This photo of Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. is the perfect example of the rich asshole’s emoluments problem
Just stopping by to drop off an emolument.
Eleonora Movsisyan is the CEO and founder of Nail Sunny, a chain of nail salons offering manicures and pedicures in several locations across Moscow. The head of the self-described “#1 nail art chain in Russia” visited Washington, D.C. on Tuesday morning for a meeting with her country’s new ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov.
A photo posted on Movsisyan’s personal Instagram account, and on Nail Sunny’s company Instagram page, shows that the meeting took place at a popular locale for foreign governments eager to please President some rich asshole: the the rich asshole International Hotel.
Despite the emoluments clause, a provision in the United States Constitution that prohibits the rich asshole and other federal officials from receiving payments from foreign governments, diplomats from around the world have been holding events at his properties since his 2016 election.
In December 2016, ThinkProgress reported that — under pressure — the Kuwaiti government had cancelled a contract with one Washington hotel and moved a major event to the rich asshole’s new hotel. A former Mexican ambassador has alleged that the rich asshole’s State Department is actively encouraging world leaders to use the rich asshole’s hotel for official visits.
the rich asshole continues to retain full control of the hotel, despite a provision in the lease that seemingly prohibits tenants from holding government positions.
While the Instagram picture does not indicate what the CEO and the ambassador did at the rich asshole International Hotel, it raises more questions about a president who promised not to profit from foreign governments, but has done little to follow through on that commitment. Antonov’s visit also comes amid an ongoing investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller into the the rich asshole campaign and potential crimes related to it’s interactions with Russian officials.
the rich asshole supporters are heavy consumers of fake news
A new study from three academics breaks down the data.
After authorities arrested a handful of some rich asshole supporters for plotting to car-bomb Somali immigrants in Kansas in 2016, the defense attorney for one pointed to a novel defense for his client: fake news. Per the attorney, Patrick Stein – whose Facebook was littered with both fake stories and support for then-candidate the rich asshole – was motivated to plan his slaughter because he thought then-President Barack Obama was on the brink of declaring martial law, misinformation he picked up from fake news sites.
Stein’s plot, of course, was foiled, but his case helps sum not only the threats posed by the spawn of fake news sites over the past few years, but the propensity for the rich asshole supporters to find themselves consuming fake news sites at far higher clips than other demographics in the U.S.
Indeed, a new paper from a trio of researchers illustrates just how popular fake news sites are for the rich asshole supporters – and how ineffective fact-checking efforts aimed at combating these sites remain.
The new paper from Princeton’s Andrew Guess, Dartmouth’s Brendan Nyhan, and University of Exeter’s Jason Reifler illustrates how approximately 27 percent of American adults visited a fake news site in the lead-up to the 2016 election, as well as the election’s immediate aftermath. For the purpose of the study, the academics described fake news sites as those that “frequently publish false claims, distort genuine news reports, and copy or repurpose content from other outlets.” Sites identified included fake news outlets like BipartisanReport.com, IJR.com, and DailyWire.com, among dozens of others.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers discovered that fake news geared at the presidential candidates “was heavily skewed toward some rich asshole.” Moreover, the rich asshole supporters “were far more likely to visit fake news websites – especially those that are pro-the rich asshole – than [Hillary] Clinton supporters.”
Moreover, according to the paper, nearly 60 percent of the total visits to fake news sites “came from the 10 percent of people with the most conservative online information diets” – with older Americans “much more likely to visit fake news” based on the variables examined in the paper. Such findings back up earlier research, including a 2017 fake news-related conference at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center that concluded that “misinformation is currently predominantly a pathology of the right.”
Facebook, as the fake Russian feeds recently unearthed made clear, stands as a hive of misinformation and fake news without parallel. As the paper notes, Facebook “was a key vector of exposure to fake news,” with the researchers’ findings providing “the most compelling independence evidence to date” backing up Facebook’s descent into a fake news paradise.
Given that fake news – thanks in no small part to the rich asshole’s continued usage of the term – remains as relevant, and prevalent, since the election, the most concerning findings of the new paper may be the fact that dedicated fact-checking sites so rarely reach fake news consumers. As the researchers found, “only about half of the Americans who visited a fake news website during the study period also saw any fact-check from one of the dedicated fact-checking website[s].” Remarkably, not a single respondent who came across a fake news article flagged – that is, which contained a claim rated as explicitly false – actually saw any fact-check that debunked the story.
To be sure, fake news is hardly siloed to voices on the right, or those within the rich asshole’s camp. As a piece from The Atlantic last year noted, the lesson that those pushing anti-the rich asshole conspiracies – including voices like Seth Abramson and the Palmer Report – seem to have taken “is that fake news works.”
And it’s possible that, since the time-frame examined in the recent paper, fake news consumption has tilted away from the rich asshole’s most fervent supporters. But given the new numbers, it’s clear that the rich asshole rode a wave of support from fake news consumers through the election – even while he continues to decry the “fake news” he says is now aimed at him.
‘The words of a man who is running scared’: Ex-CIA agent mocks the rich asshole’s Comey and Hillary tweets
Ex-CIA agent Ned Price -- MSNBC screenshot
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Appearing on an MSNBC panel discussing a series of President some rich asshole’s tweets launched Tuesday morning, a CIA veteran ridiculed the increasingly desperate tone of the president’s words, saying he is panicking.
Speaking with host Craig Melvin, National Security Analysts Ned Price — who spent 11 years in the CIA — said the rich asshole’s attack on James Comey and Hillary Clinton indicate he fears the Mueller investigation is closing in on him.
On Saturday, Price speculated that the leak about George Papadopoulos boasting to an Australian diplomat that the rich asshole campaign had dirt on Hillary Clinton was a warning shot from the FBI.
“Timing of this story is interesting, coming 4 days after the rich asshole’s false dossier tweets, which also impugned the FBI. The FBI largely treated the rich asshole campaign & subsequently the rich asshole presidency w kid gloves. But this may indicate the gloves are coming off,” he tweeted.
On Tuesday, Price asserted that the leak may have had its intended effect.
“Ned, a week earlier, the president told the New York Times reporter this, in regard to the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. ‘I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department, but for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter,'” host Melvin read before asking, “Is that bluster or do you think that he’ll try to exercise that power?”
“Well, Craig, I think we’ve already seen indications that President the rich asshole won’t be able to keep his hands off this investigation when it comes to Uranium One,” Price replied. “He’s already voiced his input into that investigation, releasing material that was previously held private by an FBI source involved in that matter.”
“I think the broader point of all of this is that these are not the words of a president. The tweet this morning was not the words of a president” he stated. “They were the words of a man who was running scared. He’s running scared from an independent FBI and Department of Justice.”
“So the question becomes: why does President the rich asshole feel the need to be so hands on, not only in this investigation but also in other investigations?” he proposed. “And it suggests to me that President the rich asshole feels that he has something to hide. If you add the firing of James Comey, the attempt to get his top national security aides to claim there was no collusion, it paints a picture of just that. Not only of potential collusion, but also certainly what appears to be obstruction of justice.”
You can watch the video below via MSNBC:
the rich asshole’s ‘bigger nuclear button’ tweet appears to have been prompted by a Fox News report on Kim Jung-un
Nuclear bomb explosion (Shutterstock) and President some rich asshole, composite image.
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At 7:37 PM, Fox News’ chyron read that Kim Jong-un “says he has a nuclear button.” Two minutes later, President Donald the rich asshole tweeted in an apparent response.
First flagged by Media Matters’ Matt Gertz, the short amount of time between Fox’s headline and the president’s bombastic tweet offers powerful evidence that the right-wing network “is going to get us all killed.”
Less than 30 minutes after the “nuclear button” tweet, the rich asshole posted a promotion for Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.
‘We’ve seen this before’: Presidential historian compares the rich asshole’s ‘Deep State’ conspiracy to Nixon’s attacks on CIA
some rich asshole and Richard Nixon (Composition / RawStory)
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President some rich asshole’s latest attacks on a law-enshrined American institution has once again garnered him comparisons to President Richard Nixon.
