February 12th-13th, 2017. It's been 457-458 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 385-386 days the Jan 20th inauguration.
POLITICS
White House speechwriter David Sorensen resigned Friday following allegations of physical and emotional abuse from his ex-wife, Jessica Corbett, making him the second staffer last week to leave President some rich asshole’s administration over domestic violence allegations.
Corbett’s story, first reported by The Washington Post, has been overshadowed by the domestic abuse allegations from two ex-wives of former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, as the White House offers convoluted talking points for explaining its handling of the allegations and the larger issue of violence against women.
“He has thrown me into a wall. He has put a cigarette out in my hand,” Corbett told NBC News in an interview that aired Tuesday morning.
Sorensen “made me drive around for hours, wondering where I would go, with no money, to beg people for cash so I could come home,” she continued.
Corbett stressed that she did not seek the spotlight and did not intend to harm Sorensen professionally.
“I wasn’t out to get him. I was not trying to get him denied this job by telling the truth. I do very much believe that he is one of the best and most capable people at what he does professionally,” she said.
According to the Post, Corbett had contacted the paper a week before allegations against Porter became public through reporting by The Daily Mail and The Intercept.
In a statement issued by the White House, Sorensen denied Corbett’s allegations. He claimed to the Post that “in fact, I was the victim of repeated physical violence during our marriage, not her.”
Meanwhile, White House officials have continued to cast doubt on whether they believe accusers in cases of domestic abuse, as well as sexual misconduct. In addition, they have offered shifting explanations on their handling of Porter’s allegations, like confusion over basic facts on what they knew and when.
On Monday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters multiple times that “the president and the entire administration take domestic violence very seriously,” yet would not say whether the rich asshole believed the accusations.
In a tweet over the weekend, the rich asshole complained that “lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation.” When asked about Porter on Friday, he told reporters that “it’s a tough time for him.”
THE RICH ASSHOLE SAYS DEMOCRATS HATE HIS BUDGET—BUT SOME REPUBLICANS DON'T LIKE IT MUCH EITHER
President some rich asshole accused Democrats of being the only ones who don’t like his 2019 budget plan, but some Republicans appear unhappy with it as well.
“Our infrastructure plan has been put forward and has received great reviews by everyone except, of course, the Democrats,” the rich asshole tweeted early Tuesday.
“After many years we have taken care of our Military, now we have to fix our roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and more. Bipartisan, make deal Dems?” the rich asshole asked, prodding Democrats to support his plans after they and Republicans worked to hammer out and pass a two-year funding bill last Friday that will simultaneously raise military and non-defense spending.
The new $4 trillion 2019 fiscal budget the rich asshole unveiled Monday contains a $200 billion bump for American infrastructure aimed at leveraging state and municipal spending. The plan is to inject a total $1.5 trillion into investments in roads and bridges over the next 10 years. About $50 billion is set aside for rural infrastructure, and another $20 billion to finance water, transportation and similar projects.
As a whole, the budget is expected to add $7.2 trillion in government debt to the federal ledger over the next 10 years. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney called it “a messaging document,” rather than a plan set in stone.
Senate Democrats said the plan would actually cut more infrastructure than it added. Republicans also ran lukewarm on its ideas.
“President the rich asshole’s budget shows his administration’s tremendous commitment to America’s national defense,” said hard-right Freedom Caucus member Representative Matt Gaetz in a statement. “But despite these positive steps forward, the budget falls short in fiscal responsibility.”
Gaetz suggested cutbacks in mandatory spending programs like welfare would be the best way to save money, and said: “This budget continues too much of Washington’s wasteful spending—it does not balance in ten years, and it creates a deficit of over a trillion dollars next year.”
Gaetz made no mention of the infrastructure plan, but over the weekend his fellow caucus members were critical of the rich asshole's spending increases and the trillions these would add to the deficit.
Some conservative groups seemed skeptical.
“As with every proposal that spends billions of taxpayer dollars, the devil will be in the details," said Americans for Prosperity, a group backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch in a statement. "And as we saw just last week with the so-called bipartisan budget agreement, details can be expensive.”
Lawmakers, the group said, “should focus on reducing costly and time-consuming bureaucratic hurdles, regulations and mandates, and ensuring that tax dollars are spent on roads and bridges, not crony projects.”
Others were also cautious. Republican Florida Representative Carlos Curbelo said that while he is “encouraged by his prioritizing of our national infrastructure,” the exact amount of spending “still needs to be negotiated and studied.”
By and large, the “budget proposal from the Administration is certainly not reflective of the direction our federal government should take,” Curbelo said, pointing out its “significant reductions to agencies needed to protect our environment and combat the threats of climate change and sea level rise, to cuts to Community Block Grants that assist in disaster recovery” and other programs that have bipartisan support.
WHITE HOUSE THINKS HOPE HICKS IS ‘IMMUNE’ TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE FROM ROB PORTER, MSNBC HOST SAYS
The rich asshole White House has taken an unusual position on Hope Hicks’s romantic relationship with alleged domestic abuser Rob Porter, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell has claimed.
On Monday, O'Donnell slammed counselor Kellyanne Conway for her assertion that the White House Communications Director Hicks is a “strong woman.”
On his show, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, the host singled out White House counselor Kellyanne Conway for claiming she is not worried about communications director Hicks's relationship with Porter because Hicks is a "strong woman."
“I am very close to Hope Hicks and I don't worry about her in that respect,” Conway said in a CNN interview over the weekend.
“I'm sorry for any suffering [Porter's ex] has endured, but in the case of Hope, I rarely met somebody so strong with such excellent instincts, and loyalty, and smarts," Conway said.
"I didn't have the presence of mind and professional capabilities at her age that I see in her every single day," she added, in comments that were slammed by O'Donnell.
O’Donnell took issue with how Conway positioned Hicks as strong because it insinuated that Porter's alleged victims were weak. He added that Conway's remarks seemed to suggest Hicks was the "immune to the possibility of physical abuse by a man she is dating."
“Rob Porter’s former girlfriend just wasn’t ‘strong’ enough. That’s why he physically abused her,” O’Donnell said.
“His two former wives just weren’t ‘strong’ enough. That’s why he physically abused them. That’s why he punched Colbie Holderness and gave her that black eye. Because she wasn’t ‘strong’ enough. That’s the the rich asshole White House position on why no one has to worry about Hope Hicks—because she’s ‘stronger’ than the women Rob Porter victimized," he continued.
Conway’s apparent assertion that someone “so strong” would not be the victim of abuse was also slammed by Porter’s first wife Colbie Holderness, who stated in an op-ed for The Washington Post on Tuesday that “recognizing and surviving in an abusive relationship takes strength."
The White House has also faced criticism over President some rich asshole’s reaction to the allegations made against Porter, after the outgoing staff secretary received well wishes from POTUS.
