January 23rd, 2017. 435 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no.45, and 365 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
As expected, the GOP's tax scam is turning out to be nothing but bad news for American workers.
Many companies have loudly trumpeted one-time bonuses following passage of the rich asshole tax scam while quietly announcing massive layoffs. But one company now admits it will use the windfall to fund the gutting of over 5,000 jobs.
On Tuesday, personal care product corporation Kimberly-Clark — the maker of Kleenex, Huggies, and many other popular brands — announced that it will be closing or selling 10 facilities and shedding about 12 percent of its workforce as part of a so-called “Global Restructuring Program.”
The company told reporters on a quarterly earnings conference call that the rich asshole tax cuts would help fund the layoffs and closings.
Chief Financial Officer Maria Henry explained the effects of “tax reform” at the top of the call, first bragging that the tax savings would be the equivalent of a 6 percent increase in earnings.
“We also anticipate ongoing annual cash flow benefits from tax reform,” Henry continued, “that provides us flexibility to allocate significant capital to shareholders,” which is how many companies said they would use their tax windfall, rather than to create jobs.
Henry went on to say that those tax benefits would also fund “our restructuring program over the next few years.”
Since the passage of the tax plan, companies have continued to lay off workers while taking free publicity from the rich asshole.
But Kimberly-Clark’s announcement is one of the largest, and apparently the first to openly admit that the rich asshole tax cuts are actively helping to close plants and kill jobs.
This is why Democrats fought against the Republican plan, and why it is so crucial that Democrats retake the House and Senate in November.
Religious Right leader gives the rich asshole a pass on affair with adult film star
Hypocrisy, plain and simple.
some rich asshole is many things, but a paragon of right-wing moral virtue is not one of them. That hasn’t stopped conservative evangelical leaders on the Religious Right from supporting him.
On Tuesday, Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins said in an interview with Politico’s Isaac Dovere that recent reports claiming the rich asshole had an affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels and paid her $130,000 to stay quiet about it were not a big deal if evidence proved the reports to be true.
“I would not say it’s not a problem, again, this election… evangelicals did not vote for some rich asshole based on his moral qualifications, but based upon what he said he was going to do, and who he surrounded himself with,” he said. Perkins noted that evangelical support “is not unconditional” and if the rich asshole were to start misbehaving as he did in recent years, the support would disappear.
“We kind of gave him — ‘All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here,'” Perkins said.
The Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group because of how it denigrates the LGBTQ community, is very critical of pornography, and marital infidelity (the rich asshole’s alleged affair happened four months after his wife Melania gave birth to their son). But a search of its website does not yield any statements on marital infidelity with a porn star.
“The president is not the pastor-in-chief,” Perkins said. “I do believe he needs to be a moral leader.”
He added that “with the exception of the way the president’s gotten into some things and handled some things and gotten into these spats…the president is providing the leadership we need at this time…. The president has not done anything, believe me, if the president had done anything immoral, the media would be all over it.”
Perkins’ comments are in direct contradiction with his own past statements. In 2011, the same year Stormy Daniels gave her only recently-disclosed interview about her 2006 affair with the rich asshole, Perkins tweeted that “lionizing porn stars & normalizing pornography” will cause tragedy for children.
Two years earlier, in 2009, Perkins lamented public figures whose private morality did not live up to their public policy positions. “If you’re going to champion those issues you’ve got to live by a higher standard,” he said in an interview on MSNBC. “I think all public servants to be faithful to their vows of marriage. I can’t imagine why voters would think politicians would be faithful to them if they’re not faithful to their spouse.”
the rich asshole doesn’t fit the definition of “faithful” public servant that Perkins once espoused. But the evangelical leader seemed not to care about any of that once the rich asshole locked up the GOP nomination.
Perkins did get what he wanted, in a sense: a Religious Right-friendly vice president, a conservative GOP platform, and a promise from the White House to appoint conservative judges once in office. The rich asshole administration has also undertaken a series of extreme actions that conform to the Religious Right’s agenda: banning transgender people from the military; establishing a “religious freedom” executive order; penning a “religious freedom” Justice Department memo which provides a license to discriminate against same-sex couples; and signing a global gag rule that bans funding to foreign groups that provide abortions, among other things.
“Why should I not support [the rich asshole] now, when he’s actually doing the things I asked him to do?” Perkins said in the Politico interview, after being asked if his acceptance of the rich asshole was hypocritical.
Perkins has been happy to reciprocate for the many right-wing gifts the rich asshole’s administration has given him over the past year. According to The New York Times, Perkins said in August 2017 that he had been to the White House many more times in the rich asshole’s first year than he had during President George W. Bush’s first year.
He’s also been happy to act as the rich asshole’s scapegoat, on occasion. One of their earliest public interactions occurred after the rich asshole misstated a verse from the Bible during a speech at Liberty University in January 2016. the rich asshole cited “two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” The audience laughed, and afterwards, the rich asshole blamed Perkins for the gaffe.
“Tony Perkins wrote that out for me — he actually wrote out ‘2,’ he wrote out the number 2 Corinthians,” the rich asshole said, according to CNN. “I took exactly what Tony said, and I said, ‘Well Tony has to know better than anybody.'”
Perkins, in a sign of things to come, took the blame, telling CNN, “I’m guilty as charged. That’s exactly what I did.”
Perkins has similarly defended the rich asshole during his worst moments. Following the release of the now-famous Access Hollywood tape, in which the rich asshole could be heard bragging about being able to get away with sexual assault, Perkins said he still backed the business mogul for president.
“As I have made clear, my support for some rich asshole in the general election was never based upon shared values rather it was built upon shared concerns,” he told the Washington Post in an email. He compared the rich asshole with his opponent, saying that “we are left with a choice of voting for the one who will do the least damage to our freedoms.”
The pair’s one minor disagreement came in July 2017, after Perkins decided to sign a letter to the rich asshole from the Conservative Action Project, in support of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. At the time, the rich asshole was fulminating about Sessions on Twitter, blaming the attorney general for having a “weak” position on Hillary Clinton’s private email server. However, the letter was otherwise supportive of everything the rich asshole had done and said as president, and targeted “the distinctly partisan investigation into his family.” In the end, the rich asshole reportedly chose not fire Sessions.
Despite his forgiving nature with the rich asshole, Perkins has not applied the same standard to other high-profile individuals. In the same Politico interview where Perkins gave the rich asshole a “mulligan” on the Stormy Daniels affair, he attacked Hillary and Bill Clinton for unnamed moral transgressions.
“…Hillary Clinton herself…does not have a pristine background, you know, with some of the stuff with her and Bill,” he said.
In 2011, Perkins also tweeted outrage about Anthony Weiner’s numerous sexting scandals, simultaneously blasting Planned Parenthood and finding a way to buff up his own anti-abortion image.
“When asked why she engaged in relationship w/Rep Weiner, “porn star” responded, ‘His advocacy of Planned Parenthood,'” Perkins wrote. “Wow. #prolife.”
When asked why she engaged in relationship w/Rep Weiner, "porn star" responded, "His advocacy of Planned Parenthood." Wow. #prolife
A few other lucky conservatives have managed to win Perkins’ support over the years, despite their own moral shortcomings.
When Perkins and other right-wing figures were concerned about Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination in 2012, Perkins said that Newt Gingrich’s past marital infidelity, which had been drudged up during the primary, should not prevent him from receiving evangelical support.
“The evangelicals, the social conservatives…they understand forgiveness,” he said during an interview on MSNBC. “Newt Gingrich’s past or any candidate’s past is their past.”
In 2009, Perkins bypassed any outrage he might have had over former Sen. David Vitter’s (R-LA) confession that he had solicited prostitutes, co-hosting a local town hall with Vitter instead, and had him on his radio show to talk about former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ apparent ethical problems.
Perkins also helped to cover up sexual assault committed by an anti-gay politician he supported. Three years ago, a rising evangelical star in Ohio, state legislature candidate Wesley Goodman, fondled an 18-year-old boy in a hotel after an event raising money for his campaign. The event was organized by Perkins, who is also the president of the Council for National Policy. Perkins expressed disapproval when the boy’s stepfather, who was a member of the council, confronted Perkins about it, but the incident did not come to light until late last year. Goodman had defeated two other candidates in the primary and won the general election, and all the while, even though Perkins asked Goodman to leave the race, he said nothing in public about the incident.
the rich asshole's embrace of hatred and bigotry has tourists shunning America — and costing the country billions.
Since some rich asshole assumed the presidency in January of 2017, international travel to the United States has slumped, as the world is repelled by his ongoing embrace of bigotry and incompetence.
And new numbers from the National Travel and Tourism Office prove it the rich asshole travel slump is real and having significant consequences for the United States. There has been a 3.3 percent drop in travel spending and a 4 percent collapse in inbound travel to the United States.
What this means is that the country has lost $4.6 billion that would have been spent in America and missed out on 40,000 jobs.
