Sean Hannity Threatens CNN, NBC In Silly Tweet
Fox News host and right-wing nutjob Sean Hannity took to Twitter (again) to threaten the mainstream media (again). Late Tuesday night, Hannity tweeted out his unhinged threats to take down CNN and NBC, you know, the fake news media. Because of course, he did.
“One week from tonight i will expose @CNN and @NBCNews news for #EpicFail. Happy New Year to all irredeemable deplorables. 2018, cling to God Faith Bibles religion,” Hannity tweeted.
No one knows exactly what the f*ck Hannity intends to reveal as the media outlets’ “#EpicFail,” but he certainly seems to think it’s gonna be “yuuuuge.”
RELATED: Hannity Tries To Troll Journalists–Makes A Fool Of Himself
Hannity has been on a crusade against the “anti-the rich asshole media” and “fake news media” for the better part of a year now. However, he has also found himself at the center of multiple controversies due to his conspiracy theories and fear mongering.
“The liberal media continues to ignore the facts in what has become a political witch hunt,” Hannity tweeted earlier this year.
The liberal media continues to ignore the facts in what has become a political witch hunt... That's tonight's opening monologue #Hannity
Last month, several advertisers decided to boycott Hannity’s show after he defended Alabama Senate candidate and alleged baby-raper Roy Moore. According to Hannity, there is no reason to believe his accusers, who he insists most likely made the whole thing up.
RELATED: WATCH: Sean Hannity Claims ‘No Class’ Obama Is Obsessed With the rich asshole
Hannity also pushed the bogus claim that Hillary Clinton was behind the death of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee worker who died tragically in 2016. Fox News was eventually forced to issue a retraction of Hannity’s accusations after Rich’s family voiced their outrage. But it should be noted that the network never did issue an apology for broadcasting this outrageous conspiracy theory.
Hannity has repeatedly attacked the “liberal media,” who he said are nothing more than “modern-day propagandists” in the “abusively-biased media.”
“They are collectively at war with the president because their little egos are bruised,” Hannity said on his show in February 2017.
Eric the rich asshole Just Tweeted Some Fake News–Was Immediately Mocked
Eric the rich asshole retweeted a picture by Fox News claiming some rich asshole has reduced the number of ISIS fighters to less than 1,000. The picture has been circulating on Twitter by a lot of Trumpbots and a few real people who still blindly support the rich asshole. There has been rejoicing and many retweets with the ever-popular #MAGA to prove how great some rich asshole is at presidenting.
Eric retweeted this gem:
How very … precise. The only source of this information was in a Fox News article that in no way substantiated the claim. According to the article:
U.S. military officials said this week that ISIS has lost 98 percent of the territory it once held — with half of the terror group’s ‘caliphate’ having been recaptured since the rich asshole took office. The latest American intelligence assessment says fewer than 1,000 ISIS fighters now remain in Iraq and Syria, down from a peak of nearly 45,000 just two years ago.
RELATED: Fox News Retracts Its Retraction After Accusing The NYT Of Helping ISIS Leader Escape
While they substantiate the amount of territory lost with evidence of actual information, there is absolutely no attempt to prove their claim about the number of remaining “ISIS fighters.” We don’t call them Faux News for nothing. While it is true that ISIS has lost a large amount of territory – that didn’t happen solely in the 11 months the rich asshole’s been in office. According to Politifact:
Between two-thirds and three-fourths of the firepower unleashed against ISIS hit before the rich asshole became president. The terrorist group’s hold on territory had started to crumble a year before he took command. While the rich asshole ordered some changes in the military operation, the experts we reached said those didn’t transform the strategy so much as continue the one he inherited from Obama.the rich asshole can take credit for keeping the fight going, but he has to share the glory for the results.
Luckily, those of us with any sort of basic intelligence knew this, but Eric is genetically-bound to praise his father. Twitter users who know what’s up, clued the lesser son in.
I wonder what this would look like if they plotted isis in 2015, 2016, and 2017? Is that info anywhere?
“Trumptainment” News?
Eric, not everyone on Twitter is as forgiving as your daddy’s faithful bots. Make sure you do your homework, or we will do it for you, publicly.
‘Here comes an orange meltdown’: Internet cheers as Obama beats the rich asshole for ‘Most Admired Man in America’ title
President Barack Obama (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb) and President-Elect some rich asshole (Michael Vadon/Flickr)
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Gallup on Wednesday released the results of its annual poll to determine the most admired man and woman in America — and former President Barack Obama won the title for the tenth straight year.
Even though Obama has been out of office for nearly a year now, he still bested current President some rich asshole by three percentage points in Gallup’s poll. Additionally, former the rich asshole rival Hillary Clinton was once again named the most admired woman in America for the sixteenth straight year.
Given the rich asshole’s obsession with being liked more than Obama, many Twitter users pounced on the new survey to imagine the rich asshole being comically enraged upon seeing it. Check out some of the top reactions below.
The Hill: "Poll: Obama is America's most admired man for the TENTH year in a row. Obama beat out TRUMP, the Pope, John McCain, Telsa CEO Elon Musk and others".
Like I said before, you will NEVER measure up to Real President Obama. You're not even worthy to clean his toilets. #SAD
Chew on that Trump & eat your black heart out Gallup: Obama, Hillary Clinton remain most admired a.msn.com/01/en-us/BBHpA…
@POTUS
Ha ha ha ha ......
"A new poll has found that Barack Obama is America's most admired man for the tenth year in a row — beating out President Trump, Pope Francis and others."
Obama is a WINNER!
Trump is a loser!
Just resign.
Poll: Obama is 'most admired man' for the 10th year in a row
This is the kind of thing that will push Donald Trump to start a war with Kenyathehill.com/blogs/blog-bri…@realDonaldTrump#BarackObama #obama #resist #resistance #theresistance#resisttrump #antitrump #ANTITRUMPMVMT
the rich asshole’s Sinking Ship: Two More Resignations in Just 24 Hours
12-27-17
Another week, another two key White House figures gone. Seriously, if he’s that hard of a man to work for, how is anyone left in that place?
The administration of popular vote loser some rich asshole has gone through more controversial hirings, firings and resignations in a mere 11 months than most administrations do in 8 years.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn just announced on Thursday that he is leaving the White House to go to work in the private sector. It’s not clear if Dearborn is resigning because of the rich asshole-Russia scandal, or because he knows the rich asshole’s ship is sinking and doesn’t want to go down with it.
White House National Economic Council Deputy Director Jeremy Katz then announced on Friday that he’s resigning as well. Katz has had zero ties to the election scandal thus far, so we can only assume that he’s jumping ship because he knows it’s going down as well.
Bill Palmer says, “Don’t be shocked if there end up being a whole lot more noteworthy resignations from some rich asshole’s White House over the holidays, while most of the public isn’t paying attention. We’ll see the rich asshole-Russia players bailing out because they’re about to cut a plea deal or because they think they’re about to be arrested. We’ll see non-scandalized advisers bailing because they think the rich asshole-Russia scandal is going to take the rich asshole down. And we’ll see still more people bail because they’re tired of working at a demented circus.”
