October 30th, 2017 - November 1st, 2017. 350-352 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no.45, and 282-284 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
So much bullshit, it spread for 2 days and multiple posts.
So, it looks like the indictments came thru and No45 is shitting kittens.
If anyone thought Gen Kelly was gonna wrangle in No45, they were sadly mistaken. As it stands, he's pretty much sold his soul and his credibility to No45 when he attacked the Congresswoman and lied about something that happened in the past.
Facebook400TwitterMore24
CNN's Alisyn Camerota interviews Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
CNN’s Alisyn Camerota nailed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Wednesday when he kept responding to questions about indictments of the rich asshole campaign officials this week by talking about Hillary Clinton.
When asked about the indictment of former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the guilty plea of former the rich asshole foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, Jordan immediately tried to make the discussion about alleged crimes committed by Hillary Clinton.
“We learned last week if there was any collusion, it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign paying for the dossier,” he said, referring to the dossier that was compiled by former British intelligence officer Michael Steele. “I think that’s important news and why it’s important that we are going to investigate those issues moving forward, and we should have done that a long time ago.”
Camerota was not impressed with this response, however.
“Why do you seem more focused on Hillary Clinton and what happened then than on a investigation connected to a sitting president and the election a year ago?” she asked.
“I am interested in the facts,” Jordan insisted, before rattling off a list of Clinton’s alleged misdeeds.
“You are more interested in the Hillary Clinton facts,” Camerota interjected.
She then tried to pin down Jordan by asking for his response to Manafort’s indictment this week. Jordan admitted it appeared Manafort may have committed crimes, but then argued that Manafort’s alleged crimes had nothing to do with President some rich asshole.
“But we’re talking about the rich asshole campaign,” she said. “They hired him as their campaign chairman. Talk about extreme vetting!”
Watch the video below.
‘He didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no’: the rich asshole didn’t reject Papadopoulos bid to set up sketchy Putin meeting
George Papadopoulos and other advisers meet with some rich asshole (screen grab)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
President some rich asshole “didn’t say no” when former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos suggested setting up a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign, according to a source who was in the room at the time, CNN reported on Wednesday.
Papadopoulos, who pled guilty in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, was described by the rich asshole as an “excellent guy” during a March 2016 meetings. Court filings said that Papadopoulos admitted pushing for a meeting with Putin.
A person who was in the room at the time told CNN that the rich asshole did not dismiss the idea.
“He didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no,” the official explained.
Then-adviser Jeff Sessions, however, reportedly shut down the suggested meeting.
CNN noted that Mueller’s investigation may be looking into the rich asshole’s reaction to the suggested meeting with Putin.
the rich asshole live-tweets ‘Fox & Friends’ to blame Chuck Schumer for NYC terror attack
Pres. some rich asshole (screen capture)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
President some rich asshole on Wednesday wasted no time blaming Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for Tuesday’s terrorist attack in New York City that left 13 people dead and many more injured.
But instead of basing his case on briefings from U.S. intelligence officials, the president’s assessment of the situation was based entirely on things he saw on “Fox & Friends.”
“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty,” the president wrote, in response to a segment on “Fox & Friends” that featured right-wing talk show host Mark Levin. “I want merit based.”
We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter). @foxandfriends
Later in the morning, the president again put the blame on Schumer for this week’s attack — and he once again cited “Fox & Friends” as his source.
“‘Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems’ said Col. Tony Shaffer,” the president wrote. “We will stop this craziness! @foxandfriends.”
"Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems" said Col.Tony Shaffer. We will stop this craziness!@foxandfriends
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) refuted the facts.
Actually, the Gang of 8, including @SenSchumer, did away with the Diversity Visa Program as part of broader reforms. I know, I was there twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
the rich asshole is more paranoid and vengeful than Nixon — but his stupidity makes him much more dangerous
some rich asshole speaks at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Take a long look at the photograph above of some rich asshole speaking to the American Conservative Union, the umbrella organization of the right. The ACU was founded in 1964, the year conservative icon Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination for president and was crushed at the polls that fall by the liberal, Lyndon B. Johnson. Keep that photograph in mind as you read my conversation with historian Rick Perlstein, which we might have subtitled “From Barry Goldwater to some rich asshole: You Must Be Kidding!” Perlstein has now written three best-selling books on the modern conservative movement. He still blinks at the thought of the rich asshole’s triumph in capturing the Republican nomination last year and then beating Hillary Clinton. The photograph suggests the seminal moment in 2015 that led to both victories — as the rich asshole convinced conservatives he was one of them. The legacy of both Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan is now his. So is the Republican Party. He tightened his grip on the GOP in the last few days when two prominent Republican senators who are leaving politics rebuked the president as “dangerous to our democracy,” even as some of their colleagues were rushing into the rich asshole’s arms with wet kisses, fearing, perhaps, that if they were any less ardent, Steve Bannon would come galloping down upon them in a future primary with an even more radical challenger. I asked Rick Perlstein to talk about these matters.
—Bill Moyers
Moyers: So Republican Sens. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker gave up, and others, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, gave in. And here are the headlines in The New York Times:
CRITICS GIVE WAY AS THE GOP TILT TO RICH ASSHOLE’S ORBIT
Acquiesce or Go Home
Party With Less and Less Room for Older Breed Of Conservative
In other words, some rich asshole owns the Republican Party.
Rick Perlstein: That’s right. It’s like Ivory soap, “99 and 1/100 percent pure,” remember? Oh, the apostasy of Jeff Flake. The senator from Arizona gives this very histrionic speech about how the rich asshole has introduced evasion and demagoguery and all these awful things into the Republican Party — and then announces he’s quitting. He’s really saying, “I’m not going to fight it. I’m going to surrender to it.” Remember, he’s voted 90 percent of the time with the the rich asshole/Republican agenda. And then later that day, he and the other brave, bold critic in the Republican establishment, Sen. Bob Corker, both voted to end the rule that would have allowed people to sue banks and credit card companies that rip them off. They get to have their cake and eat it, too. They basically make a material contribution to the very damage to the body politic in the afternoon that they decry in the morning.
Moyers: Sens. Murkowski of Alaska, Collins of Maine, Sasse of Nebraska and McCain of Arizona — John McCain! — also voted for the rich asshole’s giveaway to Wall Street. Political commentator Kyle Kulinski called it “Your daily reminder that establishment Republicans want the rich asshole to do every single thing he’s doing minus the mean tweets.”
Perlstein: I read Jeff Flake’s book, Conscience of a Conservative, written in homage to Barry Goldwater. Here’s a guy staking out in his ideology in terms that are quite reactionary, in a book that supposedly decries the turn of the Republican Party to dangerous reaction.
Moyers: Who is now the Republican establishment?
Perlstein: So interesting. I once saw a letter from H. L. Hunt, the purported richest man in the world in the 1960s, the oil billionaire, probably one of the first billionaires to bankroll Barry Goldwater. He said, “Beware the cunning of the establishment.” Richest man in the world. Didn’t think he was in the establishment. Now there’s Robert Mercer, billionaire extraordinare, and his daughter Rebekah, showering money on Steve Bannon to overturn the Republican establishment — are the Mercers not establishment? Are the Koch brothers, who have billions of dollars to spend, the establishment? The establishment is a very plastic concept. But as a Supreme Court justice said of pornography, maybe we know it when we see it. Establishments replace one another. The Republican establishment used to be Nelson Rockefeller types, and then it became Ronald Reagan types, and then it became Newt Gingrich types and then Bush types. It is a moving target and right now we don’t have a good answer.
Moyers: I’ve been thinking about that piece you wrote in The New York Timesearlier this year in which you said, “I thought I understood the American right. the rich asshole proved me wrong.” Do you still stand behind that confession?
Perlstein: Oh, yes. What I got wrong about the American right was the idea that it succeeded in the 1960s by purging its crazier, more reactionary, more paranoid elements and becoming respectable. Historians are beginning to rethink that formulation, which is really the conservative’s own self-representation. It’s a very self-congratulatory representation. What if the crazy paranoid fringe was in fact the vanguard? What if they were kind of the people who created the political energy that allowed the establishment to float above it all and make their ex cathedra pronouncements, as William F. Buckley did for so many decades, while they were really working in a complicated partnership, in harness with one another, toward taking over the party?
Moyers: You said before the election last year that the rich asshole had raised energies in the Republican electorate that may not be so easily contained.
Perlstein: Right. And I think it’s the next frontier for both historians and other sorts of analysts and journalists trying to figure out how the Republican coalition works and how conservatism works and what is different — what is the break between conservatism, say, from Goldwater to Reagan to Gingrich to Boehner and the conservatism of the rich asshole and Bannon. The metaphor people have reached to describe how conservative politicians of a previous generation reached out demagogically to the feral impulses of the electorate was the dog whistle. They would use racist codes. You know, Richard Nixon running TV commercials in the South in 1968 with country singers talking about how they didn’t want Washington folks butting into our business. They wouldn’t come out and say, “Those dark people are taking over.” And when Richard Nixon even did that kind of thing, it was through a front group — through “Democrats for Nixon.” There was a distancing. And then of course there was Ronald Reagan and the welfare queen in 1976, and Reagan giving his famous speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1980, near where the three young civil rights workers were killed by white supremacists — the only time in the campaign he mentioned states’ rights. And then in 1984, saying the South shall rise again. Dog whistling.
Moyers: And Lee Atwater and the elder George Bush in 1988 with the Willie Horton ad.
Perlstein: Yes. The revolving prison door — all that stuff. And there’s a plausible deniability. And what people have said is that some rich asshole takes the dog whistle and turns it into a train whistle. If only you could be a fly on the wall in the councils of power in the Republican Party in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and be privy to these conversations where these strategies are unfolding! Because I think that people who really have their finger on the pulse of the American electorate understand that there are always these kind of feral energies, wild savage energies, abroad in the land. Even Lyndon Johnson — when he’s heard talking on the Oval Office tapes about whether to escalate in Vietnam, will mention 1950 and what happened when the Republicans, especially Joseph McCarthy, started raising the cry that the Democrats lost China. As you must know, Johnson feared that this sort of paranoid, reckless madness would again be loosed in the land. I think sophisticated political actors all the way through George W. Bush understood this as a danger, and even as they tried to ride and surf and use that danger, they sought somewhat to contain it.
Moyers: How did George W. try to contain it?
Perlstein: He campaigned using those traditional Republican tropes, but then after 9/11, you see something very interesting. He calls Islam a religion of peace. He goes to a mosque. I compare this to Ronald Reagan in 1978, when he’s beginning his run for the presidency and there’s an initiative on the California ballot called Proposition 6 that will ban gay school teachers, and he comes out against it. This is a time in San Francisco — gay men were being cut down in the streets. Reagan in effect says: “I don’t want to be part of unleashing those energies.” And maybe you were there when Barry Goldwater was the Republican candidate for president against LBJ in 1964, and he paid a courtesy call on LBJ right after rioting in Harlem following the shooting of a young black person by a white cop, and Goldwater said something like, “This is really frightening stuff. If my supporters start exploiting these riots and start exploiting racial turmoil in the United States to get me elected, I will withdraw from the presidential campaign.” There was some realization in all this that civilization in America is a very thin veneer and you have to master the savage energies — you have to contain them. And the rich asshole does not understand that game. So now we see a certain class of Republican literally saying these lowborn, kind of louche, ill-bred “populists” are taking over from the “principled intellectuals. “Remember the National Review last year — Buckley’s old magazine? Their mantra was “Never the rich asshole!”
