February 13th, 2017. It's been 458 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 386 days the Jan 20th inauguration.
POLITICS
FBI Chief Disputes White House Claims On When It Heard Of Rob Porter Allegations
Christopher Wray said the FBI turned in a partial report about the domestic abuse accusations nearly a year ago.
WASHINGTON ― The White House’s attempts to explain why it allowed a top aide accused of domestic violence by both of his ex-wives to keep his job took another hit on Tuesday, this time from FBI Director Christopher Wray.
President some rich asshole’s other top aides have been claiming that they did not know about the domestic violence allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter until recently and that they did not appreciate the full extent of the accusations until photographs of one woman’s injuries were published by news outlets.
But Wray, who was named to that job by the rich asshole, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the FBI had given the White House a preliminary report on Porter nearly a year ago.
“I can’t get into the content of what was briefed,” he said in response to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). “What I can tell you is that the FBI submitted a partial report on the investigation in question in March and then a completed background investigation in late July.”
Wray added that the FBI “soon thereafter” received a request for a follow-up from the White House, which it completed and returned in November.
The FBI closed out its investigation in January, but then received “additional information” in early February, which it passed along as well, Wray said.
White House officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment about Wray’s testimony, which contradicts timelines offered by the White House press office over the past week.
After the first news report of the domestic abuse allegations against Porter was published by the London-based Daily Mail on Feb. 6, the White House offered statements fully supporting Porter, who functioned as Chief of Staff John Kelly’s top assistant.
It was the next day, after The Intercept published photos showing one of Porter’s former wives with a heavily bruised eye, that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Porter was resigning of his own volition but would stay on through a transition period.
And it was later on the night of Feb. 7 that Kelly released a statement saying that he was “shocked” by the latest reports and that Porter had been told to leave.
Wray’s testimony on Tuesday corroborates reporting by HuffPost that Kelly, who took over the chief of staff job in early August 2017, learned of the charges against Porter in November but kept him on anyway because he valued Porter’s help in bringing order to what had been a chaotic White House.
the rich asshole himself has not spoken at all about the two women accusing Porter, but has said that he feels bad for Porter, wishes him well and hopes he will have a good career.
White House tells $7 trillion lie about the rich asshole’s budget proposal
The White House wants you to believe its budget will cut the deficit.
Deputy White House Press Secretary Raj Shah appeared on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning to defend President the rich asshole’s 2019 budget.
“So it’s a great plan, but it also has serious deficit reduction […] It has over $3 trillion dollars in deficit reduction, which is the largest deficit reduction of a budget in terms of a 10-year outlay that we’ve ever seen,” he said. “It lays down a path toward fiscal responsibility, it allows us to keep this booming economy growing, and it funds this president’s priorities that he campaigned on and the American people voted for in support.”
The reality is far less rosy.
the rich asshole’s budget proposes running a $900 billion dollar deficit into 2022, with the hope it would also reduce the deficit by more than $3 trillion dollars over the next decade, eventually bringing it down from 4.4 percent of GDP this year to 1.1 percent by 2028.
The budget will cut spending, specifically in non-defense discretionary spending, which helps fund everything from education programs to food stamps to public broadcast. It doesn’t, however, cut nearly enough to balance the budget within the traditional 10-year budget window. The proposal would add $7.2 trillion more to the debt over 10 years. The projections in the budget also envision very robust economic growth, so if the economy cools, the budgetary picture will get even worse.
This is, of course, made even more difficult by the trillion dollar hole left by the Republican tax plan and the half a trillion in increased spending the rich asshole approved when he signed the two-year budget deal last week.
But the problem really isn’t the deficits. Running a deficit is fine, as long as the rich pay their fair share of taxes and social programs remain intact. Neither of which is true under the rich asshole administration. As HuffPost’s Zach Carter puts it, “Deficits are only scary if they threaten an amorphous crisis of unknowable proportions.”
The problem is running a deficit while Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House. The GOP will likely use large deficits as an excuse to later make further cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and social security to save money. the rich asshole has already promised to make cuts to these programs in his budget.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) also hinted at “entitlement reform” on the Fox Business Network Tuesday morning.
.@SpeakerRyan: "We have to get our other partners in government to be willing to do the kind of entitlement reform that we're willing to do in the House."
Republicans have had their eyes on cutting funding for these programs since before their trillion dollar tax plan was passed last year.
“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said in December of 2016. “… Frankly, it’s the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”
Sean Hannity comes completely unglued over alleged ‘secret sperm’ hidden in Obama’s portrait
Fox News host Sean Hannity. Image via screengrab.
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Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday came completely unglued over what he claimed was a “secret sperm” hidden within former President Barack Obama’s official portrait.
Writing on Twitter, Hannity said that Obama’s portrait, which was unveiled on Monday, was loaded with “inappropriate sexual innuendo” that showed “a stark contrast to predecessors.”
Obama's portrait – a stark contrast to predecessors with inappropriate sexual innuendo https://t.co/YupamDxqKt— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) February 13, 2018
As evidence for this claim, Hannity posted a link to an article on his own website titled, “PORTRAIT PERVERSION: Obama Portrait Features ‘SECRET SPERM.'”
The article itself details Obama portrait artist Kehinde Wiley’s past use of what the New York Times has described as “rich textile or wallpaper backgrounds whose patterns he has likened to abstractions of sperm.”
The article then zooms in on a portion of the Obama portrait that it believes depicts a sperm swimming on the former president’s head, just around the area of his left temple.
The Hannity article said that the purported sperm in the Obama painting was part of a “shocking” and “widening scandal” about the portrait. In addition to painting the supposed sperm, notes the Hannity article, Kehinde Wiley has in the past made jokes about “killing Whitey.”
See the detail of the Obama portrait yourself below.
Rob Porter was in line for a promotion to John Kelly’s deputy before wife-beating scandal broke: CNN
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Former White House staff secretary Rob Porter was reportedly in “serious discussions” to get a major promotion shortly before he was forced to step down amid allegations that he physically abused both of his ex-wives.
Sources have told CNN that “Rob Porter was in in serious discussions to be promoted before he was forced to resign from the WH amid abuse allegations.” Additionally, one source claimed that Porter “was being considered for deputy chief of staff.”
“His anticipated elevation further highlights how top White House officials were willing to overlook indications from the FBI that there were potential abuse allegations in his background in exchange for professional competence in a tumultuous West Wing,” CNN writes.
The the rich asshole White House has given multiple conflicting reports about the timeline surrounding Porter’s departure.
Last week, deputy press secretary Raj Shah claimed that the White House didn’t act sooner in dismissing Porter because the FBI was still conducting its background investigation into him. However, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified under oath on Tuesday that the FBI had finished its investigation in July and had subsequently provided the White House with followup information in November and earlier this month.
What’s more, a new report from Politico on Tuesday claimed that White House officials had tried to arrange for an off-the-record meeting for Porter to deny allegations of spousal abuse to reporters even after a photograph of his wife with a black eye had been published by a British tabloid.
Despite this, the White House has tried to claim that it acted swiftly and decisively in firing Porter, even though it had been warned about the FBI about problems in granting him a security clearance months before.
‘No repercussions!’ Sen. Angus King blasts the rich asshole for letting Russia get away with cyberattacks
Sen. Angus King (I-ME) (Screen cap).
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Sen. Angus King (I-ME) on Tuesday went off on the the rich asshole administration’s seemingly passive response to Russian cyberattacks on American democracy.
During a hearing in front of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, King asked Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats why the Russian government still feels it has a free hand to launch cyberattacks aimed at undermining American elections.
“Director Coats, you have a stunning statement in your report: ‘[The Russians] will work to use cyber operations to achieve strategic objectives unless they face repercussions for their cyber operations,'” King said, reading Coats’ own intelligence assessment of Russian hacking. “Right now there are none! Is that not the case? There are no repercussions! We have no doctrine of deterrence.”
Coats said he agreed that Russia needed to face consequences, but disputed the characterization that the intelligence community had done nothing in response to Russia’s cyberattacks on the United States.
“Though I can’t say much in this setting, I argue that your statement — that we have done nothing — does not reflect the responses that frankly some of us at this table have engaged in and United States government engaged in before and after this, both during and before this administration,” he said.
King then pointed out that having consequences in place for actions would do no good if the Russians were not told what those consequences would be. Coats said that Russia had been informed of repercussions for continued hacks on American elections infrastructure, but he said the whole world didn’t need to know what they were.
Watch the video below.
Joy Behar mocks Mike Pence for news he hears the voice of Jesus: ‘Can he talk to Mary Magdalene without his wife?’
Sherri Shepherd and Joy Behar (Photo: Screen capture)
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The women of “The View” couldn’t help but devolve into the strange accusation from Omarosa Manigault that Vice President Mike Pence hears Jesus Christ talking to him.
Whoopi Goldberg played a clip of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who berated the press for publishing leaked classified information. Goldberg wondered how the White House could take that position when they’ve got Omarosa blabbing all over “Celebrity Big Brother.”
“She does more spin than ‘Dancing With the Stars,'” guest-host Sherri Shepherd joked.
Co-host Sunny Hostin identifies as a woman with devout faith, but she was deeply concerned hearing the news about Pence.
