monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

As Steve details, there are a lot of sitting Republicans who are getting out. We are not unpleased.

“He is going into the lion’s den,” Gardiner said.

Here's a criticism of Wolff's book that needs to be considered

Another throughline of the book—that the media has abysmally failed to cover Trump fairly or adequately—is correct, but not in the way he thinks. The starkest sign of a rotten media ecosystem is that a book this flimsy and dubious could dominate the news cycle.

[Overhanging] every page of Fire And Fury is the more crucial problem that Wolff is talking to a bunch of pathological dissemblers [...]. In essence, we have a story that could plausibly be true [...] but the reader has no way of deciphering whether it actually is, or of evaluating what it could possibly mean. The only philosophical approach for the reader to take is complete agnosticism, and the only judgment to make is that this really isn’t journalism. Call it the Michael Wolff way.

Since Fire and Fury’s thunderous debut last week, much ink has been spilled over Wolff’s small errors, the unbelievability of several of the stories he relates, and his general character as a journalist. These critiques are all essentially correct: He has been known to make lazy mistakes; he tells stories that prompt eye-rolls because something about them just doesn’t ring true. Yet Fire and Fury is a much worse book than any of these criticisms suggest. [...]

Given [his] level of sloppiness, Wolff’s constant, endless sniping about the media is surely the strangest part of the book. [...] It’s not easy to decipher exactly what Wolff is so vexed about, but there is a clue in the author’s note about how he views the proper role of the press. “While the Trump administration has made hostility to the press a virtual policy,” he writes, “it has also been more open to the media than any White House in recent memory.”

This is surely the Rosebud of Wolffism. In Wolff’s world, “openness to the media” means a willingness to blab to reporters—regardless of whether the blabbing is substantive or even true. It isn’t about, say, an honest or even partially honest accounting of government policy. [...] Wolff has written a whole book sourced from people who make a living lying to the press—which some of them are happy to admit to—and perceives it to be openness!

[...] One of the Wolff stories that has gotten the most play is one about Trump not knowing who John Boehner was. Since the two men clearly knew each other, the story has been attacked as inaccurate. Wolff’s ally Janice Min, part owner of the Hollywood Reporter (which Wolff contributes to), struck back at critics with a very Wolffian defense, and in the process explained how Wolff got the story: “FWIW, the Trump–John Boehner anecdote was shared by Roger Ailes at our dinner. Which doesn’t mean Boehner and Trump had never met. Just that on one important occasion, Trump did not remember Boehner’s name.” Notice the almost unconscious way in which Min just accepts Ailes’ story. Wolff’s method is essentially the It-Must-Be-True-Because-Roger-Ailes-Told-Me-It-Was-True writ large.

In one sense, of course, Wolff isn’t alone. The whole genre of White House palace-intrigue reporting has long been somewhat problematic, and much too common. But disturbingly often in the past year, these stories have simply been unbelievable; they’ve felt more like liberal wish fulfillment than journalism. The best kind of palace-intrigue reporting comes from reliable reporters at reliable news organizations, where you can be certain (or at least optimistic) that they were pushed on the trustworthiness of their sources and forced to double-check things. None of this applies to Wolff.

Instead, at the precise moment that the press is under grotesque attack [...], we get a book in which it is impossible to distinguish fact from fiction—and pointless to even try. The Trump team probably regrets all the bad press they have gotten from Fire and Fury over the past several days, but they should surely feel sanguine about a media environment that allows Wolff’s method and standards to flourish.

Naw, that only helped Americans and hurt all these other foreign globalists (probably 90% of the total).

The man whom Scumbags of America voted as their champion, Darrell Issa is leaving the stage Benen

As Steve details, there are a lot of sitting Republicans who are getting out. We are not unpleased.

I was talking about Americans, not North Americans. Canada and Mexico aint happy with Trump, who's gunna dump NAFTA. Not to mention the dozens of other countries between Mexico and Panama.

US President Donald Trump has said it is "unlikely" he will be interviewed by Robert Mueller - the man investigating possible ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.

There was no collusion, Mr Trump said, adding: "I'll see what happens."

In June 2017, Mr Trump said he would "100%" be interviewed under oath.

He has consistently denied that his campaign worked with Russia to undermine his opponent Hillary Clinton, calling the accusations a "witch hunt".

Earlier this week the US media reported that Mr Trump's lawyers were in talks with the Mueller investigation to set a date for an interview.

"When they have no collusion - and nobody has found any collusion at any level - it seems unlikely that you would even have an interview," Mr Trump told reporters on Wednesday.