BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 01/07/18 02:25 PM EST
the rich asshole administration officials on Sunday are playing defense for their boss against shocking allegations reported in a new book detailing the first year of the rich asshole’s presidency.
Multiple individuals close to President the rich asshole hit the Sunday show circuit, including two Cabinet officials, but White House policy adviser Stephen Miller became the talk of the morning after Jake Tapper abruptly cut off a contentious interview with the rich asshole aide during CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Tapper called Miller "obsequious" for his defense, and the rich asshole aides also took criticism from past administration officials for their approach to fighting back against the book's claims.
Michael Wolff’s book, titled “Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House,” has roiled Washington, D.C., since excerpts began leaking last week ahead of its Friday release.
The account of the rich asshole’s first year in office includes reporting that alleges the rich asshole did not actually think he would win the 2016 election. It also contains quotes from former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon calling some rich asshole Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the presidential campaign “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”
The White House has since blasted the book as full of lies and denounced Bannon, with the president issuing a damning statement of his former top aide that said Bannon “lost his mind.”
Miller slammed the book during his CNN interview, calling it a “grotesque work of fiction” and a “pile of trash” written by a “garbage author.”
But the interview took a turn when Miller began to spar with Tapper over CNN’s coverage of the rich asshole White House. After several minutes, Tapper cut off the interview, telling Miller he was not answering his questions.
“I get it. There’s one viewer that you care about right now and you're being obsequious and you’re being a factotum in order to please him, OK,” Tapper told Miller, appearing to refer to the president.
“And I think I’ve wasted enough of my viewers’ time. Thank you, Stephen,” the host added as he ended the interview.
the rich asshole in a tweet following the show praised Miller for his debate with Tapper, calling the CNN host a “flunky.”
“Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the rich asshole Administration,” the rich asshole wrote on Twitter about an hour after the interview aired. “Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!”
Other administration officials also pushed back against the reporting in the book, which has been criticized by both politicians and members of the D.C. press corps. The book and its author have made claims about the president ranging from the allegation he doesn't read to his behavior being childlike.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley disputed another claim made by the book's author, who said in an interview that “100 percent of the people around" the president question "his intelligence and fitness for office."
“These people love their country and respect our president. I've never seen or heard the type of toxic language that they're talking about,” Haley told ABC’s “This Week.”
“Now, I'm not there seven days a week, but I'm there once a week, and I'm there for a day with White House meetings and everything, no one questions the stability of the president,” she added.
"This president reads material that we provide to him. He listens closely to his daily briefing," Pompeo said during an interview on "Fox News Sunday."
"This president is an avid consumer of the work product that our team at the CIA produces and we do our best to convey that to him every day," he continued.
Wolff’s book included a quote attributed to White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, in which the administration aide claims the rich asshole will not read policy papers and memos.
the rich asshole, for his part, has dismissed Wolff as a “loser” who “made up stories” to write the book.
“Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book,” the rich asshole said last week.
“He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!”
Corey Lewandowski, who formerly served as the rich asshole’s campaign manager, echoed the president’s line, accusing Wolff of being a liar.
“The guy is a liar, is what it comes down to, and I don’t think anybody who looks at what’s in this book can take it honestly," Lewandowski said on "Fox News Sunday."
“This is a book of fiction. Not only is it not accurate, there are so many misrepresentations in this book that it shouldn’t be taken seriously," he added.
While some reporting in the book has been called into question, demand for the inside account of the rich asshole White House has been high and the president’s lawyers reportedly tried to stop the book’s publication.
The administration’s blistering response to the book also garnered criticism on Sunday. Former Obama adviser David Axelrod called the rich asshole White House’s strategy “disastrous,” adding that it “only raises more questions.”
“So this book is — however accurate some of the reporting is, it builds on a year's worth of experience with some rich asshole and a year's worth of reporting by a broad array of news organizations that make you think, yes, maybe there is something here,” Axelrod told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, also questioned the administration’s handling of the book.
“But the worst thing that you can do is flatter the book with attention and, even worse than that, threaten to sue the author,” McKinnon told CNN. “I guarantee, if you want to raise sales for a book, threaten to sue the author.”
The book skyrocketed to No. 1 on Amazon's best-seller list ahead of its release on Friday, and physical copies sold out in multiple bookstores.
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 01/07/18 10:26 PM EST
The New York Daily News is mocking former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon on its Monday cover for his about-face on his comments about some rich asshole Jr.
“Sloppy Steve Cucks Himself,” The Daily News’ headline reads.
Is it too late now to say sorry?
PLUS: The #GoldenGlobes goes black (nydn.us/2m964bo)
An early look at Monday's front page: nydn.us/2m9WiWy
Bannon issued a statement Sunday praising the rich asshole Jr. as a “patriot” and a “good man” in response to intense backlash for his original comments labeling the president’s son “unpatriotic.”
“I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president’s historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency,” Bannon said in a statement.
In excerpts released last week from the book “Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House,” Bannon labeled a 2016 meeting between the rich asshole Jr. and a group of Russians “treasonous.”
“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon is quoted as saying, referencing the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
President the rich asshole has responded harshly to his former chief strategist, saying Bannon “lost his mind” when he left his White House job in August.
the rich asshole recently doubled down on his criticism of Bannon, labeling him “Sloppy Steve” on Twitter.
the rich asshole's worst present didn't even come with a gift receipt
By VICE News Jan 7, 2018
On his last week of vacation until the next one, President the rich asshole gave gifts to the usual suspects: the conspiracy theorists, the Iranians, the members of Mar-a-Lago, the people eagerly awaiting justice for Clinton’s email scandal, and Jeff Sessions. What he didn't anticipate, however, was that someone had a gift for him: Michael Wolff, who published a new book this week chock-full of humiliating anecdotes about the rich asshole's first year in office.
There's no time like the present, so let's recap the rich asshole's week of gifts:
A gift for the East Coast Day 343 — December 29
The president doesn’t seem to know the difference between climate and weather. He spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s golfing in Florida after tweeting that the East Coast could use “a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against.”
A gift for Iran Day 344 — December 30
the rich asshole gave everyone a belated Christmas gift: an explanation of why he tweets so much. It’s not because he likes it — it’s just the only way he can “fight a VERY dishonest and unfair “press,” now often referred to as Fake News Media,” the president tweeted.
The president also continued his tweets about the days of protests in Iran over concerns about government’s corruption and rising costs of necessities like bread and gas. The death toll, which included both demonstrators and police, would soon rise above 20.
“Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching!” Trump tweeted, along with a video of himself speaking on the matter.
The U.S.’ harsh rhetoric has driven a wedge between the nation and European powers, like the U.K., France, and Germany, which support Iranians’ right to protest but in a more measured tone.
A gift for the haters Day 345 — December 31
Trump rang in the new year the same way he has for a decade: at Mar-a-Lago. He celebrated the end of 2017 with a tastefully edited, lavish propaganda video.
He also extended warm wishes and a “Happy and Healthy New Year” to all of his “friends, supporters, enemies, haters, and even the very dishonest Fake News Media.”
Before his fancy party, Trump lashed out at Iran’s leaders in a few tweets after they imposed even tighter restrictions on its already heavily censored internet in an attempt to disrupt the on protests.
“Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate,” he tweeted. “Not good!”
A gift for Pakistan Day 346 — January 1
Trump headed back to D.C., but he fit in some time to expand upon his Iran criticisms. This time, Trump criticized the Obama-brokered Iran nuclear deal. “TIME FOR CHANGE!” the president tweeted.
Trump also took aim at past administrations’ relationship with Pakistan. He asserted that the U.S. has given the country too much aid money while it only gives “lies and deceit” in return.
“They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help,” Trump tweeted. “No more!”
A big button gift Day 347 — January 2
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders kicked off her year with the press having to insist that no, the president doesn’t actually believe the Department of Justice is part of a “deep state” conspiracy.
“Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aide, 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,” the president had tweeted.
Days earlier, the DOJ released a trove of emails from Abedin as part of a high-profile Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. While many of the emails — which were found on her husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop — were marked classified and redacted, Abedin had forwarded government passwords to her Yahoo email, according to the Daily Caller’s analysis.
Still, the emails revealed nothing to contradict the FBI’s assessment that Clinton’s use of a private email server wasn’t criminal.
But Trump was only warming up. In another tweet a minute later, he threatened North Korea with nuclear annihilation by bragging about the size of his “button,” which doesn’t even exist. Apparently, his holiday of golfing wasn’t as relaxing as everyone would have hoped.
“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!” Trump tweeted, just hours into an unexpected diplomatic thaw between North and South Korea for the new year.
National security experts and Democrats widely condemned the tweet, while Republicans wouldn't really talk about it. The president, however, capped off the day on a high note: He promised his followers, once again, that he “will build the desperately needed WALL!” in a final tweet.
A gift for the public Day 348 — January 3
Leaked excerpts of journalist Michael Wolff’s new gossipy tell-all, “Fire and Fury,” from inside the White House kicked off an epic round of political backstabbing.
To start, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon called the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Russian operatives and Trump campaign officials, including Don Jr., “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”
Bannon also offered his candid predictions on where the Russia investigation will lead. “They’re going to crack Don Jr. like an egg on national TV,” Bannon told Wolff.
Trump wasted no time issuing an official response: that Bannon is nuts.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” Trump said. “Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.”
Other shocking facts that have trickled out from the book describe a White House gripped by chaos, where much of staff believes the president shouldn’t, in fact, be president. According to various excerpts from “Fire and Fury”:
- As soon as Trump realized he would win the election, he looked like he “had seen a ghost,” Donald Trump Jr. told a friend. And Melania started crying.
- Longtime Trump staffer Sam Nunberg called the president a “fucking fool” when trying to explain their new boss to West Wingers.
- Thomas Barrack Jr., a billionaire and close friend of the president, said of Trump: “He’s not only crazy, he’s stupid.”
- Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the president a “moron” (which was already reported) and also that Trump had “lost his mind.”
- Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn called the president “dumb as shit.”
- H.R. McMaster said Trump was “a hopeless idiot.”
Despite the sting of being called names, Trump found the wherewithal to pass a new policy — or rather, get rid of one. While he still believes rampant voter fraud cost him the Electoral College, he dismantled the commission he’d set up last spring, as it was plagued by a lack of evidence.
A gift for Jeff Sessions Day 349 — January 4
In two hours of broadcasting Breitbart’s new radio news show, Bannon had only one thing to say about Trump: that he’s a “great man.” “You know I support him day in and day out,” Bannon continued, responding to a listener question.
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers were drafting two cease-and-desist letters within 12 hours — one to Bannon for breaking his nondisclosure agreement and the other to the book’s publisher, Henry Holt and Co., and Wolff. The publisher responded by moving up the sale date as soon as humanly possible, to the next day at 9 a.m.
“I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!” Trump tweeted.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions was also busy trying to stop the sale of something: legal weed. He kicked off his war on marijuana by allowing U.S. attorneys to prosecute marijuana cases at their own discretion, against a previous Obama-era policy that said federal resources could only be used to target serious violations of law.
While the Trump administration has vehemently tried to protect the young and innocent from the “dangers” of pot, officials don’t seem to care too much about protecting waters. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced that the administration planned to allow oil companies to drill in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific oceans, including areas that have been protected from drilling for decades.
Top White House aide had to be escorted off CNN set after heated interview with Jake Tapper
A top White House aide was escorted off a CNN set Sunday when he refused to leave after a heated interview with host Jake Tapper.
White House policy adviser Stephen Miller was asked "politely" to leave the “State of the Union” set several times but ignored the requests, a CNN official told the Washington Examiner. Security then escorted him out.
