By Dustin Rowles | Politics | May 8, 2018 |
By Dustin Rowles | Politics | May 8, 2018 |
— It didn’t take long for Donald Trump to tire of Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor of New York City has already worn on Trump’s nerves, and word is, Trump is considering taking him off the television interview circuit after a series of missteps and admissions that have prolonged the Stormy Daniels saga (oh, Trump: The Stormy Daniels story is never going away. Ask Bill Clinton when people stopped talking about Monica Lewinsky). From the Associated Press:
President Donald Trump is growing increasingly irritated with lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s frequently off-message media blitz, in which he has muddied the waters on hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels and made claims that could complicate the president’s standing in the special counsel’s Russia probe.
Trump is apparently also irritated with Sean Hannity for aiding Giuliani’s cock-ups, and for suggesting that Trump “funneled” money through a law firm, which has illegal connotations.
Trump snapped at both men in recent days, chiding Hannity for using the word “funneled,” which he believes had illegal connotations, according to the people. As for Giuliani, the president has not yet signaled to him to stop appearing on television, but told a confidant recently that perhaps his new lawyer should “be benched” at least temporarily, if he can’t improve his performance.
Oh Giuliani and Hannity: Trump burns everything he touches, and then he leaves their charred carcasses by the dumpster on his way to the next fire. When will these people ever learn?
— Meanwhile, it does appear that Donald Trump plans to pull out of the Iran deal. An announcement will be made this afternoon. What does it mean? Well, the Iran deal is incredibly complicated, and Trump clearly doesn’t know his way around the intricacies, so some things will probably be left in place and some things won’t. However, it is likely to destabilize the region; it is likely to create more conflict in the Middle East; it may lead to an all-out war; Iran may reactivate its nuclear program; and gas prices will probably go up.
Or, Donald Trump gets f**king lucky again, nothing happens, and he stumbles backward into some sort of half-assed success. You never know with this guy.
— As we mentioned in Pajiba Love last night, Eric Schneiderman — accused by four women of some pretty heinous behavior — resigned within hours of Jane Meyer and Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker article detailing the allegations. Kellyanne Conway and a lot of Trumpers are declaring some sort of victory, though they refuse to acknowledge the hypocrisy in the fact that Democrats resign or are forced out after these allegations, while they protect a President who has had sexual assault allegations leveled against him by at least 16 women.
Gotcha. https://t.co/a3NPal4z9X
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) May 8, 2018
And if you’re wondering what Kellyanne’s husband is retweeting this morning, well, this is totally fair:
Eric Schneiderman and Junot Diaz are, of course, more reminders that even men who claim to be supporters, or who have suffered from abuse themselves, can still be raging misogynistic monsters.
Also:
Schneiderman resigns 3 hours after the New Yorker story get published (he deserves no credit or praise for this) - a Republican led committee in Missouri essentially indicts Eric Greitens and he's still there.
— Yashar Ali 😠(@yashar) May 8, 2018
Speaking of Diaz, I thought this was worth mentioning: Here in Portland, a local bookstore has decided to pull his books from their shelves. “There are plenty of authors who aren’t sexually assaulting and sexually harassing people, so we make more space for them by removing the ones who are,” Krzanowski said in an interview Monday.
I applaud the sentiment, but I do worry that if you start by pulling Diaz from shelves, by next year, there may not be any male authors left on those bookshelves. Yes, I know: Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
— What else, what else? Three states that supported Trump in 2016 will hold Republican primaries for Senator tonight: Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia. They all face Democratic incumbents, and what we’ll learn tonight, I guess, is how much the GOP in those states has swung toward more Trump-like candidates (although we will not know until November how those Trump-like candidates fare against the Democrats).