“We have seen this before,” Presidential historian Tim Naftali said on a Tuesday night CNN panel about the rich asshole’s tweet slamming the “Deep State Justice Department.”
“Richard Nixon didn’t use the word ‘deep state,’ but when the CIA refused to help him cover up, he began to spread myths that the CIA was undermining his administration,” the historian continued. “There are some Americans who believe that Richard Nixon was railroaded, and many of them believe a myth that the CIA brought him down. That’s a product of the willfulness of a man with authoritarian instincts who wants to misuse government agencies.”
“My concern,” Naftali continued, “is that the use of the ‘deep state’ term is a way of getting a pass. our president wants to be able to do what he wants with these institutions if they don’t follow him, he’s going to say they’re not responsive and they’re part of the ‘deep state.'”
Ex-White House counsel: Devin Nunes may be violating the Constitution with his ‘secret’ mission to expose FBI ‘corruption’
Ex-White House counsel John Dean (left) and House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (right). Images via screengrab.
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John Dean, the White House counsel for President Richard Nixon credited as a part of the latter’s demise, has reportedly been brushing up on his Constitution after learning about the most recent maneuvers of House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA).
As Politico reported Tuesday, Dean believes Nunes’ “secret meetings” with fellow Republican legislators to build a case for corruption at the Department of Justice and the FBI are not protected under the U.S. Constitution’s speech and debate clause because they’re bypassing typical committee procedure.
“Members of Congress in both the House and Senate have tried to use the speech and debate clause to protect themselves from everything from bribery to taking care of constituents with the executive branch, and been shown that that clause is not that broad,” Dean told Politico. “I think they’re on dangerous ground.”
In the same interview, Dean also suggested that had Fox News existed during the Nixon era, the former president “might have survived.”
Only 17 companies have ‘showered their workers with bonuses’ thanks to the rich asshole’s tax overhaul
Louise Linton and Steve Mnuchin (MSNBC)
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President some rich asshole celebrated the Republican tax cut bill on Twitter, claiming that companies giving one-time bonuses because of the legislation. President some rich asshole has been celebrating the Republican tax bill since its passage last month, claiming that companies are “showering their workers with bonuses” thanks to the tax overhaul.
An analysis by CNN found that only 16 companies in the S&P 500 responded to the tax overall by raising wages, handing out bonuses, or improving benefits. That number rose by one late Tuesday afternoon after Southwest Airlines announced a $1,000 cash bonus.
“It’s good marketing, but you don’t have a trend yet. It’s premature at this point,” said William Klepper, a management professor at Columbia Business School.
CNN noted Wells Fargo is spending only 5 percent of the company’s total tax savings on a wage hike and additional charitable giving.
“It’s a token compared with what companies are actually saving,” explained Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management. “Where is the rest of the money going?”
Helaine Olen, a Washington Post contributor, explained why such pronouncements by a tiny fraction of companies should not be viewed as signs of a permanently changed economy.
“But bonuses are, by definition, an irregular, voluntary, often one-time event. They are not a firm commitment to better pay. A company can give them once and never give them again,” Olen explained.
“So why did companies make announcements timed to the tax bill?” Olen asked. “This is very likely a strategy to curry favor with a thin-skinned president known to like flattery. If so, it’s working.”
Ex-astronaut Mark Kelly: the rich asshole wants credit for zero airplanes deaths but ignores thousands of gun deaths
Retired astronaut Mark Kelly (left, via Wikimedia Commons) and President some rich asshole (right, via Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons).
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After President some rich asshole took credit for there being zero airplane deaths in 2017, retired astronaut Mark Kelly took him to task.
Rather than the president, Kelly wrote on Twitter, the credit lies with the US Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA and airlines themselves which led to such a safe year for air travel.
“But, if you’re going to take credit for zero airline deaths in 2017 then you should take responsibility for the tens of thousands of gun deaths, too,” Kelly continued.
Check out his tweet below.
Actually, it's @USDOT, @FAANews, & @NASA —and especially the airlines— who deserve credit for this. But, if you're going to take credit for zero airline deaths in 2017 then you should take responsibility for the tens of thousands of gun deaths, too. #lawsmatter twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
the rich asshole Jr. Uses Bogus WikiLeaks Info To Try And Distract From His Own Legal Problems
Much like his father, some rich asshole Jr. is up to his eyebrows in the Russia scandal, so he feels a need to try and deflect from that fact by tweeting out baseless claims he thinks will change the topic. Instead, they only make him look desperate, guilty, and moronic.
Junior’s latest attempt at diversion is a suggestion that originated with WikiLeaks and alleges that The New York Times“colluded” with Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Don Jr. tweeted out this:
The double standard never ends. Every day @realDonaldTrump’s win is that much more impressive when you realize all he was actually up against. WikiLeaks Drops Proof That NYTimes Colluded With Hillary Clinton | Daily Wire dailywire.com/news/25249/wik…
Much like his father, some rich asshole Jr. is up to his eyebrows in the Russia scandal, so he feels a need to try and deflect from that fact by tweeting out baseless claims he thinks will change the topic. Instead, they only make him look desperate, guilty, and moronic.
Junior’s latest attempt at diversion is a suggestion that originated with WikiLeaks and alleges that The New York Times“colluded” with Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Don Jr. tweeted out this:
The double standard never ends. Every day @realDonaldTrump’s win is that much more impressive when you realize all he was actually up against. WikiLeaks Drops Proof That NYTimes Colluded With Hillary Clinton | Daily Wire dailywire.com/news/25249/wik…
Be sure and note the link to the far right news site Daily Wire, which is known to be completely unreliable and a shill for the rich asshole administration.
The author of the Times report referred to by Junior and the Daily Wire is Scott Shane, and he quickly poured cold water on Junior’s specious claims:
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
.1) Not sure who's writing this stuff for @WikiLeaks, but they need to talk to those who actually worked on the diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks, NYT and the other media partners (Guardian, Le Monde et al) all agreed on a plan to inform State Dept which cables were being published.
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
Email shows New York Times handed over Cablegate's publication schedule to the US government (without telling @WikiLeaks) giving the State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, up to 9 days in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCU… pic.twitter.com/CT4XkEs8Mc
When it comes to WikiLeaks, it should be noted that Don Jr. has dirty hands. He exchanged messages with them during the 2016 election. Oh, and let’s not forget that WikiLeaks has extensive ties to Russian intelligence. A U.S. intelligence report from 2017 said the:
“Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet RT (formerly Russia Today) has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.”
Hmm…another connection between a member of the rich asshole family and Russian president/terrorist/mass murderer Vladimir Putin. Image that!
Be sure and note the link to the far right news site Daily Wire, which is known to be completely unreliable and a shill for the rich asshole administration.
The author of the Times report referred to by Junior and the Daily Wire is Scott Shane, and he quickly poured cold water on Junior’s specious claims:
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
.1) Not sure who's writing this stuff for @WikiLeaks, but they need to talk to those who actually worked on the diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks, NYT and the other media partners (Guardian, Le Monde et al) all agreed on a plan to inform State Dept which cables were being published.
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
New cable shows New York Times "reporter" Scott Shane handed over Cablegate's secret country by country publication schedule to the US government giving the State Department (then headed by Hillary Clinton) up to a week in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. pic.twitter.com/DHpqxiXOWJ
Email shows New York Times handed over Cablegate's publication schedule to the US government (without telling @WikiLeaks) giving the State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, up to 9 days in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions. foia.state.gov/searchapp/DOCU… pic.twitter.com/CT4XkEs8Mc
When it comes to WikiLeaks, it should be noted that Don Jr. has dirty hands. He exchanged messages with them during the 2016 election. Oh, and let’s not forget that WikiLeaks has extensive ties to Russian intelligence. A U.S. intelligence report from 2017 said the:
“Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet RT (formerly Russia Today) has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.”
Hmm…another connection between a member of the rich asshole family and Russian president/terrorist/mass murderer Vladimir Putin. Image that!
the rich asshole’s Irish golf course records $2.3 million loss
Lauren Gill
Posted with permission from Newsweek
President Donald Trump’s golf course in Ireland lost money for the third year in a row in 2016, becoming the latest of his properties to struggle as its owner campaigned and won the White House.