Miller slammed CNN’s coverage of the rich asshole and the release of Michael Wolff’s tell-all book, Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House, which shines an unflattering light on the president.
When Miller referred to the rich asshole as a “political genius,” Tapper said there was only “one viewer you care about right now.”
Tapper then cut the interview short, saying he had “wasted enough” of his viewers’ time.
After the interview the rich asshole commended Miller for his performance.
“Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the rich asshole Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!” the president tweeted.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Bannon supporters wonder whether his populist wing of the Republican Party has already run out of time to maintain influence in this year’s midterm elections.
By ANNIE KARNI
01/07/2018 08:01 PM EST
Steve Bannon, like his one-time brother-in-arms President some rich asshole, is known as someone whose instinct is to double down, not kiss up.
That made his belated attempt on Sunday to de-escalate mounting tension with the commander-in-chief — who has been publicly and privately raging about his former chief strategist all week — notable to many of his allies, one of whom called it a “huge step for Steve, one of the most stubborn people on Earth.”
But inside the White House, Bannon's 297-word statement of contrition about comments he made in Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House" was seen as too little, too late for an operative unaware of the self-inflicted damage his hubris could cause.
It did nothing to quell the rich asshole’s rage at his former chief strategist or the anger of Bannon’s former West Wing colleagues, according to multiple administration officials, who said the vibe in the president’s circle was that people were unmoved by the statement. Asked whether there is anything Bannon can do at this point to get back in the president's good graces, one White House official said curtly, "Unlikely."
That posture has left Bannon supporters wondering whether the three-shirt-wearing bomb-thrower can switch the layers out for a hair shirt long enough to stop the rich asshole from siding permanently with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — or whether Bannon’s populist wing of the Republican Party has already run out of time to maintain influence in this year’s midterm elections.
“The problem for Steve is that we were already into January 2018, and he doesn't really have a system, he doesn't have a fund, he doesn't have a political team,” said Matthew Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, whose wife works in the White House communications department. “Now it's going to take extra time to make things up, if he's able to, and repair the trust he had with the president. The clock is no longer on his side.”
A Republican pollster and operative with close ties to the White House marveled at the terrible timing of Bannon’s feud with the rich asshole. “It happens after taxes, before the Camp David meeting this weekend,” the operative said, noting that McConnell and Ryan were both spending quality time with the rich asshole during the peak of his Bannon frustration, shortly after celebrating their first big legislative victory. “He couldn’t have picked a worse day on the calendar for this to happen. The swamp won.”
Bannon’s influence, the operative predicted, will be zilch in the coming 2018 midterms, with no recruitment plan or financial backing to offer establishment-challenging outsider candidates. The operative, who has polled Bannon’s name ID in states like Alabama, said his image was 40 percent positive, 20 percent negative among Republican primary voters before the feud. “Now he’s going to be 20 to 40 — or worse,” the operative predicted.
Meanwhile, the “establishment” wing of the party was cheering the downfall of the anti-McConnell avatar. “This is a bigger win for the president, for whom Bannon is now less able to create problems and now unlikely to give the president continued bad advice in late night phone calls,” Karl Rove, the former chief strategist for President George W. Bush, said in an email on Sunday night. “Bannon shredded his biggest claim, that he was the president’s leader on the outside, the keeper of the flame who had discarded the ‘influence’ of being a mere staffer for the ‘power’ of being the leader of the nationalist populist movement.”
In issuing the statement that Bannon crafted himself — in which he expressed “regret” about his five-day delay in reacting to what he called “inaccurate reporting” regarding some rich asshole Jr. and professed undying fealty to the president and his agenda — Bannon was hoping to ratchet down what has become an untenable position for him.
He stalled in speaking out, friends said, in part because he didn’t remember making the comments attributed to him in the Wolff tome — Bannon reportedly called a June 2016 meeting at the rich asshole Tower with a Russian lawyer “treasonous” and speculated that special counsel Robert Mueller would “crack Don Jr. like an egg” — but also because the president beat him to the punch by criticizing him on Twitter.
But over the past week, mulling his options, Bannon has been most concerned with clarifying his comments about the rich asshole Jr. and uncharacteristically “de-escalating the tension,” an ally said.
He was less concerned with making peace with his White House nemeses Jared Kushner and Ivanka the rich asshole — and doesn't mention either of them in his statement.
His Sunday statement said his comments to Wolff were meant to be critical of one-time campaign chief Paul Manafort, who also attended the rich asshole Tower meeting, not the president’s son.
Meanwhile, the rich asshole has done just the opposite of de-escalating, finally letting loose on an over-empowered aide that many have been urging him to dump on publicly for months. Over the past week, he derided his ex-strategist as “Sloppy Steve” on Twitter and in a press conference conducted from Camp David. There, a jeans-clad McConnell stood with the rich asshole like the victor in a fight for the soul of the Republican Party.
Bannon was also dropped by his benefactor, Rebekah Mercer, and his future at the helm of his website, Breitbart News, remains a question mark, even as he grinds onto the next immigration policy fight.
“It would have been great if that apology had been at the beginning of the week,” added Schlapp. “Waiting to the end was a big setback.”
One Bannon ally said he was surprised to see the statement at all, figuring you either speak publicly immediately or don’t speak out at all.
While Bannon may be at a low point and the morale at Breitbart might be sinking, there was a silver lining, according to the close ally. “You’ll see a more serious Bannon come out of this,” the ally said.
And there were still some voices willing to speak up for him, despite his fall from grace.
“If there is anyone, like Bannon, who is a strong supporter of Israel and a strong fighter against anti-Semitism and that person ends up having less influence on the administration,” said Mort Klein, the president of the Sheldon Adelson-funded Zionist Organization of America, “that is something that would sadden me."
Andrew Restuccia contributed reporting.
the rich asshole takes new tack to weaken ObamaCare
BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL - 01/07/18 05:04 PM EST
The rich asshole administration is turning to regulations as their last, best hope of chipping away at ObamaCare in 2018, with congressional Republicans unlikely to pass full repeal.
A proposed rule released Thursday targeting the health law is likely the first step in a new effort to undermine the law. And advocates for ObamaCare worry that another forthcoming rule could cause even more damage.
The administration on Thursday eased rules on small businesses that band together to buy health insurance through what are known as association health plans (AHPs).
The proposal retains ObamaCare protections for people with pre-existing conditions and prohibits lifetime limits on benefits.
But it would allow associations to purchase cheaper health insurance that won’t cover the ten “essential health benefits,” which include mental health, substance abuse treatment, maternity care and prescription drugs.
A second proposed rule, yet to be unveiled, could have an even greater impact, with much broader exemptions from ObamaCare.
That rule is expected to lift the Obama administration's restrictions on skimpy, short-term health insurance plans. The changes would allow the plans to last for 12 months and be renewed.
Experts expect the short-term plans to also be exempt from all of ObamaCare’s protections, meaning insurers would be able to charge higher premiums to people with pre-existing conditions.
The proposal on association plans is “aimed at putting AHPs on same footing as large employer plans. But large employer plans are still subject to various [ObamaCare] requirements,” said Edward Leeds, an attorney at Ballard Spahr in Philadelphia.
The expected rule on short-term plans “would really go beyond that,” he added.
Together, the proposed rules have advocates for the health law worried about massive instability in the law’s insurance marketplace.
Experts and advocates warn the rules would lead to skyrocketing premiums and a major fragmentation of the insurance markets.
“Both of these rules would have the effect of seriously undercutting the viability of ObamaCare’s consumer protections by driving up premiums and weakening the risk pools,” said Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
President the rich asshole has made no secret of his desire to undo as much of ObamaCare as possible. He’s said the law is failing, and on numerous occasions said the inevitable collapse of the insurance markets would bring Democrats to the negotiating table to work on a replacement.
When he signed an executive order loosening ObamaCare protections in October, the rich asshole said he was "starting that process" to repeal the law.
It will be the "first steps to providing millions of Americans with ObamaCare relief," he said of the order.
Administration officials said the order was just the beginning of their efforts to target ObamaCare, with Congress seemingly unable to repeal the law.
Republicans failed to repeal ObamaCare after a months-long struggle in 2017, and the obstacles now appear greater. The election of Sen. Doug Jones, a Democrat from Alabama, cut the GOP majority to a single seat, 51-49.
GOP lawmakers did get one win — repealing ObamaCare's individual mandate in the rich asshole tax-reform package.
It’s not yet clear what the mandate repeal will mean, but most expect it will also make premiums in the ObamaCare marketplace rise.
The individual mandate likely pushed some healthy individuals to buy insurance on the exchange. Without that financial penalty, they may not return.
“The repeal of the mandate and expansion of association health plans and the rise of short-term plans will certainly send premiums rising for middle-class people with pre-existing conditions, whose only option is the [ObamaCare]-regulated market,” said Larry Levitt, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The new regulations can’t go as far as the policies in the various repeal bills, but Park said they can still do a lot of damage to the law.
“They’re all steps to undermine the market,” Park said.
Levitt said the administration appears to want to use regulations to create a parallel insurance market that “largely doesn’t have to follow the rules” of ObamaCare.
The administration has high hopes for their new effort.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, the rich asshole said the ObamaCare regulations, combined with the repeal of the mandate, could accomplish his goal of bringing Democrats and Republicans together for a bipartisan compromise on a replacement bill.
“I believe that because of the individual mandate and the associations, the Democrats will and certainly should come to me and see if they can do a really great health-care plan for the remaining people,” the rich asshole said.
“This is the administration’s strategy, make it look like market reforms and marketplaces aren’t successful," said Park.
"And that’s used as justification for further changes."
‘Rest in peace, your career’: Internet buries ‘obsequious toady’ Bannon after he begs the rich asshole for forgiveness
Steve Bannon (Photo: Screen capture)
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Former White House adviser Steve Bannon will not likely not be included in any future editions of Profiles in Courage after issuing a groveling apology to President some rich asshole on Sunday morning.
Only a few hours after former Bannon protege Stephen Miller tore into Bannon in a heated segment with CNN host Jake Tapper, Bannon issued a statement to Axios attempting to take back all of the comments he made about the rich asshole and his family — although he left some accusations hanging.
Posters on Twitter were quick to pile on Bannon, with longtime conservative commentator Bill Kristol writing, “I’m old enough to remember when Steve Bannon—whatever else one thought of him—didn’t seem to be an obsequious toady.”
That was one of the nicer things said about the Breitbart head.
See below:
Exclusive: Bannon expresses "regret" over comments to Wolffaxios.com/scoop-bannon-s…
Why is #Bannon apologizing for, and #StephenMiller spitting mad at him for quotes from #fireandfurybook if it's "completely fake"?
I’m old enough to remember when Steve Bannon—whatever else one thought of him—didn’t seem to be an obsequious toady. twitter.com/natashabertran…
Rest In Peace, Steve Bannon's career. @benshapirotwitter.com/benshapiro/sta…
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon will not likely not be included in any future editions of Profiles in Courage after issuing a groveling apology to President some rich asshole on Sunday morning.
Only a few hours after former Bannon protege Stephen Miller tore into Bannon in a heated segment with CNN host Jake Tapper, Bannon issued a statement to Axios attempting to take back all of the comments he made about the rich asshole and his family — although he left some accusations hanging.
Posters on Twitter were quick to pile on Bannon, with longtime conservative commentator Bill Kristol writing, “I’m old enough to remember when Steve Bannon—whatever else one thought of him—didn’t seem to be an obsequious toady.”
That was one of the nicer things said about the Breitbart head.
See below:
Exclusive: Bannon expresses "regret" over comments to Wolffaxios.com/scoop-bannon-s…
Why is #Bannon apologizing for, and #StephenMiller spitting mad at him for quotes from #fireandfurybook if it's "completely fake"?
