This is a daily or weekly record of the Trump presidency so hopefully future generations will learn what happens when you elect an narcissistic, thin skinned, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic unqualified buffoon in a position of power where he has access to nuclear codes.
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Friday, January 12, 2018
January 9th, 2017 - January 9th, 2017. 421-421 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no.45, and 351-351 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
President some rich asshole’s lawyers are reportedly in negotiations with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office to conduct an interview as part of the ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Given the rich asshole’s difficulty in controlling his impulses, however, many legal experts say they’d be wary of letting the rich asshole chat with Mueller’s crack team of prosecutors.
One source who is described as having “knowledge of the Mueller investigation” tellsNew York Magazine’s Cristian Farias that the rich asshole is the kind of client that gives attorneys nightmares because he will “humiliate you and destroy you because he just can’t follow directions.”
The Mueller team will be ready to go with several carefully calibrated questions designed to trip up the president, says the source, and the president’s lawyers will have a very difficult time controlling his responses.
“He’s a loose cannon,” the source told Farias. “No matter how much you prep him, no matter what small words you use to explain to him the potential landmines he could step on … he will leap in blindly and say whatever pops into his head, and that could be a potential disaster.”
Farias also notes that even pro-the rich asshole legal pundit Alan Dershowitz has questioned the wisdom of letting the rich asshole be interviewed by Mueller, although he said that he would never be willing to let any client get grilled by the prosecution.
Through all of their whining, the rich asshole TV doesn't bother to deny he forgot the words.
some rich asshole could not even escape his failure as president in front of a friendly red state crowd at Monday night’s college football playoff game, where he was met with boos from the crowd. That failure was compounded by hypocrisy when the rich asshole bungled the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Despite his crusade against NFL players protesting racism by kneeling during the national anthem, the rich asshole clearly stumbled his way through the anthem he claims to love:
On Tuesday morning’s “Fox & Friends,” the gang was joined by Fox News contributor and disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to complain that pointing out the rich asshole’s awkward performance was somehow unfair.
Seconds after playing actual video of the rich asshole blowing the anthem, co-host Steve Doocy claimed the rich asshole “showed how you do it,” and complained about “internet trolls” criticizing the rich asshole for forgetting the words to the anthem.
Gingrich’s response was to lash out at the rich asshole’s critics, but not to refute the criticism in any way:
GINGRICH: I think if some rich asshole came out on the field, sang the national anthem solo, and did so perfectly, people on the left would claim this was a sign he is not really doing his job because he is studying music, and how can he be spending all this time studying music when he ought to be president. This is just junk.
Gingrich is right about one thing, which is that the rich asshole’s racist appropriation of the national anthem protests is worthy of criticism under any circumstances. If you are going to make a literal federal case out of singing the national anthem, then knowing the words to it is the absolute lowest of expectations.
the rich asshole’s inability to meet the lowest expectations is no surprise by now, but worthy of criticism every single time.
When some Republicans senators offered up a fix for Obamacare, the vice president worked with anti-choice radicals to kill the deal.
Amidst the year-end legislative chaos that unfolded as Republicans scrambled to pass their tax scam and present some rich asshole with a single congressional victory in 2017, there was an attempt to stabilize the health insurance market.
The tax bill included a provision that scraps the Obamacare individual mandate, the mechanism that requires Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty.
In response to that radical move, a bipartisan deal was proposed to make sure the health insurance markets remained secure. But then, after anti-abortion zealots met privately with Vice President Mike Pence in December to urge the administration to kill the deal because it did not include restrictions on federal funding of abortion. This, despite the Hyde Amendment, which already bans federal funding of abortion.
“The next day,” the Daily Beast reports, “key lawmakers involved in crafting the legislation announced they were punting on the issue until 2018.”
The move was a major embarrassment for Republicans like Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who co-sponsored the effort to stabilize the health insurance markets. Collins was widely ridiculed in December for voting in favor of the radical GOP tax bill in exchange for a vague promise that Republicans would address key concerns she had about undercutting Obamacare; a promise that was quickly broken.
As the tax bill was careening through Congress without the benefit of open hearings last year, the Congressional Budget Office announced the GOP plan would result in 13 million more Americans without insurance over the next 10 years.
The bipartisan fix would have restored “Obamacare subsidies that the rich asshole administration cut off in October, and it would give individual states more flexibility to set insurance regulations,” the Daily Beast notes.
After the rich asshole reportedly expressed support for the deal during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, anti-choice lobbyists met privately with Pence, demanding that the bill be stopped because it might mean that federal money would be used to fund health plans that in turn might fund abortions.
The day after the Pence meeting, Collins and her colleagues announced the bill to stabilize the health insurance markets wouldn’t be taken up until 2018.
But not anytime soon. For now, the GOP-controlled Congress is trying to figure out how to avoid a government shutdown in coming weeks.
some rich asshole stands for the national anthem (screen grab)
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some rich asshole Jr., the son of President some rich asshole, on Tuesday praised his father for showing “some respect” for the national anthem and the American flag.