The course, Trump International Golf Links Ireland, took a $2.3 million hit for the year, according to documents recently filed with the Irish government, according to The Irish Times. The Trump Organization bought the property on Ireland’s west coast in 2014 and spent more than $32 million in renovations before opening it in 2016, The Washington Post reported.
But 2016 wasn’t all bad for Golf Links — it’s revenue increased by 30 percent, and it’s operating losses were only half of what they’d been a year prior, according to figures provided by the golf club to The Post.
The losses for 2016, however, were just 15 percent lower than what they’d been in 2015 when the course was under heavy renovations.
The annual filing to Irish regulators did not specify a reason for the losses, but said it was “confident [of] the return operating profits in 2017.”
Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump—who is now helping run the Trump Organization—told The Irish Times, “it is incredibly gratifying to see our vision for Trump Doonbeg come to life. I continue to be impressed by the beautiful product and the business improvement at the property.”
The club’s manager told the Irish newspaper that he also predicted the club would lose money overall in 2017. These figures will not be filed until late 2018, according to The Post.
The Irish course isn’t the first Trump golf club to lose money—recent government data has revealed that at least four of his properties are struggling.
In Scotland, the commander-in-chief’s two golf courses reported that their losses doubled in 2016 to more than $24 million combined. And in California, Trump’s course outside of Los Angeles reported its 2017 totals to be the lowest since 2011. In New York, the president’s Bronx course also reported declining revenue, according to The Post.
The location of the struggling properties may have something to do with their pains since Trump is not popular in Europe and all of the struggling courses are located in liberal areas. But Trump’s ascension to the presidency has not been all bad for his real estate—his hotel in Washington, D.C. reported surging profits and his Florida luxury resort, Mar-A-Lago, raised membership fees as members now have the unique opportunity to interact with the president.
The course, Trump International Golf Links Ireland, took a $2.3 million hit for the year, according to documents recently filed with the Irish government, according to The Irish Times. The Trump Organization bought the property on Ireland’s west coast in 2014 and spent more than $32 million in renovations before opening it in 2016, The Washington Post reported.
But 2016 wasn’t all bad for Golf Links — it’s revenue increased by 30 percent, and it’s operating losses were only half of what they’d been a year prior, according to figures provided by the golf club to The Post.
The losses for 2016, however, were just 15 percent lower than what they’d been in 2015 when the course was under heavy renovations.
The annual filing to Irish regulators did not specify a reason for the losses, but said it was “confident [of] the return operating profits in 2017.”
Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump—who is now helping run the Trump Organization—told The Irish Times, “it is incredibly gratifying to see our vision for Trump Doonbeg come to life. I continue to be impressed by the beautiful product and the business improvement at the property.”
The club’s manager told the Irish newspaper that he also predicted the club would lose money overall in 2017. These figures will not be filed until late 2018, according to The Post.
The Irish course isn’t the first Trump golf club to lose money—recent government data has revealed that at least four of his properties are struggling.
In Scotland, the commander-in-chief’s two golf courses reported that their losses doubled in 2016 to more than $24 million combined. And in California, Trump’s course outside of Los Angeles reported its 2017 totals to be the lowest since 2011. In New York, the president’s Bronx course also reported declining revenue, according to The Post.
The location of the struggling properties may have something to do with their pains since Trump is not popular in Europe and all of the struggling courses are located in liberal areas. But Trump’s ascension to the presidency has not been all bad for his real estate—his hotel in Washington, D.C. reported surging profits and his Florida luxury resort, Mar-A-Lago, raised membership fees as members now have the unique opportunity to interact with the president.
POLITICS
White House Says Secret Rounds Of Golf Make some rich asshole A Better President
But Obama was apparently a slacker whenever he played golf.
Some rich asshole loves golf. He has spent at least 91 days of his presidency at golf courses and has been confirmed golfing at least 35 times. Presumably, he has golfed more times, but the White House is often tight-lipped at what in the world the president is doing at these golf courses.
On Christmas Day, the rich asshole tweeted that he was taking the day off then getting “back to work” after the holiday.
But the rich asshole then spent the next seven days at the golf course. Reporters confirmed that the president was golfing during at least some of this time.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the rich asshole’s time on the links when asked by Yahoo News reporter Hunter Walker what his biggest accomplishment there has been.
“I think it would certainly be developing deeper and better relationships with members of Congress in which those relationships have helped push forward the president’s agenda ― specifically when it comes to helping get the tax reform and tax cuts passed,” Sanders said, adding, “He has played golf with a number of senators and used that time certainly to accomplish that.”
Yet the White House is rarely willing to tell the press when this relationship-building is happening. Officials often don’t release details about whether the rich asshole is golfing, and with whom, and reporters have a tough time confirming what he’s doing.
"You Can't See Me"
A large truck is attempting to block cameras from capturing video of President Donald Trump golfing
cnn.it/2BZEPtZ
Sanders, however, denied that the White House was at all skittish about the time the rich asshole is spending at his golf courses.
“I think it’s the press that has an issue with his time on the course,” she said. “The president is extremely proud of the accomplishments we had during 2017. ... It was probably one of the most successful first years in office ― passed major legislation, reworked the court system and got a Supreme Court justice nominated and approved and on the bench in the first year. A booming economy, massive gains against the war on ISIS.”
Presidents golf. Being commander in chief is a tough job, and everyone needs a way to unwind. But the reason the rich asshole’s time on the golf course is an issue is because he frequently went after President Barack Obama for golfing, saying he was lazy and not doing his job.
"@gretawire: PresObama is not busy talking to Congress about Syria..he is playing golf ...go figure"
@BarackObama played golf yesterday. Now he heads to a 10 day vacation in Martha's Vineyard. Nice work ethic.
the rich asshole has admitted that he loves golf, but insisted there was a distinction between his golf and Obama’s golf.
I don't mind that @BarackObama plays a lot of golf. I just wish he used it productively to make deals with Congress!
There’s zero indication that every time the rich asshole has been on the golf course, he’s spent it with members of Congress.
Welcome to 2018! some rich asshole Is Worse Than Ever!
Unfortunately, The New York Times doesn’t entirely seem to be on top of that story.
On the first workday of 2018, some rich asshole proved that he’d made no New Year’s resolutions to sober up politically. He’s going to be the exact same maniac he was in 2017, on Twitter at least. CNN posted a dizzying “Hollywood Squares” matrix of the rich asshole’s nine morning Tweets. In just a few minutes, he attacked his own “Deep State Justice Department,” called for Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin to go to “jail,” again mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man,” savaged the “Failing New York Times” and took credit for the fact that 2017 saw zero fatalities in domestic air crashes. There have been zero fatalities in domestic air crashes since 2009. (Thanks, Obama!)
the rich asshole is incorrigible and still, predictably, dangerous. Over the long holiday weekend, angry progressives vented some of their fear and outrage over that at the very same New York Times the rich asshole attacked, singling out three articles that made it look like the nation’s most important paper is bending backwards to meet the president on his own terms, truth be damned. You can trace a connection between the rich asshole’s ever-accelerating craziness and abuse, and the Times’s growing trouble with its progressive readers. If you cared enough to do so, that is.
First came Michael S. Schmidt’s “impromptu” interview with the president at his Mar-a-Lago resort, also known as his faux-opulent Florida grift. It turned out Schmidt was lunching there with the right-wing the rich asshole pal, Christopher Ruddy of Newsmax, and Ruddy told reporters that he helped broker the sit-down. It’s fair to call the the rich asshole-Schmidt impromptu as long as Ruddy’s role in making it happen was disclosed, but the Times was sketchy about that. Schmidt described squatting at the president’s side in a catcher’s position for 30 minutes, until his thighs began to ache. That might explain why so many balls got past him.
the rich asshole made impossible and/or incoherent claims about taxes (“I know the details of taxes better than anybody. Better than the greatest C.P.A.”), something he called “chainlike immigration,” healthcare, and his relationship with China’s leaders, who he claimed “treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China.” Schmidt challenged none of it, even telling the rich asshole his China nonsense “makes a lot of sense” and agreeing that indicted campaign manager Paul Manafort worked for the rich asshole “for a very short period of time.”
