Dopes and Babies

Boss Baby, via South China Morning Post.

Washington Post book promo, adapted from Philip Rucker's and Carol Leonnig's A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, coming out next week, on the meeting of 20 July 2017, arranged by Mattis as a kind of emergency education session for the president to familiarize him a little bit with the ins and outs of foreign and national security policy, on which Trump was imperfectly informed ("Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were located")—the meeting where Rex Tillerson came to understand that Trump was a "fucking moron":

“We should charge them rent,” Trump said of South Korea. “We should make them pay for our soldiers. We should make money off of everything.”

That's how to run a country like a business. It's all about the shareholders, whoever they are.

Tighten up

That gasping sound you hear around the media at the news that Donald Trump has been under an FBI counterintelligence investigation since early May 2017, looking into the question of whether he might be or have been effectively serving as an agent of the Russian government during his presidential campaign and into his presidency, at least as far as the Oval Office meeting of 10 May when he told Ambassador Kislyak and Foreign Minister Lavrov how pleased he was that he'd fired his FBI director because it relieved him of a lot of pressure, and passed them a tidbit of secret intelligence that happened to come from our Israeli allies, in a meeting that was barred to the US press but well reported, with pictures, in Russia—

That is, I mean, if there's anybody surprised to learn that that was when the FBI opened up a file with Donald Trump's name on it to join those on Papadopoulos, Page, Manafort, Stone, and Flynn in the ongoing investigation of who in the Trump campaign might possibly be a Russian agent, they have to either have been not paying attention or journalists.

Speaking of journalists, get Natasha Bertrand:

Lindsey Graham can't figure it out

Late 2013 was a particularly good time for peculiar and damaging interactions with women one doesn't know in the Ritz Carlton Moscow. If you've never heard this story from December 2013, you should.

Not only did Putin add me to the Interpol list, but the US simultaneously revoked my visa. @jaynordlinger explains https://t.co/d8KskJ5CTK

— Bill Browder (@Billbrowder) October 22, 2017

Sadly, no, Nordlinger's piece doesn't explain it at all, it's mostly National Review harrumphing, though I wouldn't disagree with that part of the message.

Browder is, as you remember, the old-Russia-hand investor (the grandson of Earl Browder, who was secretary general of the Communist Party USA during the Great Depression and World War II) who made an enormous fortune out of the privatization of the former Soviet economy in the 1990s, fell out with Putin and the oligarchs, and was subjected to various indignities, banned from entering Russia (he lives in London, having given up his US citizenship in 1998, I'm sorry to say, to avoid US taxes), his business offices raided and employees harassed and arrested, companies he owned outright stolen, and $230 million in tax payments from his companies to the Russian state robbed, upon which his Russian lawyer, Sergey Magnitsky, was arrested, imprisoned, tortured—authorities were trying to make him confess that he'd stolen the $230 million himself, on Browder's orders—and beaten to death.

President Trump is Not Authorized to Speak for the Trump Administration, Part 418

Via.

Via TPM, following up on this morning's post, h/t Jordan:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley on Sunday insisted that the United States will remain in the Iran nuclear deal.

President Donald Trump on Friday said he would likely pull the U.S. out of the deal unless Congress and the other nations in the seven-country accord made a handful of adjustments he demanded.

“Let’s see if we cannot address the flaws in the agreement by staying within the agreement, working with the other signatories, working with our European friends and allies within the agreement,” Tillerson said on CNN’s “State of the Union”....

“Before the Senate not long ago, your counterpart at the Pentagon, Secretary Mattis, was asked if he thought staying in the agreement was in the best interests of the United States,” Jake Tapper said, referring to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. “It sounds like you agree with that as well.”

“I do agree with that,” Tillerson said. “And I think the President does as well.”

On the same day on which President Trump has skipped the deadline, as he announced Friday he would, for sending the congressionally mandated letter to Congress certifying that Iran is in compliance with the JCPA and that the agreement is in the national security interests of the United States, on the grounds, we're told, that he does not think it is in the national security interests of the United States, not at all.

But then as usual, how would Trump even find out what he thinks? It's not like Fox News covers that in any depth.

Moron this after the break

The story in the strip is that Trump is supposed to be visiting Tampere, Finland, so the town authorities decide to put up a welcome billboard with a local dialect expression meaning "Good morning!"

Via Raw Story, Emperor Trump on the subject of being called a fucking moron by his secretary of state:

“I think it’s fake news,” Trump told Forbes, “but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests — and I can tell you who is going to win.”

He continued his public attacks on Tillerson’s diplomatic work with North Korea, which he said was helpful to the secretary of state.

“He was wasting his time,” Trump said. “I’m not undermining, I think I’m actually strengthening authority.”

I wish people would grasp when he says things like this that he's showing he is effectively not the president. When he tells Twitter that he's mad at Sessions for refusing to work his will with the Mueller investigation, he is acknowledging (correctly) that he has no power to tell the attorney general what to do, and when he tells Twitter, or Forbes, that he wishes Tillerson would stop attempting to negotiate with DPRK, he's suggesting (weirdly) that he has no power over the secretary of state either. He's identifying himself as a concern troll ("I'm just trying to give him some good advice"), not as the executive to whom the secretary reports.

Old Trump pops off

Wunschmädchen: Iréne Theorin as Kellyanne Conway and Thomas Mayer as President Trump in Andreas Kriegenburg's July 2012 staging of Die Walküre for the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, via Likely Impossibilities.

Poor old Rex, patiently bearing the cross God and Mrs. Tillerson gave him, as reported with tons of literary color commentary by Erin McBride for Independent Journal Review, whose editors apparently don't believe in cutting, or possibly don't exist, but innocently revealing, as has been widely noted this morning, that he doesn't really want his new job:

So why, then, did he want the gig?

“I didn’t want this job. I didn’t seek this job.” He paused to let that sink in.

A beat or two passed before an aide piped up to ask him why he said yes.

“My wife told me I’m supposed to do this.”