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Trump loses it as Republicans revolt

On Friday, President Donald Trump “freaked out” in a lengthy Truth Social rant in which he declared that he would not sign a bipartisan housing bill “in PROTEST” of Republicans’ unwillingness to pass his election overhaul legislation.

As the Daily Beast explains, “Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent the bill, passed with bipartisan support, to the president’s desk despite Trump blindsiding GOP leaders on the day of the signing ceremony by canceling the event at the last minute. The move to send the housing bill to the president’s desk set the clock ticking for the legislation to become law with or without his signature.”

Even so, Trump blasted a rambling refusal, posting, “I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97 percent with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats.”

He went on to declare that failure to pass the act would be “crazy” and “ a serious threat to any politician who votes against it!” He made yet another call to “terminate” the filibuster, which would allow the Senate to pass “this, and every other Bill that true Republicans have ever dreamt of.”

The president continued, claiming that if Democrats retake power, the first thing they'd do is end the filibuster, “and I will no longer be able to call them Dumocrats again! The title of DUMB will revert to the Republicans who allowed this horrible calamity to happen to our Party, and our Nation, itself!”

According to the Daily Beast, “If the president does not sign the bill, it becomes law anyway ten days after it is sent to his desk. The president did not say whether he would veto it, but the legislation, which passed with overwhelming support, has a veto-proof majority.”

The housing bill, called the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, is intended to ease the housing affordability crisis, which has become a top issue for Americans across the political spectrum. But when Trump was recently asked by reporters whether he supported the legislation, he said, “It’s a yawn. Some people say it’s wonderful. To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) posted a clip of Trump’s statement to social media, asserting, “He truly doesn’t give a damn about you.”

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White House agenda in meltdown as Trump drifts 'further from reality'

On Tuesday, a conservative journalist offered a stark assessment of President Donald Trump’s recent behavior, writing that the Commander in Chief has “drifted further from reality.” What’s more, the White House agenda has been thrown into increasing chaos as a growing number of people “wake up” to his lies.

This is according to Bulwark contributor Andrew Egger, who writes, “It’s been stranger than usual, watching Donald Trump operate this week. The president has long lived on a different planet from the rest of us — a world defined by his own personal information bubble of yes-men and online fans shouting his praises. But it’s rarely been so clear just how far Trump’s planet is from our reality.”

Egger notes the example of the war with Iran, explaining, “To hear the president tell it, America is forever on the verge of total victory. He is perpetually giving the mullahs one last, last, last chance to surrender before he turns their country into a parking lot — then inventing some pretext to call off the attack, pretending Iran has waved some secret white flag and is ready to make a deal.” But after several such cycles, “Iran is barely bothering even to participate in this charade.”

Trump did it again over the weekend, threatening to bomb Iran using “Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II,” before calling it off with claims that a deal had been struck that would open the Strait of Hormuz and end the Iranian nuclear program. As Egger writes, “We’ve seen this movie before: What Trump is describing is essentially the memorandum of understanding that he signed back in June, which has been out of force for weeks. This time, however, his assertions are even more fanciful: No such deal exists, and no talks are ongoing.” Iran said as much, which “led to another tantrum from Trump, who called Iran ‘unbelievably duplicitous’ in a post yesterday, but declined to resume his threats of devastating military action.”

Egger also raises the example of Trump’s Reflecting Pool debacle, which blew up in U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s face over the past week. As Egger explains, “After contriving a government-wide effort to lie that the pool’s lining had been damaged by vandals, including ex-Olympian David Hearn, the administration quietly dropped the charges and admitted what had been obvious all along: The lining had been faultily installed. But this was not obvious to everyone. Donald Trump spent yesterday spinning up a totally different tale: that Hearn was guilty, that a hostile judge in the case had been ‘really vicious,’ and that his handpicked D.C. prosecutor had simply wilted under the pressure. Pirro ‘choked,’ he complained to reporters. She had ‘folded like an umbrella.’”

“Pirro could never have done anything else,” notes Egger. “She wasn’t going to risk getting herself disbarred over hallucinated damage to the Reflecting Pool. But her position in the White House now dangles by a thread. Trump dressed her down in a phone call Saturday, then summoned her to the White House yesterday evening for more recriminations. Whether Pirro will survive the trip back to our planet remains to be seen.”

