Huffington Post: The Long Road To Impeach Trump Just Got Shorter. By Norman Solomon.

“Under the Trump presidency, defending a wide range of past gains is both necessary and insufficient. Fighting for impeachment is a way to go on the offensive, directly challenging the huge corruption that Trump has brought to the White House.

From the outset, President Trump has been violating two provisions of the U.S. Constitution — its foreign and domestic “emoluments“ clauses. In a nutshell, both clauses forbid personally profiting from presidential service beyond receiving a government salary.”

The Washington Post: Opinions: Trump’s two-year presidency. By Kathleen Parker.

“Good news: In two years, we’ll have a new president. Bad news: If we make it that long.

My “good“ prediction is based on the Law of the Pendulum. Enough Americans, including most independent voters, will be so ready to shed Donald Trump and his little shop of horrors that the 2018 midterm elections are all but certain to be a landslide — no, make that a mudslide — sweep of the House and Senate. If Republicans took both houses in a groundswell of the people’s rejection of Obamacare, Democrats will take them back in a tsunami of protest.

Once ensconced, it would take a Democratic majority approximately 30 seconds to begin impeachment proceedings selecting from an accumulating pile of lies, overreach and just plain sloppiness. That is, assuming Trump hasn’t already been shown the exit.”

Vox: Trump paused a call with Putin to make an aide explain a nuclear arms treaty. By Suzanne Cordeiro and Dimitar Dilkoff (AFP).

“Three things stick out about this report, presuming it’s accurate[…]. The first is that Trump still clearly does not know basic facts about American foreign policy, like the name of a major treaty — and that this somehow leaked to the press from one of his top advisers, the only people in the room for the Putin call.

The second is that the president seems willing to make major policy changes anyway. Trump had referenced New START in an October presidential debate, though he called it “start up“ and incorrectly suggested that it limited American nuclear warhead construction without similarly capping Russia’s. (The deal actually caps each country’s number of deployed nuclear warheads at 1,550.)
[…]
Finally, the comments seem to contradict stuff Trump has said recently about nuclear weapons. Just days before his inauguration, Trump said in an interview that he hoped to work with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to reduce both countries’ nuclear arsenals.”

Also:

“In August, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough recounted a story an unnamed foreign policy expert told him about Trump and nukes. In it, Trump expresses confusion as to why the US doesn’t use its nukes.

“Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can’t we use them,” Scarborough said.”

This makes me very afraid.

New York Times: Trump and Staff Rethink Tactics After Stumbles. By Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman. (The former headline read “After 2 Weeks, Trump’s Bungles Have Aides Rethinking Strategy”.)

“Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate the light switches in the cabinet room. Visitors conclude their meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one that leads to an exit. In a darkened, mostly empty West Wing, Mr. Trump’s provocative chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, finishes another 16-hour day planning new lines of attack.

Usually around 6:30 p.m., or sometimes later, Mr. Trump retires upstairs to the residence to recharge, vent and intermittently use Twitter. With his wife, Melania, and young son, Barron, staying in New York, he is almost always by himself, sometimes in the protective presence of his imposing longtime aide and former security chief, Keith Schiller. When Mr. Trump is not watching television in his bathrobe or on his phone reaching out to old campaign hands and advisers, he will sometimes set off to explore the unfamiliar surroundings of his new home.”

Link via MetaFiter: The Trump Roundup.