Moyers: Is the rich asshole more paranoid and dangerous than Nixon?
Perlstein: Oh, I think there’s no question. I mean, he really takes Nixon’s worst qualities and turns them up to 11. People have been talking a lot these days about Richard Nixon’s famous “mad man” — the idea that if you made the North Vietnamese Communists believe this guy [Nixon] is crazy and might do anything — he might launch a nuclear weapon — then they’re going to rush to the negotiating table and give us concessions. But Richard Nixon said you never get mad unless it’s on purpose. At least this was a conscious strategy on his part. It was a feint. A hustle. Now, today, we may have an actual mad man in the White House. I mean, these are not clever negotiating tactics he’s using. When the rich asshole goes on TV and a reporter says, “So, Mr. President, you said that you were going to keep the 401(k) in the tax negotiations, but your Republican congressional negotiator said you’re going to get rid of the 401(k). Which is it?” And the rich asshole says, “Well, maybe we’ll keep the 401(k) as a negotiating chip.” That level of stupidity — you don’t telegraph to the other side what your bargaining chips are. This is 10-year-old stuff.
Moyers: Could it be his opioid is revenge, not power?
Perlstein: That’s an interesting distinction.
Moyers: Well, it comes from considering his cultural upbringing, his father’s purported KKK activity, his relationship to Joseph McCarthy’s hit man Roy Cohn. You’ve pointed out the rich asshole’s apparent interest in New York movies like Death Wish. He never seems to leave his fantasies.
Perlstein: And consider how his racism played out here. Quite remarkable. He was an executive in his father’s company in the 1970s when the Justice Department discovered that they were putting little “C’s” next to the colored applicants in their housing and using testers. A white couple would come in and say, “We’re looking for an apartment” and be told, “Oh, we have plenty.” And a black couple would come in, say “We’re looking for an apartment” — and be told “Oh, I’m sorry. We’re filled up.” And then in the Central Park jogger case in 1989, the rich asshole took out full-page ads in New York newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty because a white woman had been raped by minorities and he said they should die — that was what happened in the days of lynching. the rich asshole was calling for a lynching. A white woman has been raped and attention must be paid and punishment meted out. Now, those youngsters were exonerated and the real perpetrator eventually apprehended, yet the rich asshole still called for them to be kept incarcerated. We are talking here about the president of the United States. He’s fanning the most feral forces there are within the American political culture.
Moyers: Any insight into what’s going on inside his psyche?
Perlstein: I defer to your friend [the psychohistorian] Robert J. Lifton. There’s something sufficiently deep-seated in his psyche to almost constitute a psychopathology that keeps him from literally seeing reality as it is.
Moyers: So you’re a historian, not a psychologist. Find anyone in the presidency like him before? We’ve had many flawed presidents.
Perlstein: It pops up from time to time. When Lyndon Johnson insisted that race riots must have been stoked by the communists, [Attorney General] Ramsey Clark came back and said, “We’ve really searched up and down and we don’t see any evidence,” and Johnson basically told him to go back and try again, because it has to be true. I’m sure that at his worst his paranoia matched the rich asshole, but he had so many redeeming qualities he transcended it. With the rich asshole, it’s just paranoia and vengeance all the way down, even in his moments of victory.
Moyers: And taking the Republicans beyond restraint?
Perlstein: I think he has. And to their shame, a lot of Republicans who understand precisely how dangerous this is have decided to stick around for the ride. the rich asshole is their ticket to getting their tax cuts, among other things. We need to understand it much better — the dance that’s been going on within the Republican Party and the conservative coalition, this dance between feral populism and an establishment kind of “principled intellectual conservatism.” And of course that’s not how they work.
Moyers: You mention tax cuts. So last year during the campaign the rich asshole promised tax cuts to the middle class. He said specifically the hedge-fund guys would be paying up — the Wall Street crowd. But from what’s being circulated in Washington, the Republicans, apparently with the rich asshole’s blessings, are backing tax cuts that would give 50 percent of the benefits to the wealthiest 1 percent and the top one-hundredths of 1 percent of earners would receive more than 40 percent of the benefits, while the bottom half would receive collectively something near 13 percent.
Perlstein: Yes, it’s pretty remarkable, isn’t it?
Moyers: the rich asshole and the conservatives get their votes from angry populists. They get their money from rich people—
Perlstein: Yes.
Moyers: —and from corporations. But what if it all springs back? Suppose that sooner or later the populists in the coalition wake up and realize they’ve been had — swallowed up in a great historical hoax?
Perlstein: Well, that’s where some very dark forces come into play.
Moyers: Dark forces?
Perlstein: Yes, what happens when the white working-class voters who supported the rich asshole begin to feel the sting of economic dispossession in a new and profound way? Let’s say there’s a stock market crash, or the economy takes a dive. Let’s say their tax bills go up. That that’s when the scapegoating begins. I don’t know what happens when people start getting their tax bills and realizing that they were played for fools. But of course the people around some rich asshole control their own media — Fox, talk radio, the “alt-right” press — which means they control their own reality. And their propaganda is very much designed to work neurologically, not intellectually, to hit the amygdala of the brain in its fear center. If people don’t know what’s happening to them or who’s making it happen, it’s very hard for them to place the finger of blame in the appropriate place. “Dark forces” come into play.
Moyers: Can a democracy die of too many lies?
Perlstein: It’s certainly happened before.
Moyers: The right seems to be even more fueled these days by some powerful resentments.
Perlstein: You know, the club that Richard Nixon started at Whittier College, because he wasn’t allowed into the one fraternity, was called the Orthogonians.
Moyers: Orthogonians?
Perlstein: Orthogonians, which kind of meant squares. You know, the right angles, the guys who were commuters and, you know, they weren’t from all the right families. The club that they weren’t allowed in was called the Franklins. So Richard Nixon always saw the world in terms of Orthogonians and Franklins, you know, the silent majority and the liberal elite. And if you think about it, all of us at some point of our lives are Franklins and all of us are Orthogonians. We’re always feeling the sting of resentment. So it’s a very powerful message.
Moyers: the rich asshole struck many people here in New York City like that. He hungered to be accepted by the establishment. It was palpable.
Perlstein: An Orthogonian — that’s correct.
Moyers: He was always trying to get into the—
Perlstein: Trying to get into the club. Trying to buy the World Trade Center to do it. And now feral greed seems to drive him, even as president.
And that’s the interesting thing, because we had a bait-and-switch. Of course some rich asshole doesn’t ever seem to have intended to govern in the interest of the blue-collar dispossessed white working class in whose name he claimed to speak. He handed over the keys almost immediately to the Goldman Sachs bankers and the plutocrats. And now there’s Stephen Bannon going off half-cocked on his own behalf and claiming to be the true avatar of the Trumpite revolution — you know, more Trumpier than the rich asshole, I guess. So we’re at a pretty interesting crossroads as we speak here.
Moyers: Your books show how resilient the conservative movement has been in our time. It keeps rising from the grave to move the Republican Party further and further right. Defeated with Goldwater in 1964, back in 1968 with Nixon. Defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976, back with Reagan in 1980. Defeated by Clinton in 1992, back with George W. Bush in 2000. Defeated by Obama in 2008, back with the rich asshole in 2016. Everyone kept saying the Republicans were finished unless they purged the conservatives. Now it’s the conservatives purging the Republicans.
Perlstein: So let’s talk about the transition from Carter to Reagan. That’s the subject of my historical research right now. Basically, you have the bounty of America’s postwar boom that was built upon the fact that all of our economic competitors were damaged by war. It was built upon cheap oil and cheap resources, and then on the social legislation of the 1960s that was offered on the assumption of a post-scarcity era — that we had basically solved the economic problems. Economists were confident, through Keynesian means, that they could keep recessions in check with low inflation. All that breaks down in the 1970s for various complicated reasons. And the response of a lot of Democrats — from people in Congress like Sen. Gary Hart, who essentially declared the New Deal tradition his ideological enemy, to Jimmy Carter, who said that the challenge of the future was accepting that we had to live in a period of austerity, to Jerry Brown in California, who backed a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution — all of them were saying, basically, folks, look, the party’s over. You can’t have all the nice things anymore.
And this is precisely at the time that Republicans like Ronald Reagan are saying, “The problem is that taxes are too high.” Remember, Republicans for generations had been saying with great frustration since the New Deal, “We can’t win elections because no one shoots Santa Claus!” Santa Claus could no longer deliver those things the Democrats were voting for the people from the public treasury. So basically Democrats in the late 1970s said, “We’re not going to be Santa Claus anymore. We’re going to be the responsible grown-ups in the room.” The Republicans had to figure out a way to be Santa Claus. In fact, Jude Wanniski — remember him, the guy from The Wall Street Journal, one of the brilliant propagandists of supply-side economics? — called his theory of why tax cuts were great politics and policy of the Republicans “the two Santa Claus” theory. Of course, it turned out to be complete poppycock. You know, it was just nonsense.
Moyers: Supply-side economics?
Perlstein: Yes, supply-side economics was just the sheerest invention. But as politics, the conservatives were able to take advantage of Democrats abandoning the field of, basically, populism in the same way you have Bill Clinton deciding that the answer to the recession in the early 1990s is giving in to the bond-holders.
Moyers: And then there’s Barack Obama.
Moyers: And then there’s Barack Obama.
Perlstein: And you have Barack Obama, for all his administrative and communication skills, deciding that the important thing to do when the economy melts down after the big crash is to foam the runway for the banks and ease their soft landing instead of making people whole who literally had their homes stolen by banks. So the Democrats are not blameless in this.
Moyers: Are you saying Democrats provided the conservatives with the source of their resiliency?
Perlstein: But the fact of the matter is, liberals have always been too glib about the power and resilience of the reactionary tradition in America. Remember, half the country went to war to preserve slavery in this country — and it wasn’t just slavery; it was an entire feudal system in which basically society was ordered — the great chain of being from the slave to God.
Moyers: This is where your first book, Before the Storm, about the conservatives after the Goldwater defeat, tapped into historical DNA, connecting the modern conservative movement way back to people who were appealing to—
Perlstein: Whiteness — the white picket fence — the nuclear family—
Moyers: Yep—
Perlstein: —and Kevin Phillips called the other side — the liberals who were basically plunging ahead with all this social legislation that in a way rewired how people experienced their relationship to the state and to each other — he called them “the toryhood of change.” The snobs who are telling people how to live. They’re a toryhood. They’re controlling. They experiment with people’s lives.
Moyers: That’s obviously not how we saw it.
Perlstein: I’m sure. But unfortunately, the state can be a very scary thing, and benefits that are delivered by the state can often very easily be recast as oppressive to people, especially when their relative position in the pecking order is weakening. It’s not a zero-sum game. We know that as liberals when we invest in people who have been disinvested, that’s a rising tide that lifts all boats. But it can be a very traumatic thing to lose one’s sense of power and privilege in a changing world, and the conservatives recast themselves as not merely the preservers of order but the forces of dynamism. They saw themselves as cutting through this kind of sclerosis of liberalism. As the New Right leader and strategist [and] founder [with Jerry Falwell] of the Moral Majority Paul Weyrich put it, organizing discontent, finding places where people feel the world slipping away and gaining a toehold and turning that into political power, and if they have to lift a the rich asshole on their shoulder to cross the finish line, well…
Moyers: You’ve spent years studying the infrastructure by which conservatives prepared for this moment. What do you see as the singular opportunity that enabled them to seize the opportunity in 2016, after eight years of Obama?
