new Secretary of State,” Trump said. “Mike graduated first in his class at West Point, served with distinction in the U.S. Army, and graduated with Honors from Harvard Law School. He went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives with a proven record of working across the aisle.”

The president continued, “Gina Haspel, the Deputy Director of the CIA, will be nominated to replace Director Pompeo and she will be the CIA’s first-ever female director, a historic milestone. Mike and Gina have worked together for more than a year, and have developed a great mutual respect.”

Trump also had words of praise for Tillerson: “Finally, I want to thank Rex Tillerson for his service. A great deal has been accomplished over the last fourteen months, and I wish him and his family well.”

The president — who has long clashed will Tillerson, who he believes is “too establishment” in his thinking — felt it was important to make the change now, as he prepares for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as upcoming trade negotiations, three White House officials said.

Two things:  Trump definitely now feels he is unfettered and can do whatever the hell he wants to right now.  He's not wrong, nobody's going to try to stop him.  House Republicans surely proved that yesterday.  Trump says he told Rex on Friday that his services would no longer be required, Tillerson says that he was never told, but this announcement came just hours after Tillerson remarked that the State Department believed Russia was "clearly" behind the chemical weapon attack in Britain last week that put ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the hospital.

The second is that the odds of US military action against Syria and North Korea just went skyward.  Bringing in the CIA head as your new chief diplomat is not even pretending peace was ever on the table.  The only question now is the timeframe.

War is definitely coming.  In his own thoroughly corrupt but predictable way, Tillerson was the last holdout for diplomacy.  It's all swamp monsters now, and they're packing thermite and Everclear.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

Jane Mayer's profile of Steele dossier author Christopher Steele is a hell of a read, worthy of your time, but the real news is that Mayer dug up something that has direct implications for the 2018 Senate races: one of Steele's claims is that the Russians flat out told Trump to sink former GOP presidential candidate, Massachusetts governor and current Utah Senate candidate Mitt Romney as his Secretary of State.

In the spring of 2017, after eight weeks in hiding, Steele gave a brief statement to the media, announcing his intention of getting back to work. On the advice of his lawyers, he hasn’t spoken publicly since. But Steele talked at length with Mueller’s investigators in September. It isn’t known what they discussed, but, given the seriousness with which Steele views the subject, those who know him suspect that he shared many of his sources, and much else, with the Mueller team. 

One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy—and an incoming President. 

As fantastical as the memo sounds, subsequent events could be said to support it. In a humiliating public spectacle, Trump dangled the post before Romney until early December, then rejected him. There are plenty of domestic political reasons that Trump may have turned against Romney. Trump loyalists, for instance, noted Romney’s public opposition to Trump during the campaign. Roger Stone, the longtime Trump aide, has suggested that Trump was vengefully tormenting Romney, and had never seriously considered him. (Romney declined to comment. The White House said that he was never a first choice for the role and declined to comment about any communications that the Trump team may have had with Russia on the subject.) In any case, on December 13, 2016, Trump gave Rex Tillerson, the C.E.O. of ExxonMobil, the job. The choice was a surprise to most, and a happy one in Moscow, because Tillerson’s business ties with the Kremlin were long-standing and warm. (In 2011, he brokered a historic partnership between ExxonMobil and Rosneft.) After the election, Congress imposed additional sanctions on Russia, in retaliation for its interference, but Trump and Tillerson have resisted enacting them.

Now, I'm not sure how accurate this is, but maybe Robert Mueller does.  Maybe this is all a ploy to make sure Trump goes after Romney in the 2018 Utah Senate race, maybe it's not.  But it makes sense, and it would be just another log on the pyre of Trump's administration when Mueller shows up to light the fire.

The biggest tell that this is legitimate is Trump's actions.  He's refused to implement sanctions overwhelmingly passed by Congress and he's tried to outright revers Obama-era sanctions, he hasn't ordered US Cyber Command to protect the country's internet infrastructure, and the biggest tell we found out this weekend: Trump has spent exactly $0 of $120 million allocated to State Department to counter Russian influence.

As Russia’s virtual war against the United States continues unabated with the midterm elections approaching, the State Department has yet to spend any of the $120 million it has been allocated since late 2016 to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy. 