At Monday’s national College Football National Championship, the rich asshole made an appearance long enough to have his photo taken standing for the anthem before quickly departing back to Washington, D.C. In the past, the president has criticized professional football players who kneel during the anthem to protest systemic racism in the United States.
But after the rich asshole was seen mouthing words that did not match the lyrics of The Star Spangled Banner, some questioned whether the president actually knows the words to his nation’s anthem.
But not Don Jr. In a tweet on Tuesday, the president’s son said that he was proud of his father for showing people “how it’s done.”
“It’s not that hard. Just show some respect for your country,” Don Jr. wrote.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough warned Republicans they would one day pay a price for turning a blind eye to President some rich asshole’s bigotry, instability and abuses of constitutional norms.
The “Morning Joe” host opened a segment asking how Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) could “split the difference” on the rich asshole’s bigotry, and he warned conservatives like New York Times columnist David Brooks not to ignore obvious warning signs about the president.
“Mark it down: Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018, the bill will come due on Republicans who think this is all worth it,” Scarborough said. “If you think America trading in their values in all the way some rich asshole has traded in his values for a couple of points reduction in the corporate tax, or regulatory reform around the margins, understand there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You and your party are going to pay for it.”
Brooks argued in Tuesday’s column that anti-the rich asshole conservatives should preserve their moral authority with the president’s supporters to prepare for a crisis on the horizon, and Scarborough said that was overly optimistic.
“The crisis is here, that’s the difference — I think that’s the difference,” Scarborough said. “That’s a great point. He says the crisis is coming. That’s what separates David Brooks and me right now — I think the crisis is here.”
Scarborough and MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist, disagreed on another crucial point with Brooks, who argued that the rich asshole served only as a distraction from consequential activity inside the executive branch.
“I think this idea that you can have a presidency separate from the president is just not the way our system works, and i think inevitably, that just doesn’t work,” Robinson said. “You might think it’s working for a week or for a month, but ultimately we give enormous responsibility and enormous power to one person, to the president of the United States, and if the president of the United States is not fit to hold the office, that’s — that’s not a sustainable thing.”
President some rich asshole speaking (via screengrab).
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In a scathing editorial published after some rich asshole addressed farmers in Nashville on Monday afternoon, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal hammered the president’s proposed trade policies that will damage those same farmers by shutting down markets for them.
In his Monday speech, the president touted the GOP’s recently signed tax plan that he told the assembled crowd will, “keep your farms in the family” because of changes to the estate tax.
According to the Journal, those farms may be worth a lot less if the rich asshole gets his wish and pulls out of Nafta as he promised, thereby “making America weaker.”
“Farmers are scared stiff that some rich asshole might take a protectionist turn that would impose more government barriers,” the editorial explains. “Highly efficient and productive, U.S. farmers thrive in a competitive global market. But tariffs are border taxes that raise costs for U.S. producers and consumers. Managed trade via quotas also shelters producers from competition and raises costs for consumers.”
The editorial goes on to delineate the damage the rich asshole has already inflicted on farmers and ranchers in the rural communities that supported him in the 2016 presidential election.
“some rich asshole already walloped U.S. farm exporters when he dropped out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has given Europe, Australia and Canada an edge to meet growing Asian demand for high-value farm products. After Japan imposed 50% ‘safeguard’ tariffs on frozen beef last July, U.S. imports dropped by a quarter. Imports from Australia, which has a trade deal with Japan and supplies about half of its frozen beef, increased by 30%.” the Journal reports.
“The greatest danger to the Farm Belt is that some rich asshole might withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. sends about $18 billion a year in farm products to Mexico and $23 billion to Canada, which together account for a third of American farm exports. Since Nafta came into force in 1994, farm exports to Mexico and Canada have more than quadrupled. Soybean exports to Mexico have quintupled,” the editorial continues.
“If the U.S. nixes Nafta, the three economies would return to most-favored-nation trading status and tariffs would revert to World Trade Organization levels. This would harm the U.S. the most since Canada and Mexico have higher tariffs under WTO rules than the U.S. does. Mexico imposes a 10% tariff on pork, 25% on beef and 75% on potatoes. Those rates are zero under Nafta.”
“One argument some rich asshole should hear is that a U.S. withdrawal from Nafta would most hurt states like Iowa and Wisconsin that gave him his election victory.” the editorial continues before concluding, “Trashing Nafta would be among the great self-inflicted wounds in history. It would also tell other countries that the U.S. can’t be trusted to keep its word on trade, which would make it impossible to cut the bilateral trade deals the President says he wants. This is a strategy for making America weaker.”
Ivanka tried to hop on the #MeToo bandwagon. It did not go well.
Ivanka the rich asshole tried to attach herself to the empowering speech Oprah Winfrey gave at the Golden Globes Awards, but was immediately called out for her role in covering up for arguably the most infamous sexual predator in the world: her father.
