Sept. 4 Open Thread: Woodward Details White House Bedlam

This is what they mean when they say “the institutions are working,” apparently: The Washington Post has a copy of Bob Woodward’s new book, in which former administration officials confess swiping documents off Trump’s desk to keep him from harming himself and others.

In one case, an aide swiped a letter that would have withdrawn the U.S. from a trade agreement with South Korea that affects our ability to monitor North Korean nukes.

“I stole it off his desk,” former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn said, according to the report. “I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.”

It also details Trump’s initial response to Syria:

After Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.

“We’re not going to do any of that,” Mattis reportedly told an aide. “We’re going to be much more measured.”

The Daily Beast joined the national media throng in profiling Kerri Harris in advance of Thursday’s primary. Just a hunch, but I don’t think they’re all doing this because they’re dying for their bosses to send them to Delaware.

Trump is still trying to shame Jeff Sessions into quitting because he doesn’t have the stones to fire him. He attacked Sessions yesterday for the indictments of the first two crooks congressmen to endorse Trump back when he was even less popular than he is now. Trump has two interlocking problems here: He’s too cowardly to fire Sessions, even under constant prodding by his advisers at Fox, and he doesn’t have another strategy when confronted with someone as shameless as himself.

New Yorker editor David Remnick is the latest media figure to learn that his audience has caught on to the industry’s shtick: Find a menace of the month and legitimize it by reporting on it repeatedly. Remnick tried to book Steve Bannon to headline the magazine’s annual chatfest but had to reverse course when several celebrity entertainers, including Jim Carrey and Patton Oswalt, pulled out in response.

Think the past few months have been crazy? Josh Marshall thinks this is actually the calm before the storm that will hit once the elections are over.