Perlstein: What was the discontent? I think that there are two kind of broad wellsprings of that discontent. One is economic — the fact that people weren’t made whole after the traumas of 2007 and 2008, the fact that the heartland Main Street America is being emptied out, that capital continues to flee overseas, that factories continue to close, that people are exploited by credit-card companies and student loan companies and all the rest. That sort of economic dispossession. But another wellspring, frankly, is the sense that one’s symbolic power that comes with being white and Christian and sitting behind that white picket fence, is not what it once was, especially in the hands of what they identified as “this foreign Kenyan usurper, Barack Obama.”
You know, back in Weimar, Germany, as Hitler was making his way to power, the socialists used to say anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools. And by that they meant when you’re being screwed by the boss and you blame the Jews instead of joining our socialist party in which we’re fighting to give you power in the workplace and power over the economy — well, that makes you a fool. But that interplay between ethnic scapegoating, religious scapegoating and a sense of economic dispossession — which doesn’t necessarily mean poorness or privation, it could mean a sense of economic vulnerability, the fear of falling that Barbara Ehrenreich a long time ago called the secret to the inner life of the middleclass — creates a situation where everyone’s place in the economic pecking order is ever precarious. Especially in America where we don’t have that safety net, that social democracy. I think that’s the enabling condition for a lot of this.
Moyers: And then there’s how you have put some rich asshole in the context of a sociological concept called “herrenvolk democracy.”
Perlstein: Oh, yes, which basically means social democracy for the favored race as a way not of expanding liberty to all citizens but only to the accepted in-group, people like us.
Moyers: The benefits were intended for the herrenvolk — universal for them but limited to them.
Perlstein: And that’s always been the struggle. Think of the original populists, the People’s Party of the 1890s. Often described as very white. But there’s a book that just had its 50th anniversary. The Tolerant Populists, by Walter Nugent. And as against interpretations of the populists that were popular among certain mid-20th century historians and social scientists, Nugent actually read populist newspapers that were often German-language newspapers, revealing that among the populist party nominees in Kansas in the late 19thcentury were African-Americans, women, Jews — that there has in fact been a tradition of multiracial class-based political mobilization that is a spark, a flame we can fan, a heritage we can claim. And consider this: For all the compromises that Franklin Roosevelt made with Southern white segregationists to get his New Deal legislation passed, the fact of the matter is that African-Americans across the United States put pictures of Franklin Roosevelt on their walls. They knew that this guy had his heart in the right place. John F. Kennedy’s picture was up on the wall in African-American homes all across the country. They knew he had his heart in the right place, even though he was very slow to find his way to proposing a revolutionary civil rights act in 1963.
Moyers: Yes, when President Johnson traveled through Appalachia, or other impoverished places, he couldn’t get over it. Hadn’t he just signed the Civil Rights Act of ’64? The Voting Rights Act of ’65? But there, on the wall, were photographs of JFK.
Perlstein: Life’s unfair, no? So I’m saying, I wouldn’t get too hopeless. Some interesting things are happening now.
Moyers: I don’t recommend any rose-colored glasses, Rick. You have written over and again that our society has never been one of consensus. Americans are always in conflict, polarized, competing and fighting.
Perlstein: Our national community builds in the act of transcending original wounds. If you think back to the late 18th century to the constitutional convention where delegates were trying to figure out a way to hold together a nascent commercial society in the North and a feudal society in the South, and doing it over the bodies of enslaved Africans and yet at the same time were superintended by a new Constitution professing ideals of liberty and individual dignity — man, that’s very heady stuff and not something that lends itself to easy accord. We’d like to believe that we’re united and at peace with ourselves and that we have the will to transcend and even repress those original psychic wounds—
Moyers: But we’re yoked to reality, including human nature—
Perlstein: Which gets us in a heck of a lot of trouble. So I try to get people to face hard truths in the interest of a difficult healing and a grace that is not cheap.
Moyers: The most somber realist in the White House, despite passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was Lyndon Johnson. He kept watching [Alabama Gov.] George Wallace campaigning in primaries rallying white Democratic voters. Wallace would in effect say things like, “I’m all for the New Deal. I’m just not for it for black folks.” Johnson saw the blowback coming.
Perlstein: Yes, that’s herrenvolk democracy. Social democracy only for the white majority. I understand that in that 1964 campaign, the great Daisy commercial guys — Doyle, Dane and Bernback — cut commercials celebrating the Civil Rights Act. But they were not run, correct?
Moyers: Correct.
Perlstein: Because you guys knew better than the liberal majority and the people at The New York Times what was going to happen. The Times ran a headline the day after the ’64 election saying, “White backlash does not develop.” Well, they didn’t notice [what happened] that very day in California, which voted by a million votes against ending housing discrimination.
Moyers: And two years later, in 1966, California elected Ronald Reagan for governor. Democrats lost heavily in the congressional races.
Perlstein: But look, at the same time after he signed the Civil Rights Act, when Lyndon Johnson told you that he thinks he’s just given up the South to the Republicans for his lifetime and yours, I like to think there was an implied second part to that sentence, which is, “We have cemented the loyalty of Northern African-Americans for your generation and mine.” And that was a dialectic too.
Moyers: Well, a lot depends now on whether some rich asshole is an outlier or the representative of a new and even more adamant conservative politics.
Perlstein: You know, a lot of African-Americans traditionally have said, “Give me an outright Southern racist than the polite wink and a nod of a Northern racist any day, because at least you know what you’re dealing with and you can fight him out in the open.” So I think that the rich asshole’s radicalism represents a certain opportunity to the people who have been trying for generations to instruct white people about what it is like to be black in America, what it is like to be an immigrant in America, what it is like to be Mexican, what it is like to be of a minority religion or no religion, and women who are trying to instruct men what it’s like to be under the gun of constant harassment and sexual objectification at the office. Things are becoming a lot clearer now. The edges, the invisible lineaments that divide us from each other are becoming a lot more perspicuous, a lot more visible — and I think that’s a useful tool for social change.
Moyers: So the turmoil and conflict we’re experiencing today might be because we are beginning to strip the whitewash off the history of our country.
Perlstein: I think it’s happening in a way that we haven’t quite seen in the past, and maybe we can hold out some promise for some interesting developments.
Moyers: We haven’t talked about guns, and the fierce religious zeal conservatives attach to guns. More than we can imagine at the moment, I sense we’re going to have to reckon with guns on the road ahead.
Perlstein: (Pause) I have a hard time understanding why conservative politicians don’t denounce what the National Rifle Association is doing with those video spots, in the figure of Dana Loesch, that really come straight from the propaganda files of Goebbels in Nazi Germany. They talk about how liberals are destroying truth and undermining our way of life and that guns are the only way that we can be safe. When are we going to demand Republicans start distancing themselves from a National Rifle Association that has literally become an anti-constitutional insurrectionist organization?
Moyers: But Republicans, conservatives, the NRA — are all part of the same ball of wax.
Perlstein: Well, the thing about the Second Amendment that’s so interesting to me as a historian, Bill, is that it’s the only part of the Constitution that really affirmatively mentions regulation as a good thing — “a well-regulated militia.” It’s such a bizarre text in the first place. But in the second place, a constitution is quite literally a machine for governing without violence. Without a constitution, it’s a war of all against all, and the person who can dominate the other person physically wins. As interpreted by the NRA and unfortunately by the Supreme Court as an individual right, it almost deconstructs the whole point of the Constitution, which is that people shouldn’t have to carry around guns. Our founders gave their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor for a government of laws and not a government of arbitrary—
Moyers: Coercion.
Perlstein: Coercion, yes—
Moyers: Enforced by guns.
Perlstein: Yes, again. Every clever college freshman will tell you that ultimately a government is the monopolization of the use of force, and if you resist the rule of law you are going to be physically removed from the body politic. That’s the last resort. But there’s a first resort — and the National Rifle Association, at the behest and by the funding of the weapons industry, has created it: the first resort of insurrection.
A member of my family works for an investment bank. She once showed me a securities report — you know, one of those things that bankers come up with for analyzing an industry, whether it’s a buy or a sell. And it was so fascinating to read, in the cool rational jargon of bankers, the idea that the gun industry does great when there are Democrats in power because then they can scare the bejesus out of people that they’re going to take their guns away — an utter and rank lie, but one that the cunning forces of capital also have deployed as a profit-making strategy. It’s a very dangerous reality. And now we’re seeing it now. This did not get a lot of publicity but in Gainesville, Florida last week, when Richard Spencer was there—
Moyers: Leader of the white nationalists.
Perlstein: —leader of the white nationalists, and they had the largest police presence on a college campus in the history of the school. But that didn’t keep another white nationalist, who thought that he was being physically menaced by someone with a stick, to fire a shot at left protesters. They missed, but that sort of escalation by people who are trained to believe that they are under literal physical threat — demagogues like Dana Loesch and organizations like the National Rifle Association — may just cause an escalation of violence that is becomes extremely dangerous to all of our liberties.
Moyers: Do you ever go online to some of those gun sites? Do they frighten you?
Perlstein: Very scary. Because there’s an almost religious ideology that unless you are prepared to meet any threat with violent force, you, your family, the women and children you are charged by a kind of patriarchal ideology to protect, are endangered. I went to one site that offers tactical training on how to clear a room, how to get off the maximum number of rounds in the shortest period of time, what clothes to wear with breakaway pockets so you can shoot faster — there’s an entire narrative of how the world works, and the core of that narrative is that there are bad people who are not like you who are out to kill you and you have to kill them first.
Moyers: Do you write your history books to oppose the people you are writing about?
Perlstein: Do I write my books to oppose? I don’t think so. No, I think I write my books to affirm. Ultimately, I write my books motivated by a fascination, by the challenge of the various tribes of America to live together. I take great pleasure in making connections and in reaching readers and hopefully edifying them and enlightening them. I like to think that I use my work, my books, my journalism to create a community, a community of readers, of thinkers, of citizens. So ultimately, I think I do see it as an affirmative act. I’m not nihilistic, I’m optimistic.
Moyers: Thank you, Rick Perlstein.
NBC’s Peter Alexander: John Kelly stopped updating the rich asshole on NYC attack so he could be briefed by Fox & Friends
Peter Alexander (MSNBC/screen grab)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
NBC White House correspondent Peter Alexander reported on Wednesday that President some rich asshole got the day’s initial morning briefing from Fox & Friends before receiving his official intelligence briefing.
In a series of tweets on Wednesday, the rich asshole repeatedly referenced the Fox News morning program and even seemed to be directing the coverage in one tweet.
We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter). @foxandfriends
"Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems" said Col.Tony Shaffer. We will stop this craziness! @foxandfriends
Reporting from the White House, Alexander noted that the rich asshole was being briefed by Fox News before his Presidential Daily Briefing.
“It appears he’s watching Fox News this morning,” Alexander said. “It appears that that’s where he’s getting, in effect, his briefing this morning. This attack in Manhattan [is] serving sort of a dual purpose for this president, allowing him and other conservatives to push their immigration agenda, but also to take a swipe at the Senate’s top Democrat [Chuck Schumer].”