“I went to law school in Indiana,” she explained. “He is a hated figure there, actually. He’s not very popular at all. And I think when you have Mike Pence, who now puts this religious veneer and calls people ‘values voters,’ I think we’re in a dangerous situation. Look, I’m Catholic, I’m a faithful person, but I don’t know that I want my vice president talking in tongues.”
Joy Behar, another co-host raised as a Catholic, noted that there’s often no question about people talking to Jesus, the question about Pence is whether Jesus is talking back.
“My question is, can he talk to Mary Magdalene when his wife isn’t in the room?” Behar asked about Pence. He previously said that he and his wife have a rule that he won’t be alone in a room with another woman.
In all seriousness, Hostin went on to clash with co-host Meghan McCain, who tried to call her colleague a liberal.
“But do we want our politics served with a veneer of religion over it?” Hostin asked. “How is the the rich asshole administration a values-driven administration?”
McCain argued that, politically speaking, the term “values” generally means “pro-choice.” But Hostin took issue with that.
“I don’t see the values in the administration with Rob Porter beating his wife,” Hostin said.
McCain referenced that she thought Hostin was pro-life. “In the political term of what it means it’s ‘valuing’ life,” she said. “It’s an old term that has been used in politics.”
“No, no, Meghan,” Hostin cut in. “That’s not true. Values driven means not only being pro-life but means being pro-marriage. Means being pro-values, pro-compassion, pro-empathy. So many things. It’s not only about pro-life. And the bottom line is, this administration is not a value-s driven administration. You have people beating each other’s wives.”
McCain was presumably speaking to the way the far-right has adopted the phrase “values” to mean anti-choice, while Hostin was speaking about actual values and not far-right political demands from the evangelical lobbyists.
“I don’t know how to say this in a way that doesn’t sound disrespectful. If you’re a liberal,” McCain said gesturing to Hostin. “You have certain problems with Mike Pence, obviously. We see the world through very different veneers.”
“Why am I a liberal?” Hostin asked.
McCain said that she assumed Hostin was.
“It’s not a great assumption,” Hostin clapped back. McCain tried to talk about various things Hostin has said on the show, but ultimately apologized if Hostin considers herself a conservative. Hostin, generally falls on both sides of issues and could easily be considered a moderate.
“I’m not in this fight today,” McCain said throwing her hands up.
Watch the full conversation below:
Ex-wife of former White House speechwriter rips the rich asshole for whining about ‘due process’ for the accused
Jessica Corbett (Screengrab)
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Jessica Corbett, the ex-wife of a former White House speechwriter who resigned last week after she came forward with allegations of abuse, slammed some rich asshole on Tuesday after he complained accused abusers don’t get “due process.”
“I got no due process,” Corbett, who was married to former White House aide David Sorensen told NBC News.
Sorensen, who reported to White House aide Stephen Miller, resigned last Friday after Corbett claimed he was emotionally and physically abusive during their marriage. White House officials, already embroiled in a scandal involving former the rich asshole aide Rob Porter, said they “immediately confronted” Sorensen and accepted his resignation.
Despite the administration’s assurances that the the rich asshole White House has a zero tolerance policy for abusers, the president on Friday took to Twitter to lament “false” allegations, asking, “is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”
But, according to Corbett, Sorensen is not the one whose “due process” was violated. “He got due process when I answered the FBI agents truthfully,” she explained.
Corbett also detailed the extent of her abuse at Sorenson’s hand, telling NBC News, “he has thrown me into a wall, he has put a cigarette out on my hand.”
“He made me drive around for hours, wondering where I would go, with no money, to beg people for cash so I could go home,” she added. “He cut my credit card off, drained my bank account, told me I would be homeless.”
She said the FBI’s first question to her was, “why did you and David get a divorce?”
“Because he was abusive,” Corbett said. “And I escaped and survived.”
Despite the abuse, Corbett insists he “wasn’t out to get” her ex-husband.
“People accuse me of trying to bring a good man down, but all I did was tell the truth,” she said. “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 he is one of the best and most capable people at what he does professionally.”
Watch a clip below, via NBC:
CIA director says the rich asshole’s raving conspiracy theory tweet is based on ‘atrocious’ and ‘ridiculous’ information
FILE PHOTO: Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo testifies before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Thayer/File Photo
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CIA Director Mike Pompeo testified on Tuesday that President some rich asshole’s suggestion that the agency had spent thousands to buy damaging information about him was based on “atrocious” and “ridiculous” information.
The New York Times and The Intercept reported last week that intelligence officials agreed last year to pay hackers over a $1 million in order to obtain information that was said to include compromising information on the rich asshole.
In a tweet on Saturday, the rich asshole suggested that the story was evidence of a conspiracy against him.
According to the @nytimes, a Russian sold phony secrets on “Trump” to the U.S. Asking price was $10 million, brought down to $1 million to be paid over time. I hope people are now seeing & understanding what is going on here. It is all now starting to come out - DRAIN THE SWAMP!
But under questioning from Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) on Tuesday, Pompeo said the media outlets had fallen for a story that was not true.
“Reporting on this matter has been atrocious, it’s been ridiculous, totally inaccurate,” Pompeo told Collins. “In our view, the suggestion the CIA was swindled is false. The people who were swindled were [reporters] James Risen and Matt Rosenberg, the authors of those two pieces.”
“Indeed, it’s our view that the same two people who were proffering phony information to the United States government, proffered that same phony information to these two reporters,” he added. “The Central Intelligence Agency did not provide any resources, no money to these two individuals who proffered U.S. government information directly or indirectly at any time. And the information that we were working to try and retrieve was information that we believed might well have been stolen from the U.S. government. It was unrelated to this idea of kompromat [compromising information on the rich asshole] that appears in each of those two articles.”
Watch the video below.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell embraces the rich asshole immigration plan
Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters (screen grab)
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U.S. Senate Republicans on Tuesday turned up the heat on Democrats seeking protections for young “Dreamer” immigrants as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell embraced President some rich asshole’s demands for broad changes to the country’s immigration policies.
In announcing his support for legislation that would help immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children, McConnell also threw his weight behind building a U.S.-Mexico border wall and sharply curtailing visas for the parents and siblings of immigrants living in the United States legally.
“This proposal has my support and during this week of fair debate I believe it deserves support of every senator who’s ready to move beyond making points and actually making a law,” McConnell, a Republican, said in a speech on the Senate floor.
Even some Republicans, however, have expressed skepticism that such broad, fundamental changes in U.S. immigration law can pass the Senate by the Thursday deadline that No. 2 Republican Senator John Cornyn urged late on Monday.
Also on Monday, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who is leading the charge for Dreamers, told reporters that he thought early Senate votes on immigration legislation would begin with “expansive” measures that will fail to win the 60 votes needed to clear procedural hurdles.
Then, Durbin said, senators will be forced to move “toward the center with a moderate approach.”
But at least for now, Republicans were holding a tough line. Republican Senator Tom Cotton, interviewed on Fox News, said the rich asshole’s immigration plan “is not an opening bid for negotiations. It’s a best and final offer.”
That ran counter to statements the rich asshole has made in recent days, including early on Tuesday in which he said in a tweet that “Negotiations on DACA have begun.”
DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Democratic former President Barack Obama initiated in 2012 and which has allowed around 700,000 Dreamers to legally study and work in the United States temporarily. Last September, the rich asshole announced he would terminate the program on March 5.
During testimony before the Senate Budget Committee on Monday, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said he thought that a deal on immigration legislation will be reached “and that we have full funding on the (border) wall” of $18 billion over two years.
Durbin and other Democrats have talked of the possibility of a bill that provides for a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and additional border security, which could include the construction of more border fencing and other high-tech tools to deter illegal immigrants.
the rich asshole’s FBI director undercuts White House — says Rob Porter’s background investigation was completed in July
FBI director Chris Wray (Screenshot)
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Although the rich asshole White House officials have tried to claim that they were not aware of the full extent of allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter, FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday said that his agency finished its background investigation into Porter all the way back in July.
When asked by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) about the background check on Porter, Wray outlined how the FBI went about investigating potential issues that had prevented him from obtaining a full security clearance.
“The FBI submitted a partial report on the investigation in question in March, and then a completed background investigation in late July that soon thereafter we received requests for follow-up inquiry, and we did the follow-up and provided that information in November and we administratively closed the file in January,” Wray said. “Then earlier this month, we received some additional information, and we passed that on as well.”
A new report from Politico on Tuesday claimed that White House officials had tried to arrange for an off-the-record meeting for Porter to deny allegations of spousal abuse to reporters even after a photograph of his wife with a black eye had been published by a British tabloid.
Despite this, the White House has tried to claim that it acted swiftly and decisively in firing Porter, even though it had been warned about the FBI about problems in granting him a security clearance months before.
Watch the video below.
‘Frankly, the US is under attack’: the rich asshole’s intel chief delivers shocking warning on Russia’s threat to our elections
some rich asshole and Vladimir Putin (Photos by: Screen capture and Shutterstock)
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Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates testified publicly before the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday and cautioned that the United States is under attack.
In his opening statement, Coates gave a report about the threats facing the country.