“He worked very hard and we found out about it recently and I was surprised by it, but we certainly wish him well. It’s obviously a tough time for him,” the rich asshole told reporters. The president's comments were criticized as insensitive and resulted in White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stating, in a bold spin, that the president wished all Americans well, not Porter in particular.
We get layoffs, they get luxury jets.
The rich asshole tax scam has resulted in thousands of layoffs, but it has freed companies up to invest in luxury private air travel.
the rich asshole and the GOP have tried everything they can to sell their trillion-dollar giveaway, up to and including absurdly claiming it will benefit education, but the real beneficiaries are all too apparent.
Even before passage of the bill, CEOs were quite clearly saying they would not be investing their windfall in their own workers, but rather, would use it for themselves. And according to CNBC, that includes ushering in a “golden age” for private jet sales.
On Tuesday, Steve Varsano, CEO of The Jet Business, explained on CNBC how the rich asshole tax scam helps the private jet industry. The business has been steadily increasing since the 2008 financial crisis, he said, but it has “skyrocketed” recently.
“The decrease in corporate taxes has given the companies a lot more free cash flow to invest in” things like private jets, he said, and new depreciation rules give companies “a lot more cash to invest in assets.”
Varsano went on to explain that the overwhelming majority of sales are of used jets, and indeed, industry experts only project new sales to increase by 58 planes in 2018, from 660 sales in 2017 to 718 this year. According to Varsano, used planes account for about 2,500 sales per year.
That means a lot of expensive toys for billionaires, but few new jobs for manufacturing them, and lots of money not being spent on jobs and wages.
It’s no surprise that the rich asshole’s tax scam would be a boon to luxury air travel, since his Cabinet members have made U.S. taxpayers into unwitting customers, racking up millions in private flights.
Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to claim their tax scam is benefitting average American workers because of one-time bonuses and $1.50-a-week pay bumps. No wonder the bill remains unpopular among voters, even as the wealthiest Americans and corporations celebrate the “free cash flow” to buy private jets.
Where Americans see a deadly tragedy, the rich asshole sees an opportunity to score political points
the rich asshole’s tweets about tragedies are often just political messaging.
Since some rich asshole took office in January of 2017, it has been a year of disasters. Three massive hurricanes ravaged the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean. Mass shootings at a concert in Las Vegas and a church in Texas were among the deadliest in modern American history. Terrorist attacks around the world killed thousands. School shootings, naval ship crashes, white nationalist violence, wildfires, police killed in the line of duty, and innocent and unarmed people killed by police all cost lives here and abroad in the first year of the presidency. So how did a new president respond?
With Twitter, the rich asshole’s chosen outlet for his response to the events each day. His Twitter timeline tells the story of the first 12-plus months of some rich asshole era. As these calamities unfolded — some acts of nature and other acts of humanity — some drew the rich asshole’s attention. Others he ignored totally. Some received a great deal of his immediate attention, ranging as high as 40-plus tweets about Hurricanes Harvey and Maria. Some served as little more than convenient pretext for a one-off tweet to smear critics and promote his Islamophobic and xenophobic worldview. In all, a ThinkProgress review of his feed from his inauguration to February 6, 2018 finds that 244 of his 2,632 tweets and retweets (including a few he later deleted, accessed via trumptwitterarchive.com) were responses of some kind to tragic event that happened on his watch. In more than 75 of those, the president overtly sought to politicize and exploit the tragedy for political gain.
Some patterns emerged.
the rich asshole uses tragedy to convince the public to ban Muslims
At least fourteen of the tragedies the rich asshole highlighted through his tweets involved attacks by people apparently acting on behalf of ISIS, the Taliban, or others he termed “Radical Islamic Terrorists.” Incidents in cities like Barcelona, Kabul, London, Paris, and New York were met with at least 62 the rich asshole tweets — 29 of them pushing the rich asshole’s political talking points.
Most were messages tying the attacks to Islam, denouncing “political correctness,” and claiming the attacks were examples of why his Muslim travel ban is necessary.
As a candidate, the rich asshole called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what’s going in,” but courts have determined the travel ban is intended to discriminate, rather than make the country safer.
the rich asshole uses tragedy to say immigrants are dangerous
Perhaps an even bigger priority for the rich asshole than his Islamophobic policies are his xenophobic policies, especially his dream of a “big, beautiful wall” at the southern border — a project he insisted over and over would be paid for by Mexico but now seeks $18 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds to built. While candidate the rich asshole talked mostly about ending illegal immigration, President the rich asshole has also proposed to end many of the ways people legally immigrate to the United States.
After the October 31, 2017 truck attack in New York City by an immigrant from Uzbekistan, the rich asshole pounced with a string of anti-immigrant tweets. He used the deaths to call for the elimination of both the diversity lottery and the rules that allow preference to immediate family members of immigrants (which the rich asshole misleadingly dismisses as “chain migration”).
Congress must end chain migration so that we can have a system that is SECURITY BASED! We need to make AMERICA SAFE! #USA
Early Sunday morning, NFL linebacker Edwin Jackson was killed by a drunk driver. Only after police revealed that the driver was an undocumented immigrant — two days later — did the rich asshole tweet out his condolences and spotlight his death as one of “many such preventable tragedies” that would stop if only the Democratic minority in Congress would “get tough on the Border [sic].”
My prayers and best wishes are with the family of Edwin Jackson, a wonderful young man whose life was so senselessly taken. @Colts
So disgraceful that a person illegally in our country killed @Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson. This is just one of many such preventable tragedies. We must get the Dems to get tough on the Border, and with illegal immigration, FAST!
the rich asshole thinks Chicago is a violent wasteland
Perhaps because it was the hometown of his predecessor — or maybe because protesters stopped his 2016 campaign from taking place there — but the rich asshole has repeatedly attempted to portray Chicago as the most violent city imaginable.
Although his inaugural address promised that “American carnage” in violent inner-cities like the Windy City “stops right here and stops right now,” there were still 650 murders — some of them among the 2,785 recorded shooting incidents — there in the first year of the rich asshole’s presidency (less than a 16-percent decline from 2016).
While the rich asshole has done virtually nothing to actually reduce gun violence, he did repeatedly highlight homicides in Chicago and threaten some sort of federal takeover of law enforcement there.
In August, after coming under fire for his response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, the rich asshole retweeted a tweet from a supporter with white nationalist ties, demanding to know why the national media was not paying as much attention to the shootings going on in Chicago over the same weekend.
the rich asshole blames Puerto Rico for a poor hurricane recovery
In September, Hurricane Maria ravaged the Caribbean, causing historic damages to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, American territories that are home to millions of U.S. citizens. More than four months later, huge swaths of Puerto Rico remain without electrical power and running water. The administration’s insufficient response to the storm drew bipartisan criticism and has been labeled“the rich asshole’s Katrina.”
