Donald Trump fires Rex Tillerson, replaces him with Mike Pompeo. Update!

Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018

Courtesy of CNBC: 

Rex Tillerson is out as secretary of State, ending a tumultuous tenure as America's top diplomat that was marked by a series of public disagreements with his boss — President Donald Trump. 

Trump plans to appoint CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace the former Exxon Mobil chief executive. The president picked deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel to run the spy agency.

That tweet up above was how the world learned that Trump was kicking Tillerson off the island, no press conference, no official statement, just a tweet. Because apparently that is how these things are done now.

There has of course been talk that Trump was displeased with Tillerson going way back to when he called Trump a "moron" back in October.

Though of course Trump responded to talk that Tillerson may be on his way out with this tweet:

The media has been speculating that I fired Rex Tillerson or that he would be leaving soon - FAKE NEWS! He’s not leaving and while we disagree on certain subjects, (I call the final shots) we work well together and America is highly respected again!https://t.co/FrqiPLFJ1E

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 1, 2017

I cannot say that I was ever a fan of Tillerson, but at least he comported himself like a grown up most of the time.

Mike Pompeo is just a Trump ass kisser and a rubber stamp on anything and everything that Trump will want to do going forward.

Clearly this administration is in free fall right now, and when it finally makes impact it is going to leave a hell of a crater.

Update: Apparently Tillerson learned he was fired in the same tweet where everybody else learned about it. 

The State Department has used NONE of the money that it was allocated to fight the Russian cyber attacks. Go ahead, act surprised.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

As Russia’s virtual war against the United States continues unabated with the midterm elections approaching, the State Department has yet to spend any of the $120 million it has been allocated since late 2016 to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy. 

As a result, not one of the 23 analysts working in the department’s Global Engagement Center — which has been tasked with countering Moscow’s disinformation campaign — speaks Russian, and a department hiring freeze has hindered efforts to recruit the computer experts needed to track the Russian efforts. 

The delay is just one symptom of the largely passive response to the Russian interference by President Trump, who has made little if any public effort to rally the nation to confront Moscow and defend democratic institutions. 

As if you needed ANY more evidence that Donald Trump is a Russian agent.

This also reinforces the New Yorker article about the Kremlin's influence in Trump's decision to choose Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State.

Just not sure that Mitt Romney would have been so willing to play along with this.

Did the Kremlin push Donald Trump to reject Mitt Romney and instead choose Rex Tillerson for his Secretary of State? Yeah, quite possibly.

New in this fantastic Chris Steele profile: Steele wrote another memo in November 2016 that said the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. https://t.co/Jtdj72CjJi pic.twitter.com/NWWkJGr5DJ

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) March 5, 2018

Here is the passage courtesy of the New Yorker:  

One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy—and an incoming President. 

As fantastical as the memo sounds, subsequent events could be said to support it. In a humiliating public spectacle, Trump dangled the post before Romney until early December, then rejected him. There are plenty of domestic political reasons that Trump may have turned against Romney. Trump loyalists, for instance, noted Romney’s public opposition to Trump during the campaign. Roger Stone, the longtime Trump aide, has suggested that Trump was vengefully tormenting Romney, and had never seriously considered him. (Romney declined to comment. The White House said that he was never a first choice for the role and declined to comment about any communications that the Trump team may have had with Russia on the subject.) In any case, on December 13, 2016, Trump gave Rex Tillerson, the C.E.O. of ExxonMobil, the job. The choice was a surprise to most, and a happy one in Moscow, because Tillerson’s business ties with the Kremlin were long-standing and warm. (In 2011, he brokered a historic partnership between ExxonMobil and Rosneft.) After the election, Congress imposed additional sanctions on Russia, in retaliation for its interference, but Trump and Tillerson have resisted enacting them.

If accurate this would indicate that not only did the Kremlin help Trump get elected, but that they are still influencing his decision making so that it directly benefits Russia and not  the United States of America.