“We face a complex volatile and challenging threat environment,” he said. “The risk of interstate conflict is higher than anytime since the end of the Cold War, all the more alarming because of the growing development in use of weapons of mass destruction by state and non-state actors. Our adversaries as well as the other maligned actors are using cyber and other instruments of power to shape societies and markets, international rules and institutions, and international hot spots to their advantage.”
He explained that the U.S. is now entering a period in which technology is essential and technological superiority should be a priority for the defense of the country.
“Against our adversaries who seek to sow division in the United States and weaken U.S. leadership, and non-state actors, including terrorists and criminal groups, are exploiting weak state capacity in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, causing instability and violence both within states and among states,” he said.
Turning to global threats, he immediately brought up the cyber war against Russia.
“The cyberthreat, which is one of my greatest concerns and top priorities,” Coats began. “Frankly, the United States is under attack. Under attack by entities that are using cyber to penetrate virtually every major action that takes place in the United States, from U.S. businesses to the federal government to state and local governments, the United States is threatened by cyberattacks every day. While Russia, China, Iran and North Korea pose the greatest cyberthreats, other nation states, terrorist organizations, transnational criminal organizations, and ever more technically capable groups and individuals use cyber-operations to achieve strategic and malign objectives.”
He said that some of the actors “including Russia, are likely to pursue even more aggressive cyberattacks with the intent of degrading our democratic values and weakening our alliances.” Coates warned that these cyber-operations “will continue against the United States and our European allies, using elections as opportunities to undermine democracy, sew discord and undermine our values.”
He went on to say that they expect “Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false flag personas, sympathetic spokesmen, and other means to influence to try to build on its wide range of operations and as bait social and political fissures in the United States.”
Watch a portion of the opening statement below:
‘You can’t justify it’: GOP senator buries White House for tone-deaf response to wife-beating scandal
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) (Screen cap).
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Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Tuesday pointedly refused to defend the the rich asshole White House’s handling of the Rob Porter scandal.
During an interview on CNN, host John Berman asked Ernst about a new report that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders arranged for an off-the-record briefing with former staff secretary Rob Porter to deny accusations that he beat his two ex-wives — even after photos emerged showing his first wife with a black eye that was allegedly inflicted by Porter.
“I think you can’t justify it,” said Ernst, who volunteered at a women’s crisis center while in college, of the new report. “You can’t justify that.”
“And you believe the women?” Berman asked her.
“I do believe the women, yes, I do,” she replied.
Earlier in the interview, Ernst took a dig at President some rich asshole for coming out on Friday in defense of Porter without once mentioning any sympathy for the women he allegedly beat.
“I think he needs to send a stronger message,” she said of the president. “We need to allow women and men that have been abused to come out, make sure their stories are heard and believed.”
Ernst also said she was “extremely disappointed in this situation” and emphasized that “abuse is never OK.”
Watch the video below.
Newt Gingrich gobsmacks Fox & Friends by destroying latest Susan Rice conspiracy theory: ‘It’s happened to me’
Newt Gingrich appears on Fox News (screen grab)
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Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) on Tuesday told the host of Fox & Friends that they likely were wrong to suggest that an email sent by former National Security Adviser Susan Rice proved that she conspired against President some rich asshole.
The Fox News morning show latched onto the news that two Republican senators said they had questions about an email Rice sent herself on Inauguration day. The hosts and their guests — with the exception of Gingrich — found it particularly suspicious that Rice had quoted Barack Obama telling the FBI to proceed with the Russia investigation “by the book.”
“What’s your first take on why she would do something like this?” Brian Kilmeade asked Fox News contributor Andrew Napolitano during one of the show’s segments on Rice.
“She’s obviously trying to rewrite history,” Napolitano opined. “She’s trying to make it look as if something happened that didn’t happen.”
“My suspicion,” he continued, “is that [the Obama team] learned something between Jan. 5 and Jan. 25 which would make them want to change the narrative about this meeting. None of us knew about the meeting… It’s a private, secret meeting in the Oval Office. Suddenly, word comes out — and why would ‘by the book’ be in quotations? Who would believe this?”
But the hosts of Fox & Friends were not counting on Gingrich taking Rice’s side when they brought up the topic again the following hour.
“We’ve all been scratching our heads,” co-host Steve Doocy told Gingrich. “We cannot figure out what Susan Rice was doing 15 minutes into the the rich asshole administration on Inauguration Day when she wrote a memo to herself and emailed it, essentially saying that President Obama and other top law enforcement and FBI and DOJ people did everything by the book when it came to the Russia collusion meeting they had in the Oval Office.”
Gingrich offered an innocent explanation: “It may have been there because someday she’s going to write a memoir and she just wanted to have it.”
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt reminded Gingrich that Rice had been accused of lying about Benghazi.
“For this, the timing of this is so bizarre,” Earhardt said. “Why do you think she wrote this memo 15 days after the meeting? Notes from the meeting. And she kept saying, in her notes to herself, that the president insisted we do everything by the book?”
“Well, I’m guessing that she had taken those notes — and this is a guess as a historian — that she had finally gotten around to it, had a few extra minutes and thought she would capture it in a structured document,” Gingrich explained.
“As she’s cleaning out her office?” Earhardt asked.
“Right,” Gingrich replied. “No, literally, I think — I’ve had that happen to me — I’ll have some piece of paper from a meeting three weeks ago that I never quite got around to capturing in an email or putting into a file. It may well have been she was just tidying up.”
“It’s interesting you’re giving her the benefit of the doubt,” co-host Brian Kilmeade quipped. “That’s very nice of you.”
Watch the video below from Fox News.
Christian author crashes and burns after Morning Joe challenges him to show evidence of the rich asshole’s ‘spiritual voyage’
Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough (MSNBC)
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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough challenged the author of a “spiritual biography” of President some rich asshole to explain himself in a contentious interview.
David Brody, the White House correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network, promoted his new ebook “The Faith of some rich asshole” during an appearance Tuesday on “Morning Joe” — where the host asked him to prove his claims about the president’s religious belief.
“The center of any faith is understanding that you are a broken person, that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory and forgiveness for our continued sins,” Scarborough said. “some rich asshole has said, ‘I never ask God for forgiveness, if I do something wrong I try to leave him out of it.’ He’s never asked for God’s forgiveness. That doesn’t pass the sniff test in any evangelical church, does it?”
Brody said the rich asshole had publicly asked God’s forgiveness at an Iowa event — where he actually said taking communion was the same as seeking mercy — and the Christian reporter said the president speaks more openly about faith “behind the scenes.”
“He’s saying it behind closed doors,” Scarborough interrupted. “Why is it hard for some rich asshole to say, ‘I am a sinner, I have fallen short of God’s glory and I depend on God’s forgiveness for me to move forward?”
Brody said the president has “been on a spiritual voyage” over the last five years, even if that wasn’t always apparent.
“As a mainline Presbyterian, his faith he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve like many others out there,” Brody said.
“In seeking truth you have to get both sides of the story,” he continued. “We’ve heard one side of the book, and I’m telling you there are stories to be told that show a much different side of some rich asshole than people might expect.”
Scarborough asked him to show the rich asshole’s faith on display in his Twitter feed, and Brody shared some anecdotes about the president praying with televangelist James Robison in Pensacola — and the host asked him to stop bluffing.
“You’re not stupid,” Scarborough said. “You’re not dumb, you have grown up — you know exactly what I’m talking about. You know exactly what you’re doing. You’re dissembling because you know there is no — you talk about me. I say all the time I’m broken, I screw up every day, I’m a terrible person.”
“If I go to church I go to church begging God for forgiveness,” he added. “You know why? Because that is the center of the Christian faith. All I am asking you is, has some rich asshole once said publicly that he has sinned, fallen short of the glory of God, and asked for God’s forgiveness.”
Brody insisted the rich asshole had, but he admitted a Google search of those remarks would turn up an interview he conducted with the president on one of his golf courses.
“He said it privately to you, and that’s the public statement you’re talking about?” co-host Mika Brzezinski chimed in.
Brody admitted he had been responsible for publicly reporting those private comments, and then he tried to move the goalposts again.
“Let’s remember, the book is called ‘The Faith of some rich asshole,’ it’s not called ‘The Sainthood of some rich asshole,'” Brody said.
BELIEF
Why Is the Bible So Badly Written?
The obvious answer is that the Bible was not actually dictated by a deity.
Millions of evangelicals and other Christian fundamentalists believe that the Bible was dictated by God to men who acted essentially as human transcriptionists. If that were the case, one would have to conclude that God is a terrible writer. Many passages in the Bible would get kicked back by any competent editor or writing professor, kicked back with a lot of red ink—often more red than black.
Mixed messages, repetition, bad fact-checking, awkward constructions, inconsistent voice, weak character development, boring tangents, contradictions, passages where nobody can tell what the heck the writer meant to convey. This doesn’t sound like a book that was dictated by a deity.
A well-written book should be clear and concise, with all factual statements accurate and characters neither two-dimensional nor plagued with multiple personality disorder—unless they actually are. A book written by a god should be some of the best writing ever produced. It should beat Shakespeare on enduring relevance, Stephen Hawking on scientific accuracy, Pablo Neruda on poetry, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on ethical coherence, and Maya Angelou on sheer lucid beauty—just to name a few.