As a result, not one of the 23 analysts working in the department’s Global Engagement Center — which has been tasked with countering Moscow’s disinformation campaign — speaks Russian, and a department hiring freeze has hindered efforts to recruit the computer experts needed to track the Russian efforts. 

The delay is just one symptom of the largely passive response to the Russian interference by President Trump, who has made little if any public effort to rally the nation to confront Moscow and defend democratic institutions. More broadly, the funding lag reflects a deep lack of confidence by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson in his department’s ability to execute its historically wide-ranging mission and spend its money wisely. 

Mr. Tillerson has voiced skepticism that the United States is even capable of doing anything to counter the Russian threat.

“If it’s their intention to interfere, they’re going to find ways to do that,” Mr. Tillerson said in an interview last month with Fox News. “And we can take steps we can take, but this is something that once they decide they are going to do it, it’s very difficult to pre-empt it.”

We'll see what happens, but in my mind the depths of the Russian control over Trump is near absolute.  They have him wholesale, and America is in peril.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

America's status as global pariah under the Trump regime worsens as the United States continues to bail on UN agreements.

The United States has walked away from a United Nations effort to ease the global migration and refugee crisis, with the Trump administration saying it was no longer compatible with U.S. principles or priorities. 

In a statement, the U.S. Mission said the U.N.'s New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants — recognized by the United States last year under the Obama administration — "contains numerous provisions that are inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies." 

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said President Donald Trump made the decision after noting that "America is proud of our immigrant heritage and our long-standing moral leadership in providing support to migrant and refugee populations across the globe." 

"But," Haley continued, "our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter the country."

The rest of the world, including China and Russia, will go on without us as Trump continues to abdicate from any sort of global leadership.

World leaders and dignitaries from 193 U.N. member states adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants in September 2016, paving the way for the global compact for migration. 

The compact, expected to be adopted in 2018, is aimed at facilitating safe and orderly migration around the world. It will present a framework for comprehensive international cooperation on migrants, set out a range of actionable commitments and tackle issues such as protecting the safety, dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of migrants. 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson applauded Trump's decision to exit the agreement and said "strengthening global governance" would run afoul of U.S. laws and policies. 

"While we will continue to engage on a number of fronts at the United Nations, in this case, we simply cannot in good faith support a process that could undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders," Tillerson said in a statement.

No longer.  A nation of immigrants has turned its back on the people of the rest of the planet.  Only about 4% of the world's population is American. The other 96% of the globe is realizing that they can get along without us for the time being, and will gladly do so.

And speaking of refugees, we seem to be headed for creating a few million more on the Korean Peninsula as Trump national security adviser is openly warning of war with Pyongyang and GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham is calling for the US to begin removing the families of American soldiers stationed in South Korea.

Let’s be clear about what McMaster and Graham are saying. The US and North Korea appear to be on the path to war, and there’s no solution for peace in sight. Therefore, Graham argues, the US should stop sending family members of American military personnel to South Korea — and start taking those already there out of the country.

Graham’s commentary doesn’t come out of nowhere, however. There are serious reasons to worry about the damage North Korea could do to South Korea, where 28,500 US troops and their dependents reside.

If the US attacks North Korea, experts believe Pyongyang will retaliate not just against America but also against Seoul and Tokyo. Simulations of that possibility produce pretty bleak results. One war game convened by the Atlantic back in 2005 predicted that a North Korean attack would kill 100,000 people in Seoul — a city of around 25.6 million people — in the first few days alone. Others put the estimate even higher. A war game mentioned by the National Interest predicted Seoul could “be hit by over half-a-million shells in under an hour.”

It’s worth noting that McMaster has long talked about the growing prospect of war with North Korea, and Graham nonchalantly discusses “thousands” dying on the Korean Peninsula during a conflict. And of course Trump himself once said he would unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea if it continued to develop its nuclear program.

This rhetoric is supposed to remind North Korea that the US is serious when it says it needs to stop building a missile that can hit America. But now that North has one, it seems like the US is threatening war with no real chance of getting North Korea to do what America wants, experts tell me.