Those lost jobs join the other 250,000-plus American jobs that have moved overseas as the rich asshole presides over a rise in outsourcing and plant closings. That was before his massive tax giveaway to billionaires and corporations, which has enabled companies to make even more layoffs as he reverses the course of the ongoing Obama recovery.
So why won’t tourists come? the rich asshole.
Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, laid it out for The New York Times: “It’s not a reach to say the rhetoric and policies of this administration are affecting sentiment around the world, creating antipathy toward the U.S. and affecting travel behavior.”
A perfect, recent example of this behavior was the rich asshole’s racist description of nations like Haiti as “shitholes” that should not send people to emigrate in America. The remark prompted protests in that nation, as well as a condemnation from Miami-Dade County in Florida, home to the nation’s largest Haitian-American community.
The official condemnation was the second such proclamation from the county, after it condemned the rich asshole for smearing Latinos. He launched his presidential campaign describing Mexicans as rapists, setting the tone early on for an image of America laced with hostility, and not the greatness he built his campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again” around.
The African Union, which represents 55 nations, responded to the rich asshole’s “shithole” comments as well, demanding a formal apology and expressing “shock, dismay and outrage” at what he said.
Traditionally rock-solid American allies have been forced into strained relations with America.
At the beginning of his presidency, the rich asshole complained about an agreement to resettle refugees with Australia, and angrily cut short a phone call with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, immediately creating a hostile relationship with one of America’s closest friends.
So far, the rich asshole has not visited the United Kingdom, and anticipating major protests in reaction to a visit, tentative plans for a state visit were canceled. Prince Harry, who has a warm relationship with President Barack Obama, is reportedly considering not inviting the rich asshole to his upcoming wedding to Meghan Markle.
the rich asshole embraced hate, and the world has responded by shunning America.
The country has increasingly become an international pariah, choosing to walk away from important and interconnected legislation like the Paris climate accord.
the rich asshole expressed solidarity with Nazis and white supremacists, hailing them as “very fine people.” So toxic were his comments that many in corporate America chose to shun him and disbanded multiple White House councils that had been assembled to push for business policies. More than a dozen charities and organizations canceled events at the rich asshole’s Mar-a-Lago in response to his overt racism.
Even businesses that tend to turn a blind eye to morally questionable behavior rebuked the rich asshole, so it isn’t a surprise that average travelers followed their lead.
the rich asshole has chosen the path of isolation and alienation. The rest of the world is getting the message and staying away, and America’s reputation and economy are suffering as a result of his childish petulance and bigotry.
‘Don’t ever preach to me again!’: Ex-GOP chair tells evangelicals who still support the rich asshole to ‘shut the hell up!’
Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele.
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Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele blasted Family Research Council president Tony Perkins for giving President some rich asshole a “mulligan” on paying hush money to former adult film star Stormy Daniels.
“When it comes down to giving the rich asshole a pass, some top evangelical leaders are turning a blind eye to his past indiscretions and came to his defense following recent reports about his alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels,” MSNBC host Chris Matthews explained.
“I have very simple admonition: just shut the hell up and don’t preach to me about anything ever again,” Steele suggested.
“After telling me who to love, what to believe, what to do and what not to do and now you sit back and the prostitutes don’t matter, the grabbing the you-know-what doesn’t matter, the outright behavior and lies don’t matter, just shut up!” Steele blasted.
“They have no voice of authority anymore for me,” Steele concluded.
Watch:
Internet mocks the rich asshole’s ‘executive time’ after he tweets he’s ‘blaming Samsung’ for lost FBI text messages
some rich asshole on the phone in Air Force One (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
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some rich asshole on Tuesday spent his evening, as he often does, rage-tweeting about the latest conspiracy theory against his administration.
This time, the source of the president’s indignation was text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that Republicans have decided proves a DOJ conspiracy against the rich asshole. Before the Strzok/Page text messages, of course, it was “unmasking,” Uranium One and the Nunes memo (to name just a few things this administration and its enablers have used to distract from the Russia probe).
the rich asshole’s late-night Twitter tantrum inspired an immediate reaction from the Internet, with users joking the president is using his so-called “executive time” productively.
Read the responses below, via Twitter:
executive time, the evening edition twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
So what does this do to Samsung’s stock price in the morning? twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
Samsung slammed Trump’s tariff on washing machines as a “a great loss for American consumers and workers” & warned it could affect their SC plant (where they plan to hire ~1K workers): columbiabusinessreport.com/news/manufactu… twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
Wow, wrapping in trade and Russia in one tweet.
Note: Samsung enjoyed big market gains yesterday despite US tariffs... twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
Samsung's CEO, call your office. twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
Samsung is part of the deep state? twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
Funny, you just placed tariffs on Samsung today. 3D chess my ass.
Fetch me a bagel with cream cheese and clean your gimp ball. twitter.com/realpresssecbo…
[Darren Rovell voice] Trump’s in-tweet mention of Samsung was worth $8.7 million in equivalent advertising value twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
Psychiatrist who briefed lawmakers on the rich asshole's mental state says she received death threats
BY BRANDON CONRADIS - 01/23/18 10:20 PM EST
The Yale psychiatrist who last month warned lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the threat posed by President the rich asshole said she has received thousands of death threats, most of them on Twitter.
"I was concerned because I was getting a thousand threatening messages a day at one point," Dr. Bandy X. Lee told the New Haven Register on Sunday.
Politico reported earlier this month that Lee met with lawmakers on Dec. 5 and Dec. 6 to brief them on the rich asshole's mental state.
An assistant clinical professor who edited a collection of psychiatric testimonials called "The Dangerous Case of some rich asshole," Lee reportedly warned the lawmakers that the rich asshole is "going to unravel."
“We feel that the rush of tweeting is an indication of his falling apart under stress. the rich asshole is going to get worse and will become uncontainable with the pressures of the presidency," Lee later told Politico.
Her meeting drew criticism from some, who claimed she was in ethical violation by evaluating the rich asshole's mental health without having actually met him.
Lee denied those charges to the Register.
Reports of Lee's meeting with lawmakers came amid amounting concern over the rich asshole's mental health. Earlier this month, a reporter asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders if the public should be "concerned about the president’s mental fitness."
Washington Post: the rich asshole asked acting FBI director McCabe who he voted for in 2016
Washington (CNN)President some rich asshole asked acting FBI director Andrew McCabe who he voted for in the 2016 election in an introductory Oval Office meeting, The Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing several current and former US officials.
The meeting happened in May, not long after the rich asshole fired former FBI director James Comey, according to the Post.
The officials said McCabe responded by telling the President that he didn't vote.
the rich asshole also expressed frustration because McCabe's wife had received "several hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations" when she ran for a Virginia state Senate seat in 2015 from a group with ties to Hillary Clinton, the officials said, according to The Washington Post's report.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McCabe thought the exchange was "disturbing," The Post reported one official as saying. Additionally, the conversation is of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, according to one official cited in The Washington Post report.
Mueller is investigating any potential connection between the rich asshole campaign and Russia, and his is one of several ongoing investigations looking into any collusion.
Melania Now Refusing To Travel With the rich asshole Amid Affair News
You’ve probably seen the numerous videos of Melania the rich asshole batting President Stable Genius’ tiny hand away when he attempted to hold hands with her. You’ve probably seen the angry glares she shoots him on a regular basis. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist that things have been bad between the President* and the woman who could reasonably be called First Lady if the rich asshole’s daughter wasn’t already filling that role — and all of this was before news surfaced that The rich asshole cheated on her with porn star Stormy Daniels (without a condom no less), had her spank him with a copy of Forbes with his daughter on the cover, and paid a hefty fee to shut Ms. Daniels up.
Now, in a decision that seems to be related to recent news, Melania has abruptly canceled her plans to travel with her husband to a World Economic Forum in Switzerland this week.
According to Melania the rich asshole’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham, the trip to Davos was canceled because of “scheduling and logistical issues.”
This announcement was made on Monday, Melania and Donald’s thirteenth wedding anniversary — a day on which both of them were markedly silent on their marriage. On the anniversary of the rich asshole’s election, Melania tweeted a photo of herself without him in it at all.
Last year, Melania the rich asshole famously “liked” a tweet about a “wall” between her and her orange-skinned hubby.
So far, Mrs. the rich asshole has been silent about the “Stormy” situation their marriage is in — but she doesn’t have to say anything. She’s been telling him to fuck off for quite some time.
Shortly after President the rich asshole fired his FBI director in May, he summoned to the Oval Office the bureau’s acting director for a get-to-know-you meeting.
The two men exchanged pleasantries, but before long, the rich asshole, according to several current and former U.S. officials, asked Andrew McCabe a pointed question: Whom did he vote for in the 2016 election?
McCabe said he didn’t vote, according to the officials, who like others interviewed for this article requested anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive matter.
the rich asshole, the officials said, also vented his anger at McCabe over the several hundred thousand dollars in donations his wife, a Democrat, received for her failed 2015 Virginia state Senate bid from a political action committee controlled by a close friend of Hillary Clinton.
