Trump's Big CON: The Con Man is Exposed

UPDATE IV:  Will the Con Man be impeached?

"Trump has repeatedly, as a businessman, flouted the law. He kind of began his career by getting in trouble with the Department of Justice, which had a very strong case against him that he’d broken the Fair Housing Act. Reporting indicated that he’d broken the Cuban embargo in the 1990s, when that was a serious crime. Reporting also indicated that he had broken laws with respect to the employment of illegal immigrants, ironically contradicting his own campaign, and there are certainly laws that he could now break, for example, laws that ban torture.

Over the course of his entire business career, he has a pattern of playing fast and loose with the law, and letting statutes of limitations run out, settling cases, protracting lawsuits, walking away from failed deals. He also has a pattern and practice of not telling the truth. That is not just something that started when he was a candidate.

His overriding pattern is Donald Trump first, and nothing else matters nearly as much. And when you’re not president, you can get away with that, you can walk away from things. But as president, you can’t. You are accountable for what you do and for what you say. And what is the ultimate accountability for a president? That accountability is impeachment." [Emphasis added]

Read the Washington Post, ‘Prediction professor’ lays out eight reasons Trump could be impeached.

UPDATE III:  As noted before, Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man.

Who gave this man power?

Read the Washington Post, Trump appears dazzled by being able to bomb Syria over dessert.

UPDATE II:  "On Wednesday, President Trump took to Twitter to inform Americans about how his administration was doing:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

One by one we are keeping our promises - on the border, on energy, on jobs, on regulations. Big changes are happening!
6:10 PM - 12 Apr 2017

This whole 'keeping our promises' theme is pretty interesting, because a lot of other things happened that suggest Trump might be in error. Here’s a sampling of the past 24 hours:

    OMB Director Mick Mulvaney told CNBC’s John Harwood in response to a question about Trump’s promise to eliminate the national debt, “it’s fairly safe to assume that was hyperbole. I’m not going to be able to pay off $20 trillion worth of debt in four years.”

    Trump told the Wall Street Journal that in a 10 minute conversation, Chinese President Xi Jinping had changed Trump’s mind on the leverage China could exercise over North Korea.

    Trump also told the Journal that he would not label China as a currency manipulator;

    Trump then told the Journal that he wants to keep the Export-Import Bank that he pledged to cut as a candidate

    After saying throughout his campaign that NATO was obsolete, Trump reversed course and said it was not obsolete at a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

    Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went to Moscow and said that “there is a low level of trust between our countries,” which seems at odds with Trump’s campaign rhetoric about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Again, let me stress that all of this happened within the past 24 hours alone.

As CNN put it, 'Within a few hours of extraordinary political shape-shifting, President Donald Trump abandoned stances that were at the bedrock of his establishment-bashing campaign.'"

Read the Washington Post, Trump fought the Blob and the Blob won. Why?

UPDATE: The Donald now realizes that reality sucks.

Recently he "remarked on a couple of occasions (health care, North Korea) that things are more complicated than he realized. The easiest solution to all of it is to tack to the middle. And if Bannon is sidelined — either officially or just has less power — the voices pushing Trump toward the middle could certainly be more successful in getting him there. Trump's policies are certainly malleable. "

Read the Washington Post, Is Trump flip-flopping toward the middle?

So many lies, so little time to refudiate.

Read the Washington Post:

Trump backs off fiscal pledges and adopts centrist policies that he once fought;

Trump on NATO: ‘I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.’;

Trump says he will not label China currency manipulator, reversing campaign promise;

3 big ways Trump is starting to sound like Obama on the economy.

No one should be surprised.

The Donald is clueless, willful ignorant, inept, habitually dishonest, unpleasant, and arrogant.

In other words, he’s a loser.

Trump's Big CON: 'I'll Rarely Leave the White House'

UPDATE VIII:  From the Washington Post: “The Center for American Progress has created a new web page that answers three questions at any given time: Is Trump at Mar-a-Lago? How much in total have taxpayers shelled out to support these trips? And what government programs (school lunches; Medicaid; Pell Grants) could that money cover?

Something tells us that those sums are going to climb to truly astonishing heights before this is all over."

UPDATE VII:  Where is the outrage?

"Conservatives frequently attacked Obama for spending on his travel while president . . .

[But] Donald Trump's travel to his private club in Florida has cost over an estimated $20 million in his first 80 days as president, putting the president on pace in his first year of office to surpass former President Barack Obama's spending on travel for his entire eight years."

Read CNN, Trump on pace to surpass 8 years of Obama's travel spending in 1 year.

UPDATE VI:  As of April 5, 2017, "Donald J. Trump has spent nine of his 11 weekends as president visiting at least one of his properties", he has visited Mar-a-Lago 17 times and his Palm Beach golf course 10 times.

Read The New York Times, Tracking the President’s Visits to Trump Properties, which notes that "Trump’s visits to properties owned, managed or branded by the Trump Organization amount to free publicity for the company and blur the line between his family business and presidential duties."

UPDATE V:  "For the eighth weekend in a row, President Trump has visited a property that bears his name. He has done so on 21 of the 66 days he has been in office, meaning that for the equivalent of three full weeks of his just-over-nine weeks as commander in chief, he has spent all or part of a day at a Trump property — earning that property mentions in the media and the ability to tell potential clients that they might be able to interact with the president. And, despite his insistence on the campaign trail that he would avoid the links — 'I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf,' he said in August — he has made 14 visits to his own golf courses since becoming president, likely playing golf on at least 12 of those occasions."

Read the Washington Post, Nearly 1 out of every 3 days he has been president, Trump has visited a Trump property.

UPDATE IV:  "President Donald Trump, once a critic of his predecessor's golfing, has visited one of his golf courses in Florida -- seemingly to play the sport -- five of the last seven weekends. . .

Trump has visited the two courses near his Mar-a-Lago estate -- Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach and Trump National Golf Course in Jupiter -- 10 times in the first two months of his presidency. . .

[B]efore he ran for president, Trump would tweet about Obama's golfing.

'Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the US, President Obama spent the day playing golf,' Trump tweeted in October 2014. 'Worse than Carter.'

Now, citing the President's privacy, Trump's aides are left trying to conceal the President's frequent golfing."

Read CNN, Trump, critic of Obama's golfing, regularly hits the links.

UPDATE III:  Read the Washington Post, Why President Trump’s frequent golfing is even more hypocritical than it seems.  

UPDATE II:  At least six times (Nov. 18, 2013, Sept. 9 & 26, 2014, Oct. 13 & 23, 2014, and May 21, 2016), Trump complained that Obama played to much golf.

Only 30 days in office, Trump has played golf 6 times.

Read also CNN, Trump's aides don't want to admit the President is golfing, which notes that "Trump even suggested during a 2016 event in Virginia, in a knock on Obama, . . . 'I'm going to be working for you, I'm not going to have time to go play golf,' and in comparison, Obama didn't play golf during his first three months in office"

UPDATE: If he just wanted rest and relaxation, Trump could use the Presidential retreat, Camp David, "a symbol of simple American values".

It is secluded and has "built-in security".

But Trump is a 'blue-collar billionaire'.

Read the Washington Post, Mar-a-Lago 3, Camp David 0. With Trump as president, is the rustic Md. retreat doomed?