Rob Mellow 
I’m old enough to remember when Steve Bannon—whatever else one thought of him—didn’t seem to be an obsequious toady. twitter.com/natashabertran…
Rest In Peace, Steve Bannon's career. @benshapirotwitter.com/benshapiro/sta…
Groveling Bannon apologizes to the rich asshole and Don Jr. in Sunday morning mea culpa
Steve Bannon (New York Times)
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In a statement to Axios, former White House adviser Steve Bannon apologized to President some rich asshole on Sunday morning saying, “My support is unwavering for the president and his agenda.”
After a week in which Bannon has seen his star fall in the wake of comments he made to author Michael Wolff — and the threat of being booted from Breitbart — Bannon offered up apologies to the rich asshole as well as his son who he had accused of “treason.”
“some rich asshole, Jr. is both a patriot and a good man. He has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around,” he wrote, adding, “My support is also unwavering for the president and his agenda — as I have shown daily in my national radio broadcasts, on the pages of Breitbart News and in speeches and appearances from Tokyo and Hong Kong to Arizona and Alabama.”
“My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from my life experiences as a Naval officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to hunt Soviet submarines to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was the defeat of ‘the evil empire’ and to making films about Reagan’s war against the Soviets and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in selling uranium to them,” he continued, before attempting to quash comments he made about Russian collusion with the rich asshole campaign.
“Everything I have to say about the ridiculous nature of the Russian ‘collusion’ investigation I said on my 60 Minutes interview. There was no collusion and the investigation is a ‘witch hunt,'” he stated.
You can read the whole thing here
Bannon comes groveling back to the rich asshole
Area man discovers what it's like to lose all his friends.
Steve Bannon, some rich asshole’s former chief strategist and executive chairman of the far-right publication Breitbart News, had a terrible, awful, no good, very bad week.
On Wednesday, news broke that Bannon described a meeting between several top the rich asshole campaign officials and a group of Russian nationals with close Kremlin ties as “treasonous” and unpatriotic,” according to “Fire and Fury,” an explosive new book on the rich asshole White House by author Michael Wolff.
Bannon singled out President some rich asshole’s oldest son, some rich asshole Jr., who attended the meeting after being informed that the Russians would provide information damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon reportedly said.
Since this news broke, Bannon has found himself increasingly alone in the world. the rich asshole put out a statement claiming that his former chief strategist “has nothing to do with me or my Presidency” and that Bannon “spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was.”
The wealthy Mercer family, which has funded Bannon’s work in the past and owns a stake in Breitbart News, suggested in their own statement that he is dead to them. “I support President the rich asshole and the platform upon which he was elected,” Rebekah Mercer said. “My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements.”
Even Bannon’s job at Breitbart may be in danger. Mercer noted her equity interest in the publication, which has close ties to the so-called “white supremacy” and white nationalism, in her statement — a move many interpreted as an implicit threat to fire Bannon.
Now, after days of watching his influence, and potentially his, job slip from his grasp, Bannon appears eager to make nice with his former allies. In a statement first reported by Axios, Bannon says that his support for the rich asshole is “unwavering” and that his comments about the Russia meeting were not intended to implicate some rich asshole Jr.
“some rich asshole, Jr. is both a patriot and a good man,” Bannon said in the statement. “My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr.”
It remains to be seen whether the rich asshole will welcome Bannon back into his good graces or continue to punish the man who spoke ill of him and his family.
Bannon praises the rich asshole Jr as a 'patriot' and 'good man' after book criticism
BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 01/07/18 11:30 AM EST
Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon in a new statement praised some rich asshole Jr. as a "patriot" and a "good man" and expressed "regret" for his delayed response to quoted criticism in a book released last week.
"He has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around," Bannon said in a statement provided to Axios, referring to the rich asshole Jr.
Bannon added that his support for President the rich asshole and his agenda is "unwavering."
"President the rich asshole was the only candidate that could have taken on and defeated the Clinton apparatus," he said.
"I am the only person to date to conduct a global effort to preach the message of the rich asshole and Trumpism; and remain ready to stand in the breech for this president's efforts to make America great again."
Bannon's statement comes after a controversial new book on the rich asshole White House claimed Bannon called the 2016 meeting between the rich asshole Jr. and a group of Russians "treasonous."
"They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV," Bannon is quoted as saying in the book, referring to the investigation into Russia's election interference.
the rich asshole tore into Bannon after excerpts of Michael Wolff's book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House," were released. the rich asshole accused Bannon of losing his mind.
Bannon in the statement to Axios sought to further explain his comments.
"My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from my life experiences as a Naval officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to hunt Soviet submarines to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was the defeat of 'the evil empire' and to making films about Reagan's war against the Soviets and Hillary Clinton's involvement in selling uranium to them," Bannon said.
He said his comments were aimed at former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who he called a "seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate."
"He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr.," Bannon said.
He added that there was no collusion between the rich asshole campaign and the Russians and that the Russia probe is a "witch hunt."
"I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president's historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency," he said.
the rich asshole reportedly starts his days later because he wants more 'executive time' to watch TV and go on Twitter
· Sonam Sheth 01-07-2018
· President some rich asshole shrank his daily schedule because he wanted more "executive time" to watch TV and tweet, according to the news site Axios.
· He reportedly has three hours of "executive time" every morning and another few hours of it during the day as well.
· That's in addition to the time he spends watching cable news and going on Twitter every evening after retiring to the private residence.
President some rich asshole's official daily schedule is getting shorter because he wants more time to watch cable news and go on Twitter, Axios reported on Sunday.
the rich asshole — who's said in the past that he wakes up at 5 a.m. — now starts his days at 11 a.m. after taking three hours of "executive time" in the Oval Office, most of which the report said he spends in his private residence watching TV and perusing Twitter.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Axios that the rich asshole's "executive time" in the morning "is a mix of residence time and Oval Office time but he always has calls with staff, Hill members, cabinet members and foreign leaders during this time."
the rich asshole's media habits are well documented, from his voracious consumption of cable news to his tendency to fire off impulsive tweets when he's displeased with the way he's portrayed in the media. According to The New York Times, the only people allowed to touch the TV remote are the rich asshole and the technical support staff. The Times said the president watches at least four and up to eight hours of TV per day.
That point was echoed by a Washington Post report published last April, which said the rich asshole turns on the TV as soon as he wakes up, watches periodically throughout the day, and continues late into the evening when he retires to the private residence.
According to a copy of the rich asshole's private schedule that was shown to Axios, the president's official days last from around 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and sometimes they end before that. He also takes some "executive time" in between, in addition to the three hours every morning.
On Tuesday, for instance, the rich asshole's day will last from 11 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Two hours and thirty minutes out of that day are devoted to "executive time."
On Wednesday, in addition to the three hours of "executive time" he'll have in the morning, the rich asshole has an intelligence briefing at 11 a.m. and another three hours of "executive time" until a meeting with the Norwegian Prime Minister.
After his days end — around 4 p.m. on shorter days and around 6 p.m. on longer days — the rich asshole usually goes back to the residence and watches TV, makes phone calls, and goes on Twitter.
In the nascent stages of his presidency, the rich asshole's days would begin earlier and end later, but he reportedly didn't like that schedule and pushed to start later and end earlier.
While aides told Axios that the rich asshole is always busy, they added that he was harder to control once the day ended.
"Once he goes upstairs, there's no managing him," one White House aide told the Post last April.
the rich asshole routinely watches a host of cable news networks, starting his mornings off with CNBC's "Squawk Box," Fox Business Network's "Mornings With Maria" which is hosted by Maria Bartiromo, and Fox News's "Fox and Friends." the rich asshole has repeatedly praised "Fox and Friends" for its favorable coverage of him, while blasting networks like MSNBC and CNN for their more critical coverage of his administration and policies. He has called the latter "fake news" on a number of occasions, both in public and on Twitter.
At night, The Post's report said, the president occasionally "hate-watches" cable news shows that are critical of him, sometimes talking on the phone with friends while doing so.
"The President is one of the hardest workers I've ever seen and puts in long hours and long days nearly every day of the week all year long," Sanders said Sunday. "It has been noted by reporters many times that they wish he would slow down because they sometimes have trouble keeping up with him."
the rich asshole rallying allies to attack Bannon at every chance: report
Steve Bannon and some rich asshole (Composite / RawStory)
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According to a report at Axios, President some rich asshole has been working the phones encouraging supporters and allies to use their media appearances to attack former White House advisor Steve Bannon.
Since leaving the White House, the relationship between the president and the Breitbart head has deteriorated, and that process sped up this past week with revelations in author Michael Wolff’s bombshell tell-all, ‘Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House.‘
Among the revelations was Bannon accusing the president’s son, some rich asshole Jr. of “treasonous” behavior by meeting with Russians before the 2016 election, as well as attacks on the rich asshole daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.
Axios states the rich asshole “has been working the phones over the past several days telling allies they need to choose between him and former adviser Steve Bannon.”
The report goes on to state that the rich asshole adviser and speech writer Stephen Miller is expected to go after Bannon when he appears on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning.
In response, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t completely tamp down that expectation, issuing a statement saying, “Stephen is going on to give a recap of the Thursday immigration meeting, weekend meetings at Camp David and a preview of the bi-partisan immigration meeting on Tuesday. However, I’ve never known anyone or any topic that Stephen couldn’t handle so if other topics come up I have no doubt he will easily handle those as well.”
Will the rich asshole’s first checkup assess mental health?
January 7, 2018
Lauren Gill
Posted with permission from Newsweek
President Donald Trump will undergo his first presidential physical exam on Friday as questions surrounding his mental health swirl. However, the White House has been tight-lipped as to whether the checkup will assess his mental acuity.
Trump will be examined by his military physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on January 12, the White House announced last month. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has refused to say if this will include an examination of the president’s mental health, and instead deflected an inquiry last week by telling reporters they will be provided details of the checkup afterward.
The routine examination comes amongst fierce debate by experts about Trump’s mental health following several erratic tweets and the publishing of a new book leveling claims by his own advisers questioning his mental stability.
After Trump fired off a tweet boasting about the size of his nuclear button in comparison to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, a former White House ethics lawyer called it proof that the president is “psychologically unfit” and should be removed from office.
This Tweet alone is grounds for removal from office under the 25th Amendment. This man should not have nukes. twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
“This Tweet alone is grounds for removal from office under the 25th Amendment. This man should not have nukes,” tweeted Richard Painter, who served as an ethics attorney under George W. Bush.
Concerns about Trump’s mental fitness have extended to Congress, where a dozen members invited a Yale psychiatrist to meet with them about Trump’s mental health last month.
But some mental health professionals have sharply criticized those making claims about the president’s psychological stability, citing the so-called Goldwater rule of the American Psychiatric Association banning doctors from making assessments about anyone they have not examined themselves. This rule was instituted as a response to a magazine article in which experts questioned 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s fitness for office.
Past presidents have been known to experience mental health issues—Abraham Lincoln reportedly suffered from depression, John F. Kennedy took anxiety medication, Richard Nixon took Valium, and Lyndon B. Johnson’s aides were said to have enlisted three psychiatrists who reported that he could have been experiencing paranoid disintegration.
Ronald Reagan’s aides were also worried about his mental health during his final years in office and discussed whether to invoke the 25th Amendment.
But Trump has repeatedly defended his mental state, firing off a tweet on Saturday declaring “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.”
Friday’s examination will mark the first time that the public will get an unbiased picture of the 71-year-old leader’s health. Last year, Trump received a clean bill from his personal physician, who said he could “state unequivocally” he would “be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
This, of course, was a puzzling assessment of the health of a man who is known to live on a McDonald’s heavy diet.
the rich asshole rages at ‘fake news’ after top aide loses it and gets kicked off CNN: ‘Reagan had the same problem’
President some rich asshole defending Republican nominee Roy Moore.