“If McMaster, Graham, and Trump are serious, God help us,” Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, told me in an interview today. “If they're bluffing, it's not working to bring North Korea to the table, and threatening preventive war just further solidifies North Korea's determination to continue advancing its arsenal and increases unintended war risks.”

Either way, we're getting closer to becoming a dangerous rogue state, one the rest of the world will have to deal with.

Trump's Year-End Clearance Fail

Looks like long-suspected rumors that the Trump regime is going to reshuffle the deck chairs on the Trumptanic over the holidays are shifting into a much likely action phase with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's plans for an brand-new, even worse cabinet for 2018.

The White House has developed a plan to force out Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, whose relationship with President Trump has been strained, and replace him with Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, within the next several weeks, senior administration officials said on Thursday. 

Mr. Pompeo would be replaced at the C.I.A. by Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas who has been a key ally of the president on national security matters, according to the White House plan. Mr. Cotton has signaled that he would accept the job if offered, said the officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations before decisions are announced. 

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Trump has given final approval to the plan, but he has been said to have soured on Mr. Tillerson and in general is ready to make a change at the State Department. 

John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, developed the transition plan and has discussed it with other officials. Under his plan, the shake-up of the national security team would happen around the end of the year or shortly afterward. 

The ouster of Mr. Tillerson would end a turbulent reign at the State Department for the former Exxon Mobile chief executive, who has been largely marginalized over the last year. Mr. Trump and Mr. Tillerson have been at odds over a host of major issues, including the Iran nuclear deal, the confrontation with North Korea and a clash between Arab allies. The secretary was reported to have privately called Mr. Trump a “moron” and the president publicly criticized Mr. Tillerson for “wasting his time” with a diplomatic outreach to North Korea.

And let's be honest about exactly what getting rid of Rex Tillerson and replacing him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo means (and backfilling Pompeo's job with avowed racist asshole Tom Cotton), it means any hope of a diplomatic, non-military solution to North Korea and/or Iran goes up in smoke (or in cruise missile contrails).

Tillerson is a horrendous Secretary of State who gutted America's diplomatic corps in less than a year and his promises to increase diversity at State in August turned into a massive purging of top black and Latino and women diplomats in November.  I'm not sorry to see him gone, but Pompeo at State would be the end of US diplomacy period, and Cotton at the CIA would be fundamentally worse.

In other words, Trump would have the people he wants on hand to start the wars he'll need in order to stay in office after Mueller drops the hammer.

You though 2017 was bad?  Stay turned for 2018, now just a month away.  The odds of us being in a major war before the end of next year just went up substantially.

Oil's Well That Ends Well For US Diplomacy

Donald Trump keeps isolating the US from international agreements and diplomatic cooperation on a number of area, and no executive agency has taken damage quite like the State Department.  We're now a year into his term and Trump continues to refuse to appoint diplomatic staff to key positions.  It's gone way past the fact he doesn't care, as far as American diplomacy still exists, it's now "you deal with Trump, and you do what he wants." 

President Trump pushed back Thursday on concerns about a lack of nominees for key positions at the State Department, arguing it wouldn't affect his agenda.

"Let me tell you, the one that matters is me, I'm the only one that matters because when it comes to it that's what the policy is going to be," Trump said on Fox News when pressed about vacancies by Laura Ingraham.

"We don't need all the people that they want," Trump continued. "Don't forget, I'm a business person and I tell my people, well you don't need to fill slots, don't fill them."

A number of top positions remain unfilled at the State Department, among other agencies, including officials overseeing Southeast Asia and arms control.

Trump has fallen behind his four predecessors in the number of appointments confirmed by the Senate by this time, while he also has fewer nominations sent compared to the four previous administrations, according to an appointee tracker from The Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service.

The president blamed Senate Democrats for more nominees not being approved, though acknowledged that he has focused on nominating fewer people.

"We're filling up roles. And, don't forget, Schumer and the Democrats are just obstructing. You can't get anything through. We have almost about half the number of people coming through as Obama had. They are obstructing," Trump said.

And when it comes to anything involving transparancy and international cooperation to rein in corruption, the US is now freely abandoning its leadership role instead.

