January 22nd, 2017. 434 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no.45, and 364 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
Kellyanne Conway was blindsided when Chris Cuomo reminded her the shutdown was a manufactured GOP crisis.
Kellyanne Conway has not fared well lately in her TV appearances.
10 days ago, she made a fool of herself on CNN by telling host Chris Cuomo that nobody at the White House ever talks about Hillary Clinton, in the same breath that she brought up Hillary Clinton unprompted.
Then on Monday night, she sparred with Cuomo again — and walked away just as bruised as last time.
When Cuomo slammed some rich asshole’s handling of the immigration debate, Conway inexplicably responded by jabbing Cuomo for calling out her obsession with Clinton in the aforementioned previous interview. “We don’t do that on CNN, right? You don’t want me to mention the woman whose name we don’t say anymore, right?”
“Listen to yourself. When you speak, you must also listen to what you are saying,” said Cuomo, clearly losing patience.
He reminded Conway that a wall would not actually do anything for to fight drug traffickers, to which Conway responded by rattling off statistics about deaths from illegal drug use.
“You want to talk about the deaths, they matter. We’re talking about the rationale behind the supply, which you’re dead wrong about, and you’re using to advance a narrative that if you just put up a wall, everything’s fine,” said Cuomo.
Conway then bizarrely claimed Cuomo was just disappointed the government shutdown was over. “I know today was a big loss, a big kick in the gut, cause we traded in the Russia graphics for the shutdown graphics, and now that’s done.”
But Cuomo did not rise to the bait. And he reminded Conway of the entire reason negotiations in Congress blew up.
“CHIP? If you cared about it, you would have done something months ago. You did nothing. DACA? If he wanted a ‘bill of love,’ he would never have attached anything to a DACA bill. If you care about the DREAMers, you do a clean bill, you don’t attach other security concerns.”
“And by the way,” added Cuomo, “you say Democrats don’t care about security? I’m 180 degrees from you. I don’t know why they were willing to give in on the wall.”
Cuomo exposed every single one of Conway’s lies in rapid-fire succession.
Conway seems to believe that the faster you talk, the more lies you can get away with. Unfortunately for her, Cuomo was faster with the truth.
During the campaign, the rich asshole promised to surround himself with "the best people." It hasn't quite worked out that way.
Despite snow still on the ground, it looks like the rich asshole administration is poised for another round of spring cleaning. Even after seeing 36 percent turnover among of high-level staff — the highest for a first-year president in more than three decades — a White House this chaotic just can’t seem to keep anyone around.
On the possible chopping block this time around are Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and White House chief of staff John Kelly.
Despite pledges to surround himself with “the best people,” some rich asshole has instead surrounded himself with clumsy and inept team members who regularly fail to deliver.
With plenty of top-level Republicans refusing to even think about joining this administration, the country is left with whoever is willing to work for an unstable White House, and the results continue to be lackluster.
Zinke is facing the rich asshole’s anger and possible legal issues because of his “clumsy” handling of the administration’s offshore oil drilling rollout.
A few days after the administration rolled out its new initiative, Zinke went “rogue” and tweeted out that the Florida coastlines would be exempt. In addition to not coordinating his message with the White House, Zinke failed to follow the process set out by law on how to make determinations regarding offshore drilling.
Over the weekend, when the rich asshole posed for a photo op holding a phone, it was reported that he was also unhappy with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Ross “entered the administration as one of the rich asshole’s favorites” according to Axios, but now he regularly falls asleep in meetings, much to the dismay of senior Capitol Hill aides.
the rich asshole was disappointed with a trade deal Ross made with China and reportedly humiliated Ross in the Oval Office. “These trade deals, they’re terrible,” the rich asshole complained. “Your understanding of trade is terrible. Your deals are no good. No good.”
Ross also regularly lied about his wealth, something he may have in common with the rich asshole.
the rich asshole is also at odds with his second chief of staff. The relationship is reportedly so bad, according to Vanity Fair, that the White House is bringing in Ivanka the rich asshole to lead the effort to replace Kelly.
Kelly recently told lawmakers he had helped school the rich asshole on some of his “uninformed” promises about the border wall with Mexico, including the facts that it would not be a continuous structure and that Mexico would not be paying for it.
The following morning, the rich asshole released multiple official White House statements via Twitter that directly contradicted what his chief of staff said, a practice that is not unusual with this White House.
Kelly, reported to be unhappy in his position, might soon be on the way out.
the rich asshole went through a number of campaign managers, and then faced his first year in the Oval Office with record low approval ratings. He has since gone through multiple high-level staffers, and those who do stay have referred to the rich asshole as “a moron.”
Far from hiring the best people, the rich asshole seems to employ whoever will consent to being humiliated and undermined by his fragile ego. And even then, he can’t keep them around for long.
Kellyanne Conway Somehow Brings Up Clinton While Talking Talking About A Football Game (VIDEO)
Just last week, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said that “nobody” in the rich asshole administration ever talks about Hillary Clinton, then hours later, the rich asshole rage-tweeted about his former rival.
“So many people can’t get over the election results,” Conway told CNN host Chris Cuomo earlier this month.
“We don’t care about her. Nobody here talks about her,” Conway insisted “Hey, Chris, nobody here talks about Hillary Clinton, I promise you.”
However, Clinton is living in Conway’s head even when she’s discussing a football game.
During a segment on ‘Fox & Friends’ in which the panel spoke with Conway about the Philadelphia Eagles’ 38-7 victory in the NFL championship game, the White House counselor bizarrely brought up Clinton. Conway also praised the Eagles for not taking a knee.
“The Patriots are in the Super Bowl again and they haven’t been in the Super Bowl since last year,” she said. “We were so happy to have the Patriots here [at the White House] last year when they won. But we want to have the Eagles here this coming year.”
“And I’ll just say that the underdog here is the Eagles and you know me, I love an underdog,” she added. “The Patriots are like that woman [Hillary Clinton] whose name I don’t mention on TV anymore. People always count out the Eagles.”
Watch:
some rich asshole has never gotten over the fact that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Apparently, that irks Conway as well. SAD!
REPORT: the rich asshole Thinks John Kelly Is A ‘Nut Job,’ Ordered Ivanka To Find Him A New Chief of Staff
Anyone who would take on the herculean task of being some rich asshole’s Chief of Staff should be praised for bravery, regardless of their other political flaws. After all, this is a job that comes with untold amounts of abuse on a daily basis, the degradation and loss of one’s basic decency and intelligence, and, of course, the risk that one could be fired at a moment’s notice for seemingly no reason at all. Former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus left his cushy job to be the rich asshole’s Chief of Staff, and he is long gone. He was the guinea pig, and he found out the hard way just how little the rich asshole values those who are loyal to him. Now, it looks like the same is about to happen to General John Kelly, the rich asshole’s current Chief of Staff.
Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair is reporting that time is running out for John Kelly. And, who should be the one charged with finding a new Chief of Staff? the rich asshole’s favorite kid, Ivanka. Sherman says of the situation:
“Ivanka is the most worried about it. She’s trying to figure who replaces Kelly.”
Sherman reports that a rich asshole adviser told him that Kelly’s goal seems to be to outlast Priebus, but that may not happen. It seems that the rich asshole is furious with Kelly for his comments regarding the rich asshole being “uninformed” on the campaign trail when he promised his rabid, brainwashed cult of followers that they would get a 2,o00 mile wall on the southern border and that Mexico would be forced to foot the bill.
One Republican who is familiar with the situation said to Sherman that Kelly’s overall characterization of his Chief of Staff role is quite bothersome to the rich asshole:
“The more Kelly plays up that he’s being the adult in the room—that it’s basically combat duty and he’s serving the country—that kind of thing drives the rich asshole nuts.”
To put a fine point on that, the rich asshole has reportedly said of Kelly recently:
“I’ve got another nut job here who thinks he’s running things.”
Well, it seems that the rich asshole is unmanageable. Then again, we already knew that. If a Four-Star Marine General cannot contain the rich asshole, who can? Good luck getting anyone else to want to do this job.
America, we’re doomed.
This is what happens when you trust Mitch McConnell
McConnell says a lot of things. Then he does whatever he wants.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell managed to convince Senate Democrats to vote to fund the government on Monday on the strength of his word. Based on even his recent track record, that word is worth very little.
McConnell said Monday, before a vote to fund the government through February 8, that he would take up legislation to address the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that President some rich asshole rescinded last year. McConnell promised to do so if there wasn’t an agreement reached prior to February 8 and Democrats continued to support future spending bills.
“Should these issues not be resolved by the time the funding bill before us expires on Feb. 8, so long as the government remains open, it would be my intention to take up legislation here in the Senate that would address DACA, border security and related issues as well as disaster relief,” he said on the Senate floor.
He also promised a “level playing field” for the bill’s process in exchange for a vote to end the shutdown for another three weeks.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, speaking on the floor two hours later, explained his rationale for accepting McConnell’s deal.
“We will vote today to reopen the government to continue negotiating a global agreement with the commitment that if an agreement isn’t reached by February the 8th, the Senate will immediately proceed to consideration of legislation dealing with DACA,” he said.
So the Senate Democrats agreed to vote for a continuing resolution on Monday to fund the government through February 8th, and possibly another continuing resolution on February 8, for the commitment to consider an unidentified immigration bill.
No immigration agreement was attached to the bill passed on Monday. McConnell’s deputy, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has already cast doubt on the idea of considering an immigration bill before February 8.
So all of this rests on McConnell’s word. Of course even if a reasonable immigration bill were to pass the Senate, there are no guarantees it would be supported in the House, or indeed even the White House.
But McConnell has promised many things in recent months and failed to follow through. Here are a few examples:
McConnell promised a vote on Collins-Nelson, a bill to lower Obamacare premiums, before the end of 2017
Before the passage of the Republican tax bill, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) was on the fence. She was very concerned about what repealing the individual mandate would do to state health insurance exchanges, and she wanted to make sure to pass legislation she wrote with Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) to strengthen the exchanges with reinsurance money to help lower premiums.
McConnell promised Collins that he would support her bill to stabilize Obamacare insurance markets and try to pass it before the end of 2017.
That led Collins to back the bill, tweeting: “After securing significant changes, as well as commitments to pass legislation to help lower health insurance premiums, I will cast my vote in support of the Senate tax reform bill.”
But the promise was broken weeks later, and the Senate did not take up the bill.
Later in December, Collins let McConnell slide on that promise, and she vowed to introduce legislation in 2018, with no specific promise from the majority leader to champion it.
McConnell promised a vote on Alexander-Murray, a bill to stabilize Obamacare markets, before the end of 2017
At the same time he made the promise about Collins-Nelson, McConnell promised Sen. Collins passage of legislation to lower health insurance premiums in exchange for her tax vote. The bill, known as Alexander-Murray, would reimburse insurers for providing key Obamacare subsidies, thus further stabilizing health insurance markets
McConnell also failed to keep this promise, as the legislation did not get added to the tax bill and was not passed separately in 2017.
On Monday, Collins told reporters that she was still optimistic:
In my case, obviously I was very disappointed that the commitment for a vote by the end of the year was not kept. But I am optimistic it is going to be kept. Our negotiations with the house are going very, very well. And the deadline slipped, but the policy is what is important. And you have to remember that the individual mandate repeal does not go into effect until 2019. So we do have a little time here.
She was speaking about both health care bills.
McConnell promised to bring a DACA bill to the Senate floor in January
During the tax bill fight in the Senate last month, McConnell promised Sen. Jeff Flake said he was “pleased that the Majority Leader has committed to bring the bipartisan DACA bill we are currently negotiating to the Senate floor in January.” This commitment was made Flake said, in exchange for Flake’s yes vote on the tax bill.
On Monday, Flake told reporters that he did not necessarily consider the January promise to be broken:
My commitment was to have a vote on immigration by the end of January. We’re getting close. This one will miss it by a week. I can live with that. We got a shutdown that wasn’t anticipated. So we’re getting close on that.
Yet McConnell did not promise to bring the bipartisan DACA bill to the Senate floor — he said it was his intention to begin consideration of a DACA bill long as the government does not shut down on February 8, the date that the new continuing resolution expires.
McConnell promised the Republican tax plan would not raise taxes on anyone in the middle class
McConnell promised Americans that “nobody in the middle class is going to get a tax increase” in November of last year. A week later, he had to walk back that promise.
“I misspoke on that,” McConnell told the New York Times. “You can’t guarantee that absolutely no one sees a tax increase, but what we are doing is targeting levels of income and looking at the average in those levels and the average will be tax relief for the average taxpayer in each of those segments.”
McConnell promised to honor Senate tradition on judicial nominees
When Barack Obama became president, McConnell sent a letter to him, which was shared with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), then chair of the Senate Judicary Committee. Leahy said the letter stated “that the Republican Conference expected the blue slip policy to be observed, ‘even-handedly and regardless of party affiliation.'” Leahy did exactly that, which meant that Republicans, then possessing a small senate minority, could still affect Obama’s judicial nominations by filing a “blue slip” on nominations from their home states, effectively holding the nomination indefinitely. They did so for a dozen nominees.
Yet in 2017, the first year of President the rich asshole’s first term, McConnell did away with the blue slip rule. He told the Weekly Standard that the GOP would now treat blue slips “as simply notification of how you’re going to vote, not as an opportunity to blackball.”
Several senators who voted for the budget resolution spent Monday said they were confident McConnell would keep his promise. Jeff Flake, already burned once, believes he will not be burned again.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said it would be an “affront” to many of his fellow senators if McConnell broke his pledge. Both Corker and Flake are retiring after this year.
Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who caucuses with the Democrats, indicated that McConnell would keep his promise.
Andrew Desiderio
Yet other politicians, on both sides of the issue, with wildly divergent motivations, cast doubts on the idea of a new meaningful promise from McConnell.
Conservative Republicans were skeptical that any new ground had been broken in what McConnell had previously said. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) argued that he didn’t hear anything new in the majority leader’s assurances.
The White House cast doubt on the premise of McConnell’s promise. Even if the compromise legislation passed the Senate, and somehow also passed the House, a White House spokesperson said the rich asshole would not sign it.
Now that Dems have voted to reopen gov w promise of Senate DACA vote, WH spox @RajShah45 on CNN flatly sez POTUS won't sign Graham-Durbin deal
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) flatly dismissed the idea that McConnell can be trusted on issues like this.
“There has to be a pathway that is nailed down much better because McConnell’s version of regular order — he simply controls the place and does what he wants,” Merkley said on MSNBC the night before the shutdown ended. “There’s very little trust… We haven’t ever seen McConnell stand up for his promises.”
Additional reporting by Danielle McLean.
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 01/22/18 10:24 PM EST
Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon once ripped Ivanka Trump, calling her “another staffer who doesn’t know what you’re doing,” according to a new book about President Trump’s White House.
Fox News host Howard Kurtz described the interaction, which took place during the early days of the administration, in his new book, “Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press, And The War Over The Truth.”
“My daughter loves me as a dad,” Bannon told Ivanka, according to an excerpt of the book reported on by The Washington Post. “You love your dad. I get that. But you’re just another staffer who doesn’t know what you’re doing.”
Another scene in the book shows President Trump siding with Bannon after the former strategist blamed Ivanka for a leak.
“‘Baby, I think Steve’s right here,’ Trump told her,” Kurtz writes.
A White House official denied the account to the Post, saying, “The past three weeks have made very clear who the leakers are.” The White House did not respond to questions about other parts of the excerpts.
Bannon left the White House in August, but fell out of favor with the White House after another book, Michael Wolff's now infamous "Fire and Fury" included quotes from Bannon calling Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign “treasonous.”
Trump hit back, saying that Bannon had “lost his mind.”
Bannon apologized with a statement calling Trump Jr. a “good man” and a “patriot,” but it did little to win back favor in the White House.
Bannon later stepped down as chair of Breitbart News after he lost support on the right over his Trump attacks.
BY OLIVIA BEAVERS - 01/22/18 11:16 PM EST
President the rich asshole made "a rare admission" of regret to aides after sending then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer to fight with the press over reports detailing the crowd size as his Inauguration Day ceremony, according to a new White House tell-all.
Fox News host Howard Kurtz described the incident in his new book, “Media Madness: some rich asshole, The Press, And The War Over The Truth.”
Special counselor Kellyanne Conway initially tried to persuade the president against the idea of sending Spicer out in his defense, according to an excerpt, as reported by The Washington Post.
She appeared to be one of the few who could calm the rich asshole down, using a line she regularly employs with the president when he gets irritated about a matter: ‘You’re really big. That’s really small.’ ”
But Spicer ultimately came to the podium swinging during his first official White House news conference, insisting that the audience in attendance was larger than for former President Barack Obama.
Spicer inaccurately claimed a day after the inauguration that the rich asshole had “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”
The statement created a dizzying distraction for the White House early into the administration.
Kurtz says following the news conference, the rich asshole make “a rare admission” that he had been wrong. “You were right. I shouldn’t have done that,” he told aides, according to the book.
Spicer told HLN earlier this month that his claim about the crowd size on the rich asshole's Inauguration Day is the "first and foremost" an example of one of the times he "screwed up" while serving as the White House mouthpiece.
Spicer left his White House post in August.
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 01/22/18 09:07 PM EST
President the rich asshole has signed a stop-gap government funding bill, officially ending the three day-long government shutdown.
the rich asshole signed the bill Monday night after Senate Democrats struck a deal on legislation earlier in the day.
“I am pleased that Democrats in Congress have come to their senses,” the rich asshole said in a statement, which White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders read to reporters at her daily briefing earlier in the day.
The measure funds the government through Feb. 8.
The House later passed the measure approved by the Senate, sending it to the rich asshole for his signature.
Senate Democrats agreed to the deal after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to hold debate on a bill to extend protections for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
However, some Democrats — including many eyeing 2020 presidential bids — slammed the deal and voted against it.
Liberal groups quickly called foul, pointing out that Monday's measure includes little that wasn't offered Friday in the legislation Democrats rejected.
“It’s official: [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer is the worst negotiator in Washington – even worse than the rich asshole,” said Murshed Zaheed, political director at Credo.
The measure also includes money to fund the Children's Health Insurance Program, whose authorization expired in September, for six years.
States had stood at risk of running out of funds for low-income children’s health care if Congress didn’t enact a patch by February.
The shutdown began Friday when it was clear that a continuing resolution to fund the government lacked the 60 votes necessary to clear the Senate after passing the House.
Critical government functions were put on hold during the shutdown, even though the rich asshole administration sought to minimize the effects compared to the last government freeze, which lasted 16 days in 2013.
The House and Senate held emergency sessions over the weekend to break the impasse, but a final resolution didn’t emerge until Monday morning.
BY CRISTINA MARCOS - 01/22/18 06:11 PM EST
The House cleared legislation on Monday to end the three-day government shutdown, and the measure was later signed by President the rich asshole.
Lawmakers voted 266-150 to reopen the federal government and extend funding through Feb. 8, as well as provide money for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for six years. Six Republicans voted "no," while 45 Democrats voted "yes" to pass the bill.
the rich asshole signed the bill just before 9 p.m.
A government shutdown went into effect early Saturday morning after most Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans blocked a House-passed temporary spending bill that would have lasted through Feb. 16.
Democrats had pledged not to vote for a spending measure unless lawmakers had an agreement on how to ensure protections for young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, known as “Dreamers.”
The House and Senate held emergency sessions over the weekend to break the impasse, but a final resolution didn’t emerge until Monday morning.
By that time, hundreds of thousands of federal workers were furloughed or working without pay. But the short length of the shutdown, as well as the fact that most of its duration occurred over a weekend, means that its effects will be relatively limited compared to the 16-day shutdown in 2013.
Critical government functions were put on hold during the shutdown, even though the rich asshole administration sought to minimize the effects compared to 2013.
Americans could still visit national parks, unlike in 2013. But many National Park Service staffers were furloughed, which halted services like trash removal and restroom cleaning.
Members of the military continued working during the shutdown, but without pay.
A measure attached to the bill to reopen the government ensures that federal workers get back pay they would otherwise have lost during the shutdown.
Senate Democrats agreed to end the impasse after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pledged to take up an immigration bill next month. There’s no guarantee any bill that passes in the Senate will get a vote in the House, however.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said McConnell has committed to consider legislation to protect Dreamers if negotiators don’t reach an immigration deal before Feb. 8.
“Now there is a real pathway to get a bill on the floor and through the Senate. It is a good solution, and I will vote for it,” Schumer said.
the rich asshole and GOP leaders in Congress stood firm in refusing to negotiate on immigration until the government reopened.
the rich asshole met with a group of GOP senators on Monday once a deal to reopen the government emerged, as well as centrist Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Doug Jones (Ala.).
“Once the government is funded, my administration will work toward solving the problem of very unfair illegal immigration. We will make a long-term deal on immigration if, and only if, it is good for our country,” the rich asshole said in a statement.
The legislation approved Monday is the fourth stopgap measure to keep the government funded since September. Leaders in both parties are still working on a budget deal to establish spending levels for 2018, as well as aid for regions affected by recent natural disasters.
House Democratic leaders did not whip their members to oppose the bill, but they voted against it.
"I refuse to be an enabler to the Republicans' failures any longer," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Lawmakers are trying to reach a compromise to replace the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that granted temporary work permits for qualifying young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
The rich asshole administration is phasing out the DACA program, putting its roughly 700,000 recipients at risk of deportation.
Liberals and immigration activists expressed outrage that the deal fell short of Democrats’ demands that Republicans needed to at least agree on the contours of an immigration deal.
“I do not see how a vague promise from the Senate Majority Leader about a vague policy to be voted on in the future helps the Dreamers or maximizes leverage the Democrats and American people have over the Republicans right now,” said Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.).
“This shows me that when it comes to immigrants, Latinos and their families, Democrats are still not willing to go to the mat to allow people in my community to live in our country legally,” he concluded.
Other Democrats were more willing to vote to end the shutdown.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who represents a Northern Virginia district with thousands of federal workers, said McConnell’s “concession to our demands for action is a big victory for the Democrats and the American people.”
The provision in the bill extending CHIP has bipartisan support, despite the partisan fighting that led to the shutdown.
The authorization for CHIP expired at the end of September and lawmakers struggled for months to reach an agreement on its funding. States stood at risk of running out of funds for low-income children’s health care if Congress didn’t enact a patch by February.
Bipartisan talks are also expected to resume on pairing protections for Dreamers with enhanced border security measures.
Both sides remain far apart on key issues like chain migration, temporary protected status for people from struggling countries and whether the Dreamers would be eligible for citizenship or some other form of legal status.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had been in talks with the other second-ranking leaders in both chambers: House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), along with Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and John Cornyn(R-Texas).
McCarthy wouldn’t commit on Monday to bringing up any immigration bill passed in the Senate. He suggested that the House and Senate could each pass their own versions and work out a bicameral compromise in a conference committee, in a process similar to the GOP’s tax overhaul.
“We’re two different houses, so we’ll both do our own work,” McCarthy said. “I don’t see anything wrong with the Senate passing a bill, the House passing a bill and going to conference. That worked with tax. It could work with other items.”
—Updated at 9:04 p.m.
‘Cut it out!’: Interview goes off the rails after Kellyanne Conway accuses CNN’s Cuomo of not caring about border security
CNN's Chris Cuomo and Kellyanne Conway
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
An interview between CNN’s Chris Cuomo and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway derailed on Monday as the pair clashed on immigration and the government shutdown.
In a rowdy back and forth, Cuomo challenged Conway on the administration’s hardline approach to immigration, at one point asking, “why are you treating immigrants like they’re monsters?”
“Don’t even go there,” Conway replied.
“I’m all over it,” Cuomo retorted. “I bought property in this place.”
Conway later accused CNN of being upset that the government shutdown was solved because “we’ve traded in the Russia graphics for the shutdown graphics.”
In a tussle over the president’s changing position regarding a border wall, Cuomo accused Conway of talking “like [the rich asshole] never looked at a map before.”
Conway said Cuomo was “disparaging to the office of the president”—prompting the CNN host to call that an “unfair shot.”
But it was when Conway tried to accuse Cuomo of not caring about the resources afforded to border patrol agents that the interview truly veered off course.
“You just said everything’s fine,” Conway charged.
“I’ve said what?” Cuomo asked.
Conway said just because Cuomo took one trip to the border in his khakis doesn’t mean he knows about immigration.
“I didn’t wear khakis,” Cuomo joked.
“Cut it out!” Conway shouted back.
Watch below:
Republican claims there was an anti-the rich asshole ‘secret society’ in the DOJ — but isn’t sure ‘it actually happened’
House Judiciary Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and member, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX), speaking to Fox News. Image via screengrab.
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
On Monday evening, two members of the House Judiciary Committee claimed on Fox News that their latest review of text messages sent between FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok included a reference to a so-called “secret society.”
“We knew that Strzok and Page had an intense anti-the rich asshole bias,” Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) told Fox News’ Martha McCallum. “And that’s OK, so long as they check it at the door and do their job. But we learned today in the thousands of text messages that we reviewed that perhaps they may not have done that.”
“In the immediate aftermath of [President some rich asshole’s] election, there may have been a ‘secret society’ of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI, to include Page and Strzok, working against him,” the congressman continued. “I’m not saying that actually happened, but when folks speak in those terms, they need to come forward to explain the context.”
House Judiciary Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) then expounded further on the text messages.
“The day after the election, what they really didn’t want to have happen, there is a text exchange between these two FBI agents, these supposed to be fact-centric FBI agents saying, ‘Perhaps this is the first meeting of the secret society,'” the South Carolina Republican said. “So I’m going to want to know what secret society you are talking about, because you’re supposed to be investigating objectively the person who just won the electoral college.”
Watch below, via Fox News:
Ex-CIA senior official berates Devin Nunes’ FBI memo ‘hatchet job’: What does he know about ‘intelligence?’
Rep. Devin Nunes (Photo: Screen capture)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Amid news that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has not even released his supposed FBI takedown memo to the bureau in question, one former CIA official called B.S. on the chairman’s credentials.
“How do you think he understands the details of how you conduct surveillance?” former CIA deputy director and current CNN commentator Phil Mudd asked CNN host Wolf Blitzer rhetorically.
“Do you think he knows what the law is? Do you think he knows what FBI regulations are? Do you think he’s read through telephone book about the regulations?” he continued. “This is about a hatchet job.”
Mudd then charged Nunes with trying to cover up what happened between the Russian government and President some rich asshole’s campaign — the topic of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation at the heart of the congressman’s secretive four-page memo. Nunes has long been accused of being in cahoots with the rich asshole White House regarding the Russia scandal.
Watch below, via CNN:
the rich asshole’s FBI director threatened to quit amid Sessions’ pressure to ‘clean house’: report
Attorney General Jeff Sessions (left) and FBI Director Christopher Wray (right). Image via Creative Commons.
