Originally published at: A Case Study in How Trump Treats His Friends - TPM – Talking Points Memo
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Learning from her predecessors, ex-Attorney General Pam Bondi was the ultimate yes man. Perhaps unflagging sycophancy could protect her from the fate of Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s first Attorney General back in 2017, who provoked his rage by recusing himself from investigations into Russian interference in the…
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Alina Habba would be a great choice for Attorney General.
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Saturday’s Heather & Paul:
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The confirmation hearing would be fun to watch.
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Alina Habba should show up to her confirmation hearings in a bikini and announce her engagement to Trump, since she is angling to replace Melanoma as wife number 4.
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Heather’s piece on the formation of NATO is a must-read. The US was central and essential to the creation of NATO. The reasons for establishing a defensive alliance of democratic, sovereign nations are just as relevant today. It is not obvious that the participation of the US is necessary to the continued fulfillment of the existential NATO mission to protect its members from territorial aggression by an authoritarian Russian regime. It will certainly be harder, but the 32 member NATO of today (plus Ukraine) is capable of putting up more credible defence than the US gives it credit for. And they don’t have the choice of opting out.
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“With fronds like these, who needs enemas?”
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That’s because NATO, like the UN, the WHO, etc etc, was all created to establish American hegemony.
Sure, they were given the ‘you have to set aside X for defense spending’, but we didn’t want them to actually do it. We didn’t. We wanted them to make a nod toward it, but also to be dependent on us. The whole fucking post-war world order was us setting things up so Western Europe got a good deal, but we ran the show.
That is what Trump burned down in his first term. We literally ran the world. The whole fucking thing was set up so we’d benefit more than anyone else. And this fucking idiot threw it away because he doesn’t fucking understand at all.
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Friends? Trump doesn’t have any friends. He has fellow travelers and sycophants who think they can play with fire w/o getting burnt and generally find out they are wrong.
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On 19 February, the second day of Ramadan, Mohamad Faisal Nurul Amin and his family gathered to pray before sunrise in their apartment on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York. After nearly a year of waiting, they believed their family would be together again. Amin’s father, Nurul Shah Alam, 56, was coming home.
“For the first time since we arrived in America, I felt happy,” said Fatima Abdul Roshid, Shah Alam’s wife, speaking through an interpreter. “I thought my husband would be with our two sons and me for Ramadan.”
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You beat me to that ! 
the Orange Idiot has no friends, probably never has had. Friendships require emotional bonds that he just is not capable of
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I take particular interest in her because her father was my mother’s gastroenterologist (her main doctor in the last 20 years of her life – she died 23 years ago this May), a wonderful doctor and person. Her mother (who acted as his receptionist) was incredibly kind to my mother. Both of them even attended her funeral. I knew they were RC’s from Iraq (via Ireland, where he got his MD) but had no idea how active he was (is) as one until I read up on him a few years ago.
All of this has made me wonder, whence cometh Alina’s ambition? Her callousness? How do her parents feel about the direction she has chosen to take in life? Her now two divorces? (So much for that diamond-encrusted cross she’s wearing in her official gov’t portrait.) Visiting her Wikipedia page just now, I noticed that it no longer names her father or links to a Wikipedia page for him. (He’s a very distinguished MD.) In fact, his Wikipedia page has been taken down. He’s pretty much retired, so I he wouldn’t be worried about losing patients. Why is he distancing himself from his daughter, at least in public forums? Have he and his wife had to endure harassment and even threats? Are they ashamed of their daughter? Both reasons?
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It’s a collective idiocy. Sure Felon is the idiot who actually decided it was a good idea to puncture the hegemony balloon, but conservatives have been whining about this for decades. Because THEY didn’t understand. Listening to MAGA talk about “making America great” and pulling us out of OTAN simultaneously was always mentally jarring. They are masters of sloganeering.
Remember that the GOP used to run on being the idea party. It’s a pity they were all bad. Very much like the Darwin awards on continuous loop.
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On Friday in theGuardian…
trump mocking British PM Starmer…
“‘Ohhh, I’ll have to ask my team.’
“I said: ‘You’re the prime minister, you don’t have to.’
“‘No, no, no, I have to ask my team. My team has to meet, we’re meeting next week.’
“But the war already started. Next week the war’s going to be over … in three days.”(my bolding)
… … … … … … … …
Three days trump said.. three days… remember that. It tells me trump expected Iran’s regime to collapse and he’d get an ass kisser he could name as Supreme Leader for Iran. Now his merry little “excursion” has resulted in thousands of Iranians dead, much destruction across the Gulf and serious upending of the world’s economy. Not to mention complete ruination of America’s standing in the world and destruction of the world wide order that held (more or less) for more than 80 years since World War 2. NATO is gone and with it our alliances we needed and depended on. All for trump’s merry little 3 day war. And we should not forget Israel’s pounding of Lebanon and their extensive participation in trump’s merry little war.
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Trump, seemingly pleased by the recent blood-letting, may hunger for more. The names of various Cabinet members, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and FBI Director Kash Patel, have been floating around as potential next targets.
Like a temperamental, vengeful, unappeasable god, Trump must have his sacrificial virgin. Well, they would be virgins if he hadn’t already defiled them, metaphorically at the very least.
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