On the one hand, I think these people are crazy for being anywhere near this presidential administration, but if they’re leaving en masse now, they must have some enough brains left to distance themselves from the rich asshole’s failing administration.
It looks like they are all getting out before Mueller torches everyone in the rich asshole’s White House. Smart moves.
Christian GOP lawmaker is asked how he can possibly support the rich asshole — and he says it’s Obama’s fault
Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC) (Photo: Screen capture)
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Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC) has served almost two decades as a Baptist minister, but he still supports President some rich asshole, but not because the billionaire is a Godly man.
“I was raised in that world and it always fascinates me that so many evangelicals went for a man who might answer the question ‘what would Jesus not do’,” CNN host Bill Weir said to Walker. “How do you reconcile your faith with this president, politically?”
“After eight years of the Obama administration,” Walker said. “Things like the former president saying ‘God bless Planned Parenthood.’ Those kinds of things riled up the evangelical base.”
The quote Walker recited from President Barack Obama was from a speech to Planned Parenthood where he closed, as presidents often do, by saying “God bless you. God bless the United States of America.”
Weir didn’t note that among people of faith, saying “God bless you,” is a frequently used prayer said as a nicety.
Ministers across the country have attacked the evangelical wing of Christianity for being un-Christ-like in their continued support of the rich asshole. In an interview Tuesday, Rev. Billy Graham’s granddaughter Jerushah Armfield called out their hypocrisy.
The term evangelical “started to really represent, actually, a branch of Christians that seemed to be a little more conservative and a little bit more hypocritical, a little bit more willing to compromise on the personal morals of a candidate in lieu of what politically they could gain for their party,” she told CNN.
Continued evangelical support for Roy Moore gave many Christians pause after the disgraced judge was accused by multiple women of molesting them as children. Christian leaders have also called on evangelicals to denounce the rich asshole in wake of his “both sides” comment after the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Walker turned his ire toward former White House aide Steve Bannon instead.
“I probably shouldn’t say this on CNN or even out loud but I will tell you this, the Steve Bannons of the world, that kind of language and rhetoric, that’s not who we are,” he said. “Republicans have to be willing to call out when there is certain language used with undertones to our friends and neighbors of all the communities we serve. We have to have the boldness to say ‘that’s not right.’”
GOP lawmaker claims Clinton hired British spy to trick FBI into investigating the rich asshole-Russia ties
Rep. Ron DeSantis (Fox News)
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A Republican congressman appeared on Fox News to amplify a conservative newspaper report casting doubt on a salacious dossier linking President some rich asshole to Russia.
The Washington Times reported Monday that FBI officials have said some elements remained unverified in the dossier produced by a former British spy working for an opposition research firm.
“(This), of course, is troubling to a lot of folks who feel that could have been the basis upon which the entire investigations were launched,” said “Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth.
That’s the same message the rich asshole pushed Tuesday on his Twitter account.
WOW, @foxandfrlends “Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.” And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!
Fusion GPS, working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, hired former MI6 agent Christoper Steele in June 2016 to investigate the rich asshole’s connections to Russia.
The FBI opened an investigation into those connections the following month, after intelligence services and news reports blamed Russian hackers for data stolen from the Democratic National Committee, and Steele shared his findings with the bureau as he continued working through the end of the year.
The dossier eventually leaked to news organizations before the 2016 election, and was reported by Mother Jones, but the salacious details were not revealed until weeks ahead of Inauguration Day after reporters were unable to substantiate the claims.
“I’m hearing the exact same things, and think about where this dossier came from,” said Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who has been a leading Republican critic of the special counsel probe into the rich asshole-Russia connections. “It’s not something that was created by an intelligence agency, it was funded by the Democrats and Hillary Clinton through Perkins-Cole law firm to Fusion GPS, and Fusion GPS created this.”
Intelligence agencies warned the Obama administration about potential ties between the rich asshole campaign and Russia, but Republican congressional leaders refused to endorse a unified resistance to foreign election meddling.
DeSantis also cast doubt on Steele and his sources, and suggested a congressional investigation was necessary to push back against the special counsel probe, which has so far resulted in two guilty pleas and two indictments.
“I think Christopher Steele — he had been a spy in Russia 25 years ago,” DeSantis said. “He didn’t have any sources — I think he was really just window dressing for this thing. They put a lot of BS in this thing, fake news, and they tried to dress it up as an intelligence product. And if the FBI used that, that was unverified — even Jim Comey admits that — to launch a counterintelligence investigation, I think that that’s very, very troubling. We are digging for the answers on this, and we are going to get the answers.”
Co-host Lisa Boothe asked whether the investigation could be considered credible if the dossier was used to justify a FISA warrant against any the rich asshole campaign officials — and DeSantis agreed it would.
“Well, I think it would undermine the legitimacy of the genesis of the investigation and all the way to the present,” DeSantis said. “The Russia collusion was always more of a narrative than anything based on any type of factual basis, but if this was the basis to get surveillance on an American citizen, remember, if you are doing a FISA surveillance on an American citizen, it’s not just that they may have foreign contacts. You have to actually say there is a basis they display committed a criminal offense. If a dossier, an opposition research political hit piece is what you are using, I think that’s going to call into question how they conducted themselves in this investigation. There is no doubt about it.”
Republicans fear Steve Bannon’s next far-right recruit could turn Mississippi Senate race into another Alabama
Mississippi state Senator Chris McDaniel and Steve Bannon (Photos: Facebook and Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia)
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Once thought to be a safe Republican seat, the Mississippi Senate race for 2018 is playing out the inter-party battle seen at the national level. State Sen. Chris McDaniel is the far-right, Roy Moore-type official, who is going up against incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS). Thanks to President some rich asshole’s war against the establishment wing of the GOP, Wicker is seen another Luther Strange complete with support from the White House, the Washington Post reported.
Unlike Moore, however, McDaniel hasn’t yet launched into a national, high-profile campaign. Instead, he’s looking to become the successor to Sen. Thad Cochran, who at 80 years old has been dealing with health problems. Cochran barely won his seat in 2014 in a matchup against McDaniel. However, according to those close to Gov. Phil Bryant (R-MS), McDaniel doesn’t have a chance.
“I know all the governor’s people. They know my people,” said McDaniel. “And there’s been a lot of speculation about who might receive the appointment. But there’s been no official conversation. No detailed conversations on it.”
“Mississippi is stronger because of Sen. Cochran’s service, and I look forward to it continuing,” Bryant said in a statement. “Speculation about anything else is insensitive, irresponsible and unfair.”
So, McDaniel announced that he’ll make a decision on whether he’ll run against Wicker in January.
“It certainly is on my mind. I think the race will be very compelling. Nevertheless, I still have to make a final decision,” said McDaniel. He also revealed he’s thinking about running for lieutenant governor in 2019.