While the rich asshole devoted more tweets (at least 48) to Hurricane Maria than any other single tragedy of his presidency to date, more than a third of them were used to push his political message. the rich asshole quickly pivoted from messages like “we are with you,” to trying to deflect any blame, proclaiming that Puerto Rico was a mess before the storm. Rather than express empathy with Americans killed, or struggling to survive without food or water, much of the rich asshole’s message was, essentially, “it’s their own fault.”
...owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with. Food, water and medical are top priorities - and doing well. #FEMA
This continued for weeks after the storm hit, including an October claim that “the wonderful people of Puerto Rico, with their unmatched spirit, know how bad things were before the [hurricanes].”
the rich asshole uses tragedy to malign the media
Another frequent refrain from the rich asshole, especially after he took a pounding for his tone-deaf handling of Puerto Rico and Charlottesville, was to lash out at the media for being unfair to him. the rich asshole, who has frequently used Twitter to attack the “fake news” provided by news outlets other than Fox News, seemed especially irked that these outlets accurately reported on his response to these disasters.
Over and over, he complained of the media’s coverage of Puerto Rico:
My Administration, Governor @RicardoRossello, and many others are working together to help the people of Puerto Rico in every way...
He did the same with Charlottesville, calling the American press “dishonest” and “truly bad people”:
Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied...truly bad people!
In all, at least 13 of the rich asshole’s tweets about Charlottesville and Maria were dedicated to attacks on journalists.
the rich asshole uses tragedy to enthusiastically smears his critics
the rich asshole’s disdain for critics goes beyond just the media. He also repeatedly used tragedies tweeted out criticism of other politicians as part of his response to tragedies.
After the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico criticized the rich asshole administration’s hurricane response, he went after her personally:
When a fellow Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, criticized his botched Charlottesville response, the rich asshole blasted him as “publicity seeking” and implied it would cost Graham his senate seat:
After a deadly attack in London, Mayor Sadiq Khan — who is Muslim and has previously criticized the rich asshole’s divisive and Islamophobic actions — urged his city not to be alarmed by the heightened presence of police. the rich asshole seized on this, out of context, to accuse Khan of not taking the violent attacks seriously:
Though fact-checkers debunked the rich asshole’s false assertion, he repeated his attack on London’s mayor and threw in a smear of the media for good measure:
the rich asshole also attempted to blame the New York truck attack on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), citing something he heard while watching Fox News:
"Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems" said Col.Tony Shaffer. We will stop this craziness! @foxandfriends
Even private citizens were not immune. He went after Myeshia Johnson, the grieving widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in a U.S. military operation Niger in October. She had revealed that the rich asshole told her in a condolence call that her husband “knew what he signed up for,” and she said the president struggled to even remember his name. In return, the rich asshole essentially called her a liar on Twitter.
the rich asshole thinks law enforcement is great, but pays no attention to police officer-involved shootings
One of the themes of some rich asshole’s 2016 Republican National Convention speech was that he was the candidate who supports law enforcement. “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country,” he told the audience.
In August, after white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville turned violent and Heather Heyer was killed by a Nazi sympathizer, the rich asshole responded with a tweet sending “condolences to the family,” but he later expressed sympathies for white nationalists at the event.
But when later that day, two Virginia State Police officers were killed in a helicopter crash while participating in surveillance of the Charlottesville rallies, the rich asshole responded with a retweet of a Secret Service tweet sending “thoughts & prayers” and with a tweet of his own sending “[d]eepest condolences” and praising the officers as “all among the best this nation produces.”
He similarly offered quick condolences after a Colorado sheriff’s deputy was killed in a New Year’s Eve mass shooting, saying, “We love our police and law enforcement – God Bless them all!”
My deepest condolences to the victims of the terrible shooting in Douglas County @DCSheriff, and their families. We love our police and law enforcement - God Bless them all! #LESM
More than a dozen of the rich asshole’s tweets in response to tragedies have highlighted his appreciation for American law enforcement and denouncing “anti-police agitators.”
But the president did not respond at all to the more than 1,000 people fatally shot by police officers since his inauguration — even when those killed were unarmed. For example, when Kansas police shot and killed an unarmed innocent man after a fake 911 call by online gamers, the rich asshole ignored the tragedy and instead tweeted about how unfair it is that Amazon.com is able to use the postal service to ship products at an affordable rate, how Fox & Friends proves that his approval ratings are equal to where Obama’s eight years earlier, and how climate change must be a hoax because it was cold that day.
the rich asshole ignored national and international tragedies unless they could score him political points
Those police shootings were not the only tragedies that the rich asshole just simply ignored. A ThinkProgress review of multiple other databases based on publicly available information found dozens of fatal attacks, at home and abroad, that neither fit the rich asshole’s political narrative nor received even a single tweet’s response from the president.
At least eight mass-casualty attacks in places like Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, and Syria were responsible for more than 100 deaths each — mostly of Muslims. the rich asshole met each with Twitter silence.
The Gun Violence Archive documents seven mass shootings since April in the United States that resulted in five or more deaths, but received no the rich asshole response. But the rich asshole did notice after the June attacks on the London Bridge that that particular attack did not involve guns:
And while none has received the attention that Columbine and Sandy Hook received, the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund has documented more than 75 school shootings in the United States since the rich asshole took office. Three dozen of these were intentional attacks that resulted in the injury or death of another person. the rich asshole responded to just two of these via Twitter.
After a January 2018 school shooting in Kentucky left 18 students injured and two more dead, the rich asshole did not initially let the tragedy distract from his tweets smearing FBI agents and demanding a border wall. Only a day after the Prime Minister of Canada tweeted his condolences did the rich asshole finally follow his lead.
I’ve spoken with Kentucky’s @GovMattBevin to offer condolences on behalf of Canadians for today’s shooting in Benton. Our hearts go out to Kentuckians, and to all those affected by this tragedy.
Earlier today, I spoke with @GovMattBevin of Kentucky regarding yesterday’s shooting at Marshall County High School. My thoughts and prayers are with Bailey Holt, Preston Cope, their families, and all of the wounded victims who are in recovery. We are with you!
The one other school shooting that seemed to received the rich asshole’s attention was a November shooting at the Rancho Tehama Elementary School in northern California. the rich asshole literally reused his tweet from a different tragedy nine days earlier (in Sutherland Springs, Texas), tweeting “May God be with the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI and Law Enforcement has arrived.”
The next morning, the rich asshole (apparently realizing his error), deleted the tweet — and did not replace it. The shooter, after all, was a white man who should not have had access to a gun, making it incongruent with any of the president’s political messages.
It's hard to distance yourself from a sexual predator when the leader of your party bragged about being one.
More than two weeks after disgraced former Republican National Committee finance chair Steve Wynn was forced to resign amid allegations of sexual abuse, the GOP still hasn’t returned any of the donations it received from him.
And based on its latest public statement, the party seems more interested in making excuses than making amends.