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
After the White House pressured FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire his deputy director amid a rumored Justice Department purge, the former threatened to quit.
As Axios reported Monday night, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been pushing Wray to fire FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in an apparent effort to “clean house.” After the president told White House counsel Don McGahn about the situation, the attorney “told Sessions this issue wasn’t worth losing the FBI Director over,” Axios’ sources revealed.
On Sunday night, Axios reported that Sessions urged Wray to make a “fresh start” after taking the helm of the bureau, and has been doing so “for some time.”
McCabe is a member of the “core team” the attorney general pressured Wray to fire, and has been at odds with the rich asshole administration since being appointed as acting director of the bureau following President some rich asshole’s firing of former director James Comey. He’s since countered the rich asshole’s denial of Russia’s electoral interference and criticized the president publicly.
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/146704/trump-just-dealt-major-blow-solar-power
the rich asshole just dealt a major blow to solar power.
As the Senate voted on a measure to re-open the government on Thursday, the rich asshole administration announced it would impose tariffs of 30 percent on imported solar panel equipment, a move that will essentially make it very expensive for Americans to buy the products from Chinese companies. That’s alarming to most renewable energy advocates, since America’s ability to get inexpensive solar panels from China is partially why America has seen stunning increases in solar-powered electricity generation over the last decade. At least 40 percent of solar panels used in America are Chinese-made.
President Trump has approved recommendations to impose safeguard tariffs on imported large residential washing machines and imported solar cells and modules. To read Ambassador Lighthizer’s full statement, click here: ustr.gov/about-us/polic…
the rich asshole’s decision stemmed from a complaint filed by SolarCity and Suniva, two foreign-owned solar panel manufacturers that operate in the U.S. In a petition filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission in June, the companies argued that China’s dominance in the American solar equipment market constituted unfair competition. The ITC agreed, and in October recommended the rich asshole impose tariffs of 10 to 35 percent on Chinese solar products.
ITC’s recommendation gave the rich asshole reason to indulge in two of his favorite activities: appeasing American manufacturers and knocking China. But most American manufacturers of solar equipment likely aren’t happy about the decision.
“The tariffs requested by Suniva would more than double the price of solar panels in the U.S., undercutting the cost-competitiveness of solar and reversing its high growth trajectory,” a group of 27 manufacturers wrote in a letter to the International Trade Commission in August. “We would be forced to cut our operations, seriously endangering manufacturing jobs at our factories.” The Solar Energy Industries Association, the solar industry trade group, estimates that 88,000 jobs in solar could be lost—more jobs than the entire U.S. coal industry. (The solar industry currently employs about 260,000 people; the coal industry employs about 80,000 people.)
Many conservative Republicans were also opposed to tariffs for various reasons; some argued that the rich asshole shouldn’t stifle a growing industry, while others, like Fox News host Sean Hannity, said tariffs would constitute a “bailout” of SolarCity and Suniva. In the hours immediately following the rich asshole’s decision, however, it’s mostly renewable energy groups and environmentalists who are yelling into the void.
Doing nothing "clearly worked."
Now that Democrats have helped to end the rich asshole shutdown, the White House is hard at work demonstrating what a failure some rich asshole has been throughout the whole debacle.
On Monday, Democrats struck a deal to reopen the government until Feb. 8, securing six years of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and a vote on DACA in the process. The deal sets up a hard deadline for Republicans to either make good on the political cover they’ve been using the DREAMers for, or shut the government down again.
A key narrative to emerge from the shutdown was the rich asshole’s total disengagement during the process. After blowing up a deal to avoid the shutdown and releasing a racist campaign ad accusing Democrats of murder for supporting immigration reform, the rich asshole holed up in the White House for the weekend, posing for pictures with his empty desk.
As it turns out, the rich asshole’s absence was considered a blessing by advisers who fear his erraticism.
That narrative got an unexpected boost Monday when, barely an hour after the shutdown ended, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about the rich asshole’s lack of leadership during the crisis.
CBS News Radio correspondent Steve Portnoy asked Sanders to respond to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s criticism that negotiating with the rich asshole is like “negotiating with Jell-O.”
“Was it a concerted effort on the president’s part not to reach out to him this weekend?” Portnoy asked.
“What the president did clearly worked,” Sanders responded with unearned smugness, noting that the rich asshole’s disengagement allowed the crisis to be solved by Schumer.
the rich asshole’s involvement in these negotiations has been disastrous for nearly everyone involved.
When he held an on-camera photo op to bolster his claim of mental stability, he wound up agreeing to a clean DACA fix and promising to sign any bipartisan deal he was presented. Then he went on a racist tirade during a bipartisan meeting, broke both of those promises, and scuttled a deal with Schumer that would have avoided the shutdown.
For once, Sanders is right: If Republicans and Democrats are to reach a deal to protect DREAMers, the less the rich asshole is involved, the better.
There is no the rich asshole dirty work that Pence won't do.
Mike Pence’s Middle East trip was interrupted by a harsh dose of reality when a reporter confronted him with reports of some rich asshole’s alleged affair with a porn star in 2006.
Pence has already used the trip to lie right to our troops’ faces about the rich asshole shutdown, and to inject partisan politics into his address before the Israeli Knesset.
But Pence was clearly not prepared when an Associated Press reporter asked him to comment on the rich asshole’s widely reported affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and the $130,000 in hush money his attorney allegedly paid on the rich asshole’s behalf just weeks before the 2016 election.
“Do you think (Daniels) is telling the truth on this, or were you aware about any of this?” Pence was asked.
“Uh, I, I’m just not going to comment on the latest baseless allegations against the president,” Pence replied, then stammered his way through a halting statement about his “focus” on “serving the president.”
Given the extraordinarily detailed account of the affair and of the payments on the rich asshole’s behalf to keep the affair quiet, the allegations are hardly baseless.
Pence has a talent for unconvincing defenses of the rich asshole, as he demonstrated when pressed on the rich asshole’s response to the white supremacist murder in Charlottesville, or when he defended the rich asshole campaign against collusion allegations in the most suspicious way possible.
What Pence lacks in outward conviction, though, he makes up for in sycophantic obedience. Whether he’s being called on to lie to the troops, or to perform an expensive publicity stunt in support of the rich asshole’s racist feud with NFL players, or invoking the name of a civil rights hero in order to defend white supremacist monuments, there is no errand too dirty for Pence to take on.
‘Coffee boy’ George Papadopoulos’ fiancée says he’s the ‘John Dean’ of Mueller’s investigation
Former the rich asshole campaign aide George Papadopoulos (Twitter photo).
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
George Papadapolous, the former some rich asshole campaign aide who pleaded guilty in October to one count of lying to the FBI, is much more than a “coffee boy,” his fiancée said, insisting “history will remember him like John Dean.”
In an interview with the Washington Post, published Monday, Simona Mangiante told reporters her fiancé Papdapoulos has much more information than has been previously reported.
“There’s a lot to come,” she said. “He was the first one to break a hole on all of this.”
Mangiante said Papadapoulous guilty plea and subsequent work for the FBI was “brave,” adding her fiancé didn’t have a “hard” time making the decision. “It’s always easiest to say the truth about everything,” she said.
Mangiante also promised her “loyal” fiancé was “on the right sight of history.”
the rich asshole associates have tried to downplay Papadapoulous’ role during the campaign, to varying degrees of success. Mangiante told the Post their description of him as a “coffee boy” could not be further from the truth.
“I know what it means as a young person to do all the efforts you do to build your career and be dismissed as a coffee boy,” she said.
Mangiante also described the impact of Papadapoulous’ guilty plea on their budding romance.
“We went from paradise to hell,” she said, adding the investigation “has changed his life forever.”
"The Republican majority now has 17 days to prevent the DREAMers from being deported."
After some rich asshole and the Republicans spent three days failing to get their act together, Democrats helped end the rich asshole shutdown in exchange for a promise that DREAMers will finally get a vote within the next two weeks, according to a senior Democratic aide.
“We expect that a bipartisan bill on DACA will receive fair consideration and an up or down vote on the floor,” Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said from the Senate floor.
On Friday, the rich asshole scuttled a deal to keep the government open, then spent the weekend loafing while his underlings —with the help of Russian bots — failed at trying to pin the shutdown on Democrats.
But on Monday, Schumer struck a deal with Republicans to provide enough votes to reopen the government, in exchange for a promise that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will bring an immigration bill up for a vote.
Democrats also secured six years of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which Republicans allowed to expire last September, and which they subsequently held hostage in the shutdown negotiations.
The deal — passed by an 81-18 margin — funds the government until Feb. 8, at which point the Democrats, and the Republicans who also initially opposed a deal that didn’t include a fix for DREAMers, will have the opportunity to test McConnell’s promise. McConnell had been unable to get even his own party to agree to last week’s failed bill.
Schumer made the results of that test explicit. “The Republican majority now has 17 days to prevent the DREAMers from being deported,” he said.
If McConnell fails to honor his pledge, Democrats will once again have the opportunity to hold fast for DREAMers, while Republicans will be forced to put their money where their mouth is and provide the fix for DACA they have said they want.
The onus is now on Republicans to keep their commitments, and to keep the government open past that Feb. 8 deadline.
More and more, Republicans look to foreign operatives to push the party's domestic messaging.
Poll after poll shows Americans blame Republicans for shutting down the federal government. But if the GOP is looking for any consolation, they at least appear to have Russian bots on their side.
Russian-influenced Twitter accounts have gone all in trying to help Republicans and the White House promote the #SchumerShutdown hashtag in a desperate attempt to shift the blame for the shutdown to Democrats.
“#SchumerShutdown ― the hashtag that GOP leaders and the White House are using to accuse Democrats of causing the shutdown ― on Sunday night became the top trending hashtag being promoted by Russian bots and trolls on Twitter, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy,” HuffPost reports.
It’s all part of a larger, disturbing trend in which Republicans now regularly rely on operatives in foreign countries to drive the GOP’s domestic messaging via social media.
Indeed, the second most popular Russian bot hashtag is part of another GOP messaging campaign. That one is aimed at vilifying the FBI while special counsel Robert Mueller probes some rich asshole’s Russian ties during the 2016 campaign, and whether the rich asshole obstructed justice in 2017 trying to cover up the potential collusion.
The Russian trolling surrounding the shutdown was confirmed by a second source.
“In the last 48 hours, Russia-linked Twitter accounts tweeted #schumershutdown more than any other hashtag, according to Hamilton 68, a project run by the German Marshall Fund think tank that tracks tweets “tied to Russia-linked influence networks,” according to Quartz.
Just last week, Twitter confirmed that 677,775 people during the 2016 campaign were exposed to social media posts from more than 50,000 automated accounts that have links to the Russian government.
Of those people, at least one was a United States senator: Texas Republican John Cornyn.
As for the White House, it needs all the messaging help it can get for the shutdown.
Despite its attempt to attack Schumer on Twitter, and despite the White House’s aggressive support from Russian bots, it was the #TrumpShutdown hashtag that reigned as the No. 1 hashtag worldwide over the weekend, as that message careened around the globe.
The GOP controls all three branches of the federal government, and yet they continue to insist it is the Democrats who are to blame for the shutdown debacle.
As Fox News’ Shep Smith has stressed, “Never in the history — at least modern history — of the country has there been a government shutdown when a single party is in charge of Washington.”
This has gone from comical to sad.
Fox News
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway came off the bench this weekend to shill for the rich asshole shutdown, but on Monday morning, her obsession with Hillary Clinton reared its compulsive head.
Conway was shelved from cable TV after her extended meltdown over Clinton. After a week in the doghouse, she was trotted out to pitch in on the White House’s failed effort to sell the rich asshole shutdown as the Democrats’ doing.
But during a lighthearted exchange of pleasantries on “Fox & Friends” about the Philadelphia Eagles’ 38-7 victory in the NFL Championship game, Conway couldn’t resist returning to her foremost obsession.
“I will just say that the underdog here is the Eagles,” Conway said. “And you know me, I love an underdog.”
Then she bizarrely pivoted to Clinton. “The Patriots are like that woman whose name I don’t mention on TV anymore,” Conway said, a reference to her disastrous performance in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
She added that the Eagles “are constantly counted out, and constantly said ‘you can’t win.’ Sounds familiar to me.”
One major difference between the rich asshole and the Eagles, as Conway is painfully aware, is that the Eagles actually won with a higher score than their opponent, while Clinton bested the rich asshole by 3 million votes.
Despite Conway’s frequent insistence that neither she nor anyone in the White House thinks about Clinton anymore, it’s obvious Conway can’t shake her obsession. Clinton will always be a reminder of Conway’s own tainted accomplishment, the election of a man who will leave office under a cloud of unprecedented scandal and disastrous cultural and political wreckage, abetted by Conway’s willingness to cover for his misogyny and sexual predation. There is no shower that will wash that off.
Network anchor laughs in Paul Ryan’s face for trying to blame shutdown on Democrats
No one is falling for this.
The Republican public relations offensive on the rich asshole shutdown is failing spectacularly, and House Speaker Paul Ryan didn’t help matters when he tried to invent a narrative that people are blaming the shutdown on the Democrats.
During an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning, host John Dickerson asked Ryan why the rich asshole hasn’t fulfilled his promise to “fix” what is “broken” about Washington, D.C.
“some rich asshole didn’t shut down the government,” Ryan stated. “Why do they call this the ‘Schumer shutdown?’ Because Senate Democrats shut down the government.”
Ryan’s assertion that “they call this the Schumer shutdown” earned a chuckle from Dickerson, who interrupted Ryan to point out that only Republicans call it that.