McCabe, 49, who had been FBI deputy director for a little more than a year when James B. Comey was fired, is at the center of much of the political jockeying surrounding the investigation into potential coordination between the rich asshole associates and the Kremlin. He has for a number of months been the subject of the rich asshole’s ire, prompting angry tweets suggesting that the Russia probe is politically motivated by Democrats sore about losing the election.
McCabe, who has spent more than two decades at the bureau, found the conversation with the rich asshole “disturbing,” said one former U.S. official. Inside the FBI, officials familiar with the exchange expressed frustration that a civil servant — even a very senior agent in the No. 2 position — would be asked how he voted and criticized for his wife’s political leanings by the president.
One person said the rich asshole-McCabe conversation is of interest to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
The encounter is also the latest example of the rich asshole erupting at a senior official, whether it is at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe, or White House counsel Donald McGahn for not doing more to quash the investigation early on.
The White House and the FBI declined to comment.
The Oval Office meeting happened shortly after the rich asshole fired Comey following failed efforts by the president to get the FBI director to back off from the Russia probe. Before the May 9 dismissal, the rich asshole had also sought a loyalty oath from Comey and was annoyed that the FBI director would not state publicly at the time that the rich asshole was not personally under investigation.
One White House official said the rich asshole expressed his concerns to McCabe about his politics but consented to the official’s becoming acting FBI director on the advice of others and because “there were no immediate better choices.” Although the job had fallen to McCabe by default, the rich asshole could have picked a different acting director. The Justice Department interviewed four people other than McCabe for the post.
McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, received nearly $500,000 in donations from a political action committee controlled by then-Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton who chaired Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 run for president.
At the time of the donations, McCabe was assistant director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and he recused himself from investigations involving Virginia political figures. A lawyer by training who specialized in counterterrorism work, McCabe became Comey’s deputy in February 2016, by which time the election his wife lost had been over for three months.
But critics have questioned why he went on to oversee two critical cases related to Clinton — a probe into her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and an investigation into donations made to the Clinton Foundation. At the end of October 2016, as the election neared and the FBI faced intense public scrutiny over McCabe’s role, he recused himself from the Clinton probes.
McCabe’s conduct is now the subject of an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and a report is expected sometime in the spring.
the rich asshole had a second meeting with McCabe in the Oval Office to interview him for the position of FBI director. That meeting was brief, as it was clear the rich asshole had no intention of giving McCabe the job, said the first White House official.
A year into his presidency, it is clear the rich asshole still harbors a deep dislike of McCabe. Another White House official said the rich asshole frequently complained about the FBI official, labeling him a Democrat. Over the past seven months or so, the rich asshole has repeatedly tweeted criticisms of McCabe, erroneously saying McCabe headed the Clinton investigation while his wife was taking Clinton money for her state Senate campaign.
When The Washington Post reported in December that McCabe planned to retire from the FBI in March once he becomes fully eligible for his pension, the president quickly tweeted out a fresh criticism of McCabe, again citing the campaign donations to his wife.
In August, a former Justice Department senior official, Christopher A. Wray, became FBI director. In recent months, he has been under increasing political pressure to remove top officials linked to Comey.
Sessions has pressed Wray to replace McCabe, as well as James A. Baker, until recently the general counsel. It is customary for a new director to bring in his own team. The political controversy surrounding Comey and those of his leadership team who remain at the bureau has increased the pressure on Wray.
Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia who is acting head of the Justice Department’s national security division, has been selected to be the FBI’s next general counsel, according to people familiar with the matter. He replaces Baker, who was reassigned late last year.
Boente is a veteran federal prosecutor who has led multiple U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country and has risen to prominence in a variety of acting roles in the rich asshole administration. When the rich asshole fired acting attorney general Sally Yates over her refusal to defend his travel ban, Boente took over and said he would defend the measure.
When Sessions was sworn in as attorney general, Boente became the deputy attorney general, and after that, the acting head of the national security division.
Wray also will replace his chief of staff, James Rybicki, with Zachary J. Harmon, a colleague from the law firm where Wray was a partner before joining the bureau. Harmon is a former federal prosecutor who heads the anticorruption practice at King & Spalding.
Harmon also worked in the deputy attorney general’s office in the administration of George W. Bush and helped the FBI rebound from the Robert Hanssen spy scandal. Hanssen, an FBI agent, was accused of leaking secrets to Russia over 22 years until his arrest in 2001.
Asked whether there needs to be a staff shake-up at the FBI, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday, “We have 100 percent confidence in Director Wray. If anybody will make that decision, it’s the director. We’ll leave that in his hands.”
Matt Zapotosky, Sari Horwitz and Aaron Davis contributed to this report.
the rich asshole asked acting FBI chief who he voted for in 2016 election during WH meeting: report
BY BRANDON CARTER - 01/23/18 07:59 PM EST
President the rich asshole asked Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe during an Oval Office meeting who he voted for in the 2016 election, according to a new report.
The Washington Post reports the rich asshole invited McCabe to the White House after he fired former FBI Director James Comey last May. McCabe was the acting FBI director at the time.
the rich asshole also ripped McCabe for his wife’s failed run for Virginia state Senate in 2015, during which she received thousands of dollars in campaign donations from a political action committee led by former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who is closely tied to the Clintons.
One former U.S. official told the Post that McCabe thought the conversation with the rich asshole was “disturbing,” and one person told the newspaper that special counsel Robert Mueller is interested in the talk.
—This breaking news report will be updated.
Biden confirms reports McConnell blocked Obama from warning Americans about Russian election interference
Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) | Flickr -- Gage Skidmore
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected the Obama administration’s efforts to warn the public about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, former vice president Joe Biden said Tuesday.
As Politico reports, the Senate leader refused to sign a bipartisan statement about Russia’s efforts. Former president Barack Obama felt the lack of bipartisanship would serve the Kremlin’s interests, Biden said.
The former vice president said Obama “would sit there literally after” each press briefing “and say, ‘What the hell are we going to do?’” Biden explained.
Biden was speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations about Russian efforts to sow discord in the United States’ electoral process. He told president Richard Haass that he regretted the administration’s failure to take more action before the election.
“Had we known what we knew three weeks later, we may have done something more,” Biden said, according to Politico.
“Can you imagine if the president called a press conference in October, with this fella, Bannon, and company, and said, ‘Tell you what: Russians are trying to interfere in our elections and we have to do something about it,’” Biden said. “What do you think would have happened? Would things have gotten better, or would it further look like we were trying to delegitimize the electoral process, because of our opponent?”
The Atlantic has previously reported on McConnell’s efforts to curb the Obama administration’s efforts during the election. “The effort was stymied by several Republicans who weren’t willing to cooperate, including, reportedly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,” the Atlantic’s Kaveh Waddell wrote in December 2016.
MSNBC and CNN cut away from Sarah Huckabee Sanders mid-briefing
CNN's Jake Tapper and MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, composite image.
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CNN and MSNBC cut away from the White House briefing with Sarah Huckabee Sanders to cover “top stories” on Tuesday.
“Welcome to ‘The Lead,’ we’ll break away from the White House press briefing and we’ll continue to monitor and bring you any updates,” Jake Tapper began his show on Tuesday.
MSNBC anchor and former George W. Bush communications direct Nicolle Wallace threw even more shade.
“We’re going to continue to monitor the White House briefing, if Sarah Huckabee Sanders or any of her partners today have anything to say about our top stories, we will bring you those comments,” Wallace began.
Watch MSNBC cut away from the White House briefing:
Watch CNN cut away from the White House briefing:
FBI director Chris Wray replaces Comey holdover with the rich asshole loyalist amid pressure from AG Sessions to ‘clean house’
Attorney General Jeff Sessions (left) and FBI Director Christopher Wray (right). Image via Creative Commons.
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FBI Director Christopher Wray has announced the replacements for two top FBI jobs that worked under ex-director James Comey, amid pressure from the attorney general and White House to “clean house” during special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was named as the replacement for former FBI general counsel James Baker, who “was reassigned late last year.” He also appointed Zachary J. Harmon, a colleague from the law firm he worked for prior to taking the helm of the bureau, as his new chief of staff after his old one, Jim Rybicki, left to take a private sector job.
Baker’s reassignment in December came amid right-wing media speculation that he “leaked” information from the bureau and was an ally to Comey, who defended him on Twitter in the days after he was moved to a different position.
Boente, the Post noted, may be seen as a loyalist for President some rich asshole despite being appointed to his U.S. attorney position President Barack Obama. After acting Attorney General Sally Yates refused to back the rich asshole’s travel ban, Boente stepped forward to defend it.
The announcement of the filled positions came after reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been pressuring Wray to reshuffle positions in the bureau. Yesterday, Axios reported that Wray threatened to quit if he were forced to fired Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a foe of the rich asshole administration despite being appointed as acting director of the bureau following Comey’s firing.
