President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Pompeo is a weird dude. Top of his class at West Point. Harvard Law and Law Review. Williams and Connelly. Then bailed out after a year and went into business in Kansas (where he had no previous ties) which failed gracefully after eight years, and four years later was in Congress. Heavy Koch Bros. ties.
Who leaves Williams and Connelly after a year? A federal clerkship maybe, but going to Kansas to start an aeronautic business (it isn't like he had any experience running a business or with the airplane industry).

 

"He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books."

What happens as part of this review process, I wonder? Is this for national security reasons? What, if anything, does any president get to delete in such cases?

 

Nothing. The intelligence community can censor, but the President can't. Obviously, he didn't try, because here's the story. Can't get the genie back in the bottle. Probably 10-20 publishing house interns with access to galley proofs who'd give them to the Times for nothing and/or sell them for something to a less scrupulous outlet.

 

No, but I still wouldn't call the Post centrist. In all its history, it has never endorsed a Republican for President. Even when Republican candidates won large majorities of states/electoral votes, the Post had never endorsed them. For many years (and I assume this is still the case) it rarely endorsed Republicans for any office. That's not centrist.

It's not just the editorial page, either; what the Post decides is newsworthy is also part of the issue. It's an old example, but one that I think is illustrative: when I first moved to the DC area in 1984, there was a big pro-abortion demonstration scheduled on the Mall. For a week or more in advance, the Post, which I had just started reading and was impressed by, was full of stories about the rally. National section, Metro section, Style section - everywhere. From the Post's coverage, I thought the thing was going to be bigger than the 1964 civil rights march. The day of the event and the morning after, front-page coverage. Not long afterwards, there was an anti-abortion demonstration on the Mall. One article, after the event, on the back page of the Metro section, less than half of the part of the page above the fold. Only thing was, there were more people at the anti-abortion rally. To its credit, once someone pointed out the discrepancy in coverage relative to attendance, the Post acknowledged a problem and had an ombudsman-type person write about it. As I recall (and I doubt the article used these exact words), the basic explanation was that their journalists knew lots of friends from college who were coming to town for the pro-abortion rally and didn't know any non-college-educated people who didn't like abortion, so of course they thought the first event was the bigger story. Yes, that's unconscious rather than intentional bias, but could you see the Post ever making such a coverage mistake or doing so much cheerleading in favor of the conservative side of an argument? (Maybe being too credulous on Iraq WMDs, I guess, but that doesn't seem like the same sort of thing.)

 

If it’s John Bolton who brings down Trump, well, it’d be fitting. Bolton’s not a good guy. Neither is Trump. Fitting.

 

Oh look, another devastating smoking gun that doesn't fucking matter.

 

It may not matter to Republican Senators. Let's see about the other 330 million citizens.

 

No, believing government lies about starting a war is nothing like giving an event too much coverage and then admitting you made a mistake. It's a billion times worse and it sure as shit isn't "left-leaning."

 

Yeah. I’ll believe these spineless GOP senators when I see it. They’ve done nothing in face of overwhelming evidence so far. Doubt Bolton news changes anything.

 

Mr. First Captain Pompeo was also a five-and-fly guy. Nice to see our investment in his military training paid off with a career of military service. He looks like he could spend a couple weeks at Beast Barracks to trim down some.