In her speech accepting the Cecil B. Demille lifetime achievement award, Winfrey said, “I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up. … I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed, bills to pay and dreams to pursue.” She concluded by noting, “a new day is on the horizon.”
Ivanka praised Winfrey’s speech, tweeting, “Just saw @Oprah’s empowering & inspiring speech at last night’s #GoldenGlobes. Let’s all come together, women & men, & say #TIMESUP! #United”
the rich asshole’s eldest daughter has been complicit in covering for him. She has repeatedly been pushed by White House insiders as a moderating influence over his behavior. But in reality, she has simply stood by and been silent. Or worse, openly promoted his harmful, anti-woman agenda.
It is a role she has embraced for years, including when he appeared on “The Howard Stern Show” in 2006 and laughed along with the rich asshole when Robin Quivers called him a “sexual predator.”
Video Player
00:00
00:18
STERN: Donald, seriously you know about sexual predators and things like that —
QUIVERS: You are one!
STERN: — all right, I wasn’t going to say that.
SOME RICH ASSHOLE: It’s true.
IVANKA RICH ASSHOLE: (laughs)
There are multiple, credible accounts from women who have accused the rich asshole of sexual assault and misbehavior. And he of course infamously admitted that he assaults women in the “Access Hollywood” video.
Ivanka has never publicly condemned or rebuked her father for this, or any of his other bigoted actions and beliefs. Her flailing attempt to attach herself to Winfrey’s speech was slammed immediately.
Model Chrissy Teigen told Ivanka to “go away,” while actress Alyssa Milano told her, “Great! You can make a lofty donation to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund that is available to support your father’s accusers.”
Ivanka the rich asshole is not an advocate for women. She has traded power and access in exchange for her silence and refusal to speak about her father and his actions. She is not seen as a credible voice, and the attempt to jump on Winfrey’s bandwagon backfired in public humiliation.
the rich asshole's signature combination of the ridiculous and the terrifying strikes again.
some rich asshole’s threats against North Korea have moved into a frightening new phase, from overcompensating Twitter play to the planning stages of a provocative military attack.
According to new reporting from the conservative Wall Street Journal, the rich asshole administration officials are “quietly debating whether it’s possible to mount a limited military strike against North Korean sites without igniting an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula.”
In characteristically Trumpian fashion, the plan even has a trivial bully’s nickname — the “bloody nose” strategy — and features a heavy dose of finger-crossing that North Korea won’t respond by murdering millions of people:
React to some nuclear or missile test with a targeted strike against a North Korean facility to bloody Pyongyang’s nose and illustrate the high price the regime could pay for its behavior. The hope would be to make that point without inciting a full-bore reprisal by North Korea.
It’s an enormously risky idea, and there is a debate among the rich asshole administration officials about whether it is feasible. North Koreans have a vast array of artillery tubes pointed across the demilitarized zone at Seoul, the capital of South Korea, with which they could inflict thousands of casualties within minutes if they choose to unleash an all-out barrage.
As if all of this isn’t frightening enough on its own, consider exactly whom this leak is designed to reach. Past administrations have frequently used press leaks to engage in public diplomacy, to send messages to foreign leaders without changing official policy.
But in this case, Kim Jong Un does not appear to be the audience for this leak. He’s simultaneously unlikely to believe that such an attack would merely be a token strike, and unlikely to care even if he did.
No, this leak appears aimed at making the rich asshole look tough, while also changing the subject from the week of heavy debate about his mental state. Ironically, it was the rich asshole’s threat against North Korea that actually started that debate, a fact that was quickly obscured by the bombshell revelations in Michael Wolff’s book.
the rich asshole is obviously trying to change the subject with this reckless leak, but the reality is that this is the subject. Risking millions of lives for the meager benefit of looking tough is the very definition of unstable, and anyone who would entertain such an idea is the very definition of unfit.
some rich asshole (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia)
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some rich asshole is not telekinetic. His brain may be a medical marvel, but for terrible reasons, not because he can move objects with his mind. Nonetheless, the rich asshole recently took credit for keeping airplanes all around the world from crashing in 2017.
“Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation,” the (I still can’t believe this person is) president tweeted Tuesday morning. “Good news – it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!”
Yet there hasn’t been a fatal airline crash in the U.S. since 2009, and the current head of the FAA is Obama appointee Michael Huerta. If we’re going to go around arbitrarily assigning credit for planes staying in the sky, maybe we should give it to the guy whose job description includes “the safety and efficiency of the largest aerospace system in the world.” Or maybe pilots, or possibly airplane mechanics. Or according to the rich asshole’s logic, every single person in the world who took a flight this year, since I’m sure we all were “very strict” about our wish not to die in a plane crash.
“This isn’t a guns situation,” the rich asshole claimed in a mind-boggling statement after a man with a gun killed 26 people at a Texas church. The guy was white, thankfully, or it would have been terrorism.