As social media went up in flames over the lies, grandiosity and delusion that was evident (and unchallenged) in Schmidt’s piece, Times staffers circled the wagons around Schmidt, insisting he’d done a service in just letting the rich asshole ramble on. (This Times-writer pushback has become an increasingly troubling practice at the Times in the the rich asshole era. Defending colleagues is laudable; circling the wagons, and insulting your critics, is not.) The Washington Post quickly found the rich asshole told 24 lies in 30 minutes. Not only did the Times fail to fact-check the piece when it ran; a later fact-check counted only 10 lies.
Next up was Peter Baker’s “For the rich asshole, A Year of Reinventing the Presidency.” The piece itself wasn’t horrible, although parts of it seemed a retread of something Baker co-wrote last month with Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush, which concluded that the rich asshole “had yet to bend the presidency to his will” but was “at least wrestling it to a draw.” Both pieces interviewed an impressive range of sources and reported shocking facts, but overall took a soothing tone that served to normalize the rich asshole’s dangerous assaults on presidential norms.
What lit up social media was the extraordinary tweet the Times used to herald Baker’s new piece:
President Trump has brought a reality-show accessibility to a once-aloof presidency, invigorating voters who felt alienated by the establishment nyti.ms/2DDJii3
To hail the president’s “accessibility” on the very day that wealthy friends, Cabinet members and access-seekers paid $750 to attend his Mar-A-Lago New Year’s Eve party was tone-deaf at best. (Tickets cost $600 for dues-paying club members; last year they paid $525 while their guests paid $575. The club also doubled its initiation fee to $200,000 last year.) The tweet also seemed to borrow right-wing framing of President Obama as “aloof” – widely and correctly read as either a synonym for “outsider” or “uppity.” The best Twitter retorts featured former Obama photographer Pete Souza’s shots of the first black president playing with children and comforting the family members of mass-shooting victims.
Finally, on Monday the normally excellent economics reporters Binyamin Applebaum and Jim Tankersley endorsed the rich asshole’s claim that business is booming thanks to him, in a piece headlined “The rich asshole Effect: Business, Anticipating Less Regulation, Loosens Purse Strings.” The piece reported that “across the business community, there is a perception that years of increased environmental, financial and other regulatory oversight by the Obama administration dampened investment and job creation — and that some rich asshole’s more hands-off approach has unleashed the ‘animal spirits’ of companies that had hoarded cash after the recession of 2008.”
Progressive economists pounced quickly, showing that the 6.2 percent annual investment growth the piece cited was not terribly impressive – under Obama, investment grew by 11.4 percent between the first quarter of 2011 and the second quarter of 2012, by 9.1 percent between the third quarter of 2013 and the third quarter of 2014, and averaged 8.9 percent over the eight years of the Clinton administration. And most of it could reasonably be attributed to rising energy prices spurring greater investment in that sector. Once economist Dean Baker subtracted investment in the mining and oil sectors of the economy, the growth rate only sat at 3.3 percent.
Why are these Times pieces particularly troubling, when the paper still produces great reporting? All seem part of an effort to normalize not only the president, but his most outlandish claims—even, in the last case, to supply “evidence” that those claims about the economy are correct. As progressive economist Jared Bernstein notes in that piece, there is certainly a connection between business community “confidence” in a political climate and its willingness to invest. But linking that “purse-string opening” to the age-old project of lifting hard-won regulations that make Americans safer, without more evidence, is unwise and lamentable.
Maybe more disturbing, the paper appears newly insulated from criticism, since it dispatched its last public editor and did away with the position altogether. Its political reporters are now renowned, and not in a good way, for brooking little or no criticism on social media. Most important, the paper has yet to formally account for the role it may have played in electing the rich asshole.
Instead, executive editor Dean Baquet has been quoted saying his paper and others “absolutely” missed the story of the white working-class voters who drove the rich asshole’s victory, especially in swing states. In fact, there’s increasing evidence that Russian meddling could have driven those victories, along with James Comey’s unprecedented and policy-violating last-minute intervention. The Times famously minimized the former – Baquet was ripped about it by his own (former) public editor — and hyped the latter. It’s possible that without the Times, there would be no need for the Times to examine the “missed” story of the rich asshole victory, because there would have been no victory in the first place. If Baquet feels bad about not charting the story of the rich asshole’s ascension, he should remember one thing: he will certainly feel worse if his paper misreports the story of the president’s unprecedented abuse of power and his caping for plutocrats, and the nation’s resulting decline.
Joan Walsh, The Nation’s national-affairs correspondent, is the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America.
There hasn’t been a fatal passenger airline crash in the United States since 2009.
By Emily Stewart Jan 2, 2018, 11:00am EST
2017 was a lot of things, including, as it turns out, the safest year on record for commercial air travel. And the president of the United States is, perplexingly, taking credit for it.
There was an estimated 3 percent growth in air traffic from 2016 to 2017. And the fatality rate was 0.06 fatalities per million flights — in other words, one fatal accident for 16 million flights.
“2017 was the safest year for aviation ever,” Adrian Young of the Dutch consulting firm To70 told Reuters.
President some rich asshole on Tuesday took to Twitter to celebrate the year in airline safety:
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday on two analyses that both found 2017 was a great year for airline safety. One was from To70, which found no consumer passenger jet fatalities in 2017. Its Civil Aviation Safety Review, an annual analysis of airplane safety, found there were 13 lives lost on airplanes in 2017. They occurred on two regional airlines, both of which were small turboprop (propeller-powered) planes.
To70’s analysis examines accidents, whether caused by technical failure, human error, or unlawful interference, involving larger passenger aircraft. In 2017, there were 111 accidents, two of which included fatalities: an October crash of a Brazilian-built Embraer flight in Angola, and a November crash of a Czech-made plane in eastern Russia.
The Aviation Safety Network also reported that there were no commercial jet deaths in 2017. It recorded 10 fatal airliner accidents, resulting in 44 deaths of passengers on board and 35 people on the ground. It records passenger and cargo flights.
The group’s president, Harro Ranter, said in a statement that the average number of airliner accidents has shown a “steady and persistent” decline since 1997, thanks in large part to sustained efforts by international safety organizations to improve safety — not President the rich asshole, who has been in office for less than a year.
As the Hill’s Jordan Fabian points out, there hasn’t been a fatal passenger airline crash in the US since 2009, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, and the last deadly commuter plane crash took place in Hawaii in 2013.
Still, the rich asshole has made a habit of taking credit for things that don’t exactly correspond to him — including claiming he invented the phrases “prime the pump” and “fake news,” touting business deals reached under the Obama administration as attributable to him, and saying quarterback Colin Kaepernick is still a free agent because NFL owners are afraid of “a nasty tweet from some rich asshole.”
the rich asshole in June proposed privatizing the US air traffic control system. The proposal would place the safety of millions of US airline passengers under a private nonprofit corporation instead of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and could potentially cost more.
That’s not to say that flying is a risk-free affair — as To70 notes, there were several serious non-fatal accidents in 2017, including an Air France Airbus plane carrying 520 people from Paris to Los Angeles last fall that had to make an emergency landing after suffering serious damage to one of its four engines. The firm also points to the risk that the growing prevalence of lithium-ion batteries in electronics poses for fires aboard planes.
“There is no room for complacency,” To70’s report warns.
While 2017 was safe for flying, it wasn’t exactly fun
Last year may have been a safe one for commercial flights, but it wasn’t a great one in terms of customer experience.
As Mashable pointed out, 2017 saw multiple mishaps that made passengers miserable. An 11-hour blackout at Atlanta’s international airport in December grounded more than 1,500 flights and stranded thousands of passengers. The FAA in July was asked to address shrinking airplane seat sizes.
United Airlines in April dragged a passenger off an overbooked flight after he refused to leave the seat he had paid for, prompting major backlash after a video of the incident went viral. Due to a scheduling system glitch, American Airlines accidentally allowed all of its pilots to take vacation during the holidays.