“Every time you look, Trump seems to have drifted further from our reality,” writes Egger. “His poll numbers have never been worse, but don’t try to tell him that: ‘My REAL Polling Numbers,’ he insisted yesterday, ‘are the best they have ever been.’” Egger goes on to list a litany of examples from the different reality on “Trump’s planet:” the constant AI slop posts, reposts of articles from March declaring how well the war is going, lying brags about his golf game, and more.

“Trump has spent a decade trying to drag us along the path of his own suspended reality,” Egger concludes, “but something has snapped; the real world has moved back onto its own course. Trump’s planet — where America is the hottest country in the world, Iran has been brought to its knees, vandals who destroyed the Reflecting Pool will be brought to justice, and he is extraordinarily popular and oh so good at golf — is so far from Earth it can no longer be seen with the naked eye. And as more and more people begin to wake up to this fact, the president is making no effort to reverse thrust. Already his world cannot be seen except through our most powerful telescopes; soon we may be unable to see him at all.”

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Trump biographer alleges Trump cleaned 'incriminating documents' from Graham's house

On Tuesday, amid reports that the FBI had swarmed the home of Lindsey Graham following his death, a leading biographer of President Donald Trump offered a theory on the agents’ shady intentions.

“I couldn't understand why the FBI was investigating Lindsey Graham's death—in the absence of any suspicious toxicology report in the autopsy,” posted Seth Abramson, who penned a trilogy of bestselling books on the Trump administration’s corruption, “until I realized it gave Trump and his lawyer Kash Patel an excuse to enter Graham's house and remove potentially incriminating documents.”

Since Graham’s death over the weekend, there has been a wave of conspiracy theories purporting that he was poisoned by Russia over his advocacy for sanctions, despite a medical examiner’s assertion he died of “aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.” When Trump was asked about his thoughts regarding poisoning, he rambled, “Just to answer the conspiracy theory, I’d love to say yes, but I think he — he had some problems. And his father died just about at the same age. … I’m a believer in the racehorse theory, you know, if you have problems, you have problems. And he had some problems that were a little bit deep-seated and not easy to find.”

Then when nearly 20 FBI agents were spotted at Graham’s home, asked by reporters whether the senator’s demise was under investigation, Trump gave the shrugging reply, “I don’t see a lot of evil there. I know there’s all sorts of conspiracy theories going along, and I think the FBI is wasting their time if they’re doing that.”

FBI Director Kash Patel has been involved with the matter personally, giving credence to Abramson’s theory. While the author didn’t say specifically what incriminating documents the administration could be after, one reply suggested that it could be linked to the investigation into Trump’s meddling in the 2020 Georgia presidential election.

“Trump wants to know what Lindsey Graham told the Georgia grand jury,” posited Mary Pat Flynn, who sued Trump in a trademark dispute in 2016. “Trump wants to know why Trump was indicted in Georgia, but Lindsey Graham wasn’t.”

While Patel has claimed that the FBI is just present at Graham’s home to support local law enforcement, many aren’t buying it.

“You don't send 20 FBI agents to a residence for a ‘routine’ check,” posted Jamie Bonkiewicz, who famously had the Secret Service show up at her door after posting online about White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. “You know they are clearing out Lindsey Graham's computers, correspondence, and personal notes. They are protecting this administration by wiping away any incriminating evidence.”

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'There’s a bridge I will sell you': Mary Trump roasts White House logic

President Donald Trump’s niece, psychiatrist Dr. Mary Trump, has previously commented on her uncle’s apparent cognitive decline and mental “downward spiral.” On Wednesday she transferred her analytical lens from the president’s psychological state to how he and his advisers are trying to manipulate the public to ignore America’s problematic economy.

“Last week, we learned that America lost 23,000 jobs in July,” Dr. Trump posted on X on Wednesday. “And it turns out that in May and June, we added 103,000 fewer jobs than had originally been reported. Is that a good thing? Well, to find out, we just need to ask Economic Council director Kevin Hassett.”

Trump played a clip of Hassett saying “over the last couple of years, there were millions of revisions, and the bottom line is that if you look at the overall economy, then things are really, really booming.”

The psychiatrist responded by saying, “Pro tip for future economists to determine whether or not the country is strong — or maybe I should say the degree to which an economy is strong — just look at how many jobs we're losing. Because according to inappropriately smiley person Kevin Hassett, the more jobs we lose, the better it is for us.”

She concluded, “By the way, if you believe that, there's a bridge just down the street I will sell you.”