That shooting came roughly one month after a gunman killed 58 people and injured more than 500 others in Las Vegas, a situation the rich asshole nonsensically described as a “miracle.” If the shooting had been in Chicago—both the city and the GOP racist dog whistle—it would have triggered a threat to “send in the feds!”
Instead, the rich asshole ($30.3 million from the NRA) and his complicit congressional Republicans ($54 million from the NRA in 2016) did nothing but issue useless post-massacre “thoughts and prayers.” At the very least, they deserve to split credit for 2017 being the deadliest year for mass shootings in modern history. There were 345 mass killing incidents, resulting in 574 deaths.
2. The death of more than 1,000 Americans in Puerto Rico.
Hurricane Maria was a devastating natural disaster, but there was nothing natural about the death toll that followed the storm. the rich asshole’s response wavered between callous indifference and general ineptitude, and both were echoed throughout his cabinet and party. As Puerto Ricans struggled without drinkable water or electricity, the rich asshole tweeted insults about the island’s debts, claimed relief efforts were hampered by “big water…ocean water,” and nodded to his racist base with complaints that survivors “want[ed] everything to be done for them.”
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz’s increasingly impatient appeals for help were met with rude, misogynist responses, which the rich asshole tweeted from the comfort of his luxury golf course. Meanwhile, survivors were driven to drink from toxic water sources out of sheer desperation. When the rich asshole finally did visit the island, he was his typical buffoonish self, demanding praise from local politicians and essentially insinuating residents should be grateful thousands more hadn’t perished. Did I mention he thought it was a good idea to pelt survivors with rolls of paper towels? Because the rich asshole is the worst. Not worst president. Just worst ever.
The official death tally for Puerto Rico remains at 64, but that gross underestimate is based solely on the number of people killed by the storm. Far more have died as a result of the rich asshole administration’s abysmal response. A New York Times investigation puts the toll closer to 1,050. On December 29, the governor’s office announced that “approximately 55 percent of the customers who are able to receive electric power have their service restored.” An unacceptable number of people remain without potable water.
Back on the mainland last week, the rich asshole visited one of his golf courses for the 92nd time since he was elected. According to the rich asshole Golf Count (a site that does just one thing, but stays awful busy), the estimated cost of those visits to taxpayers is at least $46,239,580.
3. A three-year high in coal miner deaths.
In the rare moments when they were not being interviewed about their unwavering support for the rich asshole by the New York Times, coal miners mostly watched as their jobs continued to disappear. (By simply lying about the number of new coal jobs, the rich asshole easily countered this observable reality among his gullible base.) Even more tragically, the number of coal miner deaths rose to 15 last year after hitting a record low of 8 in 2016.
In mid-December, the rich asshole administration’s mining regulators wrote that they may be considering getting rid of Obama-era rules around coal and rock dust designed to safeguard against black lung. “I think it’s a very bad signal for coal miners…I don’t think the rich asshole administration has coal miners’ best interests at heart. They’re aligned with coal mine operators as opposed to miners, and the only reasons they would want to reopen these rules or revisit these rules are to weaken them,” Tony Oppegard, a Kentucky attorney who represents miners, told the Associated Press.
Back in 1990, the rich asshole told Playboy magazine, “The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son. If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines. But most people don’t have the imagination–or whatever–to leave their mine. They don’t have ‘it.’”
In New York City, hate crimes jumped 28.4 percent; in Los Angeles by 13 percent; in Philadelphia by 9 percent; in Chicago, by 8.3 percent, and in Phoenix, Arizona, by a whopping 46 percent. Houston, the nation’s No. 4 city, bucked the trend, reporting five incidents through July 31, the same number as last year.
the rich asshole said a group of white racist marchers in Charlottesville, among them the man who struck and killed Heather Heyer with his vehicle, included “some very fine people.” The quote led countless detractors to accuse the rich asshole of being a white supremacist, but that’s only because he totally is.
5. Related, the precipitous rise in schoolyard bullying.
In a survey of K-12 educators in the months before the rich asshole’s election win, the SPLC found a precipitous rise in incidents of racist bullying. In the weeks after November 8, a poll of 10,000 K-12 teachers, counselors and administrators found an uptick in the “use of slurs and derogatory language, and disturbing incidents involving swastikas, Nazi salutes and Confederate flags.” Roughly 90 percent of respondents said the “school climate has been negatively affected, and most of them believe it will have a long-lasting impact.” Similarly, “80 percent describe heightened anxiety and concern on the part of students worried about the impact of the election on themselves and their families.”
A Buzzfeed News analysis of data from the Documenting Hate Project turned up “more than 50 incidents, across 26 states, in which a K-12 student invoked the rich asshole’s name or message in an apparent effort to harass a classmate during the past school year.” A survey from the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California at Los Angeles, found “more than 20 percent of teachers reported heightened polarization on campus and incivility in their classrooms…[and] 27.7 percent of teachers reported an increase in students making derogatory remarks about other groups during class discussions.” A number of teachers interviewed “described how the political environment ‘unleashed’ virulently racist, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, or homophobic rhetoric in their schools and classrooms.”