According to a new report by CNN, the RNC said on Sunday it is keeping all donations from Wynn until gaming regulators in Massachusetts and Nevada complete their investigations into allegations of sexual assault and harassment made against him. This comes after the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that the board of directors of Wynn Resorts had canceled its investigation into the allegations, saying it was no longer needed since he had resigned as the company’s chairman and chief executive.
In late January, RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel said that although she had accepted Wynn’s resignation, the GOP wouldn’t return Wynn’s money unless he was “found guilty.” At the time, the only investigation underway was the internal probe by Wynn Resorts’ board of directors, and an RNC official told the Daily Beast that McDaniel was specifically referring to that investigation.
But now that the internal probe has ended with Wynn’s resignation from the company, the RNC is once again moving the goalposts — and highlighting the jaw-dropping hypocrisy of the party’s stance on all matters related to sexual misconduct.
The GOP’s reluctance to return donations from Wynn is a sharp departure from the position it took when allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein surfaced last year. At the time, Republicans had a field day demanding that Democrats return every penny that Weinstein had donated to their campaigns.
If the DNC truly stands up for women like they say they do, then returning Weinstein's dirty money should be a no-brainer.
Even the GOP’s official Twitter account chimed in, asking people to share a tweet telling the Democratic National Committee they should return donations from Weinstein.
But four months later, the RNC is singing a very different tune now that one of its own is facing allegations.
RNC spokesman says Wynn stepping down as CEO doesn’t change party’s decision not to return his donations unless a board investigation finds him guilty of wrongdoing. Wynn gave $375K to RNC late last year. wsj.com/articles/steve…
Wynn, who stands accused of sexual assault and harassment by multiple women who worked for him, was tapped to become the RNC’s finance chair after the rich asshole’s inauguration. In his role with the RNC, Wynn was tasked with leading the Republican Party’s fundraising efforts until his resignation last month. He was also a prominent donor to Republican candidates and causes.
According to the Daily Beast, “Wynn has donated more than $2 million to Republican campaigns, party organs, and interest groups since 2001. That includes more than $1.3 million to the Republican National Committee (compared with the $300,0000 in donations that Weinstein gave to the DNC) and the party’s House and Senate campaign arms.”
Besides his position as an RNC official, Wynn has close personal ties to the rich asshole, calling him a “great friend” in 2016. Since the rich asshole took office, Wynn has privately dined with him at the White House at least five times.
He also served as the vice chairman of the rich asshole’s inaugural committee after the election, and just last month he co-hosted and spoke at an RNC fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, the rich asshole’s Florida vacation resort. According to Wynn, attendees at the event paid anywhere from $100,000 per couple to $250,000 for a roundtable. All proceeds from the fundraiser went to the rich asshole Victory Fund.
the rich asshole hasn’t given any indication that he plans to return those funds. In fact, the rich asshole’s only public comment on Wynn so far was to “like” a tweet about the sexual abuse allegations against him.
As MSNBC’s Joy Reid pointed out when the allegations against Wynn were first revealed, the scandal puts Republicans in an incredibly awkward position. If Republicans refuse to distance themselves from Wynn, they must explain why they are standing by someone facing credible allegations of sexual abuse from multiple women.
On the other hand, if Republicans denounce Wynn and return his donations because of these allegations, they must justify standing by the rich asshole despite credible allegations of sexual misconduct against him from at least 19 different women.
At the end of the day, it’s hard to distance yourself from a sexual predator when the leader of your party bragged about being one.
Desperate to hold onto the Senate, Republicans want Bob Corker to get back in the race as polls show the current GOP frontrunner losing to a Democrat.
Perhaps fearing a repeat of the stunning Senate loss in deep-red Alabama, Republicans in Tennessee are begging their outgoing senator to cancel his retirement and save the party from itself.
According to a report from Politico, “a faction of Republicans in Tennessee and Washington are worried that the favorite for the Republican Senate nomination, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), could lose a general election — and with it the Republican Senate majority.”
The report notes that Corker — who has butted heads with the rich asshole and decided last October not to seek another term — is “listening” but has not yet made any decision to go back on his retirement.
The GOP’s fear that it could lose Tennessee are well-founded.
In a Public Opinion Strategies poll, Blackburn — a rich asshole ally who led the fight to kill internet privacy laws and ran an anti-Planned Parenthood ad so extreme it was banned from Twitter — loses to former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen, 47 to 45, even though the poll was overweighted with GOP voters.
Once thought impossible due to the heavily GOP-tilted map, Democrats now have a path to retake control of the Senate as well as the House. With Republicans defending a razor-thin majority of 51 seats, Democrats would only have to win two of the three most competitive races — Tennessee, Nevada, and Arizona — to win the majority, assuming all of their incumbents win re-election.
And a recent string of Republican Senate candidates making complete and total fools of themselves makes that not as tall an order as it might seem.
Corker is famously open to persuasion. Last year, he flipped his vote on the GOP tax scam immediately after the inclusion of a real estate tax break that coincidentally saved him $1.1 million, leading many to call it the “Corker Kickback.”
Republicans’ desperation to pull Corker back into the race indicates that Tennessee could be the next Alabama — and the GOP has only itself to blame for that.
Thomas Brunell, who literally wrote the book on partisan gerrymandering, is just the latest unqualified the rich asshole nominee to withdraw amid public scrutiny.
the rich asshole’s pick to run the Census Bureau has reportedly withdrawn his name from consideration, joining a growing number of unqualified nominees who have been forced to withdraw from the running to lead federal agencies in the rich asshole administration.
According to a report by Mother Jones’ Ari Berman, Thomas Brunell — a Texas-based Republican who advocated for GOP gerrymandering in multiple states and wrote a book arguing against the merits of competitive elections — has removed his name from consideration to become the next deputy director of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Berman reached out to Brunell and the Commerce Department, which houses the Census Bureau, but he received no response to his requests for comment.
the rich asshole picked Brunell in November 2017 to lead the Census Bureau, a position that would have put him of charge of running operations leading up to the 2020 census.
The results of the census are used to inform public policy, allot federal funding, and make critical decisions about representation in elections, including how electoral maps are drawn and how many congressional districts each state should have.
Historically, the Census Bureau has been led by a non-partisan career civil servant with a strong background in statistics. Brunell, a Republican political science professor with no government experience, lacked the expertise and experience that would typically be required for the position.
But his blatant lack of qualifications was the least of Brunell’s problems.
Far more troubling was his history of defending GOP-led racial gerrymandering and voter suppression laws, as well as his hostility toward one of the fundamental tenets of democracy: competitive elections.
According to Politico, Brunell “has testified more than half a dozen times on behalf of Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts.” Brunell’s 2008 book is actually titled ‘Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.'”
Brunell’s nomination drew intense criticism from civil rights advocates, policy experts, and Democratic lawmakers, who said he could use his position to manipulate the census to give Republican areas more representation and funding than Democratic ones, or to dilute the impact of minority votes.
