whykhan:

Sally Yates, acting Attorney General of the United States of America, did her goddamned duty to the republic and to the Constitution in standing up against Trump and his fucking refugee ban, which Yates called “probably illegal.” She declared that the DOJ would not enforce it, and Trump just fired her. Trump fired the Attorney General of the United States of America for defending the Constitution, which was her fucking duty. The last time a president fired an AG was Nixon in the 70s. It’s day 10.

plaidadder:

plaidadder:

From the Washington Post’s website: “Trump speaks with Taiwanese president, a major break with decades of US Policy on China.”

Only Nixon can go to China. Only Trump can pick up the phone and fuck up everything that’s happened since then in thirty seconds.

As the Post’s piece will tell you, the reason this is a big deal is that our diplomatic relations with China depend on our officially pretending that Taiwan is a province of China, rather than an autonomous political entity with which, say, the US can have separate diplomatic relations. By talking directly to the president of Taiwan, Trump is de facto resuming diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which were suspended in 1979. Which means, you know, who knows what will now happen to our diplomatic relations with China. 

In the media people are still having the “is Trump merely crazy and stupid or is he crazy and stupid like a fox” debate. Well, here is what, for me, definitively ends that debate:

“

The Taipei Times reported ahead of the call Friday that it was arranged to congratulate Trump on his election victory last month and to express hopes for an expanded relationship with the United States.”

There’s a lot of passive voice here, but it does sound to me as if this call was the president of Taiwan’s idea, not Trump’s. They’ve been watching the same campaign we’ve been watching. And someone, at some point, said, quick, set up a call with him before someone tells him why he shouldn’t take it. And they did, and they basically tricked him into recognizing Taiwan.

He is an idiot who has no fucking idea what he’s doing and everyone in the world knows that and other world leaders are already starting to play him. And it’s working.

This is going to end badly.

For the love of God and the good of mankind, someone has to get this clown off the grid. Because no matter how fucking STUPID he is, no matter how unintentional his actions actually are, when he interacts with world leaders, that means something, just because he is the President-Elect of the United States. If they don’t start a war on purpose they’re going to wind up starting one by accident.

Someone just has to take the phone away from him. All that FUCKING GRIEF over Hillary Clinton’s private email server, and Trump is going to destroy the planet with a fucking smartphone.

So I was just reading up on this over at the Washington Post.

There are differing stories about exactly how the call happened:

“Many questions remain about the conversation between Trump and Tsai. The president-elect tweeted Friday that Tsai called him, rather than the other way around. Tsai’s office said later, however, that the call was arranged in advance by both sides. …

Analysts are divided on whether it represented a mix-up between the two governments or a more significant signal about the type of foreign policy that can be expected from the U.S. president-elect.”

So if in fact this was arranged in advance, then someone on Team Trump was in on this, and I guess that person may or may not have known what he was doing. I remain convinced, however, that Trump himself has no fucking clue. Trump, on his Twitter anyway, is mainly upset that anyone is suggesting that there’s anything that could possibly be more important than Trump getting to hear from another world leader about how awesome he is.

So China has formally complained about this, to our current government. Another fun thing is that today, Trump also spoke to Rodrigo Duterte, who’s president of the Phillippines, and who called Obama a “son of a whore” because Obama thought that Duterte’s plan to deal with the Phillippines’ drug problem by shooting suspected drug dealersin the streets was not a good idea. According to Duterte, Trump thinks that executing people en masse–and by “en masse” I mean that according to this piece his government has executed 4,500 people in five months without any form of due process–because someone thinks or claims to think they might be drug dealers is a FABULOUS idea:

“According to Duterte, his plan to ‘kill all’ the country’s suspected drug users and dealers — a plan that has been condemned by the United States, the European Parliament and the International Criminal Court, among others — now has the backing of the U.S. president-elect. The campaign has left at least 4,500 Filipinos dead over about five months.

