"The White House is looking for a few manly men. If you have abused your spouse, please make sure there are no pictures. Apply directly to Don McGahn or John Kelly. Knowledge of Russian a plus. No questions asked."
[Added]: Rob Porter and the Team Trump men's club: Accused of mistreating women? You're hired.
[Added]: The White House had to protect Rob Porter to save Donald Trump
John Kelly is a liar (his timeline does not stand up to scrutiny) and a defender of domestic abuse. However, he works in a WH that is okay with this, and all the other Chaos, so long as no one in the press knows about it. But we know about a few cases now. So naturally, there’s shock about the gambling going on in this casino.
So, what happens next?
What happens to John Kelly? (John Kelly must go). What happens to Hope Hicks (Trump has 'grown increasingly frustrated with Hope Hicks' )? Oh, and what happens to the country?
Trigger warning: abuse picture below the fold
Michelle Goldberg/NY Times:
Rob Porter Is Donald Trump’s Kind of Guy
Porter and both of his ex-wives are Mormons, and, speaking to The Intercept, Willoughby described confiding in a Mormon official about her husband’s fits of rage. She was told to think about how Porter’s career might suffer if she spoke out. Powerful people in Washington seem to have been similarly worried, first and foremost, about protecting the ambitious and pedigreed young man.
Porter once worked for Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, and in The Daily Mail, the senator categorically dismissed the accusations and, whether he meant to or not, the women making them. “Shame on any publication that would print this — and shame on the politically motivated, morally bankrupt character assassins that would attempt to sully a man’s good name,” he said.
Also, deputy Chief of Staff Jim Carroll, First of His Name resigns to become Drug Czar of All The Americas.
Trump likes giving his vassals fancy titles.
WaPo:
Second White House official departs amid abuse allegations, which he denies
A White House speechwriter resigned Friday after his former wife claimed that he was violent and emotionally abusive during their turbulent two-and-a-half-year marriage — allegations that he vehemently denied, saying she was the one who victimized him.
The abrupt departure of David Sorensen, a speechwriter who worked under senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, came as The Washington Post was reporting on a story about abuse claims by his ex-wife, Jessica Corbett. Corbett told The Post that she described his behavior to the FBI last fall as the bureau was conducting a background check of Sorensen.
Jacy Gomez/US News:
Inexcusable
Domestic abuse is a serious problem in the United States whether the president knows it or not.
Trump should have condemned Porter's actions. Instead, he did the exact opposite, saying "we certainly wish him well" and "we hope that he will have a wonderful career."
No one familiar with Trump's scandal-plagued presidency will be particularly shocked by these comments. But they are still disappointing – and we should be outraged. Domestic violence is a serious problem in the United States. Making light of domestic violence offenders and their crimes is simply inexcusable.
Matt Glassman/NY Times:
Why Congress Doesn’t Always Do the Right Thing
When the incentives don’t align, members face problems. In these cases, re-election usually wins out, not least because it is a prerequisite for any other goal. Indeed, profiles in courage are so rare because they routinely cost legislators: Both Edmund Ross and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky lost their re-election bids.
Many argue, however, that members should be willing to risk their jobs for the public good, especially on matters of conscience or morality. Historically, some politicians have done this — perhaps most famously Sam Houston of Texas, when he refused to support slavery’s expansion or secession from the Union, which cost him first his Senate seat and then his governorship. But giving up one’s job for a public policy is tougher than it appears. Consider whether you would give up your current job — and likely any future in your current career field — to pass one specific public policy.
Still, some people might be willing to sacrifice their job for a policy. But even then, there’s a catch: Very few will be happy to lose their job to not get the policy. That is, members who sacrifice their seats to “do the right thing” might find that the policy is never enacted, or that they are replaced by someone who repeals the policy.
