the rich asshole calls report he ordered Mueller’s firing ‘fake news’
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 01/26/18 07:30 AM EST
President the rich asshole dismissed reports that he ordered Special Counsel Robert Mueller's firing last summer as "fake news" on Friday in Davos, Switzerland.
“Fake news. Fake news. Typical New York Times. Fake stories," the rich asshole told reporters.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the rich asshole attempted to oust Mueller last June, but was stopped after White House counsel Don McGahn threaten to tender his resignation.
However, McGahn threatened to quit if the rich asshole tried to fire Mueller, saying the move would further stir speculation the president was obstructing justice in the investigation.
Attorney Ty Cobb, who is handling the White House's response to the probe, declined to comment to the Times.
“We decline to comment out of respect for the Office of the Special Counsel and its process,” Cobb said.
A number of other outlets have independently confirmed the Times's report, including Fox News.
Fox News host Sean Hannity said that the network had confirmed the reporting on Thursday after originally calling it a distraction.
"All right, so we have sources tonight just confirming to Ed Henry that, maybe, yeah, some rich asshole wanted to fire the special counsel for conflict. Does he not have the right to raise those questions?" Hannity said.
The report comes after the rich asshole said on Wednesday he is looking to sit down with Mueller for an interview.
Now that the rich asshole's been busted for his failed attempt to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, he's changing his tune.
some rich asshole described reports that he attempted to fire special counsel Robert Mueller last June as “fake news,” but that’s a very different response from the outright denials he and his subordinates had previously issued.
Appearing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the rich asshole was asked about the latest revelation that the rich asshole had plotted to fire Mueller almost immediately after his appointment, and then only thing that stopped him was White House counsel Don McGhan’s threat to quit if he did.
“Did you seek to fire Mueller?” a reporter asked.
“Fake news, folks, fake news,” he responded. “Typical New York Times, fake story.”
But in the past when reporting indicated that the rich asshole has sought to remove Mueller, the denial was far more detailed than his go-to rhetoric attacking the free press.
There are at least eight instances of the rich asshole and his team denying plans to go after Mueller.
“I haven’t given it any thought,” the rich asshole said in August, two months after he had already tried to fire Mueller. “I mean, I’ve been reading about it from you people. You say, oh, I’m going to dismiss him. No, I’m not dismissing anybody.”
Kellyanne Conway told ABC News in August 2017, “The president is not discussing firing Bob Mueller.”
the rich asshole’s lawyer John Dowd told USA Today that same month, “That’s never been on the table, never.”
In December, the rich asshole plainly said, when asked again about whether he was considering firing Mueller, “No, I’m not.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and legislative affairs director Marc Short also insisted that month that there was no conversation about firing Mueller.
Now there has been a dramatic shift in tone, from unequivocal denials to now simply attacking a news outlet. Notably, the rich asshole attorney Ty Cobb simply said in a statement, “We decline to comment.”
The story, originally reported by the New York Times, has also been confirmed by the Washington Post and several other news outlets.
Even the rich asshole’s favorite pro-the rich asshole propaganda outlet, Fox News, confirmed the story. Reporter Ed Henry told viewers, “A source close to the White House telling Fox the New York Times is accurate,” before the network began to regurgitate White House spin. the rich asshole devotee Sean Hannity dismissed the story as mere “distraction” from The New York Times and then turned his focus to a car chase.
the rich asshole’s safe space is his increasingly impotent “fake news” attack — for which he was booed in Davos — but his own rhetoric has given up the game: There was an attempt to rid himself of Mueller, which means more and more evidence that he tried to obstruct justice.
Pennsylvania Rep. Lou Barletta, who the rich asshole has boasted is going to “win big” against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, has associated with extremists who deny the Holocaust on at least two occasions.
As Republicans fight to save their House majority, their efforts in the Senate have also faced a long string of humiliations.
They lost what should have been a completely safe special election in Alabama, after their candidate was credibly accused of being a child molester. Their frontrunner in Ohio unexpectedly dropped out. Their most promising potential candidates declined to enter the race in Minnesota and North Dakota. And one of their minor candidates in Missouri went on an insane rant about how feminists have “snake-filled heads” and he expects “a home-cooked dinner at six every night,” from a woman.
Now, they are suffering yet another humiliation from their top Senate candidate in Pennsylvania: Rep. Lou Barletta.
On Thursday, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported that in 2006, when Barletta was the mayor of Hazelton, he sat for an interview with the American Free Press, “a publication that regularly promotes conspiracy theories including that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were a ‘Jewish plot’ and the Holocaust was a hoax.”
The following year, Barletta headlined an anti-immigration rally that featured anti-Semitic rock singer Paul Topete, who claimed in online forums that the Holocaust is “one of the largest if not THEE [sic] largest scam ever played on humanity,” perpetrated by “frauds in the SHOAH Industry.”
At that rally, Barletta said George W. Bush, who was at the time trying to pass a bipartisan immigration bill, wanted to give “murders, rapists, thieves, and terrorists” legal status.
Faced with his past ties to hate groups, Barletta’s campaign manager insists he is not a racist because the KKK tried to hold a rally in his honor and he did not support it. This is not exactly a convincing defense.
Barletta is currently the frontrunner in the Republican race to challenge Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, largely because of his relationship with some rich asshole. He was an early endorser of the rich asshole’s presidential campaign, and supports the rich asshole’s proposal to massively scale back legal immigration. Last year, the rich asshole proclaimed Barletta was “a great guy” who is “going to win big” against Casey.
Barletta has proved once again that there does not seem to be any lower limit on standards for Republicans who want to run for high office.
the rich asshole's attacks on the free press did not go over so well in Davos.
Foreign journalists let some rich asshole know that his authoritarian claims of fake news aren’t going to be shrugged off, the way so many American journalists now do when the president unleashes reckless, dangerous attacks on the free press.
After delivering a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the rich asshole agreed to a brief question-and-answer session, where he was asked what in his life had prepared him for the presidency.
The narcissist in chief immediately started talking about his press coverage and how much media attention he’s received his entire adult life.
“And throughout my whole life — someone will explain someday why — but I’ve always gotten a lot. And as a businessman I was always treated really well by the press. You know, the numbers speak and things happen, but I’ve always really had a very good press.”
The lifelong publicity hound then complained his favorable press coverage vanished when he decided to run for office.
“It wasn’t until I became a politician that I realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be — as the cameras start going off in the back,” he complained.
That thin-skinned charge was immediately met with a wave of boos and jeers from foreign press.
On Friday morning, the rich asshole used the empty charge of “fake news” while trying to dismiss a blockbuster report that he had demanded special counsel Robert Mueller be fired last year, just as he was beginning his Russia and obstruction of justice investigation.
By contrast, the rich asshole’s attorneys refused to deny the story.
As for the rich asshole’s whining about his campaign coverage, many studies have shown that he benefited from the media’s relentless and mindless obsession on Hillary Clinton’s emails during the campaign.
Not only did the rich asshole receive far less negative coverage than Clinton in 2016, according to an exhaustive review by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, but the rich asshole received more overall press attention. Additionally, Clinton’s so-called scandals got more press coverage than the rich asshole’s.
As president, the rich asshole’s vicious attacks on the free press have earned him the “top oppressor” label from the Committee to Protect Journalists, beating out some of the world’s worst dictators, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
the rich asshole’s “fake news” attacks and insistence that he’s a victim might work with his conservative media enablers at home, but the rest of the world knows better.
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 01/26/18 05:56 AM EST
The fight over the release of a classified memo alleging FBI misconduct has set up a potentially bitter clash between President the rich asshole and the Justice Department.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd — a rich asshole appointee — wrote in a letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) that releasing the memo publicly would be “extraordinarily reckless” and endanger national security.
If the Intelligence Committee votes to release the four-page memo, which could happen early as early as next week, the rich asshole would have an opportunity to veto the decision.
But the White House has signaled tacit support for the move and it’s widely expected that the president, who has previously claimed that the Obama administration “wiretapped” his campaign, will permit the release of the document.
But the White House has signaled tacit support for the move and it’s widely expected that the president, who has previously claimed that the Obama administration “wiretapped” his campaign, will permit the release of the document.
Allowing the committee’s memo to become public unimpeded would be a slap in the face to the Department of Justice at a time when the rich asshole’s efforts to influence its activity are under intense scrutiny.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is believed to be homing in on whether the rich asshole obstructed justice by “fighting back” against the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Meanwhile, a recent drumbeat of headlines have highlighted interactions between the president and Justice officials considered an unusual breach of the historical firewall between the department and the White House.
The stakes are just as high for Nunes, who has faced allegations from Democrats of ginning up the controversy over “unmasking” to provide cover for the rich asshole’s wiretapping claims. The memo, they say, is part of a broad partisan effort to discredit the FBI, and by extension, Mueller.
The committee voted on party lines last week to make the memo, drafted by Nunes and his staff, available to the entire House. At least publicly, Nunes has not committed to a vote on making the document available to the public.
But backing away would carry its own set of political risks for the embattled chairman. Conservatives are clamoring for the release of the memo, calls that escalated after the news that the FBI lost five months of text messages between a pair of FBI employees once assigned to the investigation into the rich asshole campaign.
The bureau blamed a technical glitch and the Justice Department inspector general has since recovered the missing texts using forensic tools.
The precise contents of the memo remain unknown, but it is believed to contain allegations that the FBI did not adequately explain to a clandestine court that some of the information it used in a surveillance warrant application for the rich asshole adviser Carter Page was opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign, now known as the “Steele dossier.”
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants are highly classified — even the existence of a given warrant is classified — and Boyd in his letter warned Nunes that the reported allegations in the memo would be based on information that “neither you nor most of [the committee have] seen.”
The Justice Department, which has not been allowed to see the memo, expressed concerns common to the exposure of any classified information: that its public release will damage ongoing investigations and harm national security by burning sources and laying bare intelligence community capabilities.
“Indeed, we do not understand why the committee would possibly seek to disclose classified and law enforcement sensitive information without first consulting with the relevant members of the Intelligence Community,” Boyd wrote.
Several Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) have suggested that Nunes should allow the department to weigh in on the release of the document.
Nunes would be relying on an obscure House rule that has never before been used to override the classification system. If the committee votes to make the memo public, the president would have five days to block its release. And even if he did block the release, the full House could override him in a floor vote.
But the release of the memo could provide fuel for the rich asshole’s claims that his transition was inappropriately spied on by the Obama administration — as well as back up his assertion that the FBI’s reputation is “in tatters”— and it remains unclear if he will back his own Justice Department.
Some Republicans who have viewed the memo have hinted heavily that it contains the key to unraveling the entire Mueller investigation, long described by the president as a “witch hunt.”
“We certainly support full transparency and we believe it’s at the House Intel Committee to make that decision at this point,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said this week.
A spokesman for Nunes said Thursday that the committee has not briefed the White House on the contents of the memo.
The Justice Department is not “currently aware of any wrongdoing relating to the FISA process,” according to Boyd.
While Nunes has described the memo as “facts,” Democrats have slammed it as a collection of misleading talking points they are unable to correct without exposing the highly classified information underpinning the document.
Boyd suggested that the Justice Department is in a similar position. “We assume members want to provide evidence of any specific allegation of misconduct to Department officials so that we may take appropriate action," he wrote.
Lawmakers say the underlying intelligence justifying the memo’s allegations is so sensitive that only eight members of Congress are able to view it. Nunes and ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) are two of the eight figures, but the other members of the Intelligence Committee are not. The top two lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee are also part of the so-called Gang of Eight, but while they have access to the underlying intelligence, Nunes has denied committee requests to see the memo.
“Seeking Committee approval of public release would require [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] committee members to vote on a staff-drafted memorandum that purports to be based on classified source materials that neither you nor most of them have seen,” Boyd told Nunes.
Nunes has brushed aside the notion that the memo would be unpersuasive without the underlying intelligence to substantiate its claims, calling the argument Democratic obstruction of his investigation into Justice Department misconduct.
But a working group, including Nunes, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), met over the weekend to discuss the possibility of making some of the underlying information public. Nunes has “a plan,” according to committee member Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who provided no further details.
The memo is a committee work product and the responsibility for releasing it, or not, rests with Congress. The underlying intelligence, however, belongs to the executive branch and the rich asshole could unilaterally make it public if he wished.
“I haven’t had that conversation with the president,” Sanders said earlier this week. “Right now, it's going through the process with the House Intel committee. We feel like they should play that role at this point, and if it doesn’t happen we can address it at this point.”
According to Gowdy, who helped draft the memo, “everything” in it is based on documents provided to the committee by the FBI.
A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment when asked if officials had expressed Boyd’s concerns to the White House.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, and Marc Short have proved they "will certainly carry whatever water this presidents asks them to."
It’s shameful enough that the president of the United States in an incessant liar — even his friends at Fox News have warned him not to testify under oath because he’ll certainly be caught lying — but he’s not the only liar in the white House.
the rich asshole’s constant stream of misleading statements and outright falsehoods — 2,000 and counting in his first year alone — is enabled by some of his most public top aides, who also have no problem lying to the American people on his behalf.