"On Friday, President Trump and his entourage will jet for the third straight weekend to a working getaway at his oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.

On Saturday, Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr., with their Secret Service details in tow, will be nearly 8,000 miles away in the United Arab Emirates, attending the grand opening of a Trump-brand golf resort in the “Beverly Hills of Dubai.”

Meanwhile, New York police will keep watch outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, the chosen home of first lady Melania Trump and son Barron. And the tiny township of Bedminster, N.J., is preparing for the daunting prospect that the local Trump golf course will serve as a sort of northern White House for as many as 10 weekends a year.

Barely a month into the Trump presidency, the unusually elaborate lifestyle of America’s new first family is straining the Secret Service and security officials, stirring financial and logistical concerns in several local communities, and costing far beyond what has been typical for past presidents — a price tag that, based on past assessments of presidential travel and security costs, could balloon into the hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a four-year term. . . 

Trump’s frequent travel belies his repeated criticism of Obama as a 'habitual vacationer' enjoying taxpayer-funded golf getaways. It also comes after his own promises: He told the Hill newspaper in 2015, 'I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done.'"

Read the Washington Post, Trump family’s elaborate lifestyle is a ‘logistical nightmare’ — at taxpayer expense.

Trump's Big CON: He is the Hypocrite-in-Chief (or Coward-in-Chief)

UPDATE VI:  The Republi-CON party itself is hyper-partisan in support or opposition to war/the use of military force.

"In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 22 percent of Republicans supported the U.S. launching missile strikes against Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against civilians.

A new Post-ABC poll finds that 86 percent of Republicans support Donald Trump’s decision to launch strikes on Syria for the same reason. Only 11 percent are opposed. . .

For context, 37 percent of Democrats back Trump’s missile strikes. In 2013, 38 percent of Democrats supported Obama’s plan. That is well within the margin of error."

Read the Washington Post, Reflexive partisanship drives polling lurch on Syria strikes.

UPDATE V:  Trump isn't the only Republi-CON hypocrite.

"The Republican leaders of the House and the Senate this past week were quick to praise President Trump’s strike on Syria after an apparent chemical weapons attack. But in 2013, when President Barack Obama was weighing a strike, they were opposed."

Read the Washington Post, Ryan and McConnell flip-flop on use of force in Syria to deter chemical weapons.

Read also the Washington Post, Obama aides push back against criticism of inaction on Syria, which noted that Obama "proposed similar airstrikes in Syria to the ones President Donald Trump ordered this week, but were stymied by a Republican-controlled Congress reluctant to go along with the Democratic president’s plan."

UPDATE IV:  It's a different world when you are the one in charge.

"President Trump — who ran a presidential campaign excoriating interventionism, ridiculed the idea of action in Syria, voiced confidence we could leave Bashar al-Assad in place and reintroduced the noxious 1930s “America First” rhetoric — when confronted with the real world threw away all that refuse and launched a retaliatory missile strike on the airfield from which planes carrying sarin gas took off earlier in the week. . .

And that really is the rub: What comes next, and what is our strategy for Syria? It surely seems that contrary to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s remarks just a few days ago, we are not willing to stand aside with the false presumption the Syrian people can decide (in the fog of Sarin gas) the fate of Assad. Eliot Cohen, an ardent critic of the president, was pleased to see some action, but remarked to me that Trump’s missile strike was “Better than nothing. How much better than nothing is not clear, until you know what damage is done.” He added: “For this kind of thing to be effective, it really has to hurt the Syrian regime — and one cannot be sure whether or not it has.”"

Read the Washington Post, Trump launches cruise missile strike, eradicates 'America First'.

Trump should have targeted Assad, but at least he did something.

UPDATE III:  "Trump is now commander in chief. He must decide whether to continue our passive approach and watch continued genocide unfold or whether we chart a new course. Frequent Trump critic Eliot Cohen tweeted, 'Whining is cowardly & counterproductive.'"

Read the Washington Post, The Syrian genocide is now Trump’s problem. 

UPDATE II:  "Assad has continued to dress smart and kill with abandon. His security forces maintain jails where torture is common. His army drops “barrel bombs” on civilians. The extent of the killing, the torture, the attack on doctors and the bombing of hospitals are hard to envision and impossible to accept. Yet this week, both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a man of few words and no policies, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said it was no longer U.S. policy to rid Syria of Assad. A day or so later, Assad apparently used nerve gas. . .

No one can say with any certainty that Assad acted after the Trump administration shrugged indifference to his remaining in office. But it is not illogical to think so. The words of a U.S. president matter and are obsessively examined by foreign governments. They assume that these words mean something. They base policy on them. They sometimes kill on account of them. Vagueness is sometimes useful; it can also be deadly.

Read the Washington Post, Trump finally realizes the truth about Syria’s Assad. Now what?

UPDATE:  "As the Western world processed stomach-churning images of dead children, apparently murdered by chemical weapons, the president couldn’t help but take a potshot at his predecessor. 'These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution,' Trump said in a statement yesterday afternoon. . .

As he ripped Obama, Trump mentioned neither Russia nor Iran. Both countries are actively propping up Assad’s regime.

The president also offered no path forward, except to say that the savagery, which observers on the ground say killed at least 72 people, “cannot be ignored.” . .

This White House is stuck in permanent campaign mode. . .

This has been a pattern during Trump’s first 75 days in office. When it suits him, the president takes credit for his predecessor’s successes. More often, he points the finger. Trump’s unsubstantiated allegation that Obama 'wiretapped' his office is the most memorable illustration, but there are many others. After the botched raid in Yemen that killed a Navy SEAL, for instance, the White House claimed that the operation was authorized by the Obama team."

Read the Washington Post, Trump keeps blaming Obama. Fresh polls show voters don’t buy it., which includes 6 other 2013 tweets that warned Obama not to attack Syria.

In August 2013, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons that killed nearly 1,500 civilians, including at least 426 children.

After Obama threatened action, Republi-cons, including The Donald, warned Obama not to attack Syria.

On August 29, 2013, Trumps tweeted "What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval."

On September 5, Trump tweeted "AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!"

And on September 7, Trump tweeted"President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your "powder" for another (and more important) day!"

Now Assad is using chemical weapons again.

And Trump's response, blame Obama.

Read the Washington Post, A chemical weapons attack in Syria exposes Trump’s Assad problem.

Of course this should be no surprise, Trump is the 'I Want The Credit, Don't Blame Me' President.

Republi-CON Family Values, Alabama Edition

UPDATE IV: After an affair and an attempted coverup, and more than a year, we may finally learn more about Republi-CON Family Values, Alabama Edition.

And how did this man get elected?  It's all about the hate.

"'The idea that moral hypocrisy hurts you among evangelical voters is not true, if you’re sound on all of the fundamentals,' said Wayne Flynt, an ordained Baptist minister and one of Alabama’s pre-eminent historians. 'Being sound on the fundamentals depends on what the evangelical community has decided the fundamentals have become. At this time, what is fundamental is hating liberals, hating Obama, hating abortion and hating same-sex marriage.'"

Read The New York Times, For Alabama Christians, Governor Bentley’s Downfall Is a Bitter Blow.