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President some rich asshole on Sunday complained that he and President Ronald Reagan had the “same problem” with so-called “fake news.”
Minutes after White House aide Stephen Miller lost it on CNN over Michael Wolff’s new tell-all book, the rich asshole took to Twitter to rage about “fake news.”
During the interview, Miller had grown increasingly upset and vocal about the claims made about the rich asshole’s mental health in Wolff’s book.
Tapper finally had to cut the interview short, observing, “I get it. There’s one viewer that you care about right now and you’re being obsequious because you’re trying to please him. I’ve wasted enough of my viewers time.”
Fox panel rips Stephen Miller after Jake Tapper boots him off CNN: ‘All he would do is lavish the rich asshole’
Fox News "Media Buzz" panel (screen grab)
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On Fox News, White House aide Stephen Miller did not get good reviews for his manic performance with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday morning that forced the State of the Union host to shut down the interview and go to commercial.
During a panel discussion on Fox media analyst Howie Kurtz’s Spin Cycle, the host broke off from a discussion about author Michael Wolff’s blockbuster book about President some rich asshole’s White House to address Miller’s outburst.
“On the subject of the president watching television,” Kurtz began. “Earlier today a White House official, Stephen Miller, was on CNN talking to anchor Jake Tapper. He turned on his former colleague Steve Bannon and called his remarks in the book ‘grotesque and vindictive.’ And also said that CNN is 24 hours of anti-the rich asshole hysteria.”
“It was a very testy interview,” Kurtz admitted before reading President’s the rich asshole’s tweeted response to Tapper, and adding that the rich asshole was obviously watching.
“Yeah, he just guaranteed the rebroadcast of that show, those rating are going to go through the roof,” campaign strategist Mo Elleithee agreed.
“I didn’t see anything unfair in Tapper’s questions although it was a testy interview” the Fox host offered.
“That’s right, and I haven’t seen the whole interview yet,” Elleithee stated. “But there was a clip at the end where Tapper was trying to ask Miller several questions and Miller, all he would do was just lavish the president with effusive personal praise to the point where Tapper said you’re only speaking to an audience of one right now.”
“Moments later, the president verified that with his tweet,” Elleithee added with a smirk.
“I guess he doesn’t just watch Fox News,” conservative commentator Gayle Trotter added as the panel began to laugh.
Watch the video below via Fox News:
CNN media critic: If another world leader acted like the rich asshole we’d ‘conclude that he is not well’
some rich asshole Drinking Water (Screen Capture)
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CNN “Reliable Sources” host and media watcher Brian Stelter said on Sunday that if another country’s leader acted like President some rich asshole, we’d “conclude that he is not well.”
According to Mediaite.com, Stelter was referring to the president’s tweet at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier this week in which he boasted that his “nuclear button” is bigger than Kim’s.
That behavior on top of the revelations from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House, said Stelter, mean that it’s no longer out of bounds to question the president’s fitness for office.
“When a President of the United States threatens North Korea by invoking the size of his nuclear button, it is fair to ask about his fitness,” said Stelter. “If a leader of another country were to do the same thing, I think many commentators, many reporters will conclude that he is not well.”
Watch the video, embedded below:
Pro-the rich asshole pundit nearly comes across table at centrist GOPer: ‘Are you calling me a liar?’
Matt Dowd (left) speaks to Matt Schlapp (right) (credit: ABC/ screen grab)
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Matt Schlapp, an ardent supporter of President some rich asshole, lashed out at right-leaning ABC contributor Matthew Dowd on Sunday and demanded that he quit calling him a “liar.”
During a panel discussion about President the rich asshole’s desire for Democrats to agree to a border wall, Schlapp argued that the Democrats might be “dumb enough to say ‘hashtag resistance’ all year.”
“If they decide to never work with some rich asshole on any issue, that is a political risk that is not wise to take,” he insisted.
Dowd, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, expressed a different point of view: “I know Matt likes to create a world that is sort of fictional.”
“Are you saying I’m a liar, Matt?” Schlapp interrupted, appearing to raise out of his seat. “That’s way beyond. I don’t need truth serum. I don’t need to be lectured by you about being a liar.”
“I never called you a liar,” Dowd insisted.
“You did! You did in the first segment!” Schlapp exclaimed.
“No, I did not,” Dowd replied. “I said if you drank truth serum, you would actually admit [the truth].”
“Clever way of calling me a liar,” Schlapp complained, pointing his finger at Dowd.
“The Republicans have passed nothing that is popular with America in 2017,” Dowd said, concluding his point. “And I expect them to pass nothing that is popular in 2018. The president is inherently the most unpopular president at this point of any president that we’ve had.”
“The Democrats have a generic ballot lead that is larger than any time in the last 20 years,” he added. “So we’re seeing a situation that this huge wave is coming and I don’t see a president who’s only governed to a base to change that in the course of the next few months.”
Watch the video below from ABC.
Here are 21 facts that explain exactly who Stephen Miller is
Stephen Miller appears on CNN's State of the Union (screen grab)
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Even among the right-wing ideologues doing the actual presidenting in this administration, Stephen Miller stands out for the copious amounts of Kool-Aid he mainlines. Speaking to the New York Times, a the rich asshole team colleague described Miller as “fiercely loyal” to the president, “a true believer in every sense of the word.” Though he joined the campaign in its early days, penning many of the apocalyptic speeches that won fear-drunk Republican hearts and minds, Miller recently got a lot more visibility after a string of television appearances in defense of the Muslim ban. At each stop, Miller showed a flair for the dramatic: he lied, he dodged, he put on his best tyrant’s voice and proclaimed the executive branch above the law. It seemed contrived and forced, like a politically precocious, weasley teenager’s idea of how to command a crowd. According to those who know Miller’s history, that’s not so far off the mark.
Dating back to junior high school, Miller has been the unwavering right-winger now before us. Though the internet, and some of his family members, were quick to compare him to Joseph Goebbels, this reporter saw a resemblance to Roy Cohn—a rich asshole mentor—down to the sartorial details. Miller wears retro skinny suits, only recently ditched a chain-smoking habit and has the kind of cockiness that reads as unexamined, unsympathetic self-hatred. His barked orders and put-on baritone are all part of the package, and can strike an observer as funny. At least until you remember this guy is trying to turn the country into an all-white gated community.
The th h asshole administration is the natural place for Miller to end up. He’s been writing racist, anti-immigrant rants for half his life and he’s only 31. He’s worked for some of the most deplorable U.S. politicians out there, only to become the voice for the worst of all. By all accounts, he is as terrible—and dangerous—as he seems, which is why he’s no laughing matter. And in that way, he is exactly like his boss. As one of his high school classmates told the Daily Beast, “People laughed at [Miller] because he was a buffoon, he was a performer, he thrived on spectacle. I’m very conscious now, looking back, that he was treated the same way that the rich asshole was—he wasn’t taken seriously.”
Here are 21 facts that explain who Stephen Miller is.
1. The National Rifle Association was his first right-wing love.
Miller grew up in Santa Monica, a coastal city long regarded as a progressive bastion in L.A. County. A Los Angeles Times profile states Miller, along with two siblings, was raised in a “Jewish family of longtime Franklin Roosevelt Democrats.” Somewhere around eighth grade, Miller’s politics took a hard right after reading Guns, Crime, and Freedom, penned by National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre.
2. He dumped a childhood friend because he was Latino.
According to Jason Islas, in the summer between middle and junior high, Miller told him, “I can’t be your friend anymore because you are Latino.” According to Islas, the two never spoke again, though he hasn’t lost much sleep over the demise of their friendship. “[It] didn’t bother me, because the fact that Miller rejected me because I am Latino showed me he was pretty much worthless,” he told Univision.
3. He was the ‘ best-known and least-liked conservative activist’ in his liberal high school.
Miller was in the racial and political minority at Santa Monica High, where 30 percent of students were Latino, 12 percent black and 5 percent Asian. Oscar de la Torre, a counselor at the school who remains active in the community, describes Miller as being “on a crusade against liberalism and liberals.”
Student body president Justin Brownstone says Miller “enjoyed saying things that were perceived as racist. The more he offended, the happier he was.”
“He had a lot of grudges,” de la Torre told Fusion. “He didn’t go out of his way to go to dances or to have girlfriends. I don’t remember ever seeing him smile.”
4. He started as a right-wing mouthpiece in high school.
Julia Ioffe writes that Miller reached out to conservative talk radio host Larry Elder while at Santa Monica High, mostly to complain about pervasive liberalism in his school. He also started writing articles for the Santa Monica Lookout. Miller leveraged his role as local conservative media maven to win unilateral wars against what he imagined were lefty enemies in his school.
“Thus began a cycle that would repeat itself over and over in high school and college,” Ioffe writes, “Miller would clash with school administrators over a perceived leftist conspiracy…then escalate the conflict by taking it to a conservative talk show, infuriating the administrators but yielding a compromise in Miller’s favor.”
In a column written just after graduation, Miller noted that just “since his Junior year in High School, he [had] been a guest on local and national radio over thirty times.”
5. He spent months fighting to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance in his high school.
In a letter to local media outlet the Lookout decrying “political correctness out of control,” 16-year-old Miller complained that “our school refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms for years,” proof that “they only adhere to the liberal guidelines.” For months, Miller pestered school administrators to “bring back the pledge” even dragging the superintendent into the fight. The pledge was ultimately reinstated, though Miller moaned in his letter that “it is still only said twice a week, while policy dictates it should be said every day.”
6. Some things Miller’s classmates have said about his attitudes on race.
Charles Gould, whom the Daily News describes as Miller’s schoolmate from first to 12th grade, wrote, “[Miller] was an unabashed racist. No, I’m not being over sensitive and no, I’m not using the ‘r’ word where it doesn’t apply. In private conversations he was constantly making disparaging remarks about the African-American, Latino and Asian students at our school.”
Classmate Natalie Flores, who wrote a Huffington Post piece about growing up with Miller, told Univision that Miller seemed to have “an intense hatred toward people of color, especially toward Latinos.” She added, “I think his big problem was the Latinos. He thought they lived off welfare.”
“[It] was not just that he targeted minority students, and played a victim on a regular basis, but was an asshole,” Ari Rosmarin, the editor of the student newspaper who now works at the ACLU, told the Daily Beast. “Most people knew him because he made it his business to have everyone hear his vile rhetoric on a regular basis.”
7. His high school writings demonstrate his budding right-wing views.
In that same letter, Miller writes, “When I entered Santa Monica High School…I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills. There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school. Even so, pursuant to district policy, all announcements are written in both Spanish and English. By providing a crutch now, we are preventing Spanish speakers from standing on their own…”
He goes on to gripe about condoms in his school (“Legally speaking, sex between minors is statutory rape”), the presence of a student LGBT group (“[W]e have a club on campus that will gladly help foster their homosexuality”), reverence for Native Americans (“excusing their scalping of frontiersmen as part of their culture”) and the lack of praise for the U.S. military (“Osama Bin Laden would feel very welcome at Santa Monica High School.”)
In another article he wrote, “We have all heard about how peaceful and benign the Islamic religion is. But, no matter how many times you say that, it cannot change the fact that millions of radical Muslims would celebrate your death for the simple reason that you are Christian, Jewish or American.”
Here’s what he used for his senior yearbook quote, citing Teddy Roosevelt: “There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 percent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.”