Why does the Bible so fail to meet this mark? One obvious answer, of course, is that neither the Bible nor any derivative work like the Quran or Book of Mormon was actually dictated by the Christian god or other celestial messengers. We humans may yearn for advice that is “god-breathed,” but in reality, our sacred texts were written by fallible human beings, who try as they might, fell short of perfection in the ways we all do.
But why is the Bible so badly written? Falling short of perfection is one thing, but the Bible has been the subject of literally thousands of follow-on books by people who were genuinely trying to figure out what it means. Despite best efforts, their conclusions don’t converge, which is one reason Christianity has fragmented into over 40,000 denominations and non-denominations.
Here are just a few of the reasons for this tangled web of disagreements and the generally terrible quality of much biblical writing (with some notable exceptions) by literary standards.
Too Many Cooks
Far from being a single unified whole, the Bible is actually a collection of texts or text fragments from many authors. We don’t know the number of writers precisely, and—despite the ancient traditions that assigned authorship to famous people such as Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—we don’t know who most of them were. We do know that the men who inscribed the biblical texts had widely different language skills, cultural and technological surroundings, worldviews and supernatural beliefs, along with varying objectives.
Scholars estimate that the earliest of the Bible’s writers lived and wrote about 800 years before the Christian era, and the most recent lived and wrote around 100 CE. They ranged from tribal nomads to subjects of the Roman Empire. To make matters more complicated, some of them borrowed fragments of even earlier stories and songs that had been handed down via oral tradition from Sumerian cultures and religions. For example, flood myths that predate the Noah story can be found across Mesopotamia, with a boat-building hero named Utnapishtim or Ziusudra or Atrahasis.
Bible writers adapted earlier stories and laws to their own cultural and religious context, but they couldn’t always reconcile differences among handed-down texts, and often may not have known that alternative versions existed. Later, variants got bundled together. This is why the Bible contains two different creation myths, three sets of Ten Commandments, and four contradictory versions of the Easter story.
Forgery and Counter-Forgery
Best-selling Bible scholar Bart Ehrman has written a whole book about forgery in the New Testament, texts written under the names of famous men to make the writings more credible. This practice was so common among early Christians that nearly half of the books of the New Testament make false authorship claims, while others were assigned famous names after the fact. When books claiming to be written by one person were actually written by several, each seeking to elevate his own point of view, we shouldn’t be surprised if the writing styles clash or they espouse contradictory attitudes.
Histories, Poetries, None-of-These
Christians may treat the Bible as a unified book of divine guidance, but in reality it is a mix of different genres: ancient myths, songs of worship, rule books, poetry, propaganda, gospels (yes, this was a common literary genre), coded political commentary, and mysticism, to name just a few. Translators and church leaders down through the centuries haven’t always known which of these they were reading. Modern comedians sometimes make a living by deliberately garbling genres—for example, by taking statements literally when they are meant figuratively—or distorting things someone else has written or said. Whether they realize it or not, biblical literalists in the pulpit sometimes make a living doing the same thing.
Lost in Translation
The books of the Bible were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, though not in the modern versions of these languages. (Think of trying to read Chaucer’s Middle English.) When Roman Catholic Christianity ascended, church leaders embraced the Hebrew Bible and translated it into then-modern Latin, calling it the Old Testament. They also translated texts from early Jesus-worshipers and voted on which to include in their canon of scripture. These became the New Testament. Ironically, some New Testament writers themselves had already quoted bad translations of Old Testament scriptures. These multi-layered imperfect translations inspired key doctrines of the Christian faith, the most famous being the Virgin Birth.
Most English versions of the Bible have been translated directly from the earliest available manuscripts, but translators have their own biases, some of which were shaped by those early Latin translations and some of which are shaped by more recent theological considerations or cultural trends. After American Protestants pivoted away from supporting abortion in the 1980s, some publishers actually retranslated a troublesome Bible verse that treated the death of a fetus differently from the death of a person. The meaning of the Bible passage changed.
But even when scholars scrupulously try to avoid biases, an enormous amount of information is simply lost in translation. One challenge is that the meanings of a story, or even a single word, depend on what preceded it in the culture at large or a specific conversation, or both.
Imagine that a teenage boy has asked his mom for a specific amount of money for a special night out, and Mom says, “You can have $50.” She is communicating something very different if the kid asked for $20 (Mom is saying splurge a bit) versus if the kid had asked for $100 (Mom is saying rein yourself in).
As the mom opens her wallet, the son scrolls through restaurant options on Yelp and exclaims, “Sick!” Mom blinks, then mentally translates into the slang of her own generation which, her son’s perceptions aside, doesn’t come close to translating across 2,000 years of history.
Inside Baseball
A lot changes in 2,000 years. As we read the Bible through modern eyes, it helps to remember that we’re getting a glimpse, however imperfectly translated, of the urgent concerns of our Iron Age ancestors. Back then, writing anything was tremendously labor intensive, so we know that information that may seem irrelevant now (because it is) was of acute importance to the men who first carved those words into clay, or inked them on animal skins or papyrus.
Long lists of begats in the Gospels; greetings to this person and that in the Pauline epistles; instructions on how to sacrifice a dove in Leviticus or purify a virgin war captive in Numbers; "chosen people" genealogies; prohibitions against eating creatures that don’t exist; pages of threats against enemies of Israel; coded rants against the Roman Empire....
As a modern person reading the Bible, one can’t help but think about how the pages might have been better filled. Could none of this have been pared away? Couldn’t the writers have made room instead for a few short sentences that might have changed history: Wash your hands after you poop. Don’t have sex with someone who doesn’t want to. Witchcraft isn’t real. Slavery is forbidden. We are all God’s chosen people.
Answer: No, they couldn’t have fit these in, even without the begats. Of course there was physical space on papyrus and parchment. But the minds of the writers were fully occupied with other concerns. In their world, who begat who mattered (!) while challenging prevailing Iron Age views of illness or women and children or slaves was simply inconceivable.
It’s Not About You
The Gospel According to Matthew (not actually authored by Matthew) was written for an audience of Jews. The author was a recruiter for the ancient equivalent of Jews for Jesus. That is why, in the Matthew account, the Last Supper is timed as a Passover meal. By contrast, the Gospel According to John was written to persuade pagan Roman prospects, so the author timed the events differently. This is just one of many explicit contradictions between the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death and resurrection.
The contradictions in the Gospel stories—and many other parts of the Bible—are not there because the writers were confused. Quite the opposite. Each writer knew his own goals and audience, and adapted hand-me-down stories or texts to fit, sometimes changing the meaning in the process. The folks who are confused are those who treat the book as if they were the audience, as if each verse was a timeless and perfect message sent to them by God. Their yearning for a set of clean answers to life’s messy questions has created a mess.
The Pig Collection
My friend Sandra had a collection of decorative pigs that started out small. As family and friends learned about it, the collection grew to the point that it began taking over the house. Birthdays, Christmas, vacations, thrift stores...when people saw a pig, they thought of Sandra. Some of the pigs were delightful; others, not so much. Finally, the move to a new house opened an opportunity to do some culling.
The texts of the Bible are a bit of a pig collection. Like Sandra’s pigs, they reflect a wide variety of styles, raw material and artistic vision. From creation stories to Easter stories to the book of Revelation, old collectibles got handed down and inspired new, and folks who gathered this type of material bundled them together into a single collection.
A good culling might do a lot to improve things. Imagine a version of the Bible containing only that which has enduring beauty or usefulness. Unfortunately, the collection in the Bible has been bound together for so long that Christian authorities (with a few exceptions) don’t trust themselves to unbind it. Maybe the thought of deciding what goes and stays feels overwhelming or even dangerous. Or maybe, deep down, Bible-believing evangelicals and other fundamentalists suspect that if they started culling, there wouldn’t be a whole lot left. So, they keep it all, in the process binding themselves to the worldview and very human imperfections of our Iron Age ancestors.
And that’s what makes the Good Book so very bad.
FBI director reveals the White House has been blatantly lying about the domestic abuse scandal
the rich asshole officials have been saying Rob Porter's background check process was ongoing.
During congressional testimony on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray presented a timeline of when the White House was informed about red flags in Rob Porter’s background check process that conflicts with the talking points the rich asshole officials have been using over the past week.
“What I can tell you is that the FBI submitted a partial report on the investigation in question in March, and then a completed background investigation in late July,” Wray said. “Soon thereafter we received requests for follow-up inquiry, and we did the follow-up and provided that information in November, and then we administratively closed the file in January, and then earlier this month we received some additional information and we passed that on as well.”
But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and deputy press secretary Raj Shah have repeatedly insisted that the background check process into Porter was ongoing when media reports surfaced of alleged physical and emotional abuse he had inflicted on both of his ex-wives.
“His background investigation was ongoing,” Shah said last Thursday. “He was operating on an interim security clearance. His clearance was never denied, and he resigned.”
During a press briefing on Monday, Sanders said “the background was ongoing.”
During a Fox & Friends interview Tuesday morning, Shah said “what we know about Rob Porter specifically, and that’s the incident that everybody is talking about, is that his background check investigation had not been completed yet. It was still in the investigative process and it had yet to be adjudicated. Prior to an adjudication the White House is not going to step into the middle of the process and short-circuit it.”