As Vox’s Alex Abad-Santos noted, airlines use a tactic of “calculated misery” with passengers, often making their baseline products and services so low-quality and unpleasant that many people are more willing to pay more to avoid them:
And air travel isn’t off to the best of starts in 2018 in terms of passenger experience: A computer glitch with US Customs and Border Protection on Monday evening caused delays at several major airports for fliers coming to the US from abroad.
Charles Ventura, USA TODAY Published 9:36 p.m. ET Jan. 2, 2018 | Updated 11:27 p.m. ET Jan. 2, 2018
President the rich asshole took to social media Tuesday to announce that he would present the "most dishonest" and "corrupt media awards" next Monday.
"I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock." the rich asshole tweeted on Tuesday, adding: "Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!"
the rich asshole, who has frequently slammed the media since before he took office, originally floated the idea of opening a "fake news trophy" contest in November.
"We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me)," the rich asshole said then. "They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY!"
In an email solicitation last month, the the rich asshole-Pence Make America Great Again Committee asked donors to take a poll to name the worst "fake news story" of 2017.
President the rich asshole: There should be a contest about which network is 'most dishonest'
the rich asshole's tweet Tuesday comes after he threatened North Korea's Kim Jong Un of having a "bigger & more powerful" nuclear button in the latest ongoing war of words between the two leaders.
In November, a new poll from conservative-leaning Rasmussen found that 40% of all voters thought FOX News deserved the non-award despite the rich asshole's insistence that FOX News not be included in the contest.
the rich asshole’s spokeswoman was just asked what he has achieved golfing. Her answer is absurd (WATCH)
After the rich asshole visited golf properties a staggering 91 times already during his first year in office – a number that may still increase over the course of the next few weeks – a reporter asked the White House Press Secretary what the President actually accomplished on the links at which he spent nearly a third of his presidency.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for her part, gave an answer as unconvincing as it was unfounded.
She used the rich asshole’s only veritable accomplishment while in office – the passage of the deeply unpopular Republican tax plan – as justification for the fact that the President played golf at least 75 times in 2017.
Is it a small wonder, then, that past presidents have been able to accomplish anything without having spent such an exorbitant amount of time with a golf club in hand.
Obama, for his part, played golf only 28 times in 2009. He managed to revamp the entire healthcare system by passing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA); passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; introduced strict auto emissions policies; rescued the United States’ largest car maker, General Motors; passed a historic climate change bill; nominated the nation’s first Hispanic Supreme Court judge, Sonya Sotomayor; and won a Nobel Peace prize.
It’s troubling, to say the least, that the president who promised to only make the best deals managed to accomplish so little after sacrificing so much time – and taxpayer money – to curry favor with a Congress that already has a Republican majority in both houses.
Or, as the rich asshole might say, “sad.”
the rich asshole took credit for airline safety in 2017. What about the surge in coal miner deaths?
Coal miner deaths almost doubled in 2017.
President some rich asshole is taking credit for what a new study is calling the safest year on record for commercial aviation. The president, however, is refusing to take responsibility for what his mine safety agency is saying was a year where almost twice as many coal mine workers died on the job than the final year of the Obama administration.
On Tuesday morning, the rich asshole tweeted: “Since taking office, I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news — it was just reported that there were zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!”
Over the past 20 years, the average number of airliner accidents has shown a steady and persistent decline, thanks to “safety-driven efforts” by international aviation organizations and the aviation industry, according to the Aviation Safety Network, an independent research group. Nowhere in the analysis did the researchers mention efforts by the rich asshole administration as a reason for the airline safety improvement.
In the coal mining sector, data from the rich asshole administration’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the federal government’s mine safety agency, show coal mining deaths nearly doubled in 2017. But unlike the aviation statistics, the rich asshole isn’t taking any personal responsibility for the coal mining deaths. What’s more, he tapped a former coal executive with a record of safety violations to head MSHA.
The death of a coal miner in Fayette County, West Virginia, on December 29 brought the total number of U.S. coal mining fatalities in 2017 to 15, according to MSHA’s website. Eight of the 15 coal mining deaths last year occurred in West Virginia. The remaining deaths occurred in Kentucky, Montana, Wyoming, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. In the previous year, under President Barack Obama, the coal industry saw its lowest number of coal mining fatalities to date, with eight deaths recorded across the country.
A number of factors could have led to the rise in coal mining deaths. The nation saw an uptick in coal production last year. Estimated coal production for the first 11 months of 2017 totaled 719 million short tons, 54 million short tons, or 8 percent, more than production for the same period in 2016. For 2018, though, the U.S. Energy Information Administration is forecasting a drop in production due to a decrease in exports and slower domestic demand.
Employment in the coal mining sector reached about 51,700 in September, about 3,000 more than the year before. But since then, the sector’s job numbers have declined slightly each month.
Under the the rich asshole administration and a Republican-controlled Congress, mining companies could be taking more risks under the assumption that enforcement will be more lax. The House of Representatives wants to cut MSHA’s coal enforcement budget by $11 million, or almost 7 percent, after cutting the division’s budget by $7.9 million in FY 2017.
During his presidential campaign, the rich asshole reached out to coal miners, telling them that he would bring jobs back to their communities, despite widespread consensus that coal will continue to decline in the long run. In return, the miners have put a lot of faith in the rich asshole to fulfill his promise.
As part of his focus on coal, the rich asshole selected David Zatezalo, a former coal mining executive who has faced criticism over his company’s safety record, to serve as the head of MSHA. Zatezalo, who was confirmed by the Senate in November, retired in late 2014 as chairman of coal producer Rhino Resources after serving in various top posts at the company.
Zatezalo was head of Rhino Resources when the company was issued two “pattern of violations” letters from MSHA over safety and health issues at its mines in West Virginia and Kentucky. At the time, the Obama administration was seeking to improve enforcement of mine safety following the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster.
Last month, the the rich asshole administration also announced plans to examine whether it should weaken rules aimed at fighting black lung among coal miners, a move the administration says could create a “less burdensome” regulatory environment for coal companies.
Most coal miners understand the increased dangers they face when the government steps back from safety enforcement. But the miners also see limited employment alternatives, unless they choose to uproot their families and relocate.
“We have all witnessed friends and family fight in vain for compensation after suffering from permanent injuries and black lung,” Nick Mullins, an author and former coal miner, wrote in an op-ed for HuffPost last month. “Few people seem to realize the lack of choices miners face. They do not realize that many miners would jump at the chance to earn a decent living without risking their life and sacrificing their health.”
Acting ICE director wants to ignore Constitution, arrest local leaders for sanctuary city policies
Tom Homan might want to do some legal research.
some rich asshole’s handpicked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pick — the current acting director of the agency — said on Tuesday that he wants the Department of Justice to personally charge elected officials who do not comply with the administration’s immigration enforcement requests with federal crimes.
On Fox News, Tom Homan expressed outrage that a new law in the state of California prevents the federal government from using state and local government resources to carry out immigration enforcement. The new law also limits how much state and local officials have to comply with federal immigration detention requests prior to conviction — making California the first “sanctuary state.”
After promising to send more ICE resources to California, Homan urged the Department of Justice to sue those who do not comply with his agency’s requests and to hold officials criminally responsible.
“I think we charge some of these sanctuary citizens with violating federal law. I think if they knowingly harbor and shield a known illegal alien, a public safety threat, in a jail and won’t give us access,” he said, the DOJ should charge the cities and politicians. “They need to hold these politicians personally accountable,” he explained,
“We’ve got to take the sanctuary cities on, we’ve got to take them to court, and we’ve got to start charging some of these politicians with crimes.”
Watch:
Homan might want to do some legal research. The Supreme Court has expressly said in multiple court cases that the federal government cannot commandeer state or local governments to enforce federal laws.
The rich asshole administration has strongly criticized states’ rights when it comes to immigration enforcement, while defending them as a justification for states to discriminate against transgender kids.
‘There was only one white male in the room’: the rich asshole defender’s racist attack on Mueller’s grand jury
"That room isn’t a room where POTUS gets a fair shake."
