Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Michael Cohen has spent his career making Donald Trump’s problems disappear. Now he’s the problem Trump can’t possibly make vanish.

• Cohen, unlike Ivanka or the other kids, is the only person on earth intertwined in Trump’s professional, political, personal, legal and family life — the man with secrets few others hold.
• And, thanks to a court ruling yesterday, many of those secrets, reportedly recorded and emailed, are — or soon will be —in the hands of federal investigators.
• N.Y. Times: "A federal judge in Manhattan [Kimba Wood] indicated ... that she was not prepared to grant President Trump exclusive first access to documents seized in F.B.I. raids on the office of his personal lawyer, and said that she was considering appointing an independent lawyer to assist in reviewing the seized materials."

During his decade of work for the Trump Organization, Cohen — a 51-year-old Long Island native — had a tiny 26th floor office within sight of Trump's sumptuous corner domain:

• When Jim VandeHei and I interviewed the president-elect in his Trump Tower office the week before the inauguration, Michael Cohen caught us on the way to the elevator, and ushered us into his lair to kibitz.
• For years, Cohen was reporters' personal connection to his boss — the person who called with complaints and would connect you with Trump.
• So the court decision is devastating: As we have told you, Cohen is a potential Rosetta stone to Trump's final decade in private life.
• Cohen knows more about some elements of Trump’s life than anyone else — because some stuff, Ivanka doesn't want to know.

Why Cohen matters, from a former Trump campaign official:

• “The guys that know Trump best are the most worried. People are very, very worried. Because it’s Michael [effing] Cohen. Who knows what he’s done?"
• "People at the Trump Organization don’t even really know everything he does. It’s all side deals and off-the-books stuff. Trump doesn’t even fully know; he knows some but not everything."
• "Cohen thinks he’s Ray Donovan [the Showtime series starring a fixer for Hollywood's elite]. Did you see the photos of him sitting outside on the street with his buddies smoking cigars? [Saw it in Axios AM!] Makes it look like a Brooklyn social club."
• “I’ll tell you who’s worried. The principal.”

Be smart ... A source who's in frequent contact with the West Wing told me: "POTUS' worries about Cohen are reflected in his dark moods."

 

[Michael Scally MD]

• Israeli officials cited in a Ynetnews report characterized the missile strike on Friday by the US, the UK, and France on suspected chemical weapons facilities in Syria as a failure.
• Multiple Israeli government and military sources suggested the strike was not effective in hurting Syria's ability to conduct chemical attacks.
• These officials also criticized President Donald Trump's talking about the strike beforehand.
• The latest strike most likely didn't change anything on the battlefield in Syria, and it's hard to know how much of the chemical weapons stockpile it hit.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”

― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Hooghe M, Dassonneville R. Explaining the Trump Vote: The Effect of Racist Resentment and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments. PS: Political Science & Politics 2018:1-7. https://www.cambridge.org/core/article/explaining-the-trump-vote-the-effect-of-racist-resentment-and-antiimmigrant-sentiments/537A8ABA46783791BFF4E2E36B90C0BE

The campaign leading to the 2016 US presidential election included a number of unconventional forms of campaign rhetoric. In earlier analyses, it was claimed that the Trump victory could be seen as a form of protest voting. This article analyzes the determinants of voters’ choices to investigate the validity of this claim. Based on a sample of the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, our analyses suggest that a Trump vote cannot be explained by a lack of trust in politics or low levels of satisfaction with democracy, as would be assumed given the extant literature on protest voting. However, indicators of racist resentment and anti-immigrant sentiments proved to be important determinants of a Trump vote—even when controlling for more traditional vote-choice determinants. Despite ongoing discussion about the empirical validity of racist resentment and anti-immigrant sentiments, both concepts proved to be roughly equally powerful in explaining a Trump vote.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for Trump’s legal team, said that unexpected raids like the one executed against Cohen “are generally reserved for mafia dons and drug kingpins.”

“It is not every day that you see no-knock search warrants authorized by a federal judge on a lawyer and a law firm in white-collar matters,” Corallo said. “I don’t know how serious it is for President Trump, but it is very serious for Michael Cohen.”

 

[Mister Sandman]

ouch, Scott......... is it really possible to be even worse than your (terrible, disgusting) boss?
(usual haters of NYT pls abstain, and focus on the facts - Pruitt is a disgrace under any term)

https://nyti.ms/2JSOHWx

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]