Wray’s testimony indicates Sanders and Shah have been lying — the White House officials let a potential blackmail target serve in a sensitive role handling classified documents even after they were informed that he would be unable to get a security clearance due to the abuse allegations against him.
Former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller pointed out that the report Wray says the FBI provided to the White House in March about Porter’s background check process isn’t routine.
the rich asshole pitched real estate project to Georgian prime minister during White House meeting: report
President some rich asshole meets with Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili (Official White House photo).
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President some rich asshole reportedly used a White House meeting with the prime minister of Georgia last year to talk about a long-stalled real estate project in the former Soviet satellite state.
Two former the rich asshole business partners tell Forbes that the rich asshole brought up plans to build a rich asshole Tower in Georgia during his meeting with Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili last May.
As president, the rich asshole has vowed to not be involved in making deals that benefit his businesses and has instead given responsibility for running his businesses to his sons, Eric the rich asshole and some rich asshole Jr.
According to The New Yorker, the rich asshole first unveiled plans to build a rich asshole Tower in the Georgian city of Batumi in 2011.
What’s more, the New Yorker writes that the proposed deal to fund the tower’s construction raised concerns about whether the project would be used as a vehicle to launder money.
“The deal, for which the rich asshole was reportedly paid a million dollars, involved unorthodox financial practices that several experts described to me as ‘red flags’ for bank fraud and money laundering,” the publication writes. “Moreover, it intertwined his company with a Kazakh oligarch who has direct links to Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.”
A groundbreaking ceremony for the tower was held back in 2012, however the project has completely stalled since then and workers haven’t even dug any foundation for the proposed tower.
‘He should have been fired’: Ex-the rich asshole adviser Jason Miller says White House botched handling of accused abuser
the rich asshole communications director Jason Miller (Photo: Screen capture)
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Jason Miller is about as conservative as it comes and his support for President some rich asshole has been unshakable. But when it comes to the president’s support for former staffers who’ve been accused of domestic violence, Miller turned.
Host Anderson Cooper noted that it has been six days since Rob Porter resigned and the White House has bungled navigating the situation.
“You’re right that the messaging from the White House isn’t good on this,” Miller said about the president’s response to domestic violence.
“There’s an important point that we’re missing, that we’ve not heard brought up over the last few days, that domestic violence is a crime. If the allegations against Mr. Porter are accurate, and I have no reason to believe they’re not accurate, Ms. Holderness and Ms. Willoughby, were very credible, especially Ms. Willoughby, who you had on your show last week, both had compelling stories,” Miller continued. “That means that Rob Porter was working as chief of staff to a very powerful U.S. Senator, being someone who has committed crimes. Then, he’s someone who somehow entered the transition as someone who committed these crimes. And somebody, then, brought him into the White House, as someone who committed the crimes.”
What Miller said he wanted to know is who brought Porter on despite the crimes committed.
“Who brought them into the transition?” Miller asked. “And quite frankly, I think Sen. [Orrin] Hatch (R-UT) should be trying to figure out who the heck brought him in? This is problematic. I also don’t think it’s good that Rob Porter resigned. I think, when you have such overwhelming evidence like this, someone like that should have been fired.”
Watch the full discussion with Miller and Kirsten Powers below:
REVEALED: Omarosa was fired for using the presidential motorcade as personal car service
Omarosa Manigault (Shutterstock)
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A new report sheds light on the real reasons that controversial former the rich asshole White House official Omarosa Newman-Manigault was fired from her job last year.
In a new Politico report on the struggles facing White House chief of staff John Kelly, it’s revealed that Kelly fired Omarosa last November because she “had been using the White House car service — known as ‘CARPET’ — as an office pick-up and drop-off service, something strictly forbidden by the federal government.”
The White House Transportation Agency is tasked with driving, securing and maintaining the presidential motorcade for the president and his family. According to an Army Times article, the agency “is staffed exclusively by Army NCOs” and “provides 24-hour transportation and cargo support services to the chief executive.”
Staffers on the agency have duties that “typically involve driving in presidential motorcades, providing support services for Air Force One flights and assisting in other travel-related activities in the United States and overseas,” writes that Army Times.
Omarosa has taken to publicly slamming the rich asshole White House ever since her departure via her appearances on “Celebrity Big Brother.” On Monday, for instance, she claimed that Vice President Mike Pence believes that Jesus personally talks to him and gives him orders about what to say.
the rich asshole attacks Democrats on infrastructure deal — then begs them to make a deal
President some rich asshole honks the horn in a truck (Screen cap).
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President some rich asshole was up tweeting before 6:00 a.m. Tuesday morning with a series of accusations he’s hurling at Democrats.
After announcing his infrastructure plan, and just weeks after touting bipartisan cooperation in his state of the union address, the rich asshole blasted Democrats for not passing his plan on the day it was announced.
“Our infrastructure plan has been put forward and has received great reviews by everyone except, of course, the Democrats,” the rich asshole tweeted. “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?”
He then followed the tweet with another one about the agreement on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) for DREAMers.
“Negotiations on DACA have begun. Republicans want to make a deal and Democrats say they want to make a deal,” the rich asshole continued in his second tweet. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could finally, after so many years, solve the DACA puzzle. This will be our last chance, there will never be another opportunity! March 5th.”
As a fact check on the president, the Republicans still hold the House and Senate and could easily pass whatever he tells them to pass. His problem is that he still can’t manage to control Republican legislators and get his own party on board.
The plan for DACA is drawing criticism from the far-right because Democrats don’t want to fund the rich asshole’s “big beautiful wall” while the GOP doesn’t want to pass anything that looks like amnesty for immigrants.
After passing a budget that cuts infrastructure to water treatment plants and other essential services, the president is now seeking to pass another huge spending bill that Republican deficit hawks are concerned would add to an already ballooning national debt.
Right-wing Christians have a white hot emotional meltdown after commentator suggests the Bible is written poorly
Jesus cuddles a dinosaur.
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God forbid we should talk about the fact that the Bible, despite some wise and lyrical passages, is a boring tangled mess.
After a storm of protest on Twitter and in comment threads, Salon retracted and removed my recent article, “Why the Bible is So Badly Written,” saying that it failed to meet their editorial standards. But which standards were those? Notwithstanding its provocative title and lede, the article summarized a series of well-known flaws in the Bible along with facts about how the book was constructed. It proposed (as did Thomas Jefferson) that the Good Book could use a good edit. Reviewed before publication by a retired religion professor and a professional editor, and errata corrected, the analysis was factually defensible and reasonably clear.
What the article definitely violated were the sensibilities of many Christians and orthodox Jews, and an array of literature lovers from Christianized cultures.
Christians and Jews differ among themselves in how they think of the Bible. Adherents may hold what is called a high or a low view of scripture, or something in between. At the high end are biblical literalists who think their book of scripture, in its entirety, is a timeless and perfect message from Heaven. At the low end are modernist believers, who see the Bible as a collection of human documents, but nonetheless a precious record of humanity’s struggle to understand what is real and good. In between these two lie those who think their version of the Bible, among all the world’s holy books, is uniquely inspired and inspiring. All of these cherish the Bible’s familiar phrases—selectively—as part of their worship routines.
People who hold varying (even conflicting) views of the Bible as scripture generally unite around a derivative view—that the Bible represents one of humanity’s greatest literary achievements. This view has been unassailable for centuries, even as belief in the Bible as holy scripture has dwindled. For those who have left religion behind, emphatically endorsing the Bible as great literature softens the blow, as does the claim that Jesus was a great moral teacher. What do we do with the Bible if we don’t revere it as God’s word? We can revere it as writing.
Offended critics of “Why the Bible is So Badly Written,” pointed to famous authors, including Poet Maya Angelou, who themselves have treasured the Bible as beautiful, inspiring literature. How presumptuous to suggest otherwise!
To be clear, the Bible contains passages with timeless relevance, lyrical poetry, wise counsel, and stories that have inspired two millennia of derivative art. I could and should have acknowledged that more clearly in the article that set off the storm. But that is not all it contains. Two hundred years ago, when Thomas Jefferson took a sharp instrument to a Bible, he called the parts he kept “diamonds in a dunghill.” The other parts, those he discarded, include tedious details about ritual purification, self-aggrandizing genealogical tributes to racial superiority, horrific stories of god-sanctioned violence that dehumanizes women, slaves, and tribal outsiders—and a vast array of related dross.
My own suspicion is that few of the outraged religious believers and literature lovers who attacked Salon have ever attempted to read the Bible cover to cover. Per Barna, the average American household contains 4.4 Bibles, but 57 percent of people say they read something out of it four times per year or less. Even those who read it more often tend to return to the brief passages that they do find inspiring, while skipping the troublesome parts. The book may be the world’s best seller, as some Twitterati like to crow, but most copies collect dust with very good reason.
But reason is only part of the story when we talk about sacred cows.
Seattle, where I live, is home to a hamburger chain called Dick’s. Some folks may recognize it from a Macklemore video that he filmed on the roof of one outlet. Even newcomers to Seattle know about Dick’s and can tell you that “Dick’s is great,” whether they’ve ever tasted the hamburgers and fries or not. Dick’s is great, has taken on a life of its own. It is common knowledge, a cultural touch point, an unquestioned point of agreement that is a part of our shared identity. To claim otherwise is contrarian, the violation of a local light-hearted taboo.