A witness who recently testified before Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s federal grand jury claimed in an interview with the New York Post’s Page Six this week that the jurors looked like they were all from “a Black Lives Matter rally.”
“The grand jury room looks like a Bernie Sanders rally. Maybe they found these jurors in central casting, or at a Black Lives Matter rally in Berkeley,” the witness told Post columnist Richard Johnson, who previously served as a Miss Universe pageant judge during the rich asshole’s time at the helm. “…There was only one white male in the room, and he was a prosecutor.”
The witness claimed that, out of the 20 jurors on the panel, 11 were Black. Two, they said, were wearing “peace T-shirts.”
“That room isn’t a room where POTUS gets a fair shake,” they added, insinuating that more white jurors were needed in order for the process to be considered credible.
Although the Post interview did not name the witness or reveal their political leanings, the witness was clearly sympathetic toward the rich asshole and likely is connected to the White House or the rich asshole campaign.
The comments come amid continued efforts by supporters of the the rich asshole administration and Republicans to discredit the special counsel’s investigation, which indicted former the rich asshole campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates in October on several charges, including money laundering, operating as unregistered foreign agents for the Ukraine, and conspiracy against the United States. Former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos also pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in July and has been cooperating with Mueller’s team. In December, President the rich asshole’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn also pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian officials.
In November, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced a resolution on the House floor, demanding that Mueller recuse himself due to his previous involvement in the largely debunked Uranium One controversy.
“These deeply troubling events took place when Mr. Mueller was the Director of the FBI. As such, his impartiality is hopelessly compromised. He must be shut down immediately,” Gaetz wrote in a statement.
Last month, congressional Republicans also called for an inquiry into the Mueller investigation over what they claimed was implicit bias against the president. A series of texts uncovered by the special counsel’s team and sent to lawmakers on December 12 showed senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page — who were both assigned to the Mueller probe — discussing their mutual dislike of the rich asshole as well as expressing concerns about him becoming president. The texts were exchanged during the 2016 election, well before the start of Mueller’s investigation, and both Strzok and Page were immediately removed from the Russia probe after the text messages were first discovered.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation over his previous ties to the the rich asshole campaign in March, said the messages “raise[d] serious questions of public trust.”
“We will ensure that anyone who works on any investigation in the Department of Justice does so objectively and free from bias or favoritism,” Sessions said, addressing Republican calls for him to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Mueller probe.
the rich asshole himself has routinely dismissed the ongoing Russia investigation as a political witch hunt by Democrats, who he claims are upset about their loss in the 2016 presidential election, and has repeatedly denied any collusion between his campaign and Russian officials.
“The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s are now fighting back like never before,” he tweeted in October. “There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!”
Sarah Sanders tried to defend the rich asshole’s 7 straight days on the golf course. It did not go well.
"I think it's the press that has an issue with his time on the course."
On Christmas, President the rich asshole tweeted that he’d be heading “back to work” the next day. He then played golf at one of his golf courses in Florida on seven consecutive days.
During the first White House news briefing of the year on Tuesday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to defend the rich asshole’s golf habit. Though the rich asshole repeatedly criticized President Obama for golfing while he was in office and vowed that he was “not going to have time to go play golf” on the campaign trail, he’s golfed more than three times as much as Obama did to this point in his term.
“Can you tell me the single biggest thing the president has accomplished for the American people during his time on the golf course?” a reporter asked her.
Sanders replied: “I think it would certainly be developing deeper relationships with members of Congress.” (the rich asshole played on Monday with professional golfers Taylor and Fred Funk.)
The reporter pushed back, noting that “if so much has been accomplished during this time — there seems to be a transparency issue with his time on the golf course.”
“We don’t always get confirmation of what he’s doing there despite a lot of requests,” the reporter continued, going on to allude to the fact that team the rich asshole has used trucks and newly planted trees to block reporters from being able to see the rich asshole golf. (A video Taylor Funk posted to YouTube showing some of his New Year’s Day round with the rich asshole was quickly removed.)
“Why does it seem like the White House has some kind of issue about his time on the course?” the reporter asked.
Sanders didn’t directly answer the question, but instead suggested that the rich asshole accomplished so much during his first year in office that he deserves the downtime.
“I think it’s the press that has an issue with his time on the course,” she said. “The president is extremely proud of the accomplishments we had during 2017. I don’t think anyone can argue it is probably one of the most successful first years in office.”
WASHINGTON — President the rich asshole again raised the prospect of nuclear war with North Korea on Tuesday night, boasting that he commands a “much bigger” and “more powerful” arsenal of devastating weapons than the outlier government in Asia.
“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,’” some rich asshole wrote on Twitter. “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
some rich asshole’s combative response to a statement made in recent days by Mr. Kim raised the temperature in the brewing confrontation between the United States and North Korea even as American allies in South Korea were moving to open talks with Pyongyang. The contrast between some rich asshole’s language and the peace overture by South Korea highlighted the growing rift between two longtime allies.
The president’s saber-rattling tweet shifted the tenor of his response to the South Korean initiative just hours after a milder initial statement. some rich asshole, who has scorned the prospects of negotiating with North Korea, earlier in the day said the possible talks between the two governments on the peninsula resulted from sanctions imposed by the United States and the international community. “Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see!” he wrote Tuesday morning.
Why some rich asshole hardened his message later the same day was not immediately clear. But he has not hesitated to match North Korea’s incendiary language even while other American presidents resisted such back-and-forth taunting out of concern that it was unwise and unnecessarily rewarding the hermit nation.
Last summer, some rich asshole vowed to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea if it posed a threat to the United States. Last fall, he went before the United Nations General Assembly to warn that he would “totally destroy North Korea” if the United States were forced to defend itself or its allies.
Could the U.S. Shoot Down a Missile?
The U.S. has a system in place guarding it from intercontinental ballistic missiles. But it's by no means foolproof. Here's why.
By DREW JORDAN and ROBIN STEIN on November 29, 2017. . Watch in Times Video »
Earlier Tuesday, South Korea proposed holding talks with North Korea next week in Panmunjom, a village straddling the border between the two hostile countries. If North Korea agrees, it would be the first official dialogue between the Koreas in two years in what leaders in Seoul hope could dampen the talk of war that has consumed the past few months.
North Korea has made significant strides in the past year in developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that could eventually deliver nuclear warheads to targets as distant as the United States. More than two decades of efforts by the United States and other major powers have failed to thwart North Korea from building a nuclear arsenal in defiance of international law.
some rich asshole has emphasized a more militant line, arguing that his predecessors were too soft in responding to the threat. He has ratcheted up American sanctions and lobbied the United Nations to increase punitive measures, as well. While at various points in the past he has suggested that he would be open to negotiations, he has more often emphasized lately that he did not believe talks would lead to a fruitful outcome. On more than one occasion when his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, publicly broached the possibility, some rich asshole pulled him back, declaring, at one point, that talks would be a waste of time.
By any measure, some rich asshole is correct that the United States has a far more powerful nuclear arsenal than North Korea, but even so, Pyongyang could wreak widespread devastation. Even a conventional war could result in hundreds of thousands of casualties on the Korean Peninsula, according to national security analysts, which is one reason South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, is more eager for dialogue than some rich asshole is indicating he would be.
Many security experts have said there is no reasonable military option for restraining North Korea that would not involve unacceptable loss of life, but some rich asshole and his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, have argued otherwise.
Whether intended or not, the diverging messages between some rich asshole and Mr. Moon could create a good-cop, bad-cop scenario in which the South Koreans use the specter of a militant United States as leverage to win concessions from North Korea.
Mr. Kim has sent conflicting messages all by himself. In his New Year’s Day speech that provoked some rich asshole’s tweet, Mr. Kim both floated the idea of talks and boasted of his nuclear capacity. “It’s not a mere threat but a reality that I have a nuclear button on the desk in my office,” he said. “All of the mainland United States is within the range of our nuclear strike.”