UPDATE III:  "On Monday, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) made what appeared like a typical apology for a politician admitting to a sex scandal. At an unrelated public appearance, he asked for forgiveness from God, from those he hurt and from Alabama residents for his transgressions. . .

But wait a minute. Forgive him for what? Bentley hasn't ever admitted to the affair he has been accused of. He has denied having inappropriate physical contact with his now-former chief political adviser, even as state officials formally file an ethics complaint to see whether he used public money and personnel to carry out the alleged affair.

Most reasonable Alabama residents following this scandal (and many in the state are) would probably sum up their governor's weird apology this way: He's asking them for forgiveness for something everyone is pretty darn sure happened but he won't say happened. It's almost like he's speaking in code to his own state."

Read the Washington Post, As Alabama lawmakers move to impeach, Gov. Robert Bentley struggles to explain himself.

UPDATE II:  "Anyone who has doubts about the importance of journalists in 2016 need be acquainted only with the reporting team at AL.com, the largest statewide news organization in Alabama. The group's reporters cracked open a scandal involving their governor's alleged infidelity last week and have been covering the unpredictable fallout aggressively ever since."

Read the Washington Post, The inside story of how Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley’s sex scandal broke wide open.

Sadly, Northwest Florida's Mullet Wrapper doesn't do investigative journalism anymore.  

UPDATE:  Is The Lying Canadian (© NoBullU.com) a serial adulterer?

And why is that important?

Because "[e]xposing the hypocrisy of Republican legislators not only makes our political system more honest—it can actually change behavior."

Read Salon, Why Ted Cruz’s sex life matters: The GOP’s toxic “family values” charade deserves continued scrutiny.

He is the Republi-con Governor of Alabama, 73 and was married for 50+ years.

She is 30+ years younger, a married mother of 3 and his a political 'advisor', who he has paid $100,000s to 'assist' him, including $426,978 in 2014 during the Governor's reelection campaign.

Read:

Alabama Media Group, Shocking affair allegations, criminal charges and more: It's all Alabama politics,

Heavy, Rebekah Caldwell Mason: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know, and

Alabama Media Group, Gov. Robert Bentley had affair, says fired Alabama top cop.

Trump's Big CON: He Saved Us, Hallelujah

UPDATE V:  "China isn't manipulating its currency, and all Trump had to do was nothing. Success!"

Read the Washington Post, Trump finds his niche: fixing problems that no longer exist.  

UPDATE IV: The problem with lying is that it is hard to be consistent.

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s budget chief says Obama fudged jobs data. If that were true, he’d be able to prove it., which notes that "Mick Mulvaney, President Trump's budget director, accused the Obama administration on Sunday of doctoring federal data to minimize the number of Americans out of work."

So which is it: are the employment numbers to be believed and Trump has saved us, or can the President fake the numbers?

UPDATE III: "In the opening moments of his presidency, Donald Trump used his inaugural address to paint a picture of a bleak economy, where wealth was consolidated among a cadre of insiders while the Americans he promised to support were left to languish in 'carnage.'

On Friday, the president appeared to take a much brighter view of the American economy, keying off a monthly job growth report to declare, via a retweet of the conservative website Drudge Report, that the American economy was 'GREAT AGAIN: +235,000.'

But while Trump's fortunes have changed dramatically during his ascension from political outsider to president, it's not so clear that life has changed for many of his supporters who had been stuck in economic distress. Indeed, the jobs report that Trump now touts as proof of renaissance shows the economy largely on the same path it was before he took office.

Read the Washington Post, Trump is already claiming credit for a strong economy. But for his supporters, almost nothing has changed.

UPDATE II: "Not so long ago, however, Trump's view of the monthly jobs report, which comes courtesy of the nonpartisan federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, was markedly different. As recently as December, he described the report as “totally fiction.”

If there was any argument over whether Trump was flip-flopping on the jobs report at the precise moment it reflected positively on him, White House press secretary Sean Spicer laid it to rest Friday afternoon, telling reporters: 'I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly: 'They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.''"

Read the Washington Post, 19 times Trump called jobs numbers ‘fake’ before they made him look good.

UPDATE:  "President Trump has inherited an economy that set a record Friday with 77 consecutive months of job growth, or, as [he] put it, a 'mess.' . .

All Trump has to do is nothing. Which even an administration as dysfunctional as his might be able to do."

Read the Washington Post, The Obama recovery is about to make Trump look good.

Just 50 days ago we were damned to live in a rotten place

Now we sinner are saved!!!

Read the Washington Post, Trump team taking more and more credit for Obama successes and Trump keeps claiming he’s created U.S. jobs since Election Day. Not so.

Hallelujah, Praise Our Donald!!

Trump's Big CON: He Clings to Lies "Like a Drunk to an Empty Gin Bottle"

UPDATE:  Watching Trump is watching fabulism in action. He hears a comment, "lops off the all-important 'if' part, and takes it as a compliment. And then he takes that perceived compliment and amplifies it by a factor of about four; 'great president' becomes 'one of the great presidents in the history of the country.'

The question, as with all of Trump's falsehoods, is whether it's subconscious or deliberate — the 'Stupid or Liar' theory. Either he doesn't comprehend what Cummings was saying to him — which is a big problem in a president — or he chooses to completely misrepresent it — which is a big problem in a president."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s completely bizarre claim that a Democrat said he would rank among the greatest presidents.

Read also:

Trump's Big CON: Is He Lying or Delusional?

Trump's Big CON: When Does Trump Tell the Truth? 

Easier yet, read all the Trump's Big CON posts.

"The Wall Street Journal's normally Trump-friendly editorial board dropped a rhetorical bomb on the president, writing Wednesday that he clings to 'falsehoods' 'like a drunk to an empty gin bottle.' . .

'No doubt Mr. Trump considers that fake news, but if he doesn't show more respect for the truth most Americans may conclude he's a fake President.'

Read the Daily Mail, Trump clings to lies 'like a drunk to an empty gin bottle' says Wall Street Journal as Trump-friendly editorial board turns on the president.

Read also (if you have a subscription) the Wall Street Journal, A President’s Credibility, which discusses "the damage that Mr. Trump is doing to his presidency with his seemingly endless stream of exaggerations, evidence-free accusation, implausible denials and other falsehoods."

Even his friends and supporters are now realizing and admitting that Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man.

Trump's Big CON: His Enablers

UPDATE II:  "President Trump’s wild accusation and the right-wing media’s eagerness to support the claims of the Trump White House, working in cahoots with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), that there was nefarious “unmasking” of Trump associates picked up in surveillance of Russian officials has proved to be a colossal flop. Nunes wound up discrediting himself and implicating White House staffers in a half-baked scheme to deflect attention from the president.

Right-wing outlets (from Fox News to Breitbart to the New York Post) took the bait from Nunes and his associates, dragging Susan Rice into the matter — without evidence of a crime. Indeed, no evidence of impropriety exists and no evidence ties Rice to the leaking of Michael T. Flynn’s name. Given that the White House does not want to release the documents shared with Nunes that allegedly provide the basis for its tale, we can surmise that Nunes really had no evidence of much of anything.