Mueller seeking the rich asshole interview as he intensifies focus on obstruction of justice charges: report
some rich asshole crosses arms when asked about Robert Mueller investigation (Photo: Screen capture)
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Special counsel Robert Mueller is seeking to interview President some rich asshole regarding his decisions to oust former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former FBI Director James Comey, according to the Washington Post.
The move “indicates that his investigation is intensifying its focus on possible efforts by the president or others to obstruct or blunt the special counsel’s probe,” the Post claimed, citing two people familiar with the special counsel’s plans.
The president has faced accusations that he attempted to obstruct justice by firing Comey.
Advisers and friends of the rich asshole have urged him not to be questioned in Mueller’s investigation, according to CNN, fearing that he will put himself in legal jeopardy.
“In my humble opinion, the shot of him actually testifying is near zero,” Steven Schlesinger, an attorney who worked for the rich asshole on several lawsuits, told CNN earlier this month.
the rich asshole’s lawyers are hoping to provide a “hybrid” testimony to Mueller, according to the Washington Post. the rich asshole would answer some questions in a face-to-face interview, but provide others via a written statement.
Back to the tax returns? Ex-federal prosecutor reveals why the rich asshole’s financials are key to Mueller’s investigation
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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New reports confirming that special prosecutor Robert Mueller has already conducted interviews with Attorney General Jeff Session and former FBI Director James Comey are signs that the obstruction of justice investigation is winding down, while the focus on President some rich asshole’s financial entanglements will take months, Katy Tur’s panel on MSNBC explained Tuesday.
“Barbara, does it look like this investigation is not winding down necessarily, but moving towards its conclusion?” Tur asked former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade.
“I think you have to look at the two pieces of the investigation, the investigation regarding the overarching Russia scheme — did Russia meddle in our election — strikes me as one that might take many, many months to unfold,” McQuade said. “It involves perhaps complex money laundering investigations, offshore bank accounts. that could take a long time. Then you have this other investigation into obstruction of justice with a smaller cast of characters, really just a few events that occurred over a short period of time. that one might be winding down.”
“I don’t see how any responsible prosecutor can ever investigate a case like this without looking at the finances. Whenever you are a prosecutor, one of the first things you do in any kind of white collar case is do a complete financial workup of the people who are the targets of the investigation,” McQuade explained. “It tells you about who they are affiliated with, it suggests motives, if for example, people are in great debt to others, it could provide a motive to act in certain ways.”
Natasha Bertrand, staff writer for The Atlantic, agreed that the financials were key to the investigation.
“This is exactly what he indicted Paul Manafort and Rick Gates on, he was following the money from the very beginning,” said Bertrand.
“When it comes to trying to figure out whether Russia has any leverage on trump that would have compelled the the rich asshole campaign to then coordinate with the Russians because they felt like they really had no choice, because they were kind of being held by kompromat the Russians had on them, investigating whether some rich asshole has a history of business relations with Russia is extremely important to determining why did the Russians interfere to try to get him elected.”
“Is it because they thought they had a friend in some rich asshole, because they thought they had so much leverage over him in terms of his past financial dealings there, that they could essentially blackmail him once he was in office to get him to do their bidding?” Bertrand asked.
Watch:
‘I’m not concerned at all’: President the rich asshole insists he has no worries about Mueller grilling Jeff Sessions
some rich asshole speaks from the Oval Office (screen grab)
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President some rich asshole told reporters on Tuesday that he was “not concerned at all” about the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had been questioned by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
“No, I’m not concerned at all,” the rich asshole said during a brief appearance in the Oval Office.
the rich asshole also insisted that FBI Director Christopher Wray did not threaten to resign after the president pressured him to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a claim contrary to reports on Tuesday.
Watch the video below.
Fox anchor Bret Baier: the rich asshole’s avoided a real ‘news’ interview for 500 days — and Sean Hannity doesn’t count
Bret Baier (Fox / Screengrab)
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Bret Baier, anchor of the Fox News program Special Report, said on Tuesday that it had been over 500 days since President some rich asshole was interviewed by a professional journalist at his network — even though the president often talks to Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity.
During a Washington Post event about combatting so-called “fake news,” host Dan Balz noted that Fox News had become the president’s favorite news outlet.
Baier insisted that the “news side” of Fox was in the “same boat” as all other outlets when it came to getting interviews with the president.
“The opinion side of Fox News does not have a problem getting interviews,” Baier explained. “But my requests, Chris Wallaces’ request for an interview with the president has not been answered. I last interviewed candidate the rich asshole almost 500 days ago and have asked every week since for an interview, sometimes twice a week.”
Baier said that the rich asshole has repeatedly promised that an interview “is going to happen very soon.”
“I’m talking about the news side of Fox and our requests are the same as other networks,” he added. “In fact, Lester Holt was the last news interview — broadcast news interview — that he’s done.”
Baier took a shot at rival network CNN, which has been known to fact check the rich asshole in real time by adding graphics to the screen.
“That’s not what we do,” Baier said. “But we do do stories where we point out the factual inaccuracies, what’s true, what’s not about what was said.”
But he noted that the “news side” of Fox resists calling the president’s statement’s lies because the “motivation behind it” is not known.
“The problem sometimes is that Fox gets painted with a broad brush and Sean Hannity’s show is not Special Report,” the Fox News anchor opined. “I think Sean Hannity, for what — his opinion, he does an amazing job with bringing forward his thoughts on things.”
“But you know what you’re watching, you know what you’re reading,” Baier insisted. “The difference between those two shows is pretty stark. I think sometimes when President Obama would talk about Fox News, he would talk broadly.”
“You have to watch my show, the news side, three times and then let me know if we cover it fairly,” he stated.
Viewers, however, could be forgiven for thinking that Fox News was chiefly defined by its opinion shows because the so-called “news side” is relegated to non-primetime slots.
For example, the rich asshole’s favorite times to watch Fox News are between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. in the morning and between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. in the evening. The so-called “news side” of Fox broadcasts no shows during the hours that the president is most likely to watch.
Watch the video below from The Washington Post.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle mocks the rich asshole’s porn star payout defense: ‘$130,000 for no reason? Call me, I’ll take it’
MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle -- screenshot
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MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle was incredulous on Tuesday that the revelation that President some rich asshole’s personal lawyer formed a shell corporation in Delaware to pay $130,000 to an adult film star, for supposedly doing “nothing,” seemed to be just another White House scandal that is disappearing from the news cycle.
“I laugh because I cannot believe that this is not the top top story,” Ruhle began. “This is amazing. A news story about President some rich asshole and a porn star. That’s right, Stormy Daniels, a porn star.”
“The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, said one of the rich asshole’s lawyers paid Daniels before the election,” she continued. “The payment is said to have violated campaign laws. A group, Common Cause, argues the payments amount to a campaign expense since the purpose was to cover-up a potentially damaging story. By not disclosing the defense, the group argues the campaign broke the law.”
“We should note, it is unclear whether or not the alleged payment was made with campaign funds,” she detailed. “Daniels alleges that she and the rich asshole had a romantic relationship in the early 2000’s. However [the rich asshole attorney] Michael Cohen dismissed the claims saying, quote, ‘The Common Cause complaint is baseless, along with the allegation that President the rich asshole filed a false report to the Federal Election Commission.”
Joined by NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos, the MSNBC host joked, “First, have you ever paid $130,000 to somebody for no reason?”
“Uh, were not talking about me today, so technically no,” the analyst deadpanned back.
Host Ruhle then looked at the camera and made her own proposal.
“Anyone out there in the world, anyone wants to pay anybody $130,000 for no reason, call me,” she smirked. “I’m here to take it.”
Ruhle later added, “Call me a prude, but the naive woman that I am somehow believed people might not feel good about someone running for president who had an affair with a porn star with a new baby at home and that might affect how they thought of that person in terms of being a world leader.”
Watch the video below via MSNBC:
the rich asshole’s illness involves his deep-seated need for desecration
President some rich asshole. (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)
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He is crude, nasty, insulting, fights dirty, and behaves in a manner so unbalanced that psychiatrists have been sounding the alarm for at least two years about his mental condition. Yet the current White House physician — one Ronny Jackson — claims that the results of a “cognitive exam” show that some rich asshole is just fine.
The question is of vital importance to America and to the world. It is also important to historians, because it leads to another question: has the Electoral College at last put a madman in power?
“Madness” is a concept like “indecency” that can be shrugged away as imprecise or beyond definition. But the issue of indecency is precisely the issue that defines the insanity of the rich asshole. He is driven to make things as pointlessly disgusting and as needlessly horrible as possible — disgusting to the point where most normal people feel sick to their stomachs — and to do it for ever-higher stakes.
He makes fun of the handicapped, demeans military heroes without ever having served in uniform, heaps scorn upon the victims of natural disasters, pursues policies that degrade the whole planet, adds misery to the lives of the helpless, and makes suckers of the voters who supported him by making the rich even richer while telling the members of his “base” that this somehow helps them get ahead — the list could go on, for there can be no limit to the satisfaction he derives from debasing everything he touches.