That is especially clear now, in light of the shocking revelation that the rich asshole planned to fire special counsel Robert Mueller last June, just a month after his appointment, despite numerous denials from the rich asshole and several of his top spokespeople.
“Now we know that despite all the protestations that Mueller was not going to be fired by the White House, we know now, confirmed by multiple news sources, including NBC News, that is not true,” said longtime Republican strategist Rick Tyler on MSNBC Friday.
Three of the rich asshole’s most shameless and frequent defenders on this and many other issues are White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and legislative affairs director Marc Short.
Or, as MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle described them, “Three members of this administration who will certainly carry whatever water this presidents asks them to.”
These three people plainly denied there was any conversation about firing Mueller.
Conway, in August: “The president is not discussing firing Bob Mueller.”
Sanders, in December: “For the one thousandth time, we have no intentions of firing Bob Mueller.”
Short, also in December: “There’s no conversation about that whatsoever in the White House.”
Those flat denials were all lies, and it seems highly unlikely those three aides didn’t know they were lying at the time, given how obsessed the rich asshole was with trying to figure out a justification for getting rid of the man he obviously feared.
“For the one thousandth time,” Ruhle repeated after the montage of Conway, Sanders, Short, and the rich asshole himself denying the conspiracy to fire Mueller.
“Luckily,” Ruhle said, “we can count to one thousand and one.”
Given the latest bombshell has triggered what Sen. Richard Blumenthal unequivocally described Thursday night as a “constitutional crisis” — one that could lead to further investigations by Congress and law enforcement — it might be time for those top White House aides who have so shamelessly lied on the rich asshole’s behalf to consider how much water they want to continue carrying for him and his sinking ship.
Democrats just picked up another strong chance to flip a GOP House seat blue this November.
Republican chances of retaining control of the House in November continue to unravel, as a record number of incumbents head for the exits instead of seeking re-election. The party faces a monumental task of trying to defend some rich asshole’s wildly unpopular agenda as a Democratic blue wave swells across the country.
Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA) just became the latest Republican to bow out, leaving the GOP scrambling to keep control of his moderate suburban district, which voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Meehan’s political career imploded this week when it was revealed that he used taxpayer dollars to settle a sexual harassment claim made by a former, much younger aide who claimed Meehan had pursued her romantically and then turned on her when she entered a relationship with another man.
The RNC refused to abandon Meehan even as he compounded his woes by claiming the staffer had been his “soulmate,” and that if he was rude to her, it was only because he was so stressed from trying to repeal Obamacare.
“Without Meehan on the ballot, his suburban 7th District seat would likely be a nightmare for the GOP to hold in a special election or in November, based on the current enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans and circumstances surrounding this particular vacancy,” Roll Call reports.
Overall, Democrats need to flip 24 seats to take control of the House. The Cook Political Report currently rates 63 GOP seats as being competitive in November. By comparison, just 21 Democrats seats are deemed competitive, while the rest are safe.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy recently attempted to get the rich asshole to understand the enormity of their predicament during a meeting at Camp David. McCarthy “described scenarios to the president ranging from a bloodbath where Republicans lost the House ‘and lost it big,’ in the words of one official, to an outcome in which they keep control while losing some seats.”
To date, more than 30 House Republicans have declined to seek re-election, which represents a modern day record for voluntary exits. Twelve of the 30 are pursuing runs for higher office, and 18 of whom are retiring outright.
The record for House retirements from a single party had been when 28 Democrats retired in 1994 ahead of Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution,” when the GOP picked up 54 seats in the House.
Among the most vulnerable Republican House members are those who won in 2016 despite their districts voting for Clinton. There are currently 23 such districts.
As for saving Meehan’s GOP seat, recruiting a strong candidate to replace him may prove difficult since the district is a bizarrely shaped, gerrymandering specialty and will likely be redrawn soon to comply with the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on the issue.
“Among Pennsylvania Republicans there has been informal talk about ‘sacrificing’ Meehan’s Delaware County-based district, by making it more heavily Democratic, as they try to comply with a state Supreme Court order to draw up fairer congressional maps,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. “Republicans who control the legislature, the thinking goes, would instead firm up GOP support in neighboring districts where incumbents face tough challenges.”
The bad news just keeps piling up for Republicans.
the rich asshole calls 'Cryin Chuck Schumer' an obstacle to immigration deal
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 01/26/18 12:34 PM EST
President the rich asshole on Friday accused Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) of trying to scuttle a deal to help young immigrants who are protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
“DACA has been made increasingly difficult by the fact that Cryin’ Chuck Schumer took such a beating over the shutdown that he is unable to act on immigration!” the rich asshole tweeted from Air Force One while traveling back to Washington from Davos, Switzerland.
The comments came in response to Schumer’s criticism of a new White House proposal on immigration reform, which would offer a pathway to citizenship to as many as 1.8 million immigrants who are covered by DACA or are eligible.
In a pair of tweets, Schumer called the plan a wish list for "anti-immigrant hardliners."
"While @realDonaldTrump finally acknowledged that the Dreamers should be allowed to stay here and become citizens, he uses them as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish list that anti-immigration hardliners have advocated for for years," he tweeted.
The top Senate Democrats was referring to major cuts the rich asshole proposed to the family-based immigration system.
Under the president’s plan, U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents could only sponsor their spouses and minor children for immigration. They would no longer be able to sponsor extended family members, including parents and siblings.
The measure could dramatically reduce levels of legal immigration, something many Democrats say is too high a price to pay to save the DACA program, which the rich asshole terminated last year.
The spat shows how difficult it will be for Congress and the president to strike a deal on immigration.
Lawmakers are rushing to reach a compromise by Feb. 8, when government funding is set to expire. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will hold an open debate on the issue if a deal is not reached before then.
DACA is an Obama-era program that allows nearly 700,000 young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children to live and work without fear of deportation.
The program is set to begin winding down on March 5.
Dems seek to undermine any good PR for tax law
BY NAOMI JAGODA - 01/26/18 05:57 AM EST
Democrats worried the GOP tax-cut law is getting good press are working hard to undermine any positive feelings about the overhaul and prevent them becoming engrained with the public.
Since the measure passed Congress last month, a wave of companies has announced bonuses for employees, and some polls have shown an increase in support for the law.
In remarks on Wednesday and Thursday, the top two Democrats in Washington, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), lashed out at the new law and sought to downplay the significance of the bonus announcements.
They argued that the tax cuts will largely be a boon to corporate shareholders, rather than middle-class workers.
“Whatever they’re doing, it’s nice, it’s cute, it’s not commensurate with what advantage they have in the tax bill, and it’s not fair to the American worker,” Pelosi said at an event in Florida on Thursday.
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers held teach-ins over Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend to make the case against the tax law to their constituents, and Pelosi on Wednesday urged her colleagues to hold more of those events during the first two weekends in February.
The top House Democrat said that the middle class is getting a “crumb” while shareholders are getting a “bonanza”
Schumer spoke on the Senate floor on Wednesday about companies that have announced layoffs despite the tax cuts, as well as about companies that have announced stock buybacks.
“When the American people learn that some of them are not getting anything, some of them are getting raises and the rest are getting crumbs, and big corporations and wealthy individuals are getting nice, fat pieces of pie, they are going to be outraged,” Schumer said. “They are already.”
The public relations battle is a key part of the midterm election fight, with Republicans arguing their stewardship of the economy is a reason why they should retain GOP majorities in the House and Senate.
Democrats believe the House majority is firmly in play, as historically the president’s party typically loses seats in a midterm election. President the rich asshole’s low approval ratings and Democratic wins in local elections in several states at the end of last year have bolstered Democrats' hopes.
Winning the Senate back is a steeper climb for Democrats, but they have some hope after winning a special election in Alabama, which left the GOP with just a 51-49 edge.
Republicans have made the tax cuts a major part of their messaging, and have hailed announcements of companies promising bonuses to workers.
A list compiled by Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group helmed by Grover Norquist, includes 250 companies that have announced bonuses, wage increases and/or benefit increases following the tax bill’s passage. Among those on the list are major companies such as Home Depot, Starbucks and Walmart.
Republicans have also looked to seize on comments from Democrats denigrating the tax law.
The GOP seized Thursday on comments by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) that dismissed $1,000 bonuses. The lawmaker noted that was before taxes, and that $1,000 didn’t amount to much over a year.
Pelosi’s remarks about “crumbs” have also been turned into attack lines by Republicans.
“Democrats have completely lost touch with the American people,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said. “Workers and families across the country are getting bonuses, raises, and more benefits as a result of tax reform — and they’re going to keep more of what they earn in each paycheck. People in my district don’t call that crumbs — they call that real money.”
Frank Clemente, executive director of the progressive group Americans for Tax Fairness, acknowledged concern about the public relations effort from both Republicans and corporations linking bonuses or pay to the tax law.
“We are concerned that both of those things will be able to pull the wool over the [eyes of the] public,” he said.
Still, Clemente and others on the left said they doubt the tax bill will become popular given that it is centered on a big cut to the corporate rate, which was reduced from 35 percent to 21 percent.
“Instinctively, real voters and independents think this is going to help the wealthy and corporations and not them,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone.
Democrats are hammering home the argument that the bill is primarily for the rich by highlighting the companies that have announced stock buybacks and layoffs since the tax law was passed. Some of the companies that have announced layoffs, such as Walmart and AT&T, also announced bonuses.
They also are arguing that businesses are not making wage increases and investments purely because of the tax law.
“Don’t believe the hype,” Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said at the Florida event, which was hosted by the liberal Not One Penny campaign.
“When workers get a raise, it’s because they earned that raise,” he added. “And when they get a one-time bonus, it doesn’t necessarily translate into permanent wage increases of the kind that we need to really grow the economy in a way where everyone benefits.”
Besides seeking to undercut the bonus announcements, Democrats are also pointing out other issues they have with the new law. In particular, they are noting that it is expected to increase the deficit and say Republicans will want to pay for the tax cuts by making cuts to entitlement and welfare programs in the future.
“This tax cut for corporate America is theft,” Pelosi said. “It is theft from the future.”
GOP lawmakers have criticized Democrats’ attacks on businesses’ bonus and wage announcements, saying they show that Democrats don’t understand the issues members of the public are facing. Republicans also say many of the positive benefits of the tax law are expected to occur in the long term, as businesses bring jobs back to the U.S. and increase their investments in this country.
“It’s a sad day when Democrats are rooting against American families doing better. Whose side are they on?” said Doug Andres, a spokesman for Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
By Matthew Chapman |JANUARY 26, 2018
What do YOU EXPECT FROM A BUNCH OF ENABLERS? THEY WON’T SAY ANYTHING UNLESS IT AFFECTS THEIR AGENDAS.
So far, not one Republican senator has commented on the rich asshole’s attempt to fire the special counsel.
The explosive story that some rich asshole attempted to fire special counsel Robert Mueller just a month after his appointment has erased every other consideration from the national news and even has legal experts and historians raising the specter of impeachment.
But Senate Republicans are staying very quiet.
Among the silent Republicans is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who just two months ago said he “didn’t hear much pressure” to pass any of the bipartisan bills protecting Mueller’s job because the rich asshole would never make a move on him.
Also silent thus far is Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who was forced Thursday to walk back a conspiracy theory to discredit any investigations into the rich asshole, based on a facetious text message, that a “secret society” in federal law enforcement was working to undermine the rich asshole.
Even supposedly principled Republicans like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who fiercely defended Mueller last year and called his career “unimpeachable,” have not publicly commented.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham warned last summer that “any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the rich asshole presidency.” At the time, he encouraged support for his proposed legislation to protect Mueller’s investigation, insisting, “We need a check and balance here.”
Graham has also been silent.
But that does not mean there are zero senators speaking up.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut outlined the serious implications of the news on CNN Thursday evening, warning the revelations portend a “constitutional crisis.”
This is a make or break moment for the integrity of every politician in Washington. Now that the rich asshole’s commission of obstruction of justice is essentially confirmed, it is time for every lawmaker in Congress to make clear which side they are on.
And those who continue to hide will simply mark themselves out as cowards.
Watch Hannity urgently change the subject from the rich asshole’s constitutional crisis to a car chase
Fox News host Sean Hannity told viewers that the New York Times was trying to "distract" them with the report that the rich asshole ordered the firing of Special Counsel Mueller. Then, he promptly pivoted to the real news of the night: footage of a car chase in Arizona.
Just hours after the New York Times published a bombshell report about some rich asshole ordering White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Fox News host Sean Hannity went on air to do what he does best: throw shiny objects at the screen and yell things about Hillary Clinton.
In a segment that has to be seen to believed, Hannity told his viewers that the New York Times was trying to distract them from more important news — like Hillary Clinton’s emails, which were featured in his opening monologue. He then questioned whether the report about the rich asshole’s attempt to fire Mueller was even true.
“At this hour, the New York Times is trying to distract you,” Hannity said. “They have a story that the rich asshole wanted Mueller fired some time last June and our sources — and I’ve checked in with many of them — they’ve not confirmed that tonight.”
He continued, asking, “How many times has the New York Times and others gotten it wrong?”
But a short time later, Hannity was forced to walk back his own reporting and admit to viewers that Fox News sources had confirmed the New York Times’ story.