8. He actively tried to undermine student groups focused on Latino and black issues.
Oscar de la Torre, his former high school counselor, says Miller frequently claimed that because he—a white male—didn’t experience racism or sexism, students of color were making it up. “He didn’t believe the oppression existed,” de la Torre told the Times. “This guy is 17 years old, and it’s like listening to someone who’s 70 years old—in the 1930s.”
During a summit to address African American and Latino issues, Miller showed up with the message that the room was delusional and he knew better. “He wanted to sabotage us,” de la Torre told the Times. “He confronted everyone, denying that racism existed. He said that was a thing of the past.” (In a column about the meeting, Miller would later indicate the real problem wasn’t racism but “leftist victim mentality.”)
9. He was once booed off the stage for making a racist joke about the school janitors.
While running for student council, Miller made a speech complaining about having to pick up his garbage when there were janitors for that. The incident, which survives in the video below, was funny because the janitors were black and brown people who got paid almost nothing to pick up garbage. Get it? Haha, right?
“It was a racist remark because we all knew that our janitors were people of color,” Flores told Fusion.
“He was booed unanimously by the student body off the stage. People were disgusted,” Rosmarin, of the ACLU, told the Daily Beast. “That kind of incident with the janitorial staff—everyone, no matter what your background is, understands why that is an awful thing to say.”
(A bit of aughts trivia: the winner of that election was Mark Hunter, the guy behind the Cobrasnake party photo empire.)
10. He attended Duke University, where people remember him, though not fondly.
Here is how Miller was recently described by John Burness, the former senior vice president of public affairs and government relations at Duke: “He’s the most sanctimonious student I think I ever encountered. He seemed to be absolutely sure of his own views and the correctness of them, and seemed to assume that if you were in disagreement with him, there was something malevolent or stupid about your thinking. Incredibly intolerant.”
A college classmate told the New York Times that at a freshman orientation event, he introduced himself by announcing, “My name is Stephen Miller, I am from Los Angeles, and I like guns.”
11. In college, he greatly expanded his portfolio of right-wing hate pieces .
In a column lamenting “multiculturalism” at Duke and other colleges, Miller listed all the cool things that make America great:
“We are the nation of cinema and radio, crooning and jazz, convertibles and diners, the Old West and New York City. Our culture includes Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jackie Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Douglas Macarthur, Milton Friedman, Edgar Allen Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Edison and again, for emphasis, Elvis Presley.”
Neat-o! He only forgot to include Pat Boone and racism.
In another article, Miller accused Maya Angelou of “racial paranoia” and said her “legendary wisdom” amounted to “tired, multicultural clichés.” Another piece finds Miller finally breaking the right wing’s longstanding silence on the liberal media, asking why there aren’t any movies “about the evils of the Islamic holy war, the merits of capitalism…[o]r, dare I say it, a movie with a positive take on the Bush administration?”
For good measure, Miller also gives voice to the Angry Adult Virgin Lobby, noting that “shows like Queer As Folk, The ‘L’ Word, Will & Grace and Sex and the City, all do their part to promote alternative lifestyles and erode traditional values.”
12. He helped found and lead a campus group called the Terrorism Awareness Project.
CNN reports Miller served as “national campus coordinator, president, and co-founder” of the group, launched by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. (Horowitz is a vocally anti-black, anti-Muslim xenophobe and Zionist.) The project claimed its mission was to end “the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values and disarm this country as it attempts to defend itself in a time of terror.” Miller promoted events like “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week”—which didn’t catch on, for some reason—and videos with gross titles like The Islamic Mein Kampf. He also tried to get other college newspapers to run ads, like this one, which was reportedly designed by Richard Spencer. When colleges turned them down, Miller took his case to the only show that would have him, “Fox & Friends.” You can watch that appearance; note that Miller was still using his real voice, not his now-famous King of the D&D Virgins voice.
13. He palled around with white supremacist and recently punched neo-Nazi Richard Spencer.
When Miller was an undergrad and Spencer was working on a Ph.D. he was too racist to finish (no really, he dropped out to found a racist “think tank”), the two became buddies as members of the Duke Conservative Union. Together, they worked on an event featuring Peter Brimelow, founder of the virulently xenophobic VDARE and a notable hate-scene fixture with his very own SPLC page. Spencer told the Daily Beast he was a “mentor” to Miller, saying he “spent a lot of time with him at Duke…I hope I expanded his thinking.”
Spencer, who has lauded Miller as “very bold and strong,” said ahead of the election, “It’s funny no one’s picked up on the Stephen Miller connection. I knew him very well when I was at Duke. But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this because I don’t want to harm the rich asshole.”
For the record, Miller has said the two were merely members of the same club and that they fell out of touch after graduation.
14. Another white nationalist is also a big fan, as is David Duke.
In a piece titled “Stephen Miller is David Duke’s Favorite Jew,” Forward picks up recent tweets from the former Klansman applauding Miller. “I can’t help it, I like this guy,” Duke states in one message.
Jared Taylor, whose anti-black output was a favorite of racist murderer Dylann Roof, reportedly also namechecked Miller. The Washington Post points to a post by Taylor which notes that the rich asshole’s lack of white racial consciousness is helped by “men close to him — Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller — who may have a clearer understanding of race, and their influence could grow.”
15. He worked for noted racist Jeff Sessions.
After a stint working for Michelle Bachmann, Miller took a communications job with Senator Jeff Sessions in 2009. Sessions’ office—where Miller could help the racist, xenophobic sausage get made—helped elevate his visibility among conservatives, though initially, he was known mostly for his emails (see #16).
Politico notes the up-and-comer played a pivotal role in crushing the Gang of Eight’s 2013 bipartisan immigration bill. The outlet points out that “when the bill passed the Senate…Miller literally wrote the 23-page handbook that House members were given on how to fight the deal.” As you may already know, after being deemed too racist for the federal bench in the 1980s, Sessions was judged perfectly racist for the rich asshole administration and confirmed attorney general.
16. As you might imagine, he is a super annoying emailer.
A recent New York Times article describes Miller as “a man whose emails were, until recently, considered spam by many of his Republican peers.” The Times goes on to say:
As a top aide to Mr. Sessions, the conservative Alabama senator, Mr. Miller dispatched dozens and dozens of bombastic emails to congressional staff members and reporters in early 2013 when the Senate was considering a big bipartisan immigration overhaul. Mr. Miller slammed the evils of “foreign labor” and pushed around nasty news articles on proponents of compromise, like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. One exhausted Senate staff member, forwarding a Miller-gram to a reporter at the time, wrote: “His latest. And it’s only 11:45 a.m.”
17. On the campaign trail, he warmed up the crowds for the rich asshole.
Miller’s job was to toss small bits of red meat for the audience to gnaw on while they waited for the rich asshole to hit the stage and throw them the rest of the bloody carcass. In the video below, shot at a rally in Wisconsin, he rails against “foreign workers,” telling the audience they’re “competing against you, and your children, and your grandchildren, and your brothers, and sisters and neighbors for jobs. Low-wage foreign workers being brought in to take your place at less pay.”
He talks about “uncontrolled migration from the Middle East,” and “illegal immigrants being arrested…for the most heinous crimes imaginable,” and hails the rich asshole as the candidate “who will protect our cities, who will protect our communities, who will save our families.”
18. He wrote the rich asshole’s RNC and ‘America First’ inauguration speeches.
Miller is reportedly responsible for penning the rich asshole’s ominous RNC speech, in which he declared, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
While there was the option of going lighter for the inauguration—some presidents do not use the minutes after being sworn in to share a vision of the country as a dystopian hellscape—Miller stuck with fearmongering:
“Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
19. He’s considered the brain behind the travel ban.
Though he denies it, Miller is believed to have written a significant portion of the travel ban, with some help from Steve Bannon and congressional aides sworn to contractual secrecy. Multiple sources have reported that the Steves have refused to consult with other agencies that might have necessary insights or legal expertise, leading to disastrous rollouts. In order to counter the negative press around the Muslim ban (we’re calling it what the rich asshole calls it, because that’s what it is), Miller was sent on a Sunday morning press tour last weekend.
20. Infamous quotes from Miller’s tour of the Sunday morning shows last weekend.
“Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”
“The president’s powers…represent the apex of executive authority.”
“We will have unquestioned military strength beyond anything anybody can imagine.”
“That’s the story we should be talking about and I’m prepared to go on any show anywhere anytime and repeat it and say the president of the United States is correct 100 percent.”
21. His family is mostly not proud of him.
Buzzfeed News rounded up posts from Miller’s extended family, who seem not particularly keen on his new role. His mother’s brother, David Glosser, posted on the wall of a local media outlet, “With all familial affection I wish Stephen career success and personal happiness; however I cannot endorse his political preferences. I am not a rich asshole supporter.”
Glosser’s letter, which is fairly long, goes on from there:
some rich asshole is trying to sell you something…He sells fear of immigrants, contempt of our daughters, sisters, and wives, and sows discord and anger. He knows the dictator’s disgraceful sales tricks of challenging the integrity of democratic elections, he finds an unpopular outside group to blame our troubles on, cooks up false electoral fraud theories if he doesn’t get his way, threatens and bullies his opponents, and tells us that he is the only one that can lead the nation ahead. He’s trying to sell you something, and it’s not a good product. For the first time in my memory a major American political party’s presidential candidate has proposed that laws and regulations be established solely on the basis of a person’s religion and ethnic background. The legitimization of this as a basis of serious political discussion is a terrible step into darkness. Remember, what goes around comes around. If today it’s “them,” then tomorrow it may be you.Finally, my nephew and I must both reflect long and hard on one awful truth. If in the early 20th century the USA had built a wall against poor desperate ignorant immigrants of a different religion, like the Glossers, all of us would have gone up the crematoria chimneys with the other six million kinsmen whom we can never know.”
Another family member, commenting on the post, wrote, “At least he [Miller] doesn’t share our last name.”
‘You’ve wasted enough time’: Jake Tapper cuts off Stephen Miller after he goes berserk over tell-all book
Stephen Miller speaks to Jake Tapper (CNN/screen grab)
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CNN host Jake Tapper abruptly ended an interview with White House staffer Stephen Miller after the rich asshole aide began shouting about a new tell-all book that casts the White House in a bad light.
During an interview that aired on Sunday, Tapper accused Miller of filibustering instead of answering questions that have been raised by Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole’s White House.
Tapper noted that President the rich asshole had recently called himself a “stable genius” in response to Wolff’s book, which alleges that the president is not fit to serve.
“It happens to be a true statement,” Miller shot back.
“I’m sure he’s watching and he’s happy you said that,” a frustrated Tapper said.
“That was a snide remark,” Miller complained.
“I have no idea why you are attacking me,” Tapper remarked.
As the CNN host tried to ask questions about the book, Miller yelled that CNN attacks the rich asshole “24/7”.
“You have 24 hours of negative anti-the rich asshole hysterical coverage on this network!” Miller shouted. “Viewers are entitled to have three minutes of the truth! Why don’t you just give me three minutes to tell you about some rich asshole that I know.”
“Because it’s my show and I don’t want to do that,” Tapper jabbed. “Stephen, settle down, calm down.”
But Tapper’s attempts to calm Miller failed, and he was eventually forced to end the interview.
“Okay, you’re not answering the questions,” Tapper said. “I get it. There’s one viewer that you care about right now and you’re being obsequious because you’re trying to please him. I’ve wasted enough of my viewers time.”
With that, Tapper cut off Miller and tossed to commercial.
Watch the video below.
Fox host enrages CIA chief: What would CIA say about a world leader who calls himself ‘stable genius’?
Mike Pompeo speaks to Chris Wallace (Fox News/ screen grab)
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CIA Director Mike Pompeo on Sunday told Fox News that he would not “dignify” any question about President some rich asshole’s mental health.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Wallace noted that Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole’s White House, had raised questions about the president’s fitness for office.
