February 19th, 2017 continued. It's been 464 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 392 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
some rich asshole’s Son-In-Law Is Getting Thrown Out Of The White House (VIDEO)
some rich asshole’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is in a fuckton of trouble. Firstly. special counsel Robert Mueller is interested in Kushner’s attempts to secure foreign financing for his real estate company during the presidential transition, and he might be out of a job, which is a really bad thing for a guy who owes a lot of money. Just to put his financial woes into perspective, the rich asshole’s son-in-law took millions of dollars out of three separate credit lines months after he entered the White House last year. The senior adviser to some rich asshole has yet to receive a security clearance, but that may be about to change because he will be out of work.
AS MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reports, “Unless something changes in the next few days, Jared Kushner is going to need a new job by the end of the week.”
Watch:
White House chief of staff John Kelly appears to be ready to rescind all interim security clearances by Friday. If ‘all’ means ‘all’ then that would mean Kushner’s, too. This news follows the scandal of former White House staff secretary Rob Porter who also was not vetted, and is out of a job after multiple domestic violence allegations against him became public. Extreme vetting was not applied to the the rich asshole administration even though the former reality show star said he surrounds himself by the best people. We assume he means the ones he’s related to, by blood, or otherwise. People like Jared Kushner, a man who should not have been afforded security clearance.
Kush can’t even answer a simple question.
Over 70 days ago I led a letter with a dozen Members of Congress asking Jared Kushner a simple yes/no question: Did he speak with any foreign nationals about the troubled loan for 666 Fifth Ave?#Kushner still refuses to answer our simple question. Now we know why. twitter.com/holmescnn/stat…
This is not normal. Imagine if President Obama gave security clearances all willy-nilly to anyone he’s related to, the outrage from conservatives would be deafening.
This the rich asshole accuser keeps asking herself that. But she plans to keep talking about that day in 2006.
Rachel Crooks is one of the 19 women who accused President some rich asshole of sexual assault.
Story by Eli Saslow
Photos by Carolyn Van Houten
FEBRUARY 19, 2018
TIFFIN, Ohio
She believed her best chance to be heard was through sheer repetition, so Rachel Crooks took her seat at the dining table and prepared to tell the story again. She was used to difficult audiences, to skeptics and Internet trolls who flooded her Facebook page with threats, but this was a generous crowd: a dozen women, all friends of her aunt, gathered for a casual dinner party on a Friday night. The hostess turned off the music, clanked a fork against her wineglass and gestured to Crooks. “Would you mind telling us about the famous incident?” she asked. “Not the sound-bite version, but the real version.”
“The real version,” Crooks said, nodding back. She took a sip of water and folded a napkin onto her lap.
“It all happened at the rich asshole Tower,” she said. “I had just moved to New York, and I was working as a secretary for another company in the building. That’s where he forced himself on me.”
Crooks, 35, had been publicly reliving this story for much of the past two years, ever since she first described it in an email to the New York Times several months before the 2016 election. “I don’t know if people will really care about this or if this will matter at all,” she had written then, and after some rich asshole’s election she had repeated her story at the Women’s March, on the “Today” show and at a news conference organized by women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred. Crooks had spoken to people dressed in #MeToo sweatshirts and to her rural neighbors whose yards were decorated with the rich asshole signs. In early February, she launched a campaign to become a Democratic state representative in Ohio, in part so she could share her story more widely with voters across the state. And yet, after dozens of retellings, she still wasn’t sure: Did people really care? Did it matter at all?
Despite her story, and the similar stories of more than a dozen other women, nothing had changed. the rich asshole, who had denied all of the accusations, was still president of the United States, and Crooks was still circling back to the same moments on Jan. 11, 2006, that had come to define so much about her life.
Rachel Crooks holds a photograph of herself from the time when she worked at the rich asshole Tower.
“He was waiting for the elevator outside our office when I got up the nerve to introduce myself,” she said now, remembering that day when she was 22 years old and the rich asshole was 59. “It’s not like I was trying to upset the apple cart. I don’t know. Maybe I was being naive.”
The hostess shook her head and then reached for Crooks’s hand. “You did absolutely nothing wrong,” she said.