“All right, so we have sources tonight just confirming to Ed Henry that, maybe, yeah, some rich asshole wanted to fire the special counsel for conflict,” Hannity said. “Does he not have the right to raise those questions?”
Clearly not wanting to distract from the most pressing news of the evening, Hannity shrugged off the bombshell revelation.
“We’ll deal with this tomorrow,” he said, before pivoting to live footage of a high-speed car chase in Arizona.
As one of the rich asshole’s most reliable apologists, Hannity can always be counted on to defend, deflect, and deny even in the face of the most damning evidence against the rich asshole. And he knows his audience well — which explains why he used his opening monologue to obsessively rant about Hillary Clinton and spout off deep state conspiracy theories.
Even with that track record, Hannity managed to outdo himself Thursday night. When forced to admit that the report was true, the best rebuttal he could come up with was to suggest that the rich asshole hadn’t done anything wrong because he had the “right” to fire Mueller — a defense that even the Fox News host didn’t seem to believe.
Hannity made a valiant effort, but no car chase is exciting enough to distract from the slow-motion train wreck that has become the rich asshole presidency.
These 6 GOP tweets just became very awkward
Steve Wynn has raised and donated millions for the rich asshole.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report about Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino mogul, detailing repeated incidents of sexual harassment and assault. Wynn denied the allegations. In one alleged incident he forced a manicurist to have sex with him and later paid the woman a $7.5 million settlement. It was, according the Wall Street Journal, part of a pattern:
[D]ozens of people The Wall Street Journal interviewed who have worked at Mr. Wynn’s casinos told of behavior that cumulatively would amount to a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Wynn. Some described him pressuring employees to perform sex acts.
The article describes Wynn exposing himself and demanding sex acts from masseuses who worked at his casinos, which have billions of dollars in annual revenue.
Wynn is also a close friend of some rich asshole, who also has denied allegations that he sexually assaulted at least 14 women. After the rich asshole’s election, Wynn was installed as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
“I look forward to helping President the rich asshole and his Administration make America greater again for the people who work hard every day,” Wynn said in a statement.
This is where things get particularly awkward.
This fall, the New York Times and the New Yorker exposed decades of horrific sexual assault by Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein. The Republican Party seized on these revelations, demanding that all the money Harvey Weinstein donated to Democrats be returned.
Democrats in Congress are returning the dirty donations from Harvey Weinstein. What about the DNC?thehill.com/blogs/blog-bri…
Democrats, under pressure from all sides, ultimately did return much of the money they received from Weinstein.
Just six days ago, Wynn hosted an enormous fundraiser for the rich asshole at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Tickets for the event, which was expected to raise millions, started at $100,000. (the rich asshole was unable to attend due to the government shutdown, but sent a video address.)
The conduct Wynn is accused of has striking similarities with Weinstein. Wynn, like Weinstein, reportedly lured women to be alone with him with a professional pretext and then pressured or forced them into sex.
Will the rich asshole return the money raised at Mar-a-Lago? Will the rich asshole return the $729,217 Wynn donated to the rich asshole’s inauguration? Will Wynn remain the finance chair of the Republican National Committee?
Since 2012, Wynn has also given $2.5 million to the Republican Governors Association, $411,000 to the National Republican Senate Committee, $248,000 to the Republican National Committee and $100,000 to the National Republican Campaign Committee.
Weinstein, while an important contributor to Democrats, did not hold an high-ranking position with the Democratic Party. The Republican Party created a clear standard in response to Weinstein’s conduct. Now it’s time to see if they will live up to it.
UPDATE: The Wisconsin GOP told Politico they would donate Wynn’s $10,000 donation to “organizations that help victims of sexual harassment and abuse.” There has been no comment from any of the national Republican political committees.
RNC suspiciously silent about sexual assault allegations against its finance chair
The organization previous railed against Democrats for accepting donations from Harvey Weinstein.
The Wall Street Journal published a story Friday exposing Las Vegas casino mogul and Republican National Committee finance chairman, Steve Wynn, for his alleged history of sexual assault. One incident detailed in the Journal report claims Wynn forced a manicurist to have sex with him and later paid the woman $7.5 million for her silence.
This wasn’t just a one-off incident, according to the report; dozens of women, many of them workers at his casinos, came forward with their own stories of forced sexual contact with Wynn.
As finance chairman of the RNC, Wynn’s position is primarily to raise money for the party of President some rich asshole, an old friend and fellow businessman himself accused of sexual misconduct by 19 women. Just as the rich asshole has denied the allegations against him, Wynn did the same, telling the Wall Street Journal, “the idea that I ever assaulted any woman is preposterous.”
In the wake of these allegations, the RNC seems to be scrambling to find an appropriate response — thus far choosing silence. (The organization railed against Democrats last fall for taking donations from Harvey Weinstein after the numerous allegations of sexual assault and harassment against him were made public.)
As reported by Buzzfeed, Wynn donated more than $200,000 to Republicans in 2017, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Roughly $69,000 of that went directly to the RNC, including in-kind contributions, like travel expenses, vendor reimbursements, and catering charges.
Wynn donated to two successful GOP candidates: Greg Gianforte in Montana and Karen Handel in Georgia, in addition to donating $100,000 to the National Republicans Senatorial Committee in 2017 and contributing to the campaigns of Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and Nevada Sen. Dean Heller. All told, Wynn has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the RNC and various organizations affiliated with the Republican party.
According to the Washington Post, Wynn has no immediate plans to resign from his post at the RNC, leaving the organization to deal with the fallout.
The RNC has yet to respond to questions from multiple media outlets about Wynn, including a request from ThinkProgress. Sam Stein, a political editor at the Daily Beast, even reached out to former White House press secretary Sean Spicer for comment. Spicer, who echoed the RNC’s call for Democrats to return any donations from Harvey Weinstein, has yet to respond.
In addition to causing trouble for the RNC, the sexual assault allegations against Wynn are already having an impact on his business empire. Wynn, who is currently building a $2.4 billion casino in Massachusetts, will soon have to face the state’s gaming commission, which says it will be conducting a regulatory review to determine the next appropriate steps.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Wynn Resorts Ltd. shares sank 9 percent after the Wall Street Journal’s report was published.
White House threatens to deport Dreamers if no deal is reached by March 5th 2018
the rich asshole said Dreamers have "nothing to worry about." (we totally trust his word)
Last September, President the rich asshole said he has “great love” for the so-called “Dreamers,” referring to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Days later, he went a step further, tweeting that Dreamers have “nothing to worry about.”
“No action!” he promised.
On Thursday, the rich asshole proposed legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for as many as 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants in exchange slashing legal immigration, his beloved wall, and a crackdown on other undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.
The White House has described the plan as an “extremely generous” take-it-or-leave-it proposal. The New York Times reported Thursday that White House officials said the list of “enhanced security measures” were nonnegotiable, and, “[t]hey warned that if no deal is reached, DACA recipients will face deportation when the program fully expires on March 5.”
One unnamed senior official said the young immigrants would not be specifically targeted, but rather they would be treated as “illegal immigrants” who would be processed for deportation if they came into contact with immigration officers. And even if they won’t be targeted for deportation — although they could be, as the government has a vast amount of personal information on each Dreamer that they were required to turn over to apply for the program — without the DACA program, its recipients will lose their work permits.
So much for having “nothing to worry about.”
Giving immigrants many things to worry about has been a top priority of the rich asshole administration, and Thursday’s deportation threat is more evidence that the White House sees the 690,000 young people who benefit from DACA as a bargaining chip, not as 690,000 people with lives, jobs, homes, and families.
The situation for Dreamers has been fraught for some time. Even before the rich asshole rescinded DACA, Dreamers were being deported, and now, with each passing day, 122 DACA recipients lose their status, according to The Center for American Progress. (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent outlet housed at CAP).
On Friday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) rejected the rich asshole’s proposal.
While @realDonaldTrump finally acknowledged that the Dreamers should be allowed to stay here and become citizens, he uses them as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish list that anti-immigration hardliners have advocated for for years. 2/2
“He uses [Dreamers] as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish list that anti-immigration hardliners have advocated for for years,” Schumer said on Twitter Friday.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Democratic Whip, has also publicly rejected the president’s proposal, saying in a statement Thursday night, “Dreamers should not be held hostage to President the rich asshole’s crusade to tear families apart and waste billion of American tax dollars on an ineffective wall.”
Much of the rest of the caucus can be expected to follow in Durbin and Schumer’s footsteps, and without Democratic support, the deal could be dead in the water. The government is funded only through February 8, having reopened after Democrats agreed to a funding deal when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made a promise to put a DACA deal on the table.
A vote on the White House plan, while anathema to Democrats, would technically fulfill McConnell’s pledge.
the rich asshole tried to fire the special counsel in June. Experts suggest that would have ended his presidency.
In the largest bombshell of the Russia story since some rich asshole fired FBI Director James Comey, the New York Times reported that in June, the rich asshole tried to do the same to special counsel Robert Mueller, and only backed off after White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign.
How big would a Mueller firing have been? Absolutely cataclysmic, experts say.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper spoke with Michael Zeldin, an attorney and legal analyst, about the implications of what would have happened if the rich asshole had gone through with it.
“From a political standpoint, I think it would have been his own Saturday Night Massacre,” said Zeldin, referring to the infamous affair in which Richard Nixon fired a string of Justice Department officials in order to get rid of special prosecutor Archibald Cox. “And Carl [Bernstein] can tell us how that worked out for the last firing of a special counsel.”
“From a legal standpoint, I think it would have added a great deal of emphasis on the effort to charge the president with obstruction of justice and/or file an article of impeachment, you know, a recommendation. Article of impeachment with the House, because this would be obstructionist behavior. He has no legal basis to fire Mueller,” continued Zeldin.
As he explained, “There are specific regulations that govern Mueller’s conduct,” which were not violated. Republicans have tried to invent scandals about “conflicts of interest” in Mueller’s tea, but none of them are legitimate conflicts.
“McGahn was protective of the president. Rosenstein would have quit. I think Rachel Brand would have quit,” said Zeldin. “Had the president not been, you know, sort of well-served by McGahn, he would be facing either respective indictment for obstruction of justice — assuming a president can be indicted — or a referral for article of impeachment. I think this would have been a camel-breaking straw for even those Republicans who are pretty much lined up in his favor.”
Zeldin is not alone in his assessment.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked former president of the Nixon Library Tim Naftali what would have happened. “Could it be true that, but for White House Counsel Don McGahn, if the president of the United States had ordered the firing of the special counsel, he might have wound up exactly where Nixon was?”
Naftali responded that he would have been. “I think it’s likely we would have had an impeachment crisis last June …a number of leaders in the Senate, Republican leaders, were sending signals to the president, don’t do this. Don’t fire the special counsel.”
“This is what’s really concerning: why does he want to fire Mueller?” he added. “That’s the real issue. Why does he want to fire him? Now, in Nixon’s case, he wanted to fire the Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor, and his team stopped him from doing it in the summer of ’73. But they couldn’t hold him back by October of ’73, and he pulled the trigger.”
All signs indicate that the rich asshole very nearly avoided making a decision that would have instantly ended his presidency. The only question that remains is whether he can avoid making it again.
the rich asshole may pull the plug on International Space Station funding as early as 2025
It would be a huge setback for commercial spaceflight, manned missions to Mars, and other research efforts across the board.
Seven years after the United States ended its 30-year Space Shuttle program, the rich asshole administration is turning its sights on another space venture: the International Space Station.
According to a draft budget proposal obtained by The Verge on Wednesday, President the rich asshole and his officials are preparing to pull the plug on ISS funding in 2025. Funding for the program, which first launched in 1998 and has been continuously occupied since November 2000, is protected until that point, thanks to the Obama administration, which approved an extension through 2024.
NASA spokespersons have so far been tight-lipped about the possibility of a 2025 end-date.
“NASA and the International Space Station partnership is committed to full scientific and technical research on the orbiting laboratory, as it is the foundation on which we will extend human presence deeper into space,” they told The Verge, adding that they could not comment “on any leaked or pre-decisional documents prior to the release of the President’s FY19 budget” on February 12.
The Trump administration wants to end NASA funding for the International Space Station by 2025 theverge.com/2018/1/24/1693…
The ISS currently costs about $3 and $4 billion a year to operate and maintain. Congress has been open about its desire to free up those dollars for other ventures, such as manned missions to Mars. the rich asshole agrees: He echoed his Republican predecessors, including President George W. Bush, and expressed his wishes for a lunar base, which could effectively function as a launchpad for any future Mars missions, back in December.
“We ought to be aware that remaining on the ISS will come at a cost [beyond 2024]. That cost means trade-offs with other NASA priorities. What opportunities will we miss if we maintain the status quo?” Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), chairman of House Space Subcommittee, said during a hearing last March. “The longer we operate the ISS, the longer it will take to get to Mars.”
But abandoning the ISS too early would be a major setback for those ambitions, as it would hamper the ability of commercial spaceflight companies to develop an alternative program or test new science meant to assist future NASA missions.
