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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



"I have no interest in watching this media feeding frenzy. I've already made up my mind on the matter. Come on, who are we supposed to believe; a bleached blond with big, droopy breasts, or Stormy Daniels?"

Stormy Daniels said Saturday that her work in the porn industry has helped her prepare for the international attention she faces on the eve of a much-anticipated television interview about her alleged affair with Donald Trump and the hush money she says she received to keep it quiet.

“Being in the adult industry, I’ve developed a thick skin and maybe a little bit of a dark sense of humor,” she told The Washington Post. “But nothing could truly prepare someone for this.”

Daniels is scheduled to be the star attraction of the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, a broadcast that caps a two-week media blitz by her attorney, Michael Avenatti. As Daniels’s image and story have become 24/7 fodder for cable news shows, Avenatti has hinted repeatedly that there are more details yet to come out — including in a tweet Friday suggesting that he has a DVD with new information.
 




President Trump has decided not to hire two lawyers who were announced last week as new additions to his legal team, leaving him with a shrinking stable of lawyers as the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, enters an intense phase.

“The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president’s special counsel legal team,” Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said in a statement on Sunday morning. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them.”
 


On Friday night, the Trump administration released its plan to exclude transgender troops from the armed forces. Nothing will change for now: Four federal courts have blocked the Pentagon from discriminating against transgender individuals, and those orders remain in place. In fact, it is doubtful that this plan, or any effort to ban transgender troops, will ever take effect.

Those federal courts have found that discrimination against trans service members violates the Constitution, and the new proposal does nothing to ameliorate the ban’s grave constitutional flaws. Instead, the policy issued by the White House on Friday combines anti-trans propaganda with baseless, discredited concerns about the alleged danger of open transgender service. That might satisfy Trump’s base. It will not satisfy the federal judiciary.

Trans service members have been allowed to serve openly and receive transition-related health care since June 2016, under a policy instituted by former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. That policy was instituted as a result of multiple studies conducted and commissioned by the armed forces, including a landmark RAND study which found transgender service does not undermine readiness and unit cohesion or impose undue costs. Trump decided to repeal the policy and bar trans service members in order to shore up political support.

The president announced the ban on Twitter in July, then directed Secretary of Defense James Mattis to “study” the issue and make recommendations. But the president quickly faced legal impediments, with those four federal courts blocking the policy after finding it to be an “arbitrary,” “capricious,” and unjustified infringement on trans people’s constitutional right to due process and equal protection. As a result of those four court orders, transgender service members have continued to serve openly, and trans individuals have been allowed to enlist in the military since Jan. 1, 2018.

Yet behind the scenes, a “panel of experts” has been crafting a report, also released on Friday, designed to provide pretextual justification for Trump’s ban. According to multiple sources, Vice President Mike Pence played a leading role in the creation of this report, along with Ryan Anderson, an anti-trans activist, and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ lobbying group.

Mattis actually supports open transgender service, but he was effectively overruled by Pence, and chose not to spend his limited political capital further defending trans troops. In a memo released on Friday, Mattis encouraged Trump to ban transgender people from enlisting in the military, and to discharge those service members who wish to transition. Trump has now formally adopted these suggestions.

Given its authors, the Trump report’s conclusions are unsurprising.
 


WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — When porn star Stormy Daniels appears Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” this much is clear: The segment won’t be family viewing in the White House.

President Trump, who has been spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., is scheduled to return to the White House ahead of the highly anticipated interview. But first lady Melania Trump, who traveled to Florida with the president on Friday, is staying behind.

“The First Lady will be staying in Florida as is their tradition for spring break,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a late Sunday morning statement.

There is no word on whether Trump will tune in to the broadcast on CBS to hear Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, talk about her alleged decade-old affair with him and the hush money she says she received to keep it quiet.

Trump, meanwhile, has been complaining to associates here this weekend about all the media attention Daniels has been receiving, according to people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. Among other inquiries, Trump asked one friend how Daniels might affect his poll numbers.
 


What were you doing when you heard that Trump won?

Every once in a long while, an event occurs that is so momentous that, decades later, everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when it happened. We know immediately that what just happened is truly historical, and that the world will never be the same again. In my generation, it was 9–11. In a previous generation, it was the JFK assassination.

It’s been eight months, but I still remember it like yesterday.

...

The world’s most stable liberal democracy is now led by a right wing extremist, who campaigned and won on an openly illiberal agenda.

The world’s prime superpower will be led by an openly illiberal team for the next four (or eight) years. His presidency will energize and normalize illiberalism worldwide — be it of the same strand that he represents (figures like Putin and the European far-right), or the opposite extreme (organizations such as ISIS, who were quick to welcome his victory).

We had to take a step back and reassess. This project just became more important, and deserves to be told in context.

Why is authoritarianism rising globally? As it happens, we’ve been studying this — and warning against monocausal explanations of it — for years.

Here’s the story, in seven trends:

#1 The Triumph of Globalization
#2 The Loss of Anchors
#3 Economic Transformation
#4 Obsolete Nationalism
#5 Political Failure
#6 Social Media Broke our Public Sphere
#7 The Resurgence of Islamic Extremism
 
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