And yet the Republicans continue to support him and protect him from impeachment.

By the way this New Yorker article is a deep dive into the Steele Dossier and how it was assembled, so it is well worth your time to read. 

Donald Trump has now joined his buddy Vladimir Putin on Amnesty International's list of human rights villains.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

President Donald Trump joins authoritarian leaders like Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping in spreading hate and promoting regressive policies in 2017, Amnesty International’s annual human rights report determined. 

The report looks at the human rights situation in 159 countries and territories throughout 2017, Trump’s first year in office. 

“In the U.S.A., President Trump wasted little time in putting his anti-rights rhetoric of discrimination and xenophobia into action, threatening a major rollback on justice and freedoms—including by signing a series of repressive executive orders that threatened the human rights of millions, at home and abroad,” reads the report released Thursday by the human rights group.

The report details how the Trump administration oversaw and promoted abusive border enforcement practices and the detention of asylum-seekers on the U.S. border with Mexico.

And just in case you thought that Amnesty International was being completely unfair, get a load of this.

Courtesy of Politico: 

State Department officials have been ordered to pare back passages in a soon-to-be-released annual report on global human rights that traditionally discuss women’s reproductive rights and discrimination, according to five former and current department officials. 

The directive calls for stripping passages that describe societal views on family planning, including how much access women have to contraceptives and abortion. 

A broader section that chronicles racial, ethnic and sexual discrimination has also been ordered pared down, the current and former officials said. 

The move, believed to have been ordered by a top aide to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, reflects the Trump administration’s rightward turn from the Obama administration on family planning issues. It also appears to highlight the stated desire of Tillerson and President Donald Trump to make human rights a lower priority in U.S. foreign policy.

So yeah when a US report on human rights is stripped of language to identify abuses and protect human rights, I would suggest that we are no longer a leader in that endeavor.

Which I guess answers this question for a number of people in this country.

Yes, yes we are. 

Watch the Secretary of State admit that he called Donald Trump a moron, by refusing to admit that he called Donald Trump a moron.

Q: “Did you call the president a moron?”
Tillerson: “I’m not going to dignify the question.” (via CBS) pic.twitter.com/JuoN8OpaZG

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 19, 2018

Oh man, I could watch that all day.

Apparently Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may soon be on his way out as well.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seemed focused this week on rebooting his image as a beleaguered Cabinet member on the outs with his boss and his own employees — holding a rare town hall with employees, promising foreign trips into 2018 and saying he is “learning” to enjoy his job. 

But then he went off script by offering another invitation for diplomatic talks with nuclear-armed North Korea, putting him at odds once again with President Trump and senior White House officials, who are increasingly exasperated with the secretary of state and say he cannot remain in his job for the long term. 

The episode highlights the deep distrust between the White House and Tillerson and suggests how difficult it will be for the relationship to continue. While Trump and Tillerson have clashed on several policy issues — including negotiating with North Korea, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and planning to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem — much of the distance between them seems personal and probably irreversible, White House officials said. 

Tillerson, one White House official said, “had not learned his lesson from the last time,” when Trump publicly rebuked his top diplomat on Twitter over the wisdom of talking to North Korea. 

A senior U.S. official said foreign diplomats and leaders often ask if Tillerson is speaking for the administration and when he will depart. Another White House aide said White House officials, diplomats and other Cabinet secretaries largely deem the former ExxonMobil chief executive “irrelevant.”

Inside the White House, this person said, there are fairly regular conversations about who will replace Tillerson even as he remains in the job. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, for example, may no longer be the leading choice because it means he would not brief Trump every day, and the president likes him in that role, the official said. 

“I think our allies know at this point he’s not really speaking for the administration,” this Trump official said — a particularly sharp slap given that Tillerson has sought to be a buffer and interpreter for allies angry or bewildered by some of Trump’s actions.

Tillerson "had not learned his lesson."

