Tag: Trump tantrums

Former Trump chief of staff John Kelly says telling the president that things he wanted to do were illegal was like ‘French kissing a chainsaw’

The former White House chief of staff John Kelly has said that having to refuse President Donald Trump’s requests “was like ‘French kissing a chainsaw,'” according to a new book.

“Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President” by the New York Times correspondent Michael Schmidt is due to be released on Tuesday. The book’s synopsis describes it as the story of Trump “and the officials of his own government who tried to stop him.”

The chainsaw simile was included in an Axios report on the book. Continue reading.

Law professor details 4 glaring ‘deficiencies’ with Trump lawyers’ impeachment trial brief: ‘We’ve seen this before with the tantrums’

AlterNet logoOn Monday, January 20, attorneys representing President Donald Trump during his impeachment trial submitted a legal brief voicing their reasons for objecting to the trial. The 109-page brief has been drawing a great deal of criticism from Trump’s opponents, who argue that the attorneys’ reasoning is badly flawed in multiple ways. And law professor Michael J. Gerhardt, analyzing the brief in an article published by Just Security on January 21, cites four fundamental “deficiencies that make it more of a political screed than a legal document deserving of respect and serious consideration by senators, the public, historians and constitutional scholars.”

Deficiency #1, according to Gerhardt, is the “table pounding” tone of the memo — which the law professor criticizes for being “replete with bluster” and using over-the-top rhetoric like “an affront to the Constitution” and “a political tool to overturn the result of the 2016 presidential election.”

“— I am being precise and literal with that choice of words — thrown by Republican members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees,” observes Gerhardt, who teaches at the University of North Carolina. “The only thing this kind of rhetoric seemingly achieves is energizing the president’s base.” Continue reading.

‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals

Washington Post logoThis article is adapted from “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America,” which will be published on Jan. 21 by Penguin Press.

There is no more sacred room for military officers than 2E924 of the Pentagon, a windowless and secure vault where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet regularly to wrestle with classified matters. Its more common name is “the Tank.” The Tank resembles a small corporate boardroom, with a gleaming golden oak table, leather swivel armchairs and other mid-century stylings. Inside its walls, flag officers observe a reverence and decorum for the wrenching decisions that have been made there.

Hanging prominently on one of the walls is The Peacemakers, a painting that depicts an 1865 Civil War strategy session with President Abraham Lincoln and his three service chiefs — Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. One hundred fifty-​­two years after Lincoln hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world order. Continue reading.