While the rich asshole has thrown his support behind Wicker, the anti-establishment sentiment is high and his popularity is low. Still, the rich asshole has pledged that he will travel the country and campaign for every Republican whether they want him or not.
“He takes his role as the leader of the party very seriously,” White House political director Bill Stepien said in an interview. “He loved the campaign trail last year. He loves governing. I am sure he is going to love to get back to the campaign trail next year.”
In wake of the GOP loss in Alabama, the rich asshole claimed that the Republicans who lost major races in 2017 did so because they didn’t embrace him enough.
“Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” the rich asshole tweeted after the Virginia elections. “Don’t forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!”
Like in Alabama, Mitch McConnell’s National Republican Senatorial Committee could be pitted against Breitbart CEO and former White House strategist Steve Bannon.
“Is Bannon going to huff and puff and blow up another Senate race? Or is he going to leave it alone?” the Post quoted Chamber of Commerce political strategist Scott Reed.
Without McDaniel, there’s no viable alternative for the far-right, Bannon wing of the GOP to support. If McDaniel runs, a line of attack could be whether Wicker has the rich asshole’s back, though McDaniel supported Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the GOP primary.
“Steve’s a warrior,” McDaniel said, noting Bannon has given him “advice” on the decision for 2018. They haven’t been “orders,” however, he said.
He thinks the flub in Alabama is an “anomaly,” specifically citing the allegations of child molestation Moore faced. McDaniel doesn’t anticipate anything like it in a face off.
Kathy Griffin describes how some rich asshole destroyed her career to ‘distract’ from Comey firing
Kathy Griffin (Shutterstock)
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Comedian Kathy Griffin says President some rich asshole destroyed her career as a distraction from political blowback over his firing of FBI director James Comey.
The president attacked her on Twitter after she posed for a gory photo holding up a bloody mask of the rich asshole’s head, which turned out to be far more controversial than she anticipated, reported Politico.
“The photo was on TMZ, then Drudge tweeted it, and then Don Jr. retweeted Drudge,” Griffin told the website. “But the president’s Twitter feed is the greatest programming director ever. The minute he tweeted that tweet about me, it was literally breaking news on every channel.”
Griffin said she experienced firsthand how the rich asshole’s tweets create a feedback loop in conservative media.
“His Twitter account is talking directly to Fox News,” she said.
The Emmy Award-winning comedian apologized for the photo, but she was quickly fired from hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve show and dropped as a celebrity endorser for Squatty Potty.
Griffin was about halfway through a 50-city comedy tour at the time, and the rest of the gigs were canceled — and she’s still unable to book shows in the U.S.
“I think (the controversy) would have been gone in a week without his tweet,” Griffin said. “the rich asshole knows what would be perceived as something hysterical and he loves hysteria. There are millions of people who think I’m a member of ISIS to this day.”
Griffin said the timing of the rich asshole’s tweet suggests the president stoked outrage against her after the FBI director’s firing blew up in his face.
“It was very soon after the Comey firing,” Griffin said. “He absolutely used me as a tool to distract from his bad news of the day.”
December 27, 2017
Matthew Cooper
Posted with permission from Newsweek
Five months—five agonizing months. That’s how long it had been since Joe Biden’s eldest son, Beau, died of an aggressive brain tumor. For three years, Joe had cared for Beau, an Iraq War veteran You could see Joe Biden’s hurt; his normally ebullient smile was gone, replaced by a fatigued grimace. Facing a small crowd and live cameras, Biden announced what many had long expected: He would not be running for president in 2016. The longtime senator was not emotionally ready. The “grieving process,” Biden said, “doesn’t respect or much care about things like filing deadlines or debates and primaries and caucuses.”
What few in Washington knew then was that Biden had come very close to running. As the former vice president writes in his new book, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, Steve Ricchetti, his White House chief of staff, and Mike Donilon, a campaign strategist, among others, had secretly been planning his presidential campaign. They knew how they were going to raise money, get him on the ballot and make a strong bid for the nomination. Politicians such as Bill Bradley had offered support, as had celebrities such as George Clooney. Donilon, with help from others, had even penned a 2,500-word speech announcing Biden’s candidacy. “We’re one America,” it read. “And everyone—I mean everyone—is in on the deal.”
The plan was in place, but the night before Biden’s Rose Garden speech, Donilon suddenly reversed course. “You shouldn’t do this,” he told Biden, who had to admit he was right. For months, he had been wrestling with Beau’s death, sometimes welling up in public, most notably in an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in September, and he’d come to believe he wasn’t capable of giving all his energy to a presidential bid.
This was the second family tragedy for Biden during his long tenure in D.C. In December 1972, just after he had been elected to the Senate at age 29, Biden’s wife, Neilia, and their 4-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed when a tractor-trailer hit their car. Biden’s sons, Beau and Hunter, then just 2 and 4, survived but were hospitalized for months.
Biden spoke poignantly about those losses during his recent cross-country book tour. And inevitably, he’d be asked about the 2020 election. That’s what happened on a crisp night in
This wiggle room encourages all those who believe Biden could thump Donald Trump. And he certainly has the résumé: After 36 years in the Senate and two terms in the White House alongside Obama, he knows how to get things done in D.C.—from pushing the Clinton administration to get more involved in the Balkans wars in the ’90s to spearheading the massive stimulus program under Obama after the 2008 financial crisis. Yet Biden’s greatest strength—his experience in the Capitol—could be his greatest weakness for Democrats. With anti-establishment fever still burning all over the country, progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts seem to be the ones energizing the party.
Biden supporters counter that the ex-veep—with his affability and charm—may be the best person to unite the country after the divisive Trump years. He may also be the only person who can bring white working-class voters in key states like Michigan and Ohio back to the Democratic Party.
No one is certain how that voting bloc would have gone if Biden had run against Trump, but Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska is confident he knows who would be sitting in the Oval Office this morning. “[Biden] would have won in a landslide,” he told The New York Times.
The former veep might have beaten Trump in 2016, and he might beat him in 2020—if he gets that far. Biden is well liked by most liberals—he championed the nation’s first black president and came out for gay marriage ahead of Obama and both Clintons. But compared with Warren and others, he may seem too moderate, too establishment, too white and maybe too old (he’s now 75) to mount a bid in 2020. And if he runs, his progressive rivals will pore over a half-century-long paper trail and inevitably find plenty with which to bludgeon him during the primaries.
America may want him to run, but do the Democrats?
Blue-Collar Uncle Joe
It was totally unscripted—as most of Biden’s best moments are—and a poignant reminder that politicians are, occasionally, human beings. In mid-December, he appeared on The View, which is co-hosted by Meghan McCain. Five months earlier, her father, Arizona Senator John McCain, had been diagnosed with cancer—the same aggressive type that killed Beau Biden, whom many thought would become Delaware’s next governor.During the 28
This extraordinary display of friendship, compassion
At times, Biden’s exuberance and spontaneity seem unpresidential. And he’s always been prone to slipups. In 2010, as he introduced Obama before the president signed the Affordable Care Act, Biden proudly told him, within earshot of the microphone, that the bill was a “big fucking deal.” It might have hurt another politician, made him or her seem impetuous, even adolescent. But for some, that’s just “Uncle Joe,” a nickname playing on the fact that he is nearly two decades older than the man he served under as vice president.