Yeah, how dare this guy to continue trying to do his job.

At some point it seems possible that Trump will have replaced every single original member of his administration and White House staff. 

However he should keep in mind that rearranging the deck chairs did not keep the Titanic from sinking to an icy grave.

Award winning US diplomat writes stinging resignation letter directed at Rex Tillerson and his State Department.

Elizabeth Shakelford in Somalia.

Courtesy of Foreign Policy: 

An award-winning U.S. diplomat who was seen as a rising star at the State Department has issued a scathing resignation letter, accusing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Donald Trump administration of undercutting the State Department and damaging America’s influence in the world. 

Elizabeth Shackelford, who most recently served as a political officer based in Nairobi for the U.S. mission to Somalia, wrote to Tillerson that she reluctantly had decided to quit because the administration had abandoned human rights as a priority and shown disdain for the State Department’s diplomatic work, according to her letter, obtained by Foreign Policy. 

“I have deep respect for the career Foreign and Civil Service staff who, despite the stinging disrespect this Administration has shown our profession, continue the struggle to keep our foreign policy on the positive trajectory necessary to avert global disaster in increasingly dangerous times,” Shackelford wrote in her Nov. 7 letter. 

“With each passing day, however, this task grows more futile, driving the Department’s experienced and talented staff away in ever greater numbers,” she wrote. 

“She’s emblematic of what we’re losing across the board,” said one of Shackelford’s former State Department colleagues. “She is the best among us. We should not be losing the best among us. And that should concern people that we are,” the former colleague said. 

In her letter, Shackelford said she was leaving with a “heavy heart” as she recognized the potential of the State Department’s mission. She said she was “shocked” when Tillerson appeared to cast doubt on the importance of human rights in remarks to department employees on May 3.

Shackelford ended her letter with this:  

In the closing paragraph of her letter, Shackelford called on Tillerson “to stem the bleeding by showing leadership and a commitment to our people, our mission, and our mandate as the foreign policy arm of the United States. 

“If you are unable to do so effectively within this Administration, I would humbly recommend you follow me out the door.”

The sad truth is that career State Department staff and diplomats are left to question whether their presence within the agency is helping to slow down its slow disintegration, or if they personally are being damaged due to their association with it as it visibly falls to pieces.

If all of the truly talented diplomats and staffers like this woman leave the agency, then diplomacy is no longer available in our tool kit and all we have left is the threat of military action.

For decades the United States and presented itself as a champion of human rights around the world, but if the Trump Administration has its way, we will be reduced to the bully on the playground keeping the smaller kids off the swings and collecting the younger children's lunch money for ourselves.

And we all know what eventually happens to the bullies, don't we?

The New York Times reports that Rex Tillerson may be on his way out at State.

Bad news boss, I think I'm about to lose my job.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

The White House has developed a plan to force out Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, whose relationship with President Trump has been strained, and replace him with Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, perhaps within the next several weeks, senior administration officials said on Thursday. 

Mr. Pompeo would be replaced at the C.I.A. by Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas who has been a key ally of the president on national security matters, according to the White House plan. Mr. Cotton has signaled that he would accept the job if offered, said the officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations before decisions are announced. 

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Trump had given final approval to the plan developed by John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, but the president has been said to have soured on Mr. Tillerson and in general is ready to make a change at the State Department. Mr. Tillerson was at the White House on Thursday twice for meetings, but neither the president nor his team gave a public reaffirmation of his position in the administration.

When given the opportunity to confirm his confidence in Tillerson, and to assure folks that he was not going anywhere, this was Trump's reply.

Reporter: "Do you have Rex Tillerson on the job?"

President Trump: "He's here. Rex is here." pic.twitter.com/H72H8X529y

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 30, 2017

"He's here. Rex is here."

Yeah, but the question was how long would he be there.

Some have suggested that putting Mike Pompeo in charge of the State Department would be a good move as he takes the position more seriously than Tillerson apparently did. 