“The president was getting ongoing updates from his Chief of Staff John Kelly, but early in the morning, the president gets his best information by watching television,” the NBC reporter added. “That appears to be what he’s reacting to right now.”
Watch the video below from MSNBC.
Uber confirms NYC truck attack suspect was one its drivers
Rishabh Jain
Posted with permission from International Business Times
Uber confirmed late Tuesday that Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, the suspect in the truck attack on NYC’s West Side highway which left eight people dead and 15 injured. The company said in an official statement that while Saipov had passed its background check, he is now banned from the app.
The company said in an official statement, “We are horrified by this senseless act of violence. Our hearts are with the victims and their families. We have reached out to law enforcement to provide our full assistance."
An Uber official told the New York Times “We have been in contact with the FBI and have offered our assistance. We will remain in close contact with law enforcement and the FBI to assist with their investigation. We are aggressively and quickly reviewing this partner’s history with Uber, and at this time we have not identified any related concerning safety reports.”
Saipov was not in an Uber vehicle at the time of the attack but he was in a rented Home Depot truck. He entered the West Side bike path at Houston Street and rammed into many people on the path, ultimately crashing into a school bus on Chambers Street. He was carrying what later turned out to be a paintball gun and a BB gun.
A federal law enforcement agent told CBS News the authorities found a note referencing Islamic State (ISIS) group in his truck. Saipov is currently in custody at the NYC Health and Hospitals at Bellevue. He is believed to be hailing from Uzbekistan and was driving on a Florida license and had an address in New Jersey.
According to Business Insider, Saipov had worked for Uber for the past six months and had recorded more than 1,400 trips for the ride-hailing service. The fact that he had not set off any red flags during this period, might come under the purview of authorities.
The company’s US community guidelines list a number of reasons for drivers being banned from its platform. Consistently receiving poor ratings, damaging passengers' property, physical contact with riders, inappropriate or abusive language, unwanted contact with a passenger after the ride is complete or breaking local laws while acting as an Uber driver can get a person banned from its platform.
Going by these reports, it seems Saipov passed through the system since the basic requirement for being an Uber driver is holding a U.S. license for a year. Saipov had also earned a green card — a law enforcement official told the New York Times on the condition of anonymity. He had even entered the country legally via the Kennedy International Airport in 2010.
However, according to CNN Tech, there might have been some oversight in this case – according to a report on the website, Saipov had received multiple traffic citations in the past. He was charged in Platte, Missouri with failure to equip his vehicle with a proper braking system. The court had entered his guilty plea as he failed to make an appearance in November 2016.
Uber is yet to provide an explanation on how this record if correct was ignored in Saipov’s case.
The company said in an official statement, “We are horrified by this senseless act of violence. Our hearts are with the victims and their families. We have reached out to law enforcement to provide our full assistance."
An Uber official told the New York Times “We have been in contact with the FBI and have offered our assistance. We will remain in close contact with law enforcement and the FBI to assist with their investigation. We are aggressively and quickly reviewing this partner’s history with Uber, and at this time we have not identified any related concerning safety reports.”
Saipov was not in an Uber vehicle at the time of the attack but he was in a rented Home Depot truck. He entered the West Side bike path at Houston Street and rammed into many people on the path, ultimately crashing into a school bus on Chambers Street. He was carrying what later turned out to be a paintball gun and a BB gun.
A federal law enforcement agent told CBS News the authorities found a note referencing Islamic State (ISIS) group in his truck. Saipov is currently in custody at the NYC Health and Hospitals at Bellevue. He is believed to be hailing from Uzbekistan and was driving on a Florida license and had an address in New Jersey.
According to Business Insider, Saipov had worked for Uber for the past six months and had recorded more than 1,400 trips for the ride-hailing service. The fact that he had not set off any red flags during this period, might come under the purview of authorities.
The company’s US community guidelines list a number of reasons for drivers being banned from its platform. Consistently receiving poor ratings, damaging passengers' property, physical contact with riders, inappropriate or abusive language, unwanted contact with a passenger after the ride is complete or breaking local laws while acting as an Uber driver can get a person banned from its platform.
Going by these reports, it seems Saipov passed through the system since the basic requirement for being an Uber driver is holding a U.S. license for a year. Saipov had also earned a green card — a law enforcement official told the New York Times on the condition of anonymity. He had even entered the country legally via the Kennedy International Airport in 2010.
However, according to CNN Tech, there might have been some oversight in this case – according to a report on the website, Saipov had received multiple traffic citations in the past. He was charged in Platte, Missouri with failure to equip his vehicle with a proper braking system. The court had entered his guilty plea as he failed to make an appearance in November 2016.
Uber is yet to provide an explanation on how this record if correct was ignored in Saipov’s case.
NY GOP sends out anti-Semitic campaign flyer showing Jewish Democrat as sinister ‘puppet master’
A flyer produced by New York Republicans that depicts former Yorktown Town Supervisor Susan Siegel as a 'puppet master.'
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Democrats in Westchester County, New York are furious after the New York Republican State Committee sent out a flyer depicting a Jewish Democrat as a sinister “puppet master” who pulls the strings of local Democratic candidates — two of whom are minorities.
ABC 7 NY reports that the flyer “depicts former Town Supervisor Susan Siegel, a Jewish woman, as a puppeteer controlling three Democratic candidates that include an African-American woman and a man of Indian descent.”
The flyer says that Siegel will be using her alleged control over these candidates to make them transform Yorktown, New York into “a safehaven for illegal immigrants” that will result in massive tax increases for local residents.
“How can we trust them to protect us, when all they want is to protect them?” the flyer asks.
The flyer also makes reference to black NFL players’ protests against police brutality by saying Republican candidates will “never take a knee” if elected.
Depicting Jews as “puppet masters” who direct others to import racial minorities is a staple of white nationalist ideology, as white nationalists believe Jews are pushing immigration from non-European countries as part of a plot to commit “white genocide.” As Jewish author Michelle Goldberg explains, Nazi propaganda regularly called out Jews as “drahtzieher,” which translates to “wire pullers.”
Jewish investor George Soros is often used as a symbol of the wealthy Jewish “puppet master” who is pulling the strings of minorities, as shown in the photos below.
Despite this, current Republican Town Supervisor Michael Grace called Democrats’ criticisms of the flyer as anti-Semitic a “gross stretch.”
Ivanka and the rich asshole Hotel brands tumble all the way to bottom 10 in new survey
The only way the rich asshole brands are making money these days is off of government or through political people attempting to impress the president.
Axios cited new data from YouGov released Wednesday shows that both Ivanka the rich asshole’s clothing and accessory line and the the rich asshole Hotels brands have taken a huge hit since the family has gone from “The Apprentice” to the White House.
Out of over 1,600 brands, both brands are now listed in the bottom 10. The site began tracking the popularity of the brands in May, after what they called “overwhelming requests” to track how the Trumps’ stack up. So, the site has only been tracking the brands for the past six months and since the Trumps have been in the White House.
Due to political affiliation, the the rich asshole Hotel and Resort brand is split with Republicans favoring the brand more than independents and Democrats. However, even among the GOP consumers, the the rich asshole brand isn’t doing that well. The rich asshole’s tout their luxury brands, but much of the the rich asshole support comes from working families who can’t afford the high prices and extravagance. Those that can prefer rivals like the Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton.
Consumer perception of Ivanka the rich asshole’s brand, however, has increased among Democrats and independents, while the GOP perception has fallen. Ivanka’s boost could have come from the recent release of her book, “Women Who Work.”
Ivanka the rich asshole’s brand was dropped by Nordstrom shortly after the election. While many alleged it was a political decision, the company said they simply weren’t moving the products. Ivanka claimed it protected her integrity.
Mueller finds that Manafort has three passports — and poses a ‘serious flight risk’
the rich asshole Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort (Screen cap).
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Among the fallout from the indictment of President some rich asshole’s disgraced former campaign Paul Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller is news about his high potential for fleeing the country.
According to the The Washington Post, court filings show that Manafort has three passports. As NBC News reported, Manafort’s wealth and connections (as well as those of his deputy, Rick Gates) make him a “serious flight risk” as well.
The court filings also show that Manafort’s financial dealings are so shady, it’s unclear exactly how much money he has, owes, or is worth.
“Manafort’s financial holdings are substantial, if difficult to quantify precisely because of his varying representations,” the filings, as published by the Post, state. “The full extent of [his assets] is unclear.”
The former campaign chairman “reported $42 million in assets in March 2016; $136 million that May; and $28 million and $63 million that August, in two separate financial applications,” the Post‘s report continued.
“The defendants pose a risk of flight based on the serious nature of the charges, their history of deceptive and misleading conduct, the potentially significant sentences the defendants face, the strong evidence of guilt, their significant financial resources, and their foreign connections,” Mueller’s bail memo, unsealed Tuesday and published in part by NBC, states. “Both have had substantial overseas ties, including assets held abroad, significant foreign work connections, and significant travel abroad.”
Papadopoulos told Russians that the rich asshole campaign gave him green light to set up meetings: report
Former the rich asshole campaign adviser George Papadopoulos (image via Twitter).
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
An FBI affidavit shows that the 30-year-old adviser boasted that he got the go-ahead from his “side” when emailing with Russian operatives about potential meeting with high-level campaign officials.
According to the Washington Examiner, the affidavit was left out of the court documents listing Papadopoulos’ guilty plea. Though prosecutors did not provide a reason as to why the email was left out, it’s possible they did so because they believed he was lying.
Papadopoulos “allegedly sent the email shortly before the Republican National Convention in 2016 and noted that it would include ‘my national chairman and maybe one other foreign policy adviser,’ along with members of Putin’s office and Russia’s foreign ministry,” the Examiner‘s report noted. “Papadopoulos then said it had been approved by ‘our side.'”
There’s no evidence to prove whether the meeting happened, or who the national chairman would be. The Examiner‘s report also noted that Paul Manafort, who was indicted yesterday for conspiracy charges along with his deputy Rick Gates, was the campaign’s chairman at the time.
the rich asshole calls for 'extreme vetting' after NYC attack
BY JOSH DELK - 10/31/17 09:56 PM EDT
President the rich asshole tweeted on Tuesday that he had ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to implement tougher vetting procedures in the wake of the deadly attack in New York City.
"I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!" the rich asshole said.
His tweet came just hours after a driver plowed into a crowded bike lane in Manhattan, killing at least eight people. The suspect, 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, was shot by police and remains in critical condition, according to The New York Times.
Saipov is a native of Uzbekistan who came to the United States in 2010, CBS News reported.
The attacker reportedly yelled "Allahu Akbar" after exiting the vehicle.
In his previous tweets, the rich asshole called the terrorist a "sick and deranged person" and said the U.S. "must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country."
“EVERYONE IS FREAKING OUT”: THE RICH ASSHOLE’S WEST WING RACES TO CONTAIN MUELLER FALLOUT
The rich asshole-Russia “witch hunt” becomes suddenly, terrifyingly real.
hen Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the truculent White House Press secretary, was asked how some rich asshole had taken the news that three former campaign advisers had been charged in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, her reply was brusque. “He responded the same way the rest of us in the White House have—that is, without a lot of reaction, because it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
Those who have spoken to sources inside the West Wing, however, paint a different picture: of a president fuming over the indictments and consumed by cable news coverage, oscillating furiously between “media critic, legal analyst, and crisis communications strategist,” as The Washington Post reports.
