Your Thursday Trump Dump

And I'm going to throw in links relating to the Health Care Debate since that's somewhat Trumpy…

  • Ezra Klein explains why people who think Medicaid is worthless are (a) wrong and (b) somehow under the impression that instead giving all that money to the rich in tax cuts is going to do anything for the people who will hurt by cutting Medicaid.
  • Ed Kilgore explains how when Trump says there are no cuts in Medicaid, he's using a very deceptive way of measuring the numbers.
  • And Kevin Drum explains how a cut is a cut is a cut.
  • Trump's partial travel ban goes into effect today. As Dara Lind notes, there are still a lot of questions as to how it works and what it's supposed to do.
  • And here's Ezra Klein again, this time discussing how some Conservatives seem to be trying to live up or down (take your pick) to the caricature that Liberals have of Conservatives.
  • Once upon a time, weapons inspector Scott Ritter warned us that Saddam Hussein did not possess Weapons of Mass Destruction and we should not go to war there on the belief that he did. Ritter was widely denounced as foolish and gullible, and his warnings were ignored. He is now warning that Trump's claims of chemical weapons in Syria are a lie that could be used to justify another war built on a false premise. Maybe someone oughta at least consider that this man could be right again.
  • Former Bush-Cheney advisor Bruce Bartlett does not think the current Republican Party is dealing well with reality. I sometimes think it's because it gets in the way of believing the world is or could be the way they wish it was.

And we won't even get into those nutty tweets that Trump was sending this morning except to note that he still thinks the worst thing you can say about anyone is that their business is not prospering…even if that's not true. And he's sure embarrassing people who want to believe in him as a leader.