Supporters say Biden’s unvarnished persona is a large part of his appeal, which is perhaps why memes about his bromance with Obama—the president is always the straight man—have gone viral. In one, Uncle Joe plants tiny, travel-size soaps in the White House bathrooms before vacating the premises, because he hears the “new guy has tiny hands.” It’s also why there’s even been
Today, Biden is remarkably popular. An August poll showed him with a 74 approval rating among the Democrats being touted for a 2020 run against Trump. Warren was second with 51 percent. And a recent head-to-head Morning Consult survey gave him a 46-35 edge over Trump.
If Biden were to challenge Trump, he’d boast impressive credentials. Of the 1,971 people who have served in the U.S. Senate, only 18 have served longer than him. As the longtime chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden was on a first-name basis with most of the world leaders before he became Obama’s
It’s also telling that Biden was just about the only white Democrat invited to Alabama to campaign for Doug Jones in his bid to defeat Republican Roy Moore for an open Senate seat. That suggests Biden might have some success with the white working-class voters who shunned Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden’s proud of being from a working-class family from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and his speeches have always reflected his roots.
The best example of Biden’s working-class appeal came on the same night Clinton made her biggest gaffe of the campaign. In the fall of 2016, at a fundraiser organized by Harvey Weinstein, no less, the former secretary of state called Trump supporters “a basket of
Clinton went on to lose the white working-class vote by 37 percent, compared with a 26 percent loss by Obama years earlier. No Democrat is going to win a national election without pulling in more of those voters. And no prominent Democrat has a collar as blue as Biden’s.
#HimToo
For all of Biden’s working-class appeal, he still faces considerable obstacles—even within his own party. Back in 1991, he was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. President George H.W. Bush had nominated Thomas to the Supreme Court, but as the hearings drew to a close, word leaked that a young law professor named Anita Hill had accused the nominee of sexual harassment.Hill had made those accusations to committee staff on the condition of anonymity, but once her name got out, several Democratic congresswomen marched over to the Senate to confront the party’s leaders—including Biden, who presided over the hearings—about her allegations. In a moment that seems to have foreshadowed the post-Weinstein, #MeToo era, they demanded that Hill
More than a quarter-century later, those congresswomen are still angry about what happened. “We went to see Biden because we were so frustrated by it,” former Representative Pat Schroeder of Colorado told The Washington Post this fall. “And he literally kind of pointed his finger and said, You don’t understand how important one’s word was in the Senate, that he had given his word to [Danforth] in the men’s gym that this would be a very quick hearing.”
Days later, the hearings were extended, and Hill and Thomas exchanged accusations. She said he touted VHS porn tapes like Long Dong Silver, and he called the hearing a “high-tech lynching.” The country was riveted, and liberals were outraged that Biden never called other Thomas accusers to testify and back up Hill’s charges. He noted that the most important one, a former colleague of Thomas’s, didn’t want to appear in public. But as Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School professor who advised Hill during her Senate testimony, told Politico, “I was shocked and dismayed that Joe Biden was...not in her corner as a Democrat.”
During Biden’s long career, his judgment has been far from perfect. He seemed to oppose the raid to capture and kill Osama bin Laden and backed the disastrous second Iraq War. He also voted for a George W.
But for many on the left, the Hill hearings remain his most controversial moment. Liberal publications like The Huffington Post have skewered Biden for not coming to her rescue. “Joe Biden 2020 Is a Terrible Idea in a Post-Weinstein America,” blared one headline on that site. Essence proclaimed, “Joe Biden Is Still Trying to Right His Wrongs With Anita Hill.”
At an event in November sponsored by Glamour, Biden was reminded yet again that Hill believes she didn’t get a fair hearing. The former veep replied, “The message I’ve delivered before is, I am so sorry if she believes that.” That non-apology apology prompted Hill to jab back: “I still don’t think [he] takes ownership of his role...women were looking to...his leadership.”
In recent years, Biden has shown that kind of leadership. He authored the Violence Against Women Act, which created a federal rape shield law and funded victims’ services, among many other provisions. He even teamed up with Lady Gaga to fight campus assaults through public service announcements. Yet he seems to know the Hill incident remains a burden.
Which is maybe why just a couple of weeks after his tepid
Incarceration Nation
Biden’s problems with his base go beyond Anita Hill. Despite a long liberal voting record and ardent support from African-Americans, he has had to defend his role in writing and championing the 1994 crime bill. The Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act was once hailed for dramatically reducing crime, but Democrats and progressives now blame it for the criminally high rates of incarceration among African-American men.The press has frequently asked Biden about his role in crafting that bill. In 2016, for instance, on the Amtrak ride Biden regularly took home from Washington, D.C., to Wilmington, Delaware, a reporter asked him if he was “ashamed” of the legislation. “Not at all,” he said. “In fact, I drafted the bill.”
That position isn’t popular among his peers. In 2015, as Hillary Clinton was mounting her presidential campaign, she tried to give herself some distance from the crime bill by saying she wasn’t in the Senate then and didn’t vote for it. That was a classic bit of political
In his book, Biden writes that some parts of that crime bill always troubled him, including its three-strikes-and-you’re-out provision that sent some federal lawbreakers to prison for life. He also said he wished Congress had eased mandatory minimum sentences. But Biden still points to parts of the bill he says were positive. He and other supporters of the act note that the surge in America’s prison population began before Congress passed it, so the legislation is not entirely responsible for that increase.
They also note that the crime bill had lots of things that are still popular with Democrats, such as the assault weapons ban, a community policing grant and the Violence Against Women Act. And they point out that members of the Congressional Black Caucus backed the bill by more than 2-to-1.
As with his role in the Hill affair, Biden—if he runs—would probably have to issue a stronger denunciation of the bill to win the support of many liberals. Or not. Some savvy politicos, such as Joel Benenson, who was a pollster for both Obama and Hillary Clinton, doubts that “elections in the 21st century will be dominated by issues from the 1990s.” He says Trump’s legacy of divisiveness and economic inequality are more likely to dominate the national conversation in 2020.
That might be true in the general election, but activist groups play an outsized role in the Democratic primaries, and they are unlikely to forget about criminal justice issues. Patrisse Cullors, a political organizer and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, told The New York Times that Biden or any candidate is “going to have to deal with a large amount of criticism from those who were affected by this policy.”
In other words, “Sorry, Joe…”
‘The Rest of Your Life’
Biden knows that the 2020 presidential campaign will be nasty, brutish and long, and it doesn’t sound like a humble-brag when he says he hopes he’s not the best Democrat for the job. “The way to get incredibly popular,” he joked during his event at Washington’s Warner Theatre, “is not to run.”Biden would be the oldest candidate to run for president; he would turn 78 a few days after the election. (Trump is now 71.) It would also be his third presidential bid. His 2008 campaign against Obama and Clinton fizzled in Iowa; his once-promising 1988 effort ended quickly when he was caught plagiarizing a speech by then-British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.