Many of those companies, as well as some NASA officials, are hopeful the existing ISS program will be extended through 2028. That would allow commercial spaceflight businesses more time to develop their own technology to privatize the station and utilize its modules for low-earth orbit missions and research. It would also allow engineers to continue testing their technology on-board the ISS, a crucial step in commercial spaceflight development.
For now, executives are forced to confront the reality that their deadline may be much closer than that. Some had been forced to adjust course to meet that demand.
“We have to operate on the assumption that the ISS could be de-orbited in 2024… perhaps deorbited sometime after that,” said Amir Blachman, vice president of strategic development for Axiom Space, a commercial spaceflight company which aims to build its own commercial outpost to replace the ISS, in a January 2017 interview with Scientific American. “It changes the shape of our cash curve, but it doesn’t change the operability of the business. It’s still a highly profitable and very large business.”
Others are less confident in the private industry’s ability to have systems fully prepared by a 2024 deadline.
If the ISS program is shuttered, “we would lose our outpost in space,” said Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, to lawmakers at a hearing in March last year. He added that continuing operations was “critical” to the future of commercial endeavors.
Ending funding to the ISS program in 2024 could also cost NASA an important operating base in which to carry out research for future missions to both the moon and Mars.
“It’s… wrong to assume that ISS and [future space] exploration are competing with each other. They’re really helping each other,” NASA associate administrator for human exploration Bill Gerstenmaier told The Verge in March 2017. “We’re working today on the space station to understand the physiological problems of being in microgravity on the human body. Those are not fully resolved yet.”
The Verge noted this week the possibility that shortening the ISS funding lifespan could curtail or altogether stop lower earth orbit activity (cargo trips to space stations and commercial passenger spaceflights, for example), recalling a similar scenario from 2011, when the Space Shuttle program was shuttered. “The Obama administration had canceled NASA’s initiative to return to the Moon… leaving the space agency without a way to get its astronauts into space,” reporter Loren Grush wrote.
The expectation, Grush explained, was for commercial spaceflight operators to step in and take over where the Shuttle program left off. But those plans stalled quickly: private companies like SpaceX and Boeing simply weren’t prepared to take up the work on such short notice.
Both SpaceX and Boeing have made strides in the six years since then: Boeing has developed its CST-100 Starliner and begun making plans to utilize the seven-person crew capsule to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS or future commercial outposts. In 2014, SpaceX announced its Dragon 2 capsule had been selected by NASA to do the same.
But cutting an important lifeline like the ISS just as commercial spaceflight is getting to its feet would deal an unnecessary blow and slow those efforts once more.
“Applications with strong market potential are emerging,” Mary Lynne Dittmar, executive director of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, said during a March 2017 congressional hearing. “Abandoning the ISS too soon will most certainly guarantee failure.”
The administration is mulling the possibility of a partnership with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, to construct a replacement for the ISS called Deep Space Gateway. According to Popular Mechanics, officials from the two agencies and their current ISS collaborators — Europe, Japan, and Canada — gathered in Tokyo over the weekend to hold closed-door meetings on the subject, with the hopes that it would be launched into orbit sometime in the 2020s. However, the specifics of the design and international terms of agreement are still up in the air, as Roscosmos was reportedly “late [in] embracing the project.”
In the meantime, China has made moves to develop its own space program beyond its current capabilities.
“The heart of investments [is] going to be in the normal run of the mill things,” Jim Head, professor of planetary geosciences at Brown University, told Axios on Friday. But its larger goals, like the United States, include a trip to the far side of the moon to collect samples.
“Beyond the implications for scientific research, the mission would enhance China’s international profile and show the world how far they’ve come,” Axios wrote, quoting Notre Dame engineering professor Clive Neal.
Senate GOP will vote on 20 week abortion ban as shutdown looms
Republican lawmakers eye banning abortion while DREAMers and funding for the government hang in limbo.
In the midst of an unresolved dispute over funding the federal government and insuring protections for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants, Senate Republicans plan to vote on a 20 week abortion ban next week, re-opening a debate on the legal medical procedure at a politically charged moment.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) moved to vote on anti-choice legislation introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Wednesday, clearing the way for a procedural vote as soon as Monday.
“Now Congress has an opportunity to take a step forward… [and] I’m pleased to have filed cloture on this bill to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain,” McConnell said.
“And I look forward to voting for it early next week,” he added.
The bill would make obtaining an abortion illegal after 20 weeks, with very few exceptions. Abortion providers would also be barred from performing the procedure. Those found in violation of the law could face up to five years in prison, fines, or both.
Legal and reproductive rights organizations have slammed the bill, which would directly violate the Constitution. Many also pointed to the Senate’s timing, which comes amid an unresolved dispute over the future of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. The government shut down for three days last week after lawmakers failed to agree upon a resolution to the issue, a scenario that could repeat itself.
Following McConnell’s announcement, lawmakers and advocates for reproductive justice slammed GOP lawmakers for prioritizing legislation targeting abortion over funding the government and protecting DACA recipients, also called “Dreamers.”
Next week, instead of focusing on passing legislation that would protect DREAMers or keep the government open past February 8, Senate Republicans are voting on - you guessed it - an abortion ban. bit.ly/2DBey1A #NoAbortionBan
Where our focus should be:
passing a clean DREAM Act
Where @SenateMajLdr, @HouseGOP, @SteveKnight25 are:
20 week abortion banthehill.com/blogs/floor-ac…
“This bill is unconstitutional and shameful on its own—the decision to have an abortion is one that should be made by women, not politicians. It’s even more outrageous that the Senate would take up this vote when they should be spending their time finding a solution for the 800,000 Dreamers who have spent months living in fear and anxiety,” said Faiz Shakir, national political director at the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Every day 122 Dreamers lose status, and could be deported if Congress does not act. The Senate should stop wasting time on unconstitutional abortion bans and get back to real priorities—the urgent work of keeping its promise to DACA-recipients.”
The House voted on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act last October, passing the bill along a 237-189 margin. The bill is based on the premise that fetuses begin to feel pain after 20 weeks of gestation — a widely discredited theory experts have labeled junk science. Abortions after 20 weeks aren’t even very common: according to data from 2009, only around 1.3 percent of all abortions performed in the United States occur after 20 weeks.
But that hasn’t stopped 20 week bans from gaining traction across the country. More than 20 states have enacted legislation barring abortion after that time, including Texas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Ohio. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act signaled the strategy’s ability to gain traction at a national level, leaving advocates concerned.
“There is nothing about 20 weeks that is special or medically different [when it comes to fetal development],” Sarah Horvath, an MD and fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, told Yahoo. “Abortion is safe both before and after that gestation age. And abortion is one of the safest medical procedures performed in this country because it is legal.”
These bans, she said, “end up jeopardizing…health and safety more than doing anything to protect them.”
President the rich asshole has expressed strong support for the legislation.
“I call upon the Senate to pass this important law and send it to my desk for signing,” the rich asshole said while speaking before the anti-choice annual March for Life last week.
The bill itself is almost certain to die in the Senate. A 60-vote majority is required to break any Democratic filibuster, making the legislation all but doomed to fail. But GOP lawmakers have floated the idea of doing away with the filibuster, a move that would dramatically alter the chances of similar legislation. Bills like the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act would inevitably face an onslaught of legal backlash if signed into law, but activists worry polarization on the Supreme Court could have severe ramifications for reproductive rights.
While Senate Republicans focus on abortion, Congress is barreling toward a rapidly-approaching deadline. Lawmakers have until February 8 to strike a deal in order to keep the government funded. Without consensus on immigration, Washington will shut down — again.
Report that the rich asshole tried to fire Mueller sends Fox News into a tailspin
"Yeah, maybe some rich asshole wanted to fire the special counsel for conflict -- does he not have the right to raise those questions."
On Thursday evening, the New York Times broke news that last June, President the rich asshole ordered a White House lawyer to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. The story looks bad for the rich asshole, as it indicates that over a short period of time, he twice tried to fire officials overseeing an investigation of his campaign.
At first, the rich asshole’s favorite TV network — Fox News — pretended the story didn’t exist. While the other cable networks covered it, Fox News was talking about a 2005 photo of President Obama with Louis Farrakhan.
A short time later, Sean Hannity tried to deny the Times report, telling his viewers that “our sources — and I’ve checked in with many of them — they’re not confirming that tonight.”
But Hannity was wrong — Fox News’ Ed Henry had in fact confirmed the Times’ reporting. (So did Politico, the Washington Post, and CNN.)
Later during the same broadcast, Hannity attempted an amazing about-face. He begrudgingly acknowledged that the Times report was confirmed by Fox News, saying, “Yeah, maybe some rich asshole wanted to fire the special counsel for conflict — does he not have the right to raise those questions?”
By Friday morning, Fox News was walking back its own reporting. An anonymously-sourced report on its website attempt to cast doubt on the story reported by the Times and others, noting that while “the rich asshole did have conversations about firing Mueller,” those conversations “might not have amounted to an outright directive.” That report was also highlighted on Fox News programming. Notably, the rich asshole representatives passed up numerous opportunities to deny that the rich asshole ordered Mueller’s firing.
Meanwhile, the rich asshole’s favorite show — Fox & Friends — barely covered the story about the rich asshole trying to dismiss Mueller, and treated the rich asshole’s unconvincing denial of it as gospel.
Fox & Friends has now moved on to the "doesn't the president have the right to fire anyone he wants to" defense. pic.twitter.com/Q3y4e79Kzc
Hegseth: The president says it's fake news, and even if it's true he didn't fire Mueller so it isn't news.
Earhardt: He says it's fake news, let's move on to something you actually care about. pic.twitter.com/pDUwDVCTDj
Fox News’ handling of the latest Mueller story is reminiscent of how they handled another damaging news cycle for the rich asshole earlier this month. Although Fox News independently confirmed a story broken by the Washington Post about the rich asshole calling African nations “shithole countries” during a White House meeting, the network spent the following day gradually walking back its own reporting.
As he’s now doing with the latest report that he tried to fire Mueller, the rich asshole weakly tried to deny making the “shithole countries” comment.
the rich asshole's Holocaust Remembrance Day statement condemns murder of Jews
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 01/26/18 12:03 PM EST
President the rich asshole on Friday marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day by mourning the 6 million Jews killed in the Nazi genocide.
“We take this opportunity to recall the Nazis’ systematic persecution and brutal murder of six million Jewish people,” the rich asshole said in a statement. “On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we acknowledge this dark stain on human history and vow to never let it happen again.”
It’s a change from the rich asshole’s official statement last year, which made no mention of Jews or anti-Semitism.
The omission in 2017 angered Jewish groups, which called it a troubling distortion of the history of the Holocaust. It also fueled accusations that the rich asshole has not done enough to speak out against racism and anti-Semitism.
The White House defended the decision at the time, saying Jews were left out of the statement because other groups were also targeted by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
“Despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered,” White House communications director Hope Hicks told CNN last year.
The White House changed its approach this year.
In addition to acknowledging the Nazis’ systematic murder of the Jews, the rich asshole condemned their enslavement and killing of “millions of Slavs, Roma, gays, people with disabilities, priests and religious leaders, and others who courageously opposed their brutal regime."
“Every generation must learn and apply the lessons of the Holocaust to prevent new horrors against humanity from occurring,” the rich asshole said. “As I have said: ‘We will stamp out prejudice. We will condemn hatred. We will bear witness, and we will act.’”
International Holocaust Remembrance Day falls each year on Jan. 27, the day the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camps were liberated.
A study released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in November found that anti-Semitic incidents have surged 67 percent nationwide since 2016.
“We are deeply troubled by the rising number of anti-Semitic incidents, bullying, and hate in our nation’s schools and we don’t think the statistics paint a full picture of what is happening,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the ADL.
‘Step 1 — Hold his hand’: Daily Show creates a hilarious guide for interviewing the rich asshole like Fox News hosts
some rich asshole speaks to Sean Hannity during a Fox News town hall on Aug. 17, 2016. (YouTube)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
“The Daily Show” on Friday posted a hilarious thread on Twitter in which it gave a step-by-step guide for interviewing President some rich asshole like Fox News hosts.
The first step in the process, writes “The Daily Show” is to take a “soft approach” to interviewing him, as a Fox reporter’s primary task is to “hold his hand.” To bolster this point, it shows a video of assorted Fox hosts asking the rich asshole questions such as, “Are you getting the credit for this economic revival?”, “Are you having fun?” and “You’re one of the most loved and respected in history — how does that feel?”
Step 2 is all about flattering the rich asshole, which will instantly get him to like you. This is then illustrated by a video of Fox hosts blatantly buttering up the rich asshole on their programs, including a clip in which the cast of “Fox & Friends” praise the rich asshole for building a “beautiful” hotel.
Step 2 — Flattery Will Get You Everywhere: The president knows he's always right, but he needs to know that YOU know that.
Finally, “The Daily Show” recommends helping the rich asshole come up with answers if he seems stumped about answering questions, as illustrated by a video of Fox hosts feeding the president answers shortly after they ask him questions.
Step 3 — Help Out! Just because you have all the questions doesn't mean he needs to have all the answers.
To put it all together, “The Daily Show’s” Desi Lydic goes through a full fake interview with the rich asshole using all the techniques she learned in the guide — check it out below.