Speaking exclusively to AlterNet Dr. Karl Widerquist, Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University–Qatar, expressed shock at Hassett’s assertion.

“I did not understand the logic of the person who was saying that losing jobs is better,” Widerquist told AlterNet. “Now, jobs are not the only measure of economic health. And jobs, quite frankly, are not what the working class most needs. What the working class most needs is better wages. But more hiring indicates greater demand for jobs, which indicates a healthier economy and a greater likelihood that wages are going to go up.”

He concluded that “the more demand there is for jobs, the more likely wages are gonna go up. Less demand for jobs is almost never good for working people. It's usually really not that good for the owners of capital either, because their demand for jobs only goes down overall, usually, when the economy is in a bad situation, which isn't good for anybody.”

Trump himself has made it clear that he does not prioritize fixing the economy, from describing the affordability crisis as a “Democrat hoax” to telling reporters “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”

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White House leaks expose 'sleepwalking' Trump’s 'physical and cognitive decline'

White House aides are desperate to keep President Donald Trump focused on issues that actually matter to American voters, but warn he has become “extremely distracted.” According to leaks from within the White House, Trump’s inability to stay on task suggests the alarming degree of his “physical and cognitive decline," with the Daily Beast reporting that these are not casual rumors: “These aides are speaking out because they fear Trump is almost literally sleepwalking into a midterm disaster.”

This information comes via Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as White House strategic communications director during Trump’s first term. Speaking with CNN on Wednesday, she revealed that “the president continues to seem extremely distracted. White House advisers — I talk to many of them — they simply want him to focus on the economy, yet he will not do that.”

“For some reason, he wants to talk about virtually everything but the economy and lowering the cost of living,” she continued. And because of his inattention to the economy, she predicted, “the midterms don’t look great for Republicans,” adding, “I think it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the House is going to flip.”

As the Daily Beast notes, “A CNN poll, released the same day, shows Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted to an astonishing 34 percent. That’s the lowest number, the network notes, since the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021, at the end of his first term. A litany of scandals, controversies, and blunders have driven that number steadily down over the past 18 months. None more so than his handling of the economy, with a staggering two-thirds of respondents saying the president’s policies have ‘worsened economic conditions in the country.’”

While polls have consistently shown not only that the economy and cost of living are Americans’ foremost concerns, but that they are the very reason voters took a second chance on Trump in the first place, he has repeatedly claimed that affordability is a Democratic “hoax” created to make him look bad.

“It was a word, you know, made up by the Democrats: affordability,” Trump declared at a rally earlier this month. “They said, affordability. I said, I've been here one day. Don't worry, I'll take care of it. And we're taking care of it.”

It’s not the first time he’s made such an assertion. “It’s a con job. I think affordability is the greatest con job,” he said in December. Then later the same month, he ranted, "They use the word 'affordability,' and that's their only word. They say, 'Affordability,' and everyone says, 'Oh, that must mean Trump has high prices.' No, our prices are coming down tremendously. They have a new word. They always have a hoax. The new word is 'affordability.'"

But the numbers don’t agree. According to tracking by NBC News, grocery prices have marched up steadily or remained stubbornly high over the course of his second term. Gas prices have exploded since Trump launched war with Iran, hitting an increase of over 30 percent as of late July. Because of these and other factors, consumer sentiment has plunged to an all-time low.

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'MAGA paradox' unravels as White House leaks expose Trump’s weakness

Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte and The New Republic's Greg Sargent spoke Friday for The Daily Blast podcast and agreed that President Donald Trump's "MAGA paradox" is getting increasingly complicated for him.

Marcotte explained that the MAGA paradox describes Trump loyalists' conflicting perceptions of him. According to Marcotte, they see Trump as "an all-mighty leader who knows everything and can do everything and is the greatest leader of all time ... also he can't ever be expected to know anything, be responsible for anything, etc[.]"

Sargent said that because Trump truly believes because the United States has "limitless strength" and "unlimited power," he also believes he has those powers "because he couldn't possibly be weak in any way."

"So, you can really see how he goes from there to not really paying close attention to little details, like what the war that he started is doing to our weapons stockpile," Sargent added.

The Washington Post on Thursday reported that Trump got into a heated exchange last week with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, saying he thought the depleted stockpile problem was fixed.

"He has a very childish vision of what American military might is," said Marcotte. "We definitely have a large military — one of the most expensive in the world. But it's not limitless."