This time, he’s got a much bigger fan base, but one that can be fickle. After Biden’s speech at the Warner, I found plenty of enthusiastic
Many in the crowd worried that Biden isn’t emotionally ready for the race. Obama had the same fears back in January 2015. During a private lunch in the small dining room off the Oval Office, the president not too subtly hinted that he wanted Biden to stay out of the contest. Obama had a “soft touch,” Biden recalls in his
Biden’s answer then was to step away, to heal himself and his family. But that was before Trump won. He’s now had a couple of years to think about Obama’s question and watch the country argue about walls and bans and “Dreamers.” He is the anti-Trump in so many ways, both personal and political, in background and outlook. Blue-Collar Uncle Joe vs. the Bullying Billionaire. He may be the antidote the Democrats so desperately need—if only they could swallow it.
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Some local officials have found a silver lining in a Republican tax law that lavishes benefits on the wealthy while raising local and state taxes in some Democratic-leaning states.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that residents are lining up in places like Cherry Hill, New Jersey to pre-pay 2018 taxes before the Republican tax law caps local deductions at $10,000.
Hundreds more stood in line Fairfax County, Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland, according to the paper.
Officials in Montgomery County even passed special legislation allowing residents to pay their taxes early.
Montgomery County Council President Hans Riemer told the Journal that the law “is a middle-class tax hike for us, and we’re trying to postpone at least some of that for at least one more year.”
But in the Boston suburb of Milton, officials are looking at the tax hike as a new source or revenue.
“Thank you, some rich asshole, for solving my cash-flow issues,” town treasurer James McAuliffe said. “It’s become a very expensive town.”
McAuliffe predicted that about half the residents in Milton would have their taxes raised when the $10,000 cap goes into effect next year.
December 27, 2017
Sam Schwarz
Posted with permission from Newsweek
Never one to rest when there are media rivals to attack, Fox News host Sean Hannity took to Twitter late Tuesday night to fire off a cryptic warning to two of his most despised news networks.
"One week from tonight i will expose @CNN and @NBCNews news for #EpicFail. Happy New Year to all irredeemable deplorables . 2018, cling to God Faith Bibles religion," Hannity tweeted during a week off from his show.
Hannity spent the year targeting what he called the "anti-Trump media" and "fake news media," and often devoted major segments of his nightly program to exposing perceived bias.
But Hannity has himself been the subject of much scrutiny and criticism in 2017 for the reporting and conspiracy-mongering on his program. In November, about a dozen sponsors boycotted Hannity's program after his sympathetic coverage of Republican Alabama Senate candidate and alleged sexual harasser Roy Moore. Hannity devoted a segment to the entertaining the possibility that Moore's women accusers made up their allegations, and also said one encounter between Moore and an accuser may have been "consensual," a remark for which Hannity later apologized.
Earlier in the year, Hannity's program drew ridicule for pushing the unfounded conspiracy theory that Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee worker who was slain in July 2016, was murdered to cover up his role in leaking party emails. Fox News eventually issued a retraction, but not an apology, for some of its Rich coverage. Hannity's network often faces its own accusations of right-wing bias and unfair reporting.
Hannity has been one of the strongest critics of the so-called "mainstream media" for years, dating to when he joined Fox News in 1996. In April 2011, during President Barack Obama's first term, Hannity hosted a special report on alleged liberal media bias. The promo for the report began with the phrases "Double Standards ... Groundless Attacks ... Blatant Left Wing Bias" flashing across the screen. The special was broken down into sections, including "the history of liberal media," the "invisible narrative," and a section dedicated to The New York Times.
The liberal media continues to ignore the facts in what has become a political witch hunt... That's tonight's opening monologue #Hannity
"They are collectively at war with the president because their little egos are bruised," Hannity said in the show.
Hannity is far from the only conservative who attacks the media on a near-daily basis, as his fellow Fox hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham often join right along. But as the most recognizable figure, and with Trump as a professed fan, Hannity often takes the lead.
Billy Graham’s granddaughter smacks down modern evangelicals for ‘hypocritical’ the rich asshole support
Rev. Billy Graham's granddaughter, Jerushah Armfield, speaking to CNN. Image via screengrab.
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Rev. Billy Graham’s granddaughter on Tuesday slammed evangelicals for their hypocrisy when it comes to the “personal morals” of candidates like Alabama’s Roy Moore — and President some rich asshole.
The term evangelical “started to really represent, actually, a branch of Christians that seemed to be a little more conservative and a little bit more hypocritical, a little bit more willing to compromise on the personal morals of a candidate in lieu of what politically they could gain for their party,” Jerushah Armfield, Graham’s granddaughter, told CNN’s Pamela Brown.
When Brown asked Armfield about her uncle Franklin Graham’s recent tweet heaping praise on the rich asshole, the evangelist’s granddaughter and wife of a pastor in South Carolina said she thinks he was referencing the president “wanting to bring back Merry Christmas.” She also suggested that the “War on Christmas” that the rich asshole (according to right-wing news outlets) has “won,” is a non-issue.
“I haven’t seen ‘Merry Christmas’ really be attacked,” Armfield said. “I‘ve been told ‘Merry Christmas’ by all sorts of walks of lives and all sorts of cultures just this year.”
“I think my uncle is an incredible — he has an incredible humanitarian ministry that’s been on the front lines off often before a lot of ministries have been there,” she continued. “I think he probably needs to stick to doing that. I think he believes he’s speaking to a larger audience than he is. I think the audience he was once speaking to is starting to migrate to a little more progressive open mindedness .”
the rich asshole “has not shown” himself to be a Christian, Armfield said, and has exhibited qualities that are the opposite of Christlike.
“My Jesus that I follow was really somebody who fought for the outliers,” she concluded, “and I think that the rich asshole has actually done the opposite in kind of ostracizing them.”
Watch Billy Graham’s granddaughter call out her uncle and fellow Christian supporters of the rich asshole below, via CNN.
2017: Here are ten great things about this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year
Anti-the rich asshole Women's marchers and President some rich asshole (composite image)
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Every year I do a list of ten good things about the year. This year, I was about to skip it. Let’s face it: It has been a particularly horrible year for anyone with a progressive agenda. When I recently asked a prominent activist how she was doing, she took my hands, looked me in the eyes and said, “Everything I’ve been working on for 50 years has gone down the toilet.”
With so many good people feeling depressed, let’s point to the positive things that happened, even in this really, really bad year.
1. #MeToo movement has empowered victims of sexual harassment and assault, and encouraged accountability. Those two small words defined a social media-based movement in which women, and some men, have come forward to publicly share their stories of sexual assault and harassment, and expose their abusers. The movement—and fallout—spread globally, with the hashtag trending in at least 85 countries. The bravery and solidarity of these victims of sexual abuse will help build a future in which impunity for sexual predators is no longer the norm.