The glaring problem with the rich asshole’s dismissal of the Mueller story is that he's a fucking liar who got caught lying
"Typical New York Times fake stories."
During a brief interaction with reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday morning, President the rich asshole was asked to respond to explosive new reporting about him ordering a White House lawyer to fire special counsel Robert Mueller last June.
the rich asshole blithely dismissed the story as “fake news” and took a shot at the New York Times — the outlet that broke the story.
“Fake news, folks, fake news,” he said. “Typical New York Times fake stories.”
But there’s an obvious problem with the rich asshole’s suggestion that the New York Times is making stuff up. The Times isn’t the only outlet to report that the rich asshole tried to fire Mueller — Politico, the Washington Post, and CNN all quickly corroborated the Times’ reporting. Even the rich asshole’s favorite network, Fox News, reported that “the rich asshole did have conversations about firing Mueller,” though it said those conversation “might not have amounted to an outright directive” to fire Mueller.
the rich asshole’s dismissal of the story is also in tension with what the rich asshole’s representatives told the Times. Instead of denying the story, the rich asshole’s attorney, Ty Cobb, told the Times that “[w]e decline to comment out of respect for the Office of the Special Counsel and its process.” the rich asshole representatives similarly declined to comment to Politico, the Post, and CNN.
A few hours after his interaction with reporters, the rich asshole addressed the World Economic Forum. During a brief question-and-answer session, the rich asshole attacked the media, saying, “It wasn’t until I became a politician that I realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be.” His comments were received with boos and jeers.
As ThinkProgress detailed last night, in the seven months since the rich asshole reportedly tried to fire Mueller, the president and other administration officials have repeatedly denied that the rich asshole has ever even considered firing the special counsel.
GDP growth below expectations in fourth quarter of 2017
BY NAOMI JAGODA - 01/26/18 08:50 AM EST
Gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017, the Commerce Department announced Friday.
The growth rate was below economists' projections of about 3 percent.
Had GDP increased by at least 3 percent in the fourth quarter, it would have been the first time since George W. Bush's administration that GDP grew by 3 percent in three consecutive quarters.
The Commerce Department said the GDP increase was due to increases in personal consumption expenditures, nonresidential and residential fixed investment, exports and spending by state and local governments and the federal government.
The growth rate's deceleration relates to a downturn in private inventory investment. Additionally, imports, which are subtracted in GDP, increased, the Commerce Department said.
Overall, GDP increased by 2.3 percent in 2017, up from a 1.5 percent increase in 2016.
Friday's numbers represent the Commerce Department's first of three estimates for fourth-quarter GDP. The department will release another estimate based on more complete data on Feb. 28.
Updated at 9:10 a.m.
NY, Minnesota sue the rich asshole admin to block healthcare funding cuts
(Doctor with Patient) Shutterstock)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
New York and Minnesota have filed a lawsuit seeking to block the rich asshole administration from cutting off federal funding for state programs that provide healthcare to hundreds of thousands of low-income people.
The lawsuit, filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court, seeks to restore more than $1 billion in funding for state health programs created under the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, a statement from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said.
New York and Minnesota are the only states that operate so-called Basic Health Programs, a type of health insurance plan for low-income residents authorized by the law, according to Schneiderman’s statement.
In December, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told both states it would cut off some of the federal funding for the programs because Congress had not appropriated money for them, according to the lawsuit. Schneiderman said the cut amounted to about 25 percent of the funding for New York’s Basic Health Program.
About 800,000 people in both states are covered by the programs, according to the lawsuit.
A spokesman for HHS could not immediately be reached for comment.
(Corrects Basic Health Plan to Basic Health Program in paragraphs 3 and 4.)
In Davos, world leaders confront climate change without the rich asshole
At the World Economic Forum, world leaders stressed the need for global cooperation on climate change while the United States remained silent.
A week after NASA declared that 2017 was the second warmest year on record, world leaders gathered at the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss problems facing the global community, including climate change. French President Emmanuel Macron called for his country to become a “model in the fight against climate change.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the importance of global cooperation in dealing with the climate crisis. And Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi called climate change the “greatest threat to the survival and human civilization as we know it.”
One voice, however, was conspicuously silent on the issue: the United States.
That’s hardly surprising, given President some rich asshole’s persistent climate denial (which was the subject of a joke by French President Macron during his speech at the forum). As president, the rich asshole has worked to systematically undermine climate regulations and initiatives set up by his predecessors — from pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement to ordering the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, which would have placed emissions limits on power plants.
But experts noted that the fervor with which other world leaders spoke about the issue of climate change signaled that, even without the rich asshole, the world is set to move forward with climate action.
“What was striking was the degree to which they emphasized climate,” David Waskow, director of World Resource Institute’s International Climate Initiative, told ThinkProgress. “They made sure that climate was clearly highlighted in their remarks, and international cooperation is very much a central part of the way in which they see action going forward. All of that came through quite strongly.”
Modi, the world leader who perhaps spoke most strongly about climate action, called the failure to address global warming an “alarming glimpse of our own selfishness.” He also called on rich nations to help fund climate mitigation and adaptation programs in developing countries — something that the rich asshole has vehemently opposed since the presidential campaign.
“Everyone talks about reducing carbon emissions but there are very few people or countries who back their words with their resources to help developing countries to adopt appropriate technology,” Modi said.
This was hardly the first time that climate change became a major theme at the World Economic Forum. At last year’s summit in Davos, Chinese President Xi Jingping grabbed headlines when he called the Paris Agreement “a hard-won achievement” that “all signatories should stick to it rather than walk away.” Jingping did not speak at this year’s forum, but, according to the New York Times, world leaders expressed hope that China would become a major leader on global climate action, especially given the absent strong leadership from the United States.
But major gaps remain between rhetoric and action. China, for instance, has seen its greenhouse gas emissions rise in the last year, fueled by a spike in demand for electricity that was largely met by burning coal. France missed its target for cutting emissions in 2016, emitting 3.6 percent more greenhouse gases than its goal. Germany remains tied to coal, with 40 percent of its energy coming from coal-fired power plants. The country is also on track to miss its climate goals. The German environment ministry estimates that 2020 levels of carbon emissions will likely be only 31 percent below 1990 levels, rather than the official target of a 40 percent cut. India, too, remains deeply dependent on coal, which supplies 70 percent of the country’s energy. And despite Modi’s pledge to produce 175 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2022, India’s state-run utility plans to invest $10 billion in new coal-fired power plants over the next five years.
Still, Waskow said that he was heartened to hear world leaders focus on the need for global cooperation to deal with climate change, regardless of what the United States does.
“Countries are clearly ready to work together and do so with or without national leadership from the United States and the rich asshole,” Waskow said. “It’s like the rich asshole is trying to run down an up escalator. He might make some headway, but at the end of the day, the escalator is going up.”
‘Look at the car wreck!’ Morning Joe laughs out loud at Sean Hannity’s ‘desperation’ over the rich asshole-Mueller report
Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough (MSNBC)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Fox News anchor Sean Hannity panicked on air over a bombshell report revealing President some rich asshole tried to fire special counsel Robert Mueller — and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough laughed at the spectacle.
Hannity at first denied the New York Times report, and claimed it was just a “distraction,” but minutes later conceded Fox News reporters had independently confirmed the details and then quickly changed the subject to a dramatic car chase caught on video in Arizona.
“Look over there!” Scarborough said, laughing loudly. “Oh my god. ‘But didn’t Bill Clinton’ – look at the bird, look at the bird! Look at the car wreck! Oh my god.”
After the laughter died down, Scarborough ripped Republicans who had sacrificed their dignity for a president who has admitted to obstruction and possibly collusion on national television.
“Over this week, and certainly over the last six months, we’ve seen this coming from people who are the rich asshole apologists,” Scarborough said. “You know, like for instance, Mueller. The New York Times reports some rich asshole wanted to fire Robert Mueller. Fake news! Okay, well maybe it’s not fake news, and then I am holding up a sheet of paper, here’s a secret society and we are going to investigate the secret society. There’s a secret society, other congressmen come on the TV and say we are going to look into this secret society. There’s no secret society.”
“The desperation, every day there is desperation, and every day, it blows up in their faces,” he added. “But I guess the big takeaway here is, just how much people are willing to actually sacrifice their political souls for a man who will never show loyalty in return.”
MSNBC’s Donnie Deutsch said it’s time for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan to go on the record and comment on the GOP president and efforts by the lawmakers they lead to protect the rich asshole from investigators.
“This continuing assault on democracy — forget the obstruction, forget the actual news — this continual assault on things that protect us, our intelligence community, the media, the judicial system, I want to hear today from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan — what do they say about this?” Deutsch said.
“The president wanted to fire Bob Mueller, he was asked about it, he said ‘fake news’ — what do you say, sirs? What do you say?” Deutsch continued. “It’s time for the cockroaches to come out from under their rocks and respond. What do you say, gentlemen?”
the rich asshole flies all the way to Switzerland to largely address his domestic audience
President the rich asshole seemed to be speaking to his base, not the rest of the world.
Although President some rich asshole encouraged the international community to “do business in America,” the bulk of his Friday speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland seemed gear to the domestic U.S. audience.
Referring to those who have criticized his U.S.-centric “America First” approach as being detrimental to the country’s long-term goals and diplomatic efforts, the rich asshole said that America First does not mean “America alone” — but made no reference to specific areas of cooperation with international partners.
Instead, he said that America First was essentially the same as the leaders of other countries protecting their own interests.
“I believe in America. As president of the United States, I will always put America first,” he said. “Just like the leaders of other countries should put their countries first. But America first does not mean America alone.”
Still, he made little mention of how the United States would work with other countries at the global summit. the rich asshole, the first sitting U.S. president to attend the forum in Davos, Switzerland in 18 years, highlighted his tax reform and the lower unemployment rate among African Americans and Hispanic Americans and promised investment in the military, repeating some of the talking points that do well among his base in the United States.
He claimed that “regulation is stealth taxation,” blamed “unelected bureaucrats” for creating “crushing anti-business and anti-worker regulations,” and touted the country’s “strong economic growth,” citing a strong stock market and consumer confidence.
Just moments after his speech, the Washington Post reported that economic growth had slowed in the United States the final quarter of 2017, falling short of the rich asshole’s own targets:
The economy grew far faster in 2017 than during the year before, but the slower rate in the fourth quarter underscores the challenge the rich asshole administration will have in delivering the growth he has promised. Officials have focused on 3 percent GDP growth as proof his economic policies were working, and the rich asshole has said it could go far beyond that target.
the rich asshole repeatedly told the leaders at the forum that the United States was a great place for investment and that the country has “the best workers in the world.” His references to U.S. foreign policy were few. He said that the United States is will still working to “de-nuke the Korean Peninsula,” “block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon,” (Iran insists it has never sought one) and to continue to fight “jihadist terrorists.”
the rich asshole is laughed at, booed in Davos
The president's attacks on "fake news" didn't go over well in Europe.
After delivering a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, President the rich asshole did a brief question-and-answer sessions with WEF Chair Klaus Schwab. The second and final question the rich asshole fielded was about what experiences he had earlier in his life that he thinks prepared him for the presidency.
the rich asshole’s response was not well received. First, he bragged about his business acumen and claimed he’s “always been successful at making money” — comments that elicited laughter for the crowd. But the laughs escalated to boos after the rich asshole took aim at the “fake news” media.
“The other thing is, I’ve always seemed to get — for whatever reason — a disproportionate amount of press or media,” the rich asshole began. “And throughout my whole life — someone will explain someday why — but I’ve always gotten a lot. And as a businessman I was always treated really well by the press. You know, the numbers speak and things happen, but I’ve always really had a very good press, and it wasn’t until I became a politician that I realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be — as the cameras start going off in the back.”
As the crowd booed, the rich asshole tried to walk it back.
“But overall I mean the bottom line, somebody said, ‘they couldn’t have been that bad because here we are, we’re president,’ and I think we’re doing a really great job.”
That wasn’t the only awkward moment during the rich asshole’s WEF appearance. While he was being introduced before his speech, the crowd groaned when Schwab said to the rich asshole, “I’m aware that your strong leadership is open to misconceptions and interpretation so it is so essential for us in the room to listen directly to you.”
If the crowd took Schwab’s advice and listened to the rich asshole, they would have heard the “America first” fare we’re used to in the states. During his speech, the rich asshole pushed nationalism — “I will always put America first just like the leaders of other countries should put their country first also,” he said at one point — urged global business leaders to invest in the U.S., and sounded off on his desire to curtail legal immigration to the country.
“America is a cutting-edge economy but our immigration system is stuck in the past,” he said.
Mueller keeps Russia cards close to the vest
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 01/26/18 05:54 AM EST
Speculation is swirling about whether special counsel Robert Mueller is nearing the end of his Russia probe — and whether he has any evidence that President the rich asshole or his officials colluded with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.
The allegation that the rich asshole campaign officials illegally coordinated with Moscow has been a central claim made by Democrats, as well as the focus of aggressive reporting by media outlets since the rich asshole was inaugurated last January.