Whether that was mere bluster or not was not clear. North Korea has tested an intercontinental ballistic missile with enough range to reach the East Coast of the United States, but it has not yet shown that it has developed the capacity to deliver a nuclear warhead that could survive the rigors of re-entry through the atmosphere or accurately hit targets at such a long range. But Mr. Kim has made clear that he has made progress in recent months, raising fears in Asia and the United States.
The Republicans’ Fake Investigations
A generation ago, Republicans sought to protect President Richard Nixon by urging the Senate Watergate committee to look at supposed wrongdoing by Democrats in previous elections. The committee chairman, Sam Ervin, a Democrat, said that would be “as foolish as the man who went bear hunting and stopped to chase rabbits.”
Today, amid a growing criminal inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, congressional Republicans are again chasing rabbits. We know because we’re their favorite quarry.
In the year since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier — the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about some rich asshole’s ties to Russia — the president has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter. His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.
We are happy to correct the record. In fact, we already have.
Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm, Fusion GPS. In those sessions, we toppled the far right’s conspiracy theories and explained how The Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton campaign — the Republican and Democratic funders of our the rich asshole research — separately came to hire us in the first place.
We walked investigators through our yearlong effort to decipher some rich asshole’s complex business past, of which the Steele dossier is but one chapter. And we handed over our relevant bank records — while drawing the line at a fishing expedition for the records of companies we work for that have nothing to do with the rich asshole case.
Republicans have refused to release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony, even as they selectively leak details to media outlets on the far right. It’s time to share what our company told investigators.
We don’t believe the Steele dossier was the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the rich asshole camp.
The intelligence committees have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the rich asshole camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign. Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.
We suggested investigators look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank and others that were funding some rich asshole’s businesses. Congress appears uninterested in that tip: Reportedly, ours are the only bank records the House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed.
We told Congress that from Manhattan to Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and from Toronto to Panama, we found widespread evidence that some rich asshole and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians in arrangements that often raised questions about money laundering. Likewise, those deals don’t seem to interest Congress.
We explained how, from our past journalistic work in Europe, we were deeply familiar with the political operative Paul Manafort’s coziness with Moscow and his financial ties to Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.
Finally, we debunked the biggest canard being pushed by the president’s men — the notion that we somehow knew of the June 9, 2016, meeting in the rich asshole Tower between some Russians and the the rich asshole brain trust. We first learned of that meeting from news reports last year — and the committees know it. They also know that these Russians were unaware of the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s work for us and were not sources for his reports.
Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert. But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did some rich asshole repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?
What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect some rich asshole president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I.
We did not discuss that decision with our clients, or anyone else. Instead, we deferred to Mr. Steele, a trusted friend and intelligence professional with a long history of working with law enforcement. We did not speak to the F.B.I. and haven’t since.
After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary. We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power. We did not, however, share the dossier with BuzzFeed, which to our dismay published it last January.
We’re extremely proud of our work to highlight some rich asshole’s Russia ties. To have done so is our right under the First Amendment.
It is time to stop chasing rabbits. The public still has much to learn about a man with the most troubling business past of any United States president. Congress should release transcripts of our firm’s testimony, so that the American people can learn the truth about our work and most important, what happened to our democracy.
the rich asshole zeroes in on Abedin in latest Clinton attack
BY MORGAN CHALFANT AND AMIE PARNES - 01/02/18 06:01 PM EST
President the rich asshole escalated his public attacks on Hillary Clinton and her close aide Huma Abedin on Tuesday, tweeting that Abedin didn’t follow security protocols and put “classified passwords” in the hands of foreign agents.
the rich asshole appeared to be referencing a story in The Daily Caller reporting that Abedin had forwarded State Department passwords to her personal Yahoo email account and that was likely compromised in subsequent breaches reported by the email provider.
Taking to Twitter on Tuesday morning, the rich asshole wrote: “Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid (sic) Huma Abedin has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others.”
It's a fight the rich asshole wants to have. Republicans have been eager to relitigate the controversy as part of an effort to distract from and undermine the special counsel investigation into whether the rich asshole’s campaign colluded with Russia.
The Daily Caller report hinges on government emails made public as a result of litigation the conservative group Judicial Watch brought against the State Department in 2015.
The headline highlights an Aug. 2009 email released by State in September that appears to show Abedin, who served as vice chair on Clinton’s presidential campaign, forwarding passwords to her government laptop to her personal Yahoo account.
To be sure, the FBI said in documents related to the Clinton email probe that Abedin “routinely” forwarded emails from her official account to her personal one because it was easier to print.
Some of the emails cited by The Daily Caller contain information that was later determined to be classified, though none contain classified markings.
The article lays the groundwork for accusations that Abedin offered up sensitive information to hackers by detailing successive breaches at Yahoo, the first of which is now known to have impacted all 3 billion accounts in 2013.
A second, unrelated breach in 2014 exposed account information on 500 million users. The Justice Department has charged two Russian intelligence agents in connection with the case.
Cybersecurity experts cautioned that there is no evidence Abedin’s account was targeted by hackers.
“The classified information and other sensitive data was potentially exposed, but not definitely exposed based on what is known publicly,” said Ryan Kalember, a top executive at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.
Still, her employment status would have made Abedin a top mark for a Russian spying operation. According to the criminal indictment, the hackers sought access to accounts of “Russian and U.S. government officials” on behalf of the FSB, Moscow’s federal security service.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say her account was hacked,” said Megan Stifel, a cybersecurity expert at the Atlantic Council. “The State Department is obviously a very high target.”
Many describe the use of personal email for official business as a practice that, while frowned upon, has permeated the federal government for years. Jared Kushner, the rich asshole’s son-in-law, and other top officials were found to have used private email for White House business earlier this year, which prompted an internal review.
According to State emails, Abedin’s computer would have required a FOB-generated password to access it, significantly reducing the likelihood a hacker could actually infiltrate her virtual desktop. However, any duplicate use of her passwords could have offered up other accounts to hackers.
Sources close to Hillary Clinton and Abedin say there's no official plan or strategy on how to deal with Abedin and the Yahoo controversy.
One source close to both women said Abedin is consulting a close group of confidants and her lawyers. And Clinton “really has nothing to do with this,” the source said.
“I'm sure she doesn't want to involve herself in any of it,” the source said. “I don’t see any scenario where HRC is hands-on with this stuff.”
Karen Dunn, Abedin's lawyer, referred inquiries to Nick Merrill, Clinton’s spokesman. Merrill did not respond to a request for comment.
Since the rich asshole’s surprising 2016 win, he has frequently turned his attention to his former rival. In the last two months, he has mentioned her more than two dozen times on Twitter and mentions her during campaign-style rallies around the country. His supporters have frequently met the mentions with chants of "lock her up!"
Meanwhile, the revelations play into the hands of Republicans clamoring for the Justice Department to appoint a new special counsel to investigate Clinton-related matters, currently under review by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
They also give ammunition to those in the GOP looking to attack the FBI in an apparent effort to cast doubt on the Russia probe.
Some longtime Clinton advisers accused the rich asshole of changing the subject.
“To be kept in mind is the ‘distract and deflect’ strategy at work on the part of the White House and its allies,” one adviser said. “The more focus is on allegations regarding Russia, the greater the effort to toss out allegations about the Clinton campaign and people.”
Other longtime Clinton advisers pushed back on the rich asshole after his Tweet on Tuesday.
the rich asshole: I have a 'much bigger' button than Kim Jong Un
President the rich asshole on Tuesday said that the nuclear launch button on his desk is "much bigger" and "more powerful" than that of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – and that his button actually "works."
"North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the 'Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,'" the rich asshole tweeted. "Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"
the rich asshole's comments came after Kim said in a New Year's Day speech that he had a nuclear launch button at his desk, and that the international community would have to accept North Korea's status as a nuclear-armed nation as a "reality."
In that address, Kim also said he was willing to send a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February and engage in talks with Seoul about easing military tensions between the two countries.
South Korea responded to Kim’s remarks on Tuesday, calling for a dialogue between Seoul and Pyongyang aimed at de-escalating tensions ahead of the Winter Games.
the rich asshole’s latest tweet, however, appeared to challenge Kim’s claim that North Korea has become a functional nuclear power, while delivering a warning that he stood ready to retaliate against a possible nuclear launch by Pyongyang.