The taboos surrounding the Bible, as both a sacred text and a body of literature, are not so light-hearted because they are more important. But I might argue that defense of the Bible is no less reflexive. For over a thousand years, speaking ill of the Bible has been as gauche as speaking ill of the dead. But that is changing.
If, at this point, you find yourself irritated or protesting or sneering, let me ask you something. When was the last time you actually read it? Cover to cover. If you think that the Bible as a whole constitutes a pinnacle of human moral guidance or literature—either one—you owe it to yourself to read it, all of it. But be forewarned. The testimonial section at ExChristian.net is peppered with stories of folks who set out to do just that and found their spiritual worldview in rubble.
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Note: The version of “Why the Bible is So Badly Written” linked at my website includes minor revisions that did not appear in the version at Salon. These include a more clear statement that the Bible contains bits of beauty and wisdom amidst the rest. I routinely continue to tweak articles after they have been picked up elsewhere. To see the exact version published by Salon, go to AlterNet.com.
Note: The version of “Why the Bible is So Badly Written” linked at my website includes minor revisions that did not appear in the version at Salon. These include a more clear statement that the Bible contains bits of beauty and wisdom amidst the rest. I routinely continue to tweak articles after they have been picked up elsewhere. To see the exact version published by Salon, go to AlterNet.com.
Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including AlterNet, Salon, the Huffington Post, Grist, and Jezebel. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.
How the GOP used a two Santa Clauses tactic to con America for nearly 40 years
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The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus.
-Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976
-Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976
The Republican Party has been running a long con on America since Reagan’s inauguration, and somehow our nation’s media has missed it – even though it was announced in The Wall Street Journal in the 1970s and the GOP has clung tenaciously to it ever since.
In fact, Republican strategist Jude Wanniski’s 1974 “Two Santa Clauses Theory” has been the main reason why the GOP has succeeded in producing our last two Republican presidents, Bush and the rich asshole (despite losing the popular vote both times). It’s also why Reagan’s economy seemed to be “good.”
Here’s how it works, laid it out in simple summary:
First, when Republicans control the federal government, and particularly the White House, spend money like a drunken sailor and run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible. This produces three results – it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy, it raises the debt dramatically, and it makes people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Claus.”
Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!” This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus.
Think back to Ronald Reagan, who more than tripled the US debt from a mere $800 billion to $2.6 trillion in his 8 years. That spending produced a massive stimulus to the economy, and the biggest non-wartime increase in the debt in history. Nary a peep from Republicans about that 218% increase in our debt; they were just fine with it.
And then along came Bill Clinton. The screams and squeals from the GOP about the “unsustainable debt” of nearly $3 trillion were loud, constant, and echoed incessantly by media from CBS to NPR. Newt Gingrich rode the wave of “unsustainable debt” hysteria into power, as the GOP took control of the House for the first time lasting more than a term since 1930, even though the increase in our national debt under Clinton was only about 37%.
The GOP “debt freakout” was so widely and effectively amplified by the media that Clinton himself bought into it and began to cut spending, taking the axe to numerous welfare programs (“It’s the end of welfare as we know it” he famously said, and “The era of big government is over”). Clinton also did something no Republican has done in our lifetimes: he supported several balanced budgets and handed a budget surplus to George W. Bush.
When George W. Bush was given the White House by the Supreme Court (Gore won the popular vote by over a half-million votes) he reverted to Reagan’s strategy and again nearly doubled the national debt, adding a trillion in borrowed money to pay for his tax cut for GOP-funding billionaires, and tossing in two unfunded wars for good measure, which also added at least (long term) another $5 to $7 trillion.
There was not a peep about the debt from any high-profile in-the-know Republicans then; in fact, Dick Cheney famously said, essentially ratifying Wanniski’s strategy, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. We won the midterms [because of those tax cuts]. This is our due.” Bush and Cheney raised the debt by 86% to over $10 trillion (although the war debt wasn’t put on the books until Obama entered office).
Then comes Democratic President Barack Obama, and suddenly the GOP is hysterical about the debt again. So much so that they convinced a sitting Democratic president to propose a cut to Social Security (the “chained CPI”). Obama nearly shot the Democrats biggest Santa Claus program. And, Republican squeals notwithstanding, Obama only raised the debt by 34%.
Now we’re back to a Republican president, and once again deficits be damned. Between their tax cut and the nearly-trillion dollar spending increase passed on February 8th, in the first year-and-a-month of the rich asshole’s administration they’ve spent more stimulating the economy (and driving up debt by more than $2 trillion, when you include interest) than the entire Obama presidency.
Consider the amazing story of where this strategy came from, and how the GOP has successfully kept their strategy from getting into the news; even generally well-informed writers for media like the Times and the Post – and producers, pundits and reporters for TV news – don’t know the history of what’s been happening right in front of us all for 37 years.
Republican strategist Jude Wanniski first proposed his Two Santa Clauses strategy in 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace and the future of the Republican Party was so dim that books and articles were widely suggesting the GOP was about to go the way of the Whigs. There was genuine despair across the Party, particularly when Jerry Ford began stumbling as he climbed the steps to Air Force One and couldn’t even beat an unknown peanut farmer from rural Georgia for the presidency.
Wanniski was tired of the GOP failing to win elections. And, he reasoned, it was happening because the Democrats had been viewed since the New Deal as the Santa Claus party (taking care of people’s needs and the General Welfare), while the GOP, opposing everything from Social Security to Medicare to unemployment insurance, was widely seen as the party of Scrooge.
The Democrats, he noted, got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their “big government” projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built, giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers and making our country shine.
Democrats kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn’t seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that added to the perception that the Democrats were a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class.
Americans loved the Democrats back then. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.
Wanniski decided that the GOP had to become a Santa Claus party, too. But because the Republicans hated the idea of helping working people, they had to figure out a way to convince people that they, too, could have the Santa spirit. But what?
“Tax cuts!” said Wanniski.
To make this work, the Republicans would first have to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on a simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. (Everybody understood that demand – aka “wages” – drove economies because working people spent most of their money in the marketplace, producing demand for factory output and services.)
In 1974 Wanniski invented a new phrase – “supply side economics” – and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn’t because people had money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money.
The more things there were, he said, the faster the economy would grow. And the more money we gave rich people and their corporations (via tax cuts) the more stuff they’d generously produce for us to think about buying.
At a glance, this move by the Republicans seems irrational, cynical and counterproductive. It certainly defies classic understandings of economics. But if you consider Jude Wanniski’s playbook, it makes complete sense.
To help, Arthur Laffer took that equation a step further with his famous napkin scribble. Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up! Neither concept made any sense – and time has proven both to be colossal idiocies – but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the wilderness.
Ronald Reagan was the first national Republican politician to fully embrace the Two Santa Clauses strategy. He said straight out that if he could cut taxes on rich people and businesses, those tax cuts would cause them to take their surplus money and build factories, and that the more stuff there was supplying the economy the faster it would grow.
George Herbert Walker Bush – like most Republicans in 1980 who hadn’t read Wanniski’s piece in The Wall Street Journal – was horrified. Ronald Reagan was suggesting “Voodoo Economics,” said Bush in the primary campaign, and Wanniski’s supply-side and Laffer’s tax-cut theories would throw the nation into such deep debt that, he believed, we’d ultimately crash into another Republican Great Depression.
But Wanniski had been doing his homework on how to sell “voodoo” supply-side economics.
In 1976, he rolled out to the hard-right insiders in the Republican Party his “Two Santa Clauses” theory, which would enable the Republicans to take power in America for the next forty years.
Democrats, he said, had been able to be “Santa Clauses” by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. From food stamps to new schools to sending a man to the moon, the people loved the “toys” the Democrats brought every year.
Republicans could do that, too, the theory went – spending could actually increase without negative repurcussions. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people’s taxes!
For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich, which wasn’t to be discussed in public, it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts.
The rich, Reagan, Bush, and the rich asshole told us, would then use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus stimulating the economy and making average working people richer. (And, of course, they’d pass some of that money back to the GOP, like the Kochs giving Paul Ryan $500,000.00 right after he passed the last tax cut that gave them billions.)
There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They’d be forced into the role of Santa-killers by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.
When Reagan rolled out Supply Side Economics in the early 80s, dramatically cutting taxes while exploding spending, there was a moment when it seemed to Wanniski and Laffer that all was lost. The budget deficit exploded and the country fell into a deep recession – the worst since the Great Depression – and Republicans nationwide held their collective breath.
But David Stockman came up with a great new theory about what was going on – they were “starving the beast” of government by running up such huge deficits that Democrats would never, ever in the future be able to talk again about national health care or improving Social Security.
And this so pleased Alan Greenspan, the Fed Chairman, that he opened the spigots of the Fed, dropping interest rates and buying government bonds, producing a nice, healthy goose to the economy.
Greenspan further counseled Reagan to dramatically increase taxes on people earning under $37,800 a year by doubling the Social Security (FICA/payroll) tax, and then let the government borrow those newfound hundreds of billions of dollars off-the-books to make the deficit look better than it was.