She added that it also isn't strong enough that it can "crush enemies" the way Trump seems to believe it can.

Sargent said that what is striking is that at no point has anyone asked questions about why the president of the United States had no idea what the status of the U.S. munitions stockpile was.

Marcotte said that this goes back to the MAGA paradox. "He is blameless always, and always, he is like a baby," she said.

Sargent said that it appears "Trump's child brain associates small munitions stockpiles with a weak presidency. So he knows he must instantly say, 'our munitions stockpiles are very, very big,' which he thinks will show that he's very, very strong."

Because Trump "is a weak and pathetic figure," it turns out that the manufactured power that motivated MAGA has become "a ridiculous over read. They're all like those cartoon characters who run off of a cliff and look down and realize there's nothing under them anymore."

Marcotte said that most in Trump's orbit would never have the intelligence or experience to ever have such a high-profile position normally. She explained that there is political science research about why there is so much incompetence in authoritarian regimes.

"Donald Trump only values loyalty and the willingness to flatter him. So a lot of people who would never — on any planet would Pete Hegseth be the Defense Secretary for a competent president. I mean, the man was a weekend Fox News host," Marcotte laughed. "And you can just go down the list."

She added that she believes many of these officials have convinced themselves that MAGA is here to stay because the alternative — "looking in the mirror and realizing they're taking this job because they know this is their only pathway to success — is kind of a really painful admission."

"They all need therapy. Lots and lots of therapy," she said.

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Flood of new White House leaks are unraveling Trump's cover stories

Even more leaks are emerging from President Donald Trump's administration, exposing some of the humiliating aspects of the story surrounding the gifted Qatari jet he flew to the NATO summit.

Speaking to press critic Margaret Sullivan on Thursday, The New Republic's Greg Sargent pointed out that the Wednesday reports revealed the president abandoning key members of his Cabinet and staff as a decoy for Iran. It was reported late Wednesday that U.S. intelligence never fully believed the threat intelligence to begin with.

The ordeal began when President Donald Trump was told of a credible threat from Iran on his life. Since Turkey shares a 350-mile border with Iran, the administration cooked up a scheme to hide the president in a catering truck and shift him over to Secretary Pete Hegseth's plane.

Sargent said, "Now new leaks from inside the administration are making this whole affair look considerably darker."

The White House is dealing with the leaked information and conducting an investigation by the chief of staff and the director of the FBI. On Wednesday, it was revealed who was on the decoy plane and that the president abandoned the safety of Secretary of State Marco Rubio while making members of the press sitting ducks.

It was then leaked to the Washington Post on Wednesday evening that the CIA didn't buy the intelligence that came from Israel.

One official said that the claims of threats against Trump’s life were “Israeli-derived, not U.S.-generated, and viewed as low confidence.”

“As the President has said, he has faced numerous threats on his life, including ones from Iran, and every measure is taken to ensure his safety,” a U.S. official said in a statement to the Post. “The United States Secret Service’s core mission is protecting the President, which they achieved.”

"It appears several of Trump’s most loyal aides were transferred to the secret plane with him, even as reporters were not informed about any of this and were left on the decoy plane as well," explained Sargent. "All this neatly symbolizes Trump’s abusive and authoritarian relationship with the media."

Trump hasn't been known for treating the press fairly, Sullivan explained.

"He has treated the press in a very unusual and very bad way for years now, and unfortunately, many members of the mainstream media don’t seem to care, or they don’t know what to do about it," said Sullivan. "But they keep covering him in this very normalizing way. Like, 'Well, he’s the president, so therefore we have to believe everything he says,' or, you know, treat it with a great deal of deference."

"And, you know, this, I think, is a very vivid example of what he thinks of them," said Sargent.

Sargent also pointed to the leaks that keep coming out about it. On Trump's personal flight were "White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, Walt Nauta, another top aide, and Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant, who kind of functions like a security blanket to the president." The decoy flight had Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a slew of aides and the press.

Sullivan explained that the problem with not telling the press is that they could have hidden the information for security reasons, but instead they reported incorrect information. It's something she said the White House Correspondents’ Association should have stepped in to address.

"But was there a huge outcry? Was there a sense of, “My God, you can’t do this. Is it an absolute outrage? No," said Sullivan.

During a CNN discussion on Thursday morning, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said, "I think that's where the press has a right to be upset. If they were on that plane, they were basically made to be, in essence, bait."