2. The year has seen an explosion of grassroots organizing, protest, and activism. An active and uncompromising spirit of revolt has blossomed in the face of a frightening political climate during some rich asshole’s presidency. On January 21, two million people took to the streets in Women’s Marches across the world as a show of solidarity against the rich asshole’s vile and misogynistic rhetoric. On January 29, thousands gathered in airports around the country to protest the rich asshole’s xenophobic and unconstitutional Muslim ban. In April, 200,000 people joined the People’s Climate March to stand up to the administration’s reckless stance on climate. In July, disability rights activists staged countless actions on Capitol Hill in response to the GOP’s cruel and life-threatening health care bill. In November and December, “Dreamers” protected by Obama’s provision called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) stormed the Hill to demand a replacement for that program, which the rich asshole ended in September. New groups like Indivisible have helped millions of Americans confront their members of Congress, roughly 24,000 people joined the Democratic Socialists of America, and organizations like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have seen massive surges in donations.
3. We’re already seeing rebukes of the rich asshole at the ballot box. A wave of Democratic electoral victories swept some unlikely regions of the country, showing popular rejection of some rich asshole and his party. Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie, who ran a shameless race-baiting campaign, lost by a wide margin to Democrat Ralph Northam in Virginia. In New Jersey, Phil Murphy handily defeated Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno, making that state the seventh in the nation with Democratic control over legislative and executive branches. In Alabama’s special election to fill Jeff Sessions’ vacant Senate seat, Democrat Doug Jones took the lead over alleged sexual predator Roy Moore—an astonishing win in a deep red state, propelled largely by black voters. Danica Roem in Virginia, who ran against a virulently anti-LGBTQ opponent, became the first openly transgender person elected as a US legislator. Her win ended 26 years of Republican rule in that district. And in Virginia’s 50th district, self-described democratic socialist Lee Carter defeated powerful Republican delegate Jackson Miller.
4. The first group of J20 protesters, people arrested in Washington DC on the day of the rich asshole’s inauguration, were found not guilty. It was a scary year for the 194 protesters, journalists and medics facing multiple felony charges, including rioting and property destruction, that could have resulted in prison terms of up to 60 years. The state’s attempt to collectively punish almost 200 people for property destruction committed by a handful is an outrageous example of judicial overreach in an era in which First Amendment rights are under siege. On December 21, however, the jury returned 42 separate not-guilty verdicts for the first six defendants to stand trial. Their acquittal on all charges hopefully portends more non-guilty verdicts for the remaining 188 defendants and gives a boost to our basic rights of free speech and assembly.
5. Chelsea Manning was released from prison after 7 years. Army Pvt. Manning was first detained in 2010 and ultimately convicted of violating the Espionage Act after she leaked troves of documents exposing abuses by the US military, including a video of American helicopters firing on unarmed civilians in Baghdad, Iraq. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison. She developed post-traumatic stress disorder in prison and was repeatedly denied medical treatment for her gender dysphoria. The Army finally granted her the treatment after she went on a hunger strike. On January 17, 2017, President Obama commuted Manning’s sentence, and she was released in May. We owe Chelsea Manning a debt of gratitude for her tenacious commitment to exposing the crimes of U.S. empire.
6. Cities and states have committed to positive climate initiatives, despite federal regression. Twenty states and 110 cities signed “America’s Pledge,” a commitment to stick to Obama-era climate goals even after the rich asshole’s disastrous decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords. In December, a group of 36 cities signed the “Chicago Charter,” an agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions and monitor each others progress. These pacts demonstrate popular sentiment and political will, at the local, city and state level, to fight the corporate oligarchs who perpetuate climate chaos.
7. the rich asshole’s presidency has deepened the critical national conversation about racism and white supremacy. The Black Lives Matter movement, which started under Obama’s administration, exposed this nation’s systemic racism. The victory of some rich asshole emboldened white supremacists, as evidenced in the violent Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally in August. But the year has also seen a wave of opposition to racism, Islamophobia and anti-semitism that includes the toppling of confederate flags and statues, confronting hate speech, demanding the removal of white supremacists Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller from the White House (two of the three are gone), and building strong interfaith alliances locally and nationally.
8. This was the year the world said no to nuclear weapons. While some rich asshole taunted North Korea’s Kim Jung Un (“Little Rocket Man”) and threatened to tear up the Iran nuclear deal, on July 7, 122 of the world’s nations showed their rejection of nuclear weapons by adopting an historic Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty. The treaty, opposed by all nine nuclear states, is now open for signatures and the ban will come into effect 90 days after being ratified by 50 states. The organization that promoted this ban is The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an alliance of 450 nongovernmental organizations in about 100 countries. It was thrilling to learn that ICAN was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. The treaty and the Peace Prize are indications that despite the intransigence of the nuclear-armed states, the global community is determined to ban nuclear weapons.
9. ISIS no longer has a caliphate. For peace activists, it’s hard to put forth military actions as victories, especially when these actions incur a large civilian toll. This is indeed the case with ISIS, where at least 9,000 civilians were killed in the battle to retake the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. But we do have to acknowledge that taking away ISIS’ territorial base has put a stop to some of the group’s horrific human rights abuses. It will also hopefully make it easier to find a settlement to the dreadful wars that have been raging in Syria and Iraq, and give our government one less excuse for dumping so much of our resources into the military..
10. The global community stood up to the rich asshole’s stance on Jerusalem. In a stinging rebuke of President some rich asshole’s controversial decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, 128 countries, including some of the US’s most trusted and reliable allies, voted in favor of a United Nations resolution calling for a reversal of his position. Despite the threat from US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley that the US would be “taking names” of those who voted against it, only nine countries voted with the US and 25 abstained. The resolution isn’t binding, but it’s a stark illustration of just how isolated the United States is in its stance toward Israel.
As we head into the new year, let’s keep ourselves inspired by the hard work of folks at home and abroad who gave us something to cheer about for 2017. May we have a much longer list in 2018.
the rich asshole Vowed to Get Back to Work After Christmas. He Then Went Golfing.
President some rich asshole speaks on the phone at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida on December 24, 2017.
NICHOLAS KAMM/Getty Images
President some rich asshole vowed that he would be getting back to the business of running the country the day after Christmas. But at least part of his day was actually spent golfing. In an unusual turn of events, news cameras actually managed to catch the commander in chief golfing at the rich asshole International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
“I hope everyone is having a great Christmas, then tomorrow it’s back to work in order to Make America Great Again (which is happening faster than anyone anticipated)!” the rich asshole tweeted on Christmas Day.
Yet bright and early the next morning, the rich asshole had other things on his mind and his motorcade went to pick him up at Mar-a-Lago just before 9 a.m. to go to the rich asshole International Golf Club that is nearby. The White House didn’t hide his time at the golf course, saying he hit the links with Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, Bryson DeChambau, a PGA tour player and former PGA player Dana Quigley.