Although the White House had been anticipating charges in Robert Mueller’s “witch hunt” for months, news that one former adviser, George Papadopoulos, had pleaded guilty, and begun working with the F.B.I., exploded like a bomb. Rising before dawn and gluing himself to his television, the rich asshole at first felt vindicated by the charges against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, which were seemingly unconnected to Russia. “NO COLLUSION!” he tweeted triumphantly, after he spoke with his lawyers. Others were reportedly relieved that the first batch of indictments did not include the rich asshole’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn. (Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty.)
But the president’s mood darkened after hearing that Papadopoulos had, apparently, turned state’s witness. “The walls are closing in,” one senior Republican in close contact with top staffers told the Post, echoing other sources who described the rich asshole as angry and agitated. “Everyone is freaking out.” The New York Times reported that White House aides were “stunned and alarmed.”
Other West Wing sources were more sanguine. There wasn’t “as much of a freakout as you might think,” one official told Politico. While the rich asshole was fixated on the Russia investigation all day, he is said to have been reassured by his lawyers that Mueller won’t threaten him personally, even if he indicts former the rich asshole associates, and will ultimately clear the president’s name. His legal team has urged the investigation to proceed swiftly so that it can be concluded by the end of the year.
Papadopoulos’s guilty plea, and subsequent cooperation with the F.B.I., could upend that timetable—as could the arrests of Manafort and Gates. The overriding assumption is that Mueller believes that the pair have information relating to the rich asshole, which he intends to leverage. As legal experts have told Vanity Fair, the special prosecutor appears to be following a classic anti-mafia playbook: begin by targeting lower-level staffers, then work your way up, using compromising information or legal threats to compel testimony against their higher-ups. Gates, apparently, is a point of particular concern. Possibly facing years in jail, he has a young family, and continued to be involved with the the rich asshole administration after the president was sworn in.
As the fractious situation unfolded, and immediately choked the media cycle, there was widespread frustration among the G.O.P. Yet again, Russia had dominated the start of carefully planned week of policy news, in which Republicans are preparing to unveil their tax overhaul bill and the rich asshole is set to depart on a pivotal, 12-day trip across Asia. It’s not the first time that the rich asshole has flown overseas under a cloud of scandal. The day before he embarked upon his first presidential foreign trip in May, the Justice Department appointed Mueller as special counsel.
the rich asshole’s allies are divided over how he should respond to the indictments. Chief of Staff John Kelly, along with the rich asshole lawyers Ty Cobb, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, reportedly advised the president to respond cautiously, and emphasized that Mueller should not be fired. “Nothing about today’s events alters anything related to our engagement with the special counsel, with whom we continue to cooperate,” Cobb said, according to the Post. “There are no discussions and there is no consideration being given to terminating Mueller.” Instead, they appear to have opted on a method of deflection, ramping up Republican efforts to shift attention towards Clinton. Last night, Kelly declared on Fox News that an investigation was needed to probe funding from Clinton’s campaign and the DNC for the research behind the rich asshole/Russia dossier, and Clinton’s involvement in the Uranium One deal, adding that he thought Mueller’s investigation should “wrap up soon.” Sekulow told ABC News on Tuesday morning, “I have not had a conversation with the president regarding pardons and pardons are not on the table.”
Others, including the nationalist-populist gadfly Steve Bannon, urged the president to aggressively push back. “Source close to Bannon tells @DanaBashCNN he wants the rich asshole to go to war versus Mueller,” tweeted CNN’s Manu Raju.“The Dowd/ Cobb play nice strategy is an epic failure.”
Although yesterday’s news was not as damaging as expected, Mueller’s opening bid was a robust display of strength. By simultaneously presenting a surprise cooperating witness from inside the rich asshole’s campaign, alongside accusations of criminality on the part of the rich asshole’s former campaign manager, he laid out an intimidating blueprint of his coming plans.
the rich asshole ‘listened with interest’ at Papadopolous’ pitch for campaign meeting with Putin: report
some rich asshole during CNN debate (Photo: Screen capture via video)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
In the midst of a coordinated White House effort to distance some rich asshole from former staffer George Papadopoulos, The New York Times reported Tuesday on details from a March 31, 2016 campaign meeting.
Citing a former campaign aide who attended the meeting, The Times reported the rich asshole “listened with interest” as Papadopoulos pitched the idea of a personal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Though campaign supervisor Sam Clovis worried about the “optics” of a meeting with the Russian strongman, the rich asshole asked questions of Papadopoulos’s plan.
the rich asshole “didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no” the source disclosed.
However, then Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) rejected the meeting and asked those assembled to never speak of it again.
Additional details on the meeting bring into question statements Sessions made while testifying before Congress on multiple occasions.
On October 18, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) asked Attorney General Sessions, “You don’t believe that surrogates from the the rich asshole campaign had communications with the Russians?”
“I did not — and I’m not aware of anyone else that did,” Sessions replied. “I don’t believe that it happened.
Papadopoulous tried to connect a fellow the rich asshole aide with Russian source of ‘golden showers’ dossier info: report
Former the rich asshole campaign adviser George Papadopoulos (image via Twitter).
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Despite the White House’s insistence that former adviser George Papadopoulos was an incidental, unpaid volunteer on the rich asshole presidential campaign, new analyses show the extent of Papadopoulos’ influence.
In a report from The Washington Post, reporters found that although some more senior the rich asshole campaign officials “appeared to rebuff Papadopoulos’ persistent offer to broker a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” the unsealed documents from the former adviser’s case don’t indicate that he was reprimanded for doing so.
Soon after joining the campaign, he attended a March 31, 2016 meeting attended by both the rich asshole and now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions where he brought up his “connections” that could assist in arranging a meeting between the candidate and Putin. Around that time, he also began appearing on behalf of the campaign in foreign media, and told a group of Israeli researchers in April 2016 that the rich asshole viewed Putin as “a responsible actor and potential partner.”
Court documents analyzed by the Post also show that in September 2016, Papadopoulos told Boris Epshteyn, a fellow campaign aide, that he wanted to set up a meeting in New York with a man named Sergei Millian from the Russian American Chamber of Commerce. Millian, it turns out, is allegedly a “major source” for the writer of the “golden showers” dossier (a claim the Post notes that Millian denies).
When asked by the Post about Papadopoulos, the powerful chief political analyst at Sinclair Broadcasting Group replied that he “can meet and talk to any person” and that it’s “none of your business.”
the rich asshole tweets orders to Homeland Security after Fox News spends hours hyping extreme vetting
some rich asshole on Instagram (Screenshot)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
President some rich asshole took to Twitter on Halloween night to announce unspecified orders to the Department of Homeland Security after eight people were run over by a rental truck used as a weapon in New York City.
“I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!” the rich asshole tweeted.
He neither specified the details of his order nor did he explain on what issues the United States has been politically correct.
the rich asshole’s mention of an ‘extreme vetting program’ came as Fox News spent hours discussing the idea.
While President the rich asshole was complaining about political correctness, former New York Senator Hillary Clinton offered thoughtful, measured words.
Other members of the administration also showed up the commander in chief with thoughtful, measured words.
White House wants credit for Papadopoulos arrest
Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that Mueller’s probe brought down Papadopoulos only because of White House cooperation.
The White House on Tuesday sought to take credit for the arrest of a former the rich asshole campaign aide who had repeated contacts with Russia-linked officials offering “dirt” on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — marking the latest damage control move as the Russia probe intensifies.
President some rich asshole and other White House allies had so far sought to downplay the role of George Papadopoulos, a campaign foreign policy adviser, whose plea deal was made public by special counsel Robert Mueller on Monday, the same day that two top the rich asshole campaign officials were indicted on charges unrelated to the campaign.
the rich asshole derided Papadopoulos on Tuesday morning as a “liar,” while former campaign aide Michael Caputo dismissed him as “the coffee boy.”
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders went further Tuesday afternoon, claiming the White House and the campaign deserved credit for helping Mueller’s team build its case that Papadopoulos had lied to the FBI about his contacts.
“Papadopoulos is an example of actually somebody doing the wrong thing while the president's campaign did the right thing,” Sanders said. “All of his emails were voluntarily provided to the special counsel by the campaign, and that is what led to the process and the place that we’re in right now is the campaign fully cooperating and helping with that. What Papadopoulos did was lie, and that’s on him and not on the campaign, and we can’t speak to that.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about when the documents in question had been turned over. Papadopoulos was initially interviewed as part of the FBI’s probe into Russian election meddling on Jan. 27. He was arrested in July.
The Washington Post reported that the rich asshole’s campaign handed over emails implicating Papadopoulos to the special counsel in August — after he had already been arrested.
Court documents indicate that Papadopoulos has been a cooperative witness as part of the special counsel’s probe.
Sanders on Tuesday also defended other campaign officials who interacted with Papadopoulos, including by claiming that one official — who has been identified in news reports as campaign aide Sam Clovis — did not encourage Papadopoulos to travel to Russia.
“My understanding is there wasn’t encouragement,” Sanders said.
But according to the plea deal, the official who has been identified as Clovis wrote, “I would encourage you … [to] make the trip … if it is feasible.”
The obfuscation was part of a broader push on Tuesday against new questions raised by Mueller’s revelation on Monday of charges against former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, another campaign aide, including money laundering and other crimes related to the pair’s relationship with pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.
the rich asshole on Tuesday morning cast the Manafort charges as a vindication, of sorts, for the campaign. He also belittled Papadopoulos, despite having called him “an excellent guy” to The Washington Post editorial board in March 2016.
“The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts [sic] lawyer said, there was 'no collusion' and events mentioned took place long before he came to the campaign,” the rich asshole wrote on Twitter. “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!”
the rich asshole continued trying to redirect the heat toward Democrats.
"The biggest story yesterday, the one that has the Dems in a dither, is Podesta running from his firm. What he know [sic] about Crooked Dems is earth shattering," the rich asshole wrote on Twitter later Tuesday, alluding to the departure of Tony Podesta, the brother of former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, from his eponymously named lobbying firm. "He and his brother could Drain The Swamp, which would be yet another campaign promise fulfilled. Fake News weak!"
Shortly after the rich asshole tweeted, John Podesta, whose emails were taken by suspected Kremlin-backed hackers and released by WikiLeaks, responded online to the president.
"Not bad enough that I was the victim of a massive cyber crime directed by the Russian President, now I’m the victim of a big lie campaign by the American President," Podesta tweeted Tuesday.
Former some rich asshole campaign officials and other allies also worked the morning TV news shows to downplay Papadopoulos' role on the campaign and draw a line between the crimes allegedly committed by Manafort and Gates and their work on the campaign.
Caputo, a former some rich asshole campaign aide, told CNN's "New Day" that he was unaware of Manafort's alleged crimes and did not know Papadopoulos at all.
"The leaders of the Washington office of the campaign didn’t even know who he was until his name appeared in the press,” Caputo said. "I mean, you might’ve called him a foreign policy analyst, but, in fact, you know, if he was going to wear a wire, all we’d know now is whether he prefers a caramel macchiato over a regular American coffee in conversations with his barista. He had nothing to do with the campaign."
In an appearance on NBC's "Today" show, former some rich asshole campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said he did not know whether he was the "high-ranking campaign official" whom Papadopoulos said he emailed regarding his interactions with Russia-linked contacts.