Pointing to a tweet in which the rich asshole called himself a “stable genius,” Wallace wondered how the CIA would assess other world leaders who did the same thing.
“The CIA does psychological profiles of world leaders,” Wallace observed. “What would you say about a world leader who refers to himself as a ‘very stable genius’?”
Pompeo, however, refused to answer the question.
“I’m not going to dignify that question with a response,” the CIA director insisted. “This is a man who is leading the United States of America and who engages with the intelligence community in ways that are sophisticated. He deals with the most complex issues and has handled them in a way that I great admiration and respect for. We’re keeping America safe.”
“You say you’re keeping America safe,” Wallace pressed. “By raising questions about the president fitness, in a sense — and the president became a part of it, making this the big topic this week — has this book weakened our country, weakened our standing around the world?”
“No,” Pompeo replied without offering an explanation.
Watch the video below from Fox News.
‘Thank you, Jake Tapper’: the rich asshole aide Miller flayed on internet after CNN host cuts off ‘baby Goebbels’ CNN freak out
Stephen Miller speaks to Jake Tapper (CNN/ screen grab)
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Top White House aide Stephen Miller had a complete meltdown on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning which forced host Jake Tapper to shut down the interview and, needless to say, Twitter users noticed right away.
Moments after Tapper told Miller, “There’s one viewer that you care about right now and you’re being obsequious because you’re trying to please him. I’ve wasted enough of my viewers time, ” and cut to commercial in disgust, Twitter lit up over the controversial the rich asshole adviser whose TV appearances are always combative.
Here is a sampling:
Jake Tapper ended the interview with Stephen Miller abruptly with the line, “wasting enough of my viewers’ time”
“There’s one viewer that you care about right now and you’re being obsequious,”
Thank you @jaketapper.
It's time to stop giving them airtime if they act like this.
@jaketapper Thank you for cutting off propagandist Stephen Miller. There is a difference between giving the other point of view and lying.
Mind blowing @jaketapper interview moments ago with unhinged Stephen Miller. Must be watched in its entirety. Tapper did the best he could with a stupid, obsequious Roy Cohn wannabe.
shorter Stephen Miller: I'm here to tell you, @jaketapper, that you suck, your network sucks, you all suck. We won and fuck you.
Jake: you're done. Next...cnn.com/videos/politic…
Who is Stephen Miller is trying to convince. He looks like he’s had too much of the Kool-Aid. @jaketapper is this guy for real? Miller is a joke.
Stephen Miller is a fanatic. pic.twitter.com/JFGGcbXc0i
Stephen Miller should only be referred to as #babyGoebbels
‘Trumpalising the Queen’: Author Wolff says the rich asshole will treat royal family as reality show characters if he attends wedding
President some rich asshole (AFP / Mandel NGAN)
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According to author Michael Wolff, if President some rich asshole attends the royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle he will hog the limelight and treat Queen Elizabeth as if she is a reality show member in his own show.
Speaking with the Daily Mail, the author of Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole’s White House, said it was still up in the air whether the rich asshole will be at the wedding, but danger lurks if he does attend.
The author said, given what he saw of the rich asshole during his time lurking about the White House to report his book, he believes the president will use the occasion to show off for the world and will show up the Queen.
“He sees the Queen in reality TV show terms. That’s the rich asshole modus operandi,” Wolff explained. “He will try to Trumpalise the Queen and Buckingham Palace.”
“He doesn’t like being snubbed and wants to be the center of attention all the time,” Wolff added before getting into how the rich asshole views Great Britain.
“the rich asshole’s foreign policy doctrine is simple: you Brits suck up to him and enlist in whatever geopolitical fantasy he has going, he’ll give you what you want – though only if it doesn’t hurt him,” Wolff stated. “It is not so much vengeance, rather ‘you flatter me and I’ll flatter you.'”
Wolff also revealed that the rich asshole isn’t much interested in news of the world, saying, “I interviewed the rich asshole two weeks before your 2016 referendum and he had no idea what Brexit was.”
You can read the entire interview here
Report: SEC investigating Kushner Companies’ use of controversial visa program
"Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States," the company told Chinese investors last May.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into the Kushner Companies’ use of an obscure and controversial visa program that lets foreign investors effectively buy an immigration visa to the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
The company, which is owned by the family of senior White House advisor and the rich asshole son-in-law Jared Kushner, received a subpoena last May for information related to its use of the EB-5 visa program, according to the report, which is based on anonymous sources “familiar with the matter.” The news follows on a report in The Wall Street Journal last August that The Kushner Companies received a similar subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York.
“Kushner Cos. utilized the program, fully complied with its rules and regulations, and did nothing improper,” general counsel Emily Wolf said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal at the time. “We are cooperating with legal requests for information.”
The SEC investigation is being run out of the commission’s Texas office, in cooperation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, The Journal reports.
Jared Kushner came under fire last May after The Washington Post reported on a pitch his sister, Nicole Kushner, made to investors in Beijing for the family’s “Kushner 1” development in New Jersey. That event was organized by the Chinese company Qiaowai.
“Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States,” a brochure for the event reportedly declared.
The coveted EB-5 has been nicknamed “the golden visa.” To qualify, an investor generally has to front at least $1 million. But Kushner 1 and other Kushner Companies properties take advantage of a Targeted Employment Area program that lets investors qualify for an EB-5 if the invest just $500,000 in a development located in an area of high unemployment.
Individual states use federal guidelines to decide whether a project is in a Targeted Employment Area. A Washington Post investigation last May found that The Kushner Companies worked with state officials to effectively gerrymander their TEA application — making it appear their luxury 65 Bay Street development, where apartments rent for up to $4,700 a month, was in an impoverished area of Jersey City.
U.S. Immigration Fund, which operates regional EB-5 centers in New Jersey, partnered with Kushner Companies on the 65 Bay Street and Kushner 1 projects. Its founder and CEO, Florida developer Nicholas Mastroianni, also worked on the rich asshole National Golf Course project in Jupiter, Florida, Bloomberg reported.
The Kushner Companies’ use of the program on several developments has likely saved it millions. Annual interest rates on EB-5 investments typically run from 4 to 8 percent, experts told The Post in May, while other forms of financing carry between 12 and 18 percent annual interest.
The EB-5 program has come under fire from politicians in both parties. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) called the program “a magnet for fraud” in an interview with CNN last March. A 2015 report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service wasn’t prepared to detect EB-5 fraud.
“USCIS does not have a strategy for collecting … some information on businesses supported by EB-5 program investments, that officials noted could help mitigate fraud,” the report said.
Mark Giresi, U.S. Immigration Fund’s chief operating officer, defended his company’s use of EB-5 visas, saying its creates jobs for people across areas outside the immediate vicinity of a building project.
“In large urban markets like Jersey City, these types of real estate development projects create much-needed jobs, particularly in the construction industry, across areas of the city that cover multiple census tracts,” Giresi told The Washington Post in a statement last May.
Some Jersey City residents feel differently. The Kushner 1 development Nicole Kushner pitched to Chinese investors last May is in a census track with just 4 percent unemployment. But the map in its TEA application includes census tracts in the Bergen-Lafayette neighborhood, which has an unemployment rate of between 10.9 and 12.6 percent.
Asked how he felt about Kushner Companies using his neighborhood to finance its development, the Rev. Shyrone Richardson of the World Outreach Christian Church told The Washington Post it was “sad” and lamented the lack of jobs for local residents:
“Unfortunately, the people who are benefiting from this are not the people in this area.”
Watch the rich asshole adviser Stephen Miller get thrown off the air after a disastrous interview
Maybe this guy doesn't belong on TV?
The White House deployed Stephen Miller, a top the rich asshole adviser with strong connections to white nationalism, to defend some rich asshole against allegations that he is unfit for the presidency. It was a trainwreck.
Miller spent minutes denying the claim, raised in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury,” that the rich asshole himself met with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have dirt on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton — then Miller admitted that he as “no knowledge of anything to do with that meeting.”
He repeatedly called the rich asshole a “political genius” and defended a Twitter rant in which the president claimed to be a “very stable genius.” CNN host Jake Tapper rebutted any suggestion that the rich asshole is a political genius by pointing out that the rich asshole’s approval ratings are in the 30s.
Miller claimed that Stephen Bannon’s role in the rich asshole White House has been “greatly exaggerated.” Bannon held the position of chief strategist and was, until recently, one of the rich asshole’s top advisers — though the rich asshole has tried to distance himself from Bannon after Wolff published the former top advisor’s critical comments about the president.
Miller also spent a huge chunk of the interview blasting CNN and claiming that the network could not be relied upon because its coverage is often critical of the rich asshole. At one point, when Tapper turned the conversation to the issue of the rich asshole’s fitness for office, Miller snapped back, “I’m getting to the issue of your fitness.”
In the end, Tapper cut the interview short, telling Miller, “I’ve wasted enough of my viewers’ time” before turning to pitch the next segment — all while Miller impotently continued to rant at Tapper from off camera.
UPDATE: Miller’s boss approves of the interview.
UPDATE: Miller’s boss approves of the interview.
the rich asshole health care nominee reportedly padded his resume then blamed it on a tornado
Former employees of the Missouri hospital where Robert Weaver says he worked for nine years question his account.
Robert Weaver, the rich asshole administration’s nominee to head the Indian Health Service, may have misrepresented his employment at a Missouri hospital, according to a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal.
Weaver, 39, is a member of the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma. The White House announced his nomination last October, saying he would bring “nearly two decades of experience in hospital, mental health administration, and entrepreneurship” to IHS.
Weaver reportedly told members of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that he worked in “supervisory and management positions” at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Missouri, from 1997 to 2006. His résumé, available online, says he managed “all accounts receivable, budgets, patient access, and physician recruitment” in “various positions” for the hospital.
But several employees who worked in those areas of the hospital between 1997 and 2006 told The Wall Street Journal they did not recall Weaver.
“I was the budget coordinator during that whole time,” Rhonda Foust, who worked in finance at the hospital from 1981 to 2010, told The Journal. “If this person was over budgets, I would have known them.”
Jane Obert, the hospital’s compliance officer among from 1992 to 2008, and Diane Sadler, who worked at the hospital as an accounting manager from 1993 until 2010, also did not recall working with Weaver. Augusto Noronha, the hospital’s chief financial officer from 1999 to 2005, and Wayne Noethe, a former hospital controller, said they’d never heard of the nominee.
“I’m sure I would have remembered the last name Weaver,” Sadler said, “because that was my grandmother’s last name.”
One administrator contacted by The Journal, Bob Henderson, did recall Weaver. Henderson, the hospital’s former director of patient financial services, said Weaver worked as a patient registrar in the emergency room and eventually supervised some other patient registrars — though not the whole department.
The hospital could not confirm details of Weaver’s employment because their records were destroyed in a massive tornado in 2011 that left 158 dead and over a thousand injured. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Indian Health Services, told The Journal that the tornado also destroyed Weaver’s own records from his time at the hospital.
In a profile published last November in Tribal Business Journal, Weaver related how he began working at the hospital in college. He’d been trying to get an “entry-level” hospital job without any success, he told the Business Journal. When he complained to a classmate he’d been tutoring in art appreciation, the man told him to come see him in his office. The man turned out to be a vice president at the hospital.
“He greeted me with a pack of paperwork and told me to show up on Saturday,” Weaver said. “I spent years there working in seven different positions.”
Weaver told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that he oversaw 80 to 100 staff during his first few positions at the hospital, according to The Wall Street Journal. His account to the Tribal Business Journal of a hospital administrator helping him get an entry-level job during college appears to cast doubt on that claim.
