This is down deep in the NYT story just out on the open and public battle between the White House and the Pentagon over whether to withdraw immediately all U.S. troops from Syria:
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TPM’s Tierney Sneed obtained a copy of the lengthy Mueller-bashing memo that Attorney General nominee William Barr sent to the justice department earlier this year.
Here’s one of the weirder dimensions of late 2018 Trumpism. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me the word has apparently come down from the White House that the wall, as in the wall to be built along the southern border, must now be called “wall”. In other words, no definite article, no “the”. President Trump now does this. It was part of a DHS press release a week ago. And today in a congressional hearing, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Rep. Tom Marino: “From Congress I would ask for wall. We need wall.”
"I would ask for wall. We need wall." pic.twitter.com/mkgHZWFgyI
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 20, 2018
President Trump makes everything so binary, everything so black and white, that there is an inevitable tendency to lionize anyone who goes into opposition to him. That is a tendency worth resisting, as much with out-going Secretary Mattis as with anyone else. I’m trying to resist over-interpreting his resignation letter. But it doesn’t leave a lot of room for interpretation. The critical passage in my mind comes here …
One of the most characteristic qualities of the Trump era is the deep-seated uncertainty. We talk a lot about the endemic chaos and unpredictability that President Trump seems to thrive on. But I mean something different. Most Presidents usually act in relatively predictable ways based on a more or less known set of basic beliefs and policy goals. The Trump White House operates very, very differently. Read More
You remember all the smoke about Jerry Falwell Jr for some inexplicable reason going into the divey, boozy youth hostel business with a young pool attendant in South Florida and the fact that Michael Cohen somehow also happened to have some kind of relationship with Falwell. At least one outlet has picked up this new article on the case by Aram Roston at Buzzfeed and claimed it says Michael Cohen brokered the deal. That’s definitely not what it says. Not close. But it certainly seems clear that Roston thinks that’s where this is going. And I bet he’s right.
The Senate has in the last few minutes pressed pause on any further votes on government funding or the border wall until the White House and congressional leaders agree on some kind of global deal.
A design of our Steel Slat Barrier which is totally effective while at the same time beautiful! pic.twitter.com/sGltXh0cu9
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2018
It’s telling that no one on the Republican side wants to take any more votes until they know what President Trump will sign.
To be clear, that’s not significant progress. A shutdown still looms. A deal is not in sight.
Unsurprisingly, according to CNN, President Trump twice chewed out his Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker for not doing more to control prosecutors in the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office. This happened first when Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress at the end of November and then again a week later when prosecutors implicated President Trump in a number of felonies.
“Pointing to articles he said supported his position, Trump pressed Whitaker on why more wasn’t being done to control prosecutors in New York who brought the charges in the first place, suggesting they were going rogue.” Read More