But new reports indicate that Mueller’s recent interviews pertain to whether the rich asshole obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, who had been leading an investigation into Russia's election meddling.
Bloomberg reported this week that Mueller is close to finishing the investigation into obstruction of justice and CNN has reported that the special counsel has communicated to the rich asshole’s legal team that Mueller would like to interview the president on why he fired Comey.
Mueller has interviewed most of the principles for an obstruction case, including Comey, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former chief of staff Reince Priebus, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and senior adviser Jared Kushner, as well as dozens of White House staffers.
The only missing piece is the president. the rich asshole said Wednesday that he’d be willing to speak with Mueller under oath and that it could happen in the next two or three weeks.
Legal experts say Mueller will get only one interview with the rich asshole, so any questions he has about both obstruction and collusion would have to be brought up in that meeting, regardless of whether he’s conducting parallel investigations with separate timelines.
“You only get one crack at it,” said Bill Barr, who served as attorney general under George H.W. Bush. “the rich asshole should be the last person interviewed for both investigations.”
The recent chatter over obstruction — and not collusion — has the rich asshole’s allies feeling optimistic that Mueller has come up empty on the Russia front.
The president’s lawyers are circulating a memo, obtained by The Hill, detailing the ways in which the administration has complied with the special counsel investigation — a document that strongly implies that the White House believes it’s time to bring the investigation to a close.
“The most transparent response in history by a president to [special counsel] inquiries,” John Dowd, an attorney for the rich asshole, told The Hill in an email.
Dowd’s memo says the White House made more than 20 staffers available for interviews, including eight people from the general counsel’s office. In addition, 17 campaign aides and 11 outside advisers have given voluntary interviews, according to the document.
The White House says it has handed over 20,000 pages of documents to the special counsel, including more than 1,600 pertaining to Flynn and 1,200 regarding Comey. The campaign handed over orders of magnitude more documents — 1.4 million pages, according to the president’s legal team.
the rich asshole has signaled his strategy in dealing with questions of obstruction, saying Wednesday that he was merely “fighting back” against false claims made against him.
But the rich asshole’s critics believe Mueller has the president dead-to-rights on obstruction.
the rich asshole has made conflicting public statements about why he fired Comey. Most notably, the rich asshole said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt last year that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation.
“Testimony under oath about the obstruction charges would be a bloodbath for the rich asshole,” former U.S. attorney Harry Litman wrote for Lawfare this week.
“The president has told serial lies about his conversations with Comey, whose account is in any case backed by contemporaneous evidence, and, it would appear, the testimony of the rich asshole-camp insiders such as Reince Priebus,” Litman said. “Mueller’s team will meticulously serve up each of those lies back to the rich asshole, forcing him either to disavow them (adding to the obstruction case) or recommit to them (adding perjury counts to Mueller’s ledger). And the rich asshole is arrogant and easily goaded, making him a prosecutor’s dream.”
Still, some legal experts note the difficulty of pinning obstruction charges on the president.
There are questions about how Mueller could prove the rich asshole intended to obstruct justice without evidence of an underlying crime.
And some legal experts argue that the rich asshole has the right to fire his FBI director for any reason he sees fit.
“I don’t think for a minute they’ll be able to bring an obstruction case against the president,” said Robert Ray, the former independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation during the Clinton administration.
“the rich asshole had a mix of reasons for firing Comey and he can explain those to Mueller. You’d never be able to prove criminal intent for an action that the president is constitutionally entitled to take for any reason or no reason at all. You may not like that, you may think it’s grounds for impeachment, but he’s the executive and no reasonable prosecutor could conclude he committed a criminal offense here.”
But even if Mueller’s recent focus has been on obstruction, the Russia investigation remains a wild card.The allegation that the rich asshole campaign officials illegally coordinated with Moscow has been a central claim made by Democrats, as well as the focus of aggressive reporting by media outlets since the rich asshole was inaugurated last January.
But new reports indicate that Mueller’s recent interviews pertain to whether the rich asshole obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, who had been leading an investigation into Russia's election meddling.
Bloomberg reported this week that Mueller is close to finishing the investigation into obstruction of justice and CNN has reported that the special counsel has communicated to the rich asshole’s legal team that Mueller would like to interview the president on why he fired Comey.
Mueller has interviewed most of the principles for an obstruction case, including Comey, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former chief of staff Reince Priebus, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and senior adviser Jared Kushner, as well as dozens of White House staffers.
The only missing piece is the president. the rich asshole said Wednesday that he’d be willing to speak with Mueller under oath and that it could happen in the next two or three weeks.
Legal experts say Mueller will get only one interview with the rich asshole, so any questions he has about both obstruction and collusion would have to be brought up in that meeting, regardless of whether he’s conducting parallel investigations with separate timelines.
“You only get one crack at it,” said Bill Barr, who served as attorney general under George H.W. Bush. “the rich asshole should be the last person interviewed for both investigations.”
The recent chatter over obstruction — and not collusion — has the rich asshole’s allies feeling optimistic that Mueller has come up empty on the Russia front.
The president’s lawyers are circulating a memo, obtained by The Hill, detailing the ways in which the administration has complied with the special counsel investigation — a document that strongly implies that the White House believes it’s time to bring the investigation to a close.
“The most transparent response in history by a president to [special counsel] inquiries,” John Dowd, an attorney for the rich asshole, told The Hill in an email.
Dowd’s memo says the White House made more than 20 staffers available for interviews, including eight people from the general counsel’s office. In addition, 17 campaign aides and 11 outside advisers have given voluntary interviews, according to the document.
The White House says it has handed over 20,000 pages of documents to the special counsel, including more than 1,600 pertaining to Flynn and 1,200 regarding Comey. The campaign handed over orders of magnitude more documents — 1.4 million pages, according to the president’s legal team.
the rich asshole has signaled his strategy in dealing with questions of obstruction, saying Wednesday that he was merely “fighting back” against false claims made against him.
But the rich asshole’s critics believe Mueller has the president dead-to-rights on obstruction.
the rich asshole has made conflicting public statements about why he fired Comey. Most notably, the rich asshole said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt last year that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation.
“Testimony under oath about the obstruction charges would be a bloodbath for the rich asshole,” former U.S. attorney Harry Litman wrote for Lawfare this week.
“The president has told serial lies about his conversations with Comey, whose account is in any case backed by contemporaneous evidence, and, it would appear, the testimony of the rich asshole-camp insiders such as Reince Priebus,” Litman said. “Mueller’s team will meticulously serve up each of those lies back to the rich asshole, forcing him either to disavow them (adding to the obstruction case) or recommit to them (adding perjury counts to Mueller’s ledger). And the rich asshole is arrogant and easily goaded, making him a prosecutor’s dream.”
Still, some legal experts note the difficulty of pinning obstruction charges on the president.
There are questions about how Mueller could prove the rich asshole intended to obstruct justice without evidence of an underlying crime.
And some legal experts argue that the rich asshole has the right to fire his FBI director for any reason he sees fit.
“I don’t think for a minute they’ll be able to bring an obstruction case against the president,” said Robert Ray, the former independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation during the Clinton administration.
“the rich asshole had a mix of reasons for firing Comey and he can explain those to Mueller. You’d never be able to prove criminal intent for an action that the president is constitutionally entitled to take for any reason or no reason at all. You may not like that, you may think it’s grounds for impeachment, but he’s the executive and no reasonable prosecutor could conclude he committed a criminal offense here.”
The special counsel has largely avoided leaks, and Mueller has kept his collusion cards — if he has them — close to the vest.
the rich asshole’s allies have been quick to note that none of the charges brought against the rich asshole campaign officials so far have pertained to Russia.
The president’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate, Richard Gates, who was also on the campaign, have been charged with a litany of financial crimes dating back to before the campaign.
And Flynn and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Mueller’s court filings on Papadopoulos referenced emails in which he talked about meetings with Russian officials, but there has been little reporting and no signals from the special counsel that it is preparing to bring charges on the question of illegal collusion.
That could be intentional — if Mueller is hot on the trail of a conspiracy to collude, it would be in his interests not to tip his hand to those he’s pursuing. The special counsel recently added a cyber-crimes specialist, indicating an investigation into hacked Democratic emails or Russian campaign ads could still be alive.
Flynn’s cooperation with the special counsel has to be alarming to the administration, considering he once occupied senior positions in the campaign and at the White House.
And in a stunning interview with The Washington Post this week, Papadopoulos’s fiancée, Simona Mangiante, said the former campaign adviser knows far more than has been reported. Mangiante said that Papadopoulos would go down in history as a modern day John Dean — a reference to former President Nixon’s attorney, who turned state’s evidence for Watergate prosecutors.
“That definitely suggests there is still a focus on collusion,” said John Wood, a former U.S. attorney.
Still, Wood said there are encouraging signs for the White House that the special counsel appears to be approaching its final stop.
“Prosecutors want to talk to the most senior person at the end of an investigation, so I think they’re encouraged that Mueller wants to talk,” Wood said. “Obviously, they have to prepare for every angle and be ready for whatever Mueller might throw at them. You can’t get too comfortable or take anything for granted, but there is some good news here too in terms of what this means for the White House.”
WATCH: the rich asshole backer claims Mueller bombshell can’t be true because it didn’t appear in Wolff’s ‘gossip book’
the rich asshole communications director Jason Miller (Photo: Screen capture)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
CNN’s Breanna Keilar on Friday battled former some rich asshole campaign communications adviser Jason Miller as he tried to insist reports about the president considering firing special counsel Robert Mueller were false because they did not appear in Michael Wolff’s White House book “Fire and Fury.”
The New York Times on Thursday reported that the rich asshole ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, but backed down after McGahn threatened to quit.
“It really makes liars of the president and a number of his top aides,” Keilar explained, rolling a montage of White House aides insisting the president had not considered dismissing the special counsel.
Miller tried to cast doubt on the reporting, prompting Keilar to note, “CNN confirmed it. Fox News confirmed it.”
“Four people said they were briefed on this supposed conversation,” Miller replied. “Does not say there were four people in the room.”
“That’s who you’re going with, ‘supposed conversation?’” Keilar asked.
“We just had this Michael Wolff book pop,” Miller said. “And so this is something that supposedly happened seven months ago, we had this gossip book that came out with hundreds of pages of things that were somewhat true—maybe not true—and you tell me this detail didn’t even make it into that book, that this is something that no one ever heard about and just now, while the president is in Davos, giving this momentous speech, this is when it pops?”
“I don’t know,” he continued. “It seems suspect to me. The whole thing, we’re treating it like the president actually went and fired Mueller. He didn’t. Even if he did … he can fire anyone he wants anytime he wants.”
Watch Miller’s one-of-a-kind defense of the rich asshole below, via CNN:
Top Intel Dem: the rich asshole's order to fire Mueller was 'Nixonian'
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 01/26/18 12:47 PM EST
California Rep. Adam Schiff (D) on Friday blasted President the rich asshole following a report from The New York Times alleging that the rich asshole ordered his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller.
In a statement, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee warned that the rich asshole's reported order to fire Mueller was "Nixonian" in its intent, and called on Congress to act quickly to protect the special counsel.
"The reports that the President not only considered firing Special Counsel Mueller, but went so far as to order it, demonstrate the Nixonian lengths this President is prepared to go to protect himself," Schiff wrote.
"Congress must make clear that any effort to remove the Special Counsel or impede his work would touch off a constitutional crisis which would imperil this Presidency and do grave damage to our nation."
Schiff went on to accuse Republicans of attacking the credibility of the FBI in the face of "undue interference" from the White House in the Russia investigation.
"Instead of protecting Mueller's investigation from undue interference, many Republicans in Congress have stepped up their spurious attacks against the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Special Counsel. It is time for them to put country and rule of law before party," he said.
Democrats in Congress have renewed calls for a bill to protect Mueller and his team from firing by the White House following the Times report Thursday that claimed the rich asshole only backed off after McGahn threatened to quit over the order.
Last June, around the time the Times says the rich asshole gave the order, Schiff warned that Congress would simply rehire Mueller if the rich asshole ousted him from the special counsel's office.
“If President [the rich asshole] fired Bob Mueller, Congress would immediately re-establish independent counsel and appoint Bob Mueller,” Schiff tweeted last year. “Don't waste our time.”
WATCH: Tomi Lahren goes on bonkers rant accusing liberals of ‘brainwashing’ teens into eating Tide Pods
Tomi Lahren (Screen cap).
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren is angry about teenagers filming themselves eating Tide Pods, and she knows exactly whom to blame: Liberals.
In a new video rant posted on Friday, Lahren took aim at the “Tide Pod Challenge” craze — in which teenagers film themselves eating laundry detergent pods and then post the videos on social media sites — and said it was the fault of the left for destroying the American family.
“I know what you’re thinking — the Tide Pod Challenge couldn’t possibly be political, could it?” Lahren asked rhetorically. “Actually, yes it is. It’s just the latest symptom of a larger problem — the breakdown of the American family. It’s what happens when kids aren’t taught boundaries, respect, consequences, or logic.”
But how, exactly, has the left used its influence to convince teens to eat Tide Pods? According to Lahren, it all stems from Hollywood’s control of popular culture.