During the call, Duterte said, Trump told him he was doing it the ‘right way.’ ”

So far nobody on Trump’s side has confirmed this. But you know what? It really doesn’t matter. Because we can’t believe anything Trump or his spokespeople say, about this or about anything else. And the entire world knows this. Did he in fact tell Duterte to go right on with his program of state-sponsored murder cause that’s an awesome way to deal with a complex social problem? Duterte says he did. Even if Trump later says he didn’t, how is anyone ever to know what really happened? Even suppose Trump didn’t support the program and even suppose, let’s say, his team is actually horrified that this is out there, what can they do about it? He has no credibility and neither do they.

This is where we’re at, folks. The future President of the United States just endorsed a government’s plan to execute its citizens in en masse, at will, without any form of legal process or any limit to how many people will be killed or how long it will go on. At least that’s what many people are saying. 

For a guy who has not even been sworn in yet he has done a LOT of fucking damage already.

valadilenne:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the meeting between Trump and Obama at the White House, and here’s the thing.

Obama used to be a law professor. This is key.

Law school is so, so different from college. 

In college, everyone expects there to be a “syllabus day,” kind of a grace period where they can show up and get the lay of the land, figure out the bare minimum that they can get away with, the TA gives everyone their office hours, there’s an introductory lecture, and everybody leaves a few minutes early to go take a nap or something. You do the bullshit assignments, you say something in class now and then to get your participation check mark, and figure out how badly you can do on the final and still pass. 

But see, in law school, all the methodologies you’ve spent the last 17 years operating under go out the window. Day one of law school is you being thrown into the deep end of the pool—you’ve had a homework assignment for two weeks now, and it’s to read the first 200 pages of your casebook. And now it’s you and the teacher (who is usually as smug as Alex Trebek) gauging and assessing what you managed to absorb while you skimmed through all those pages of reading so you could hurry up and get to the other 150 pages of reading for your next period class, in front of 50 people who are all smarter than you. And if you fuck up, or you didn’t do the reading, you are at the mercies of not just the professor, but the silent satisfied judgment of your peers. 

Law school is hard, and it will make you feel stupid and tongue-tied and like you don’t know anything and can’t form an argument—because you don’t, and you can’t. Everybody there has had a 4.0 since birth. Everybody there was the smartest kid in their class, and you’re all rabidly competing for a sliver of a chance at something down the road. It’s petty, and savage, fiercely entrenched in a culture of formalities and ceremony, and exactly like Washington DC. 

Yesterday when I was driving home, the NPR reporter talking about the Oval Office meeting mentioned that Trump had thought it was going to be a “getting to know you” type meeting, but that he was surprised when Obama stretched their talk out to 90 minutes before sending him along to the Capitol building where he met with congressional leaders for more lengthy meetings and stuff he didn’t want to do.

And he hasn’t even gotten to the actual job yet. 

So think about that as we go into this. 

Trump walked into the Oval Office like a two-pump-chump freshman thinking it was syllabus day, and what he got was the first day of law school, and he hadn’t done the reading like everyone else had, and Professor Obama decided to put him in the hot seat. 

This was Obama’s chance for the most perfect revenge that would never be picked up on as revenge at all. He was gracious, polite—everything he needed to be for a peaceful transition and a good review from the press. And that would continue when the doors were closed, because that’s the key. Not a Come to Jesus meeting, oh no. If Obama were smart—and he is very smart—he would have treated Trump like an equal, and brought the discussion to a level that assumes far more of Trump than anyone has so far. Assumes that he’s an adult who’s been paying attention. Statistics, esoteric minutiae about the executive branch procedure, economic growth numbers, labor figures, domestic policies, countries Trump has never even heard of, shit that would never in a million years have been in Trump’s campaign soundbites or digestible summaries. 

No way to escape. No aides to remember any of it for him. Just the two of them. 

Because that’s what would strike a precise chill into Trump. The thundering realization that he’s woefully unprepared for the hard, boring, thankless reality of this, and Obama’s version of a smooth transition won’t and shouldn’t include remedial civics. 

That’s what I saw when they shook hands and Trump stared at the floor instead of looking back into Obama’s face. He’s just figured out how little he knows about any of this. 

And that should give you a small glow of satisfaction, because after those meetings, Trump definitely has the 1L Terror Shits. In January, the night sweats and insomnia will show up, but for these first few weeks—nothing but diarrhea and self-doubt.