The Tribal Business Journal article does not mention St. John’s Regional Medical Center by name. But St. John’s is the only hospital listed on Weaver’s public résumé, and the dates for Weaver’s stated employment at the hospital line up with his time in college.
The Wall Street Journal was also unable to confirm Weaver’s college degree. His public résumé says he attended Labette Community College, a two-year college in Parsons, Kansas, from 1995 to 1996 and Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, Missouri, from 1996 to 2001.
Missouri Southern State University records confirm Weaver pursued an BA in Spanish from 1996 to 2001, spokesperson Cassie Mathes told The Journal. But he was still “degree seeking” in 2001 and never graduated. An HHS spokesperson told The Journal that Weaver switched majors from Spanish to international business.
“[A]ny suggestion Mr. Weaver is unqualified to run IHS is a pure act of character assassination,” the spokesperson said.
Asked about Weaver’s experience working with IHS, the spokesperson reportedly pointed to his time as an IHS patient as a child. She would not comment on his claims about his hospital employment.
Weaver started and ran four healthcare-related companies since 2006, according to his public résumé. Those companies provide health and other types of insurance, administer tribal health plans, consult with tribes to on cost savings, and provide medical utilization services.
If confirmed, Weaver will take over an agency plagued with problems. Regulators have barred IHS hospitals from the Medicare program for failing to meet federal standards, according to The Journal, and some in Indian Country say poor care is taking a terrible toll.
Lisa White Pipe, a member for the Rosebud Sioux tribal council, lost her father to cancer in 2016. She blames his death, in part, on IHS delaying his treatment.
“It felt undignified how he was treated,” she told The Wall Street Journal last year. “He was in pain and just pushed to the side.”
Some, like Kay Rhoads, principal chief of the Sac and Fox Nation, say Weaver’s unconventional background may be what’s needed to revitalize the ailing IHS.
‘We’ve had people with medical backgrounds for years,” Rhoads, whose tribe hired Weaver’s consulting company last year, told The Wall Street Journal. “And it hasn’t worked.”
the rich asshole Reignites His Most INSANE Campaign Promise While Threatening DACA: ‘Mexico Will Pay For The Wall’
Just when we thought one of some rich asshole’s most insane campaign promises was dead, he went and brought it back: The idea that one of America’s neighbor’s and closest allies, Mexico, would pay for a massive and racist wall along the southern border. While he was holed up at the presidential retreat known as Camp David with his fellow racist GOP leaders, the rich asshole reinforced the idea that our southern neighbor would fund the racist monument — which will, of course, cost billions to build and maintain, and certainly will do very little to actually secure America’s southern border or solve the issue of drug cartels and the like contributing to America’s opioid epidemic — which, of course, has everything to do with the over-prescribing of legal prescription drugs and nothing to do with Mexican drug lords. That did not deter the rich asshole’s racist dog whistling on the subject, though. While speaking from the podium at Camp David flanked by the GOP leadership, the rich asshole said:
“I believe Mexico will pay for the wall. I have a very good relationship with Mexico. But yes, in some form, Mexico will pay for the wall.”
Of course, in recent months, the rich asshole and his GOP bullies have tried to hold the fate of DREAMERS — the undocumented immigrants who arrived here in the United States as children through no fault of their own — hostage in order to force Congressional Democrats to fund his stupid and useless wall, and has set the date to de-fund the Obama-era program that protects them to March. It also seems that he is perfectly fine with shutting down the government in order to get funding for this wall in order to appease his racist, anti-brown-people base.
This is an absolute disgrace. The racism of the rich asshole and his GOP leadership — and especially their rabid base — knows no bounds. America, what have we done?
With Steve Bannon "helping" Team the rich asshole like this, who needs enemies?
CBS
The first of many shocking revelations from Michael Wolff’s tell-all the rich asshole book was Steve Bannon’s admission that some rich asshole Jr’s meeting with Russians at the rich asshole Tower was “treasonous.”
And in a thoroughly botched attempt to walk that stunning comment back on Sunday, Bannon managed to confirm it instead.
In a series of bullet-points that he fed to news outlet Axios, Bannon tried to do damage control by placing the blame on indicted former the rich asshole campaign honcho Paul Manafort, but confirmed the treason quote in the process:
“My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from my life experiences as a Naval officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to hunt Soviet submarines to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was the defeat of ‘the evil empire’ and to making films about Reagan’s war against the Soviets and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in selling uranium to them.”“My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr.”
No matter where those comments were aimed, however, they most certainly hit everyone on the rich asshole campaign who participated in that meeting, including some rich asshole Jr.
On MSNBC’s “AM Joy” Sunday morning, columnist E.J. Dionne pointed out that Bannon didn’t dispute calling the meeting “treasonous,” and even reinforced it by citing his own experience as a military officer:
One other fascinating dimension to Bannon’s botched attempt at an apology is the timing.
He made a point of telling Axios, “I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president’s historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency.” But Trumpworld’s anger with Bannon has been evident for some time, including being cut off by Bannon’s main benefactor several days ago.
What made Bannon wait so long, and what prompted him to finally attempt to repair his bridge with the rich asshole, are open questions for now.
What we do know, though, is that confirming he called the rich asshole Tower meeting “treasonous” is not likely to do it.
the rich asshole adviser Stephen Miller's attempt at damage control did not go well.
CNN host Jake Tapper
CNN
White nationalist and despotic-minded White House senior adviser Stephen Miller was sent out to quash the firestorm from author Michael Wolff’s controversial tell-all book Sunday morning, but wound up self-immolating instead.
In a lengthy interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Miller tried, very unsuccessfully, to minimize the role of ousted White House senior strategist Steve Bannon, and was frustrated in his efforts to run out the clock by dogged host Jake Tapper.
Before things got contentious, Miller made his worst stumble when answering for Bannon’s assertion that there was no way the rich asshole didn’t meet with the Russians who attended the June 2016 the rich asshole Tower meeting.
A hesitant Miller conspicuously refused to rule it out, haltingly telling Tapper, “I have no knowledge of anything to do with that meeting.”
It’s worth noting that in this instance, Miller’s instinct for self-preservation appears to have overridden his charge to cover for the rich asshole. Miller is a witness in the Mueller investigation.
In fairly short order, Miller began to attack CNN in order to avoid Tapper’s tough questioning, insisting that “it brings a lot of you guys a lot of joy” to report on the allegations in Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury.”
But Tapper quickly turned the tables on Miller, continuing his tough questioning, and repeatedly observing that Miller was performing for “an audience of one.”
The interview concluded with an unhinged Miller desperately attacking Tapper in order to avoid questioning, and an extraordinary shutdown from Tapper, who disdainfully dismissed Miller and addressed viewers while Miller continued to rant:
TAPPER: I get it. There’s one viewer that you care about right now, and you’re being obsequious, you’re being a factotum, in order to please him…MILLER: No…TAPPER: …and I think I’ve wasted enough of my viewers’ time. Thank you Stephen.MILLER: Hey Jake, you know who I care about?TAPPER: (to camera) As Republican lawmakers call for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign…
Miller’s embarrassing performance might very well have steamrolled another journalist, but the respected and seasoned Tapper treated this propaganda exercise with the dismissal that it deserved.
If only more would do the same.
When reporters pointed out that Michael Wolff, the author of the explosive new book "Fire and Fury," is not the most credible source of information, the rich asshole thought they were coming to his defense. In reality, they were just doing their jobs.
"I know nothing."
White House
It’s no secret that some rich asshole loves Fox News. He loves the network so much, in fact, that he frequently live-tweets its coverage and uses his Twitter account to promote it. But watching Fox News on a regular basis comes with side effects, as the rich asshole demonstrated Saturday.
In a bizarre press conference at Camp David, the rich asshole hit back at claims made by Michael Wolff in the new book “Fire and Fury,” which purports to give an insider’s look at the first year of the the rich asshole presidency.
Some of the claims in the book are extremely salacious, and many journalists have cautioned readers that Wolff’s credibility is not exactly rock solid. That’s what journalists do — at least most of them.
At Fox News, however, things are done a little bit differently and facts tend to be treated as optional. According to Politifact, 60 percent of the claims they fact-checked from Fox and Fox News have been rated “Mostly False,” “False,” or “Pants on Fire.”
Perhaps that explains why the rich asshole was so shocked to find out that journalists do, indeed, care about facts — regardless of which side they come down on.
Speaking at Camp David, the rich asshole told reporters that he was “heartened” when the media actually took the time to look at Wolff’s history of specious and sometimes baseless claims. He expressed genuine surprise that the “fake news media” pointed out that Wolff’s credibility is not solid, and that his claims should be interpreted with that in mind.
“What I really was heartened by — because I talk about the fake news and the fake news media — was the fact that so many of the people that I talk about in terms of fake news actually came to the defense of this great administration, and even myself, because they know the author and they know he’s a fraud,” the rich asshole said.
In the rich asshole’s eyes, journalists who stuck to the facts were coming to his defense. In reality, they were just doing their jobs.
But when Fox News is your standard, sticking to the facts is anything but ordinary.
Really, though, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the rich asshole thinks everything is “fake news” — because on Fox, most of it is.
Billionaire activist Tom Steyer has purchased hundreds of copies of the exposé "Fire and Fury," and will be sending them to every member of Congress — despite the rich asshole's calls for the book to be banned.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
some rich asshole wants “Fire and Fury,” the new book exposing his administration, removed from bookshelves as quickly as possible.
But billionaire activist Tom Steyer just bought hundreds of copies of the exposé, which will help to keep it on the best-seller list.
the rich asshole has been whining about the book, which is based on interviews with those in the highest levels of his administration (including the rich asshole himself, according to author Michael Wolff). He keeps insisting that the reporting inside is fake and made up, even though other reporters have confirmed some of the details.
So he certainly won’t be happy about Steyer’s latest act.
Steyer told San Francisco’s KQED that he bought a copy of the book for every member of Congress and is now working to make sure they all see it.
“Judging by the excerpts, we went and bought 535 copies, and we’re going to get citizen volunteers to deliver them to the office of every Congress person and senator,” he said.
Since the rich asshole pushed his lawyer to demand the book be pulled off bookshelves, interest has gone off the charts. It rocketed to the top of sales on Amazon, and will almost certainly debut at or near the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
Steyer has been a consistent thorn in the rich asshole’s side. He founded the group NextGen America, which has pushed for action to combat climate change. Ignoring the overwhelming scientific evidence of the phenomenon like most Republicans, the rich asshole has gone a step farther and claimed that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese government.
Steyer also bankrolled a multi-million dollar ad campaign calling for the rich asshole to be impeached for his destructive actions in the White House. Fox News banned the ad from its airwaves and the rich asshole freaked out about it on his Twitter account.
Since then, even more Americans have said the rich asshole should be removed from office — far more than the Americans who want to see him re-elected.
In the KQED interview, Steyer said the rich asshole is a “dangerously unfit president” and renewed his call for his impeachment.
When he finds out about Steyer’s book buying adventure, the rich asshole will not be pleased. There is a good chance that he will unleash yet another bizarre Twitter rant about it — and then the book will sell even more copies.
the rich asshole says he’s ‘like, really smart,’ ‘a very stable genius’
POSTED 11:10 AM, JANUARY 6, 2018, BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President some rich asshole, portrayed in a new book as a leader who doesn’t understand the weight of his office, took to Twitter on Saturday to defend his mental fitness and boast about his intelligence, saying he is “like, really smart” and “a very stable genius.”
He posted a series of tweets from Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, a few hours before holding meetings on the 2018 legislative agenda with Republican congressional leaders and Cabinet members.