However Pompeo is also ideologically more pro-war, so if Tillerson was the obstacle keeping Trump from going off half cocked and attacking North Korea, it is unlikely that Mike Pompeo will continue to obstruct that decision.

One thing is for certain Trump's claim that he "only hires the best people" has now become a running joke.

You know, much like this presidency.

Only no one is laughing anymore.

Yet another State Department employee resigns her post as Rex Tillerson seems to adopt new problem solving strategy called "wishful thinking."

Courtesy of Think Progress: 

Rex Tillerson’s State Department slipped further into disarray this week, following the departure of a figure brought in to overhaul the department amid growing tensions within the Trump administration. 

Maliz Beams, who was brought on as Counselor to the Department of State in August, resigned her position after only three months, according to officials. The department confirmed Beams’ departure on Monday. 

“Beams is stepping away from her role here at the Department of State and is returning to her home in Boston,” a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “Effective immediately, [Tillerson’s deputy chief of staff] Christine Ciccone will step in to lead the redesign effort and manage its daily activities.” 

Beams’ departure is more bad news for the department, which has suffered a number of exits in recent months. Beams, who has an extensive private sector background in business and finance and previously served as CEO of Voya Financial (formerly ING US), was brought in to lead a massive redesign effort championed by Tillerson. Trump’s budget calls for a $10.1 billion reduction in State Department spending, a controversial move that could cost 2,300 people their jobs. Beams reportedly clashed with Tillerson over the effort.

But don't think that Rex Tillerson does not have a plan for how to deal with world crises with only a skeleton crew, because he does.

The aforementioned "wishful thinking."

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s proposal to slash the state department and foreign aid budget is in part based on an expectation it will be able to resolve some of the global conflicts that have been absorbing costly diplomatic and humanitarian support. 

But in a vivid display of the most urgent diplomatic challenge facing the US, Tillerson was speaking as North Korea carried out a new ballistic missile test – the first since it fired a missile over Japan in mid-September. 

The secretary of state presented this rationale for the budget cut at a time when he is under fire from former US diplomats for gutting his state department amid multiple crises around the world – an allegation Tillerson denied.

I think it is overwhelmingly obvious at this point that Tillerson, like many Trump appointees, was  appointed to destroy the very agencies they were supposed to lead.

Tillerson seems particularly adept in that regard.

Of course the problem with that is that it leaves the American people incredibly vulnerable.

All across the board we are suffering a crisis of leadership, and every day the danger to average citizens rises just that much higher.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson continues to gut the State Department.

Remember who you work for.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

According to a Friday night report in the The New York Times, Tillerson has not only frozen hiring and failed to nominate people to the majority of the department’s politically-appointed positions — he’s also engaged in what appears to be an intentional campaign to push out as many career diplomats as possible. 

“[Tillerson’s] small cadre of aides have fired some diplomats and gotten others to resign by refusing them the assignments they wanted or taking away their duties altogether,” the Times report states. “Among those fired or sidelined were most of the top African-American and Latino diplomats, as well as many women, difficult losses in a department that has long struggled with diversity.” 

Among the methods used to push out senior diplomats is by forcing them to undertake menial tasks under Tillerson’s presidentially-directed order to accelerate Freedom of Information Act requests (which are currently backlogged). The task has required every department in the bureau to contribute. As a result, “midlevel employees and diplomats — including some just returning from high-level or difficult overseas assignments — to spend months performing mind-numbing clerical functions beside unpaid interns.” 

“The United States is at the center of every crisis around the world, and you simply cannot be effective if you don’t have assistant secretaries and ambassadors in place,” R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat who served as under secretary of state during George W. Bush’s adminsitration, told the Times. “It shows a disdain for diplomacy.” 