“Thank you,” Crooks said, even though she sometimes still wondered. She reached for her water glass and lifted it up into the air to use as a prop. “He took hold of my hand and held me in place like this,” she said, squeezing the sides of the water glass, shaking it gently from side to side. “He started kissing me on one cheek, then the other cheek. He was talking to me in between kisses, asking where I was from, or if I wanted to be a model. He wouldn’t let go of my hand, and then he went right in and started kissing me on the lips.”
She shook the water glass one final time and set it down. “It felt like a long kiss,” she said. “The whole thing probably lasted two minutes, maybe less.”
“Like you were another piece of his property,” the hostess said.
“And with those orange lips!” another woman said.
Everyone at the table began to talk at the same time about the rich asshole, and Crooks pushed her chair back and nodded along. She understood by now that for everyone else this was a story about the president — about what he had or hadn’t done during those two minutes, and what that said about his morality and the character of the country that voted him into office. But the story Crooks was still trying to understand was her own, about what those two minutes had meant for her.
The hostess clinked her glass again to quiet the room. “Sorry, but can we go back to the kiss for a second?”
“Sure,” Crooks said, and then she started to tell it again.
Crooks gets ready for work at her home in Tiffin.
There were 19 women in all who made public accusations of sexual misconduct, or “The Nineteen,” as they had come to be known on T-shirts and bumper stickers. Most had come forward with their stories after the rich asshole launched his presidential campaign in 2015, and the experiences they described having with him spanned five decades. They claimed the rich asshole had “acted like a creepy uncle,” or “squeezed my butt,” or “eyed me like meat,” or “stuck his hand up under my skirt,” or “groped with octopus hands,” or “pushed me against a wall,” or “thrust his genitals,” or “forced his tongue into my mouth” or “offered $10,000 for everything.”
In response, the rich asshole had called the accusations against him “total fabrications” based on “political motives” to destroy his campaign and then his presidency. “Nothing ever happened with any of these women,” the rich asshole tweeted once. “Totally made up nonsense to steal the election. Nobody has more respect for women than me!”
One woman accused the rich asshole of assaulting her in the middle of a commercial flight after they met as seatmates in the 1970s. Another said it happened in a conference room during the middle of a job interview. Another, a journalist for People magazine, said the rich asshole forced his tongue into her mouth as they finished an interview for a feature story about his marriage to Melania. The list of accusers included a reality-TV host, a runner-up on “The Apprentice,” a yoga instructor, an adult-film star and several women who had competed in the rich asshole’s beauty pageants: a Miss New Hampshire, Miss Washington, Miss Arizona and Miss Finland.
And then there was Crooks, who had never been on reality TV, never drank alcohol, never met anyone famous until she moved from her childhood home in Green Springs to New York City in the summer of 2005. Nobody else in three generations of her family had ever seen the appeal in leaving Green Springs, population 1,300, but nobody else was quite like her: striking and self-assured at 6 feet tall; all-state in basketball, volleyball and track; the high school salutatorian and “Most Likely to Succeed.” She wanted to backpack across Europe, earn her doctorate, work in high-end fashion and live in a skyscraper that looked out over something other than an endless grid of brown-and-green soybean fields. “New York is where you can make things happen,” she had written to a friend back then, and a few weeks after graduating from college she persuaded her high school boyfriend, Clint Hackenburg, to move with her.
They rented a room in a cheap group house way out in Bay Ridge, and she took the first job she could find on Craigslist to pay rent, at an investment firm in the rich asshole Tower called Bayrock. Her secretarial tasks were to make coffee, water the two office palm trees, polish the gold-trimmed mirrors, straighten the tassels on the Oriental rug at the entryway and sit at a mahogany welcome desk to greet visitors who came through the glass front doors.
She found the work mindless and demeaning, but all around her was the promise of New York. There was Oprah Winfrey, filming a TV show next to the two-story Christmas wreath in the main lobby. There was George Clooney, strolling past the office. There was the rich asshole, an occasional business partner with Bayrock, standing right outside the glass doors every few days with his bodyguard as he waited for the elevator to take him back to his $100 million penthouse on the 66th floor. She remembered that sometimes he looked in and smiled at her. At least once she thought she saw him wave. “If you’re working in that building, you’ve got to at least meet him,” Hackenburg told her, and after five months Crooks finally got up from her desk and went out to say hello. It was early in the morning, and the office was mostly empty. She walked toward the rich asshole, who she remembers was standing by himself in the small waiting area near the elevators. She held out her hand, intent on introducing herself not as a fan or as a secretary but as a business partner.