It was his latest pushback against author Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House.” The book draws a derogatory portrait of the 45th president as an undisciplined man-child who didn’t actually want to win the White House, and who spends his evenings eating cheeseburgers in bed, watching television and talking on the telephone to old friends.
The book also quotes the rich asshole’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and other prominent advisers as questioning the president’s competence.
the rich asshole is having none of it.
He tweeted that critics are “taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.” The president said “actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.”
the rich asshole said going from successful businessman to reality TV star to president on his first try “would qualify as not smart, but genius …. and a very stable genius at that!”
Reagan died in 2004, at age 93, from pneumonia complicated by the Alzheimer’s disease that had progressively clouded his mind. At times when he was president, Reagan seemed forgetful and would lose his train of thought while talking.
Doctors, however, said Alzheimer’s was not to blame, noting the disease was diagnosed years after he left office. Reagan announced his diagnosis in a letter to the American people in 1994, more than five years after leaving the White House.
the rich asshole, now 71, was the oldest president ever when assuming office. Reagan was nearly eight months younger.
Chatter about the rich asshole’s mental fitness for office has intensified in recent months on cable news shows and among Democrats in Congress.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders this week called such suggestions “disgraceful and laughable.”
“If he was unfit, he probably wouldn’t be sitting there and wouldn’t have defeated the most qualified group of candidates the Republican Party has ever seen,” she said, calling him “an incredibly strong and good leader.”
In early December, the House voted overwhelmingly to kill a resolution from a liberal Democrat to impeach the rich asshole. Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, said the rich asshole had associated his presidency with causes rooted in bigotry and racism.
To back his claim accusing the rich asshole of high misdemeanors, Green cited incidents such as the rich asshole’s blaming both sides for violence at a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his sharing of hateful, anti-Muslim videos posted online by a fringe British extremist group.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in a statement shortly before the vote that while “legitimate questions have been raised about his fitness to lead this nation,” they argued “now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment.”
the rich asshole says he’s ‘like, really smart,’ ‘a very stable genius’
POSTED 11:10 AM, JANUARY 6, 2018, BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President some rich asshole, portrayed in a new book as a leader who doesn’t understand the weight of his office, took to Twitter on Saturday to defend his mental fitness and boast about his intelligence, saying he is “like, really smart” and “a very stable genius.”
He posted a series of tweets from Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, a few hours before holding meetings on the 2018 legislative agenda with Republican congressional leaders and Cabinet members.
It was his latest pushback against author Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House.” The book draws a derogatory portrait of the 45th president as an undisciplined man-child who didn’t actually want to win the White House, and who spends his evenings eating cheeseburgers in bed, watching television and talking on the telephone to old friends.
The book also quotes the rich asshole’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and other prominent advisers as questioning the president’s competence.
the rich asshole is having none of it.
He tweeted that critics are “taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.” The president said “actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.”
the rich asshole said going from successful businessman to reality TV star to president on his first try “would qualify as not smart, but genius …. and a very stable genius at that!”
Reagan died in 2004, at age 93, from pneumonia complicated by the Alzheimer’s disease that had progressively clouded his mind. At times when he was president, Reagan seemed forgetful and would lose his train of thought while talking.
Doctors, however, said Alzheimer’s was not to blame, noting the disease was diagnosed years after he left office. Reagan announced his diagnosis in a letter to the American people in 1994, more than five years after leaving the White House.
the rich asshole, now 71, was the oldest president ever when assuming office. Reagan was nearly eight months younger.
Chatter about the rich asshole’s mental fitness for office has intensified in recent months on cable news shows and among Democrats in Congress.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders this week called such suggestions “disgraceful and laughable.”
“If he was unfit, he probably wouldn’t be sitting there and wouldn’t have defeated the most qualified group of candidates the Republican Party has ever seen,” she said, calling him “an incredibly strong and good leader.”
In early December, the House voted overwhelmingly to kill a resolution from a liberal Democrat to impeach the rich asshole. Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, said the rich asshole had associated his presidency with causes rooted in bigotry and racism.
To back his claim accusing the rich asshole of high misdemeanors, Green cited incidents such as the rich asshole’s blaming both sides for violence at a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his sharing of hateful, anti-Muslim videos posted online by a fringe British extremist group.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in a statement shortly before the vote that while “legitimate questions have been raised about his fitness to lead this nation,” they argued “now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment.”
the rich asshole says he’s ‘like, really smart,’ ‘a very stable genius’
POSTED 11:10 AM, JANUARY 6, 2018, BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President some rich asshole, portrayed in a new book as a leader who doesn’t understand the weight of his office, took to Twitter on Saturday to defend his mental fitness and boast about his intelligence, saying he is “like, really smart” and “a very stable genius.”
He posted a series of tweets from Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, a few hours before holding meetings on the 2018 legislative agenda with Republican congressional leaders and Cabinet members.
It was his latest pushback against author Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House.” The book draws a derogatory portrait of the 45th president as an undisciplined man-child who didn’t actually want to win the White House, and who spends his evenings eating cheeseburgers in bed, watching television and talking on the telephone to old friends.
The book also quotes the rich asshole’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and other prominent advisers as questioning the president’s competence.
the rich asshole is having none of it.
He tweeted that critics are “taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.” The president said “actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.”
the rich asshole said going from successful businessman to reality TV star to president on his first try “would qualify as not smart, but genius …. and a very stable genius at that!”
Reagan died in 2004, at age 93, from pneumonia complicated by the Alzheimer’s disease that had progressively clouded his mind. At times when he was president, Reagan seemed forgetful and would lose his train of thought while talking.
Doctors, however, said Alzheimer’s was not to blame, noting the disease was diagnosed years after he left office. Reagan announced his diagnosis in a letter to the American people in 1994, more than five years after leaving the White House.
the rich asshole, now 71, was the oldest president ever when assuming office. Reagan was nearly eight months younger.
Chatter about the rich asshole’s mental fitness for office has intensified in recent months on cable news shows and among Democrats in Congress.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders this week called such suggestions “disgraceful and laughable.”
“If he was unfit, he probably wouldn’t be sitting there and wouldn’t have defeated the most qualified group of candidates the Republican Party has ever seen,” she said, calling him “an incredibly strong and good leader.”
In early December, the House voted overwhelmingly to kill a resolution from a liberal Democrat to impeach the rich asshole. Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, said the rich asshole had associated his presidency with causes rooted in bigotry and racism.
To back his claim accusing the rich asshole of high misdemeanors, Green cited incidents such as the rich asshole’s blaming both sides for violence at a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his sharing of hateful, anti-Muslim videos posted online by a fringe British extremist group.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in a statement shortly before the vote that while “legitimate questions have been raised about his fitness to lead this nation,” they argued “now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment.”
the rich asshole strikes back at 'Fire and Fury' allegations from Camp David
THURMONT, Md. — President the rich asshole on Saturday launched a defense of his fitness for office, striking back against a new book that portrays him as a man who is ill-equipped to handle the presidency.
the rich asshole spoke out at the presidential retreat at Camp David, where he is meeting with Republican lawmakers and Cabinet officials to draw up a game plan for 2018.
He spoke to reporters after sending out a series of tweets earlier in the day describing himself as "a very stable genius" and "like, really smart," a clear reaction to the book by Michael Wolff that has zoomed to the top of Amazon's bestseller list.
the rich asshole suggested that he had weighed in on the discussion of his fitness, a decision sure to lead to more coverage of the issue, to set the record straight.
“Well, only because I went to the best colleges, or college,” the president said when asked why he tweeted about his mental state, and not the issues being discussed at Camp David.
the rich asshole said he was an "excellent student" and “came out and made millions and billions of dollars, became one of the top business people, went to television and for 10 years was a tremendous success, as you probably have heard.”
the rich asshole was flanked by 10 top GOP lawmakers and administration officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who reportedly called the president a “moron” after a national security meeting last summer.
A State Department spokeswoman later denied the claim.
The president then turned his fire to Wolff, whom he called a “fraud.”
“[I] ran for president one time and won, and then I hear this guy who does not know me, does not know me at all. By the way, did not interview me for three hours, it didn't exist, OK? It's in his imagination," the rich asshole said.
Wolff claims he did interview the president and conducted more than 200 interviews with White House and campaign officials for the book.
When asked about the book itself, the rich asshole said, “I consider it a work of fiction and I consider it a disgrace.”
The president complained about the country’s “very weak” libel laws, saying “if they were strong, it would be very helpful,” because “you wouldn't have things like that happen.”
The book has engulfed the White House in controversy and stymied its efforts to seize momentum to push forward on its legislative agenda in 2018.
Current and former the rich asshole aides have ripped Wolff's "Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House" as trash that includes numerous falsehoods, but have also been aghast that the journalist would have been given access to administration figures.
Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon gives Wolff some of his juiciest material, and has yet to say publicly he was misquoted. Bannon's participation led the rich asshole to completely break with his former close adviser earlier in the week.
The book has dominated news coverage partly because of the rich asshole reaction, overshadowing other stories that might give the rich asshole a jolt of momentum, including another positive jobs report and further growth in the stock market following Congress's passage of a GOP tax-cut bill.
Wolff said in a new interview that he has heard from sources in the White House that the rich asshole is “bouncing off the walls” with anger over the book.
“I hear that the president is very angry, or, let me be precise: I hear that he is truly bouncing off the walls,” Wolff told The Hollywood Reporter.
He added that he didn’t get the sense that the rich asshole “has thought of anything other than himself at any given time.”
White House chief of staff John Kelly on Saturday disputed that characterization. Asked if the president showed signs of agitation Friday night or Saturday morning, he said, “not at all.”
Kelly told reporters at Camp David he had not seen the president’s Saturday morning tweets. But when shown the messages on a reporter’s phone, he described them as just another attempt by the rich asshole to circumvent the media.
Speaking to the press, the rich asshole answered questions on topics ranging from the Russia investigation, North Korea and the party’s legislative agenda.
The president again insisted he was not under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and reiterated his belief his campaign did not collude with Russia’s election-meddling efforts in 2016.
“Everything I’ve done is 100 percent proper,” the rich asshole said when asked about reports he urged Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia probe. “That is what I do, is I do things proper.”
the rich asshole said a New York Times report that he asked White House counsel Don McGahn to talk Sessions out of recusal was “off,” but did not explain further.
The president also expressed hope that good can come out of upcoming talks between South Korea and North Korea, an apparent shift from his stated skepticism that diplomacy can solve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
the rich asshole also said he is open to talking with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he taunted this week over the size of his “nuclear button.”
“Sure, I always believe in talking,” the rich asshole said.
But the president said he would not engage in talks without preconditions.
“We have a very firm stance,” he said, adding that Kim “knows I’m not messing around, I’m not messing around, not even a little bit, not even 1 percent.”
the rich asshole began to sketch out his legislative agenda for 2018. He suggested he might back off his push to get started quickly on welfare reform, unless Democrats get on board.
“We’ll try and do something in a bipartisan way, otherwise we’ll be holding it for a little bit later,” the rich asshole said.
The president said he had “great meetings” with his counterparts in Congress that touched on the budget, security, infrastructure, military and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
But the rich asshole said he would not agree to relief for young immigrants covered by the DACA program unless Democrats accept his demand for a border wall with Mexico.
“We want the wall,” he said. "The wall is going to happen, or we’re not going to have DACA.”
It wasn’t all business for the officials at Camp David.
the rich asshole and the lawmakers on Friday night watched the film “The Greatest Showman,” about the life of the famous showman and circus promoter, P.T. Barnum.
The movie “celebrates the birth of show business, and tells of a visionary who rose from nothing to create a spectacle that became a worldwide sensation,” according to the online film database IMDb.
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