Terri Ann Lowenthal, former co-director of the Census Project, an organization that tracks the census, calledBrunell’s nomination a “very troubling” sign that the rich asshole administration was trying to “politicize the census.”
Last month, Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Brian Schatz of Hawaii penned a letter calling on Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to block the appointment of Brunell, calling him “deeply unqualified.”
“The person charged with operational oversight of the governmental undertaking responsible for apportionment in our government’s highest legislative body should be committed to fair and accurate representation for all Americans,” the senators wrote. “Dr. Thomas Brunell is not that person.”
Brunell is just the latest woefully unqualified the rich asshole nominee to withdraw his name from consideration amid intense public scrutiny. In December, Matthew Petersen became the third of the rich asshole’s judicial nominees to drop out of the running for a federal judgeship, following in the footsteps of disgraced nominees Brett Talley and Jeff Mateer.
But the rich asshole — who is himself staggeringly unqualified for the office he holds — apparently thinks being unfit to serve is an asset. In January, he actually resubmitted the nominations of at least three people who were previously nominated for Senate-confirmed positions but deemed unqualified or otherwise unfit to serve.
One would think he would have learned by now that tapping unqualified people to serve in leadership positions doesn’t usually turn out well.
In fact, less than two weeks ago, the person he chose to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was forced to resign in shame after getting caught profiting from investments in a tobacco company. That resignation came just three months after Tom Price, former Health and Human Services Secretary, was forced out amid revelations that he used taxpayer dollars to fund trips on private jets.
The bar is set so low for the rich asshole, however, that the routine act of nominating someone — anyone — is seen as an accomplishment. But even that low bar is too high for the rich asshole. A year into his presidency, he still hasn’t nominated anyone to fill nearly half of the most important positions in his administration.
Given the quality of his nominees, that may be a good thing.
So much for the optimistic spin that the Russia probe will be wrapped up "soon."
Despite the rich asshole’s claim last December that special counsel Robert Mueller was nearing the end of his investigation, the White House is now quietly preparing for a much longer probe.
On Monday, the so-called budget released by the rich asshole’s own team even acknowledged that, setting aside another $10 million for the investigation to march on into 2019.
“The budget projects that Mueller’s team will keep spending at its current rate of about $10 million per year in the next fiscal year, which starts in October,” Politico reported after the White House unveiled its $1.5 trillion blueprint.
In terms of Mueller’s budget and the estimated $10 million cost for 2019, a spending report released by the special counsel’s office in December detailed that the probe had spent $3.2 million between May and September.
This dollars-and-cents estimate, of course, counters months’ worth of spin suggesting Mueller and his large team of lawyers were wrapping things up and any unpleasantness for the rich asshole would soon be behind him.
White House spokesman Raj Shah told Fox News last month that officials “believe [the investigation] will end soon” — calling back to last October, when press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Mueller’s work would likely be concluded “soon.”
Hardly.
Mueller’s team has a criminal case pending against the rich asshole’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and deputy Rick Gates. That trial is expected to begin in August or September.
But that’s likely just a run-up to the main event, which could focus on the rich asshole and his top White House aides.
Indeed, the looming showdown between Mueller’s office and the rich asshole continues to unfold, with the rich asshole’s attorneys desperate to keep him from testifying for fear he’ll open himself up to criminal charges by lying to prosecutors.
In recent days, the Justice Department’s No. 3 attorney, Rachel Brand, abruptly left her post, reportedly concerned that she could be asked to oversee Mueller’s investigation if the rich asshole took the extraordinary step of firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Mueller had already made it clear in December that his investigation would last at least through 2018. And despite the stubborn wishes of the rich asshole and his surrogates, it seems the White House has resigned itself to an even longer timeline.
What You Should Know About the rich asshole’s Nihilist Budget
He just doesn’t care.
The budget document President some rich asshole released on Monday doesn’t really matter. It will have no effect on government spending or tax levels. It will not build bridges or defund public housing programs. Congress controls federal spending, not the president, and for the past several years lawmakers have jettisoned the formal budget process in favor of a series of backroom deals.
The president’s budget has thus become an elaborate Washington ritual in which an administration expresses its values and priorities in the technocratic jargon of modern bureaucracy. It’s an administration’s way of telling the public how it would govern if it didn’t have to work with Congress, and of demonstrating how much it cares about these proposals by working out in fine detail how much it all would cost.
the rich asshole’s budget shows he doesn’t care very much about anything. The signature proposal, hyped ahead of the release as a $1.5 trillion program to rebuild America’s infrastructure, turns out to include just $200 billion in new spending ― offset by $240 billion in cuts to existing infrastructure programs, including the Highway Trust Fund, Amtrak and the Army Corps of Engineers’ civil works initiatives.
The infrastructure plan is a good example of how the rich asshole’s supposedly populist campaign has not translated into populist governance. the rich asshole’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, is a former member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, which rabidly opposes spending on the social safety net.
“As a nation, we face difficult times – challenged by a crumbling infrastructure, growing deficits, rogue nations, and irresponsible Washington spending,” Mulvaney said in a statement on Sunday ― even though the budget doesn’t close deficits or un-crumble infrastructure.
Another budget bullet point ― seemingly making good on the rich asshole’s campaign promise to end the opioid crisis ravaging America ― comes to just $1 billion a year, a pathetically low number for a national public health crisis. the rich asshole’s boost to opioid spending accounts for less than 1.5 percent of the Department of Health and Human Services budget, which the rich asshole would also slash by about 20 percent from last year’s level. By contrast, total defense spending would increase by about 25 percent over the course of the next decade. That’s real money, but it doesn’t tell us anything important about American military objectives in places like Afghanistan, Yemen or Niger.
Public education advocates are understandably angered by the rich asshole’s call to cut overall federal education funding by $7.1 billion, while spending $1.1 billion on vouchers that families can use to pay for private school. But even this is a half-hearted measure. the rich asshole has said he wants to spend $20 billion a year on the vouchers.
One area where the rich asshole administration showed some enthusiasm for policy innovation is in cracking down on food stamp recipients and their supposedly lavish and unhealthy diets. The budget would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ― the official program name for food stamps ― by about 25 percent, replacing a portion of beneficiaries’ monthly stipend with canned goods and other healthy food chosen by the government. The idea is almost unheard-of on Capitol Hill and has little chance of being taken seriously by the committee that oversees the program.
the rich asshole would also eliminate all funding for public housing repairs ― a move that reflects general meanness about the lives of the poor, but only costs about $2 billion ― and eliminate $1 billion in Section 8 vouchers to help poor families pay rent.
Taken together, the rich asshole’s budget reflects a strange bureaucratic nihilism. His budget proposal doesn’t balance ― not next year, or even over the traditional 10-year window, which would have allowed the rich asshole to gimmick up the final years with spending cuts and various administrative fees that he had no intention of actually following through on. He’s accepting $900 billion-plus deficits every year until 2023, and substantial deficits through 2028. It’s not like he’s holding back from a big idea because he’s worried about the price tag. He just doesn’t care.
the rich asshole has repeatedly defended abusers. No one is buying the latest White House spin.