Reagan, Greenspan, Winniski, and Laffer took the federal budget deficit from under a trillion dollars in 1980 to almost three trillion by 1988, and back then a dollar could buy far more than it buys today. They and George HW Bush ran up more debt in eight years than every president in history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined.
Surely this would both starve the beast and force the Democrats to make the politically suicidal move of becoming deficit hawks. And that’s just how it turned out.
Bill Clinton, who had run on an FDR-like platform of a “New Covenant” with the American people that would strengthen the institutions of the New Deal, strengthen labor, and institute a national health care system, found himself in a box.
A few weeks before his inauguration, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin sat him down and told him the facts of life: he was going to have to raise taxes and cut the size of government. Clinton took their advice to heart, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and cut numerous programs, declaring an “end to welfare as we know it” and, in his second inaugural address, an “end to the era of big government.”
Clinton was the anti-Santa Claus, and the result was an explosion of Republican wins across the country as Republican politicians campaigned on a platform of supply-side tax cuts and pork-rich spending increases. State after state turned red, and the Republican Party rose to take over, ultimately, every single lever of power in the federal government, from the Supreme Court to the White House.
Looking at the wreckage of the Democratic Party all around Clinton by 1999, Winniski wrote a gloating memo that said, in part: “We of course should be indebted to Art Laffer for all time for his Curve… But as the primary political theoretician of the supply-side camp, I began arguing for the ‘Two Santa Claus Theory’ in 1974. If the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts…”
Ed Crane, then-president of the Koch-funded Libertarian CATO Institute, noted in a memo that year: “When Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Vin Weber, Connie Mack and the rest discovered Jude Wanniski and Art Laffer, they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. In supply-side economics they found a philosophy that gave them a free pass out of the debate over the proper role of government. Just cut taxes and grow the economy: government will shrink as a percentage of GDP, even if you don’t cut spending. That’s why you rarely, if ever, heard Kemp or Gingrich call for spending cuts, much less the elimination of programs and departments.”
Two Santa Clauses had gone mainstream. Never again would Republicans worry about the debt or deficit when they were in office; and they knew well how to scream hysterically about it as soon as Democrats took power.
George W. Bush embraced the Two Santa Claus Theory with gusto, ramming through huge tax cuts – particularly a cut to the capital gains tax rate on people like himself who made their principle income from sitting around the mailbox waiting for their dividend or capital gains checks to arrive – and blew out federal spending.
Bush, with his wars, even out-spent Reagan, which nobody had ever thought would again be possible. And it all seemed to be going so well, just as it did in the early 1920s when a series of three consecutive Republican presidents cut income taxes on the uber-rich from over 70 percent to under 30 percent.
In 1929, pretty much everybody realized that instead of building factories with all that extra money, the rich had been pouring it into the stock market, inflating a bubble that – like an inexorable law of nature – would have to burst.
But the people who remembered that lesson were mostly all dead by 2005, when Jude Wanniski died and George Gilder celebrated the Reagan/Bush supply-side-created bubble economies in a Wall Street Journal eulogy:
“…Jude’s charismatic focus on the tax on capital gains redeemed the fiscal policies of four administrations. … Unbound by zero-sum economics, Jude forged the golden gift of a profound and passionate argument that the establishments of the mold must finally give way to the powers of the mind. … He audaciously defied all the Buffetteers of the trade gap, the moldy figs of the Phillips Curve, the chic traders in money and principle, even the stultifying pillows of the Nobel Prize.”
In reality, his tax cuts did what they have always done over the past 100 years – they initiated a bubble economy that would let the very rich skim the cream off the top just before the ceiling crashed in on working people. Just like today.
The Republicans got what they wanted from Wanniski’s work. They held power for thirty years, made themselves trillions of dollars, and cut organized labor’s representation in the workplace from around 25 percent when Reagan came into office to around 6 of the non-governmental workforce today.
Over time, and without raising the cap, Social Security will face an easily-solved crisis, and the GOP’s plan is for force Democrats to become the anti-Santa, yet again. If the GOP-controlled Congress continues to refuse to require rich people to pay into Social Security (any income over $128,000 is SS-tax-free), either benefits will be cut or the retirement age will have to be raised to over 70.
The GOP plan is to use this unnecessary, manufactured crisis as an opening to “reform” Social Security – translated: cut and privatize. Thus, forcing Democrats to become the Social Security anti-Santa a different way.
When this happens, Democrats must remember Jude Wanniski, and accept neither the cut to disability payments nor the entree to Social Security “reform.” They must demand the “cap” be raised, as Bernie Sanders proposed and the Democratic Party adopted in its 2016 platform.
And, hopefully, some of our media will begin to call the GOP out on the Two Santa Clauses program. It’s about time that Americans realized the details of the scam that’s been killing wages and enriching billionaires for nearly four decades.
U.S. officials, Pence part ways with the rich asshole on North Korea
The rich asshole administration's latest policy flip-flop.
U.S. officials are ready to negotiate with North Korea, a spokesperson for South Korean President Moon Jae-in told reporters on Tuesday. The statement comes days after Vice President Pence suggested he would be willing to open discussions with the Kim regime, with certain stipulations.
“The United States too looks positively at South-North Korean dialogue and has expressed its willingness to start dialogue with the North,” spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom stated, according to The New York Times.
Shortly after leaving South Korea this past weekend, where he had been in attendance at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics opening ceremonies, Pence told the Washington Post that he would consider talks with Pyongyang, so long as the topic of denuclearization was on the table.
“The point is, no pressure comes off until they are actually doing something that the alliance believes represents a meaningful step toward denuclearization,” Pence said, in an interview. “So the maximum pressure campaign is going to continue and intensify. But if you want to talk, we’ll talk.”
The decision comes at a crucial time for North Korea, whose economy has taken a hit under aggressive sanctions imposed by the United Nations. Pence himself recently stated that the United States was ready to unveil crippling new economic sanctions meant to force North Korean officials into a nuclear drawdown. The vice president called the sanctions the “toughest and most aggressive…on North Korea ever.”
“We will continue to intensify our maximum pressure campaign until North Korea takes concrete steps toward complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization,” Pence said during a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on February 7.
Referring to the sudden diplomatic warming between North and South Korean officials prior to the Olympics, he added, “I laud the fact that inter-Korean dialogue is taking place for the success of the Pyeongchang Olympics. But we cannot simply look on as North Korean continues to develop nuclear weapons and missiles.”
The sudden shift toward diplomatic talks is an about-face for the rich asshole administration, which has wavered considerably over the past year on the topic of North Korea. In August, responding to reports that North Korea had begun making missile-ready nuclear weapons, President the rich asshole stated that the nation would be “met with fire and fury” if it continued developing its nuclear program.
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” the rich asshole told reporters. “…[Kim Jong-un] has been very threatening, beyond a normal state. And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
Responding to the rich asshole’s comments, North Korean officials threatened to strike military targets in Guam, a U.S. territory.
The president’s comments were later tempered by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who stated that Americans should “sleep well at night” and not worry about the escalating rhetoric between the two countries.
“What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong-un would understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language,” he said. “I think the president just wanted to be clear to the North Korean regime that the U.S. has unquestionable ability to defend itself, will defend itself and its allies, and I think it was important that he deliver that message to avoid any miscalculation on their part.”
In October, the rich asshole and Tillerson found themselves at odds after the president shot down his secretary of state’s suggestion that North Korea could be dealt with diplomatically. Tillerson had told reporters one day earlier that the United States was in “direct contact” with North Korean leaders and had several channels open with Pyongyang, whenever they were ready to talk.
“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” the rich asshole tweeted, using a mocking nickname for the North Korean leader. “Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”
More recently, Vice President Pence himself has ratcheted up tensions between the two nations, telling reporters at a missile defense facility in Tokyo that he would be “telling the truth about North Korea at every stop” on his way to South Korea.
“We’ll be ensuring that whatever cooperation that’s existing between North and South Korea today on Olympic teams does not cloud the reality of a regime that must continue to be isolated by the world community,” he said.
North Korean leaders shot back, saying their nuclear program was meant as a deterrent to the rich asshole to prevent him from launching the first strike, according to the Associated Press.
“If the rich asshole does not get rid of his anachronistic and dogmatic way of thinking, it will only bring about the consequence of further endangering security and future of the United States,” officials stated, according to the Korean Central News Agency, the country’s state-run media outlet.
The spin keeps changing but the facts remain the same — the White House covered for a domestic abuser.
The White House’s already-shaky cover story about how the administration quickly moved to get rid of a top aide after he was accused of beating his ex-wives suffered another embarrassment on Tuesday, when it was revealed the White House initially tried to have the aide talk his way out of the problem. In a room full of reporters.
In the week since Rob Porter left the White House after the Daily Mail published photographs of his battered ex-wife, the administration has been completely unable and unwilling to explain why Porter kept working for chief of staff John Kelly after Porter failed this FBI security clearance after the ex-wives detailed his history of abuse.
the rich asshole has warmly praised Porter since the scandal broke, while remaining steadfastly mum about the victims. Meanwhile, the jumbled spin from his team has revolved around the idea that the White House cut ties with Porter “40 minutes” after they got the disturbing news last week.