The blatant effort to confuse and distract from the biggest political scandal of our lifetimes — Russian efforts to manipulate our election process and potential coordination with the campaign of the beneficiary of Russia’s 'active measures' — does not come as any surprise. However, certain right-wing media outlets’ willingness to echo Trump’s defamatory misdirection tactics remains as distressing as ever. (It was just this sort of echo chamber effect that Russia used during the campaign to help Trump, as Clint Watts recently explained.) . .

Nunes, Trump, Ryan, the leakers — abuse their trust and turn the most consequential national security investigation of our lifetimes into a circus. [Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfareblog.com explain we run the risk of undoing the “grand bargain” (i.e. intelligence services get robust powers in exchange for equally robust oversight) that allows our intelligence community to operate within a democratic government. They] reiterate that 'if the President and the House Intelligence Committee Chairman can discredit an investigation of foreign interference in an American election and collusion with that effort by the president’s campaign by alleging improper political misuse of the intelligence authorities by the prior administration, if leaking FISA intercepts is an accepted way to go after a political opponent, and if nobody can credibly say who’s telling the truth and who’s lying, then the grand bargain has truly failed, with consequences that are hard to fathom.'"

Read the Washington Post, Nunes is out of the Russia probe, and the Susan Rice spin collapses. 

UPDATE: The enablers include a web of far-right media outlets, blogs, and community with help from Russia creating, promoting and echoing "fake content, seeding doubt and paranoia".

Read the Washington Post, The web of conspiracy theorists that was ready for Donald Trump.

As an article before noted, Trunp's ability to get away with false and misleading claims "requires the support of many enablers: almost all of his party’s elected officials, a large bloc of voters and, all too often, much of the news media."

For an example, read the Washington Post, Anatomy of a fake scandal, ginned up by right-wing media and Trump, which noted:

"President Trump started off this morning as he often does, by settling in to watch the festival of nincompoopery that is 'Fox & Friends.' On the show, he saw something that he believes vindicates the bizarre and false charge he made that Barack Obama was tapping his phones during the presidential campaign.

I’ll try to sort through the substance of all this. But I also want to make a broader argument about how Trump’s support system — inside his government but especially in the conservative media and on Fox, which is where he apparently gets most of his intelligence information — is playing to his worst instincts, harming him politically, and making his presidency even more dangerous. . .

[W]hen Trump tunes in to 'Fox & Friends' every morning, he learns that he’s right about everything. He doesn’t need to listen to his intelligence briefers or anyone else who might tell him something he doesn’t want to hear. He can keep telling tall tales and pursuing his petty grievances. He never does anything wrong and never has to change. I shudder to think how that dynamic will play out when this administration faces its first foreign policy crisis, with untold numbers of lives at stake."

Trump's Big CON: The 'I Want The Credit, Don't Blame Me' President

UPDATE II:  For a list of some of "Trump’s buck-passing", read the Washington Post, Personal irresponsibility: A concise history of Trump’s buck-passing.

UPDATE:  Did something go wrong/Trump's not happy/someone is criticizing him/or anything he doesn't like -- IT'S BARACK'S FAULT.

"President Trump’s weekend allegations of a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to wiretap his 2016 campaign confused intelligence analysts, befuddled members of Congress and created fresh work for fact-checkers. Within 24 hours of his allegations, made on Twitter, the administration conceded that the president was basing his claim not on closely held information, but on a Breitbart News story quoting the conservative radio host and author Mark Levin.

But in conservative media, where the claim originated, Trump has gotten credit for cracking open a plot by a “deep state” of critics and conspirators to bring down his presidency. And the perpetrator is former president Barack Obama."

Read the Washington Post, Trump and Republicans see a ‘deep state’ foe: Barack Obama. 

"Trump has become the 'don’t blame me' president — struggling to adjust to the reality of a job often revealed in shades of gray. The man in the nation’s highest elective office, who is eager to claim credit for positive developments, has yet to show signs of accepting responsibility or blame when things go wrong."

Read the Washington Post, Has Trump become the ‘don’t blame me’ president?

Trump's Big CON: What's He Hiding: Is Trump a Russian Agent? (Cont.)

UPDATE II:  "The constant flow of bizarre and incriminating information, just the portion of which has seeped out, is becoming so voluminous that the Trump administration can no longer wave this off as much to do about nothing. . .

The Trump obsession with 'unmasking' names is a blatant attempt to distract and obviously irrelevant. It’s not even helpful to Trump’s case. There are many legitimate reasons for unmasking, and nothing suggests requesting information about the identities of those Russia was trying to assist was illegal or improper. Ironically, by focusing on unmasking, the Trump spinners just remind us that there was an extensive, serious investigation underway because of  a comprehensive Russian effort to manipulate American voters and because of unprecedented connections between one candidate’s team and Russia. . .

Listen, if you were the national security adviser and learned of this extensive Russian campaign of active measures, knew about all sorts of connections between Russia and one campaign, and found out associates of one candidate were picked up in monitored conversations with Russian agents, wouldn’t you demand to know the names of those involved? Any national security adviser who didn’t would be accused of burying his or her head in the sand. Nothing regarding alleged unmasking that we have heard or seen so far bolsters Trump’s “wiretapping” claim or suggests that anyone in the Obama administration did something illegal or wrong, nor does it tell us who revealed that Flynn was one of the people picked up in surveillance of Russians. What it does confirm is that there was so much evidence of a Russian disinformation scheme and of questionable connections between Trump associates and Russians that it warranted a substantial intelligence investigation.

The Trump spin squad appears so desperate to create confusion . . . that it has confused itself about what is helpful and what is not. When you hear breathless accusations from Fox Non-News hosts, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) or enlisted right-wing journalists eager for a scoop — ask yourself why it is the least bit unusual for national security officials to be looking for Russia’s points of contacts. It’s not, and it does not detract from the enormity of the scheme of manipulation, disinformation, cultivation and other tried-and-true Soviet-style techniques unfolding before our eyes. And that is merely what we presently know about the Russia-Trump scandal."

Read the Washington Post, The Russia scandal gets weirder and weirder.

UPDATE:  "From the moment President Donald Trump tweeted that he had been "wiretapped" by President Barack Obama during the course of the 2016 election, he and his senior aides have been desperately searching for evidence that makes that allegation true. . .

What Trump and his associates are doing is pursuing a strategy of muddying the waters as they try to get out from under a decidedly ill-advised tweet from the President.

With no evidence that he was wiretapped, they are hoping that these unmasking allegations -- or the possibility that Trump transition officials were surveilled as a result of incidental collection for probes related to foreign operatives -- give the president enough cover to credibly say 'See, told you! Now, let's move on.'

That's fine as a political strategy. But the facts are still the facts. And the fact is that this latest unmasking episode is a smokescreen to distract from the broader issue -- which is that the President of the United States made a completely unfounded and very serious allegation against his immediate predecessor."

Read CNN, Trump just keeps creating smokescreens to mask his Russia problem. 

"The now president of the United States and his campaign team either wittingly or unwittingly helped carry Russian disinformation targeted at American democracy. The magnitude of that analysis has yet to sink in. Consider the number of questions that raises, and the implications for the investigation underway.