This is more than the behavior of a stupid and tasteless vulgarian. At the heart of it all is a compulsion.
The current form of the compulsion is to rob the presidential office of its power to inspire. There was a point to it all last year when the President of the United States addressed a convention of Boy Scouts and proceeded to violate the heart of their character-building creed by bragging — bragging about the way he had beaten his opponent. This lowered the stature of his office and it made a great many of the participants wish to be elsewhere. It ruined the occasion. The president was teaching the Boy Scouts to be nasty.
That was the systematic purpose of the rich asshole’s behavior that day and it was part of a much larger pattern.
For some rich asshole is a compulsive defiler. He enjoys it. It makes him happy.
He seems driven to prove to himself and to everybody else that his power extends beyond the ability to “get away with anything.” His power is greater than that: he can get away with disgusting behavior that no one else would have the gall to think of.
Hence his otherwise pointless attempt to deny the heroism of his own party’s nominee for the presidency in 2008, a man who had stood up to torture as a prisoner of war while the rich asshole avoided military service. How otherwise can one explain such behavior, behavior of the sort that would in normal times ruin the reputation of any politician who dared to indulge in it, except as a gesture to prove that he — and he alone — can mock certain near-universal standards of decency and get away with it?
This was more than an attempt to degrade. It was a demonstration of the absolute power to defile.
And he enjoyed it.
He found it fun.
He makes fun of the appearance of women, brags about groping them, and brags about evading taxes. He makes up nicknames for those who disagree with him and revels in humiliating people. He comes off like an all-purpose villain in an old-time Hollywood film, the guy who fights dirty — for the fun of it — who smirks and who brags and who only cares about ruining things. What he represents is the knee to the groin, the swift kick below the belt, the loud belch on the solemn occasion. There used to be a short and pithy term for the likes of some rich asshole in America.
He is a rat.
He is the gross-out artist of the frat house.
He is such a compulsive louse that one suspects there must be something deeply . . . “wrong with him.”
And the fact that he occupies the office that was first held by George Washington adds to his glee.
One of the common complaints among the rich asshole’s critics is the fact that his behavior is un-presidential. People simply cannot get used to the fact that the President of the United States acts like a guttersnipe. No one has seen such a thing in our times and it’s impossible to regard it as anything less than weird.
It’s unbelievable.
And that appears to be precisely what some rich asshole finds so enjoyable. He loves it.
White House physicians in the past have covered up a great many things about the medical conditions of presidents. Dr. Cary Grayson, Woodrow Wilson’s physician, hid the facts about the president’s stroke. The physicians treating Franklin D. Roosevelt said nothing during the 1944 election to reveal that FDR was dying. And the physicians treating John F. Kennedy, some of whom were arguably quacks, hid the facts about his serious back and intestinal conditions.
Granted, the concepts of “madness” and “insanity” are arguable. In the 1960s a renegade psychiatrist named Thomas Szaz denied that there is any such thing as insanity. All that we can say, he asserted, is that certain people behave in unusual ways that other people find strange. A famous psychiatrist, Erich Fromm, refused on principle to use the word “insane” about Adolf Hitler, whom he did acknowledge was “sick.” Fromm categorized Hitler’s “sickness” as “malignant necrophilia.”
Behavior that flows from what some regard as mental illness spans a range of dysfunctionality. Some people who are characterized as mad are the victims of severe hallucination. They are sometimes incapable of taking care of themselves in the most elementary ways. Others who are sometimes called deranged can act in extremely effective ways while lacking any normal sense of conscience — the sorts of people who are sometimes called “psychopaths.” Others have the garden-variety maladjustments that are sometimes called “neuroses.” They are so “hung-up” about certain kinds of “issues” that their lives are just a tangle of self-defeating illusions.
And then there are the sadists, the masochists, the devotees of whips and bondage — the perverts.
Psychiatrists have called some rich asshole the victim of “narcissistic personality disorder.” But there is reason to believe that his madness goes deeper than that. Perhaps these mental-health practitioners should look at the literature in their field about the sorts of people with a mania for . . . desecrating things. The fact that some rich asshole is so obsessed about physical luxury, physical grandeur, slacks that are steam-pressed every single day, is perhaps a compensation for the drives that are pulling him constantly, relentlessly, toward behavior that goes beyond “trashy.”
There are clinical terms for the sorts of people who suffer from a morbid attraction to filth.
To putrefaction.
People who find themselves aroused by the chance to make the lives of others raunchy and putrid.
the rich asshole is a very sick man, and his pathology is to make us all as sick as he possibly can — sick to our stomachs, sick at the sight of him snorting and cavorting in his sty. He is having the time of his life making everything around him “go bad.”
It is time for a cure.
Richard Striner, a professor of history at Washington College, is the author of many books including Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery and Lincoln’s Way: How Six Great Presidents Created American Power.
This article was originally published at History News Network
the rich asshole opioid commission’s work is a ‘sham,’ member says
Jessica Kwong
Posted with permission from Newsweek
The work of President Donald Trump’s opioid commission has been turned into a “sham” and a “charade” by Republican-led Congress, a member of the panel said.
Trump in October declared a 90-day public health emergency around the opioid epidemic—but he did not make new funding available to address the issue.
“It means nothing if it has no funding to push it forward,” former Democratic Representative Patrick Kennedy, one of six members appointed to the bipartisan commission in March, told CNN in a report published Tuesday.
“This thing's a charade. I have to be true to the way I feel—this is essentially a sham," Kennedy said. “You can't expect to stem the tide of a public health crisis that is claiming over 64,000 lives per year without putting your money where your mouth is."
More than 500,000 deaths have occurred due to drug overdoses since 2000, and opioids could kill nearly 500,000 Americans in the next decade as addiction rises.
Experts and advocates share a similar view to Kennedy’s.
“A lot of talk, little action,” Chuck Ingoglia, a senior vice president at the National Council for Behavioral Health, told Vox. “It’s great that the president says this is a priority. It’s great that he convened a task force so we have another paper that says the opioid crisis in America needs attention. But too little has happened to actually do anything about it.”
The commission, which offered 56 recommendations, including setting up drug courts nationwide to direct drug abusers to treatment instead of the prison system, officially ended its work on December 1.
The public health emergency declaration was set to expire on Tuesday, but Acting Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Eric Hargan renewed the declaration for another 90 days as the government moved toward a shutdown on Friday.
Mueller interviewed James Comey in the rich asshole-Russia probe: reportTrump in October declared a 90-day public health emergency around the opioid epidemic—but he did not make new funding available to address the issue.
“It means nothing if it has no funding to push it forward,” former Democratic Representative Patrick Kennedy, one of six members appointed to the bipartisan commission in March, told CNN in a report published Tuesday.
“This thing's a charade. I have to be true to the way I feel—this is essentially a sham," Kennedy said. “You can't expect to stem the tide of a public health crisis that is claiming over 64,000 lives per year without putting your money where your mouth is."
This is a moral crisis. People are choosing to turn their backs. Those struggling with addiction need access to medication-assisted therapies, and we need more federal funding to stop the deaths of despair that are devastating American families! twitter.com/washingtonpost…
More than 500,000 deaths have occurred due to drug overdoses since 2000, and opioids could kill nearly 500,000 Americans in the next decade as addiction rises.
Experts and advocates share a similar view to Kennedy’s.
“A lot of talk, little action,” Chuck Ingoglia, a senior vice president at the National Council for Behavioral Health, told Vox. “It’s great that the president says this is a priority. It’s great that he convened a task force so we have another paper that says the opioid crisis in America needs attention. But too little has happened to actually do anything about it.”
The commission, which offered 56 recommendations, including setting up drug courts nationwide to direct drug abusers to treatment instead of the prison system, officially ended its work on December 1.
The public health emergency declaration was set to expire on Tuesday, but Acting Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Eric Hargan renewed the declaration for another 90 days as the government moved toward a shutdown on Friday.
Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2017 (Screenshot)
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Special counsel Robert Mueller interviewed former FBI director James Comey last year as part of his investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to the New York Times.
The Times reported: “The interview with Mr. Comey focused on a series of memos he wrote about his interactions with some rich asshole that unnerved Mr. Comey. In one memo, Mr. Comey said that some rich asshole had asked him to end the F.B.I.’s investigation into the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.”
Mueller is reportedly investigating whether the rich asshole committed obstruction of justice when he fired Comey.
some rich asshole's personally chosen CIA chief insists that despite "moron" reports, the rich asshole understands intelligence better than veteran spies.
The rich asshole administration wants the world to know that despite the reported comments from Cabinet members like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, some rich asshole is not a “moron.”
The most recent manifestation of this propaganda campaign came from a close the rich asshole associate, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, the latest of his top lieutenants to blatantly stroke his ego in plain view of the world. To hear Pompeo tell it, the rich asshole has the mental acuity and dexterity of a superspy with decades of experience on the front lines.