CNN host Audie Cornish questioned, "I wonder if the staff was upset and that's why it got to the press. Do you know what I mean? Like, there were some people who were like, wait, what? Like we were all left behind as well?"

Critics like Jim Acosta, Jon Stewart, and John Oliver have mocked Trump for his weakness, and comparing it to the evening that Trump was rushed to the bunker to protect him from protesters a few blocks away.

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Trump banned this word from the White House to appease the NRA: ex-Trump official

In the wake of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 students and faculty were killed, the Trump administration commissioned a report on how to stop such massacres. The White House warned the report authors, however, not to use the word “firearm” at all in an attempt to appease the powerful NRA lobby.

“Think about that for just a moment,” wrote ex-Trump official Miles Taylor, who revealed this incident in an article published in Defiance News on Tuesday. “This was a document commissioned because a gunman had slaughtered children in a school, and the White House wanted the guns edited out of it altogether.” He says that at the time, he and the Homeland Security colleague tasked with composing the report noted that it was “like writing a report on flood safety that never mentioned the rain.”

Then when the report offered the “seemingly modest suggestion” that the government “study — just study — whether the minimum age to buy a firearm should be raised to twenty-one, the same as the drinking age,” writes Taylor, “Trump was terrified of losing the support of the NRA, an organization that would bristle at the mere mention of the subject. So White House staff demanded the gun lobby be allowed to review the report before it went public.” The report’s author ultimately resigned in disgust before it was released, and when it did come out, rewrites ensured that “the final report reached the conclusion the gun lobbyists had wanted,” which happened to be “the opposite of what the government’s own experts had advised.”

Taylor — a security expert who served in the administrations of President George W. Bush then President Donald Trump, spending two years in the Department of Homeland Security under the latter — related this amidst a wider warning about the influence the NRA has on Trump, whose “changes to federal gun policy, it seems to me, are much more about getting rich than gun rights. And the moves represent the culmination of a tidal shift that began in the first administration.”

Now, according to Taylor, “Trump’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) proposed a rule that would let gun dealers mail guns directly to people’s homes for the first time. This would replace the current system, where online-bought weapons must be routed through a licensed store for an in-person background check. It would be one of the most consequential changes to American gun policy in decades,” resulting in a projected 3.3 million firearms being purchased by mail per year.

And who, writes Taylor, stands to cash in? “Among others, the president’s eldest son. Donald Trump Jr. sits on the board of GrabAGun, an online retailer that bills itself as the ‘Amazon of guns,’ and he holds a stake in the company” — yet another instance of Trump’s sons profiting off his position.

Miles notes that this regulatory change is one of some three dozen such rollbacks the administration is pushing, “from narrowing background checks on some gun sales to loosening restrictions tied to mental illness. Even the ATF itself was worried about the latter proposal. The agency flagged that the mental illness rollback could contribute to mass casualty events, a warning that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly dismissed.”

“You don’t have to be a Second Amendment critic to find this alarming,” asserts Taylor. “I’m not. Personally, I think responsible gun ownership and sensible public safety were never enemies. Most gun owners I know support background checks and think keeping firearms out of the hands of people in acute crisis is just plain common sense, not some kind of evil ‘confiscation’ of personal rights. In fact, most Americans writ large agree with those perspectives when asked in surveys.”

He asserts that, “Gun owners should be the first to express concern. Public policy made behind closed doors like this — with lobbyists hand-editing government reports and cheering on changes that will enrich the president’s family — can be corrupted in both directions.” Taylor emphasizes that he himself owns and carries firearms, so “it should tell you something that I’m spooked by what the Trump administration is planning to do.”

“You’ll see the results soon,” he warns. “Trump’s gun-selling bonanza isn’t about upholding the Constitution. To any sensible observer, you can see it’s about cashing in. After future mass shootings, we’ll be able to ask ourselves more honestly: at what cost?”

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Trump 'bombed' at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — but he stayed awake

President Donald Trump does not appear to be the entertainer he once was, reports CNN’s Brian Stelter.

The president’s insult-laden speech drew mostly stunned silence from the audience as he attacked a bunch of journalists at the pared-down recap of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday.

“Trump bombed at the ... Dinner Friday night. He knew he was bombing, too, and he even tried to meta-joke his way out of it,” reports Stelter. “But no. Even the president’s jokes about his bad jokes fell flat, and he was widely ridiculed for the comedy routine afterward.”