“The ‘they’ is Republicans calling it the Schumer [shutdown],” Dickerson said.
After a few seconds of Ryan’s talking points, Dickerson told Ryan, “I’m not trying to assign blame, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
Indeed, most Americans are not fooled by Republican attempts to shift blame, and no amount of repetition will change the rich asshole shutdown into a “Schumer shutdown,” or anything else.
Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has no idea what the rich asshole has in mind for an end to the stalemate.
All Republicans have now are lies and reckless attacks. And they aren’t working.
George Papadopoulos’s fiancée hints that he has quite a lot to tell special counsel Robert Mueller — which is surely bad news for the rich asshole, but good news for the country.
Ever since George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in connection with the Russia probe, he has been an intense focus of special counsel Robert Mueller.
And according to his fiancée, he has quite a story to tell.
As The Washington Post reports, Simona Mangiante, who became engaged to Papadopoulos in late 2017, is convinced that he is integral to the entire story.
“I believe history will remember him like John Dean,” she declared.
Mangiante also suggested that “she believes [Papadopoulos] ultimately will emerge as more than a bit player in the Russia probe — and that his decision to cooperate after he was arrested getting off an airplane at Dulles International Airport in July was a key turning point.”
According to Mangiante, Papadopoulos is “very loyal” and “on the right side of history.”
“There’s a lot to come. He was the first one to break a hole on all of this,” she added.
Papadopoulos, who served on the rich asshole campaign’s national security team, gained attention last year following the revelation he met with a professor in London who claimed to have met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and said that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
Papadopoulos confided this in a drunken stupor to an Australian diplomat, who proceeded to tip off the FBI, sparking the initial inquiry into Russia in 2016.
the rich asshole subsequently tried to dismiss Papadopoulos as a mere “coffee boy.” But before he flipped, the rich asshole proudly featured him in pictures of his security team on his Twitter feed.
Mangiante’s insistence that Papadopoulos is a hero should be taken with a grain of salt. But it is clear that his eager cooperation with Mueller will be of no help to the rich asshole.
Fox News host Howard Kurtz is known for defending the rich asshole from critical voices in the media — which is exactly why his new book describing the chaotic the rich asshole White House is so damning.In the instant bestseller “Fire and Fury,” author Michael Wolff gave a scathing account of the unprecedented chaos inside the rich asshole White House, prompting a wave of frenzied media debate and howls of outrage from the rich asshole’s supporters. the rich asshole feared the book so much that he actually threatened a frivolous lawsuit against the publisher.
But as the Washington Post argues, an upcoming book by Fox News host Howard Kurtz could cause bigger problems for the rich asshole than anything Wolff wrote.
Kurtz is very favorable to the rich asshole in general, often defending him from more critical voices in the media. After it was revealed that the rich asshole rejected a deal on immigrant children for fear too many people would come in from “shithole countries,” Kurtz defended him, insisting the racism would have been totally fine if not for the profanity.
And yet in his new book, “Media Madness: some rich asshole, the Press, and the War Over the Truth,” Kurtz’s account essentially agrees with Wolff on the broader point: the rich asshole’s White House is in chaos, and even his own advisers have been taken aback by his poor and capricious judgment.
As the Post’s Aaron Blake notes, one of the most astonishing facets of the rich asshole’s behavior is that he “has a tendency to do whatever his advisers most strongly advise him against.”
For example, the rich asshole was reportedly “strongly advised” not to send then-press secretary Sean Spicer out in front of the cameras to argue with reporters about his inaugural crowd size. But he did it anyway — and later admitted, “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Much to the horror of then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, the rich asshole sent a tweet in August announcing his decision to ban transgender people from the military — a move that apparently came “out of nowhere” and completely blindsided his aides.
“Oh my God, he just tweeted this,” Priebus reportedly said at the time, according to the Post.
His advisers even have a name for that behavior, Blake notes. They call it “defiance disorder.”
the rich asshole has long shown that he is automatically against anything for which President Barack Obama advocated. But the fact that he is also compulsively in favor of what his advisers tell him he should not do is truly disturbing. He is essentially governing as a spiteful toddler — something that even his own chief of staff has confirmed.
If the rich asshole’s “defiance disorder” has shaped so much of his presidency, it bodes poorly for his ongoing capacity to make decisions or negotiations on anything — and even a the rich asshole-friendly Fox host can see that.
the rich asshole will tap billionaire who pushed for overseas private armies to lead intelligence agency: report
Stephen Feinberg -- YouTube
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
President some rich asshole is expected to choose the billionaire co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management — who has pushed for turning over the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan to mercenary armies and the CIA — to lead the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
According to six sources who spoke anonymously with Foreign Policy, New Yorker Stephen Feinberg, who has a substantial financial stake in private security firm DynCorp International, is the rich asshole’s top choice.
The report notes that last summer, Feinberg and Blackwater founder Erik Prince — the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — pitched plans to use military contractors in Afghanistan.
According to FP, the board Feinberg would head “has typically been composed of independent experts in business and academia, or retired military and intelligence professionals. The members serve in an unpaid capacity as a personal resource for the president on intelligence matters — reviewing everything from bio-weapons to intelligence failures.”
The report also notes that Feinberg has no experience in government — aside from his massive investment in military contractor DynCorp — but did donate a million dollars five days before the election to Rebuild America Now, a rich asshole-supporting super PAC that went hard after Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
According to a profile in The New Yorker, Feinberg has long been considered for a spot in the rich asshole administration, and that intelligence officials were alarmed when his name was floated previously.
“He’s a phenomenal manager of an investment fund, but his brilliance is in his trading. I don’t think he’d succeed in the bureaucratic environment of Washington,” said a Cerberus insider who agreed with that assessment.
Also of concern is his financial portfolio that is heavily tied to government contracts.
Foreign Policy reports, “Financial ties have complicated his road to power in the rich asshole administration. Cerberus wrote a letter to investors in February last year suggesting that if Feinberg accepted a position in government, he would need to turn over ‘voluminous information’ to the Office of Government Ethics to be scrutinized. Feinberg faces the same hurdle in joining the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.”
You can watch a 2017 video below via Bloomberg on the hurdles Feinberg might face:
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 01/22/18 02:28 PM EST
President the rich asshole on Monday hailed the end of the three-day government shutdown and sought to draw a hard line with Democrats in immigration negotiations.
“I am pleased that Democrats in Congress have come to their senses,” the rich asshole said in a statement, which White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders read to reporters at her daily briefing.
the rich asshole said he would make a deal with Democrats on immigration “only if it is good for our country,” adding that his priority is “solving the problem of very unfair illegal immigration.”
the rich asshole appears to be feeling emboldened after Democrats in the Senate agreed to a stopgap spending deal with Republicans, dropping their demand that an immigration measure is brought up right away.
Under a spending deal, lawmakers will have three weeks to broker an agreement on immigration before spending lapses again on Feb. 8.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised Democrats he would have an open immigration debate if a deal is not worked out before then.
Sanders said Democrats decided to drop their demand that an immigration package be tied to a spending bill because it was "indefensible."
"Democrats realized that the position they had taken, frankly, was indefensible and they had to focus on, first, funding our military, protecting border patrol agents, funding vulnerable children through the CHIP program," she said, referring to the Children's Health Insurance Program.
"These were things they didn't disagree with, they agreed with everything that was in this CR [continuing resolution]. The president stayed firm, Republicans stayed firm and Democrats realized they had to move past that piece of legislation to focus on the conversation they are desperate to have," she added, referring to the Democratic push to discuss immigration issues.
As Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress scrambled over the weekend to end the shutdown, the rich asshole was largely relegated to the sidelines.
The president made no public appearances after his last-ditch attempt to work out a spending deal with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer(D-N.Y.) failed.
The Democratic leader faulted the rich asshole for not getting involved in the shutdown talks, saying they had not spoken since their negotiating sessions last Friday hours before government funding expired.
“The great deal-making president sat on the sidelines,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
“Look, what the president did clearly worked,” Sanders responded, pointing to the 81-18 margin on a test vote in the Senate.
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 01/22/18 04:27 PM EST
The Senate voted Monday to reopen the government, ending a three-day standoff that left federal agencies shuttered and hundreds of thousands of workers furloughed.
The House is expected to approve the bill later and send it to President the rich asshole, allowing the government to completely reopen on Tuesday.
Senators voted 81-18 to approve the stopgap spending measure lasting until Feb. 8 after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised to allow an immigration bill to reach the floor next month.
The final vote came two hours after the Senate voted with a large bipartisan majority to end a Democratic filibuster.
“After several discussions, offers and counteroffers, the Republican leader and I have come to an arrangement. We will vote today to reopen the government to continue negotiating a global agreement,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after clinching a deal with McConnell.
The deal falls short of the Democrats’ initial demand that the rich asshole and GOP leaders agree to the rough outlines of a deal to replace the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and protect hundreds of thousands of “Dreamers” facing deportation.
the rich asshole and GOP leaders refused to negotiate on immigration while the government remained closed.
Schumer said McConnell has committed that if negotiators fail to reach an immigration deal before the stopgap spending measure expires on Feb. 8, “the Senate will immediately proceed to consideration of legislation” to protect Dreamers.
Schumer said McConnell has promised Democrats that immigration debate “will be neutral and fair to all sides.”
“Now there is a real pathway to get a bill on the floor and through the Senate. It is a good solution and I will vote for it,” Schumer said.
Democrats who supported the funding measure said they won two key concessions from McConnell: to bring a neutral immigration bill to the floor and to do it next month.
The bill also includes a six-year funding extension for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a critical priority for members of both parties. As many as 20 states would have run out of CHIP money — affecting millions of children — if Congress did not reach a deal by Feb. 1.
“This was a really public commitment, it was specific and it was not just to one member but to the whole body,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who voted for the measure.
Other Democrats were unhappy with the deal, which came under heavy fire from liberal outside groups.
“It’s a great disappointment to me and it’s a great disappointment to the more than 300,000 DACA young people in the state of California,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), referring to Dreamers in her state facing deportation.
Asked whether she had full confidence that McConnell would keep his commitment, Feinstein said, “Chuck Schumer trusts him. I haven’t been party to that discussion so I really can’t comment.”
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) bluntly dismissed the agreement with McConnell as a bad deal.
“I don’t see that there’s any reason — I’m speaking personally and hearing from my members — to support what was put forth,” she told reporters.
Liberal groups accused Democrats of caving.
“It’s official: Chuck Schumer is the worst negotiator in Washington — even worse than the rich asshole,” Credo Political Director Murshed Zaheed said in a statement. “Any plan to protect Dreamers that relies on the word of serial liars like Mitch McConnell, [Speaker] Paul Ryan [R-Wis.] or some rich asshole is doomed to fail.”
Several senators seen as potential White House candidates for the Democratic Party in 2020 voted against the funding bill, including Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Kamala Harris (Calif.).
The three-week bill is identical to a monthlong House bill that Democrats blocked on Friday night. Only five Democrats backed that measure, while four Republicans joined Democrats in objecting.
In the end, however, Democrats worried they lacked an endgame for ending the shutdown and were suffering political damage as Republicans hammered them for holding government funding hostage.
A nationwide CNN poll conducted by SSR showed the Democrats’ lead on the generic ballot has shrunk to only a 5-point advantage. The poll was conducted last week before the shutdown began on Friday.
Democrats can claim a small measure of victory from McConnell’s promise to bring an immigration bill to the floor next month and allow an open amendment process.
But there’s no assurance that the House will take up the immigration legislation.
Earlier Monday, Democrats said they could not feel assured that McConnell would hold up his bargain after he promised moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) during the tax-reform debate to pass legislation shoring up the individual insurance market before the end of the year. That bill is still in limbo.
McConnell also promised Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) — according to Flake’s version of events — that he would bring DACA legislation to the floor in January, something that has yet to happen and doesn’t appear likely at this point.
Collins told reporters before the vote that Democrats wanted stronger assurances.
“I do think it would be helpful if the language were a little bit stronger,” she said.
But GOP leaders felt they had the upper hand politically and refused to go any further.
“I think that’s all they’re going to get,” Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said before the vote.
Jordain Carney contributed.
Left says Dems caved on shutdown
BY RAFAEL BERNAL - 01/22/18 01:25 PM EST
Progressives are hammering Sen. Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) for his agreement with Senate Republican leadership to end the government shutdown on Monday.
Even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has spoken out against the deal, saying there was no reason to support it.
“I don’t see that there’s any reason — I’m speaking personally and hearing from my members — to support what was put forth,” Pelosi said at a press briefing shortly before Schumer signaled Senate Democrats would agree to it.
Activists took a harsher tone.
“It’s official: Chuck Schumer is the worst negotiator in Washington – even worse than the rich asshole,” said Murshed Zaheed, political director at Credo, a progressive advocacy group.
“Any plan to protect Dreamers that relies on the word of serial liars like [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell [R-Ky.], [House Speaker] Paul Ryan [R-Wis.] or [President] some rich asshole is doomed to fail,” Zaheed added.
Schumer and McConnell brokered a deal to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government until Feb. 8 in exchange for a compromise from Senate Republican leadership to hold a vote on DACA-replacement legislation by that date.
Activists were incensed at the deal, as it includes no guarantees that a bill will pass — nor does it tie an immigration bill to a must-pass measure to give Democrats leverage.
The agreement also includes no guarantees that a potential Senate agreement on DACA could see a vote in the House.