Lewandowski told NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie that in his role as campaign manager, he received thousands of emails per day and could not recall whether he had been included on the emails Papadopoulos sent.
Still, Lewandowski dismissed Papadopoulos as a "low-level volunteer" who was "never a person who was interacting with the senior management on a regular basis."
And some rich asshole's personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, noted Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that Papadopoulos never traveled for the meeting with his Russia-connected contacts that he had emailed others in the campaign about. He said that nothing about Manafort's or Gates' charges was related to some rich asshole 2016 campaign and that Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, not to anything involving his interactions with individuals tied to Russia.
"Remember this: Collusion, in and of itself — there's no crime of collusion," Sekulow told ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos. "What is a violation of law here, I go back to that, for George Papadopoulos, the violation of the law, George, was that he lied to FBI agents, which is clearly not condoned by the administration."
Democrats were not eager to let some rich asshole and his aides off the hook, especially when it comes to the central question of whether the campaign colluded with Russian officials trying to tip the election some rich asshole’s way.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, hit back at some rich asshole’s Tuesday morning tweet that there was “no collusion.”
Twitter trolls duped Don Jr. into believing another fake Pizzagate-type conspiracy
some rich asshole Jr. speaks to MSNBC (screen grab)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
A photo of a banner unveiled by white supremacists, designed to make anti-fascists look like they are pro-pedophilia, managed to go viral as the real thing after it was “liked” on Twitter by an easily fooled some rich asshole Jr.
According the Gothamist, alt-right gadfly Mike Cernovich was appearing at Columbia University on Monday night and, as protesters gathered outside, several counter demonstrators disguised as protesters briefly unveiled a banner that read,”No white supremacy — No pedo-bashing — No Mike Cernovich.”
Writing at the Gothamist, Jake Offenhartz — who took a picture of the banner and posted it to social media criticizing the attempt to smear the protesters — claims he had his picture hijacked by right wingers who attempted to pass it off as an authentic desire to protect child molesters.
“Someone said ‘hold this real quick’ and then they proceeded to snap pics,” protest organizer and Columbia social work student Mistee Denson explained to Offenhartz. “Someone quickly realized what it said and ran them off. Unfortunately, they got what they wanted.”
According to Offenhartz, Cernovich and fellow alt-right troll Jack Posobeic retweeted the picture, only to take it down when threatened with copyright infringement. However the damage was done, with InfoWars editor Paul Joseph Watson then turning the removal of the tweets into a scandal over Twitter protecting supposed pro-pedophilia protesters.
Watson’s tweet was widely shared, over 12,000 times, and liked by 10,000 people — including by the son of President some rich asshole who “liked” it on his Twitter account that has over 2 million followers.
Cernovich and Posobeic were at the center of a fake conspiracy that Hillary Clinton was linked to a Washington DC pizza parlor that hosted child molestation parties in its basement. That story led to one man traveling to Washington D.C., from North Carolina and firing shots inside the pizzeria before surrendering to the police.
See Don Jr’s tweets below:
‘All our leaders have flaws’: Sarah Sanders defends Robert E. Lee’s ‘contributions’ to America
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Addressing White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s explanation that the Civil War was the result of a “failure to compromise,” presidential spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders was drawn into a discussion on states memorializing leaders of the Confederacy and claimed, “All of our leaders have flaws.”
Pressed by New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush to speak to the Civil War as a daughter of the south, Sanders compared the memorials to those dedicated to Presidents John F. Kennedy and George Washington.
“All of our leaders have flaws” Sanders replied. “Washington, Jefferson, JFK, Roosevelt. That doesn’t diminish their contributions to our country and it can’t erase them from our history.”
“General Kelly was making the point that just because history isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it is not our history,” she added.
“You are a proud daughter of the south,” Thrush pressed. “When you see a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, is there a differentiation you think with certain Confederate figures who don’t deserve to be honored?”
“I don’t think we should debate every moment of history,” Sanders replied. “I think those moments took place. There are moments that we are a lot less proud of than others but we can’t erase the fact that they happened. I think you have to determine where that line is.”
You can watch the video below:
‘An embarrassment’: Disgruntled Fox News employees lash out at network’s ‘absurd’ the rich asshole-Russia coverage
Sean Hannity (CBS News/screen grab)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
As special counsel Robert Mueller was dropping indictments against former the rich asshole campaign officials on Monday, Fox News seemed more focused on controversies swirling around cheeseburger emojis.
Some Fox employees were not happy to see the network trying to brush this news under the rug, however, and they tell CNN’s Oliver Darcy that they were deeply humiliated by the way their network brushed off the biggest story of the day.
“It is another blow to journalists at Fox who come in every day wanting to cover the news in a fair and objective way,” one senior Fox employee told Darcy. “Fox feels like an extension of the the rich asshole White House.”
“I’m watching now and screaming,” said a different Fox personality. “I want to quit.”
Some Fox employees said they were particularly disheartened by Fox segments that questioned Mueller’s credibility, which one person said “does the viewer a huge disservice and further divides the country.”
“That segment on ‘Outnumbered’ was absurd and deserves all the scorn it can get,” said another employee of the Fox News show’s segment that attacked Mueller’s reputation.
Still another employee fumed that Fox had morphed from a conservative news network to a public relations machine for the rich asshole.
“It’s an embarrassment,” they told Darcy. “Frankly, there are shows on our network that are backing the President at all costs, and it’s that short term strategy that undermines the good work being done by others.”
WATCH: some rich asshole refuses to say if he plans to pardon Paul Manafort
some rich asshole (Screenshot)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
President some rich asshole on Tuesday refused to answer whether he would pardon his former campaign chief Paul Manafort.
After a White House announcement about tax reform, a reporter tried to ask the president if he planned to pardon Manafort. the rich asshole appeared to hear the question and paused for a moment, but did not answer it.
“Thank you, everybody,” the rich asshole said.
Manafort was indicted Monday as part of Robert Mueller’s federal investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Watch video below:
George Papadopoulos guilty plea shows some rich asshole Jr. may be incredibly vulnerable
some rich asshole Jr. (Screenshot/CNN)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about a Russian offer of “dirt” on Hillary Clinton remarkably similar to one made to some rich asshole Jr. — who may face new legal jeopardy in the special counsel probe.
The 30-year-old Papadopoulos officially joined the the rich asshole campaign’s foreign policy advisory board March 21, 2016, and just three days later was contacted by a woman he believed had connections to “high-level Russian government officials,” according to his plea.
The Russian contact promised damaging information about Clinton that came from hacked and stolen emails, but Papadopoulos told FBI agents he met the woman before joining the campaign and brought knowledge of the hacked data with him.
However, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators found evidence the contacts came only after joining the the rich asshole campaign, and Papadopoulos was arrested July 27 — one day after FBI agents raided Paul Manafort’s home — and began cooperating with the probe.
There’s nothing in the guilty plea to directly implicate the president’s son, who set up a June 9, 2016, meeting with a Russian attorney promising “dirt” on Clinton — but the court documents show a much clearer picture of what investigators already know.
Court documents show investigators have known or strongly suspected since late January that Russians had promised campaign assistance through Papadopoulos since at least late April 2016, and he then lied about it.
The documents refer multiple times to Papadopoulos keeping “high level campaign officials” notified of his efforts to set up meetings between Russia, including President Vladimir Putin, and the the rich asshole campaign, including some rich asshole.
One of those email notifications was sent June 1, 2016, by Papadopoulos to a “high-ranking campaign official” who referred him to the “campaign supervisor” who was “running point.”
Carter Page, who served on the same advisory committee as Papadopoulos, traveled to Moscow in July 2016 with the permission of former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, but without the blessing of his campaign supervisor, J.D. Gordon.
An associate emailed the rich asshole Jr. on June 3, 2016, to set up a meeting with the “Russian government lawyer” to discuss the campaign, and the president’s son invited Manafort — one of the campaign officials described in the plea — and his brother-in-law Jared Kushner.
The guilty plea signed by Papadopoulos, who has turned over documents to the special counsel and likely has worn a wire, show it’s nearly impossible that Manafort — and possibly the rich asshole Jr. and Kushner — did not know what the meeting would be about.
the rich asshole Jr. later offered shifting explanations of the meeting, which Mueller’s team is investigating as possible obstruction of justice by the president himself.
the rich asshole personally dictated the first, demonstrably false statement while flying home from the G-20 meeting where he met privately with Putin.
According to court documents, Papadopoulos told the rich asshole on March 31, 2016, about his efforts to set up a meeting during the campaign between the rich asshole and Putin, and he continued trying to arrange a meeting with Russian officials, with the campaign’s knowledge, until at least August 2016.
Although individual campaign officials and associates are not identified in the plea agreement, Mueller’s team clearly knows who they are, and some of them may have been recorded by Papadopoulos after his unpublicized arrest three months ago.
News reports published Aug. 14 revealed Papadopoulos had sent at least a half-dozen requests for the rich asshole or campaign associates to meet with Russian officials, but those failed to attract sustained attention.
the rich asshole Jr. was interviewed Sept. 7 by congressional investigators, one of whom suggested in a tweet that the president’s son had broken the law by lying.
It’s not clear what Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) believes the rich asshole Jr. may have lied about, but investigators frequently ask questions to which they know the answers to gauge their target’s truthfulness.
According to news reports, the rich asshole Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he didn’t inform his father of the meeting — but the Papadopoulos plea shows nearly everyone around the candidate were aware of Russian efforts to deliver damaging information on Clinton.
Rob Goldstone, who pitched the the rich asshole Tower meeting and also attended it, said it would be “part of Russia and its government’s support for some rich asshole” of which Papadopoulos was a part — and which he just pleaded guilty to lying about.
S&P: ObamaCare enrollment hurt by the rich asshole uncertainty
BY JESSIE HELLMANN - 10/31/17 10:05 AM EDT
Enrollment in ObamaCare's exchanges next year could drop by as much as 1.6 million people because of uncertainty cause by the the rich asshole administration, according to a Wall Street forecast released Tuesday.
The estimate from S&P concludes that enrollment next year could be seven to 13 percent lower than the 12.2 million people who signed up in 2017.
Enrollment in the exchanges could be anywhere from 10.6 million to 11.4 million, the report predicts.
"Insurer exits, higher-than-expected premium rate hikes, a series of repeal-and-replace votes, the cancelation of future federal cost-sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies, an executive order on health care, and a recent discussion about a short-term bipartisan fix have all contributed to the uncertainty that has been brewing lately."
The report estimates that most current enrollees will sign up again for coverage next year, but there will be fewer new enrollees because of the confusion and lack of advertising.
The rich asshole administration cut the law's advertising budget by 90 percent for next year.
The report also attributes the expected decline to a shorter enrollment period, funding cuts to in person enrollment assistance and higher premiums for those who don't qualify for subsidies.
Insurers across the country have raised premiums in response to uncertainty over whether the administration would continue key ObamaCare insurer payments.
People who qualify for subsidies will be mostly shielded from those hikes because subsidies are designed to increase with premiums.
But people who don't qualify for subsidies will pay the full price of the increases, which could cause some to decide to go without coverage this year.
A decline in the number of people signing up for coverage could bolster the rich asshole administration’s argument that the law is failing and needs repealed
Republicans in Congress hope to turn back to repeal legislation next year.