“The left, which dictates popular culture, brainwashes young people into believing they live in a world where 64 gender options are up for selection, everything is free, Beyonce is a god-queen, and eating detergent is funny!” Lahren fumed. “Americans, we are better than this!”
Watch the video below.
‘Not going to get into that’: Ex-White House lawyer refuses to say if the rich asshole and Kellyanne lied about Mueller firing
Former the rich asshole White House ethics attorney James Schultz -- screenshot
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Appearing on CNN Friday morning a former White House lawyer who worked under some rich asshole said he was not about to accuse the president or senior adviser Kellyanne Conway of lying in June of last year about firing special counsel Robert Mueller despite sources saying the rich asshole ordered the White House counsel to do precisely that.
Speaking with host CNN host John Harwood, former White House ethics lawyer James Schultz said he had no personal knowledge of McGahn turning the rich asshole down by threatening to resign in lieu of firing Mueller and seemed to have no problem with the fact that the rich asshole had broached the subject.
“It isn’t that much of a bombshell story,” Schultz began. “It is his [McGahn’s] job to go talk with the boss, give him the best legal advice. And it appears to the extent these reports are true, if he did give that advice, the president followed it. So I don’t know what the big deal is.”
“Why create a pretext if truth is on on your side?” CNN host Michael Smerconish — who was a co-panelist — asked. “It hardly seems a basis to fire Robert Mueller because he once misplaced your 9 iron at the golf club. So why create those examples if you’ve really got a legitimate basis to want him fired. It reminds me, John, of the stated purpose of getting rid of [former FBI director] Jim Comey … because he so mishandled the Hillary Clinton email investigation.”
“The New York Times created this narrative by way of the story and identified concerns that they had to handle the matter from a conflict of interest perspective,” Schultz asserted, blaming the news report that was confirmed by four sources.”Assuming all of that is true and the New York Times is correctly reporting this, be on its face, he was asking regarding conflicts of interest. It is the White House counsel’s job to address those potential questions.”
“He did so, according to news reports,” Schultz continued. “And if that’s the case, if all of this is true, Don McGahn did the right thing and the president did the right thing.”
“Let me ask you this,” host Harwood interjected. “You are willing to stipulate that maybe the president had discussions about firing Robert Mueller. Kellyanne Conway said flat out he never did. Based on these reports this morning, do you acknowledge those apparently were lies?”
“I did not saying i was willing to stipulate,” said Schultz turning combative. “I said let’s assume for a second they were true. If we are going to speak in hypothetical terms, then that’s how I was addressing the question.”
“Okay. If they did discuss it, what Kellyanne Conway and the president said — would those be lies?” the CNN host pressed.
“Well, I don’t know the facts and you don’t know the facts,” Schultz shot back. The White House is responding to the allegations. The White House has an obligation to advise the public and they’re doing that. they have made statements, and I am not going to get into that.”
Watch the video below via CNN:
Even a giant tax cut can't buy the rich asshole the love of the billionaires
(CNN)some rich asshole at Davos was like the boorish big boss at a company striding into the annual executive retreat a few days after everyone had received a big and mostly unearned bonus.
Even though a bit of snickering can be heard in the back of the room, the usual grousing and mockery gets set aside because this is the guy who signed the checks. The warmth created by all the money cools the boss's temper, and to everyone's relief he pleasantly drones through his remarks.
Polite applause and softball questions were the President's rewards at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which draws more of the global financial elite than might be found at any other gathering.
Its lion's share of the recently enacted US tax cut was not a reward for a job well done, but a no-strings-attached gift of the sort that would make almost anyone smile and applaud politely as the boss, who spent much of the past year creating chaos and crisis, indulged in a subdued version of his usual display of bragging and self-congratulation.
the rich asshole's brief Davos speech included more than 20 references to himself -- "my election," "as I have said" and so on -- and so much boasting that parts of the text read like a rally speech. He even indulged his autocratic side, taking a jab at the "nasty" press. However if you listened to his delivery, you would have noticed a much softer tone than Rally the rich asshole presents. Davos the rich asshole said positive things about global trade and international cooperation, and sounded much like an ordinary master of the universe.
Watching the rich asshole at Davos, it was possible to forget the chaos that marked year one of his presidency and the latest crises in his world. The New York Times broke the news Thursday evening that he had ordered his staff to fire the special counsel investigating him and his team, and then backed down when the White House lawyer refused to do so. Earlier in the week we learned that first lady Melania the rich asshole decided not to go to Davos after The Wall Street Journal reported that a porn actress had been paid $130,000 to be silent about a reported relationship with her husband.
In any other time, and with any other president, a porn star payoff and a showdown over a special counsel, would be overwhelming scandals. In the rich asshole's case they amount to business as usual. This is, after all, a President who offers lies and distortions at such an unprecedented rate that the world discounts much of what he says. In the meantime, the people around the president do everything they can to calm him down.
At Davos, the sedatives applied to the rich asshole temper included a brass band -- something not ordinarily seen at the conference -- that trumpeted his appearance. This was a balm for the soul of a man who loves pomp.
After his remarks, the conference's host, Klaus Schwab, invited the President to stake a claim to his pre-presidential greatness, by asking him to tell the crowd about an experience that prepared him for the Oval Office. "Being a businessman" was the rich asshole's reply. Then he bragged about his status as the only man ever to be elected president despite having no government or military experience.
As a businessman, the rich asshole was most adept at sales, as he peddled everything from real estate to steaks to courses offered by the rich asshole University. He was in full salesman mode at Davos, declaring America "open for business" and citing the red hot stock market and low unemployment as features that should entice investors to buy American.
Of course, all of the positive economic trends the rich asshole cited began with his predecessor, Barack Obama, who guided the country out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Obama was, in essence, like the homeowner who purchased a tumbledown wreck of a house, renovated it completely and turned it over to a new owner. the rich asshole has the key now, and likes to show it off, but he never mentions the hard work done before he moved in.
The Davos crowd knows the back story, and generally approved of Obama's leadership on trade, climate change and other global issues that the rich asshole has generally reversed. They also worry about the rich asshole's temperament when it comes to the basics of democracy. It's worth noting that when the President complained about the "nasty, mean, and fake" press, some in the crowd subjected him to boos and hissing.
This negative response reminded all of the reality hanging over the rich asshole and his presidency. For all his salesmanship and cheerleading, he remains a troubling and divisive figure. His distortions, lies and frequent reversals have led many to believe he is not to be trusted. Yes, his tax cut bought him a moment of acceptance at Davos, but it didn't buy him the kind of love that lasts.
As the rich asshole comes home, America and the world remain poised on the edge of a presidential crisis. Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation could lead to prosecutions and even impeachment. These events would drown out the cheerleading and the sales pitch and make the President long for the serenity of the Swiss Alps event where he could set aside his troubles and the elite was programmed to like him, if only because he paid them to.
The president clearly believes he can do whatever he wants. Including obstruct justice.
By
Timothy L. O'Brien January 26, 2018, 5:00 AM EST
Last summer, the president of the United States, who is the nation's chief law-enforcement officer, tried to fire the federal appointee overseeing an investigation into whether the president or his advisers had broken the law by, among other things, obstructing justice.
When some rich asshole angled for Robert Mueller's head last year, according to a report from the New York Times, he reasoned that he was within his rights because the special counsel had too many conflicts to impartially run the Justice Department's probe of possible wrongdoing involving Russia and the rich asshole's campaign.
the rich asshole sorted Mueller's conflicts into three neat and ridiculous baskets: money (the rich asshole claimed Mueller gave up his membership at a the rich asshole golf course over a dispute about fees, a tale Mueller's spokesman has said wasn't true); family (Mueller had worked at a firm that had represented the rich asshole's son-in-law, Jared Kushner); and work (Mueller had interviewed for the FBI's top job a day before he was appointed as special counsel).
None of those issues compromised Mueller in any meaningful way. the rich asshole must have known this, of course. But the president, a survivor to his core, had to find some novel way of explaining why he was trying to escape the clutches of an obstruction of justice investigation by obstructing justice. the rich asshole's White House counsel, Donald McGahn, saw this overreach for exactly what it was and threatened to quit unless the rich asshole backed down. And so the rich asshole backed down, according to the Times.
Let's not pretend, however, that the president will remain subdued for very long. All of this transpired last June. Since then, Mueller has indicted or secured guilty pleas from four former the rich asshole insiders for a variety of crimes. He's conducting interviews with senior White House officials and a meeting with the president apparently is on the horizon. As the temperature of his investigation rises, expect the president to act out in increasingly volatile ways, and to stretch the boundaries of the law to counter Mueller's probe.
What might that look like?
the rich asshole has the power to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the official overseeing Mueller's probe, if Rosenstein doesn't obey a request to fire Mueller. the rich asshole could then tear through the Justice Department's senior ranks, firing people until he finds one who would comply with his demands.
Although there's some debate among legal scholars about how much latitude the president would have for such a purge, the rich asshole's previous maneuvering in this investigation suggests he believes he can do almost whatever he wants. That might explain why the Times report is surfacing now: Perhaps White House officials, perhaps even McGahn himself, are worried that the president is set again on toppling Mueller and they want to stop it (having the president safely tucked away in Switzerland and unable to counter-program probably helps).
McGahn also has much on the line himself. Last January, he met with Sally Yates, the acting attorney general at the time, after she told him that the rich asshole's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to the White House about his contacts with a Russian official. McGahn invited Yates back the next day and asked her why the Justice Department cared if White House officials were lying to one another. Yates said that it would possibly give the Russians leverage to blackmail Flynn. As it turned out, the White House knew for weeks that Flynn hadn't been truthful about his communications with Russia -- and neither McGahn nor the rich asshole apparently felt concerned enough to force him out.
If McGahn is now in Mueller's crosshairs, he might have decided that the simplest solution is to cooperate with the probe and turn over information in exchange for gentler treatment. In that scenario, McGahn becomes the source, directly or indirectly, of all kinds of interesting stuff for investigators and the media to ponder.
As the White House gets rattled further, the rich asshole will test how deeply Congress believes in and respects the rule of law. The U.S. legal system, whatever its imperfections, is a pillar of American life and liberty. Republicans and Democrats in Congress should remind themselves of that and prepare for the very real possibility that the president will try to fire the special counsel again -- especially if Mueller's probe ensnares any of the Trumps, including the paterfamilias.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Dem rep mocks Ron Johnson’s ‘secret society’ flame-out: ‘Traded his integrity for the sugar high of being on Fox’
Rep. Jim Himes -- CNN screengrab
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes (D) delivered an scathing epitaph to the career of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) Friday morning, saying twenty years from now, all anyone will remember about his Senate career will be the time he thought a joke about a “secret society” proved there was an FBI conspiracy to overthrow President some rich asshole.
Appearing with CNN host Alysin Camerota, Himes — who previously called Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro “mouth-breathers” on Thursday night — was equally caustic about Johnson on Friday morning.
Addressing the FBI texts mentioning the supposed “secret society,” Johnson told reporters, “I can’t ignore these texts. I can’t ignore the unvarnished narrative from two individuals high up in the FBI that have contact with the director,” Johnson said, only to later concede that the text might have been “made in jest.”
“What is Senator Ron Johnson doing?” a bemused Camerota asked.
“Ron Johnson is doing what Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) has been doing, and sadly so many members have been doing, seizing on rumor, seizing on fantasy to create doubt around the integrity of the FBI,” the House Intel Committee member explained. “It is sad to say, when right wing radio hosts do this it’s one thing, but when United States senators and congressman sacrifice their integrity and their legacy —.”
“Ron Johnson will be reminded of this 20 years from now that he seized on one rumor of a text that might have mentioned a secret society to allege that there was corruption at the highest levels of the FBI,” he continued. “You have traded your integrity for the sugar high of, you know, a moment on Fox News supporting the president. A president, by the way, who would stab you in the back if he had the opportunity.”
“So why are they doing that?” Camerota asked. “Beyond the sugar high, why are they doing that?”
“They are doing that because the White House is constantly generating ideas like, ‘oh, he is just fighting back, and the president has the right to obstruct justice,'” He continued. “And Devin Nunes comes up with the four-page memo which I knew immediately it was a shoddy piece of work. It is in the service of feeding the right-wing narrative that the FBI and DOJ are corrupt.”
“To see the Republican Party — which usually stands for law enforcement — do everything they can and, as I said, trade their integrity to damage this stored American institution is a sad thing to watch,” he added.
You can watch the video below:
Top Intel Dem: the rich asshole's order to fire Mueller was 'Nixonian'
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 01/26/18 12:47 PM EST
California Rep. Adam Schiff (D) on Friday blasted President the rich asshole following a report from The New York Times alleging that the rich asshole ordered his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller.
In a statement, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee warned that the rich asshole's reported order to fire Mueller was "Nixonian" in its intent, and called on Congress to act quickly to protect the special counsel.
"The reports that the President not only considered firing Special Counsel Mueller, but went so far as to order it, demonstrate the Nixonian lengths this President is prepared to go to protect himself," Schiff wrote.
"Congress must make clear that any effort to remove the Special Counsel or impede his work would touch off a constitutional crisis which would imperil this Presidency and do grave damage to our nation."