“Today's cave by Senate Democrats — led by weak-kneed, right-of-center Democrats — is why people don’t believe the Democratic Party stands for anything,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “These weak Democrats hurt the party brand for everyone and make it harder to elect Democrats everywhere in 2018.”
Schumer faced pressure to reach a deal from members of his caucus worried that the shutdown would hurt the party. Five Democrats had voted in favor of a House bill to keep the government open for a month.
Before the vote Monday, a slew of progressive activists held a call, pushing Democrats to demand a DACA deal in exchange for reopening the government.
“We’ve seen a number of promises from McConnell to his party members on [the Affordable Care Act] and the Dream Act,” said Greisa Martinez, advocacy and policy director at United We Dream.
“Promises are not results, promises are not protections,” she added, referring to so-far-unfulfilled commitments on immigration and health care made by McConnell to Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), in exchange for their votes on tax reform.
Democratic Senators with 2020 presidential aspirations also came out against the agreement.
“The Majority Leader’s comments last night fell far short of the ironclad guarantee I needed to support a stopgap spending bill,” said Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) “I refuse to put the lives of nearly 700,000 young people in the hands of someone who has repeatedly gone back on his word. I will do everything in my power to continue to protect Dreamers from deportation.”
Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) all voted against closing debate on the agreement.
CHERRY-PICKED
Team the rich asshole Bypassed DHS Analysts to Produce Bogus Terror Report
The rich asshole administration was clear: ‘An analysis conducted by DHS’ concluded that 73% of terrorists were ‘foreign-born.’ Except DHS analysts had nothing to do with the conclusion.
01.21.18 8:00 PM ET
The document didn’t mince words. It claimed three-quarters of “international terrorism” convicts were immigrants, an assertion meant to bolster some rich asshole’s cherished Muslim-focused ban on entering the country. And the report put the claim in the mouths of an agency assembled to keep Americans safe after 9/11: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Working off the 549 federal international-terrorism convictions tallied by the Justice Department, the document stated: “An analysis conducted by DHS determined that approximately 73 percent (402 of these 549 individuals) were foreign-born.”
But the Department of Homeland Security did not perform that analysis. DHS’ analysts did not contribute to the highly controversial report, The Daily Beast has learned.
According to a government source familiar with the episode, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ office took charge of the report’s assemblage of statistics—which some terrorism analysts consider highly misleading—and sent it to DHS Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen for her imprimatur after it was all but finalized.
“The the rich asshole administration is trying to turn counterterrorism into an immigration issue,” said Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina, where he tracks Muslim-American involvement in terrorism.
“Within DHS, the perception is that the rich asshole administration used the Department to conflate immigrants with terrorists in support of the president’s immigration crackdown.”
Career professional analysts at DHS communicated to the Justice Department that the data sought for the report simply did not exist within their department. DHS, multiple sources said, does not track or correlate international terrorism data by citizenship or country of origin, and have warned the rich asshole administration that doing so risks a misleading portrait of both terrorism and immigration.
The result was that the document released last week did not include the contributions of those career DHS officials tasked with providing professional and objective analysis. They were not asked to participate, and so the document did not reflect their input. The Justice Department took the lead on the report, as its public rollout indicated, complete with a senior Justice official conducting a White House press briefing.
RELATED IN POLITICS
To some within DHS, The Daily Beast has learned, the perception is that the rich asshole administration used the Department to conflate immigrants with terrorists in support of the president’s signature immigration crackdown.
“This kind of bureaucratic manipulation of what should be objective, professional analysis is what undermines confidence in these institutions,” said Michael German, a former FBI special agent now with New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.
A Justice Department official told The Daily Beast: “All essential components from DOJ and DHS contributed to the production of the Section 11 Report.”
After the story published, a Homeland Security official said in a statement that the story is “categorically false” and that DHS “worked jointly with DOJ for months” on the report. “For those of us who were actually involved, this story is as bizarre as it is fictional,” Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.
The report, issued Tuesday, flowed out of the rich asshole’s March executive order authorizing a modified version of the travel ban. But its story began earlier.
the rich asshole’s first travel ban, enacted in late January 2017, directed DHS, “in consultation with the attorney general,” to release data on immigration and terrorism. That included “the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses while in the United States” as well as those “convicted of terrorism-related offenses while in the United States” and removed from the U.S. for terrorism “or any other national security reasons.”
A month later, a DHS draft analysis was leaked to the Associated Press. That document criticized the methodology and implication of the travel ban. It noted that few people from the original seven countries covered by the travel ban were involved in terrorism on U.S. soil. And it was titled “Citizenship Likely an Unreliable Indicator of Terrorist Threat to the United States.”
While DHS’ analysts keep track of domestic terrorism data and immigration data, they do not cross-reference that data by citizenship.
“DHS does not keep [those] kind of stats, make these reports, or track this information. That’s solely in the purview of the [Justice Department],” a former senior DHS official said.
A second former DHS official confirmed that.
“You’re asking for information that isn’t tracked by DHS in that way. It’s almost as if DOJ would have to identify immigration convictions for terrorism things and then go to DHS to say, ‘Run this name and date of birth through your system and tell us this person’s immigration status,” this ex-DHS official told The Daily Beast.
Then, on March 2, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow published a different DHS analysis that went further. Most foreign-born terrorists who came to the U.S. “likely radicalized several years after their entry to the United States,” it found, “limiting the ability of screening and vetting officials to prevent their radicalization.” It referenced another as-yet-undisclosed DHS analysis of recent foreign-born terrorists that found they “began radicalizing, on average, 13 years after their entry to the United States.” The implication, undermining the rationale for the so-called Muslim ban, is that immigrants don’t come to the United States to commit terrorism; most of those who become terrorists do so long after they become Americans.
Nevertheless, the next version of the ban, issued four days later, also mandated public release of the same immigration-tied terrorism data as the January iteration required. Its 11th section once again charged “the Secretary of Homeland Security” with the data disclosure, “in consultation with the Attorney General.”
DHS, according to the government source, communicated through the interagency channels set out in the executive order that it doesn’t keep the data the order sought. Accordingly, some within DHS considered the data request inappropriate, and an indication the administration was laundering a misleading report through the department’s reputation. The lack of the requested data and the internal discomfort about assembling it anyway were among the reasons why the report came months later than the September deadline specified in the executive order.
Ultimately, the government source said, DHS’ analysts did not contribute anything of substance, and the Justice Department took charge. It was a longstanding preoccupation of Attorney General Sessions. As a senator, Sessions had taken to publishing charts tracking the immigration status of people charged with terrorism offenses.
Yet the FBI, which also aggressively tracks terrorism data—it administers the Terrorist Screening Center, which oversees the various terrorism watchlists – also did not play a substantial role in preparing the report, The Daily Beast has learned. An FBI spokesman referred comment to DHS and the Justice Department.
The major extent of DHS’ involvement in the report, according to the source, was Secretary Nielsen’s sign-off, shortly before its public release.
“This report is a clear reminder of why we cannot continue to rely on immigration policy based on pre-9/11 thinking that leaves us woefully vulnerable to foreign-born terrorists, and why we must examine our visa laws and continue to intensify screening and vetting of individuals traveling to the United States to prevent terrorists, criminals, and other dangerous individuals from reaching our country,” Nielsen said in a Tuesday statement.
Sessions has been trying to get back into the rich asshole’s good graces after recusing himself from the Russia inquiry, which has prompted the rich asshole to grow so irate with Sessions that the attorney general offered to resign. Shortly after the release of the report, Sessions said it highlighted the “ indisputable sobering reality” that “our immigration system has undermined our national security and public safety.”
the rich asshole seemed to approve. “New report from DOJ & DHS shows that nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born,” he tweeted the day of the report’s release—conspicuously omitting that the report only covered international terrorism, and had by design omitted domestic terrorism. He continued: “We need to keep America safe, including moving away from a random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit-based.”
His press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said the report “highlights the urgent need for Congress to adopt the immigration reforms identified in the administration’s priorities.” She was accompanied at the podium by a senior Justice Department official, Ed O’Callaghan.
Almost immediately afterward, other terrorism studies came to starkly different conclusions about terrorism in the U.S. and immigration.
“Here’s a government report focused just on Muslim terrorism... and ignoring the facts that white terrorists killed more people in 2017 than Muslim terrorists.”
— Former DHS terrorism analyst Daryl Johnson
On Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League released its own analysis of terrorism inside the U.S. in 2017. Though its scope was different than the administration’s, the ADL found that 59 percent of extremist-related deaths in the U.S. in 2017 were caused by white supremacists and far-right extremists.
Then, on Thursday, Kurzman, the North Carolina professor, published his annual index of Muslim-American involvement in terrorism. (PDF) Like the ADL report, its focus is different than the Justice-DHS offering. But it found “no attacks in 2017 by Muslim-American extremists with family backgrounds in travel-ban countries.” Since 9/11, terrorists from ban countries “have caused zero fatalities and 32 injuries” domestically. For good measure, Kurzman’s report noted, “almost twice as many people were killed in the United States by mass shootings in 2017 as have been killed by Muslim-American extremists in the past 16 years.”
Though the Justice-DHS report was an outgrowth of the travel ban, it notably did not associate its purported 73 percent of foreign-born terrorism convictions with travel-ban countries—an omission Kurzman believes occurred because “it would show there’s very little violence from folks from the travel-ban countries.”
But a larger omission in the report intrigues Kurzman: domestic terrorism.
According to data referenced by federal prosecutors around the country, there have been approximately 1,400 cases of domestic terrorism prosecuted since 9/11, a total more than twice the 549 cases of international terrorism that the Justice-DHS report examined. Since the data format excludes relevant information like case docket numbers, Kurzman and the Brennan Center have filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the missing domestic-terrorism information. If successful, they seek to use this much larger data set to determine, among other things, a more comprehensive picture of the relationship between terrorism and immigration.
Chances are, the professional analysts at DHS could tell them that.
“Here’s a government report focused just on Muslim terrorism and demonizing that threat and ignoring the facts that white terrorists killed more people in 2017 than Muslim terrorists,” said Daryl Johnson—a former professional DHS terrorism analyst.
“It’s strictly focused on trying to implicate Muslim immigration and terrorism and hype up the threat.”
—with additional reporting by Betsy Woodruff
CHUCK DUCKS
Dems Fold on This Shutdown, But the Next One Could Be Worse
Chuck Schumer accepted Mitch McConnell’s promise to vote on Dreamers in exchange for reopening the government. If he breaks that promise, all hell will break loose.
01.22.18 2:13 PM ET
Two truths emerged from a deal that the Senate cut on Monday to re-open the federal government after a weekend-long shutdown. The first is that Democrats caved. The second is that they find themselves somewhat better positioned for what is likely to be another, far more bitter, shutdown battle in the coming weeks.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced on Monday that he would accept a deal that would fund the government through Feb. 8 in exchange for a relatively vague promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.) to bring up legislation that would address the so-called Dreamers—undocumented youth brought to the U.S. illegally.
The deal was, on its surface, devoid of a major win for either party—but especially for Democrats. Republicans kicked the can down the road on government funding, but they also gave no concrete policy concessions in exchange for votes. A majority of Senate Democrats sided with them anyway.
“Are you looking for a spine?” one top Senate Democratic aide told The Daily Beast after the Senate vote concluded. “Because, I don’t have one to sell you.”
But the loss obscured what others saw as a longer term gain for Democrats. As Congress now goes about considering immigration reform, there are new political variables at play.
Republicans no longer have children’s health care as a political cudgel against Democrats, since the bill that passed on Monday includes a six-year authorization for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). And McConnell is on the spot to follow through on his pledge to resolve the standoff over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
“Grassroots pressure now has to become utterly overwhelming,” MoveOn’s political director Ben Wikler texted The Daily Beast immediately after the vote.
The Democrats who voted for the stopgap funding extension on Monday argued that McConnell’s promise was so public that it would be a political disaster for the majority leader if he reneged.
“There is no way that we would have been on immigration had we not forced the issue,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told The Daily Beast, characterizing the shutdown as a victory. “This is the first time ever that, under Republican control, we’re taking up this issue. … Had we not stood firm, there’s no way that Leader McConnell would be taking up DACA.”
In private, some Democrats expressed relief that the standoff came to a quick end. In the days leading up to the government shutdown, top activists in the party were torn over whether it was a good idea at all. One close Schumer adviser told The Daily Beast that the minority leader was walking into an altogether unwinnable situation and that the best maneuver would be to pocket the CHIP extension and fight another day.
“The problem is that Democrats got the balls to shut the government down mid-last week,” said the senior aide. “And the problem is that when, on Wednesday, you have the balls to do it, you don’t have enough time to message what the shutdown is about.”
A top Democratic pollster told The Daily Beast that the numbers did favor the party heading into the shutdown. But as the public became aware of the details of the disagreements, the reaction turned into a “pox on both your houses” moment. In particular, there was real fear that Democrats were being successfully tarred with hurting the military—a point that Vice President Mike Pence notably used during his trip to the Middle East.
In agreeing to a deal, these advisers insist, Schumer got the party out of a bind that was only likely to worsen.
Others saw it far differently. Progressive activists in particular fumed at Schumer for agreeing to provide the votes to reopen the government, pointing to McConnell’s past promises to his fellow Republicans which have gone unmet—including a commitment to Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) to have a DACA bill on the Senate floor in January. Sixteen Democrats voted against Monday’s stopgap bill to reopen the government, many for precisely that reason.
“I don’t believe [McConnell] made any commitment whatsoever,” said Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). “And I think it would be fool-hearted to believe that he made a commitment.”