The United States has withdrawn from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an international effort to fight corruption in managing revenues from oil, gas and mineral extraction.

There had been doubts about continued U.S. participation in the EITI since earlier this year when Congress killed the so-called resource extraction rule, which required companies like Exxon Mobil Corp to disclose taxes and other fees paid to foreign governments, such as Russia.

In a letter to the EITI board on Thursday, the director of the U.S. Office of Natural Resources Revenue, Gregory J. Gould, wrote that “effective immediately” the United States was withdrawing as an EITI implementing country.

He wrote that while the U.S. remains committed to fighting corruption “it is clear that domestic implementation of EITI does not fully account for the U.S. legal framework.”

The EITI, which was founded in 2003, and which the United States joined in 2014, sets a global standard for governments to disclose their revenues from oil, gas, and mining assets, and for companies to report payments made to obtain access to publicly owned resources, as well as other donations.

“It put more information in the hands of the public,” said Michael Ross, executive director of the Project on Resources Governance and Development at the University of California Los Angeles.

“It involved the U.S. government disclosing all the money it was getting from oil, gas and mining companies and getting these companies to publicly disclose the payments they were making.”

There are 52 countries in the EITI, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South America.

In just one year Trump has reduced the US to corrupt proto-fascist regime and international pariah status, bordering on dangerous rogue nation that the rest of the world may have to take action against.  The danger of a major global war has never been higher, and the instigator will be us when it happens.

We're the bad guys in 2017, and nobody's worse than Trump.

Last Call For These Disunited Nations

The Trump regime continues to play the role of international pariah as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has officially announced plans to withdraw the US from UNESCO, the United Nations science and culture organization, over what Washington calls "anti-Israel bias."

The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would withdraw from Unesco, the United Nations cultural organization, after years of America distancing itself because of what it called the group’s “anti-Israel bias.” 

“This decision was not taken lightly,” according to a State Department statement on Thursday. Along with the anti-Israel bias, the department also cited “the need for fundamental reform” and “mounting arrears” at the organization. 

While the United States withdrew from the group, the Trump administration said it wanted to continue to be engaged with Unesco to provide American perspective and expertise, but as a nonmember observer. The United States withdrawal goes into effect at the end of 2018. 

Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization known for its designation of world heritage sites, is a global development agency with missions that include promoting sex education, literacy, clean water and equality for women. 

The Obama administration cut off funding to Unesco in 2011 because the group admitted Palestinians as full members, which the United States saw as undercutting its influence in countries around the world. America lost its vote in the organization in 2013 because it ended its financial contributions. 

In July, Unesco declared the ancient and hotly contested core of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a Palestinian World Heritage Site.

And yeah, it's difficult to say this is entirely unexpected, even the Obama administration cut off money to UNESCO over Palestine years ago.  It looks like however that the Hebron declaration of the Tomb of the Patriachs as a World Heritage Site by secret ballot was the excuse Trump needed to pull out altogether.

It's a shame, but the writing was on the wall for this for a while now.  Still, for the US to bail on UNESCO is yet another sign that the Trump regime is increasingly isolated politically. Keep in mind that UNESCO is also a champion of global women's issues, global climate issues, and of global press freedom, all things the Trump regime have repeatedly taken action against. We weren't exactly welcome there anyway, and I doubt we'll be welcome anywhere soon.

Oh, and all this would makes sense if Israel wasn't, you know, still a UNESCO member and has been one since 1949.

So yeah, not about Israel, but about Palestine.

General Chaos In The White House

Martin "BooMan" Longman thinks Trump WH Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly is headed for the exits in Trumptempber:

I will be mildly surprised if Kelly lasts to the end of the month. I don’t see the point in what he is trying to do, and I doubt he’ll be able to see any point in it for much longer. He can’t save this administration or even keep it afloat. And I don’t think Trump will stop disrespecting him in front of the staff, so unless he enjoys being treated like Reince Priebus he’s going to take a walk or get himself fired before too much longer.