The report notes that Tillerson still has not nominated an assistant secretary for East Asia or an amabssador to South Korea — two positions that are integral to finding a diplomatic solution to President Donald Trump’s continually escalating feud with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

One former ambassador said that either the Trump Administration does not believe that America should continue to be a world leader or else they are simply incompetent.

Or else they could simply be doing exactly what their Russian puppet masters have directed them to do.

Trump's National Security Adviser says he has the intelligence of a "kindergartner."

Courtesy of Buzzfeed:

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster mocked President Trump’s intelligence at a private dinner with a powerful tech CEO, according to five sources with knowledge of the conversation. 

Over a July dinner with Oracle CEO Safra Catz — who has been mentioned as a candidate for several potential administration jobs — McMaster bluntly trashed his boss, said the sources, four of whom told BuzzFeed News they heard about the exchange directly from Catz. The top national security official dismissed the president variously as an “idiot” and a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner,” the sources said. 

A sixth source who was not familiar with the details of the dinner told BuzzFeed News that McMaster had made similarly derogatory comments about Trump’s intelligence to him in private, including that the president lacked the necessary brainpower to understand the matters before the National Security Council. 

Both Oracle and the Trump administration heatedly denied the comments that Catz later recounted.

Keep in mind that just last month Rex Tillerson, Trump's Secretary of State, was also reported to have called Trump "a moron."

At this point I am ALWAYS going to believe other sources as opposed to officials in this White House simply because lying seems to be job one with them.

And in addition to that we can all see for ourselves that Trump is a fucking moron, so how could we not think that members of his cabinet also see that he is a fucking moron?

We have seen numerous reports in the past that Trump is surrounded by babysitters whose job it is to keep him from destroying his presidency, or the country, from within.

I tend to give a lot more validity to those rather than assurances from this White House that it a giant love fest and that everybody respects the president and admires the job he is doing.

P.S. You knew this was coming.

right-wing conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney just blasted out an email w/subject line: "H.R. McMaster Unfit to Serve Following Pattern of Insubordination to President." Cites BuzzFeed story as example. pic.twitter.com/k84tFMwMpg

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) November 20, 2017

So predictable.

Donald Trump in response to a question about unfilled positions in the State Department.: "I'm the only one that matters."

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

President Donald Trump brushed off concerns that the State Department still has key unfilled jobs, telling Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that he’s the only one who matters. 

“We don’t need all the people they want us to get,” Trump said in an interview that aired Thursday night. “Let me tell you ― the one that matters is me. I’m the only one that matters because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be.” 

The president also blamed Senate Democrats for dragging out the approval process for his nominees. While some State Department job picks are waiting for confirmation, more than a dozen top positions remain vacant with no named nominee, according to a Fox News article published last month.

Damn I swear I felt somebody walk across my grave.

That is one of the most chilling answers I have heard yet.

Donald Trump is a fucking idiot, and clearly suffering from a mental illness.

Only somebody with an extreme megalomaniac would suggest that they, and they alone, are the only important person needed to run a country as vast and complicated as the united States of America.

Just imagine if President Obama had answered a question like that. Never mind trying, you can't do it, because he NEVER would have.

When asked later if Trump thought that Rex Tillerson would last the duration, he responded with:

“Well, we’ll see,” Trump said. “I don’t know who’s gonna be ― duration.”

Yes, let's dismiss all of the grownups and leave the cranky toddler in charge of everything.

Okay look if you need me, I will be hiding under my bed. 

CNN's Jake Tapper asks Rex Tillerson point blank if he called Trump a moron, Tillerson refuses to answer. "I'm not gonna deal with that petty stuff."

.@jaketapper: Did you call Trump a moron?

Rex Tillerson: “I’m not gonna deal with that petty stuff” #CNNSOTU https://t.co/mQxyzmjzBa

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 15, 2017

Well, THAT'S a confirmation if ever I heard one.

By the way "unconventional" is code for "dysfunctional."

Donald Trump wanted to increase America's nuclear arsenal tenfold.