Nor is Monday’s result any relief to immigrant communities who have watched DACA protections evaporate and who now see the March 5 deadline for the program to expire inch even closer. CREDO, a progressive political advocacy organization that helped draft a letter in December alongside more than 130 progressive groups urging that a clean DREAM Act be added to any spending bill, blasted Schumer as ”the worst negotiator in Washington.”
“Any plan to protect Dreamers that relies on the word of serial liars like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan or some rich asshole is doomed to fail,” political director Murshed Zaheed wrote in an email to The Daily Beast.
Inside the White House, the mood was more celebratory. By early afternoon on Monday, President some rich asshole was already commenting that Democrats on Capitol Hill had “choked” and “caved” so quickly, according to two administration officials.
Though the president was eager to show he wasn’t sitting on the sidelines of this fight—“itching” to get personally involved and claim some credit, as one senior official framed it to The Washington Post—some of his closest advisers had repeatedly counseled him to keep his distance. Still, the White House was determined to spin the deal struck on Monday afternoon as the result of the labor and the conviction of a president who, despite an appearance to the contrary, was in control the whole time.
“[the rich asshole] made clear no negotiations until the #SchumerShutdown was ended and military and first responders no longer held hostage,” White House Deputy Communications Director Jessica Ditto tweeted at a reporter who pointed out on Monday that Democrats had managed to hand “a disengaged president a win.”
—with additional reporting by Asawin Suebsaeng
Ted Cruz Claims: ‘I Have Consistently Opposed Shutdowns’
01-22-18
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday claimed that he has “consistently opposed shutdowns” despite him shutting down the government in 2013 over Obamacare funding. “Senate Democrats oppose everything, resist everything, shut everything down,” the conservative senator lamented during a brief press availability. “This sounds pretty familiar,” MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt shot back, referring to Cruz’s demands in the 2013 ordeal. “In 2013, I voted repeatedly to fund the government and, in 2013, it was Harry Reid and the Democrats who voted no, who voted to shut the government down.” Asked whether shutdowns should be used as political leverage, Cruz bafflingly replied, “We should not be shutting the government down. I have consistently opposed shutdowns. In 2013, I said we shouldn’t shut the government down; I went to the floor asking unanimous consent to reopen the government.” When Hunt noted that he actually “stood in the way of that,” Cruz snapped back that his role in the 2013 shutdown is just “a wonderful media narrative.”
WATCH: Ted Cruz gets busted by MSNBC reporter for lying about his role in 2013 government shutdown
Sen. Ted Cruz (MSNBC)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Reporters called out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for misrepresenting his role in the last government shutdown.
The Texas Republican blamed “angry” Democrats for shutting down the federal government in an attempt to derails President some rich asshole’s agenda, but MSNBC congressional correspondent Kasie Hunt refuse to let him weasel out of the 2013 shutdown he helped engineer.
“They’re angry, they hate the president and demanding Senate Democrats oppose everything, resist everything, shut everything down,” Cruz said, and Hunt told him that reminded her of what he said more than four years ago. “Now i recognize that is a media narrative you love to tell, but it’s worth noting in 2013 –”
“‘Green Eggs and Ham?'” Hunt interrupted, reminding Cruz of the children’s book he read during a filibuster in 2013.
“In 2013, I voted repeatedly to fund the government, and in 2013 it was Harry Reid and the democrats who voted no, who voted to shut the government down just like this week Republicans voted to fund the government, and it was Chuck Schumer who voted to shut the government down,” Cruz said.
Cruz and other Senate Republicans at the time kept attaching amendments to the appropriations bill that would have defunded the Affordable Care Act, which President Barack Obama threatened to veto.
“We should not be shutting the government down,” Cruz said. “I have consistently opposed shutdowns. In 2013 I said we shouldn’t shut the government down. I went to the floor asking unanimous consent to reopen the government.”
Hunt wasn’t letting Cruz wriggle out of that.
“Sir, you stood in the way of that,” Hunt said, and Cruz insisted she was “factually incorrect. “It’s not, though.”
Cruz blamed Democrats for the previous shutdown — but Hunt again called him out by reminding him of his scheme to undo Obamacare before it could fully take effect.
“Sir, that’s simply not the case,” she said. “This was about Obamacare funding.”
Cruz accused the reporter of trying to debate him without any facts, but Hunt kept pushing.
“Why were all of your GOP colleagues angry with you if you didn’t?” she said.
Cruz then tried to escape blame by shoving it back on fellow Republicans.
“In 2013, unfortunately, Republicans were divided,” he said. “That was a mistake and I wrote a book a couple years ago called ‘A Time for Truth.’ I walked through what happened and said the mistake made then in 2013 by Senate Republican leadership was to turn and attack House Republicans, and fellow Republicans and to turn Republicans on each other. That was a mistake. I wish it had not happened and I’m glad it didn’t happen this time. This time Republicans actually stayed united.”
Then he went on to blame the media for pushing the idea that Republicans caused government shutdowns.
“It’s actually, I think, one of the reasons why we saw a shutdown,” Cruz said. “Because, I think, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats believed they could shut the government down and reporters would dutifully blame it on the Republicans, no matter what the facts were.”
Cruz took a few more questions from other reporters before excusing himself to leave, and Hunt recapped what had just happened.
“That was an interesting exchange,” Hunt said. “I would just like to say, I was going back and forth with the senator. He’s technically correct about the way that the procedure of this played out, but there is no question about how the government shutdown unfolded in 2013, which is that Senate Republicans pushed to defund Obamacare.”
“Ted Cruz angered many of his own colleagues, there were testy meetings, he was essentially an outcast,” she continued. “Mitch McConnell was not happy with him, and the government shut down because clearly Senate Democrats were not going to go along with a budget agreement that defunded Obamacare. The dynamics were a little different, but if there’s any comparison to be made here it would be in this particular case Democrats obviously do not control the Senate. They were making certain demands about what is included in a measure, refused to provide the votes for a shutdown. So I think if you want to make a comparison, you can compare Senate Democrats to Ted Cruz.
Senate Democrats cave, provide votes based on McConnell’s empty promise
For now, the fate of many DREAMers hang in the balance.
The Senate, according to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), will vote in favor of a bill to reopen the government on Monday and fund it for three weeks.
“We will vote today to reopen the government to continue negotiating a global agreement with the commitment that if an agreement isn’t reached by February the 8th, the Senate will immediately proceed to consideration of legislation dealing with DACA,” Schumer said.
The vote came after a morning meeting where key senators, mainly moderates, met with leadership to strike a deal.
“It’s abundantly clear that the Senate cannot make progress on any of these crucial matters until the government is reopened,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on the Senate floor Monday morning. “We need to move forward and the first step is ending the shutdown. It’s evident that this government shutdown is doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to generate bipartisan progress on the issues the American people care about.”
But the compromise hinges on nothing more than a promise that McConnell will follow through on his intentions to bring a DACA fix before the March deadline. This doesn’t amount to much. He made the same promise to Jeff Flake in December to win his vote for tax legislation.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who holds hardline views on immigration, said he hadn’t heard anything new in what McConnell is saying on immigration, beyond what he has said repeatedly for weeks.
There is no agreement in the House to take up any DACA legislation, even if it passes the Senate. If the House does not consider the legislation, or votes against legislation passed by the Senate, it will have have no impact on the 800,000 young people whose lives are now in limbo.
In spite of this, Schumer said on the Senate floor shortly before the Monday vote that there is a “real pathway” forward to get a bipartisan DACA fix.
“I’m confident that we can get the 60 votes in the Senate for a DACA bill. And now there is a real pathway to get a bill on the floor and through the senate,” Schumer said. “It is a good solution, and I will vote for it. I’m incredibly grateful to the bipartisan group that has come together in recent days to renew the immigration debate with a sense of urgency.”
McConnell’s spokesman made clear that he is not agreeing to vote on any specific legislation, just a process that could end in stalemate.
Democrats who took the McConnell deal include Senators from states where the rich asshole won in 2016 and face re-election in the 2018 midterms. Even Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), a vocal advocate for immigrants in the Senate, reportedly was reportedly convinced by McConnell’s promise.
Some Democrats, seeing that the deal had won over the approval of Durbin, followed his lead.
Meanwhile, the fate of 800,000 DACA recipients remains in balance. By the March 5 deadline to renew the program — which was ended by President some rich asshole in September — 22,000 immigrants will have lost their DACA protections. After the March 5 deadline, thousands more will lose their protections each day.
Zinke’s ‘political stunt’ on offshore drilling continues to backfire
President the rich asshole is reportedly unhappy with his Interior secretary.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is facing criticism from the White House for his unexpected decision to exempt Florida from the administration’s sweeping new proposal to subject essentially all federal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling, according to news reports.
One White House official accused Zinke of going “rogue” by abruptly removing Florida from the list of states only one week after the Interior Department released its five-year offshore drilling plan, Axios reported Sunday. Oddly, Zinke announced his decision to let Florida off the hook on Twitter, instead of through more formal channels.
Moreover, at a House hearing on Friday, Walter Cruickshank, acting director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), told lawmakers that Florida is not off the table for offshore drilling activities, contradicting Zinke’s earlier tweets, which only added to the confusion over where the administration stands on offshore drilling. Cruickshank said Zinke’s statement “is not an official statement.”
Sources also told Axios that Zinke’s alleged unilateral decision to remove Florida from the plan has damaged his standing with President some rich asshole. Zinke gave the White House no notice of the action, the news outlet reported.
On January 4, the rich asshole administration released its proposed five-year offshore oil and gas leasing plan, kicking off a 60-day public comment period during which affected communities would be given the chance to weigh in on the administration’s plan. Legal experts, however, have pointed out that Zinke’s move to hastily exempt Florida is likely illegal.
Offshore leasing decisions are subject to a number of federal laws, including the Administrative Procedures Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, that dictate formal processes for how the Department of the Interior must consider, and revise, its decisions regarding which offshore areas can be opened up to oil and gas.
By announcing a change in the proposal only a few days into the process, Zinke demonstrated that the administration isn’t following the required procedure, legal experts argued. The move also raised flags about whether the decision was arbitrary or capricious, two things prohibited by administrative law.
“It’s anyone’s guess what’s going on in some rich asshole’s head, but what we do know is that while Secretary Zinke makes empty promises and tries to govern by tweet, coastal communities are left guessing about whether or not they will be subjected to the dangers of offshore drilling,” Lena Moffitt, senior director of the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America campaign, said Monday in an email. “This debacle has further highlighted some rich asshole and his administration’s incompetence and failure to take the health, safety, and economic well-being of coastal communities seriously.”
In response to Zinke’s move to exempt Florida, both Democratic and Republican governors have called for their coastal states to be spared from the offshore drilling expansion. On the Atlantic Coast, Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), a strong the rich asshole ally, is the only governor who has said he favors offshore oil and gas drilling. Zinke has pledged to meet with other governors after they publicly asked for their states to be taken off the list, but there has been no word on any other possible exemptions, even though they’re objecting on the same grounds as Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
Conservation Law Foundation senior counsel Peter Shelley said there does not appear to be any credible thought process behind Zinke’s Florida decision. “It really exposes how shallow the administration’s thinking was behind this whole process,” he said Monday in an email to ThinkProgress.
Any coastal state in the continental United States can make the same or greater claims of economic risk as Florida apparently did from future renewed offshore exploration and drilling, according to Shelley. “This whole episode is starting to look like more of a political stunt than a serious effort to expand [outer continental shelf] fossil fuel development, but it is necessary to regard it as real until all the announcements are pulled back by BOEM,” he said.
BOEM issued a notice Monday that, due to the federal government shutdown, more than half-a-dozen public meetings scheduled for Monday through Thursday on the proposed offshore program have been postponed to a date to be announced.
Article updated at 2 p.m. ET on January 22, 2018, to include comments from a Sierra Club representative.
Pence denies the rich asshole had affair with adult film actor in 2006. A lot of evidence suggests he’s lying.
The VP wants you to believe reports about the affair are "baseless."
During an interview with the Associated Press on Monday, Vice President Mike Pence characterized reports that some rich asshole engaged in an affair with an adult film actor as “baseless.”
Asked about the relationship between the rich asshole and Stephanie Clifford — aka Stormy Daniels — Pence told the AP he is “not going to comment on the latest baseless allegations against the president.”
It’s unclear if Pence discussed his alleged relationship with Daniels with the president. But there is quite a bit of evidence in the public record suggesting the rich asshole and Daniels were involved.
Last Friday, InTouch magazine published a lengthy 2011 interview with Daniels in which she details how her affair with the rich asshole unfolded — an account corroborated by some of the rich asshole’s tweets from years gone by. Earlier last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the rich asshole’s private lawyer, Michael Cohen, used a private Delaware company and pseudonyms to pay $130,000 in hush money to Daniels just weeks before the 2016 presidential election. At the time, the rich asshole was being accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women.
In a statement sent to the WSJ, Cohen didn’t deny making a payment to Daniels. And it seems far-fetched to believe that Daniels would have concocted a such a detailed story about her relationship with the rich asshole years before he decided to run for president. According to In Touch, Daniels also passed a polygraph test.
During an appearance at a strip club in Greenville, South Carolina on Saturday, Daniels didn’t deny that she had an affair with the rich asshole.
Nonetheless, the White House’s strategy is to simply deny. It’s the same approach administration officials have taken when the topic of the sexual assault allegations that have been made against the rich asshole comes up — staunchly insist all of the accusers are lying.
