July 20 Open Thread: Trump Dreams of Biden
Is Donald Trump trying to goad Joe Biden into running for president? Sure seems that way. He just repeated his claim that Biden is the Democrat he’d most like as an opponent in the 2020 race. Biden is Hamletting his decision, but he’s not one to back down from a mano-a-mano challenge, and Trump knows it.
Josh Marshall has what seems like an accurate take on this week’s Trump treasonpalooza: GOP electeds and Trump cultistswon’t budge, but GOP-leaning People Who Matter are coming around to accepting that this much evidence can’t be coincidence. Today’s “get” on that front is Blake Hounshell, whom you’ve probably never heard of but is the Editor in Chief at Politico. The former Russiagate skeptic writes, “When I wrote, back in February, that I was skeptical that President Donald Trump would ever be proved to have secretly colluded with Russia to sway the 2016 election in his favor, I mistyped. What I meant to write was that I wasn’t skeptical.”
The NFL looks like one of those football teams that keeps getting penalized for false starts. A day after the media trumpeted the Miami Dolphins’ proposal to suspend kneeling players for four games, the league froze its recent ban on kneeling for discussions with the players’ union. Remember, this issue is gold for white nationalists/fans, whose love/envy/fear relationship with the league’s mostly minority workforce creates electoral energy through cognitive dissonance. Whatever the league ultimately does, Trump will turn it to his advantage.
Not that the cultists really care about this..
Michael Cohen Secretly Taped Trump Discussing Payment to Playboy Model
https://nyti.ms/2myEPqA
My favorite part is Giuliani claiming that it’s exculpatory evidence. Satire is unnecessary.
Josh Marshall adds a postscript to the article linked above:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/time-running-out
Update on the Cohen tape story: The payments being discussed by Trump and Cohen were not made by Trump but by AMI, the publisher of National Enquirer. As Josh Marshall notes, this is the first confirmation of collusion between Trump and AMI, which has been steadfastly denied.
The sourcing on this one seems sketchy to me, but if it’s true, his karma ran over his dogma:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-flags-hats-made-in-china-held-at-customs-trade-war-2018-7
Ole Joe had that rheumy eyed look.
Paid personal respects at Jesse Helms’ funeral.
No Joe. Go away.
This, from CHARLES P. PIERCE writing at Esquire, checks out -> “Of course, there’s a tape. This is Donald J. Trump we’re dealing with here, one of America’s most successful deadbeats. I’d tape him if he stopped me on the street and asked me for directions.”
More from Pierce:
(The circumstances under discussion are as tawdry as we’ve come to expect. Karen McDougal is the woman who says the president*’s come-on was to tell her how much she reminded him of his daughter. I’ll be going to dive into a pool full of Clorox now.)
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a22501158/michael-cohen-tapes/