In Pompeo’s version of reality, America has a James Bond, and he lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Washington Post recently reported that the rich asshole’s daily intelligence briefings are constructed in a fashion to avoid upsetting him. This means that information relating to Russia, particularly that country’s meddling in the 2016 election on his behalf, is removed. A senior intelligence official told the paper, “If you talk about Russia, meddling, interference — that takes the PDB off the rails.”
But appearing at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Pompeo insisted that despite the daily evidence billions of people witness every day on the rich asshole’s lack of intellectual curiosity, when he is given his briefings he transforms into something straight out of “Mission Impossible.”
“I have seen 25-year intelligence professional receive briefings. I would tell you that President the rich asshole is the kind of recipient of our information at the same level that they are,” Pompeo claimed.
The former Republican congressman added that the rich asshole “has the grounding for him to be able to grasp this information in a way that he can ask sophisticated questions that then lead to important policy discussions.”
Before the interview began, Pompeo took note of the many reporters and cameras in attendance, perhaps targeting his subsequent praise of the rich asshole’s alleged skills to them while hoping the rich asshole would see them in the course of his habitual television watching during his so-called “executive time.”
It was a stream of conveniently over-the-top praise that has become standard operating procedure under the rich asshole. In televised Cabinet meetings, the bulk of the discussion has been praise of the rich asshole. Among his top cheerleaders has been Mike Pence, who gushed in December that the rich asshole had shepherded an agenda “that truly is restoring this country.”
Pompeo has been right up there with Pence in shaking pom-poms for the rich asshole. He has previously referred to the U.S. federal government as “President the rich asshole’s government,” and the record has shown that Pompeo is more than willing to make a mockery of the CIA to feed into the rich asshole’s impulses.
the rich asshole reportedly had serious discussions with Pompeo about creating a private spy network to investigate the so-called “deep state” plotting against him.
And thanks to the rich asshole’s penchant for believing right-wing conspiracy theories featured on Fox News, Pompeo met with a fringe figure peddling the myth that the Democratic Party’s email servers were not hacked in 2016. Reports indicate the rich asshole told Pompeo to meet with the theorist.
Pompeo has already shown that he is happy to run around knee deep in the lunatic fringe at the rich asshole’s behest, so going over the top — perhaps believing that word would get back to the rich asshole — and offering absurdist praise of the rich asshole is perfectly within his pattern of behavior.
But the American people are certainly not seeing the same figure that Pompeo has described. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, when Americans were asked to describe the rich asshole, the most common word used was “idiot.” Followed closely by “liar.”
Maybe he’s just undercover?
The truth about the missing text message ‘scandal’ that the rich asshole supporters can’t stop talking about
The latest effort to discredit Mueller.
On Tuesday morning, President the rich asshole characterized missing text messages that were exchanged by two FBI employees who were not fans of his as “one of the biggest stories in a long time.”
the rich asshole’s tweet contains a factual inaccuracy — as David Wright of CNN pointed out, the exact number of “missing” texts between agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page is unknown.
But more importantly, the story is being used by the rich asshole and his supporters to discredit the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
During his Fox News show on Monday evening, Lou Dobbs called for federal agents to be “dispatched to the Justice Department and FBI to sequester everything and to at least take into custody the top people who are responsible for the operations of those organizations.”
Fox News host Sean Hannity alleged that the missing text are evidence of an “Anti-the rich asshole ‘CONSPIRACY’ at DOJ.”
the rich asshole posted his tweet about the texts shortly after the story was discussed on his favorite show, Fox & Friends.
What text messages are missing
Strzok and Page have been in the news since last month, when the Justice Department took the unusual step of releasing records indicating that during the 2016 presidential campaign, the two agents — who were having an affair at the time — exchanged texts expressing anti-the rich asshole views.
In messages to Page, Strzok called the rich asshole “awful” and “an idiot,” and after the election, Page texted Strzok and expressed dismay at the prospect of Jeff Sessions becoming attorney general.
Both agents were involved in the FBI investigations of Hillary Clinton and some rich asshole. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller learned about the text messages in August, he removed Strzok from his team. Page had reportedly already completed her stint working in the special counsel’s office by that time.
There is no evidence anywhere in the many thousands of Strzok-Page text messages that have been released indicating that the two agents’ private views translated to anti-the rich asshole actions at their jobs. As the Huffington Post details, the rich asshole supporters overlook that the Strzok-Page texts also “make clear that both Strzok and Page were frustrated by stories that reflected poorly upon the FBI’s handling of the Clinton probe,” and had no interest in weaponizing the power of the bureau.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd has informed members of Congress that messages sent between Strzok and Page were not retained between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017 due to a technical issue.
“The FBI has informed us that many FBI-provided Samsung 5 mobile devices did not capture or store text messages due to misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities,” Boyd wrote.
Prominent Republican accept the FBI’s explanation
Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr (R-NC) — who has previously been enlisted to help the White House out of its Russia mess — has indicated he accepts the FBI’s explanation.
The rich asshole administration, however, is seizing on the missing texts as a “scandal.”
On Tuesday morning, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the story a “great cause for concern” during an appearance on Fox News. Later in the day, Sessions ordered an investigation into the missing messages.
The worst conspiracy of all time
The underlying theory by the rich asshole supporters is that the texts reveal a conspiracy by the FBI to take down the rich asshole.
In fact, the FBI’s respective handling of the rich asshole and Clinton investigations was a key factor in the rich asshole’s victory, according to an analysis by Nate Silver. While the bureau’s investigation into the rich asshole began in July 2016, the existence of the investigation wasn’t publicly disclosed until after the rich asshole’s inauguration. On the other hand, FBI Director James Comey went out of his way to publicize the Clinton email investigation just days before the election. Around that same time, the New York Times published a report sourced to “law enforcement officials” that claimed there was “no clear link” between the rich asshole and Russia — a report that looks very suspect in light of the many the rich asshole-Russia contacts that we’ve seen learned about since then.
When the rich asshole supporters been pushed about the major holes in their theory of the case — why would then-FBI Director Comey have publicized the Clinton email investigation if his bureau was trying to help Clinton? — they haven’t had answers.
the rich asshole’s solar tariff backfires: It hits red states and U.S. taxpayers harder than China
"Southern states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina among the most impacted."
On Monday, President some rich asshole slapped a 30 percent tariff on imported solar cells and panels.
But while the White House said the goal was to punish China for an industrial policy aimed at taking over the global solar market, the harsh reality is that the president is going to end up punishing the states that voted for him the most. On top of that, U.S. taxpayers are actually going to end up paying for half of any tariff.
Analysis provided to ThinkProgress by GTM Research concludes, “new and emerging state markets are disproportionately affected [by the new tariff], with southern states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina amongst the most impacted by the tariffs.” All of those states voted for the rich asshole in the 2016 election.
MJ Shiao, GTM’s head of Americas Research, explained in an interview that the states hurt the most by the new tariff are the “hot markets that are on the cusp of becoming economic for solar,” or that just became economic thanks to the steady and rapid price drops for solar cells and panels. Those states are disproportionately found in the South and Southeast.
In addition to punishing emerging markets in several red states, experts say the new tariff will also backfire for all U.S. taxpayers. “The U.S. federal government will end up footing some of the bill for the rich asshole’s decision,” Hugh Bromley, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) solar analyst, said in an email. “Half of any increase in system costs will be offset through the tax code via the Investment Tax Credit and depreciation.”
In short, U.S. taxpayers will end up footing half the bill. “The investment tax credit for solar is 30 percent of capex [capital expenditure],” Amy Grace, head of North American research for BNEF, explained — so 30 percent of any tariff-driven price increase gets paid back through the tax code. And the tax code’s accelerated depreciation for new equipment means yet another portion of any tariff-driven price increase will, again, ultimately be paid back by U.S. taxpayers.
Will the tariff provide much benefit for U.S. solar manufacturers, which is the key rationale for imposing them in the first place? BNEF’s Bromley says it won’t. “Anyone expecting a U.S. manufacturing renaissance as a result of these tariffs is set to be disappointed,” he said. “A tariff lasting only four years and ratcheting down quickly is unlikely to attract any manufacturing investment that was not going to occur anyways.”
Finally, can red state voters and U.S. taxpayers at least take some comfort knowing that China is going to suffer from all this? The answer to that is also no.
“Chinese manufacturers have aggressive cost reduction plans in place already,” Shiao said, and the U.S. is only 10 percent of the global market. But GTM’s research finds that the tariffs will reduce U.S. installations about 10 percent over the next five years. So any overall impact on Chinese solar manufacturing and sales will be quite modest indeed.
The bottom line is that the rich asshole’s new tariff on solar imports will have a very limited impact on China or domestic solar manufacturers, but red states will take a disproportionate share of the lost revenues and lost jobs from the reduction in U.S. solar installations — and taxpayers will end up footing much of the bill. This, sadly, is the kind of counterproductive impact we have come to expect from the rich asshole’s energy policies.