The White House is still in damage control mode after the rich asshole’s statement of support last week defending former aide Rob Porter over multiple allegations of domestic violence.
On Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders briefed reporters for the first time since she defended Porter, and was immediately peppered with questions about the White House’s complete bungling of the scandal.
Sanders read a prepared statement, saying that “above all, the president supports victims of domestic violence, and believes everyone should be treated fairly and with due process.”
Several reporters asked why the rich asshole would not make such a statement himself, after he publicly defended Porter and expressed sadness over his resignation — and then expressed sympathy for people whose “lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation.” the rich asshole still has not expressed any sympathy for the victims of domestic violence.
On Monday, Sanders tried to claim that he had — through the statements Sanders read out loud.
“It’s my job to speak on the behalf of the president,” Sanders said. “I spoke with him, and he related that message directly to me, and I’m relaying it directly to you.”
But CBS News correspondent Chip Reid pressed Sanders on the rich asshole’s cowardly use of a spokesperson, in a testy exchange that left the press secretary impatiently snipping at Reid.
“The vice president said he was appalled by the allegations. Why didn’t he use it as an opportunity to say something like that?” Reid asked. “Why does he have to speak through that?”
“The president has been clear multiple times, through myself and others in the administration, that we condemn domestic violence in all forms,” Sanders replied.
“He has not said it,” Reid shot back. “Why has he not said it?”
“I’m the spokesman for the president and the White House, and I said it right now,” Sanders said.
“Why didn’t he say it?” Reid pressed.
“I’m not sure how I can be any more clear,” Sanders replied impatiently. “I think the president has espoused his viewed on this …”
“He said he wishes Porter well, and that he believes people should have due process,” Reid said. “But he hasn’t addressed the victims of domestic violence at all.”
“That’s not true,” Sanders said. “If you were paying attention to what I just read to you, you would understand the opposite. He literally dictated that statement to me. So I’m not sure how that’s not the president speaking on that topic.”
The statement that the rich asshole supposedly dictated to Sanders doesn’t change his professed belief in Porter’s innocence, or his implication that the women are liars, but Reid’s grilling demonstrates that the rich asshole is incapable of even managing the meager gesture of poor lip service to the victims of domestic violence.
And Sanders’ exasperated defense shows that there is nothing the rich asshole’s flunkies won’t do to cover for him.
In Rob Porter Case, the rich asshole Sends A Message: We Will Protect Powerful Alleged Abusers
“the rich asshole has turned the clock back on the progress we’ve made in this country.”
WASHINGTON ― Domestic abuse victims often worry their experiences won’t be taken as seriously if the offender is powerful or well-liked professionally.
By defending Rob Porter, the now former White House staff secretary accused of physically abusing his two ex-wives, and emphasizing that he was very good at his job, President some rich asshole and the rich asshole’s chief of staff, John Kelly, are sending victims a signal that those fears are justified. (Porter has denied the allegations.)
“To have an [alleged domestic violence] offender at the White House, what do you think that says to every cop, every advocate, every prosecutor, every victim — especially every victim who turns on the TV and sees a man who reportedly put his hands on a woman’s neck, standing side-to-side with the president of the United States?” said Mark Wynn, a retired police officer who helped form the largest police domestic violence investigative unit in the United States. “It’s a big deal.”
White House officials were aware of the accusations against Porter for months, according to news reports, though there are still questions about the extent to which Kelly knew. Porter was able, nonetheless, to keep his job as staff secretary until last week, when he resigned after the allegations became public. Right away, the rich asshole and Kelly publicly leapt to Porter’s defense.
That response sends a message not just to Porter’s alleged victims but also to other people who are considering reporting abuse.
“Anecdotally, I think most victims don’t feel like they can report, because abusers get away with the abuse,” said Gretchen Shaw, associate director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “This is an example of how they do so — they are elevated, they are protected by the people that brush this issue under the rug, and put their skill and experience ahead of what sounds like incredible violence.”
Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, said in an email that the administration “takes the issue of domestic violence very seriously” and that the rich asshole’s budget will be “fully funding the Violence Against Women Act.” (Kelly wrote in an email to White House staff that domestic violence “has no place in our society.”)
But Porter is not an isolated incident. White House speechwriter David Sorensen resigned last week following a Washington Post report about his ex-wife’s claims of abuse, including that he put out a lit cigarette on her hand. Sorensen denied the allegations.
The president has also cozied up with other men who have faced serious domestic abuse claims, including his former labor secretary pick, Andrew Puzder (He “hit me in the head pushed his knee into my chest twisted my arm and dragged me on the floor,” his first wife said). There was also an accusation of domestic violence against former chief strategist Steve Bannon. (Puzder and Bannon have denied the allegations.)
Former Obama administration staffers say that preventing violence against women was a priority for them.
“If the FBI had found credible evidence that an Obama White House staffer had engaged in domestic violence, that staffer would have been shown the door immediately,” said Chris Lu, who served as White House Cabinet secretary during the Obama administration.
In 2012, President Barack Obama issued a memorandum arguing that the federal government “should act as a model in responding to the effects of domestic violence on its workforce.” He directed the government to issue guidance on addressing domestic violence in the federal workplace. That guidance is current, and every agency, including the White House, develops its own policies based on it, Lindsay Haake, a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management, said in an email.
“It’s a sign that you care about an issue when you apply it to yourself,” Caroline Bettinger-López, the former White House adviser on Violence Against Women in the Obama administration, told HuffPost. “Sending a message that this is not to be tolerated within the workplace, that leadership counts.”
The rich asshole administration has not continued Bettinger-López’s position, she said. Walters, the rich asshole White House spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about that position or the White House’s employment policy on domestic violence.
This issue transcends administrations and party, said Bettinger-López, now a law professor at the University of Miami. John Michael Farren, a one-time top attorney for former President George W. Bush, was convicted of attempting to kill his wife. But, “in failing to speak out against domestic violence, the rich asshole has turned the clock back on the progress we’ve made in this country on this important issue,” Lu argued.
“Domestic violence offenders are very talented, they’re very creative, they come in all shapes and forms, bankers, judges, soldiers, construction workers,” Wynn said. But “when they’re discovered by somebody responsible, why would you want to keep them where we couldn’t see them? Why wouldn’t somebody responsible for this person say, ’Wait a minute, you did what to two girlfriends? You can’t work here. We don’t want you.′
“It seems complicated. But it’s really not.”
POLITICS
Rob Porter’s Ex-Wife ‘Floored’ By the rich asshole Insinuating She’s A Liar
“The truth exists whether the president accepts it or not,” Jennie Willoughby wrote of her abuse allegations.
