You gotta think that he knows it's his if he wants it. Soooo, my guess is he doesn't really want it.

I think he wants someone else to pull the trigger.

Trump picked Pence for a number of reasons, but I'm sure one of them was Pence's ambitious nature. As long as there's a nonzero chance that he could take over the Presidency from Trump at some point, I don't see him resigning or acting out. He can see the possibility of gay conversion therapy camps peppered out all across this great land and that vision will sustain him in the months and years to come.

Trump has the right according to the Constitution, but this was a mistake on his part. One term president.

It was about 30 mins overlong imo, obv a great film nonetheless.

I believe this is what one would call a motive.

no. its more like imagine you have a white employee who is horrible at his job but he gets fired for posting racist and homophobic stuff all over twitter and for attending white supremacist protest rallies against taking down those new orleans monuments.

I don't understand how an investigation takes this long. Clearly lower level people like Carter Page should be easy pickings and then higher up people like Flynn were caught dead to rights. I get the agenda of the house and senate committees is to appear concerned and get absolutely nothing done. I'm 100% confident nothing will ever get accomplished through them. If Gulliani comes in as FBI director and puts an end to the current investigation, it seems WAAF. Even if Comey or other FBI people leak damaging info, this administration is seemingly able to handle absurd amount of negative press.

For you, indictment + fines in under 24 hours.

It seems like this is actually a rather pedestrian and classic political coalition: you have a huge mass of older whites (not a majority for sure, but there's alot of them) and a much smaller number of mega wealthy who are also mostly older and white. That is the alliance on the ground, so to speak. Then you have a propaganda organ, or really an ecosystem of them (AM radio, FNC, etc). that maintains message and discipline and coordination. And you have political leadership. It's a traditional political model.

The older white people are, in the end, the numerical force behind all of this in the context of democracy (ignore for a moment how vibrant our democracy is). I will reiterate I am not saying they are a majority of Americans but I also wouldn't deny that there aren't tens of millions of them at least and they have a lot of purchasing power and social power and atomized authority (in the careers, communities, churches, etc).

And they are the ultimate enabler of the movement, but numerical force alone isn't the extent of how the system operates. They symbiotically feed and get fed by the rest of the machine. And it's really who this whole shebang revolves around: the GOP gets older white people votes, the right-wing media complex gets their eyeballs and scams them a bit (e.g.,LifeLock gold reverse mortgages), the elites get policies favorable to them. Older whites get tribalist paens and entertainment and some of their economic interests fought for from leadership and the propaganda organs (e.g., Medicare stays, Obamacare goes, racist jokes and anger on Fox News for the yuks and blood sport). Typical bread and circus stuff.

And you have right-wing media entertainment complex industry and its brightest star and parasite Trump are feeding off of each other, and then catering to that same group of people: older middle class and above whites.

And they all work together to get the state and government and authority bent toward their interests. Simple politics.

Whether you see the right-wing media entertainment complex as in control, or Trump, or the Senate GOP, or the monied elites, or the collective whims of older middle class whites as being the real levers of power I think is largely academic. It's a pretty simple political coalition with leadership, propaganda organs, monied elites, and rank and file. The "who is REALLY in charge?" I think misses the point about how actual political systems work with mutual trades and benefits are spread around to all of the actors and of course control is placed in the elites but even then it is spread around in meaningful ways. Trump is a stakeholder, the GOP old Senate guard like McConnell and McCain and Grassley are stakeholders, Sean Hannity and Rupert Murdoch get rich and powerful too, the Kochs wield some authority and get some favorable policies, etc. The white people hoi polloi get fun tabloidy Fox News and AM radio and some reasonable implicit assurances the elites will look out for their best interests which, I mean it's ****ing America, that basically does happen. It's the younger generations who largely get to deal with the economic insecurity and the browns who get to worry about the cops and batons and the old whites get the fun and a small cut of profits and assurances the floor won't fall out for them.

At this point I'm really starting to feel like this is all an academic exercise. Nothing is going to stop the vicious descent into authoritarianism. People aren't going to suddenly vote in a blue wave in 2018. Our democracy is just going to slowly die over the next few years.

There was a hot minute during the primary when Fox was critical of Trump thinking that he was bad for the brand, but once it became clear that Trump wasn't going away, they fell in line. They're certainly catering to the sensibilities of the hoveround crowd even when Ailes & Co. would prefer a more traditional Romney/Jeb-style president.

We're all basically pretty ****ed right now.

It would be infuriating to look back after that and see how Russia used THIS colossal moron (who just fired the guy investigating him and claimed exoneration) to kill our democracy.

Anyway if Trump does get away with this, and I think he will, the next step is probably to go after the press and purge anyone within his own party who's not loyal. Republicans in Congress are the very last check on Trump, I can see him going after them with a furious rage soon.

Yeah I think this is a good counter-point to the notion that Fox is really the central power station of the entire operation. Remember that they too are very much forced to have a finger in the wind and beholden to evolve with the whims of the old angry whites.

The 2016 GOP primary is a great example when they brought out their heavy hitters like Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace to embarrass Trump in the debates to little effect before eventually falling in line behind him. It's suggestive that the the Fox News audience contains some measure of collective political authority and that the right-wing coalition has bottom-up features. Really the whole Trump movement is suggestive of that. He had very little elite support to start but two years into his formal political career or whatever, he's quickly collecting power around him and getting the elites to fall into line simply by harnessing the seemingly unmovable emotional devotion that his supporters have for him. I doubt many powerful people on the right would have chosen this path as their ideal 2 years ago but it suggests the hoi polloi can pull a lot of strings. I am not naive enough to suggest they are getting all that much, the real winners will be rich bozos if they can fade total nuclear annihilation and other disasters, but the armies of old whites are getting some things for sure, even if its just the fee fees Trump creates when he's triggering liberals or insulting Muslims or creating ****storms of institutional chaos in a system they have steadily grown to hate over the last few decades, and whatever else.

Hard to name a more useless ****bag on the national stage than Mitch McConnell

Yes, it will become a one-party state and eventually a one-man state.

Trump's Reichstag moment is a matter of time. After the one-party state forms, he will allow a terror attack to occur and use the chaos to purge party members with questionable loyalty (and just those he doesn't personally like). He will blame everybody but himself. All of the GOP will be isolated from Trump and GOP supporters will become Trump supporters (Democrats and anti-Trumpers are long gone by now). At this point, the transition is completed and Trump becomes the world's most powerful dictator while the people are living in conditions that make North Korea appear to be paradise.

Namath,

He's deeply troubled. What's the problem?

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/862360328214118406

Hugh Hewitt doesn't see any problem whatsoever here. M. Night Shyamalan Could not write these twists.

link? I saw only his FB post explaining his Yea vote. If there was remorse there I missed it.

Jeff Sessions. That was easy.

It'll be a cliche plotline in future movies (assuming that Trump approves them before release).

If anything, pirate radio (or a more technologically advanced variation of it) is a pretty promising venture given that Trump will eventually control American media.

Pence: What investigation? The President isn't under investigation. He just said so himself.

Not kidding.

It's really sad also how difficult it is for folks to be moderately objective about these things. Obama should have fired Comey. The guy is clearly acting politically right and left. But suddenly he is the cause celebre of the Democrats!? Get real. This is why people voted against Hillary. They're tired of such rank hypocrisy. The gutless Democrats stood by while Comey screwed them and now they rally around him ... All these political games. Trump is a goddawful president because he's a racist, xenophobic charlatan shoving massive tax cuts for the richest and screwing over folks with medical problems. That he apparently wants to be Putin's tool is almost beside the point.