How did Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Michael T. Flynn, all enriched by surrogates of Russia (in Manafort’s case by the Kremlin’s stooge in Ukraine and in Flynn’s case, RT, among others) come to work on a single campaign? Did whoever put them there know the extent of their Russian connections? Did Trump? Never in any campaign have so many pro-Russian, Russian-paid advisers worked for a single presidential  candidate — one who wound up refusing to criticize Russia and indeed echoing its disinformation."

Read the Washington Post, The big Russia questions loom even larger.

Read also Trump's Big CON: What's He Hiding: Is Trump a Russian Agent?, where I noted that Trump "may be an unwitting agent, but Putin has the kompromat to control Trump, and Trump knows it since he knows his own compromising financial and personal information."

Trump's Big CON: Is It the End of the Republi-CONs?

UPDATE:  Read the Washington Post, Republicans’ 2018 doomsday scenario.

I've often said that the Naive-ocrats should just call the Republi-CON bluff(s), give them what they want, "good and hard".

Trump may just be the one to do it.

Read the Washington Post, Karma? Trump turns on the far right., which states:

"Call it political karma. Right-wing conservatives who just a couple of years ago prowled the halls of Congress and the campaign trail hunting RINOs readily cast aside all ideological standards (and ethical standards) to back President Trump. Now Trump, a wounded beast, has turned to snarl and snap at the right. . .

Frankly, it was only a matter of time before the marriage of convenience and hypocrisy began to crumble. Republicans, both mainstream and far-right, convinced themselves that Trump would be a useful vehicle for achieving long-sought political aims (in the case of House Speaker Paul Ryan, defederalizing Medicaid). The hitch, however, is that Trump simply wants deals, wins on the scoreboard, and will betray anyone or any group to satisfy his hunger for victory and adulation. . .

Republicans who sacrificed moral and intellectual integrity for the White House now reap what they’ve sown. At this rate, the #NeverTrump Republicans may overdose on schadenfreude."

Schadenfreude literally German for 'harm-joy', "is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others."

Read also the Washington Post, Trump’s failing presidency has the GOP in a free fall, which states:

"Since the rise of the tea party, there have been perhaps 30 members of the House — the Freedom Caucus — who have been consistently unwilling to vote for center-right policy because their anti-government convictions are unappeasable. Incited and abetted by conservative media, they made then-Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) life a living hell, and have greeted Ryan (Wis.) with sharpened pitchforks.

So a party at the peak of its political fortunes is utterly paralyzed. A caucus in control of everything is itself uncontrollable.

Heading into last year’s election, Republicans knew that this problem — the tea party predicament, the Freedom Caucus conundrum, the Boehner bog — had to be dealt with. The GOP needed a large and capable leader who could either unite the whole party (at least temporarily) with a bold, unifying conservative vision, or peel off some centrist Democratic support with innovative policy. They needed an above-average president.

What they got is unimaginably distant from any of these goals. They got a leader who is empty — devoid of even moderately detailed preferences and incapable of using policy details in the course of political persuasion.

Republicans got a leader who is impatient and easily distracted . . .

Republicans got an administration that is incompetent. . .

Republicans got an administration that is morally small. . .

This is a pretty bad combination: empty, easily distracted, vindictive, shallow, impatient, incompetent and morally small. This is not the profile of a governing party. . .

And all this has come in the course of the president’s political honeymoon. What, for goodness’ sake, will the marriage be like?

It is now dawning on Republicans what they have done to themselves. They thought they could somehow get away with Trump. . .

Instead, they are seeing a downward spiral of incompetence and public contempt — a collapse that is yet to reach a floor. A presidency is failing. A party unable to govern is becoming unfit to govern."

And read also the Washington Post, Trump administration has unforced errors and self-inflicted wounds galore, which stated that

"Perhaps we should not be surprised by the flurry of unforced errors. President Trump has little relevant experience, zero curiosity in policy and a rotten temperament that suggests he is divorced from reality. His staff is a mix of ideological extremists and party hacks, none with White House experience. His 30-something daughter and son-in-law have no public experience, either. How did you think this was going to work? . .

Trump most definitely is not 'winning.' He’s failing and flailing, shedding support from voters and alienating allies he desperately needs. An outbreak of backstabbing and skin-saving seems about to begin. (Trump’s lack of loyalty to underlings suggests that they will be equally unwilling to protect their boss.)

No wonder Trump has always worked in a family business. His dependents never cross him and can never resign — and he never has to tell shareholders or the public how badly he flopped."

Ain't karma a you-know-what?

Trump's Big CON: Get Ready for the Train Wreck

UPDATE III: So, besides the right-wing media and their delusions and fantisies, what is the problem?

Read the Washington Post, Trump can’t stop the Freedom Caucus. He has GOP gerrymandering to blame., which noted:

"The 40 members of the Freedom Caucus represent such safe Republican districts that the only threat they fear is a primary challenge from a conservative further to their right. Republican redistricting guaranteed the GOP a near-lock on the House after the 2010 Census — but it also created a nearly ungovernable caucus. They gerrymandered themselves into this predicament.

These congressmen are perfectly content to say no and lose on principle, because compromise and conciliation — the actual work of politics — are the only things that can cost them their jobs."

UPDATE II:  "There have been 12 government shutdowns since 1980, six of which lasted just one or two days. But there has never been a shutdown in that period that occurred when one party controlled the White House, the House and the Senate.

That should make it easier to avoid a shutdown, but Trump has campaigned on big cuts in spending. If he abandons his call for spending cuts, it could embolden Democrats to oppose more of his agenda. But if he doesn’t call for enough spending cuts, the conservative House Freedom Caucus could reject the plan. It routinely opposed spending bills during the Obama administration, and its members frequently say they will not support any spending bill that widens the deficit."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s plan to avoid a government shutdown tests his fellow Republicans.

UPDATE:  Although this article focuses on health care, it could be any major issue.

Read the Washington Post, Republicans can pretend all they want. Health-care reform is still dead., which notes that the "GOP has never come to terms with the divide between moderates and conservatives; between what Trump ran on and what conservatives expect; and between populist language and popular revulsion about doing away with all Obamacare protections."

It could just as easily have said that the 'GOP has never come to terms with the divide between moderates and conservatives; between what Trump ran on and what conservatives expect; and between populist language and popular revulsion about doing' anything.

It didn't have to when it was just the Party of NO! 

The Donald claims to be a skilled businessman, a tough negotiator, a savvy dealmaker.  He has big ideas and secret strategies.  He alone alone possesses the ability to break through the gridlock of Washington.

Yet right!

"Forget the impact the spectacular health-care debacle will have on the future of tax reform or plans for an infrastructure deal. You need to focus on two freight trains racing toward each other at high speed: the budget and the debt ceiling."

Read the Washington Post, ‘The budget from hell’ and raising the debt ceiling: Republicans are not ready for this.

Read also the Washington Post, Trump says his budget will make government ‘lean.’ It’s really a scam.

Better Be Nice to Spiders

"Spiders are quite literally all around us. A recent entomological survey of North Carolina homes turned up spiders in 100 percent of them, including 68 percent of bathrooms and more than three-quarters of bedrooms. There's a good chance at least one spider is staring at you right now, sizing you up from a darkened corner of the room, eight eyes glistening in the shadows.