Things might be different if the administration were not taking on water faster than Kelly can bail it out, or if September were not set up as a crucible custom-designed to destroy the illusions of Republicans and Trump supporters everywhere. But playtime is over and the grim waiter has brought the check. Failure will begin to roll down like waters, and haplessness like a mighty stream. Brother shall deliver up brother, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause their political death.

Through it all, for as long as he lasts, Kelly will vainly try to steer the ship away from the shoals, and he’ll take the blame for errors not of his making and decisions made against his advice.

The real issue is what happens after Kelly departs, depending on how much damage is done with Trump ending DACA, possibly shutting down the government and wrecking the country's credit rating over the debt ceiling, botching tax reform, and running out of time for whatever hail Mary play on Trumpcare happens before September 30.

The same goes for Rex Tillerson, by the way.  He's not much longer for this State Department job in this dumpster fire of an administration, and neither is Treasury Secretary Gary Cohn.  It's possible and even likely that the three of them (along with Gen. Mattis at the Pentagon) get a hold on the country and run things as best they can for a while, but eventually they will realize that Trump is headed for history's septic tank and anyone along with him will be covered in crap.

It's even more likely that Mueller will come along and pull the plug anyway.  Where the country goes from there, I can't tell you.  Trump won't go quietly or peacefully and things could get violent pretty fast.  But Kelly could be a big part of directing the country towards the lifeboats.

Maybe.

We'll see. 

Scorched Earth, Hurricane Wind And Fired Staff: Trumptember

As Martin BooMan Longman reminds us, September is when Trump and the GOP will remember every cloudy day.

It’s happened. The Republicans’ month-from-hell has arrived. It’s the month I coined a meat-grinder. And it’s going to get off to the slowest of starts owing to the long Labor Day weekend holiday. There will much work for responsible government officials to do, and very little time for them to get it done. 

Yet, the president is the farthest thing from focused. The Russia investigation is terrifying him. He wants to fire his Secretary of State and it looks like Rex Tillerson would welcome that outcome. He’s fuming at his National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn because Cohn essentially called him a racist in public, but he doesn’t feel like he afford to fire him because he’s trying to pivot to a doomed tax reform effort. He’s chomping at the bit his chief of staff put on him to limit his access to fake news and crazy supporters and advisers. He’s still obsessed with his media coverage and the camera angles and attendance he gets at his political rallies. He’s more energized by his efforts to settle scores with Republican senators who have crossed him than he is with attracting the support of Democratic senators he will soon need. He’s recently made open war on the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, both of whom have been increasingly critical of his behavior and performance. Most of all, he misses the brief period during which the job of president was kind of fun.

And every day this month, more pictures of Hurricane Harvey's devastation will come in and the job of fixing it will be on his shoulders too.  Tillerson and Cohn might not survive the month as cabinet secretaries, hell Tillerson might not survive the weekend.

The job is hard, and Trump was never up for actually doing it.  Having the orange idiot at the helm is no longer funny or darkly humorous, but deadly serious (especially if Hurricane Irma comes to visit the US too).  Things are going to go extremely badly this month for Trump and for the country.

As Trump lashes out like a badger in a burlap sack, his attacks are not suited to his challenges. He threatens to force a government shutdown if he doesn’t get funding for his border wall, but he has absolutely no plan for getting the votes he’d need from Democrats to get his money. He doesn’t know how he’s going to get the debt ceiling raised or whether or not he should attach it to disaster relief. He doesn’t even have a theory of where the votes will come from or what he might need to trade for those votes. He says that he still wants Obamacare repealed but doesn’t understand that the opportunity to do that will end the moment the Republicans pass a new budget aimed at enacting tax reform. He senses that he’s completely blocked legislatively and calls for an end of the Senate’s filibuster, not realizing that he doesn’t and never will have anywhere near the votes he needs to make that change. 

This is how September is beginning for the president. Lord knows how it will end.

That's the killer.  There are plenty of very plausible scenarios right now where as bad as September is going to most likely be for us, October can easily be far worse, and a lot of those disturbingly plausible scenarios involve Trump saying "screw it" and doing something colossally stupid out of anger, frustration, dementia or a combination of all three.

Hope you enjoyed summer, because fall is going to be a killer.