But on Tuesday, Politico reported this rather stunning revelation, which completely destroys the White House’s official timeline [emphasis added]:
In the hours immediately after the Daily Mail published a photograph of Porter’s first ex-wife with a black eye, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders hastily arranged an off-the-record meeting in the West Wing with Porter and four reporters: the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, Axios’ Jonathan Swan, and the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender. In that meeting, which hasn’t previously been reported, Porter relayed his version of events and fielded questions from the group.
Rather than immediately fire Porter, the White House sent him into a room with reporters to try to spin his, and their, way out of the story.
Off the record, of course.
Meanwhile, CBS News reported on Tuesday that the FBI completed Porter’s background check long before he resigned.
That seems to indicate that the White House knew Porter was never going to be granted the security clearance that he needed to do his job, and that the White House knew why he was being denied clearance — because he was accused of beating his ex-wives.
So yes, the idea that the rich asshole’s team sprang into action the moment they found out about Porter’s dark past and fired him within “40 minutes” is a complete fabrication. How long will the White House cling to it?
Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate Karla Bigham kept a crucial Minnesota swing district blue, barely a year after its voters chose the rich asshole.
On Monday, the latest round of state legislative special elections began in Minnesota. After a long string of Democratic wins, Republicans threw everything they had at their own rare chance to turn the tables and flip a blue seat red.
And they failed. Former state Rep. Karla Bigham defeated GOP candidate Denny McNamara for Senate District 54, keeping the seat for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (Minnesota’s chapter of the Democratic Party).
A lot was hinging on the special election for this district, which encompasses the southeastern suburbs of St. Paul. After it was vacated by Democratic-Farmer-Labor state Sen. Dan Schoen amid allegations of sexual harassment, the DFL chose a woman to replace him.
Holding onto this seat was not a foregone conclusion. The DFL has held it for a decade, but the district swung to the rich asshole in 2016. Moreover, the GOP outraised Bigham and was desperate to win this seat.
Minnesota Republicans had good reason to want this seat: their state senate majority is in serious jeopardy. Bigham’s win means Republicans control the chamber only 34 to 33, at precisely the same time GOP state senator and Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach is facing a lawsuit alleging she cannot legally serve in the senate. That lawsuit was dismissed on Monday but can be refiled when the legislative session begins, and if Fischbach loses, control of the chamber will flip blue.
Another special election was held last night for state House District 23B, vacated by a GOP lawmaker also accused of sexual harassment. Republicans managed to retain this rural seat, but by a slimmer margin than usual.
EMILY’s List put out a statement celebrating Monday night’s results.
“By electing Karla, Minnesota voters have added a strong woman leader to the decision-making table, ensuring that the working families of Senate District 54 have an ally fighting for them in the upper chamber,” said EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock. “It was also heartening that our endorsed candidate Melissa Wagner over-performed in a previously deep red House district.”
If Republicans wanted a sign that the resistance is fading, this was not it. Around the country, women candidates are rocking the polls and bringing accountability.
Republicans have resorted to begging a congressman who already said he wouldn't run.
Last year, North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp looked like one of the most vulnerable Democrats on the map, even as she joined with her party to resist the rich asshole. Republicans scoffed that she was a fool for not backing the rich asshole agenda, particularly the GOP tax scam, and said the North Dakota voters who elected the rich asshole by 36 points would punish her for it.
Fast forward to today. Republicans are desperate to find someone, anyone, to take her on, and begging a congressman who already said he would not do it.
Rep. Kevin Cramer, who is best known for his obsession with privatizing Social Security, decided last month that he would run for another term in the House rather than try for the Senate.
But now, according to the Washington Examiner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and party strategists are trying to persuade Cramer to change his mind. Said one insider: “Kevin Cramer might be the most heavily recruited candidate in the history of Republican politics.”
Republicans might be right that Cramer is their only hope. Both of the current Republicans in the Senate primary are imploding in spectacular fashion.
Last week, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski unearthed a series of horrific social media posts by one of the candidates, former state party chair Gary Emineth, in which he advocated banning mosques, called President Obama a “POS,” and compared food stamp recipients to animals. Emineth’s response was almost comically inept, claiming he did not know what “POS” stood for, and then saying “So what?” and “Bring it on. I’m going to say what’s on my mind.”
Republicans were on the point of grudgingly getting behind the other candidate, former banker and state Sen. Tom Campbell, until their own opposition research revealed he had foreclosed on several family farms and was sued for fraud by a life insurance company after collecting on his deceased mother.
The saga of North Dakota Republicans is part of a general inability to recruit candidates nationwide. Indeed, a similar disaster is unfolding in Tennessee, where Republicans are begging retiring Sen. Bob Corker to un-retire after polls found their frontrunner losing to Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen.
After the stunning win of Doug Jones in Alabama, Democrats suddenly have a plausible path to winning a Senate majority, so it is crucial for the GOP to pick off at least a couple of the 10 incumbent Democratic senators on the ballot in states the rich asshole won.
If what is unfolding in North Dakota is any guide, Republicans are growing less sure by the day that they can do it.
Republicans turn on the rich asshole as domestic violence scandal spirals out of control
"I think you can't justify it."
On Tuesday morning, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said there’s no justification for the White House’s handling of abuse accusations against former top aide Rob Porter.
During an interview on CNN, Ernst was asked specifically about a new Politico report indicating the White House’s initial response to a photograph showing one of Porter’s ex-wives with a black eye was to convene a meeting with reporters where Porter shared his side of the story.
“I think you can’t justify it,” Ernst said, “You can’t justify that.”
According to Politico, “In the hours immediately after the Daily Mail published a photograph of Porter’s first ex-wife with a black eye, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders hastily arranged an off-the-record meeting in the West Wing with Porter and four reporters: the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, Axios’ Jonathan Swan, and the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender. In that meeting, which hasn’t previously been reported, Porter relayed his version of events and fielded questions from the group.”
Politico’s reporting is at tension with the White House’s talking point about how the photograph provided the impetus for officials to quickly to terminate Porter, including comments Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made during Monday’s news briefing.
Ernst criticizes the rich asshole
Despite the photographic evidence and accounts of verbal and physical abuse from both of Porter’s ex-wives, it’s not clear whether President the rich asshole believes the accusations against Porter.
On Friday, the rich asshole praised Porter, ignored his alleged victims, and said “we hope he has a wonderful career and he will have a great career ahead of him.” The next day, the rich asshole — has denied each of the 14 sexual assault allegations against him — lamented on Twitter that “lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation.”
During the CNN interview, Ernst indicated she’s unsatisfied with the rich asshole’s response to the Porter accusations, and said she thinks “he needs to send a stronger message.”
“We need to allow women and men that have been abused to come out, make sure their stories are heard and believed,” she said.
While White House officials refuse to say if the rich asshole even believes Porter’s accusers, Ernst said she does.
“I do believe the women, yes I do,” she said.
Ernst isn’t the first Republican senator to criticize the the rich asshole administration’s handling of the scandal. During an appearance on Meet The Presslast Sunday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) said “the White House said they could have handled the situation better. That’s a bit of an understatement, yes.”
“If you put on a political hat that that is a big problem. Certainly how we are viewed as Republicans in the next election, I think that that is a big problem,” Flake added. “And certainly, substantively, it’s a big problem not to show any concern or empathy for the potential victims of these incidents. That is a problem. And that’s something I think the president ought to correct.”
POLITICS
the rich asshole Used Twitter To Defend Alleged Abusers, But Not To Congratulate U.S. Medal Winners
As Team USA racks up wins, the president has been unusually silent.
As of early Tuesday, Team USA has won three gold, one silver and two bronze medals at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. And it has received zero tweets from President some rich asshole in support of those victories.
the rich asshole, for his part, has been as active on Twitter as ever. Since the Games began last week, he’s complained about the “fake news media,” claimed (incorrectly) that he was “vindicated” in the Russia investigation, railed against Democrats and stuck up for alleged abusers. He also plugged his tax cuts, promoted Republican candidates and teased an upcoming appearance at a conservative conference.
But the last time the rich asshole commented on a specific U.S. result in the Winter Olympics was this tweet, from the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia:
the rich asshole did take to Twitter last week to send his best wishes to South Korea for hosting the games.
THE RICH ASSHOLE WANTS TO REPLACE FOOD STAMPS FOR IMPOVERISHED AMERICANS WITH FOOD BOXES TO SAVE MONEY
The rich asshole administration wants to scrap food stamps for low-income Americans and replace them with boxes of non-perishable food items selected by the government, Politico reported Monday.
The proposal was touted by White House budget director Mick Mulvaney and included in the White House fiscal budget, released Monday. According to the administration, it could save the federal government $129 billion over the next decade.
Mulvaney compared the measure to start-up meal delivery company Blue Apron.
Under the plan, the amount of money low income families receive as part of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, would be slashed, and they would receive a product dubbed “America’s Harvest Box” by the Department of Agriculture.
That box would include staples like shelf-stable milk, peanut butter, canned fruits and meats, and cereal.
Critics likened the plan to wartime rationing, and questioned how the boxes would be delivered to remote rural communities and would accommodate those with special dietary requirements, including allergies.
The Food Research and Action Center, a prominent non-profit group, told Politico the harvest box idea would be “costly, inefficient, stigmatizing, and prone to failure.”
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