Spiders mostly eat insects, although some of the larger species have been known to snack on lizards, birds and even small mammals. Given their abundance and the voraciousness of their appetites, two European biologists recently wondered: If you were to tally up all the food eaten by the world's entire spider population in a single year, how much would it be?

Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer published their estimate in the journal the Science of Nature earlier this month, and the number they arrived at is frankly shocking: The world's spiders consume somewhere between 400 million and 800 million tons of prey in any given year. That means that spiders eat at least as much meat as all 7 billion humans on the planet combined, who the authors note consume about 400 million tons of meat and fish each year.

Or, for a slightly more disturbing comparison: The total biomass of all adult humans on Earth is estimated to be 287 million tons. Even if you tack on another 70 million-ish tons to account for the weight of kids, it's still not equal to the total amount of food eaten by spiders in a given year, exceeding the total weight of humanity.

In other words, spiders could eat all of us and still be hungry. . .

The Washington Post reached out to a spider for comment on this story. Its reply:"


via GIPHY"

Read the Washington Post, Spiders could theoretically eat every human on Earth in one year.

Trump's Big CON: He's Not the Only Republi-CON

Paul "Ryan's reputation as a policy expert is under renewed assault.

“It’s hard to make a case that his efforts have been all that serious,” said Jared Bernstein, who was chief economist to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “His numbers never add up.”

The New York Times editorial board this week wrote an even harsher assessment of the House speaker: 'If he is the policy wonk of the Republican Party, then the Republican Party has no policy.'

To critics, Ryan's health-care failure is proof of what they've said all along: Ryan always presented himself as a serious thinker, but his ideas are half-baked at best. To his defenders, Ryan's failure on health care has more to do with a fractious Republican caucus that wasn't ready to unite behind any measure, let alone a bill that President Trump wanted to move through Congress in a matter of weeks.

A look at Ryan's record reveals that although he demonstrated far more expertise than the typical lawmaker, he has yet to confront fully the difficult compromises involved in making federal policy with a comprehensive plan that can achieve conservative goals on a major issue. . .

Paul Krugman, a liberal economist and Nobel laureate who is perhaps the most prominent of Ryan's skeptics, disparaged Ryan's work, saying it relied on a set of unfounded assumptions about a booming economy and inexplicably falling health-care costs.

'Swooning' commentators 'lavished praise on Mr. Ryan, asserting that his plan set a new standard of fiscal seriousness,' Krugman wrote in 2011. 'In short, this plan isn’t remotely serious; on the contrary, it’s ludicrous.'"

Read the Washington Post, Is Paul Ryan a policy guy, or does he just play one on TV?

Trump's Big CON: When Does Trump Tell the Truth?

UPDATE:  Reality sometimes sucks, but it is reality.

Read the Washington Post, Trump has nothing but contempt for facts and reality-based policy. Now it’s backfiring.

"Is there anything in President Trump’s insurance plan that covers congenital lying by federal employees?

The Congressional Budget Office ought to look into that, because if the coverage exists, the White House alone is going to sink the program deep into the red. Premiums will shoot sky-high, and ordinary liars, Hollywood producers, nutritionists, everyone at Fox News (with the exception of Chris Wallace) and all but two lawyers will be unable to afford coverage.

Already it seems that vast numbers of people in the Trump administration are in need of treatment. Trump himself has reversed the natural order of things — he lies more often than he tells the truth. In fact, several experts I consulted, whose names I cannot use because they do not exist, speculate that Trump tells the truth only when he cannot think of a lie." [Emphasis added.]

Read the Washington Post, Will Trump’s health-care plan cover congenital lying?

Read also:

Trump's Big CON: Is He Lying or Delusional?

Trump's Big CON: He Clings to Lies "Like a Drunk to an Empty Gin Bottle"

Easier yet, read all the Trump's Big CON posts.

Trump's Big CON: What's He Hiding: Is Trump a Russian Agent?

UPDATE VIII:  It wasn't long ago that Trump and his surrogates said that if the FBI was investigating you, or you sought immunity, it was a sign of guilt and were "a very bad thing".

Read the Washington Post, The Trump White House is in deep legal trouble, according to Trump’s own standards.

UPDATE VII: Oooh, you might say, Trump just did business with rich Russians.

"To expand his real estate developments over the years, Donald Trump, his company and partners repeatedly turned to wealthy Russians and oligarchs from former Soviet republics — several allegedly connected to organized crime, according to a USA TODAY review of court cases, government and legal documents and an interview with a former federal prosecutor.

The president and his companies have been linked to at least 10 wealthy former Soviet businessmen with alleged ties to criminal organizations or money laundering. . .

[But] '[a]nybody who is an oligarch or is in any position of power in Russia got it because (President) Vladimir Putin or somebody in power saw some reason to give that person that job,'  Steven Hall, a former CIA chief of Russian operations,] said in an interview. 'All the organized crime figures I’ve ever heard of (in Russia) all have deep connections and are tied in with people in government.'"

Read the USA Today, Trump's business network reached alleged Russian mobsters.

UPDATE VI:  Here is how media and civil society work in Russia:

If you criticize the kleptocracy, they try to pay you off or bully you.

Read the Washington Post, Russian billionaire attempts to stifle AP scoop.

And if that doesn't work, you are killed.

Read the Washington Post, Here are 10 critics of Vladimir Putin who died violently or in suspicious ways.

And Trump admires Putin and likes the way thing are done in Russia.

UPDATE V:  "Manafort is only one piece of the Trump-Russia puzzle. Why is it that so many Trump advisers have connections to Russia, often financial ones? Why has Trump gotten so much money from Russian oligarchs and mob-connected individuals? What’s the full extent of the measures the Russian government took to help Trump get elected, and was there any coordination with any Americans, including those connected to Trump?"

Read the Washington Post, Here’s why the latest Trump-Russia revelations are so important, which asks "why is it that this scandal hasn’t yet risen to the level occupied by Watergate, Iran-contra and Monica Lewinsky?"

UPDATE IV: Of course, Russia has the help of it's useful idiots.

Read the Washington Post, Andrew Napolitano reportedly pulled from Fox News over debunked wiretapping claims.

UPDATE III:  "In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said publicly that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets” and that “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The president now denies significant business involvement with Russians. Which is true?"

Read the Washington Post, Does the FBI’s trail lead to Russia?, which also noted that "Trump’s rhetoric about Putin and Russia has been anomalously gentle. He does not hesitate to blast German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a staunch ally, for not spending enough on defense; he goes out of his way to bash our neighbor Mexico; and he even managed to get into a needless row with the prime minister of Australia. Yet he has consistently conveyed his admiration for Putin’s leadership and expressed a desire for a warmer U.S.-Russia relationship."

UPDATE II:  "Trump was the candidate the Kremlin wanted. Trump was the candidate the Kremlin helped. And to everyone’s, including the Kremlin’s, surprise, Trump was the president they/we got. . .

For someone with nothing to hide and no reason for worry, his behavior strikes us as inexplicable. It was, of course, impulsive tweeting about nonexistent wiretapping that put Trump in this situation. We’ll see whether he has the self-control to stop making his situation worse, tweet by tweet.

Read the Washington Post, Five questions after Comey’s testimony. 