James Pindell/Boston Globe:
Whatever happened to the Tea Party? It died last night
Paul’s filibuster Thursday night ended up just being the eulogy for the Tea Party. The Republican-controlled House and Senate passed the huge spending package, despite the fact that it will bloat the national debt. President Trump, who ran a campaign promising to radically reduce the debt, signed the bill around the time federal workers showed up to clock in for another Friday.
Philip A. Klein/WashExaminer:
Republicans repeal the Tea Party
“When the Democrats are in power, Republicans appear to be the conservative party. But when Republicans are in power, it seems there is no conservative party,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., one of the early Tea Party senators, observed in a Thursday night senate floor talkathon against the spending deal. “The hypocrisy hangs in the air and chokes anyone with a sense of decency or intellectual honesty.”
James Hohmann/WaPo:
Rand Paul’s short-lived shutdown is ending, but his warning about GOP deficit hypocrisy reverberates
THE BIG IDEA: Republicans are all Keynesians now, but not Rand Paul.
As he forced a brief government shutdown overnight to draw attention to his party’s hypocrisy on deficit spending, Kentucky’s junior senator was the personification of William F. Buckley’s definition of conservatism: standing athwart history, yelling stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.
Military Times:
We asked, you voted: 89 percent said no to Trump’s military parade
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 51,000 readers had responded. The majority, 89 percent, responded “No, It’s a waste of money and troops are too busy.”
The other 11 percent responded “Yes, it’s a great opportunity to show off U.S. military might.”
On Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Dana White said any parade plans were in the very beginning stages, and that the Pentagon had tapped the Army to lead the effort.
Politico:
We Locked Four Experts in a Room Until They Solved Immigration
Your move, Congress
Staring into this dismal legislative abyss, Politico Magazine and I decided to try to take matters into our own hands. If Congress couldn’t manage to forge a deal in their wood-paneled offices and marble halls over the past 17 years, maybe we could do it in POLITICO’s carpeted conference room in two hours. What did we have to lose? We couldn’t possibly do worse than Congress.
...
Over 120 minutes, we learned a lot about the contours of the current immigration debate—what both sides really care about (and if it’s actually Trump’s wall) and whether, somewhere out there, there is a deal that just might be palatable to advocates who like immigration and to those who want less of it. The answer is, actually yes. No question, the results were surprising. Congress, are you listening?
Max Boot/WaPo:
America is resisting Trump’s onslaught. Just don’t get cocky.
Trump is no Adolf Hitler, and it does a disservice to the victims of Nazism to suggest a comparison. He is more of a budding Benito Mussolini, Juan Perón or Hugo Chávez: a garden-variety strongman, not uniquely evil. And if Trump ruled in Italy in the 1920s, Argentina in the 1950s or Venezuela in the 2000s, he would undoubtedly be a dictator by now. But he doesn’t. Trump is the president of one of the oldest and most stable constitutional republics on the planet….
So far our democracy, for the most part, has resisted the Trumpian onslaught. But don’t get cocky. Trump has been in office only a year, and already Freedom House has downgraded the United States in its Freedom in the World Survey “due to growing evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, violations of basic ethical standards by the new administration, and a reduction in government transparency.” How much worse might the damage become if Trump stays in power for another three or even, heaven help us, seven years?
James Risen/Intercept:
THE UNITED STATES intelligence community has been conducting a top-secret operation to recover stolen classified U.S. government documents from Russian operatives, according to sources familiar with the matter. The operation has also inadvertently yielded a cache of documents purporting to relate to Donald Trump and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Over the past year, American intelligence officials have opened a secret communications channel with the Russian operatives, who have been seeking to sell both Trump-related materials and documents stolen from the National Security Agency and obtained by Russian intelligence, according to people involved with the matter and other documentary evidence. The channel started developing in early 2017, when American and Russian intermediaries began meeting in Germany. Eventually, a Russian intermediary, apparently representing some elements of the Russian intelligence community, agreed to a deal to sell stolen NSA documents back to the U.S. while also seeking to include Trump-related materials in the package.
The CIA declined to comment on the operation. The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
More to come. Alas.
