The fact he is ready to lie for no good reason is not what’s distressing here. What’s really scary is how his followers are so eager to let him get away with it, to cover up for those lies. If Trump were to disappear tomorrow those followers would still remain, making excuses for him, making a martyr out of him. And whoever replaces Trump will pander to those same followers with the same lies. Nixon, Stalin and Hitler still have their followers, don’t they?

We shouldn’t spend too much time pointing out Trump’s contradictions and inconsistencies, RL, the real problem is that about a quarter of the voting population will never admit to themselves he’s lying, and another quarter know he is but don’t care because they make money directly from those lies. They are too busy profiting from his deregulation and tax and labor and immigration policies.

Thirty pieces of silver.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months — and that Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration, U.S. officials told NBC News.

The intelligence assessment, which has not previously been reported, seems to counter the sentiments expressed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted after his historic June 12 summit with Kim that “there was no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”

Analysts at the CIA and other intelligence agencies don’t see it that way, according to more than a dozen American officials who are familiar with their assessments and spoke on the condition of anonymity. They see a regime positioning itself to extract every concession it can from the Trump administration — while clinging to nuclear weapons it believes are essential to survival.