Michael Wolff’s new book is dominating the airwaves and has all week.  Except on Fox Noise, of course.  The release date of the book was moved up to today, and Trumpland is doing everything it can do to increase sales, including threatening the author and his publisher as well as slandering everyone who spoke ill of Trump.  Steve Bannon, the Darth Vader of political strategy, has been renamed Sloppy Steve by His Orangeness.  Amongst all this firestorm, other news has been announced today, and the timing is just a little coinkydink:

The FBI has announced that it has reopened an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.  This comes after months of Trump screaming about “Crooked Hillary”, and demanding the FBI investigate what’s already been investigated ad nauseam. Word got out today of the investigation, apparently leaked by, you guessed it, congressional Republicans.  Second, Senate Republicans have made the very first criminal referral in connection to the Russia interference investigations against…wait for it…Christopher Steele, the retired British intelligence agent who wrote the famous dossier about Trump’s relationship with the Russians.  That’s right, folks…the VERY FIRST CRIMINAL REFERRAL from Republicans in the Trump-Russia investigation is against the guy trying to expose Trump’s collusion with the Russians.

The fact that these two announcements come on the same day as the release of Fire and Fury is, like I said already, purely a coninkydink.  Nothing to see here…move along.

Stay with me here…I’ve been reading with great glee all of the excerpts of Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury, Inside the Trump White House, and have so far read nothing that didn’t ring true to me.  I mean, come on – Trump is a heavily made-up, feeble minded, thin skinned, narcissistic caricature of what we all understand to be “presidential”.  Trump has none of the characteristics of a successful politician (or successful businessman for that matter); he’s volatile; he’s taken to repeating his repetitions; he lies when it’s easier to tell the truth.  He’s fake to the core.

I’ve found the firestorm around this book to be highly entertaining and some of the editorial content of the talking heads is just as much fun.  One of those is this morning’s piece in the New York Times by Michelle Goldberg titled…wait for it…Everyone in Trumpland Knows He’s an Idiot.  She writes of several anecdotes in the book about how Trump went around his handlers and unilaterally fired James Comey over the Russia investigation.  She quotes Wolff about that decision, “In presidential annals, the firing of F.B.I. director James Comey may be the most consequential move ever made by a modern president acting entirely on his own.”

But more importantly, she makes the point that Trump is wholly and totally incapable of executing the job of the presidency, and EVERYONE knows it.  His failing mind, his obsession with striking back at every perceived slight, no matter how small, and his erratic decision making are all clear evidence of his incompetence.  Dozens of staffers have enabled him, assuring themselves and each other that they can manage him, when, in fact, no one can manage him, including himself.

Best line of the piece, though, came in the summation – Goldberg says,

“Trump, Wolff’s reporting shows, has no executive function, no ability to process information or weigh consequences. Expecting him to act in the country’s interest is like demanding that your cat do the dishes.”

Now, THAT is a great bit of wordsmithing, I must say.  Oh, and I’m trying to put my hands on a copy of the book today.  It should make for great fireside reading this weekend.

This one wins today:

Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chair and friend to Russian strongmen, has filed suit against Robert Mueller, Rob Rosentstein, and the Justice Department claiming that Mueller’s investigation is illegal.  Yep, that’s what they’re wasting time on today.

Understatement of the day comes from white collar crime attorney Sol Wisenberg, who told CNBC, “I think it’s going to be an uphill battle.  These kinds of things usually don’t prevail.”

Manafort has pulled out all the stops.  We’re popping popcorn right now.

I grew up in the age of the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.  I was in the 4th grade during the Cuban missile crisis.  I participated in the “duck and cover” drills that did nothing to protect us and scared the crap out of all of us.  During all those years, the guy sitting in the Oval Office was cautious; calculating; surrounded by foreign relations and defense experts.  As a young boy, I feared the Russians and depended on Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and HW Bush to protect us.  In the years since the Soviet Union collapsed and the arms race waned, I didn’t think too much about nuclear weapons or war, nor did most Americans.

Then came Trump.  The Reality Show President loves to stir the pot to stay at the top of the news cycle.  He insults television stars, politicians, foreign leaders, and everyone who gets in the way.  He spends hours a day watching Fox Noise, then tweeting out advertisements for the network on an hourly basis. And he brags.  He brags on himself in a continuous stream, takes credit for everything from the stock market to airline safety and loves to saber rattle.  He’s now in a twitter war with Kim Jong Un arguing over nuclear button size.

Jesus.  As my spouse said just this morning, “I used to worry about nuclear weapons launched by other countries.  I now worry about my own.”  No truer words were ever spoken.  We are now being threatened with nuclear war by our own goddam president.  He thinks this is a reality television episode, where he wins by vanquishing his foes.  This lunatic has shaken the American psyche, and certainly the world, to the core.

Joe Biden said in October that, “Violating the norms of personal conduct generates more anxiety and fear than any policy prescription that this president has enunciated.  Sending his Secretary of State to talk with North Korea and saying he’s on a fool’s errand… it is absolutely bizarre. It’s bizarre conduct.”  And this is the problem;  the job of the President of the United States is to give comfort to its citizens.  It’s to calm fears; instill confidence in the electorate in times of trouble.  The problem with THIS president, though, is that he couldn’t care less about you, me, or anyone else for that matter.  Trump uses the office of president as a giant funnel to fill his needy ego and his wallet.  If that means stirring up long-dormant fears of nuclear wars, so be it.  If it involves childish name calling and bullying, no problem.

We are on a path of certain long term damage to our democracy, if not worse.  The glib references to nuclear war keep the entire globe on edge.  This behavior hurts everyone, including Trump.  It’s time for Congress or the Cabinet to stand on their hind legs and get this guy out of there before he burns down the planet.

Today in the NY Times, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch of Fusion GPS hit back at congressional Republicans attacking them and selectively leaking their testimony to far right propaganda outlets.   Who’s Fusion GPS?  They are a political research firm who engaged former British spy Christopher Steele to research Trump’s business ties.  The principals of this firm have become the punching bag of right wing media and congressional Republicans, and they’ve now had enough of it.  In their op-ed today, Simpson and Fritsch are demanding that Congress release their testimony to the public.

In the piece, they talk about how they testified that Steele ran across multiple occasions of Trump’s ties to dubious Russian characters that likely involved money laundering.  They also talk about how Congress has ignored their advice to subpoena Deutschbank records of Trump’s transactions, but the only bank records that have been subpoenaed are their own.  Congress has done nothing to advance an investigation of Trump and have only sought to shoot the messenger, seek to discredit Fusion GPS.

They claim their testimony to Congress included details of Paul Manafort’s cozy relationship with the Russians and evidence they discovered of the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russian to get His Orangeness elected as president.  The fact that the Republican controlled houses of Congress have not released this testimony is all you need to know about the content of those transcripts.

Republicans have been actively covering up the reality of Trump’s collusion with the Russians and clear corruption.  Clearly they are putting party and self-interest before the needs of the American people, and their actions have destabilized our own government and damaged our reputation worldwide.

Congress must release these transcripts immediately.  Our democracy, or what’s left of it, hangs in the balance.