This spells doom for Trump and the NRA. Paul Erickson, hope the sex was fantastic. Read the rest

Smart guy. Has 6-year-old triplets. Knows a shitshow when he smells one.

Nick Ayers, who is currently Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff, will NOT become the next Next White House Chief of Staff. Read the rest

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who called Trump a "moron" while he was in office, from which he was later fired, has expressed some more choice thoughts on the president.

Speaking to Bob Shieffer last night, which was aired on CBS, Tillerson said, "What was challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented Exxon Mobil corporation, to go work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports, doesn't like to get into the details of a lot of things..." He also said that Trump "acts on his instincts," which "in some respects looks like impulsiveness."

WATCH: Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is speaking publicly about what led to his firing in March by President Trump.

CBS News political contributor @bobschieffer interviewed Tillerson in Houston last night, at a dinner to benefit MD Anderson Cancer Center. pic.twitter.com/47qDqcsrMs

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) December 7, 2018

Not seen in the clip above but mentioned in The Washington Post is that Tillerson then talked about "how Trump as president regularly attempted to do things that violated the law."

“So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I want to do it,’ " Tillerson said, according to the Houston Chronicle, “and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’ ”

Tillerson also wasn't keen on Trump's use – and the American's love of – Twitter. Read the rest

Stephen Colbert points out some of the comical Trump moments at Bush's funeral, from destroying the casual chatty mood between the Obamas and Clintons to the zoning out when everyone else is reading the Apostles' Creed. He also reminds us of Trump's great journey to meet with the Bush family the night before, in which he took a stretch limousine with his motorcade to travel across the street, 250 feet away.

Colbert sums it up perfectly when he says, “Donald Trump is the only person in the world who can bring down a funeral.” Read the rest

The downfall of Milo is delicious. The flaming Trumpster fire lasted just one day on the crowdfunding platform Patreon before getting banned. Read the rest

Russia is back on its Ukraine bullshit again: last week, the Russian navy boarded and seized a Ukrainian gunboat and a tugboat taking the crews of the vessels prisoner, at least for the time being. NATO is sitting on their hands, just like they did when Putin sent mercenaries and unflagged Russian special forces operators into Ukraine to wrest control of the Crimea peninsula back in 2014. There's a lot of finger wagging and tut-tutting, sure. Trump said that he was calling off his chat with Putin last week as a result of the Russian military's aquatic clusterfuck...but then he met with him anyway.

After four years of putting up with Russian occupation of a chunk of their territory, Ukraine knows better than to leave sorting it out to diplomacy: the seizure of the nation's vessels could well be Putin's way of gauging the west's reaction to a larger action--one that could lead to a large-scale assault on Ukrainian turf.

In response to Putin's dry run, Ukraine has called up its citizen reservists, declared martial law in some parts of the country, and has been toying with the idea of refusing entry to any Russian male of fighting age. Oh, and they've asked Canada to renew the assistance that they've been giving them for the past few years.

From The CBC:

Canada is being asked to renew its military training mission to Ukraine — a proposal that's taking on a whole new level of urgency as border tension ramps up with Russia.

Over the weekend it seemed like a solid trade agreement – putting the trade war on hold for 90 days – had been made between the United States and China. And then Trump couldn't resist Twitter, where, over a few posts, he warned that if the deal didn't happen, he was a "Tariff Man." Following his toxic tweets, the Dow Jones industrial fell 705 points, or nearly 3%. The Nasdaq fell 3.1%.

The negotiations with China have already started. Unless extended, they will end 90 days from the date of our wonderful and very warm dinner with President Xi in Argentina. Bob Lighthizer will be working closely with Steve Mnuchin, Larry Kudlow, Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2018

......on seeing whether or not a REAL deal with China is actually possible. If it is, we will get it done. China is supposed to start buying Agricultural product and more immediately. President Xi and I want this deal to happen, and it probably will. But if not remember,......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2018

....I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2018

According to The New York Times:

Stocks fell on Tuesday, after President Trump sowed confusion over the status of a truce in the trade war between the United States and China, while the bond market, often considered a safe haven for investors, sent a stark warning about expectations for an economic slowdown.

President Lenín Moreno of Ecuador *really* wants Julian Assange out of that London embassy.

Convicted felon and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort suggested he could broker a deal for the handover of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the United States during a meeting in May 2017 with the president-elect of Ecuador. Read the rest

On stage at the G-20 summit on Saturday, Trump suddenly wanders off, for no apparent reason, leaving the president of Argentina standing alone. A staffer runs after him, trying to corral him back. We then hear Trump on a hot mic saying, "Get me out of here." The Guardian captured it on video, which @TopRopeTravis tweeted here:

Oh my lord.

Trump just wandered right off the stage, leaving the Argentinian president all by himself.

A staffer is then observed attempting to stop and retrieve Trump.

Ladies and gentlemen... Donald Trump.

pic.twitter.com/JhZpKFfiZG

— TOᑭ ᖇOᑭE TᖇAViS (@TopRopeTravis) December 1, 2018

But this is nothing new. Watch how Trump zombie-steps away from Prime Minister Netanyahu last year in Israel. Yikes.

Is Donald sleepwalking around the G20 or something pic.twitter.com/COsL2mHu1O

— Nathan H. Rubin (@NathanHRubin) December 2, 2018

Read the rest

Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s plans to build a Trump Tower Moscow has led the Special Counsel to question the role Ivanka and Don Jr played in trying to secure a Russian real estate deal, reports Hunter Walker at Yahoo News. Read the rest

Trump today canceled, via a tweet, his planned G20 meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Read the rest

In 2007, Florida multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to two felony prostitution counts in a sweetheart deal that sent him to a private wing of a minimum security prison, with a work-release program that let him go to an off-site office for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for just over a year. Prosecutors knew of at least 36 underage survivors of sex crimes committed by Epstein, but none of them were notified of the deal (this silence is a breach of federal law), and they were subsequently smeared by Epstein's lawyers who accused them of being "gold diggers." Read the rest

The disgraced former foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign was boasting about a Russia business deal after the election, a newly unearthed letter reveals. Read the rest

The President extends a lump of coal to our troops along the border, in a gesture of Trumpian holiday slime. A Merry Christmas to all, and to the immigrant children locked in ICE dog cages, enjoy your gruel. Read the rest

President Trump at today's rally in Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis:

“You’ll say I’m very conceited. Other than the blond hair when I was growing up they said I look like Elvis.”

(CNN) Read the rest

Yes, Trump is a pathological liar, but he's also the first US president to call Ted Cruz a liar, the first to admit that the Saudis were likely behind 9/11, the first to admit that the Saudi royals can kill a lot of journalists but that the US will still do business with them because they buy a lot of American bombs, that Nancy Pelosi blew a chance to impeach Bush, that pharma and defense contractors rip off the American public, that politicians are for sale to their political donors, that Vladimir Putin doesn't have a monopoly on political assassination (and that the US is hardly innocent on this score), and that going into Iraq was a "big, fat mistake." Read the rest

$5 from the $17 purchase price of each hand-painted Trumpturd squishy is directed to the charity of your choice, from among the ACLU, Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood, or the Institute for Free Speech. (Thanks, Jared!) Read the rest