Tuesday marked the rich asshole’s 85th visit to one of his golf properties, according to a tally by NBC News. Of the 340 days he has been in office, the rich asshole has spent 111 days at one of his properties.
the rich asshole Continues Attack on FBI, Calls Dossier a “Crooked Hillary Pile of Garbage”
President some rich asshole walks to greet supporters during his arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in Palm Beach, Florida on December 22, 2017.
NICHOLAS KAMM/Getty Images
President some rich asshole has been quite consistent during his Christmas holiday, spending pretty much every day of his Mar-a-Lago vacation slamming the FBI. It seemed maybe the president was still recovering from Christmas on Tuesday though because he confused the Twitter account of his favorite show on television, Fox & Friends.
The commander in chief devoted his Tuesday morning screed to the now-infamous dossier that details the rich asshole’s alleged connections to Russia, calling it a “pile of garbage” created by “Crooked Hillary” and paid for by the Democratic National Committee.
“WOW, @foxandfrlends ‘Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/RICH ASSHOLE COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.’ And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the the rich asshole Campaign!,” the rich asshole wrote on Twitter.
In his tweet, the rich asshole tweeted to an account that has fewer than 1,000 followers and appears to promote the Fox News morning show along with other right-leaning accounts. It’s an odd mistake considering that the president regularly tweets at Fox & Friends.
Unsurprisingly, the president commented on the issue after his favorite show gave it lots of coverage Tuesday morning, focusing on the unverified aspects of the dossier. A day earlier, the Washington Times published a piece noting that the FBI refused to repudiate the dossier even as it acknowledged that the “major core charges of election collusion remain unsubstantiated.”
What isn’t new is the rich asshole’s offensive against the FBI, which he spent all holiday weekend characterizing as a corrupt institution that was doing the bidding of his rival in the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton. the rich asshole’s former campaign manager Michael Caputo said the rich asshole’s anti-FBI tweets should be seen as an “insurance policy for the American people to make sure that its leading law enforcement organization remains unbiased.”
Others, however, have said the tweets could violate witness-protection laws. “Normally, someone being investigated for obstruction of justice who intimidates and threatens three key witnesses against him (here Comey, McCabe and Baker) risks additional witness tampering charges,” Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was an ethics official in Barack Obama’s administration, wrote on Twitter. Richard Painter, who served as an ethics official in George W. Bush’s administration, agreed writing that the rich asshole’s use of Twitter “to intimidate a witness” makes “Mr. Mueller’s job easier.”
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 12/26/17 10:04 PM EST
Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein tore into President the rich asshole on Tuesday over the latter's attacks on the FBI, saying it's the rich asshole's presidency whose integrity has been compromised, not the law enforcement agency's.
In an interview with CNN's Jim Sciutto, the legendary Watergate reporter accused the rich asshole of acting contemptuously toward the FBI and other "instruments" of American democracy.
“The key word … that he keeps using is ‘tainted.’ There’s really only one institution that has really been tainted through these months and that is the rich asshole presidency," Bernstein said. "It’s tainted by the president’s lies, by his disrespect for American institutions operating under the law with traditional American democracy and the instruments thereof."
“He’s contemptuous of those instruments,” Bernstein added.
Bernstein accused the president of doing a "grave disservice" to the country by undermining institutions such as the FBI. the rich asshole, Bernstein said, should welcome moves from Mueller's team if he really believes he will be exonerated in the end.
"If the president is as confident as he says, if this investigation is going to end very soon with him being exonerated, he ought to welcome all of this instead of attacking constantly," Bernstein said. "He’s doing a grave disservice to our democracy."
the rich asshole tweeted on Tuesday morning that the FBI was "tainted." His comment came after he sharply criticized Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe on Saturday over reports that McCabe will possibly retire in March.
"How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation ?" the president tweeted.
"FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!" the rich asshole added another tweet.
McCabe has been the target of Republican criticism over a campaign donation his wife received from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a top ally of Hillary Clinton, just a year before the investigation he managed into her private email server cleared Clinton of wrongdoing.
USA Today editorial smacks down GOP’s ‘odious campaign to tarnish Mueller and his investigators’
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller said cyber security will be the number one future threat in the country, but for the time being, "counterterrorism and stopping terrorist attacks" is more important. (Photo: Kit Fox/Medill Flickr)
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The USA Today newspaper published a powerful new editorial against the “smearing” of special counsel Robert Mueller.
“When Robert Mueller was appointed in May to oversee the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, he was universally praised as the perfect choice,” USA Today reminded. “Amid the contemptible efforts to discredit Mueller’s investigation, let’s pause for a moment to remember who he is: A Republican. A Marine Corps veteran who earned a Bronze Star for valor and Purple Heart for a gunshot wound to his thigh during combat in Vietnam. A longtime federal prosecutor before President George W. Bush nominated him to direct the FBI in 2001 and the Senate unanimously confirmed him.”
“Yet as the Russia investigation gathered steam with charges brought against four former the rich asshole campaign officials in recent months, a coterie of Republican congressmen, joined by commentators on Fox News and other the rich asshole-friendly media outlets, have started calling for Mueller’s head,” USA Today explained. “Rarely has the American public been suddenly asked to revile a public figure once so widely revered.”
The newspaper says Congress needs to pass legislation to protect the investigation.
“The factions calling the special counsel’s fairness into question are laying the groundwork for either undermining Mueller’s conclusions or firing him. To pre-empt his possible removal, Congress should promptly pass bipartisan legislation to provide greater protections for the special counsel,” the editorial urged.
“Where logic falls away amid the odious campaign to tarnish Mueller and his investigators — bolstered Tuesday by the rich asshole’s latest ‘FBI TAINTED’ tweet — is with the prospect that the president might well be innocent of wrongdoing.
“Imagine if that’s true. If the Russia story is truly ‘fake news’ and a ‘witch hunt,’ as the president and his minions insist, why would they sling mud at the very people and institutions that would place their valuable imprimatur on such a conclusion?” the newspaper asked.
“Why, you have to wonder, are they so worried about what Mueller’s investigation might reveal?” USA Today pondered.
The Editorial Board, USA TODAY Published 5:32 p.m. ET Dec. 26, 2017 | Updated 6:48 p.m. ET Dec. 26, 2017
If the rich asshole is innocent, why the effort to discredit the special counsel's findings?
When Robert Mueller was appointed in May to oversee the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, he was universally praised as the perfect choice. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a vocal supporter of President the rich asshole, tweeted that Mueller's "reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity."
And so it is. Amid the contemptible efforts to discredit Mueller's investigation, let's pause for a moment to remember who he is: A Republican. A Marine Corps veteran who earned a Bronze Star for valor and Purple Heart for a gunshot wound to his thigh during combat in Vietnam. A longtime federal prosecutor before President George W. Bush nominated him to direct the FBI in 2001 and the Senate unanimously confirmed him.
Mueller took office a week before Sept. 11 and led the bureau during the height of the war on terrorism, his agents tirelessly circumventing additional attacks. Mueller was so highly respected that he was asked to stay on under President Obama.
