No Surprise Here; Afghan Ed.

The Taliban are to resume attacks against government forces, just days after signing a deal with the US aimed at bringing peace to Afghanistan.

The hard-line Islamist group had observed a "reduction in violence" in the week leading up to the agreement.

Trump got his public announcement of a deal, that's all he cared about. So the Taliban and the Afghani government will continue fighting while Trump continues to claim that he ended the war.

In other words, same shit, different day.

Trump Can't Help But to Entangle Himself in Lies

Let's suppose it went like this: After whacking Soleimani, Trump released a statement that said: "In 2007, the United States Government designated the Iranian Quds force as a terrorist organization. The use of military force against terrorist organizations has been permitted for decades. As the commander of the Quds Force, Soleimani was a legitimate military target. And so, when the opportunity came to attack him and the timing was right, we took it."

That, Gentle Reader, would have been enough. It would have been the end of the story. Iran would have made their demonstration by missile, and the world would have moved on.

But sadly, no. Trump had to embellish and outright lie in order to make himself look good. Trump lied about an imminent threat, which nobody can corroborate. Then he lied about Soleimani planning an attack on four embassies. Oh, his minions are doing a nice job of tap-dancing and fudging, but the truth of the matter is that Trump is, once again, making shit up.

So instead of it being a neat and tidy tale of Trump seizing the chance to kill the leader of a terrorist organization, a story that would have made Trump look like a decisive leader, the story becomes one of how Trump is lying about everything and that only Trumpanzees and tools like Chuck Todd buy his shit.

(The Iranians have their own problems with lying to the world.)

A Thoroughly Trumpian/Thielian Tactic

Stormy Daniels is suing Trump for defamation.

Given that it is safe to assume that every word uttered by Trump is a lie (including the conjunctions and articles), it's hard for me to perceive how he can defame anybody.

On the other hand, he does have a legion of room-temperature followers. Like this guy. So maybe it'll fly.

First Degree Conflation Isn't a Criminal Charge

“I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “It’s a disgraceful situation. … I’ve been saying it for a long time. I have this witch hunt constantly going on.”

The president portrayed the seizures in almost treasonous terms, framing them not solely as an attack on him but on all Americans.

“It's an attack on our country, in a true sense,” Trump declared. “It's an attack on what we all stand for.”

No, Russia fucking around with our political processes is an attack on this country. Executing a search warrant that was applied for by the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York (a Trump appointee) isn't.

Executing a search warrant is a lawful search. It's not a "breaking".

But hey, legal niceties and the truth are things that have never mattered to Trump. Every word that he speaks can be safely presumed to be a lie, including the articles and conjunctions.

Meanwhile, one of Trump's tinfoil-hat-wearing racist idiots has been placed on leave, pending an investigation.

Trump's Shifting Reality

When the Access Hollywood tape surfaced 13 months ago, Trump said that was him on the tape.

Now he's denying that.

He suggested to a senator earlier this year that it was not authentic, and repeated that claim to an adviser more recently. (In the hours after it was revealed in October 2016, Mr. Trump acknowledged that the voice was his, and he apologized.)

Trump is gone past lying to his family, his business associates (I doubt if he has any real friends), his party and the nation.

Now he's lying to himself. If reality isn't to his liking, he constructs an alternative reality in his head and goes there.

It should be clear, by now, that Trump's lawyers were saying that Mueller's investigation would be over by Thanksgiving as a fib to control an unruly client. It's sort of like telling a five-year-old, when they're badgering you about "when will we get there", that "we'll be there in ten minutes", when you're an hour away. Trump would have flipped out if they had told him that Mueller's not winding things down, but that he's still building up steam.

It's going to be a race between impeachment, Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, and Trump blowing his fuses and collapsing.

It's a safe bet that most of the GOP establishment is praying for Trump to blow his fuses before he does more damage to his party than he already has.

Boy Scouts Accuse Trump of Lying

Trump claims that the head of the Boy Scouts called him to say that his speech was the greatest one ever made to the Scouts.

The Boy Scouts are tacitly saying that Trump is lying.

Pro tip: Assume that every word that Donald Trump says is a lie, including the words "me", "I", and "Ivanka", until proven otherwise.

TrumpleThinSkin

A sane and rational president develops a thick skin. when people in the media carp at him, he just goes about doing his job and to hell with them.

That is not President (for now) Trump:

Donald Trump, who promised on the campaign trail to give up Twitter because it’s “not presidential,” on Thursday used the social-media platform to launch an ugly attack on Mika Brzezinski, who along with Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough, has been a consistent critic of his administration. “I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore),” he wrote. “Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

His Duty Butt-Monkey seems to think that Trump's acting like a schoolyard bully is normal for a man of his age.

The White House vigorously defended the president’s tweets Thursday, with spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders telling Fox News that “this is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media.” People on Morning Joe, she added, “have personally attacked me many times.”

"Bullied"? Really? Saying uncomplimentary things about a politician is "bullying"?

Unlike Trump, Dubya didn't froth at the mouth, throw himself on the floor, pound his fists and chew on the carpet when people said nasty things about him. Because, for all of his faults (read the first 18 months of this blog for that), George W. Bush was an adult who acted like one. Ronald Reagan may not have liked what the reporters were saying, but he was a man. Reagan didn't roam the White House, in his bathrobe, and yell at televisions. Hell, people have been saying incredibly vile things about Richard "Lord Voldemort" Cheney and he shrugged it off because he had power and he didn't give a fuck about his carping critics.

You won't find that Cheney, Reagan and Bush carried thirty years' worth of butthurt over a single insult. But Trump sure has.

Trump has the maturity of a four-year old. That was on full display in this morning's tweet-storm.

UPDATE: This just keeps getting better.

Trump's Story Keeps Changing

President* Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time Friday that he is under federal investigation as part of the expanding probe into Russia's election meddling. He lashed out at a top Justice Department official overseeing the inquiry, reflecting his mounting frustration with the unrelenting controversy that has consumed his early presidency.

"I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt," the president wrote on Twitter.

Trump wasn't told to fire Comey. First off, as anyone who has paid even a smidgen of attention to Trump's career trajectory knows, nobody can tell Trump anything. He does what he wants and, like a petulant seven-year old, other people clean up the resultant mess.

Second, this is what Trump said a month ago:

President Donald Trump said Thursday [05/11/17] that he had already decided to fire ousted FBI Director James Comey before Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote up a formal recommendation to do so.

"I was going to fire Comey," Trump told NBC News' Lester Holt in an interview. "Regardless of the recommendation I was going to fire Comey."

The White House initially said Rosenstein's memorandum to Attorney General Jeff Sessions prompted Trump to fire Comey, but Trump contradicted that account, saying he had already planned to do so and requested a memo to back up his decision.

So, was Trump lying then or is he lying now?