Schiff went on to accuse Republicans of attacking the credibility of the FBI in the face of "undue interference" from the White House in the Russia investigation.
"Instead of protecting Mueller's investigation from undue interference, many Republicans in Congress have stepped up their spurious attacks against the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Special Counsel. It is time for them to put country and rule of law before party," he said.
Democrats in Congress have renewed calls for a bill to protect Mueller and his team from firing by the White House following the Times report Thursday that claimed the rich asshole only backed off after McGahn threatened to quit over the order.
Last June, around the time the Times says the rich asshole gave the order, Schiff warned that Congress would simply rehire Mueller if the rich asshole ousted him from the special counsel's office.
“If President [the rich asshole] fired Bob Mueller, Congress would immediately re-establish independent counsel and appoint Bob Mueller,” Schiff tweeted last year. “Don't waste our time.”
They sound like crazy ‘people on the subway’: Watch Van Jones ridicule the rich asshole’s die-hard GOP apologists
CNN political commentator and former Obama staffer Van Jones (image via screengrab).
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
CNN’s Van Jones on Friday mocked the idea that people shouldn’t worry about President some rich asshole’s attempts to fire special counsel Robert Mueller because the president eventually backed off his demands after White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.
In particular, Jones noted that it shouldn’t have taken the threat of mass resignations to get the rich asshole to understand that firing the special prosecutor just a month after he had fired former FBI Director James Comey would have been bad for his presidency.
“The fact that they are holding back a freight train with dental floss half the time — that is not good,” he said. “And that’s where we are here.”
Jones then went on to mock the GOP for trying to brush all of the rich asshole’s actions away by launching a conspiracy theory about a “secret society” within the FBI dedicated to taking the rich asshole down.
“Crazy talk!” Jones exclaimed. “This is some foolishness… this is not the random person on the subway saying this, these are senators and congresspeople, on the relevant committees! I’m like, what is wrong with the Republican Party.”
Jones then went on to say that he’s not too surprised that the GOP has devolved into spouting wild conspiracy theories given that its party’s leader often spouted wild conspiracies about former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
“When you spend eight years attacking Obama over crazy stuff, you build up a culture of crazy,” he said.
Watch the video below.
WATCH: the rich asshole gets booed at Davos after attacking ‘fake’ press on stage
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
President some rich asshole received a round of boos at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland when he launched another broadside against the American media.
Following a fairly conventional speech touting economic prosperity, the president sat down for a Q&A session in which he talked about how he’d in the past gotten lots of good press as a businessman — which he said was much different from the treatment he’s received as a politician.
“It wasn’t until I became a politician that I realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be,” the rich asshole told the crowd at the WEF.
Upon attacking the press, several people at the conference let out a loud stream of boos.
Watch the video below.
Ex-Justice Dept official: ‘If he was Gov. some rich asshole, we’d be waiting for FBI agents to show up with handcuffs’
Matthew Miller (MSNBC)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
President some rich asshole finds himself in serious legal jeopardy over his order to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, said a former Justice Department spokesman — but there may be even more damning evidence against him.
The president ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire the special counsel less than a month after he was appointed to lead the Russia probe, which MSNBC contributor and former Justice Department official Matthew Miller said was incredibly damaging.
“I think last night was a reminder that there are probably a number of pieces of evidence that Robert Mueller has that we haven’t seen this are damming to the president,” Miller told “Morning Joe.” “This event took place seven months ago, the White House has lied about it, said the president never considered firing Robert Mueller. We know that wasn’t the case.”
He said the president was only protected from criminal action at this point by the power of his office.
“When you add this up with the litany of other obstruction-of-justice-related events, I think if we are talking about a Gov. some rich asshole and not a President some rich asshole we’d be waiting for FBI agents to show up at the governor’s mansion with handcuffs,” Miller said. “This is damning. What he has going for him is that the Justice Department has concluded — most legal scholars, but not all, agree — presidents can’t be indicted, so it’s left to impeachment, and now about to whether Bob Mueller should do an interview.”
Presidents who take on the Bureau rarely win.
By TIM WEINER January 26, 2018
On Friday, April 27, 1973, a dozen armed FBI agents left their headquarters in the Old Post Office building — today a gilded the rich asshole hotel — and marched up Pennsylvania Avenue. Waving their badges, they walked into the White House.
Their orders were to stand guard in the West Wing, wherein lay evidence of high crimes. “They’re going to lock down and secure the business offices, including the president’s,” the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, Jack McDermott, told an astonished Secret Service man.
Caught in the web of Watergate, President Richard M. Nixon returned from Camp David and found a skinny young FBI man standing at attention down the hall from the Oval Office. Screaming in rage, he grabbed the agent by the lapels. “What the hell is this?” he shouted.
It was the rule of law challenging the power of the commander in chief—and the beginning of the end for Nixon. He knew that he was doomed. Within a year, the president would be named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an iron-clad criminal case. His impeachment inevitable, he resigned the presidency in the summer of 1974.
We now stand on the verge of the same kind of confrontation.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, backed by the full force of the FBI, has one foot inside the White House. He will have another if President some rich asshole makes good on his promise to talk with Mueller in a matter of weeks, a pledge the president made on Wednesday to the evident horror of his lawyers. “You fight back,” the rich asshole complained, and the reaction is, “‘Oh, it’s obstruction.’”
the rich asshole tried to fight back last summer. He wanted to fire Mueller, as he had fired FBI Director James Comey. That would have created a constitutional crisis like no other since Watergate—and a clear count of obstructing justice. Any rookie prosecutor could have brought that case to court. And Bob Mueller is no rookie.
the rich asshole wants to go to war with Mueller? A man who faced down George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to protect the Constitution from becoming a casualty in the war on terror, a Marine veteran with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star? the rich asshole wants to attack the Justice Department and the FBI when he and his administration are the focus of the most politically charged criminal investigation in half a century?
These would be suicide missions. Ever since Nixon, no president has won a face-to-face battle with the FBI or a special counsel investigating the White House. And Richard Nixon, for all his deviousness and duplicity, was an infinitely more sophisticated political operator than some rich asshole.
Nixon never would have fallen had not FBI agents pursued their investigation despite the fact that their leaders were hopelessly compromised or criminally entangled by Watergate. We would never know how President Ronald Reagan sold arms to Iran as ransom for American hostages had not the FBI used state-of-the-art forensics to salvage slam-dunk evidence from purged White House computer files in 1987. President Bill Clinton never would have faced impeachment for perjury had not the FBI drawn his blood — and secured DNA evidence of his sexual dalliances—in the Map Room of the White House in 1998.
Only the FBI can walk into the White House and compel a president to comply with the law. Only the FBI can build a criminal case against a chief executive. And the rich asshole may not realize he is up against three present and former FBI directors who have proved fearless and fiercely independent when it comes to confronting presidents.
In 2004, Mueller and Comey (then the acting attorney general) stood up to President Bush when he bent the law and the Constitution to their breaking point with his secret eavesdropping on Americans. They were prepared to resign on principle. That story is well known. But many forget that the present FBI director, Christopher Wray, then chief of the criminal division of the Justice Department, was prepared to resign with them. He’ll have to be ready to quit in protest again if the rich asshole keeps attacking the hard-won integrity of the Bureau.
Bush was savvy enough to see that the resignations would have destroyed his presidency. He wrote in his memoirs: “I thought about the Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973,” when Nixon demanded the firing of the Watergate special counsel, forced out the attorney general and the deputy attorney general, sparking a firestorm that consumed him. “That was not a historical crisis I wished to replicate.”
Now that we know the rich asshole was a tweet away from starring in Saturday Night Massacre: The Sequel, we need to look at why the G-men have the power and independence to take down the president.
***
Watergate never would have happened if J. Edgar Hoover had not died six weeks before the break-in. In his 48 years as the head of the Bureau, Hoover had protected presidents he tolerated (like Lyndon B. Johnson) and undermined those he scorned (like John F. Kennedy). He disregarded higher authority—the White House, the Justice Department, the Congress and the Supreme Court—when he saw fit.
“Attorneys general seldom directed Mr. Hoover,” Nixon said in 1980. “It was difficult even for presidents.” He was testifying at the trial of Mark Felt, a.k.a. “Deep Throat,” who had been indicted for warrantless FBI burglaries committed in the Watergate era.
Hoover oversaw hundreds if not thousands of such black-bag jobs in his time. He would not have approved a hare-brained operation like the Watergate caper—but he damned well would have protected his men had they been caught. He had that kind of power. He was the law.
In the fall of 1974, a few weeks after Nixon fled, Congress set out to recalibrate the imbalances of power created by the imperious Hoover and the imperial presidency. Following a no-holds-barred inquiry that bared three decades of crimes Hoover and his men committed in the name of national security—often with the tacit approval of presidents—the Senate made a seemingly modest move to give the FBI director a statutory 10-year term.
The aim was twofold. The 10-year sinecure would protect the director from pressure exerted by presidents. He would no longer be a point man in acts of political warfare commanded by the chief executive. At the same time, no director could become another Hoover, an unaccountable autocrat with infinite tenure and unlimited power. This was a balancing test of the kind that Congress no longer seems capable.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, in a 1976 report, also made it clear the FBI’s chief was not like a member of the Cabinet. He was not a political actor. No president could justify the removal of an FBI director merely because he wanted his own man in the job—and certainly not because the FBI was investigating the White House.
Thus Clinton was incapable of firing the FBI’s fifth director, Louis J. Freeh, a man who was investigating him from the day he was sworn in. Freeh’s deep distrust of the president blinded him—but keelhauling him was “a political impossibility,” the National Security Council’s chief counterterrorism aides, Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, wrote in 2002. “A chief executive who was being investigated by the FBI could not fire the FBI director: it would be another Saturday Night Massacre, the second coming of Richard Nixon.” It would also be an obstruction of justice—a high crime, constituting an impeachable offense.
***
We’ll see if the rich asshole keeps following Nixon’s footsteps down the road to hell.
One year ago Friday, FBI agents interviewed the rich asshole’s national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, about his contacts with Russian officials during the presidential transition. Flynn lied. A counterintelligence probe into Team the rich asshole’s ties to Team Putin became a criminal case.
In February, the rich asshole pressured Comey to drop the FBI’s investigation of Flynn. In March, the rich asshole leaned on CIA Director Mike Pompeo to find a way to make Comey back off—exactly as Nixon leaned on the CIA to block the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate case, an act caught on the “smoking gun tape” that proved to be Nixon’s downfall. And then the rich asshole went ahead and fired Comey—and recorded his own smoking gun tape, an interview with NBC News in which he said he’d done so with the intent of making the FBI’s Russia investigation disappear.
On March 22, 1973, as the breath of the FBI’s bloodhounds grew hot, Nixon had a heart-to-heart with John Mitchell, the man who’d been his campaign manager, attorney general and criminal co-conspirator. The president concluded that a continuing obstruction of justice was his only recourse. The White House tapes spun silently: “I don’t give a shit what happens,” Nixon said. “I want you all to stonewall it … plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up. ... We’re going to protect our people, if we can.”
‘Worse than the Comey firing’: MSNBC legal analyst explains why the rich asshole-Mueller report is the biggest bombshell yet
Ari Melber (MSNBC)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
MSNBC’s chief legal correspondent said the bombshell report that President some rich asshole ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller was the most significant development yet in the ongoing Russia investigation.
Ari Melber, host of MSNBC’s “The Beat,” said no White House officials denied the New York Times report — and he said the report carried a heavy legal implication for the president.
“The only type of order you see a legit White House counsel not carry out is an unlawful order,” Melber said. “Within the lines of this story, which has now been confirmed by NBC News and the Washington Post is by implication that the White House counsel, knowing what he knew at the time, felt he could not carry out this order. It’s not reported as a dinner conversation or a musing.”
He said this was the biggest development in the Justice Department probe of the rich asshole campaign ties to Russia since the president fired FBI director James Comey.
“This is probably the most significant thing that has broken about some rich asshole and the Russia probe ever, and it is legally probably worse than the Comey firing,” Melber added.
He said corrupt intent was difficult to prove, and the president could argue he was ignorant of the legal ramifications of pushing back against the investigation — but Melber said attempting to fire Mueller was damning evidence.
“This, more so than the Comey firing, shows a president with the type of activity, the type of elements of ongoing attempts to interfere were or hamper the outcome of the case along the requisite type of intent prosecutors probe to see whether a crime was committed,” he said. “Don McGahn may have done the right thing, he may have done a good thing, he may also as an attorney have done the only thing he felt he could do when asked to participate in an ongoing criminal conspiracy, which is the kind of thing a lawyer can do.”
Melber said the White House counsel would have been legally vulnerable himself if he had gone along with the president’s order.
“I will close with this point here,” Melber said. “You can defend a prior killing when you’re a lawyer, but you cannot participate in the coverup or the planning around any future crime. So it may sound counterintuitive if you’re not versed in the law to say well, how bad was this, it’s not as bad as some things but it may have reached the standard that Don McGahn felt he legally could not participate in, and this is the reason that ‘Saturday Night Massacre’-level threat, appears to be the reason it didn’t happen.”
No comments:
Post a Comment