The Memo: Mueller charges come at vulnerable time for the rich asshole
BY NIALL STANAGE - 10/31/17 06:00 AM EDT
Special counsel Robert Mueller released several bombshells on Monday, and they exploded at an especially vulnerable time for President the rich asshole.
Three polls in the past week have shown the rich asshole hitting all-time lows with the public.
Now, the question is whether the new developments from Mueller — indictments against former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Richard Gates, as well as a plea deal with former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos — will drive those numbers even lower.
“The whole game in politics is to expand your base,” said GOP strategist Rick Tyler, who was communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) 2016 primary campaign. “Independents are moving away from [the rich asshole] and he depended on them to get elected.”
The president’s tweets on Monday hit back hard amid the political danger.
“Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the the rich asshole campaign. But why aren›t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus????,” the rich asshole tweeted on Monday morning. He followed up by insisting, “….Also, there is NO COLLUSION!”
The probe is deepening, however.
Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to misleading FBI agents who questioned him on the topic. Legal documents filed by Mueller’s team assert that Papadopoulos met with an overseas professor with Russian ties who told him that Moscow had “dirt” on the rich asshole’s election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Jimmy Gurulé, a former assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice, said that it was “getting pretty hard” for the the rich asshole administration to claim that there was no collusion in light of those claims.
Gurulé, now a professor at Notre Dame Law School, is among those who believe the charges against Manafort could push the former campaign chief to “flip.”
The indictment “exerts tremendous pressure on Manafort to cooperate with special counsel Mueller, if he has anything of value that he can contribute to the ongoing investigation,” Gurulé said.
Manafort faces charges of conspiracy and money laundering, as well as failing to report foreign bank accounts and failing to register as a foreign agent.
Manafort joined the the rich asshole campaign in late March 2016, was promoted to campaign chairman in May of that year and was ousted in August.
Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty to all charges at their initial court appearance on Monday afternoon. An attorney for Manafort, Kevin Downing, said in a statement, “President some rich asshole was correct. There is no evidence the the rich asshole Campaign colluded with the Russian government.”
But there is no mistaking the fact that the rich asshole is in a vulnerable place politically.
In a Gallup tracking poll released on Monday, only 33 percent of Americans approved of his job performance, the lowest mark he has ever received.
This came on the heels of one poll from Fox News and another commissioned jointly by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, both of which showed the rich asshole with 38 percent approval. In both cases, those were the lowest marks ever recorded for the rich asshole in those surveys.
The polls also indicated erosion within the groups that the rich asshole has leaned on most heavily.
In the Fox News poll, his support among white men without a college degree fell by 12 points since the previous month, to 56 percent from 68 percent. His approval rating among independents slid to 30 percent, whereas exit polls suggest that 46 percent of independents voted for him last November.
Asked about the polls during a media briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the White House was focused on its push for tax reform and added, “I think that the economy continuing to grow and strengthen is something that will certainly change those numbers.”
But, Sanders added, “at the same time, I think these are some of the same polls that also said this president would never be president, so I don’t have a lot of confidence in them.”
Sanders has a point in at least one regard: the rich asshole’s approval ratings among Republican voters hover around the 80 percent mark in most surveys. Unless that changes, GOP lawmakers have little incentive to abandon the president.
the rich asshole has come under public criticism from high-profile Republicans in recent weeks, but none of his most notable detractors, from former President George W. Bush to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), faces a competitive election anytime soon. Another GOP critic, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), announced last week that he would no longer seek reelection next year.
Whit Ayres, a GOP consultant and pollster who worked with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) during last year’s primary, referred to the rich asshole’s job approval among GOP voters as “the key number to watch.”
Its relative strength “is what has held up his overall numbers in the mid-to-high 30s, and that support among Republicans is what has caused most Republican officials to stand by him. If the job approval among Republicans starts slipping substantially, then that creates major political problems — greater than anything he has seen up to this point,” Ayres said.
Although the rich asshole’s approval ratings are the lowest of any modern president at this point in his term, he could yet go lower, especially if the Russia probe reveals any more damaging information.
There is precedent for worse ratings: Bush had an approval rating of around 25 percent as he prepared to leave office amid two wars and a financial crisis.
That said, some experts caution that the Russia probe might not have as big an impact with the general public as it does among the media and the rich asshole’s detractors.
David Winston, a Republican pollster who has in the past worked with former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), said he did not think the new developments in the Mueller probe would fundamentally shift public perceptions of the rich asshole.
“At this point — rightly or wrongly — I think the Russian issue is being seen through partisan lenses,” he said on Monday afternoon. “I think today’s events didn’t change that.”
But others saw the indictments as a more pivotal breach of the the rich asshole team’s defenses — and one with unpredictable political consequences.
“In terms of the the rich asshole campaign claiming that this is a witch hunt … I think the events today have closed the door on that response,” Gurulé said on Monday. “Now the question is, where do things proceed from here?”
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on some rich asshole’s presidency.
the rich asshole lashes out on indictments, tries to shift focus to tax reform
BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 10/31/17 08:28 AM EDT
President the rich asshole on Tuesday dismissed the latest wrinkle in the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, saying the alleged actions of his former campaign chairman occurred prior to his involvement with the the rich asshole campaign.
“The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts [sic] lawyer said, there was ‘no collusion’ and events mentioned took place long before he came to the campaign,” the rich asshole wrote on Twitter.
The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts lawyer said, there was "no collusion" and events mentioned took place long before he...
The tweet comes one day after Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman, and his former business associate, Richard Gates, were charged in a 12-count indictment stemming from the special counsel's probe into Russia's election interference. Both have pleaded not guilty to the charges, which pertain to work the two did for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine.
the rich asshole also dismissed the volunteer foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in the course of its Russia investigation.
“Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!” the rich asshole added.
....came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!
The Washington Post on Monday said had the rich asshole spoken highly of Papadopoulos as one of his foreign policy advisers during an interview with its editorial board in March of 2016.
“He's an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy,” said the rich asshole, referring to Papadopoulos according to the newspaper.
the rich asshole then added that he hopes “people will start to focus” on tax reform.
“I hope people will start to focus on our Massive Tax Cuts for Business (jobs) and the Middle Class (in addition to Democrat corruption)!” the rich asshole said.
I hope people will start to focus on our Massive Tax Cuts for Business (jobs) and the Middle Class (in addition to Democrat corruption)!
Legal Community SCHOOLS the rich asshole’s Lawyer For Claiming Collusion Is Not A Crime
some rich asshole’s attorney Jay Sekulow made a fool of himself on Tuesday morning.
During an interview with ABC host George Stephanopoulos, Sekulow actually claimed that collusion is not a crime in an effort to defend the rich asshole after his associate George Papadopoulos plead guilty to lying to FBI agents about meeting with Russians.
“He was a volunteer with the campaign, he served on one of the committees,” Sekelow said. “He was involved with individuals that purported to be somehow involved with Russia or Russian government — it’s not clear from the documents. The end result is the meeting doesn’t take place. So what you had is you had all this conversation about collusion. Remember this, collusion in and of itself — there’s no crime of collusion.”
Even Stephanopoulos knew that claim was bullshit.
“Collusion is cooperation and that’s what he was doing with Russians,” Stephanopoulos replied.
Here’s the video via YouTube.
Indeed, collusion is just another word for “conspiracy,” which is a crime. A MAJOR crime.
Sekulow’s claim was immediately debunked by prominent members of the legal community.
Harvard University law professor John Coates and University of California, Irvine law professor Rick Hasen schooled Sekulow.
“It is a federal crime to conspire with anyone, including a foreign government, to ‘deprive another of the intangible right of honest services,’” Coates told Politifact after Fox News host Eric Bolling made the same claim in July. “That would include fixing a fraudulent election, in my view, within the plain meaning of the statute.”
“If others participated in the scheme to do this it could be a conspiracy,” Hasen added. “Whether you want to call that ‘collusion’ or not seems besides the point.”
In short, the rich asshole’s own attorney doesn’t understand the law and apparently thinks that the use of the word “collusion” absolves the rich asshole and his campaign team of any crimes. But that’s simply not the case and any self-respecting judge would laugh at Sekulow in open court if he tried to use such a defense.
Featured Image: Win McNamee/Getty Images
CNN’s Chris Cuomo shuts down the rich asshole apologist’s claim that George Papadopoulos was ‘coffee boy’
Chris Cuomo vs. Michael Caputo (Photo: Screen capture)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
CNN’s Chris Cuomo shut down a senior campaign advisor to some rich asshole for what he called “spin” in claiming that foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos was nothing more than “the coffee boy.”
The campaign advisor, Michael Caputo, insisted that Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents and then agreed to cooperate with the special prosecutor, had an extremely limited role.
“I mean, if he was going to wear a wire, all we’d know now is whether he prefers a caramel machiatto over regular, American coffee,” he continued.
“I don’t see any coffee being passed around while he was sitting with the President of the United States and Jeff Sessions,” Cuomo shot back, referring to a photo of Papadopoulos sitting at the table with the rich asshole and his advisors.
George Papadopoulos with the rich asshole advisors (Photo: Instagram)
“He had nothing to do with the campaign,” Caputo said, claiming that Papadopoulos was nothing more than a volunteer. Cuomo shot back that it seems everyone was a volunteer to the the rich asshole campaign, including chair Paul Manafort, who accepted the position without pay.
“I’m not saying he was the key to the campaign, but he was important enough that when he started emailing about this stuff he got the ear of Sam Clovis, he got Manafort, communicating about the suggestions and what to do about them,” Cuomo said. “That’s not when a coffee boy asks you to do something. I get the spin, but the reality is they certainly took it more seriously than you do.”
“The kid was 27 years old,” Caputo said, cutting two years off his actual age at the time. “You’re trying to ascribe to him the ability to discern what’s right and what’s wrong here and he’s barely old enough –”
Cuomo then cut in and the two began talking over each other. He noted that at no point did Manafort pick up the phone to the FBI and alert them to the idea that a staffer or Russian sources were trying to infiltrate the campaign.
Caputo claimed that it is unknown if Manafort did or did not. But Cuomo chimed in to say that there is zero indication from the documents that Manafort took that move.
“I would think that would be the first thing out of his mouth,” Cuomo noted.
Caputo then went on to throw Papadopoulos under the bus as “a bad kid” trying to “infiltrate” the the rich asshole campaign on behalf of the Russians. He went on to say that whatever punishment is handed down is fitting. Cuomo wondered, however, why the campaign didn’t blow the whistle on that “bad kid.”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Caputo said.
“I think you find your answer in Don Jr.,” Cuomo said of the president’s son. “Don Jr., what did he say when he was given the same solicitation? ‘Awesome! I want to meet with him!‘”
Caputo tried to claim that the rich asshole’s son approached it the same way Manafort did. Emails, however, prove otherwise.
Watch the full exchange below:
White House chief of staff John Kelly calls for special counsel to probe Democrats
John Kelly Department of Homeland Security (Photo: DOD/Wikipedia)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said on Monday a special counsel should be appointed to investigate Democrats over a uranium deal during the Obama administration and a dossier compiled on some rich asshole during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“I think probably as a layman looking at this kind of thing we need to find someone who is very, very objective who can get to the bottom of these accusations,” Kelly said in an interview on Fox News.
A special counsel would be appointed by the Justice Department.
Republicans in Congress last week launched an investigation into an Obama-era deal in which a Russian company bought a Canadian firm that owned some 20 percent of U.S. uranium supplies.