“Individuals who do harbor perspectives and racism and bigotry now feel empowered to offer their views more naturally in class discussions, which has led to tension, and even conflict in the classroom,” one Indiana teacher stated.
“I had students stand up in the middle of class and directly address their peers with racial slurs,” an Ohio teacher said. “This is not something I have seen before.”
6. International travel to the U.S. plummeted.
As early as March, the travel industry was forecasting a decline in the number of visitors to America from other countries and predicting a loss of billions in tourism dollars. The drop-off was dubbed the rich asshole Slump, mostly because the president is awful and his name should be associated with the awful things his presidency causes. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce National Travel and Tourism, international travel to America fell 4 percent last year over 2016. While there was a drop-off in visitors from every world region, the decline was most pronounced with Middle East visitors from obvious reasons.
President some rich asshole was booed as his motorcade arrived at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Monday night ahead of the college football national championship game.
Fans were waiting outside for an extended period as multiple entrances were shut down to accommodate the rich asshole's arrival, leaving many seats empty as the game came closer and closer to kickoff.
Walking out for the national anthem, the rich asshole received a slightly warmer reception.
President some rich asshole's motorcade was booed as it came into the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Monday night ahead of the college football national championship game between the Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide.
An hour before #CFPNationalChampionship kickoff, tens of 1,000s of fans left standing in cold rain with no way to get inside, multiple gates shut down for Trump arrival.
Fans were waiting outside in the rain as the rich asshole, dealing with longer wait times due to some of the stadium's entrances being closed to accomodate the rich asshole. As the presidential motorcade rolled past the awaiting fans, many of those hoping to making into the stadium before opening kickoff booed.
Even after more entrances were opened up once the rich asshole was in the building, there were long lines of Georgia and Alabama fans waiting outside the venue as the game inched closer and closer to opening kickoff. Inside, the empty seats were apparent.
"Yes, there were delays as a result of the Secret Service protocol. Gate 1 was closed for a time. We regret that fans were inconvenienced," College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said in a statement.
"This is the worst I've ever seen," said Lance McInnish, who came to Atlanta with his wife. McInnish and his wife got into the stadium in time for the national anthem, ending a three-hour wait outside in the chilly, rainy weather. "I've been to Arlington, I was at the Sugar Bowl last week, I've been here a couple times. It just seemed like nobody knew what they were doing," McInnish said.
"It's a madhouse," said Lawanda Buggs, whose son Isaiah is a defensive lineman for Alabama. "I'm just getting in and I'm mad. I waited three hours. I'm a parent."
the rich asshole would later take the field during the national anthem, where he would receive a mix of boos and cheers in what sounded like a slightly warmer reception.
What a coincidence that the rich asshole administration decided to reverse course on new offshore drilling only near the state where his resort is located.
The rich asshole administration is already attempting to backpedal a bit on a recent controversial announcement to upend a ban put in place by President Barack Obama and allow new offshore oil and gas drilling around much of the coastal United States.
But interestingly, the reversal of course thus far only includes waters around the state of Florida — otherwise known as the home of the rich asshole’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s explanation for the removal of Florida from the drilling plans insisted that the change was due to “[Florida] Governor [Rick] Scott’s leadership through hurricane season” and a desire to “[take] into consideration the local and state voice.”
“I support the governor’s position that Florida is unique and its coasts are heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver,” Zinke continued.
It’s nice that the rich asshole and Zinke want to listen to the concerns of a state government over the damage expanded drilling operations could cause.
But it’s notable that, thus far, the only “local and state voice” that the rich asshole administration seems keen to listen to is from a Republican governor in a state where the rich asshole properties have such a strong presence.
Further, as The New York Times noted, “The governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, Oregon and Washington have all opposed offshore drilling plans.”
And California Attorney General Xavier Becerra pointed out that his state is not exactly low on the list of unique tourist destinations:
.@SecretaryZinke: California is also "unique" & our "coasts are heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver." Our “local and state voice” is firmly opposed to any and all offshore drilling.
California Gov. Jerry Brown slammed the rich asshole’s proposal to expand drilling off his state’s coast as “reckless” and “short-sighted” — particularly considering the horrific history of oil drilling disasters off California’s coastline.
The dangers involved with offshore drilling would impact any location equally.
But to the rich asshole administration, potential damage to a friendly state where the rich asshole brand rakes in so much cash apparently takes precedence over any other state’s concerns.
President some rich asshole ended immigration protection for 200,000 Salvadorans living in the United States. This Monday, the rich asshole administration announced it will revoke the Temporary Protected Status or TPS granted to Salvadorans following the earthquakes that hit their country in 2001.