Jennie Willoughby said she was “floored” by President some rich asshole’s suggestion that she fabricated accusations of domestic abuse against her ex-husband, former White House staff secretary Rob Porter.
In a powerful essay published Sunday in Time, Willoughby wrote about how hard it was to watch the rich asshole praise Porter’s work and repeatedly remind the public that the former aide had proclaimed his innocence. the rich asshole, along with other members of his administration, continued to defend Porter even after he resigned from his position last week following reports that he physically abused both of his ex-wives.
“I can’t say I was surprised. But when some rich asshole repeated twice that Rob declared his innocence, I was floored,” Willoughby wrote. “What was his intent in emphasizing that point? My friend turned to me and said, ‘The president of the United States just called you a liar.’”
Willoughby and Porter’s first wife, Colbie Holderness, publicly accused Porter of abusing them emotionally, verbally and physically during their marriages. Porter has denied both allegations.
the rich asshole tweeted on Saturday that “peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation.” He added: “There is no recovery for someone falsely accused ― life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as due process?”
“There it is again. The words ‘mere allegation’ and ‘falsely accused’ meant to imply that I am a liar. That Colbie Holderness is a liar,” Willoughby wrote. “That the work Rob was doing in the White House was of higher value than our mental, emotional or physical well-being. That his professional contributions are worth more than the truth. That abuse is something to be questioned and doubted.”
Willoughby wrote that her “strength and worth are not dependent on outside belief,” and that “the truth exists whether the president accepts it or not.”
She pointed out just how dangerous it is that our culture is so ready to question victims of abuse rather than simply believe them.
“Society as a whole doesn’t acknowledge the reality of abuse,” she wrote. “Ultimately, this is not a political issue. This is a societal issue, and the tone has just been reset by the White House. If the most powerful people in the nation do not believe my story of abuse in the face of overwhelming evidence, then what hope do others have of being heard?”
Willoughby ended her essay with a strong message: “For any men, women, or children currently in situations of abuse, please know: It is real. You are not crazy. You are not alone. I believe you.”
Head over to Time to read Willoughby’s full essay.
POLITICS
The EPA's Scott Pruitt has been busted again.
Taxpayers are paying a hefty price for Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt to travel in style around the country and around the globe.
A new report from the Washington Post sheds more light on Pruitt’s fondness for luxurious travel on the taxpayer dime, reporting tens of thousands of dollars spent on first-class tickets to jet around the country. During a short stretch in early June 2017, Pruitt’s expensive taste for premier travel cost the American government at least $90,000.
The cost of these flights is just now coming to light thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Environmental Integrity Project.
Receipts obtained from the request show the EPA spent more than $1,600 so Pruitt could relax in first class on a short flight from Washington, D.C., to New York City in June 2017, while his aides flew in coach. Pruitt’s ticket cost six times as much as his aides.
Pruitt also spent thousands of dollars for first-class flights to Utah, Minnesota, Colorado, Iowa, Texas, and other domestic locations. The same Washington Post story reports that officials in previous administrations usually flew coach.
Expensive taste in airline seats is not the only perk taxpayers lavish upon Pruitt. “While on the road, Pruitt often stays at high-end hotels, according to travel records: the Kimpton in Salt Lake City, Le Meridien in Minneapolis, the Capital in Little Rock and the Michelangelo in New York.”
Pruitt’s penchant for treating himself is nothing new. In October 2017, it was revealed that Pruitt booked four charter flights for official business, costing at least $58,000.
Federal regulations state that government employees “should consider the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs,” except in cases of medical or physical necessity, and other select reasons.
Pruitt, like his boss the rich asshole, is also fond of charging taxpayers to shuttle him to and from far-flung locations for weekend getaways. In July 2017, Pruitt “spent nearly half the spring months taking extended weekend trips to and from his home state of Oklahoma, paid for mostly by taxpayers.”
Pruitt’s frequent travel, and his considerable expenses, are being investigated by the EPA’s Inspector General’s office, which opened an inquiry last year to examine “whether travel policies were followed, and whether those policies are sufficient to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse,” according to CNN.
Prior to these revelations, the rich asshole’s Cabinet had already racked up more than $1 million in luxury travel expenses. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned in large part due to the scandal around exorbitant spending on air travel.
There is no word as to whether Pruitt will follow in Price’s footsteps, and step down in disgrace.
POLITICS
The Education Department Officially Won’t Deal With Transgender Students Experiencing Bathroom Discrimination
Transgender students who are not allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity will not be receiving any help from federal officials.
The rich asshole administration’s Education Department will no longer investigate complaints filed by transgender students who are kept from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, a department official told BuzzFeed News.
HuffPost previously reported that the Department of Education had already started telling students who submitted these complaints that the issue no longer fell within its jurisdiction, but this marks the first time an official has referenced a concrete policy change. The news comes almost a year after the departments of Justice and Education rescinded joint, Obama-era guidance that any school receiving federal money must treat a student’s gender identity as his or her sex, which included allowing individuals to use the bathroom conforming to their identity.
However, since that time, the rich asshole administration has been mum on information about how the Education Department’s civil rights division would officially handle these cases. In June, an internal memo from the department’s Office for Civil Rights told attorneys that these cases could be dismissed, but it was not necessarily a requirement. But a spokeswoman for the Department of Education told BuzzFeed that the administration does not interpret Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination, to cover these types of cases.
“Where students, including transgender students, are penalized or harassed for failing to conform to sex-based stereotypes, that is sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX,” Liz Hill told BuzzFeed. “In the case of bathrooms, however, long standing regulations provide that separating facilities on the basis of sex is not a form of discrimination prohibited by Title IX.”
Hill told the outlet that transgender student complaints could still be investigated, just not those centered around the use of intimate facilities.
The Obama administration interpreted Title IX to include discrimination based on gender identity. Notably, a wave of recent court decisions have also interpreted the law this way.
In January, HuffPost learned of at least three recent cases in which the Office for Civil Rights dismissed complaints filed by transgender students regarding access to bathrooms, locker rooms and gender specific sports teams. The Office for Civil Rights wrote back to complainants and said their office was no longer required to deal with this type of discrimination.
HuffPost also previously learned that the number of complaints filed with the Department of Education related to the treatment of transgender students dropped precipitously, by about 40 percent, between January 2016 through January 2017, and January 2017 through January 2018. At the time, advocates for LGBTQ students told HuffPost they worried that the rich asshole administration was having a chilling effect on the students who would otherwise submit complaints of discrimination.
Upon rescinding the Obama-era guidance last year, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos met with a small group of transgender children and families to discuss issues facing this group of students. Vanessa Ford attended the meeting with her six-year-old transgender daughter, Ellie. During the meeting, DeVos mentioned that she had a young granddaughter, just like Ellie.
Ford told HuffPost that she found the news today “mind boggling.”