January 23, 2018
Tracy Lee
Posted with permission from Newsweek
The Trump administration is imposing hefty traffics on imported solar panels and large residential washing machines, a move that has spread anger across the renewable energy industry abroad as the U.S. claims it will help American manufacturers.
The administration said this new move benefits American workers and businesses and makes good on President Donald Trump's "America First" promises of prioritizing the needs of his nation over foreign interests.
“The President’s action makes clear again that the Trump Administration will always defend American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses in this regard,” U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer said in a statement Monday announcing the regulations.
According to the USTR, foreign solar panels will now face a tariff of 30 percent. Each year, the percentage of the tariff will shrink, eventually becoming a 15 percent tariff after four years.
For imported washers, the first 1.2 million units of washers will see tariffs that start at 20 percent. Each year will then see a drop of 2 percent for the next three years. Subsequent imports of finished washers start at tariffs of 50 percent, dropping annually by 5 percent and reaching 40 percent by the third year's end.
The decision stems from a complaint filed from Georgia-based Suniva Inc., whose majority owner is a Chinese company, and SolarWorld Americas, a subsidiary of German company SolarWorld AG. Under Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974, the companies alleged "serious injury" by increased imports. The U.S. International Trade Commission responded by enacting the regulations.
Suniva and SolarWorld Americas have maintained their claims where their business were hurt by environmental regulations and cheap imports from China. Suniva declared bankruptcy last April while SolarWorld Americas declared itself insolvent last spring.
Since taking office, Trump has charged that he would take a harder stance in protecting the livelihoods of American manufacturers against products made overseas, particularly against China.
This latest crackdown by the Trump administration has stirred throughout China and South Korea in particular, countries that are strong trading partners with the U.S.
Most of the U.S. solar panel imports are from China—the world’s biggest producer of solar panels—and exported 21 million washing machines in 2017 that was worth almost $3 billion.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry in a statement called the tariffs “an abuse” while expressing their “strong dissatisfaction” and warned that it would "resolutely defend its legitimate interests."
South Korea, who would also be hit hard with the tariffs on imported washers through its Samsung Electrics and LG Electronics, looks to push levies on imported American products as a fallout measure.
The two nations plan to appeal to members from the World Trade Organization (WTO) —the global authority on trade—that Trump's tariffs violate trading regulations.
Critics have charged that Wall Street stands to reap the benefits as the value in investments—distressed bonds—is likely to get a boost, according to Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, the solar energy sector, such as the Solar Energy Industries (SEIA)––the national trade association for the U.S. industry Association–– and Standard Solar among many has said the impact for them comes at a high-stake.
SEIA has spent months trying to fight the tariffs. In a statement on Monday, SEIA said that the regulations will "create a crisis in a part of our economy that has been thriving, which will ultimately cost tens of thousands of hard-working, blue-collar Americans their jobs.”
Ex-federal prosecutor explains how Jeff Sessions could sink the rich asshole — and himself — in Mueller testimony
Special counsel Robert Mueller and Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions (Composite image)
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to walk a tightrope during his interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, according to one former federal prosecutor.
Renatto Mariotti, who’s running for Illinois attorney general as a Democrat, said the attorney general is a crucial witness in the investigation of President some rich asshole’s ties to Russia — and his possible efforts to cover up those connections.
“Based on what we know publicly, the most important testimony Sessions could provide relates to obstruction of justice,” Mariotti tweeted Tuesday morning. “He was present during conversations with the rich asshole regarding the firing of Comey, and he wrote a memo providing an alternative explanation for the firing.”
He said Mueller likely asked Sessions what the president told him about the firing, and why he and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein were asked to prepare those memos — and why their memos didn’t match up with the reasons stated by the rich asshole or in a letter written by White House adviser Stephen Miller.
Mueller no doubt asked the attorney general about the president’s reported outbursts following his recusal from overseeing the FBI probe of the rich asshole’s campaign ties to Russia, which is a key piece of evidence in an obstruction case, according to Mariotti.
“Those statements provide evidence of the rich asshole’s intent,” Mariotti said. “Mueller needs to prove that the rich asshole fired Comey (and asked Comey to kill the Flynn investigation) with ‘corrupt’ intent.”
Mueller must prove the rich asshole wanted to unlawfully end the investigation, Mariotti said, and that could hinge on whether the president knew Mike Flynn had lied to FBI agents before asking Comey to spike the investigation of his national security adviser.
Flynn has since pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents, and so has George Papadopoulos — an adviser on the foreign policy team headed by Sessions.
“Sessions also could provide testimony about the campaign,” Mariotti said. “What did he tell Papadopoulos about setting up a meeting with Putin? Sessions publicly claims he discouraged Papadopoulos, but later email traffic suggests otherwise.”
Mueller also likely questioned the attorney general about his responses to questions from former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) about his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign.
“Did Sessions tell the truth to Congress?” Mariotti said. “For example, he told Congress that he didn’t discuss election-related matters with the Russian Ambassador.”
The attorney general recused himself from the probe in March after the Washington Post revealed he met twice with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign but failed to disclose those contacts under questioning by Franken during his confirmation hearing.
“It’s a crime to lie to Congress, so I expect Sessions to very carefully select his words to ensure that he can’t be charged for his prior statements or his statements to Mueller, because lying to the FBI is also a crime.”
The Stormy Daniels bailout? the rich asshole campaign transferred $130K to the rich asshole business one month after election
President some rich asshole and adult actress Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name was Stormy Daniels, in a 2006 Myspace photo.
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Did President some rich asshole’s campaign reimburse one of the president’s businesses for the cost of paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels?
That’s a question that’s now being asked by the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which has flagged a the rich asshole campaign reimbursement filing that sent $130,888.33 in campaign funds to a limited liability corporation called the rich asshole Tower Commercial. The filing claims that the rich asshole campaign was reimbursing the LLC for “rent,” although it does not describe exactly what properties were rented out for campaign use.
According to the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, longtime the rich asshole attorney Michael Cohen set up a separate LLC called Essential Consultants in October 2016 that he used as a vehicle to pay off Daniels in exchange for remaining silence about her past affair with the president, which occurred shortly after his wife Melania had given birth to their son, Barron the rich asshole.
Given that the payment made from the the rich asshole campaign to the rich asshole Tower Commercial LLC was for roughly the same amount that Essential Consultants LLC paid to Daniels — and given the fact that the payout occurred just one month after the 2016 presidential election ended — this transaction is sure to raise questions over whether campaign funds were used to cover the costs of paying off a porn star.
Check out the filing posted by CREW below.
Hardliners in the House are teaming up with the White House to make sure any Senate immigration deal doesn't make it to the rich asshole's desk.
While bipartisan optimism grows in the U.S. Senate that a deal can be reached in coming days to address the legal future of nearly one million undocumented immigrants in this country, anti-immigration zealots in the House are already working hard to make sure no bill makes it to some rich asshole’s desk.
And that could lead to another government shutdown.
During the weekend government shutdown, a group of bipartisan senators agreed to craft a bill to help those affected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, implemented by President Barack Obama. A new Senate bill would ensure those undocumented immigrants are allowed to stay in the U.S., as a vast majority Americans think they should be.
Indeed, the only reason the shutdown ended was because of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s promise to hold a vote on a bill for DREAMers before the next budget deadline of Feb. 8.
But as Republican House Whip Steve Scalise stressed to Politico, “The House wasn’t part of that deal.” Instead, Scalise does “not feel at all bound” by any guidelines established by senators.
Additionally, more than 150 House Republicans are set to announce Tuesday that they’re supporting an anti-immigration bill from conservative hardliners, led by Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.
“The Goodlatte proposal contains a number of contentious provisions that would be difficult to pass with even just Republican votes, including mandatory worker verification, cracking down on sanctuary cities, changing asylum thresholds and cutting legal immigration to the US by 25%, according to bill authors,” CNN reports.
The demand that the House tack to the far right would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the House to reconcile with a possible Senate bill.
Meanwhile, the rich asshole’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney told CNN Tuesday that any DREAMer fix would have to be part of a “larger agreement.” Asked the rich asshole’s position on DREAMers and who gets to say, Mulvaney said it “depends on what we get in exchange.”
He stressed the White House wants a “big deal” that covers a wide array of complicated immigration-related issues, including the rich asshole’s border wall. But with an agreed-upon, early February deadline looming, the demand for a “big deal” makes the chances of legislation passing all the more remote.
Indeed, House Republicans anxious to scuttle any immigration deal are likely working alongside anti-immigrant advocates inside the White House who made sure the rich asshole turned down two bipartisan deals earlier this month to protect the possible deportation of 800,000 DREAMers.
the rich asshole’s move last September to cancel the DREAMers protection, and the subsequent four-month refusal by Republicans to address their future via any kind of legislation action, forced Democrats to take a stand last week. They refused to vote for yet another short-term spending bill if the DREAMeres weren’t protected.