Yet as the Russia investigation gathered steam with charges brought against four former the rich asshole campaign officials in recent months, a coterie of Republican congressmen, joined by commentators on Fox News and other the rich asshole-friendly media outlets, have started calling for Mueller's head. Rarely has the American public been suddenly asked to revile a public figure once so widely revered.
"We are at risk of a coup d'etat in this country," Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., warned ominously on the House floor in November, using the sort of irresponsible language that could well inflame homegrown terrorists.
The special counsel's ostensible crime? Members of his staff — like every other American — hold political views in their private lives. In fact, nothing in the FBI code of ethics requires agents to be cleansed of political leanings. The fair investigation of political figures they might personally dislike is nothing new. Just the same, when Mueller learned last summer that one of his investigators had tweeted to another FBI employee that the rich asshole is an "idiot," the investigator was immediately reassigned.
The Justice Department's inspector general is looking into any issue of bias at the FBI and will produce a report in the months ahead. In the meantime, there is zero evidence that Mueller has done anything wrong and every indication he is making headway into the vital issue of foreign intrusion into American elections.
The factions calling the special counsel's fairness into question are laying the groundwork for either undermining Mueller's conclusions or firing him. To pre-empt his possible removal, Congress should promptly pass bipartisan legislation to provide greater protections for the special counsel.
Where logic falls away amid the odious campaign to tarnish Mueller and his investigators — bolstered Tuesday by the rich asshole's latest "FBI TAINTED" tweet — is with the prospect that the president might well be innocent of wrongdoing.
Imagine if that's true. If the Russia story is truly "fake news" and a "witch hunt," as the president and his minions insist, why would they sling mud at the very people and institutions that would place their valuable imprimatur on such a conclusion? Why, you have to wonder, are they so worried about what Mueller's investigation might reveal?
USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.
To read more editorials, go to the Opinion front page or sign up for the daily Opinion email newsletter. To respond to this editorial, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.
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West Palm Beach, Florida (CNN)President some rich asshole has spent nearly one-third of his time in office this year at one of the properties that either bear his name or that his family company owns, according to CNN's count.
the rich asshole arrived in Florida on Friday for a prolonged visit at Mar-a-Lago, his private club that sits on this tony spit of land in southern Florida. The visit comes after the rich asshole signed his signature tax legislation, putting an exclamation point on a tumultuous first year for the President.
With the rich asshole comes a host of White House aides, an abundance of Secret Service agents and the ongoing controversy around the President boosting his private businesses by making frequent visits to properties that bear the the rich asshole name.
the rich asshole has so far spent 110 days as president at one of his properties, a fact that critics argue helps the businessman-turned-politician boost the bottom line at The the rich asshole Organization. the rich asshole transferred his business holdings to a trust run by his sons before taking office earlier this year, but stopped short of selling off his holdings.
To date, the rich asshole has spent 39 days at Mar-a-Lago as President, including seven weekends in January, February and March, according to a CNN analysis. Though it has been his most controversial stomping grounds, it has not been his most frequent.
When the weather in South Florida turned hot and muggy over the summer, the rich asshole ventured north to the familiar confines of his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. the rich asshole spent a total of 40 days at the club, including a number of work filled days in August when the rich asshole held meetings with cabinet officials and called world leaders.
Closer to the White House, the rich asshole has visited the rich asshole National Golf Club in Northern Virginia 23 times and the rich asshole International Hotel just blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue five times so far during his presidency.
He spent several days at the rich asshole Tower in New York this summer and also stopped by the the rich asshole International Hotel Waikiki during a brief stop in Hawaii on his way to Asia in November.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
All presidents take vacations, but the rich asshole, a celebrity before he took office, is rare in that he used that perch to slam former President Barack Obama for playing golf while running the country. the rich asshole, as of Friday, has spent over 86 days at one of his golf courses, according to CNN's count, including Tuesday when he visited the nearby the rich asshole International Golf Club.
the rich asshole signs sweeping tax overhaul 01:49
Unfair business advantage?
The President, especially in certain Republican circles, carries a considerable cache, meaning being member of his club, a guest at his hotel or a linksman at one of his golf courses is a status symbol.
But the the rich asshole presidency has also changed the clientele at the rich asshole's properties. Mar-A-Lago, once known for the premiere venue for fundraisers and philanthropic events, saw at least 15 organizations cancel on them during the the rich asshole presidency, including groups like the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the American Cancer Society. Some of those events have been supplemented with Republican focused events, like a group known as Trumpettes USA, who held their Red, White and Blue event at the venue in January.
Critics of the President say the stops are a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause in the US Constitution and give each the rich asshole business a signature competitive advantage: The presidential seal of approval.
"The President's incessant exploitation of his office to promote his properties is unprecedented in American history," said Norm Eisen, the chair of the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a CNN contributor.
Eisen's organization, along with other groups, has sued the rich asshole for a log of visitors to Mar-A-Lago and over violating the Emoluments Clause with his hotel in Washington. A federal judge dismissed the suit Thursday, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing, but did not rule on the merits of their complaint.
How much does a visit cost?
It is unclear how much each visit to Mar-A-Lago costs and estimating the cost is difficult because of fluctuations based on security protocols and protection on each trip. But a 2016 Government Accountability Office report for a four-day trip President Barack Obama took to Florida in 2013 found that total cost to the Secret Service and Coast Guard was around $3 million.
Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog organization, has estimated the the figure is less for the rich asshole.
After the rich asshole spent a series of weekends at Mar-A-Lago earlier this year, a group of Democratic senators asked the GAO to review security and site-related travel expenses to the rich asshole's visits.
That probe is still underway, GAO spokesman Charles Young said. "The work is underway and should be completed and released sometime this spring," he said. "We don't release any info on what we are finding before the work is completed."
Local governments pay, too
The trips aren't just costly to federal agencies. Local governments, whose officers are often tasked with protecting the President during his visits, saddle expenses as well.
According to estimates provided to CNN by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, it costs around $60,000 in overtime every day the rich asshole spends in Florida. The cost to the sheriff's office is so sizable that earlier this year, local officials grappled with the idea of either raising taxes or cutting services to pay for the rich asshole's trips.
Those plans never came to fruition, but the Palm Beach County Commissioners did approve more funding, including 15 more deputies, for the sheriff's department earlier this year. The effort was, in part, because of the rich asshole's visits.
Dave Kerner, a Palm Beach County commissioner, said there was an understanding among all the commissioners that even in a time when budgets are tight, the county needed to offer more funding to law enforcement because of the rich asshole's visits.
the rich asshole supporters react to the tax bill 02:48
"There was maybe some internal frustration with it but all my colleagues supported my requested and it passed unanimously," he said.
Palm Beach County was also helped this month when the Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded $3.3 million to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office for presidential protection.
Money like that, Kerner said, helps the county immensely and he expects the county to ask for more funding as the winter, and more the rich asshole visits, continues.
This story has been updated.
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