UPDATE:  Additional evidence:  "[h]ere's what we know about Trump's campaign and Russia:

The intelligence community has concluded that Russia meddled in the U.S. election to undermine faith in the democratic process and harm Hillary Clinton's candidacy, in part because Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed then-Secretary of State Clinton for domestic protests against his authority in 2011-2012.

Two members of Trump's inner circle — former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — have publicly acknowledged that they failed to disclose private conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Flynn lost his job; Sessions agreed to recuse himself from the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election as a result.

But meeting with the Russian ambassador to Washington isn't illegal — in fact, you could argue it's part of diplomacy. It's the lack of disclosure that got both men in trouble.

Democrats are suggesting that Russia's involvement in the election and Trump officials' lack of disclosure about their ties to Russia point to something more. In a 15-minute opening statement, Schiff laid out a series of ties between Trump's campaign and Russia, citing former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled an unverified dossier on Trump and Russia. They included accusations that:

One of Trump's national security advisers during the campaign, Carter Page, has ties to Russia and has praised its president, Vladimir Putin.

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had been on the payroll for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. [Note: read the Washington Post, New documents show Trump aide laundered payments from party with Moscow ties, lawmaker alleges.]

Trump officials met with the Russian ambassador to Washington during the Republican National Convention. At that convention, Republicans changed their platform to remove a section that supported giving weapons to Ukraine as it battles Russia for territory.

Former Trump adviser Roger Stone boasted in a speech that he knew of impending WikiLeaks documents related to Hillary Clinton's campaign before they were published.

And Flynn and Sessions would go on to avoid disclosing their conversations with the Russian ambassador during or shortly after the campaign."

Read the Washington Post, Six big takeaways from Congress’s extraordinary hearing on Russia, President Trump and wiretapping. 

 Trump is trying desperately to hide something. What is it?

With the House Intelligence Committee on Monday prepared to hold hearings on Russian influence in the 2016 election, the president issued tweets that did not hold up well as the testimony unfolded. . .

FBI Director James Comey announced that a criminal investigation into possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign was indeed active and ongoing . . .

The president’s tweets throughout the day were misleading, inaccurate or simply false."

Read the Washington Post, President Trump’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Twitter day.

As noted before, The Donald is Putin's Puppet.

Now it appears that Trump was evaluated, groomed and developed for many years.

"A Reuters review found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida. . .

The buyers include politically connected businessmen, such as a former executive in a Moscow-based state-run construction firm that works on military and intelligence facilities, the founder of a St. Petersburg investment bank and the co-founder of a conglomerate with interests in banking, property and electronics.

People from the second and third tiers of Russian power have invested in the Trump buildings as well. One recently posted a photo of himself with the leader of a Russian motorcycle gang that was sanctioned by the United States for its alleged role in Moscow’s seizure of Crimea."

Read Reuters, Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings.

If you think about it, it makes sense. Trump was spotted as a potential resource and groomed and developed for years by the Russians, originally as a way to move dirty money out of the Russian kleptocracy. ("Russian president Vladimir Putin is alleged to be the 'head of the clan', whose assets are estimated at $200 billion.")

Trump, who had financial problems, is know to reward those who help him, thus the quid pro quo.

Putin likely never thought it possible to get Trump elected, but when the opportunity presented itself, Russia went to work to influence the election.

And he may be an unwitting agent, but Putin has the kompromat to control Trump, and Trump knows it since he knows his own compromising financial and personal information.

Read National Review, The Trump ‘Kompromat’ Story Is Disturbing — Every Bit of It.

So again, what is he hiding: Is Trump a Russian agent?

Trump's Big CON: He's a Loser

"President Trump's biggest weakness is that he doesn't know how to make deals.

That, as Business Insider's Josh Barro points out, seems to suggest a deep unfamiliarity with the urtext of the subject, 'The Art of the Deal.' Trump should know that “the worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it.” But that's precisely what he has done, first with health care and now with infrastructure. . .

[H]he did just about everything he could to alienate Democrats, from his, in their view, discriminatory travel ban to his attempt to undo their greatest legislative achievement of the last 40 years in Obamacare. More than that, though, Trump's inability to unite Republicans behind his health-care bill showed Democrats that they don't have to make a deal with him out of fear of him making an extremely conservative deal with the House Freedom Caucus. It turns out he can't make a deal with them at all. Kind of makes it hard to play the two sides off against each other. . .

Democrats have no incentive to help Trump pass popular legislation when his unpopularity helps them. Why turn him into the winning winner he ran as, who alone possesses the ability to break through the gridlock of Washington, when they can keep him as the losing loser he's governed as, who can't even get a bill through one chamber of Congress his party controls? They won't, at least not on terms that are remotely acceptable to Republicans."

Read the Washington Post, Trump is throwing himself into the Democrats’ trap.

Trump's Big CON: Ha Ha Ha, the Repeal Obamacare Joke's On You

UPDATE:  "[I]t is probable that whatever replaces the ACA’s tapestry of subsidies, regulations and mandates will be a tapestry of subsidies, regulations and mandates. The differences probably will constitute substantial improvements but will hardly constitute a revolution in the relation of the citizen, or the health-care sector, to the government."

Read the Washington Post, Whatever replaces Obamacare will look a lot like Obamacare.

"It took Republicans seven years to decide on an Obamacare replacement, but only a little more than seven days to decide that they needed to replace parts of that with something that wouldn't hurt their voters quite so much.

If they're serious about fixing their plan, though, there's already one that does just that. It's called, well, Obamacare. And it's the only 'replacement' option that would work."

Read the Washington Post, The only Obamacare replacement that will work is Obamacare.

Read also the Washington Post, President Trump’s biggest Obamacare bloopers., which noted that "Trump’s claims that Obamacare 'is failing,' 'is dead,' 'will close up very, very soon' and 'is not even a health-care plan [?]' are simply false.

Trump's Big CON: Is He Lying or Delusional?

UPDATE VII:  "O.K., at this point it’s not news that the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military is a man you wouldn’t trust to park your car or feed your cat. Thanks, Comey. But Mr. Trump’s pathological inability to accept responsibility is just the culmination of a trend. American politics — at least on one side of the aisle — is suffering from an epidemic of infallibility, of powerful people who never, ever admit to making a mistake. . .

[W]hat’s going on with Mr. Trump and his inner circle seems to have less to do with ideology than with fragile egos. To admit having been wrong about anything, they seem to imagine, would brand them as losers and make them look small.

In reality, of course, inability to engage in reflection and self-criticism is the mark of a tiny, shriveled soul — but they’re not big enough to see that.

But why did so many Americans vote for Mr. Trump, whose character flaws should have been obvious long before the election?

Catastrophic media failure and F.B.I. malfeasance played crucial roles. But my sense is that there’s also something going on in our society: Many Americans no longer seem to understand what a leader is supposed to sound like, mistaking bombast and belligerence for real toughness.

Why? Is it celebrity culture? Is it working-class despair, channeled into a desire for people who spout easy slogans?

Read The New York Times, America’s Epidemic of Infallibility.

UPDATE VI:  "America is now governed by a president and party that fundamentally don’t accept the idea that there are objective facts. Instead, they want everyone to accept that reality is whatever they say it is. . .