In a “rambling hour-long speech,” Stelter said Trump insulted journalists by name, “repurposed old nicknames for political opponents, made a strange number of fat jokes that weren’t funny at all, and sounded mad at his unnamed writers for giving him weak material to work with.”

“Does anyone understand this stuff?” he said at one point during the razzball speech. The answer, said Stelter, was “generally no. But more than anything, the speech was just … boring.”

“Trump’s low energy led more than one TV executive to muse that the president had stumbled upon a new technique against the media: Tank the ratings with a snoozefest,” added Stelter. “Some attendees said they were surprised that Trump didn’t bring more original material, given how highly anticipated the dinner was, in part because his attendance ended his years-long boycott of the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual fundraiser.

Many journalists refused to attend, and the dinner was a small-scale redo of the April 26 black-tie affair that got called off after a gunman tried to rush into the ballroom of the Washington Hilton hotel, so Trump joked about bullet proof vests and how attendees hid under their tables while his staff bravely stood on tables and directed crowds.

He gave shoutouts to media executives he considers propaganda allies, namely Larry and David Ellison, who took control of Paramount last year, killed off the high-rating show of late-night comic gadfly Stephen Colbert, destroyed legacy news show 60 Minutes and turned CBS News into a ratings flop.

Ellison is now trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, and the parent company of CNN.

“Under my administration, a once-feared and powerful regime that relentlessly attacked America has finally been toppled,” Trump said, referring to changes implemented by Ellison’s handpicked editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss. “Their former leaders have been removed, and they’re now being run by a gay dictator facing internal divisions. But I, for one, wish Bari Weiss all the best at CBS News. She’s a wonderful woman.”

“The more resentful and recycled Trump’s speech got, the more attendees seemed to tune it out,” said Stelter.

One of the most intriguing parts of the evening involved the correspondents’ association’s annual journalism awards presentation, said Stelter, when Trump looked on while journalists earned multiple prizes, including one for “courage and accountability” in reporting that went to a team of Wall Street Journal reporters for their investigative work on a lewd birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein with Trump’s name on it.

“Trump quickly filed a $20 billion lawsuit against the Journal, revealing reporter Khadeeja Safdar’s home address,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said while presenting the award. To which “Trump laughed and threw up his hands in an aw shucks-like gesture,” according to Stelter.

“Her family had to be relocated,” Blitzer added more somberly. “The Journal was kicked off of Air Force One, but the reporters continued to file revelatory stories.”

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Trump proves incompetence as White House 'leak probe' gets leaked: whistleblower

On Friday, President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into who leaked about security issues with his Qatari-gifted Air Force One. “Within 24 hours,” however, “the leak probe leaked,” and according to Miles Taylor — who himself acted as a whistleblower during the first Trump administration — this incident underscores the “incompetent” nature of the Trump administration as well as the danger it poses.

As Taylor explains, last week, “the New York Times reported something the White House desperately didn’t want Americans to know. The president’s shiny new jet (the $400 million palace-in-the-sky ‘donated’ by Qatar) isn’t actually safe. According to the paper’s sources, the plane lacks the defensive countermeasures custom-built for Air Force One, including the advanced antimissile systems that accompany the original plane. The leaks about the jet validate worries of national security commentators, myself included, who’ve warned that Trump’s scandal-plagued acceptance of a foreign jet would be riddled with security concerns.”

These leaks contradicted Trump’s asserted reasoning for bringing the old Air Force One to last week’s NATO summit in Turkey, and in the wake of the revelations, “officials described him as ‘livid,’ humiliated that the world had learned his prized gift is a flying vulnerability rather than a flying fortress.”

“So,” writes Taylor, “the president did what wannabe strongmen do. On Friday night, FBI Director Kash Patel was on the tarmac and about to depart for Chicago…when he was abruptly summoned to the White House. There, presumably at Trump’s direction, he oversaw the opening rounds of a leak probe into the New York Times journalists and whoever their sources were. Patel spent eight hours directing the probe from the White House, not FBI headquarters, a staggering departure from decades of practice meant to keep the bureau’s investigative machinery out of a president’s personal reach.”

This didn’t work out how the president hoped, however, as “within 24 hours, the newspaper that was the target of the FBI’s probe and Trump’s ire, the New York Times, published a detailed account of the entire operation. Sources were sharing details with them about Trump’s rage, Patel’s summons, the White House’s hands-on direction of the investigation, and the unusual nature of all of it. The details were attributed to ‘people with knowledge of the situation,’ which we can surmise are administration officials and/or people inside or close to the FBI. The leak probe leaked.”