AP
After remaining in the U.S. for over 10 years, established Salvadorans now have until September 9th, 2019, to leave the United States or find lawful means to remain. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a statement that said:
“Based on careful consideration of available information, including recommendations received as part of an inter-agency consultation process, the Secretary determined that the original conditions caused by the 2001 earthquakes no longer exist. Thus, under the applicable statute, the current TPS designation must be terminated.”
Immigrant advocates and government officials from El Salvador asked Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to extend the TPS designation, citing the horrific gang violence in the South American country. They also said that deporting so many working people at once could have a destabilizing effect on the U.S. economy.
Others urged her to consider the 190,000 U.S.-born children of Salvadoran TPS recipients. Families will be forced to either break up, move back to El Salvador and uproot their lives, or remain in the United States and risk deportation.
Telemundo
On Monday, Senior DHS officials said that the Salvadoran families will have to make that decision. They said it isn’t DHS’ fault that Congress has not legislated an enduring lawful immigration status for those currently protected by TPS.
The potential economic consequence is not part of Nielsen’s decision-making process, and the 18-month delay should allow Congress time to craft a potential legislative solution. the rich asshole’s administration repeatedly called the TPS program an example of American immigration policy gone awry.
They created the designation to provide “temporary” protection, but instead, provided years of residency. Lawmakers from both parties blasted DHS’s decision, with Rep. Jim McGovern calling it “a shameful and cynical move” whose purpose is to “score political points with the extreme right-wing Republican base.”
the rich asshole is now trying to sue everyone involved with the Steele dossier.
The explosive transcript from the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings released Tuesday by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is extremely damning for some rich asshole. It validates the Steele dossier alleging the rich asshole was blackmailed by Russia, despite months of GOP attempts to discredit it and even to have its author prosecuted.
the rich asshole’s reaction? He is going to sue everyone.
Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs reports that the rich asshole’s legal team has filed defamation suits against Fusion GPS and its founder Glenn Simpson for commissioning the dossier, as well as against BuzzFeed News for publishing it.
Completely unintimidated, BuzzFeed dared the rich asshole to go for it in a public statement:
The entire premise of these lawsuits is ridiculous. It is not even established that the contents of the dossier are false — and as we discovered from the Senate transcript, much of it is supportable — let alone that it was spread in a malicious or defamatory way.
Further, the legal bar for a public official to claim defamation is prohibitively high, and the discovery process would only humiliate the rich asshole.
At this point, the rich asshole’s legal strategy appears to have no coherence whatsoever. His team also made a cease-and-desist threat to Michael Wolff’s publisher to stop the release of Wolff’s exposé on the rich asshole White House, which the publisher responded to by releasing it early.
In the business world, the rich asshole used excessive lawsuits to punish any criticism of himself or his business empire.
But in the White House, it doesn’t work like that.
the rich asshole needs to address the allegations head on — not try to silence the truth.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA, left) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC, right). Images via Creative Commons.
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On Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released the explosive transcript regarding the Fusion GPS dossier about President some rich asshole’s alleged ties to Russia — and one of the biggest bombshells stemmed not from the dossier itself, but those who sought to keep it from the public.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) both fought on Monday to keep the transcript’s contents from the public, and once the damning details were released, Twitter let them have it.
“[Fusion GPS founder] Glenn Simpson testimony is not a good look on Grassley, Graham, Republicans, the rich asshole, the FBI. Why did they sit on all this info? Why did they only reveal Clinton email investigation? Why did Grassley/Graham go after Steele of all people?” New York Times contributing writer Wajahat Ali tweeted.
Grassley apparently accused Simpson of “colluding with the Russians” and Democrats, among other claims.
Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost noted that Grassley and Graham “no doubt” tried to keep quiet revelations that Fusion GPS reportedly had a walk-in whistleblower from the rich asshole campaign.
Thank you @SenFeinstein for treating the Americans with the transparency & respect we deserve. @ChuckGrassley@LindseyGrahamSC Your DOJ stunt threatens to irrevocably damage our true allies faith in sharing highly classified information with us. Tired of your sanctimonious bull.
Fusion GPS transcript shows that what Senators Grassley & Graham did last week in publicly referring Christopher Steele for criminal investigation was, at best, a partisan publicity stunt and, at worst, intentionally designed to mislead the American people. https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/950803976500449280 …
For the record, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley opposed releasing the Fusion GPS transcripts. It’s pretty clear the entire GOP knows it’s not “phoney” and they’re conspiring to prevent the release of anything detrimental to their party or contradictory to its leadership.
Fusion GPS transcript shows that what Senators Grassley & Graham did last week in publicly referring Christopher Steele for criminal investigation was, at best, a partisan publicity stunt and, at worst, intentionally designed to mislead the American people. https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/950803976500449280 …
MSNBC anchor Joy Reid interviewing Rick Wilson and Jason Johnson.