Mr. Trump has declared [the media] 'enemies of the people' — not, whatever he may say, because they get things wrong, but because they dare to challenge him on anything.

'Enemy of the people' is, of course, a phrase historically associated with Stalin and other tyrants. This is no accident. Mr. Trump isn’t a dictator — not yet, anyway — but he clearly has totalitarian instincts.

And much, perhaps most, of his party is happy to go along, accepting even the most bizarre conspiracy theories. . .

It’s part of a much bigger struggle, in which what’s really at stake is whether ignorance is strength, whether the man in the White House is the sole arbiter of truth."

Read The New York Times, Facts Are Enemies of the People.

UPDATE V:  "We’re seeing a broad White House effort to corrode the very ideal of reality-based governing, something that includes not just a discrediting of institutions such as the CBO but also the weakening of the influence of science and data over agency decision-making and the deliberate misuse of our democracy’s institutional processes to prop up Trump’s lies about his popular support and political opponents."

Read the Washington Post, Donald Trump’s deliberate corruption of reality-based governing.

UPDATE IV:  "Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Sunday for President Trump to either prove his claim that President Barack Obama tapped the phones in Trump Tower during last year’s election campaign or drop the accusation.

'The president has one of two choices, either retract or provide the information that the American people deserve,' McCain said in an interview on CNN’s 'State of the Union.' 'I have no reason to believe that the charge is true, but I also believe that the president of the United States could clear this up in a minute.'

Read the Washington Post, McCain to Trump: Retract wiretapping claim or prove it.

UPDATE III:  "Rep. Schiff (D-CA) was asked on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports if there was any proof to back up Trump’s claim [regarding wiretaps].

He answered, 'No, and I think it’s a preposterous claim. As other people have pointed out, if it were true it would mean that a federal judge had found probable cause to believe that Trump or his associates were engaged in a crime, or that a FISA court judge had found that they were acting as agents of a foreign power. This is what the president is suggesting when he says that he was wiretapped. But it’s a preposterous claim, and I think it’s certainly one explanation that he’s merely trying to distract, but a more troubling conclusion might be that this is simply a president that can not separate fact from fantasy, and as a Commander In Chief doesn’t know right from wrong.'

Schiff was suggesting that the President Of The United States is potentially not of sound mind."

Read Politicususa, Top Member Of House Intel Committee Questions Trump’s Mental State On National TV.

As stated before, Trump is a psycho-narcissistic con man.

UPDATE II:  For a 'tally of the lies and distortions', read the Washington Post, Trump just gave a remarkable new interview. Here’s a tally of all his lies.

UPDATE: Actually, Trump is a psycho-narcissistic con man.

A "lengthy interview, which aired late Wednesday night, provided a glimpse of the president and his state-of-mind on his fifth full day in office. It revealed a man who is obsessed with his own popularity and eager to provide evidence of his likability, even if that information doesn't match reality."

Read the Washington Post, In his first major TV interview as president, Trump is endlessly obsessed with his popularity.

As noted before, this can't end well for the country.

Trump is clearly a con man. So that begs the question: why?

"Is he lying or is he unable to separate what he wants to believe and what exists, literally, in front of his eyes? The first makes him morally unfit, and was the basis upon which many #NeverTrumpers refused to vote for him. If the latter, they — and we all — have a constitutional crisis the likes of which we have never seen. With Trump, however, we have learned the past provides no guarantees."

Read the Washington Post, Maybe Trump isn’t ‘lying’.

Trump's Big CON: 24 Million People Will Lose Health Insurance to Fund Tax Cuts and Credits For the Wealthy

UPDATE:  Need more proof, remember the proposed border adjustment tax on imported consumers goods to give more tax breaks to rich people?

Nothing better proves the true Republi-CON purpose.

And it is now clear why the Republi-CONs didn't want to wait for the Congressional Budget Office report.

Read:

The New York Times, Trumpcare vs. Obamacare: Apocalypse Foretold, which stated:

"The Congressional Budget Office report on Trumpcare is out, and it’s devastating: 14 million people losing insurance in the first year, 24 million over time, with premiums soaring for older, lower-income Americans — in many cases, the very people who went strongly for President Trump. The C.B.O. thinks it would reduce the deficit, but only marginally, around $30 billion a year in a $19 trillion economy.

Let me offer one assertion and ask two questions.

The assertion is that something like this was to be expected. The C.B.O. came in even worse on coverage than most predicted, but it was obvious that the news would be terrible because that’s what the logic of the situation told us. Obamacare imposes a mandate to induce healthy people to sign up, offers means-tested subsidies to make insurance affordable and expands Medicaid to take care of people with really low incomes. Trumpcare eliminates the mandate, slashes subsidies overall and redirects them to those who don’t need them and sharply cuts Medicaid. Of course that leads to a huge drop in coverage.

Or to put it differently, Obamacare is actually an intelligently designed system, and Republican claims that they could do much better even while slashing funding so they could cut taxes on the rich were always obvious nonsense. Trumpcare is a slapdash, incompetent piece of legislation; but even a much more competent set of people couldn’t have done better given the constraints of Republican Party ideology."

Read also:

Politico, 5 takeaways from the CBO's report on Obamacare repeal, which notes that "[m]any Trump voters and states would lose big under the GOP health plan",

Vox, The GOP health plan is an act of class warfare by the rich against the poor, and

The Washington Post, The CBO wallops Paul Ryan, which notes that no matter what you believe or think about the proposal,, "[o]ne thing is for sure: A bill that transfers wealth from poor to rich is going to blow up the notion that Trump is a populist."

And see TrumpCareCon (© NoBullU.com) (AKA TrumpConCare or TrumpCon (© NoBullU.com)) Is All About Future Tax Cut.

Trump's Big CON: SURPRISE, He and His Staff Routinely Lie to the Public

UPDATE IV:  "If you woke up Monday from a coma that caused you to miss the presidential campaign and the first two months of Donald Trump's presidency, then you may have never experienced a Kellyanne Conway interview. But you could catch up on the phenomenon by watching just one TV appearance by the counselor to the president — her latest on CNN.

You missed the whole 'alternative facts' thing? No prob. 'I'm not in the job of having evidence' — a line Conway delivered to Chris Cuomo on Monday morning — should cover the concept.

Never seen Conway take an unsubstantiated claim and state it as fact? . . .

Haven't witnessed Conway's unparalleled ability to twist a journalist's words in a way that frames the media as an enemy? Get ready for a clinic."

Read the Washington Post, Kellyanne Conway gave the most Kellyane Conway interview ever.

UPDATE III:  Anticipating  the obstruction of justice and coverup, steps were taken to preserve the evidence.

Read The New York Times, Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking. 

UPDATE II:  Now it is Trump's leading lawman lying.

Read the Washington Post, Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose and Jeff Sessions’s denials of contact with Russians are falling apart quickly.

And don't forget the obstruction of justice and coverup, all to hide that The Donald is Putin's Puppet. 

UPDATE:  Read the Washington Post, 5 times Donald Trump’s team denied contact with Russia.

Is it REALLY a surprise, or have you just been lying to yourself?

Read the Washington Post, In a remarkable interview, Kellyanne Conway’s spin about Mike Flynn crashes and burns.