Why can't I blow stuff up? I'm the president.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

President Donald Trump said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room. 

Trump’s comments, the officials said, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on that downward-sloping curve. 

According to the officials present, Trump’s advisers, among them the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, were surprised. Officials briefly explained the legal and practical impediments to a nuclear buildup and how the current military posture is stronger than it was at the height of the build-up. In interviews, they told NBC News that no such expansion is planned.

The July 20 meeting was described as a lengthy and sometimes tense review of worldwide U.S. forces and operations. It was soon after the meeting broke up that officials who remained behind heard Tillerson say that Trump is a “moron.”

H-o-l-y shit!

You combine this knowledge with the knowledge that Trump is itching to attack North Korea, and you have the stuff of absolute nightmares.

This is why you do not elect a crazy person to be president of the United States.

The people who helped elect Donald Trump should be considered traitors to their country and treated as such.

Ignorance can no longer be used as an excuse.

They KNEW who he was, and they cast a vote to put him in the most powerful position on the planet anyhow.

Donald Trump takes to Twitter to attack a Republican Senator, because why not...nothing else going on in the world.

Senator Bob Corker "begged" me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said "NO" and he dropped out (said he could not win without...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017

..my endorsement). He also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said "NO THANKS." He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017

...Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didn't have the guts to run!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017

Okay now try not to act shocked, but as it turns out Donnie boy is lying again.

Courtesy of CNN:  

President Donald Trump's tweets Sunday morning claiming he denied Sen. Bob Corker's request for an endorsement are false, two sources familiar with the discussions said. 

Trump told Corker he was going to endorse him the day the Tennessee Republican announced his intention to retire, the sources said. 

"The President called the senator early last week and asked him to reconsider his decision not to seek re-election and reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times," one of the sources said.

I know, it's like lying is just easier for Cheeto Hitler than telling the truth.

This latest flare up is most likely the result of remarks Corker made earlier in the week in response to questions concerning the possibility that Rex Tillerson might be on the outs with Trump:

"I think Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis, and Chief of Staff Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos, and I support them very much," the Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill. 

When asked about the relationship between President Donald Trump and Tillerson, which is reportedly on thin ice, Corker suggested that the secretary of state doesn't have the support he needs from the President. 

"I mean, look, I see what's happening here," Corker said. "I deal with people throughout the administration and (Tillerson), from my perspective, is in an incredibly frustrating place, where, as I watch, OK, and I can watch very closely on many occasions, I mean you know, he ends up being not being supported in the way I would hope a secretary of state would be supported, that's just from my vantage point."

Corker, who is not seeking reelection and therefore has nothing to lose, did not hold back in response to Trump's Twitter tirade either.

It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.

— Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 8, 2017

I swear if I eat one more mouthful of popcorn I am going explode.

So now Trump sets his sights on the 1st Amendment. Knew this was coming.

Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2017

Courtesy of The Atlantic:  

Frustrated with a set of damning reports about his relationship with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—including the nugget that Tillerson called him a “moron” (perhaps with an R-rated modifier)—the president offered a new suggestion on Twitter Thursday morning: Why not explore government censorship of the press?

Trump had been relatively quiet on Twitter for a few days, following the massacre in Las Vegas and his trip to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, but the Tillerson stories on Wednesday set off a new tirade of tweets against the press. Most of them are the standard “Fake news!” variety—never mind that there have been stories of Trump-Tillerson tension for months, and that multiple outlets have confirmed the “moron” anecdote—but the president is calling for something different here. He is suggesting that the Senate bring its investigative powers to bear on news reports that are, from all indications save Tillerson’s non-denial denial, entirely accurate.

Those of you who have been paying attention, may remember that this is not the first time that Trump has threatened the American press.

Courtesy of an NPR story from back in February 2016: 

Feeling maligned by the media, Donald Trump is threatening to weaken First Amendment protections for reporters if he were president and make it easier for him to sue them. 