According to Taylor, that a president would personally oversee an FBI probe into reporters who embarrassed him is “unprecedented,” but even more surprising is the fact that there are those in his orbit who are so ready to expose his misdeeds, almost as fast as he commits them. His administration is “too corrupt to hide it and too incompetent to cover it up.”

All of this comes, says Taylor, as a sign that “the censorship campaign itself is escalating to a dramatic new phase. Donald Trump’s personal involvement in these inquiries is an ominous sign for our democracy. And recent actions show that his media crackdown is more extensive than previously understood.” But, writes Taylor, the White House “keeps failing to account for” a critical consideration: “At every step, Americans are refusing to surrender in the censorship war. I’ve got to imagine that Trump is furious that his thuggery isn’t working, which is why he’s become more, well, thuggish.”

Taylor concludes with a dire warning, writing, “None of this is to make light of the fact that the president is waging an ominous war against the First Amendment. We should be clear-eyed. There are likely dimensions of this campaign we cannot yet see, including the quiet use of investigative and intelligence powers against reporters, sources, and critics in ways the Constitution expressly forbids. If you see a few ants on the table, there are hundreds underneath it or in the walls. The administration’s public actions against the media are a signal that there’s a flurry of activity behind the scenes.”

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White House advisers in trouble as Trump risks looking 'like a loser'

President Donald Trump likes to pick winners, not losers. And when he picks a ‘loser’ in a primary or general election he tends to get irritated. And nobody wants to be Trump’s advisor when he’s irritated, said Intelligencer political columnist Ed Kilgore.

That’s why advisors may be getting anxious about Trump’s endorsement in South Carolina’s Republican primary.

“One of the crosses Donald Trump has had to bear recently is a less-than-perfect record in endorsing Republican primary candidates,” said Kilgore on Tuesday. “His choices in high-profile gubernatorial nominating contests in Iowa and Georgia both lost to rivals who claimed to adore the 47th president despite their manifest willingness to rebel against his wishes. Trump’s fury at his advisers for steering him wrong peaked in South Carolina, where his gubernatorial endorsee, Pamela Evette, was struggling in a GOP runoff against yet another more-MAGA-than-thou rival, Alan Wilson, leading Trump in a panic to endorse Wilson as well, guaranteeing Evette’s demise.”

Now Trump is having fresh endorsement-obedience problems in the Palmetto State,” said Kilgore, where “absolutely every Republican pledges allegiance to him incessantly.”

When Lindsey Graham died without warning on July 11, the president and ally Gov. Henry McMaster quickly agreed to appoint Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to the seat for the remainder of the late senator’s current term. At first, no one expected her to run for the coveted full term, but when Trump endorsed her for the GOP nomination in the special primary, she announced she was in the race for real.

“But it turned out her Trump-blessed march to nearly seven years in the U.S. Senate (pretty good for someone who had never run for office) wasn’t a cakewalk after all,” said Kilgore.

Lame duck lame-duck S.C. congressman Ralph Norman hopped into the race before Trump’s endorsement — but he didn’t jump out after Trump’s endorsement. And then Norman’s colleague Russell Fry announced his own run.

Fry is no lame duck, and he may be endangering a potentially tiny 2017 GOP House majority because he would have to resign his House seat in January to assume the Senate spot if he wins.

“But more to the point, Fry is disrespecting President Trump right now,” said Kilgore. “His more-MAGA-than-the-official-MAGA-candidate posture isn’t unprecedented; it’s exactly what Iowa gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn and Georgia gubernatorial nominee Rick Jackson have claimed. But neither of those worthies was challenging a Trump endorsement so soon after it was issued.”

Worse, other Republicans are also defying Trump and already in the race including far-right candidate Mark Lynch. Now that Norman and Fry have broken the seal, Kilgore said other GOP contenders might jump in as well.

“Polls will soon start popping up, and you have to wonder if Trump will again hedge his Palmetto State bets, particularly if his old buddy Fry is doing well against his new favorite, Darline Graham,” said Kilgore. “The contest could easily extend to an August 25 runoff if nobody wins a majority on August 11.”

“The days and weeks ahead may be painful for White House political advisers, whose lives could take a turn for the worse if Trump flubs another endorsement and looks like a loser,” Kilgore added.

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