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Republican strategist Rick Wilson could not contain his amusement at some rich asshole’s latest immigration stances during a Tuesday appearance on MSNBC with anchor Joy Reid.
“Rick, the entire premise of the rich asshole campaign was Mexico is sending its worst, we’re going to end immigration, and build a wall. How did he suddenly go from that to being Marco Rubio?” Reid asked. “What is happening?”
“I think some rich asshole got his ‘Gang of Eight’ tattoo tonight and the Members Only jacket for rino cuck immigration squishes, because this is a guy who literally sat there today and shredded the entire Bannon and Steve Miller agenda on building the wall and throwing out the brown people,” Wilson suggested. “It was a clown show.”
“Who is in charge of telling an Ann Coulter? I nominate you, Rick, you’re in charge of telling Ann Coulter,” Reid replied with a laugh. “You have to tell her!”
“Jason, Democrats in my Twitter feed, there is some anger Democrats aren’t putting their foot down and saying ‘we ain’t voting for a wall period, end of story, we don’t care what you say.’ Should democrats be planting their flag there?” Reid asked Professor Jason Johnson of Morgan State University.
“They don’t have to put the flag down yet, Joy,” Johnson explained. “The Democrats don’t have to take a strong position now, because they don’t know what position the rich asshole will have in three weeks.”
Reid also asked Wilson to decipher White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “Help me, Rick. What did that mean?”
“You know, Sarah Sanders is just the White House mistress of word vomit and every day something new just pops out,” Wilson explained.
“This is a White House led by a man that does not have, shall we say, intellectual heft when it comes to understanding complex items of the policy agenda,” Wilson explained. “He’s overcome by basically inanimate objects every day.”
“Like I said, that ‘Gang of Eight’ tramp-stamp tattoo he is getting will look awesome,” Wilson predicted.
A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday temporarily blocked the rich asshole administration from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protects certain immigrants from deportation.
Judge William Alsup said the Obama-era program must remain in place while litigation over the rich asshole’s decision to end the program plays out. In a court ruling, Alsup said the Department of Homeland Security's "decision to rescind DACA was based on a flawed legal premise."
As a result, DACA recipients who failed to renew their status by last year’s deadline will have a chance to submit renewal applications. The decision does not, however, allow new applications to be submitted.
"Dreamers' lives were thrown into chaos when the rich asshole Administration tried to terminate the DACA program without obeying the law," said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, referring to DACA recipients. "Today's ruling is a huge step in the right direction."
"America is and has been home to Dreamers who courageously came forward, applied for DACA and did everything the federal government asked of them," Becerra added. "They followed DACA's rules, they succeeded in school, at work and in business, and they have contributed in building a better America. We will fight at every turn for their rights and opportunities so they may continue to contribute to America."
President the rich asshole announced in September that he would rescind the program, which allows certain immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children to stay and work without fear of deportation.
the rich asshole indicated he would support what those in the room came up with, adding that he was willing to “take the heat” to back a bipartisan deal.
the rich asshole at one point said he wants a “bill of love” to address DACA, and in another instance appeared to voice support for Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) suggestion of a clean DACA bill while dealing with other issues, like border security, later.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) quickly clarified the Feinstein comment, reminding the rich asshole of the need to implement border-security measures in exchange for DACA.
President the rich asshole and congressional negotiators on Tuesday outlined the parameters of a potential immigration deal during a lengthy bipartisan meeting at the White House, a major step toward avoiding a government shutdown.
The president and lawmakers who are leading immigration talks on Capitol Hill agreed that an agreement should include four key components.
It should protect an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 immigrants known as “Dreamers” from deportation, beef up security along the U.S.-Mexico border, change the weighting given to family relationships when granting legal status and reform the diversity visa lottery program.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later hailed the meeting as “successful.”
the rich asshole told Republican and Democratic negotiators that he would rely on them to hammer out the details and indicated that he would sign into law whatever they send to his desk.
“What I approve is going to be very much reliant on what the people in this room come to me with. I have great confidence in the people,” he told the two dozen lawmakers arrayed around a table with him in the Cabinet Room.
the rich asshole expressed sympathy to immigrants who came to the country illegally at a young age and now face deportation, urging negotiators to pass “a bill of love.”
But many thorny details remain unresolved, and it appears Congress won’t have enough time to work through them before government funding expires on Jan. 19.
“A deal is always in the details, of course,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), an outspoken advocate for immigrants who attended Tuesday’s meeting.
“When you hear about border enforcement, it depends on exactly what we’re talking about. When you hear about the end of the diversity lottery, the question becomes, ‘Well, what other purpose would those visas be used for?’” he said.
“Is there the possibility to come to an agreement? The answer is yes,” he added.
the rich asshole argued Tuesday that family-based, or chain, migration and the diversity visa lottery program have created security problems, pointing to a terror attack along a New York City bike path in October that killed eight people.
“They’re not giving you their best names — common sense tells you they’re not giving you their best names. They give you people that they don’t want, and then we take them out of the lottery,” he said, according to a White House pool report.
