BTRTN: Lawyers, Neocons, and Bunnies
Born To Run The Numbers' weekly "Saturdata" review of seven days that were out-of-control even by Trump standards:
http://www.borntorunthenumbers.com/2018/03/btrtn-lawyer-neocons-and-bunnies.html
Excerpts: "The Warren Zevon song title that inspired the headline of this piece falls short of encapsulating the week, by a long shot. There were indeed lawyers (John Dowd departing), neocons (John Bolton arriving) and a bunny (Playboy’s Karen McDougall unloading), but also so much more – a total of eight major stories populating a week that, even by Trumpworld standards, was overloaded, almost entirely due to Trump’s own actions...
"Trump also decided to give Vladimir Putin a call to congratulate him on campaigning his way to his latest 'electoral' win. We’re not sure what is more remarkable, Putin’s manipulation of his own election to garner 77% of the vote, or his manipulation of the 2016 U.S. election to get Trump to 48%... Word leaked that H.R. McMaster’s national security team had recommended that Trump not call Putin, with the colorful detail that they had stamped DO NOT CONGRATULATE on his morning briefing papers (the latest evidence that the White House is, indeed, a day care facility with Trump as Chief Child). This leak itself became news, because only a very small group of people would have known this tidbit, and one of them leaked it within hours of the briefing reaching Trump’s desk, indeed within hours of the call itself. This leak (and the ignored advice that inspired it) might have been the fatal blow for H.R. McMaster as National Security Advisor, but he had been a dead man walking for weeks, if not for the entire year-plus since he replaced – remember this guy? – Michael Flynn."