“I love free press. I think it’s great,” he said Saturday on Fox News Channel, before quickly adding, “We ought to open up the libel laws, and I’m going to do that.” 

The changes envisioned by the celebrity businessman turned Republican front-runner would mean that “when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money,” he said at a rally Friday in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Trump added that, should he win the election, news organizations that have criticized him will “have problems.” He specifically cited The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Make no mistake, Trump does not see himself as a president. He sees himself as a dictator.

And just like his idols Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Putin he has no patience with a press that insists on reporting accurately about him and his administration.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson almost quit this summer after calling Trump a "moron." Mike Pence convinced him to stay.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the White House, according to multiple senior administration officials who were aware of the situation at the time. 

The tensions came to a head around the time President Donald Trump delivered a politicized speech in late July to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Tillerson once led, the officials said. 

Just days earlier, Tillerson had openly disparaged the president, referring to him as a “moron,” after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials, according to three officials familiar with the incident. 

While it's unclear if he was aware of the incident, Vice President Mike Pence counseled Tillerson, who is fourth in line to the presidency, on ways to ease tensions with Trump, and other top administration officials urged him to remain in the job at least until the end of the year, officials said. 

Officials said that the administration, beset then by a series of high-level firings and resignations, would have struggled to manage the fallout from a Cabinet secretary of his stature departing within the first year of Trump’s presidency.

Actually I am not at all convinced that managed the fallout from the large number that have already resigned or been fired.

However losing Tillerson would have only amplified the fact that Trump is in way over his head.

Donald Trump's Defense Minister General James Mattis also seems to engaging in a little mutiny.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

Days before President Trump has to make a critical decision on whether to hold up the Iran nuclear deal, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis openly split with him on abandoning the agreement, the second senior member of the president’s national security team to recently contradict him. 

Mr. Mattis told senators on Tuesday that it was in America’s interest to stick with the deal, which Mr. Trump has often dismissed as a “disaster.” 

“Absent indications to the contrary, it is something that the president should consider staying with,” Mr. Mattis told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee after being repeatedly pressed on the issue. 

The comments were the latest example of how Mr. Trump’s instincts on national security — to threaten North Korea with destruction and tear up an Iran accord that most experts and allies say is working — are running headlong into opposition from his own National Security Council.

I would bet my house that there are a whole lot of folks in this Administration, and on the White House staff, calling Trump a moron and much worse behind his back.

Right now he is likely seen as no more than a performing monkey working to keep the public distracted, while aides and cabinet members try to get as many things as possible accomplished before this presidency implodes.

Which, let's face it, could be any day now.

Did Donald Trump just tweet his intention of going to war with North Korea?

I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017

...Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017

I'm sorry but if you have stopped negotiating with North Korea then what is left besides a military response?

People are counting on General Mattis to be the stop gap that keeps Trump from impulsively attacking North Korea, but a recent Newsweek article suggests that Mattis may not actually have the power to do that.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

"POTUS doesn't need to call the SecDef at all to do this,” says Stephen Schwartz, editor and co-author of Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940. “Although he’d presumably be included on the conference call if this weren't a middle-of-the-night, spur-of-the-moment thing.” And as nuclear weapons historian Alex Wellerstein discovered in a 2015 U.S. Air Force document last spring, the president can bypass the secretary of defense altogether and “direct the use of nuclear weapons through…the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the combatant commanders and, ultimately, to the forces in the field exercising direct control of the weapons."

I am a lover of horror movies, and have watched literally hundreds, but NOTHING has frightened me as much as having this man in the White House. 

I used to stay up night's worrying about what Bush and Cheney, might unleash on the world, but at least they appeared to be sane.

There is no telling where this lunatic might take us.

Donald Trump hates his job, and possibly his life right now. Update!

This is from a rather extensive Politico article which goes into great detail about the loss of White House and administration staff and the struggle to replace them, as well as Trump's loss of support among those deciding to stay in place.