Regardless of what exactly happened between the rich asshole and Daniels, the hush money the rich asshole camp allegedly paid her may be problematic in and of itself. On Monday, Common Cause filed a Federal Election Commission complaint alleging that the $130,000 payments from Essential Consultants LLC to Cllifford “violated reporting requirements and contribution limits and restrictions of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA)” because “the funds were paid for the purpose of influence the 2016 presidential general election — in violating [of] campaign finance reporting requirements.”
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 01/22/18 04:12 PM EST
More Americans are crediting former President Obama for the state of the economy than President Trump, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found.
The poll, released Sunday, found that 50 percent of voters believe the Obama administration deserves credit for the U.S. economy, compared to 38 percent who said the same of the Trump administration.
Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the state of the U.S. economy, lauding records set by the Dow Jones industrial average since he took office, along with lower unemployment numbers.
The president most recently tweeted about the economy over the weekend, bragging about the “Record Stock Market.”
He also tweeted that those participating in the Women’s March, a protest against him and his policies, should be celebrating the “unprecedented economic success and wealth creation” that has taken place during his administration.
Unprecedented success for our Country, in so many ways, since the Election. Record Stock Market, Strong on Military, Crime, Borders, & ISIS, Judicial Strength & Numbers, Lowest Unemployment for Women & ALL, Massive Tax Cuts, end of Individual Mandate - and so much more. Big 2018!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018
Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018
Trump signed the GOP tax plan into law late last year, creating incentives for businesses to come to the U.S.
However, voters have regularly said in polls that Obama is more responsible for the economy than Trump.
ABC News/Washington Post interviewed 1,005 adults by phone from Jan. 15-18. The poll has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
January 22, 2018
Cristina Maza
Posted with permission from Newsweek
President Donald Trump is known to fake an Indian accent to imitate Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Oval Office meetings, according to reports.
The information surfaced at a time when Trump is being accused of racism for reportedly referring to places such as Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations as “shithole” countries during immigration talks. Many spectators said the comments were racist because the citizens of these countries are people of color. Trump was also slammed in November when he referred to Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” a reference allegedly aimed to mock her assertion that she has Native American roots.
In addition, Trump was heavily criticized over the summer when he made comments that appeared sympathetic to neo-Nazi demonstrators who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Now, senior administration officials have told The Washington Post that Trump is known to use an Indian accent when imitating Modi, adding another charge to the accusations of racism. Trump appears to maintain a friendly relationship with the Indian premier. During a visit to the U.S. in June last year, Modi called Trump a “true friend.” Trump, in return, described his relationship with Modi as having “never been stronger, has never been better.”
The two men also publicly embraced as they prepared to renew the alliances between their two countries.
Many of the details from the June meeting remain unknown, but an official joint statement shows that the two leaders spoke about security in India’s neighbors Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"India and America have played an important role in rebuilding Afghanistan and ensuring its security," the statement read. "In order to attain our objectives for peace and stability in Afghanistan, we will maintain close consultation and communication."
Likewise, former President Barack Obama worked to strengthen the U.S. relationship with India and renewed a 10-year U.S.-India defense framework agreement.
Melina Delkic
Posted with permission from Newsweek
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon once told Ivanka Trump: “You’re just another staffer who doesn’t know what you’re doing,” according to a new book.
Related: Ivanka Trump's "special place in hell" for child predators comment trolls Roy Moore rally
Bannon, who has long critiqued and clashed with Ivanka's and her husband Jared Kushner's roles in the White House, tried to put the president's daughter in her place in one instance detailed in the book.
“My daughter loves me as a dad...You love your dad. I get that. But you’re just another staffer who doesn’t know what you’re doing," Bannon said, The Washington Post reported when it published excerpts on Monday.
The revelation is part of the latest book about life inside the White House. Howard Kurtz, host of the Fox News show Media Buzz, wrote the book Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press, And The War Over The Truth, set to be released on January 29.
The new book, though perhaps not as sensational as the explosive tell-all Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, contains several new alleged revelations about the administration. Along with reports of the turbulent relationship between Ivanka Trump and Bannon, are claims that the president himself leaked information to journalists, that his aides referred to his behavior as "defiance disorder" and that his staff was "blindsided" when he accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones.
The president's daughter has occasionally strayed from the White House message. Most recently she tweeted support for Oprah Winfrey's famous speech at the Golden Globes about empowering women, which some critics saw as hypocrisy in the context of her father's 19 sexual assault accusers.
In another departure, she responded swiftly after news of then-Senate candidate Roy Moore's alleged sexual misconduct with teenagers broke, saying there was "a special place in hell" for people who preyed on children. It was a notable deviation from the administration, which avoided talking about the allegations for days before the president officially endorsed the candidate. Following the incident, Bannon hit out at the president's daughter publicly, mocking her comments when saying that there was "a special place in hell for Republicans who should know better."
Related: Ivanka Trump's "special place in hell" for child predators comment trolls Roy Moore rally
Bannon, who has long critiqued and clashed with Ivanka's and her husband Jared Kushner's roles in the White House, tried to put the president's daughter in her place in one instance detailed in the book.
“My daughter loves me as a dad...You love your dad. I get that. But you’re just another staffer who doesn’t know what you’re doing," Bannon said, The Washington Post reported when it published excerpts on Monday.
The revelation is part of the latest book about life inside the White House. Howard Kurtz, host of the Fox News show Media Buzz, wrote the book Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press, And The War Over The Truth, set to be released on January 29.
The new book, though perhaps not as sensational as the explosive tell-all Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, contains several new alleged revelations about the administration. Along with reports of the turbulent relationship between Ivanka Trump and Bannon, are claims that the president himself leaked information to journalists, that his aides referred to his behavior as "defiance disorder" and that his staff was "blindsided" when he accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones.
The president's daughter has occasionally strayed from the White House message. Most recently she tweeted support for Oprah Winfrey's famous speech at the Golden Globes about empowering women, which some critics saw as hypocrisy in the context of her father's 19 sexual assault accusers.
In another departure, she responded swiftly after news of then-Senate candidate Roy Moore's alleged sexual misconduct with teenagers broke, saying there was "a special place in hell" for people who preyed on children. It was a notable deviation from the administration, which avoided talking about the allegations for days before the president officially endorsed the candidate. Following the incident, Bannon hit out at the president's daughter publicly, mocking her comments when saying that there was "a special place in hell for Republicans who should know better."
McConnell promises immigration debate if government reopens
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 01/22/18 10:29 AM EST
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday promised to take up an immigration bill protecting an estimated 800,000 "Dreamers" from deportation and allow an open amendment process if Democrats agree to reopen the government.
The Senate will vote at noon on a three-week funding resolution to end the government shutdown that began at midnight Saturday. The legislation includes an extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Democrats have been pressing McConnell for a vote on the Dreamers legislation, and it is unclear whether his latest commitments will be enough to win them over.
With some Republicans expected to vote against the bill, nearly a dozen Democratic votes will likely be needed to clear a 60-vote procedural hurdle.
Senate Democrats and Republicans will try to negotiate an immigration compromise before the pending stopgap measure would expire on Feb. 8, if that stopgap is approved.
If they fail to reach a deal, McConnell promised he will bring an immigration bill to the floor in February.
But McConnell said his promise would only be good if Democrats agree to reopen the government.
“Should these issues not be resolved by the time the funding bill before us expires on Feb. 8, so long as the government remains open, it would be my intention to take up legislation here in the Senate that would address DACA, border security and related issues as well as disaster relief,” McConnell said, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program started by President Obama that President the rich asshole is winding down.
The GOP leader pledged “this immigration debate will have a level playing field at the outset and an amendment process that is fair to all sides,” he said.
Behind the scenes, a group of centrist Democrats and Republicans have been trying to work out a deal on immigration.
Democrats leaving a meeting of moderate senators on Monday morning said they are still discussing how to get a firmer commitment for a vote to protect young immigrants in the country illegally.
"We just need a commitment on that that's firm, that we know we're going to be on it, the question is how firm the commitment [will be]" said Sen Tim Kaine (D-Va.) leaving the meeting in Sen Susan Collins's (R-Maine) office.
Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said they need a "real commitment" to bring up an immigration bill.
No Democrats said leaving the meeting that they are changing their votes. Though when asked how he would vote at a noon vote on Monday, Sen Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said he thought that vote could be postponed if negotiators need more time.
Republicans who attended the meeting said McConnell should have been more specific with his promise to ensure Democrats vote "yes."
"I do think it would be helpful if the language were a little bit stronger," Collins told reporters.
But she also gave McConnell credit, saying the GOP leader "had moved to accommodate the concerns that have been raised" about needing a commitment on immigration.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) predicted McConnell will make a "firmer commitment when it seems like it will matter."
"I think if Mitch were a little firmer as to 'we are going to move to immigration. ... There will be a process where everybody will be heard,'" he said.
Graham suggested that Democrats go to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and tell him that they will vote for the continuing resolution if McConnell will use more specific language.
McConnell has said he intends to take up an immigration bill if a larger deal can't be reached by Feb. 8.
But Democrats are quick to point to previous commitments to GOP Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Collins that did not come to fruition.
Flake, asked how Democrats could trust McConnell, noting that the GOP leader was making a "pretty high-profile promise."
Republican leaders, however, said Democrats have no reason to be distrustful.
"I think they ought to believe him because he's a trustworthy, honorable person. And I realize there's ... a trust deficit up here generally. But I think one of the first steps to regaining that trust is for the leader to make that commitment and follow through on it," said Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Cornyn said Democrats would not get a more ironclad promise.
"No, I think that's all they're going to get," he said.
Peter Sullivan and Jordain Carney contributed.
Updated at 10:59 a.m.
A year into his presidency, the rich asshole is breaking one of his big ethics pledges
A year into his presidency, no payments have been made.
An Associated Press report on Monday showed that despite President the rich asshole’s pledge to donate all profits his hotels received from foreign governments, his business has not yet made a single payment to the U.S. Treasury.
In 2017, the rich asshole International Hotel in Washington, D.C. hosted several events entertaining groups from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Kuwait, as well as another promoting business between the United States and Turkey. The initial deadline to make a donation of those profits was set for the end of last year, but the deadline came and went with no payout.
“the rich asshole officials, who have openly questioned how closely they should scrutinize their guests…now say they would have ‘information to share’ near the end of next month,” the report added.
Overall, the rich asshole Organization has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits from various foreign governments in the past year, according to a report released earlier in January by Public Citizen.
“some rich asshole entered office with the most blatant and potentially corrupting conflicts of interest in the history of American politics, and things only got worse from there,” Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said in a release. “Business is booming at the rich asshole International Hotel in D.C., not because of the décor, but because corporations and foreign governments want to curry favor with the president.”
Alan Zibel, the Public Citizen report’s author, added, “some rich asshole is a man who is easily flattered. Corporations and foreign governments know the best way to get on his good side is to open up their wallets at one of the rich asshole’s many businesses.”
Both reports contradict the rich asshole’s earlier promises that he would not profit off of foreign contributions to his businesses. Shortly before his inauguration in January 2017, the rich asshole’s attorneys responded to concerns about his many conflicts of interest — he maintains close ties to his businesses, despite handing over control of the the rich asshole Organization’s daily operations to his sons, Eric and Donald Jr. — by arguing that he was not subject to the same rules as any other elected official. Still, they said, the president wanted to go above and beyond what was required of him by giving all profits from foreign officials staying at his hotels to the U.S. Treasury.
“Just like with conflicts of interest, he wants to do more than what the Constitution requires,” the rich asshole’s tax attorney Sheri Dillon stated at the time. “So President-elect the rich asshole has decided, and we are announcing today, that he is going to voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotels to the United States Treasury. This way it is the American people who will profit.”
In the months that followed, however, it was the rich asshole’s businesses that profited, including the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, which raked in more than $37 million between January 2016 and spring 2017 — a dramatic increase from the $30 million reported in 2015 and $16 million in 2014. Analysts credited the sharp rise in profits to the rich asshole’s frequent visits to what he has referred to as the “Winter White House”, as well as the club’s decision in January 2017 to up its membership fee to $200,000.
The rich asshole International Hotel in Washington also reported at least $20 million in profits during that time, despite having a lower-than-average occupancy rate. Part of the reason for the surprise profit — the hotel was projected to lose approximately $2.1 million in the first half of 2017, but turned a profit of $1.97 million instead, according to the Washington Post — was the hotel’s high room rates, which average out to around $652.98 per night. Visitors to the hotel also spent $8.2 million on food and drinks during that same period.
Part of those profits came from foreign entities, which captured the attention of ethics watchdogs. In June 2017, the hotel received $270,000 from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through the Quorvis MSLGroup, the Daily Caller reported. The group was working on behalf of the Saudi government to lobby against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which allows victims to sue foreign governments for “physical injury, death, or damage” sustained during an extremist attack.
“This is a textbook example of a foreign government paying directly into the President’s pocketbook while pursuing its own policy goals,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD), top-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said at the time. “Saudi Arabia is spending vast amounts of money at President the rich asshole’s hotel while at the same time pressing to limit the rights of U.S. citizens to sue the Saudi government.”
A White House spokeswoman at the time stated that the rich asshole, who has refused to divest himself from his interest in the property and therefore rakes in the money from any of its high-profile visits, would donate “profits of this transaction” to the Treasury at the end of the year, which he still has not done.
In September last year, the White House once again came under fire for refusing to answer questions about the Malaysian prime minister’s visit to Washington, during which he and his delegation spent a considerable amount of time at the rich asshole International Hotel, hosting meetings and attending formal breakfasts in the property’s Lincoln Library room. According to the Washington Post, similar events of this size have, in the past, generated “hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for the rich asshole Organization.”