The rich asshole administration has said little about the possibility of talks between North and South Korea, and the rich asshole was unclear in a Tuesday morning tweet about whether the U.S. welcomed such a dialogue.
"Sanctions and 'other' pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea," the rich asshole tweeted. "Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see!"
- This story was updated at 8:24 P.M. EST.
the rich asshole doesn’t know what to make of Kim Jong Un’s speech
Sofia Lotto Persio
Posted with permission from Newsweek
President Donald Trump could not decide how to react to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who showed openness to talks with South Korea in his New Year’s speech, when commenting on the news on Tuesday.
In a series of morning tweets that touched on several topics, including ongoing anti-government protests in Iran, Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin, and the New York Times’ new publisher, Trump also discussed developments on the Korean peninsula.
“Sanctions and ‘other’ pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see!” he wrote.
South Korea welcomed Kim’s address and invited North Korea to hold talks to discuss cooperation at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games on January 9, at the border village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone separating the two countries. China was one of the first countries to express support for the talks which, according to the South Korean unification minister, had been discussed with the U.S.
Trump has often used the "We'll see" approach to discuss North Korea—as well as other matters such as firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions—but this time he may have decided to learn from the past and avoid jumping to conclusions about Kim’s behaviour.
In August, Trump tweeted the North Korean leader had made a “wise” and “well-reasoned decision” to hold off a missile strike on the U.S. territory of Guam for which plans were made and advertized to the world—a comment that was hard to match with Kim’s continuous disregard for the international community’s demands to stop test-firing missiles and nuclear weapons.
Kim delivered his New Year’s speech in an uncharacteristic light-gray suit which a South Korean analysis by the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification quoted in Reuters interpreted as an attempt to project a softer image.
The North Korean leader however also used the speech to warn the U.S. that he too, like Trump, has a nuclear button at hand. “The whole of its mainland is within the range of our nuclear strike and the nuclear button is on my office desk all the time," Kim said in the same speech in which he offered to “help” the South Korean “compatriots” make the Olympic Games hosted in February in Pyeongchang, 50 miles south of the inter-Korean border, a success.
Some analysts see Kim’s rhetoric as an attempt to divide the two allies. "A major part of the Kim family playbook is to exploit and to widen the divergences in the interests, in the first instance between the U.S. and South Korea, but more broadly among the five major neighbours," Daniel Russel, former U.S. diplomat for East Asia currently senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Reuters.
Kim has yet to show he’d follow through with actions. As South Korean media reported on Tuesday, North Korea has not even answered the phone Seoul has called twice daily since February 2016.
In a series of morning tweets that touched on several topics, including ongoing anti-government protests in Iran, Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin, and the New York Times’ new publisher, Trump also discussed developments on the Korean peninsula.
“Sanctions and ‘other’ pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see!” he wrote.
Sanctions and “other” pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see!
South Korea welcomed Kim’s address and invited North Korea to hold talks to discuss cooperation at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games on January 9, at the border village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone separating the two countries. China was one of the first countries to express support for the talks which, according to the South Korean unification minister, had been discussed with the U.S.
Trump has often used the "We'll see" approach to discuss North Korea—as well as other matters such as firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions—but this time he may have decided to learn from the past and avoid jumping to conclusions about Kim’s behaviour.
In August, Trump tweeted the North Korean leader had made a “wise” and “well-reasoned decision” to hold off a missile strike on the U.S. territory of Guam for which plans were made and advertized to the world—a comment that was hard to match with Kim’s continuous disregard for the international community’s demands to stop test-firing missiles and nuclear weapons.
Kim delivered his New Year’s speech in an uncharacteristic light-gray suit which a South Korean analysis by the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification quoted in Reuters interpreted as an attempt to project a softer image.
The North Korean leader however also used the speech to warn the U.S. that he too, like Trump, has a nuclear button at hand. “The whole of its mainland is within the range of our nuclear strike and the nuclear button is on my office desk all the time," Kim said in the same speech in which he offered to “help” the South Korean “compatriots” make the Olympic Games hosted in February in Pyeongchang, 50 miles south of the inter-Korean border, a success.
Some analysts see Kim’s rhetoric as an attempt to divide the two allies. "A major part of the Kim family playbook is to exploit and to widen the divergences in the interests, in the first instance between the U.S. and South Korea, but more broadly among the five major neighbours," Daniel Russel, former U.S. diplomat for East Asia currently senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Reuters.
Kim has yet to show he’d follow through with actions. As South Korean media reported on Tuesday, North Korea has not even answered the phone Seoul has called twice daily since February 2016.
Aspen businesswoman out $10,000 after Pence vacation kills her holiday business
Vice President Mike Pence addresses the crowd at Senator Joni Ernst's 3rd annual charity motorcycle ride to benefit military veterans at the Central Iowa Expo center in Boone Iowa, 3 June, 2017. (Shutterstock)
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An Aspen businesswoman who conducts balloon rides in the resort town claims she lost $10,000 in business because Vice President Mike Pence spent his Christmas vacation there.
According to the Denver Post, Pam and Bruce Wood, who own Above It All Balloon Co. in Snowmass Village, said flight restrictions imposed by the Secret Service forced them to ground their balloons and cancel the reservations of visitors on holiday vacations which led to a huge financial loss.
“I understand the security aspect,” Pam Wood explained, adding, “but let the little wheels on the track make a living so the rest can roll.”
According to the Woods, clients visiting from out of state were told their high-flying adventures of the snowy landscape had to be canceled due to the vice president’s visit, and deposits had to be refunded.
Pence’s impact on the community was not limited to the balloon rides.
During his holiday vacation his neighbors taunted him with a rainbow flag banner stating: “Make America gay again.”
People are reporting the rich asshole for violating Twitter’s terms of service by threatening nuclear war
some rich asshole on Phone (Twitter)
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some rich asshole on Tuesday stoked fears of escalating tensions between the United States and North Korea, casually tweeting that his “Nuclear Button” is bigger than Kim Jung-un’s.
The tweet sparked outrage on Twitter, with users pointing out that bragging about the size of your nuclear arsenal isn’t really the most thoughtful approach to foreign policy. Enterprising users even took their concerns directly to Twitter support, reporting the rich asshole’s post for violating the social media site’s terms of service.
Twitter has previously declined to suspend the rich asshole’s account, calling the president’s incendiary rhetoric “newsworthy.”
“If an account were to publicly attack or harass a private citizen, we would take action,” CEO Jack Dorsey told the New York Times in November. “We do have a clause in our terms of service that we unfortunately did not have publicly stated…around newsworthiness and public interest.”
But that hasn’t stopped some online vigilantes from pressing the company to hold the rich asshole responsible for his words and actions.
Does threatening a nation with nuclear war violate Twitter Terms of Service? twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
.@twitter and .@TwitterSupport
Enabling a mentally unstable man to provoke a nuclear war via your platform would, umm, be bad for your user numbers. twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
I reported Trump's dangerous tweet. I hope thousands of people report it. More than that, I hope @TwitterSupport and @Twitterdelete that dangerous tweet immediately. This is serious.
I just reported this #tweet to @Twitter for inciting violence by threatening harm to others. You should too. #TuesdayThoughtsre: #TrumpsTwitter @realDonaldTrump #Trumptwitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
Ha! This tweet came out a minute before he announced the Fake News awards twitter.com/jdawsey1/statu…
I encourage you to report President Trump's nuclear button tweet to @Twitter as a threat of violence -- which I understand to be against Twitter rules of conduct.
PLEASE report this tweet as harmful/abusive, and violates Twitter rules! #Trump #KimJongUn #NuclearThreat#DeleteTrumpFromTwitter twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
If you love our country, help me put this lunacy in check. Tell @realDonaldTrump this is not normal behavior. Any @HouseGOPmembers want to make sure Congress has some say before he pushes that button? twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!
Serious question: How many people need to report Trump's tweets before @Twitter intervenes?
North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!
North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!
I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!
great.
ReplyDeleteDentist in Vasant Vihar