“We put our family at risk meeting with her in hopes it would make change. She now made the decision for the Department of Education that my daughter and thousands of daughters and sons shouldn’t have the protection her grandchildren should be afforded,” said Ford.
Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, said that after the rich asshole administration first rescinded the student guidance last year, they saw school districts who had been supporting transgender students suddenly change course. She is now focused on making sure they feel supported and affirmed across the country.
“They are not alone,” said Byard. “It is ultimately most important right now every transgender student understands right now that this is wrong.”
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JEFF SESSIONS FACES FRESH RACISM CHARGE AFTER PRAISING ‘ANGLO-AMERICAN HERITAGE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT’
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose political career has been dogged by allegations of racist comments, faces a fresh backlash after harkening back to the “Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement” during a speech to the National Sheriffs' Association on Monday.
“Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people's protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process," he said at the organization's winter conference. "The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement. We must never erode this historic office."
The Anglo-American comment may have been unscripted as it did not appear in a copy of his prepared remarks published by the Department of Justice. That copy reads: "Since our founding, the independently elected Sheriff has been seen as the people’s protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and amenable to the people. The Sheriff is a critical part of our legal heritage."
"The office of Sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement. We must never erode this historic office" : Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaking at the National Sheriff's Association winter conference in DC. @vicenews
There could well be an innocent explanation for Sessions's comment, with some speculating that he meant only to refer to the policing structure the United States inherited from Britain or even the Anglo-Saxon route of the word. "Sheriff" is a portmanteau of the Anglo-Saxon words "shire," meaning "county," and "reeve," meaning "guardian," according to The Washington Post.
Important to note that he could have very likely been referring to the organizational structures of policing from Britain that the US adopted. Still, he should know better than to use such loaded language
But Sessions's history led some on social media to be less generous with their interpretation.
"Under any other administration I’d call this an innocuous historical footnote; in the current context, my 'benefit of the doubt' reserves are pretty well depleted," tweeted Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, tweeted a quote from her mother's 1986 opposition to Sessions's nomination for a federal judgeship.
"The irony of Mr. Sessions's nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods,” Bernice King tweeted.
"The irony of Mr. Sessions' nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given a life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods.” #CorettaScottKing, 1986 twitter.com/misstessowen/s…
Sessions was later denied that federal judgeship over allegations of making racist comments when he referred to Thomas Figures, a black assistant U.S. attorney who worked for him, as "boy."
Sessions denied the allegations at the time, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee: "I am not a racist, I am not insensitive to blacks. I have supported civil rights activity in my state. I have done my job with integrity, equality, and fairness for all."
Omarosa sounds the alarm on ‘scary’ Mike Pence: He ‘thinks Jesus is telling him to say things’
Omarosa Manigault-Newman and Vice President Mike Pence
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Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the former Office of Public Liaison communications director, warned against a potential President Mike Pence, telling co-stars of the reality show “Celebrity Big Bother” he “thinks Jesus is telling him to say things.”
“We would be begging for the days of the rich asshole back if Pence became president,” Manigault-Newman said. “I’m Christian. I love Jesus. But he thinks Jesus is telling him to say things. I’m like, ‘Jesus isn’t saying that.’ It’s scary.”
The clip is the latest in a string of controversial comments from the onetime “Apprentice” star, who was forced out of the White House late last year.
Watch the clip below
Jennie Willoughby: 'President the rich asshole Will Not Diminish My Truth'
IDEAS
Willoughby is a former school teacher whose passion is the resiliency of the human spirit. She writes atBorneBackCeaselessly.com
On Friday, a friend and I watched as the President of the United States sat in the Oval Office and praised the work of my ex-husband, Rob Porter, and wished him future success. I can’t say I was surprised. But when some rich asshole repeated twice that Rob declared his innocence, I was floored. What was his intent in emphasizing that point? My friend turned to me and said, “The President of the United States just called you a liar.”
Yes. And so he did.
On Saturday morning, following the overnight resignation of another White House staffer after his ex-wife came forward with her story of abuse, the President Tweeted:
There it is again. The words “mere allegation” and “falsely accused” meant to imply that I am a liar. That Colbie Holderness is a liar. That the work Rob was doing in the White House was of higher value than our mental, emotional or physical wellbeing. That his professional contributions are worth more than the truth. That abuse is something to be questioned and doubted.
Everyone wants to talk about how the White House and former colleagues defended Rob. Of course they did! They valued and respected him. The truth would be dissonant to everything they believed to be true about the man they knew. The truth would be devastating. And denial is easier than devastation.
Everyone wants to talk about how the rich asshole implied I am a not to be believed. As if the rich asshole is the model of kindness and forgiveness. As if he readily acknowledges his own shortcomings and shows empathy and concern for others. I forgive him. Thankfully, my strength and worth are not dependent on outside belief — the truth exists whether the President accepts it or not.
I think the issue here is deeper than whether the rich asshole, or General John Kelly, or Sarah Huckabee Sanders, or Senator Orrin Hatch, or Hope Hicks, or whether anyone else believes me or defends Rob. Society as a whole has a fear of addressing our worst secrets. (Just ask any African-American citizen). It’s as if we have a societal blind spot that creates an obstacle to understanding. Society as a whole doesn’t acknowledge the reality of abuse.
The tendency to avoid, deny, or cover up abuse is never really about power, or money, or an old boys’ club. It is deeper than that. Rather than embarrass an abuser, society is subconsciously trained to question a victim of abuse. I would call it an ignorant denial based on the residual, puritan, collective agreement that abuse is uncomfortable to talk about.
Amidst the recent rash of sexual assault revelations born of the #MeToo movement, even I found myself questioning the accuser. I almost allowed my societal conditioning to override what my heart knows to be true: Abuse is scary and demoralizing and degrading. It chisels away at your self-esteem and self-worth until you are unsure whether your version of reality is valid or not.
If someone finds the strength and courage to come forward, he or she is to be believed. Because that declaration only came after an uphill battle toward rebirth.
Ultimately, this is not a political issue. This is a societal issue, and the tone has just been reset by the White House. If the most powerful people in the nation do not believe my story of abuse in the face of overwhelming evidence, then what hope do others have of being heard?
We are at a critical moment in history and there are three things I know to be true:
Where there is anger, there is underlying pain.
Where there is denial, there is underlying fear.
Where there is abuse, there is cover-up.
While I may have compassion for my ex-husband and recognize his need for help, I do not tolerate abuse. While I may understand President the rich asshole and Gen. Kelly’s incredulity at such a counter-image of their golden boy, I do not condone their choice to support him.
In light of the President’s and the White House’s continued dismissal of me and Colbie, I want to assure you my truth has not been diminished. I own my story and now that I have been compelled to share it, I’m not willing to cover it up for anyone. And for any men, women, or children currently in situations of abuse, please know:
It is real.
You are not crazy.
You are not alone.
I believe you.
You are not crazy.
You are not alone.
I believe you.
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