Some Republicans have said Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the deal after her husband’s charitable foundation received a $145 million donation. The New York Times has reported that Clinton, a Democrat who lost to Republican the rich asshole in the 2016 election, did not participate in the decision.
Republicans have also raised questions about whether Democrats funded a dossier put together during last year’s presidential campaign that detailed accusations about the rich asshole’s ties to Russia.
The Washington Post reported last week that Marc Elias, a lawyer for Clinton, used campaign funds to hire Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier.
Kelly’s call for a special counsel to investigate Democrats comes as a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between the the rich asshole campaign and Russians produced its first charges and a guilty plea.
A grand jury impaneled by Mueller indicted former the rich asshole campaign manager Paul Manafort and aide Rick Gates on Monday. A third former the rich asshole adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI, it was announced on Monday.
(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
the rich asshole breaks Twitter silence on Papadopoulos guilty plea: ‘Focus on our Massive Tax Cuts’
(Photo: stock_photo_world / Shutterstock.com)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
In a Tuesday morning Twitter meltdown, President some rich asshole tried to defend his former campaign chair Paul Manafort and pivot to his struggling legislative agenda.
“The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts [sic] lawyer said, there was ‘no collusion’ and events mentioned took place long before he came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!” he tweeted.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo quickly poked holes in the White House talking points that foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos was nothing more than “some kid” or “coffee boy” in the campaign.
the rich asshole then quickly moved on to begging his audience to focus on tax reform. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to FBI agents about his efforts to connect the the rich asshole campaign with Russia to obtain stolen emails that may have harmed Hillary Clinton.
See the tweets below:
‘There is no crime of collusion’: the rich asshole lawyer hysterically lies about US law to whitewash Papadopoulos plea
Jay Sekulow (ABC News/screen grab)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Jay Sekulow, an attorney for President some rich asshole, falsely claimed on Tuesday that “collusion” is not a crime.
During an interview on ABC News, Sekulow pointed out that former the rich asshole campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his meetings with a Russian professor, but he did not plead guilty to collusion with the Kremlin.
“He was a volunteer with the campaign, he served on one of the committees,” Sekulow told Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos. “He was involved with individuals that purported to be somehow involved with Russia or Russian government — it’s not clear from the [charging] documents. The end result is the meeting doesn’t take place.”
“So what you had is you had all this conversation about collusion,” he continued. “Remember this, collusion in and of itself — there’s no crime of collusion.”
“Collusion is cooperation and that’s what he was doing with Russians,” Stephanopoulos noted.
Although the word “collusion” does not appear in federal statues, legal experts argue that it is another word for “conspiracy,” which is illegal.
Politifact checked the claim that collusion is not a crime and rated it “mostly false.”
Harvard University law professor John Coates told Politifact that there were multiple laws barring collusion between campaigns and foreign governments.
“Under that statute, it is a federal crime to conspire with anyone, including a foreign government, to ‘deprive another of the intangible right of honest services,’” he explained. “That would include fixing a fraudulent election, in my view, within the plain meaning of the statute.”
University of California, Irvine law professor Rick Hasen said that the rich asshole campaign officials may have also violated anti-conspiracy laws.
“If others participated in the scheme to do this it could be a conspiracy,” Hasen remarked. “Whether you want to call that ‘collusion’ or not seems besides the point.”
Watch the video below from ABC.
Hillary Clinton laughs last in Paul Manafort indictment
Nicole Goodkind
Posted with permission from Newsweek
Two of President Trump's key campaign aides allegedly lied about secret emails and obscured evidence—which is ironic given that they helped craft a campaign that accused Hillary Clinton of doing the same.
On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump demanded that Clinton go to prison for using a private email server as Secretary of State. He encouraged his supporters to chant, “lock her up” at rallies. Paul Manafort, then Trump campaign chairman and chief strategist, defended the chants.
It was the emails that got him twitter.com/eorden/status/…
Soon after, Manafort found himself under investigation by the Department of Justice for working on behalf of Ukraine. But instead of practicing the transparency he had so publicly accused Hillary Clinton of lacking, Manafort told the Justice Department that he did not have access to any requested documentation as his consulting company, DMI, “does not retain communications beyond 30 days.”
He lied, federal authorities said.
A search of Manafort’s DMI email accounts revealed numerous documents related to his lobbying efforts on behalf of Ukraine, many older than 30 days.
Further emails obtained from a DMI subcontractor showed Manafort attempting to distance himself from his international lobbying efforts. “There’s a lot of email traffic that has you much more involved than this suggests,” the firm warned him. Manafort did not heed the warnings.
The evidence found in these searches helped Special Counsel Robert Mueller file his first indictments in his investigation into Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. Manafort and his longtime business partner, Rick Gates, were named in the indictment on Monday morning.
Gates worked on the Trump campaign as deputy chairman. When Manafort was kicked out of the campaign in late August, Gates went on to play a central role in Trump’s inaugural committee and later joined a lobbying group created to advance the president’s agenda.
I hope this is investigated as vigorously as email w Sec of State Clinton’s were. .... fb.me/8yjwjg6PJ
During the campaign, Manafort defended the use of "Lock her Up" chants. "It probably reflects the attitude of a lot of people in America," he told reporters, "Seventy percent of people in this country think she is guilty and that justice was not done."
Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State is largely thought to have cost her the presidential election. Multiple investigations into the emails have brought nothing criminal to light.
Lawyers often tell their clients that the “e” in email stands for evidence. This is advice that Manafort could have used before he was named in a multiple-count indictment of money laundering and other illegalities.
Meanwhile the Trump Administration is still holding strong to its campaign strategy of blaming Clinton. In light of today's indictments, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that, "there's clear evidence of the Clinton campaign colluding with Russian intelligence to spread disinformation and smear the president to influence the election."
This 2016 Hannity Tweet Is Now Like A Knife In The Back For the rich asshole
No one on earth has been a bigger cheerleader for some rich asshole than Fox News’ Sean Hannity. In the wake of Monday’s indictments of former the rich asshole campaign manager Paul Manafort, Manafort’s top aide Rick Gates and with a guilty plea of former economic advisor to the rich asshole, George Papadopoulos, it appears the house of cards is beginning to collapse.
Hannity, though, is ready with the pro-the rich asshole propaganda. Immediately after the news of the indictment hit, Hannity was ready with his defense of the rich asshole which means he’s blaming Hillary:
Not that there wasn’t Russian collusion with a 2016 presidential candidate. It’s just that her name was not the rich asshole. We now have real evidence that the FBI uncovered a Russian plot dating back to 2009 that involved bribery, extortion, blackmail, money laundering and racketeering. It all came a year before Hillary Clinton and the Obama Administration approved the corrupt Uranium One deal.…………………………………We have evidence of another Russia scandal, also involving a 2016 candidate not named the rich asshole. We now know that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid over $9 million to help fund the discredited, Russia-linked dossier crafted to ruin then-candidate some rich asshole. This was nothing short of a collaborative effort with the Russians to manipulate the outcome of the last presidential election.
Not surprisingly, the rich asshole’s statements are mirroring Hannity:
Only, Manafort was part of the the rich asshole campaign during many of these alleged crimes and Hannity knows it. In fact, in 2016, he tweeted it:
While a Sean Hannity tweet certainly won’t stand up in a court of law, Hannity has long been the media sycophant for the the rich asshole administration. If he says Manafort was instrumental in the rich asshole winning the White House, he was.
Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images.
White House downplays Manafort, takes aim at Clintons
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 10/30/17 07:02 PM EDT
The White House on Monday said it had no plans to dismiss special counsel Robert Mueller after he delivered the first indictments in his investigation of Russia’s meddling in last year’s election that has shadowed the first year of some rich asshole’s presidency.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the charges brought against former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort and two other ex-aides have “nothing to do with the president,” adding that most of the alleged crimes took place before the 2016 campaign.
“The real collusion scandal, as we've said several times before, has everything to do with the Clinton campaign,” Sanders said.
While it hit Clinton, the White House did not criticize Mueller, even as a few voices on the right wing, including the Wall Street Journal editorial board, have called for him to be fired or resign over the the rich asshole dossier.
Sanders sought to downplay the possibility that the rich asshole will take any drastic measures in order to end the special counsel investigation, though she also declined to rule them out.
“There is no intention or plan to make any changes in regards to the special counsel,” Sanders said when asked if the rich asshole is considering firing Mueller.
She stopped short of taking presidential pardons for Manafort and Richard Gates, a second the rich asshole official indicted on Monday, off the table, saying, “I think we should let the process play through before we start looking at those steps.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill voiced heightened concerns Monday that the rich asshole will ax Mueller, who was tapped to lead the Russia probe after the president fired James Comey as FBI director.
“The president must not under any circumstances in any way interfere with the special counsel's work. If he does, Congress must respond swiftly, unequivocally and in a bipartisan way to ensure that the investigation continues," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (S.C.), an influential House Republican, said Sunday that colleagues should curb their criticism of the special counsel.
“I would encourage my Republican friends, give the guy a chance to do his job,” he said Sunday on Fox News. “The result will be known by the facts, by what he uncovers.”
Gowdy also criticized leaks related to the indictments, an increasing concern for Republicans. News that an indictment was coming on Monday leaked out to CNN on Friday.
Some Republicans fear the charges could stymie this week’s planned rollout of their long-awaited tax plan and overshadow the rich asshole’s first presidential visit to Asia — not to mention the existential concerns hanging over the the rich asshole administration.
For now, White House allies are taking solace in the fact that the indictment of Manafort and Gates stemmed from their work on behalf of a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine — and not the the rich asshole campaign.
Sanders’s press briefing was dominated by questions about the Manafort and Gates indictments, as well as a guilty plea from 30-year-old former the rich asshole campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who admitted to making false statements to the FBI about his talks with Russians. It is possible that Papadopoulos could offer testimony to investigators that could be used against other campaign officials.
Sanders downplayed Papadopoulos’s role on the campaign, calling him a “volunteer” who served on an advisory committee that met just one time.
The aide said he was in touch with a Russian academic in April 2016 who promised “dirt” on Clinton based on the contents of her emails, months before the Russian hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails became public.
Sanders did not say when the rich asshole first became aware of the emails.
Papadopoulos also tried to arrange a meeting between campaign officials and Kremlin representatives.
A high-ranking campaign official encouraged Papadopoulos to meet with the academic in Russia to find out more “if feasible,” according to a court document unsealed Monday.
But Sanders appeared to contradict that claim, saying “any actions that he took would have been on his own.”
When pressed on the conversation detailed in the court document, Sanders replied that she was “not aware of that conversation, so I can't speak to that.”
the rich asshole and his advisers have repeatedly attempted to distance the president from Manafort, who led his campaign between May and August 2016.
Media outlets have reported on allegations of Manafort’s corrupt financial practices for well over a year, raising questions about the rich asshole’s decision to hire him.
In his only public response to the charges, the rich asshole tweeted earlier Monday they were the result of actions taken “years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the rich asshole campaign.”
But Monday’s indictments have undercut that claim. Court documents said Manafort was charged for actions that began around 2006 and continued through the 2016 campaign.
Sanders said the rich asshole’s “last known conversion” with Manafort happened in February.
She declined to say if the rich asshole regretted choosing him to lead his campaign.
No comments:
Post a Comment