1828

2002: lobbyist buys house for around $475k with a shell company.
2003: shell company sells home to Pruitt, a state senator, for $375k.
2018: that lobbyist is now a to aide at the EPA.

1829

Several staffers said Tillerson’s inaccessibility extended to his foreign counterparts. “He is not a proactive seeker of conversations,” an officer in the State Department’s Operations Center, who spent months connecting Tillerson’s calls, told me. When new Secretaries are sworn in, they typically receive a flood of courtesy calls from foreign ministers. More than sixty came into the Operations Center for Tillerson. He declined to take more than three a day. In April of last year, when the United States initiated strikes on Syria, the Administration skipped the conventional step of notifying its NATO allies. “When news broke, alarmed allies . . . were calling” the operations officer told me. It was early on a Sunday afternoon, and Tillerson was in Washington and unoccupied. “We were told that the Secretary had a long weekend, so he was going to go home and have dinner with his wife and call it a night.” No calls. “That floored me,” the operations officer recalled.

1830

New Yorker is having a busy week

1831

From the legislation they’re looking at twisting to try and save coal :

In the past this has been used for the good of the government, by allowing the government to pay for technology to help a company produce radiation hardened microchips for military equipment or vaccinations for military personnel for example. In the hands of the Trump Kleptocracy this would lead to corruption on an unimagined scale…

1832

Everything, and everyone, Donnie touches turns to shit:

1833

Another one going under the bus!

1834

I really want to see that dirtbag go down.

1835

I’m just really surprised at all his excesses. You’d think he’d be happy just to dismantle the EPA from the inside, which is what he seemed to wanting to do all his professional life. Instead he has to do all these weird extravagant pay raises and wasteful expenditures while he’s doing it. It’s very strange.

1836

I really want to see that dirtbag go down.

Me too, but I think his ‘day job’ (i.e. the stuff he’s doing when not corruptly wetting his beak) is far more harmful, and the next person to come in will be just as bad.

It’s a consequence of electing a chief executive who claims climate change is a hoax and (pretends to) believe in a Candyland coal-mining fantasy, which is a consequence of having a dumbass electorate.

1837

And almost as if on cue yesterday, Sarah Sanders had this to say:

And, the Trump White House “continues to review a number of the reports” about EPA chief Scott Pruitt rannygazoo, Sanders said, promising to “let you know if we have any changes on that front.”

She commended Pruitt for doing a “good job adminstering the president’s policies,” including deregulation, which she called “good things.”

I wish I had a link to the actual statement. It was hemming and hawing on anything actually being done against him, followed by praise that he’s doing what they want. So like, waste as much taxpayer money as you want, Scott, just keep doing the President’s bidding. Carry on.

1839

The best people

1840

If the allegations are true, can he even go back to being the WH physician? I’d think the drinking thing would be a red flag.

1841

The White House is stuffed full of red flags and yet somehow they keep getting away with it. So I’m thinking No, the drinking thing doesn’t matter at all. The doctor could be a chainsmoking, heroin shooting, morbidly obese meth addict and it wouldn’t matter to the GOP.

1842

Well then they’d have to get a doctor that might tell the truth about Trump’s condition. Why risk it?

1843

It might matter to the Navy though…

1844

Does not compute.

1845

Remember what Trump said about Jackson looking like he was out of central casting.

And in that big article on McMaster in the New Yorker this week, it was said that Trump was disappointed when he finally met McMaster because he’s bald and built like a barrel.

Yes, Trump only cares about how you look.

1846

Don’t forget:
… lying, cheating, stealing, girlfriend/wife beating, philandering, sexual harassing, undisclosed foreign agent …

We could make a long list of things that don’t really even register for someone in the Trump administration.

1847

I’m not one to defend Trump, but Trump didn’t appoint this guy to the position in the WH. He was there going back to at least the Obama admin.

1848

Pruitt is an even bigger idiot than we all think. He turned down advice for his testimony from the White House. You just don’t do that to Trump. He’s gone within a week.