Failure to pass a DREAMer bill next month will likely spark another confrontation and could lead to another shutdown if Republicans break their promise to address the issue before the next budget deadline.
Why is one of the nation’s highest nonpartisan judicial officers huddling for a strategy session with Republican senators?
When Senate Republicans stole a Supreme Court seat from President Barack Obama, the questioning of some rich asshole’s choice, far-right judge Neil Gorsuch, focused heavily on his belief in the independence of the judiciary.
He claimed he would not be a “rubber stamp” for the rich asshole’s agenda and called it “disheartening” whenever he heard anyone on either side of the aisle impugning the motives of a federal judge.
In practice, Gorsuch has consistently made decisions that create the appearance of partisanship and ideological favoritism. And one GOP senator who voted for him, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, accidentally illustrated this fact in a tweet Monday evening.
“I enjoyed having dinner tonight at the home of Senator John Cornyn and his wife Sandy with our newest Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and a few of my other Senate colleagues to talk about important issues facing our country,” Alexander wrote.
Why Gorsuch should be included at a private dinner with a number of Republican senators, and a member of the rich asshole’s Cabinet who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is an unresolved question. And this is not the first questionable gathering Gorsuch has attended.
In September 2017, he gave a speech at the rich asshole International Hotel in Washington, D.C., and also spoke at a joint event with McConnell, who was instrumental in blocking the Supreme Court seat from being filled by Obama.
Even the one minor act of rebellion Gorsuch committed against the GOP orthodoxy — a feeble rebuke against the rich asshole for criticizing federal judges behind closed doors — was hopelessly milquetoast, and nothing in that conversation suggested he agreed with the legal arguments the rich asshole was attacking.
And the history of his political opinions is horrifically instructive. He has consistently ruled to strip women of legal rights, dismantle worker protections, and favors letting Republicans rig elections however they want.
In Gorsuch, the rich asshole and his Republican allies in the Senate have a reliable supporter of right-wing dogma on the court — and apparently at their private strategy sessions, as well.
DREAMers in New York will continue to be eligible for Medicaid, even if DACA expires
Will other states follow suit?
New York recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will continue to be eligible for state-funded Medicaid — regardless if DACA is terminated.
“Information you give us will not be shared,” according to the website of the state’s health insurance marketplace NY State of Health. A common fear among undocumented immigrants is that their information could be shared with the rich asshole administration if they seek health insurance.
Last September, the president decided to phase out the DACA program, which grants temporary deportation relief and work authorization in two-year periods to certain qualified immigrants brought to the United States as children. The move left many scrambling. A recent San Francisco federal court ruling temporarily blocked the rich asshole administration’s efforts to end the program, allowing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency to continue renewing DACA applications. While Congress continues to deliberate a permanent legal solution for the thousands of so-called DREAMers, New York has ensured they will receive health insurance regardless of their status.
Each day DACA beneficiaries nationwide lose their protection from deportation and possibly their right to work. The rich asshole administration says the program “officially” ends in March, but an average of 122 immigrants lose their status daily. This means many could lose access to employer-based health insurance. According a recent Center for American Progress (CAP) survey, 57 percent of DREAMers received health insurance through their job after their DACA applications were approved. (ThinkProgress is editorially independent of CAP.)
If DACA protections for any of the 42,000 New Yorkers expire and they lose their job-based plan, they are eligible for Medicaid.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) announcement came after organizations petitioned him to offer Medicaid to DREAMers, according to Politico. This action only applies to DACA recipients, and not other immigrants from El Salvador or Haiti who lost their temporary protected status, a state official told ThinkProgress.
For DACA grantees without employer-based insurance, options are limited. Nationwide, DACA recipients cannot purchase health care on the Obamacare marketplace, but some states have extended coverage using state dollars. Currently, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia allow DACA grantees to apply for state-funded Medicaid. (In Minnesota, DACA grantees can apply for limited benefits.) ThinkProgress reached out to each state’s health department to ask if DREAMers are still eligible for coverage even if their protections expire; only a California official responded immediately to the inquiry. Of the approximately 690,000 DACA recipients nationwide, 223,000 are California residents.
“Individuals in a deferred action status category continue to be eligible for full scope Medi-Cal if they otherwise meet all other Medi-Cal program eligibility requirements,” said Carol Sloan, a public information officer for California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal. DACA is not a specific eligibility category in California; individuals with DACA status are eligible under a broader immigration category called Permanently Residing in the U.S. Under Color of Law (PRUCOL) — which is the same approach New York announced Tuesday. Therefore, coverage shouldn’t be affected unless a recipient’s income increases or they move.
When asked whether California would consider covering DACA grantees when the program officially ends in March, Sloan did not immediately reply. If the DACA program officially ends, California also offers undocumented immigrants limited Medi-Cal benefits.
Advocates told the Washington Post that many immigrants who came to the country legally are avoiding accessing health services for fear of the rich asshole administration gaining hold of critical information about them or loved one who are vulnerable to deportation. This chilling effect has serious ramifications. Forgoing care is dangerous — and it’s even more so when considering the amount of fear and toxic stress immigrants are currently other.
the rich asshole attacks CNN after man threatens to murder CNN employees for ‘fake news’
In one of more than 20 calls to CNN, Brandon Griesemer allegedly said, "Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down."
On Monday, an Atlanta TV station broke news that a man faces up to two decades in prison for allegedly threatening to murder CNN employees.
According to court documents, the man — a 19-year-old from Nori, Michigan named Brandon Griesemer — allegedly made more than 20 calls to CNN over a two day period about a week ago. During one of them, Griesemer told a CNN operator that the network is “fake news.” In others, he made racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic comments. On another occasion Griesemer said, “Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down. F*** you, f***ing n*****s.”
Griesemer was arrested after an investigation traced the call back to a house he shares with his parents. Heavy.com published pictures from Facebook indicating that Griesemer is white. Griesemer has also been linked with threatening calls made to an Islamic center in Michigan last year.
President the rich asshole has popularized the use of “fake news” to dismiss reports and media outlets he doesn’t like. One of his frequent targets has been CNN. During his first news conference as president last February, the rich asshole slammed CNN reporter Jim Acosta as “very fake news.” Last month, he devoted an entire tweet to attacking “Fake News CNN.”
the rich asshole’s attacks on CNN have sometimes used violent imagery. Last summer, tweeted a video clip of him physically attacking a man who had a CNN logo superimposed over his head.
Weeks later, the rich asshole retweeted an image of “the rich asshole train” striking a CNN journalist. On Christmas Eve, the rich asshole retweeted a photoshopped image of him with a blood stain on his shoe that has the CNN logo on it.
Beyond dangers they pose to CNN employees and their families, the rich asshole’s attacks on the network represent an attack on press freedoms both at home and abroad. But instead of reconsidering his approach, the rich asshole continued to attack CNN on Friday morning.
It’s not just the rich asshole — other the rich asshole administration officials regularly dismiss reporting they don’t like as “fake news.” On Friday morning, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrapped up an interview on Fox & Friends by attacking the “fake news” and by joking about which magazines are used as coasters at the White House.
UPDATE (1/23, 11:28AM): “Griesemer is currently free on a $10,000 unsecured bond.”
‘Your bar is so low’: MSNBC’s Mika sickened by GOP lawmaker’s fawning praise of the rich asshole
Mika Brzezinski and Rep. Tom Cole (MSNBC)
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MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski was appalled by a Republican lawmaker’s praise for President Donald the rich asshole’s handling of negotiations on immigration policy that resulted in a brief government shutdown.
The “Morning Joe” co-host asked Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) whether the president’s tweets and controversial statements during the legislative process had been helpful, and the lawmaker said the ends justified the means.
“He handled himself very well during this,” Cole said. “He allowed the events to unfold, they were unfolding to his advantage, the administration did everything it could to minimize the impact of the shutdown. I give him high grades for this particular episode, so we’ll see going forward. But he did what he needed to do, and he walked out the winner — not the loser.”
Brzezinski asked whether Cole thought it was helpful that the rich asshole referred to African nations as “sh*thole countries.”
“Well, I wouldn’t ever excuse those kinds of comments,” Cole said.
Brzezinski made a face like she’d smelled a foul odor, and she said “your bar seems so low.”
The Oklahoma Republican then said the president’s insults were no worse than lawmakers revealing those Oval Office remarks.
“On the other hand, when you take them out and start spreading them around and exacerbate the situation, you have to ask yourself whether you’re being helpful or not,” Cole said.
The congressman then bashed the bipartisan group of senators who tried to reach a compromise on immigrants under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, saying House lawmakers should have been invited to participate.
“The issue there was, in my view, you should haven’t tried to end run the process,” Cole said. “We had senators coming in with what they thought was a deal, but it wasn’t an acceptable deal to the standpoint of the president, it would have never gotten through the House. Let’s go back and put everybody at the negotiating table that has to sign off on this thing, not just a group of senators. I’m sorry, the Constitution demands it get through the House and demands the president sign it. So if those people are not at the table, your chances of getting a deal go down.”
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