Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

[Thad]

Trump's (Bannon's) picks are so bad, I find myself actually hoping Comey stays on.

Anything short of ritual suicide is better than what Comey deserves. But I'm 100% certain that there is a basket full of guys who'd be even worse than he is, and Bannon has them all on speed dial.

Nothing to add to what I said then, really.

Though at least Bannon seems less influential than he was then. So who's picking Comey's replacement? Kushner?

(The "Kushner is Comey's replacement" joke has already been made, but hey, may as well get it out of the way.)

[Grath]

Trump's (Bannon's) picks are so bad, I find myself actually hoping Comey stays on.

Anything short of ritual suicide is better than what Comey deserves. But I'm 100% certain that there is a basket full of guys who'd be even worse than he is, and Bannon has them all on speed dial.

Nothing to add to what I said then, really.

Though at least Bannon seems less influential than he was then. So who's picking Comey's replacement? Kushner?

(The "Kushner is Comey's replacement" joke has already been made, but hey, may as well get it out of the way.)

Kushner's already busy being half of the administration. It'll be Donald Trump Jr.

[Mongrel]

Betting markets have Trey Gowdy as the current favourite to replace Comey. Followed by Giuliani, and then Sheriff David Clarke.

So uh, yeah, there's plenty of room for things to get worse.

[Mongrel]

On the plus side:



This is big because the probability that Trump condo sales were at least in part used to launder money is very high. Not that that means it was with Trump's explicit knowledge or anything, but condo buying abroad is a VERY common way to launder foreign money. If it turns out that some sketchy Russians laundered money through Trump condos, it's not going to look good even if Trump had nothing to do with it (and the odds of that are...).

[Mongrel]

Also, a possible answer to the question posed by the thread title is "Draft The Rock to run for President".



I really, really like the thought process that led to the word "future" being in that quote.

[Mongrel]

Some more tentatively good news:

By a 54 - 38 percent margin, American voters want the Democratic Party to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives. This is the widest margin ever measured for this question in a Quinnipiac University poll, exceeding a 5 percentage point margin for Republicans in 2013.

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-de ... aseID=2456

And check out question #9:

9. What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump? (Numbers are not percentages. Figures show the number of times each response was given. This table reports only words that were mentioned at least five times.)

idiot 39
incompetent 31
liar 30
leader 25
unqualified 25
president 22
strong 21
businessman 18
ignorant 16
egotistical 15
asshole 13
stupid 13
arrogant 12
trying 12
bully 11
business 11
narcissist 11
successful 11
disgusting 10
great 10
clown 9
dishonest 9
racist 9
American 8
bigot 8
good 8
money 8
smart 8
buffoon 7
con-man 7
crazy 7
different 7
disaster 7
rich 7
despicable 6
dictator 6
aggressive 5
blowhard 5
decisive 5
embarrassment 5
evil 5
greedy 5
inexperienced 5
mental 5
negotiator 5
patriotism 5

He's also been pegged at a historic 50% Strongly Disapprove rate.

[Bal]

FBI Director Joe Arpaio is going to teach crime who's boss.

[Thad]

Now there's a nominee I KNOW McCain would actually vote against, instead of just saying he would and then turning around and voting to confirm.

Dude may be all talk, but he's sincere in his hatred of Arpaio.

[Büge]

[Rico]

"It depends on what the meaning of in is."

[Thad]

The most comforting thing about the Trump Administration is that their incalculable malice has, time and again, been surpassed by even greater incompetence.

All signs suggest that Trump and Sessions seriously believed that people would buy the "he's being fired because we're so appalled by his unethical behavior that won us the election" excuse, and that Democrats would praise them and the news media would be indifferent.

It also seems plain that, if this is because there's something in the Russia investigation that Trump or his people didn't want the FBI to find (and I haven't heard any other explanation that's more plausible to explain Trump's motivation here, though "He was just pissed off at Comey and fired him" is entirely within the realm of possibility; it could have just been a simple, petty act by a simple, petty man), then Trump just increased the possibility that the FBI will find it, because the rank and file really aren't going to like this. And if he puts one of his stooges in charge to try and bury the investigation, it'll actually do the opposite and galvanize the lifetime civil servants in the agency.

Maybe. Who the fuck knows, really?

Meanwhile, I can't help noticing that most Congressional Republicans haven't said anything about this. They're in their usual wait-and-see-how-this-plays-out mode.

[McDohl]

Yeah, because Congressional Republicans are a cowardly, stupid lot. Orrin Hatch is trash, Mike Lee is trash, Rob Bishop is trash, Jason Chaeffetz is trash, Mia Love is trash...and that other guy from Utah, whoever.

[Thad]

Right; as usual, they're triangulating. Min-maxing. Balancing the question of how long they can ride the Trump train to pass whatever awful, awful legislation they want to ram through, with the question of just how close they are to that cliff it's clearly headed towards. They're ready to jump just as soon as it's the risks of staying onboard outweigh the benefits; they're just not sure when that's going to be.

[Mongrel]

This whole transcript is amazing.

[Mongrel]

[Yoji]

Do we have an emote yet with someone ripping their own skull in half? Because goddamn, I've met grade school kids with more cunning and subtlety. Either that or he must think we're dumber than cement.

EDIT: I just thought "I wonder what Kieth Olbermann thinks about all this?" But it's probably a safe assumption that he's turned into an incandescent orb of rage.

...yup, I just checked. I just typed "GQ" into my address bar and my browser started to smoke.

[Mongrel]

Well, seems like there's a race on to the bottom of the dumb barrel right now, so who knows:

[Mothra]

[Mongrel]

I mean that's the thing, right? Russia doesn't even need an inside man.

[Mongrel]

That Clint Watts guy seems on the ball. Someone should recruit him!