Bob Drummond

Reporter/editor, retired. Covered SCOTUS, POTUS, politics, national security and more for Bloomberg. Fmr DC bureau Dallas Times Herald.

[Bob Drummond @bobdrummond]

@Acyn @MollyJongFast Wait ‘til you hear about the guy who bulldozed the East Wing of the White House.

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

This war will be taught at War Colleges (assuming they still exist) and strategic studies programs for years to come as *the* case study in how operational successes do not lead to strategic victory.

[Spencer Nusbaum @spencernusbaum_]

The NL playoffs if the season ended today:

1. Braves
2. Dodgers
3. Brewers
4. Cardinals
5. Phillies
6. Nationals

[Championship Rounds @ChampRDS]

🚨 In a now-deleted post, Daniel Cormier exposed Eric Trump for asking him if any of the UFC White House fights were rigged:

"I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for bringing this to light, however I refuse to stay silent... Shame on anyone trying to ruin this beautiful event."

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

Doctor say that vaccines are one of the greatest breakthroughs in medical history. A nepo baby who snorts cocaine off toilet seats, bathes in raw sewage, and takes raccoon penises home for “further study“ says they cause autism. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.

[Bob Drummond @bobdrummond]

@MLBNetwork Curt Flood

[Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD DSc(hon) @PeterHotez]

Never forget: The @WSJopinion as the print version of Fox News and Murdoch media empire waged a war of aggression on the American people. My estimate, their Soviet-style Lysenko-Communist disinformation campaign killed between 200,000-300,000 Americans during the pandemic. I have the receipts

[Machine Pun Kelly 🇺🇦 @KellyScaletta]

If you remove the sprinkler system from a building and it burns down, you bear some responsibility for the damage, even if you didn't start the fire.

This post is about screwworms.

[David Corn @DavidCornDC]

A nugget buried in the big NYT piece on how the Trump White House had an internal freak-out over the Epstein case....If Bondi didn't use DOJ email, what did she use? I recall a time when the right (and the NYT) went ballistic over a Cabinet official's use of non-gov't email.

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

I’m Kid Rock.”
“I’m Naomi Wolf.”
“I’m Kanye West.”
“I’m Matt Taibbi.”
“I’m Catturd. Those stories, plus Rob Schneider, tonight on 60 Minutes.”

[Jesse Lee @JesseCharlesLee]

Oh my God, what a window into the Trump economic brain trust. Hassett gets asked about people running up credit card debt and becoming delinquent just to afford basic necessities, and he genuinely thinks the concern is that Wall Street credit card executives might suffer.

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

1/3
You may see clips of Trump’s self-evident dementia, but the full effect requires stamina. Here is NINE MINUTES of Trump talking about his fountains in a Cabinet meeting.

Try to read it. I dare you.

“D.C. and D.C. is looking beautiful. The fountains are almost all open. We had 28 of them, and we have one in particular, a very long lake, we call it. They're reflecting lake between the Lincoln Monument. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. You take a look at between Lincoln and Washington. You have the longest, like 2,400 feet long. That's longer than the tallest building in the world, if you set it on your side. And it's almost 200 feet wide. And for-- actually, it was built in 1922. And from 1920 to '21, it really never worked. It always leaked. And it was a problem about things. And hundreds of millions was spent. The Biden administration and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get it to work, and they failed. And we'll be spending-- you'll give me a number. But I think it's very low numbers, like in the number that we originally talked about. Where we cleaned it, we fumigated it, that we had 10 major truck dumpsters of garbage taken out. Can you believe it? Friend of mine came in. Very substantial person from Germany. Want to see the Washington Monument. I wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial. He said, I look, but that horrible reflecting pond is disgusting. It's filthy dirty and disgusting. I said, really, I drove down. I said, secret shares was taken dry. And we went down. I said, that's terrible. And for the most part, it didn't work. I mean, they wouldn't even have water in there. But when they did, it was just dirty, filthy water that leaked out. And we got to work on it. And they were supposed to cost almost 400, think of it, 400 million dollars, because it's like putting the skin on a skyscraper. But bigger, much bigger, many skyscrapers, you could almost say, other than for the world. So I think of it, the world's tallest skyscraper is shorter than 2,400 feet. So we went to work. And over the years, I built hundreds of pools. I built them every time I built them. I always like to build the Olympic size swimming pools. And I was very aware of swimming pool, what goes into making a swimming pool. It's not as simple as people think. You never wanted to leak. You want a beautiful surface. I said, you know, I have an idea, Doug. We sat down. I said, let's take that long thing where we're going to fix it with concrete, which leaks, concrete, all sorts of other materials that all leak and don't look good. They're gray. And swimming pool, I have a swimming pool right up the road. I built it 22 years ago. It's perfect. I said, does it ever leak, though? It's good contractors. I actually called it a couple of the contractors, got some ideas from them. And I gave it to Doug and Doug's done an unbelievable job. And so they were going to spend maybe 400 million dollars. I don't know. You never know with cost overruns and everything. But it was going to take years to build three years, four years. And we'll have it done before July 4th substantially, before July 4th. If we didn't have such a bad weather the last four or five days, it could have been almost done. We have to-- you can't do this substance in the rain. And what they did is they cleaned it. They took out, as I said, more than 10 dumpsters of garbage. Shovels, it was disgusting. Well, every corner, every corner, had massive amounts of-- I guess that's the way the tide goes. But at massive amounts of garbage, we then steamed clean it. We then sandblasted it. And then we pebble blasted. That's a bigger version of sand. We made the surface as good as it can be. Now we're now covering it with the most beautiful blue. Very thick, you think of it as a very sophisticated form of rubber. No leaks, no problems. And it's beautiful. It's called American Flag Blue that was the color we chose.”

[Andrew Fleischman @ASFleischman]

The president kept nuclear secrets in his bathroom, lied to the government, and hid them when asked to give them back. Dismissal.

The prosecutor kept a personal copy of a taxpayer-funded report about the president’s conduct. Indictment.

[Bob Drummond @bobdrummond]

Trump has said repeatedly over the past decade that he would make his tax returns public after IRS audits were completed.
What are the odds that he’ll keep this promise?
https://t.co/zOt9zou44N via @NYTimes

[Kate Riga @Kate_Riga24]

this is one sentence

[Bob Drummond @bobdrummond]

@meridithmcgraw

[Bob Drummond @bobdrummond]

Why pay almost $2 billion to thugs who assaulted police and tried to overthrow the elected U.S. government?
So they’ll be ready and willing to do it all again the next time Trump calls on them.

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: The Justice Dept. announced a $1.8 billion fund to pay President Trump’s allies as part of its settlement with the IRS. Follow live updates. https://t.co/BOXrURoGg7

[Bob Drummond @bobdrummond]

@nytimes @JonLemire Why pay almost $2 billion to thugs who assaulted police and tried to overthrow the elected U.S. government?
So they’ll be ready and willing to do it all again the next time Trump calls on them.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

I cannot imagine being a Republican lawmaker today. You are not allowed to have an independent thought, much less legislate. You are permitted only cult-like devotion to the Dear Leader - and any wrong move will mobilize a cult-like mob of nihilistic primary voters. Why bother?

[Bob Drummond @bobdrummond]

@peterbakernyt @LarrySabato @RobbieGramer I’m not sure this is necessarily a bad thing, given the quality of most Trump appointees. No ambassador is probably better than Ambassador Kid Rock.