When pressed on the details of Prime Minister Najib Razak’s visit, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders argued that the administration “certainly [didn’t] book their hotel accommodations” and had not influenced the prime minister’s decision to stay there.
“I’m not sure about if that came up. I’m not aware that that was ever discussed,” she said, according to Politico.
As ThinkProgress previously reported, a source has also claimed the rich asshole Organization pressured the Embassy of Kuwait to move its National Day celebration from the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown to the rich asshole International Hotel in mid-December 2016, shortly after the rich asshole was elected. Kuwaiti Ambassador Salem al-Sabah later denied being pressured to move the event, saying that the change in venue “had nothing to do with anything else other than creating an exciting event for our guests.” Spokespersons for the rich asshole Organization and the Four Seasons declined to comment.
A lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) challenging the president’s various conflicts of interest — including potential violations of the emoluments clause forbidding presidents from accepting gifts or money from foreign states — was tossed out last month after a judge ruled that Congress should take up the issue themselves. Three other lawsuits targeting the rich asshole’s business holdings are still pending, according to Mother Jones.
White House spokespersons did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday’s AP report.
Everything the rich asshole has done since the shutdown began
"I'm a great dealmaker. That's what I do."
The federal government has been shut down since midnight on Saturday, with no end in sight. The military is working without pay, federal government workers are being furloughed and important government services are not available.
This is exactly why millions of Americans voted for some rich asshole — the world’s greatest dealmaker.
“I’m a very good dealmaker, believe me,” the rich asshole said on NBC’s Meet the Press in February 2016.
“I’m a great dealmaker. That’s what I do,” the rich asshole told an audience in December 2015.
“In all fairness to the President he’s never been a dealmaker. Never made deals before,” the rich asshole told CNN in 2013, explaining why Obama couldn’t resolve a government shutdown.
As the government shutdown enters its third day, however, some rich asshole has had no public events, held no meetings, and talked to no reporters. Instead, this is how he’s been spending his time.
Watch videos of himself blaming Obama for the last shutdown
According to the New York Times, the rich asshole spent much of Saturday watch video clips of him blaming Obama for the last shutdown.
On Saturday, the president was left alternately defiant and angry, self-pitying and frustrated. He argued to aides that he did not deserve the blame he was taking, but without a credible deal on the table, there was little for him to do. Irritated to have missed his big event in Florida, some rich asshole spent much of his day watching old TV clips of him berating President Barack Obama for a lack of leadership during the 2013 government shutdown, a White House aide said, seeming content to sit back and watch the show.
This was a very successful troll by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who pushed these videos on Twitter.
This will be called the #TrumpShutdown. There is no one who deserves the blame for the position we find ourselves in more than President Trump.
Posing for photos showing that he was ‘working’
On Saturday, the White House released several photos showing that the rich asshole was working. Of course, if one is actually working, it’s generally not necessary to release photos to prove it.
Tweeting
the rich asshole has spent a lot of time on Twitter, blaming Democrats for the shutdown and mocking massive protests of his presidency by led by women.
On Monday morning, Robert Costa of the Washington Post reported that the rich asshole was “eager to get involved” in discussions to end the shutdown, but instead was “sticking to Twitter as talks continue.”
Making a video for his fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago
the rich asshole was intending to travel to Florida this weekend for a political fundraiser celebrating his inauguration where tickets started at $100,000. He couldn’t make it so he recorded a video instead:
some rich asshole’s son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara the rich asshole were set to host the event with Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel as the guest of honor.The president, who spent much of the day upstairs in the White House residence, sent a videotaped message instead of rubbing shoulders with supporters at his Mar-a-Lago property.
Talking to other Republicans on the phone
the rich asshole has held some phone calls, but only with other Republicans. He has not spoken to the Democrats with whom he could actually broker a deal. White House legislative director Marc Short confirmed his lack of outreach to NBC’s Chuck Todd:
MARC SHORT: Well, the president has been involved. Yesterday he was speaking to Leader McConnell, Leader Ryan. He also spoke to Kevin McCarthy. He also met–CHUCK TODD: Republican, Republican, Republican.MARC SHORT: –he also met–CHUCK TODD: No Schumer, no Pelosi.
Short then discussed his meeting with Schumer on Friday, before the shutdown began.
the rich asshole: Democrats shut down government to appease 'far left base'
BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 01/22/18 08:27 AM EST
President the rich asshole early Monday slammed Democrats over the government shutdown, accusing the party of closing the federal government to appease “their far left base.”
“Democrats have shut down our government in the interests of their far left base,” the rich asshole wrote on Twitter. “They don’t want to do it but are powerless!”
The president also blasted Democrats over immigration, saying lawmakers are withholding services for American citizens to obtain services “for non-citizens."
The tweets come as the government shutdown stretches into its third day, with lawmakers struggling to reach a deal to fund the government and keep its lights on.
Democrats have been pushing in funding talks for a solution for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shields immigrants brought to the U.S. unlawfully as children from deportation. the rich asshole said last year he would wind down the program, but gave lawmakers a window of time to act.
The government shutdown began Saturday at midnight after the Senate failed to pass a short-term funding bill.
Both parties have cast blame on the other for the government closure, which now heads into the workweek after the Senate failed to reach a deal on Sunday evening to reopen the government.
"It's absolutely appropriate ..."
The rich asshole administration has officially endorsed the notion that Democrats are accessories to murder.
some rich asshole’s presidential campaign released an ad this weekend depicting undocumented immigrants as criminals, and accusing Democrats of being “complicit” in “all murders by illegal immigrants” — a desperate attempt to salvage the failed messaging strategy on the rich asshole shutdown.
The ad has been widely criticized, albeit mildly by the likes of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who called the ad “not productive.”
But veteran Republican pundit Jennifer Rubin pulled no punches on Sunday’s “AM Joy” show, calling the ad a “parade of lies and racism,” and adding that it indicates “the Republican Party has now been reduced to a single issue, which is race and xenophobia.”
Even the rich asshole administration official Marc Short tried to distance the White House from the ad, saying it was made by an “outside group,” despite the rich asshole’s own voice at the end of the ad saying he approved the message.
But by Monday morning, the rich asshole White House was ready to embrace the despicable ad. During an appearance on “Good Morning America,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about the ad, and she broke with her tradition of referring campaign-related questions back to the campaign.
“Is it appropriate for the president to be saying the Democrats could be complicit in murder?” anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Sanders.
“Look, the president’s number one job, as commander in chief and the president, is national security,” a grinning Sanders replied. “We cannot protect American citizens, we cannot protect this country, if we don’t secure our border. That’s the point the president is trying to make.”
Sanders added, “It’s absolutely appropriate for the commander in chief of this country to do everything he can to make sure he’s protecting our citizens.”
the rich asshole and his flunkies have spent the weekend exploiting the rich asshole shutdown to sow racist division, to hold brave military service members hostage, and to lie about all of it. the rich asshole himself has not lifted a finger to solve the problem.
Now Americans can see why. This is the “good shutdown” that the rich asshole wanted, and the despicable racial and political divisions he’s exploiting are not by-products of it — they are the entire point.
The White House is now using its comment line to launch a false partisan attack on Democrats.
After the government shut down this weekend, all nonessential federal services were suspended. But lies and partisan spin from the rich asshole administration kicked into high gear.
This weekend, callers to the White House comment line noticed an interesting new voicemail message had been placed on the machine.
“Thank you for calling the White House,” the recording says. “Unfortunately, we cannot answer your call today, because congressional Democrats are holding government funding, including funding for our troops and other national security priorities, hostage to an unrelated immigration debate. Due to this obstruction, the government is shut down.”
This is outrageously inappropriate. Not only is government equipment being used to essentially disseminate a partisan political attack ad, but the underlying claim that “congressional Democrats” are blocking “funding for our troops” is the complete opposite of what happened.
First, the shutdown happened because of the rich asshole, not Senate Democrats. Republicans promised a vote to protect DREAMers from deportation would happen this month if a deal was reached. A bipartisan group led by Sens. Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham was doing just that, and their deal included major border security provisions the rich asshole asked for, but then the rich asshole said no anyway and blew the whole thing up.
Second, Democrats are the only ones who have tried to protect members of the military from the effects of the shutdown. Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill introduced a bill to guarantee military pay, and Mitch McConnell blocked a vote on it.
Republicans are understandably silent on this. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer slammed McConnell for talking from both sides of his mouth, saying, “If there’s pride of authorship, let him offer a resolution! We won’t block it; we’ll applaud it,” and his challenge was never answered. Meanwhile, when reporters asked White House budget director Mick Mulvaney to explain why Republicans are blocking troop pay, he had no response.
Compare this with the 2013 shutdown, when President Barack Obama made sure our service members were paid on time — something Republican leaders are ludicrously trying to deny even happened.
We as a nation have truly fallen down the rabbit hole when even the White House answering machine is lying to us. Our men and women in uniform deserve better than to have their economic security reduced to a political game by their own commander in chief.
BY NIALL STANAGE - 01/22/18 06:32 PM EST
President the rich asshole on Monday evening signed a government spending measure, ending a government shutdown that began at midnight on Friday.
The stop-gap funding, which expires Feb. 8, passed both the Senate and House by large margins earlier in the day.
So as the government prepares to reopen, who emerged as the winners and losers of the first big congressional controversy of 2018?
WINNERS
McConnell is widely perceived to have got the better of his Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
McConnell gave up little by simply pledging to have a vote on DACA. His broader argument — that DACA was not sufficiently important to force a shuttering of the government — also carried the day, at least for now.
McConnell is hardly out of the woods yet — the process of trying to get a DACA deal remains fraught with difficulty and Democrats will accuse him of bad faith if he comes up short.
But the wily McConnell has proven once again that it is hard to outflank him on tactics.
Senate centrists
A group of about 20 senators broke the logjam with talks on Sunday. In a body that is often slammed as hopelessly dysfunctional, they actually got something done.
Democrats who face challenging reelection races were central, Sens. Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) among them.
But Republicans, including several critics of President the rich asshole, also played their part. Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) was particularly prominent, with Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Bob Corker(Tenn.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) also important players.
None of this guarantees that there will be a later, bigger deal to protect the beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA() program.
But the bipartisan group met its primary goal, of getting the government running again.
Ryan avoided any blame for the shutdown. The Speaker shepherded a spending bill through the House late last week, with the issue only hitting the skids once it moved to the Senate.
It was a solid victory for Ryan, who has some complicated currents to navigate, especially with his most conservative members.
Ryan did offer some late concessions to members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, promising future votes on military spending and immigration, according to the Washington Post. And he will also have a tricky path ahead on whether or not to try to press for a DACA fix.
But, for now, Ryan will have few complaints.
2020 Democratic contenders
There was one very meaningful dividing line among Democrats on the crucial midday Monday vote that began bringing the shutdown to a close.
While Schumer was joined by 32 other members of his party, virtually every Senate Democrat who is considered a plausible White House contender voted the other way. Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand(N.Y.), Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) all voted no, as did Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Those senators might well have sincere objections to the deal, but they were also engaging in smart political positioning. Their votes allowed them to present themselves as unyielding fighters for the liberal cause — even while the votes of their more centrist colleagues kept the government open.
The result was a politically useful vote for the 2020 hopefuls, with no real risk attached.
LOSERS
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)
Schumer sought to put the best face on the deal to end the shutdown, hitting the rich asshole for not being more engaged in the negotiations and suggesting there had been a solid advance toward protecting DACA beneficiaries.
But the fact remains that the minority leader got remarkably little in return for ending the shutdown.
The unhappiness among progressive activists is clear: The liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) accused him of caving, while another liberal group, CREDO, lambasted him as “the worst negotiator in Washington.”
Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of Democracy for America, accused Senate Democrats more broadly of “a stunning display of moral and political cowardice.”
the rich asshole, meanwhile, crowed that “Democrats in Congress have come to their senses.”
Schumer could yet have the last laugh, if a DACA deal were to be done next month.
But right now, it’s been a poor few days for the Senate Democratic leader.
The Left
Progressives can and will rage about the deal their party leaders have done. Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the PCCC, lamented in a statement that the deal is emblematic of “why people don’t believe the Democratic Party stands for anything.”
But that doesn’t change the fact that the left once again failed to bend the party to its will. For all the anti-the rich asshole energy within the party — and the near-iconic status enjoyed by the likes of Warren and Sanders — party leaders hewed to the center once again.
The left needs to do some serious thinking about how it can exert more real power in future.
DREAMers
For all the sound and fury, the beneficiaries of the program are no closer, in substantive terms, to a deal that would allow them to remain in the United States legally.
The prospects of a fix happening at all seem mixed at best.
And, with the program due to end on March 5, the DREAMers, who number around 700,000 people, face a nail-biting few weeks.
MIXED
President the rich asshole
the rich asshole was a winner in the shutdown in the sense that his party got the better part of the final compromise, and the government is back up and running. But that happened only after the president’s unpredictability caused consternation among Republicans as well as Democrats.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lamented at one point that there seemed to be two Trumps — one of whom was much more hardline on immigration than the other. Graham’s confusion was apparently shared by McConnell, who said last week, “I'm looking for something that President the rich asshole supports. And he's not yet indicated what measure he's willing to sign.”
Any victory was also overshadowed by the rich asshole’s reported use of the phrase “shithole countries” during a White House meeting last week. Beyond the Beltway, that remark will likely prove far more infamous and memorable than any of the actual details of the compromise deal that extended government funding.
—Updated at 9:20 p.m.
No comments:
Post a Comment