This last at the end is what I really wanted to share with you:

That’s left Trump in a bind amid recent public criticisms from people like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and economic adviser Gary Cohn, who both publicly distanced themselves from Trump’s comments in the wake of the violent white nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

“I think that cuts him to the quick,” said a source close to the president. But he knows he can’t afford to push either man out right now. Outside of U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who people close to Trump do not think is ready to head the State Department, the source said, “I couldn’t name you a guy who would take the job or get confirmed.” 

But staffing up is far down on the list of Trump’s priorities right now. As he heads into an autumn fight on tax reform with a Congress he feels does not respect or fear him, the source close to the president described his mind-set, in recent weeks, as “the worst it’s ever been.” 

“He feels like this is not what he signed up for, and his accomplishments are being underplayed,” the person added. “He just looks around and says, ‘When is this going to get better?’”

Way back in May the guy who wrote "The Art of the Deal" for Trump said that he would resign and then somehow declare victory.

At the time I did not really think that was likely.

However now I am beginning to think that doing so will be Trump's only way to get out of a job he really hates, while also doing it on his terms.

Trump's only other option is to dig in and fight the impeachment that he has to know is coming for him, while those around him either jump ship or turn on him and undercut every decision that he makes until he is forcibly removed.

Update: According to Eric Trump his dad may not only hate his job, he may be suicidal over it: 

“It’s the media, the mainstream media, who does not want him to succeed. It’s government who does not want him to succeed… No matter what he does, he’s going to get hit, and listen, I think you have to tune it out. You obviously have to be tuned into it, but at the same time you have to take it all with a grain of salt.” 

“If they weren’t talking about you, you wouldn’t be doing something right and it’s important to keep it in context, otherwise quite frankly you’d probably end up killing yourself out of depression,” Eric Trump said. “But he’s doing a great job.”

Clearly this family has no idea what "doing a great job" even means.

I actually think that Trump is too big of a narcissist to ever take his own life.

Still this is just further proof that Trump is barely hanging on by his fingertips.

Secretary of State Tillerson says that when it comes to American values Donald Trump speaks only for himself.

An unforgettable moment. pic.twitter.com/KNu18g2FyP

— Margarita Noriega (@margarita) August 27, 2017

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace noted that the United Nations had condemned President Donald Trump for not unequivocally condemning racism and asked Tillerson if Trump had made it more difficult to promote American values abroad. 

“We express America’s values from the State Department,” Tillerson said. “We represent America’s values, our commitment to freedom, our commitment to equal treatment for people the world over, and that message has never changed.” 

Wallace noted that the U.N.’s statement suggested world leaders are beginning to doubt whether the U.S. is living its own values. 

“I don’t believe anyone doubts the American people’s values or the commitment of the American government or the government’s agencies to advancing those values and defending those values,” Tillerson said. 

What about the president’s values, Wallace asked. 

“The president speaks for himself, Chris,” Tillerson said. 

After a moment of silence, Wallace asked whether Tillerson was deliberately trying to separate himself from the president. Tillerson replied simply that he’d already made his own statement on his department promoting U.S. values. 

Can you say "awkward?"

Now you might think that it is no big deal that Trump's Secretary of State seems to be distancing himself from his boss (But don't fool yourself it IS a big deal.) however it appears he is not the only one in Trump's administration to be doing so.

Here is Trump's Secretary of Defense James Mattis talking to the troops.

Wow. "Hold the line until our country gets back to understanding & respecting each other..." Jim Mattis to US troops pic.twitter.com/VMAAXjBWyg

— Richard Chambers (@newschambers) August 26, 2017

"You're a great example for our country right now it has some problems, you know it and I know it" so just "Hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other."

It sounds like he means hold the line until Trump is out of office and America can start repairing itself.

Or is that just me?

Some how I get the feeling that Trump is becoming more and more isolated every day.