Still, the president seemed to scale back his demands for the immigration bill compared to last week, when he told a group of Republican senators that he also wanted the legislation to address people who overstay their visas.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who attended the meeting, said the deal might also address immigrants from war-torn and weather-ravaged areas who have been granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to live in the United States.
The rich asshole administration announced this week that it would end the protection for about 200,000 people from El Salvador who have lived in the United States for more than 15 years under TPS.
Putting together a bill that balances all of the competing demands on immigration won’t be easy.
That task is falling to Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy(R-Calif.) and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), who have been put in charge of coming up with a timeline for drafting a bill before a March 5 deadline.
“We all understand that getting a little bit of focus and narrowing the issues is important. We started that today,” Cornyn said.
the rich asshole on Tuesday also opened the door to working on a broader immigration reform bill that addresses other issues, such as immigrants who overstay their visas, rules for granting asylum and requiring employers to verify the legal status of workers. He said such a deal could be considered as soon as lawmakers pass legislation to protect “Dreamers” from deportation.
“I think comprehensive will be phase two,” the rich asshole said. “I think we get the one thing done, and then we go into comprehensive the following day. I think it’ll happen.”
That would be a heavy lift in a midterm election year, however, and lawmakers left the meeting somewhat skeptical that a second reform package would be possible.
“That may be an exaggeration,” said Durbin of taking up a broader immigration bill.
Lawmakers say the immigration bill now under consideration is the only one likely to pass for the foreseeable future.
“I would say this is the best bite [at the apple] that we have,” said Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (S.D.).
“We need to resolve as much as we can this time because it may not come up again for a long time,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said.
Amid the jockeying, it appears likely that Congress will have to pass another short-term measure to keep the government open past Jan. 19. Lawmakers still have to reach agreement on spending caps and it will take more time to draft an omnibus appropriations package.
Democrats have insisted that any long-term spending bill include an agreement to protect Dreamers from deportation.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that immigration reform and the spending package would move separately.
“It is still my view that I will call up a DACA-related immigration bill that ... the president will sign and that it will not be a part of any overall spending agreement,” McConnell told reporters, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The immigration debate was set in motion in September, when the rich asshole rescinded DACA, a program that former President Obama had established in 2012. The program protects certain immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, allowing them to live, work and attend school in the country.
the rich asshole said DACA had to be ended because Obama overstepped his authority in enacting it. He gave Congress six months to replace the program, setting a deadline for action of March 5.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) declined to say if he would whip members against the next government funding bill if it doesn’t include an immigration deal protecting “Dreamers,” as some immigration activists and liberal Democrats are demanding.
“It must go in a must-pass bill and the only must-pass bill that we see coming down the road between now and March 5 is this bill. So we can continue to believe, insist, that it be in this bill,” he told reporters.
MSNBC anchor Joy Reid connected the dots between the Fusion GPS testimony released Tuesday and the potential motives of the leading Republicans who worked to prevent citizens from reading the official transcript.
“Republicans did not want the public to see secret testimony related to the infamous the rich asshole dossier, but today Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein went ahead and released the testimony anyway,” anchor Reid noted. “And now that we’ve seen it, it’s clear why the Republicans didn’t want it to get out.”
“Because this testimony destroys the conspiracy theory being peddled on the right to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation,” Reid explained. “According to that theory, the dossier was co-opted by the F.B.I. in 2016 as part of a Democratic plot to tarnish some rich asshole.”
“The testimony released today blows those claims out of the water and the two Republican senators blocking its release, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) knew that,” Reid concluded.
“They knew the narrative being pushed on Fox News and Capitol Hill was baloney, but instead of correcting that narrative, they chose to perpetuate it, calling for a second special counsel to investigate so-called F.B.I. bias and referring the author of the dossier, former British spy Christopher Steele, for criminal investigation,” Reid continued.
“It’s all part of a concerted drive by the president’s allies to muddy the waters of the Russia investigation and discredit the dossier, which outlines alleged Russian collusion with the rich asshole campaign in 2016,” Reid observed.
US President some rich asshole speaks to staff at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, DC, on January 25, 2017, where he vowed to restore "control" of US frontiers by building a wall on the Mexican border (AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm)
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U.S. District Judge William Alsup on Tuesday ruled against some rich asshole’s decision to rescind DACA, granting a pretrial injunction that bars the administration from carrying out plans to scrap the program, Reuters reports.
In the middle of the intense political fight about the DACA program for dreamers, a federal judge in California just issued a nationwide injunction ordering the administration to start the program back up again, saying the decision to kill it was improper.
The decision comes as the rich asshole on Tuesday held a bipartisan White House meeting on immigration reform, insisting any DACA resolution must also contain funding for a border wall, one of the president’s signature campaign promises.
DACA, which was implemented by former president Barack Obama, is a program that allows children who were brought to the United States illegal to received deferred action from deportation.
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