“some rich asshole, I wanted to say hi, since our companies do a little work together,” she remembered telling him that day, and then, before she understood what was happening, she remembered the rich asshole becoming the second man ever to kiss her.
“Fiction,” was what the rich asshole’s campaign called her story when Crooks first told it publicly in 2016. “It is absurd to think that one of the most recognizable business leaders on the planet with a strong record of empowering women in his companies would do the things alleged,” the campaign said.
But Crooks’s version of that day was prompting more and more questions in her mind. Why did she sometimes feel as if he was still holding her in place? Why had she spent so much of the past decade recoiling from that moment — back behind the receptionist desk, back inside of her head, back home to the certainty and simplicity of small-town Ohio? It was just a dreadful kiss, or at least that’s what she kept trying to tell herself to quiet the confusion that had grown out of that moment, turning into shame, hardening into anxiety and insecurity until nearly a decade later, when she first started to read about other women whose accusations sounded so much like her own. Kissed at a party. Kissed in a dance club. Kissed during a business meeting. Kissed while attending a Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Largo. “For the first time, I started to think it wasn’t my fault for being clueless and naive, or for something I did wrong in seeming that way to him,” Crooks said in one of her first public statements about the rich asshole in 2016. Maybe together with the other accusers their stories had power, Crooks thought. Maybe, if the accusations alone weren’t enough to hold the rich asshole accountable for his behavior, the women could force the country to pay attention with better messaging and greater theatrics.
Late in 2017, Crooks agreed to join several accusers for television interviews and news conferences in New York. “A call to action,” the invitation read, because their goal was to demand a congressional investigation into the rich asshole’s alleged sexual misconduct. Crooks wrote herself some reminders for effective public speaking: “Use detail and repetition.” “Make it personal.” “Focus on solutions.” She volunteered to speak first, squared her shoulders and then turned to face the cameras with the poise of the athlete she had been.
“By now all of you are probably familiar with my story,” she said before beginning it again. The 24th floor. His lips coming toward hers. His hands holding her in place until the elevator arrived to take him upstairs. “Feelings of self-doubt and insignificance,” she said.
“I know there are many worse forms of sexual harassment, but doesn’t this still speak to character?” she said. “I don’t want money. I don’t need a lawsuit. I just want people to listen. How many women have to come forward? What will it take to get a response?”
Left: Crooks at her office at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio, where she works as a recruiter. Right: A the rich asshole flag hangs on a house in Green Springs, Ohio, the town where Crooks grew up.
The response that came was waiting every day on Crooks’s computer, so one morning back home in Ohio she woke up and walked downstairs to her laptop. The front door was locked, the shades were drawn, and she sat next to the dog she had recently bought with hopes that a pet might help reduce her anxiety. She navigated to Facebook. “Good morning, Rachel!” read a greeting at the top of her page, and then she clicked open her messages.
“Very unbelievable story,” read the first. “Try and get rich some other way.”
“You ignorant, attention seeking cow.”
“Nobody would touch you, especially not the rich asshole. You look like a boy. A gun to your head would be good for our nation.”
She had tried changing the privacy settings on her Facebook page and logging off Twitter, but there was no way to barricade herself from so much hostility. It came into her email inbox at the tiny college in Ohio where she worked as a recruiter of international students. It came when she walked her dog around the block or took her nephews trick-or-treating. “So may stares and weird comments that give me social anxiety,” was how she explained it once to a friend, because now each interaction required a series of calculations. Two thirds of people in Seneca County had voted for the rich asshole. Ninety-four percent of the rich asshole supporters told pollsters that their views were “not impacted” by the sexual harassment allegations against him. So Crooks wondered: Did the majority of her friends, co-workers and neighbors think she was lying? Or, even worse in her mind, did they believe her but simply not care?
“An honest, timeless, values-first community” was how one tourism slogan described Seneca County, and Crooks had always believed those things to be true. Her father had worked 39 years as a mechanic at Whirlpool and then retired with a decent pension. Her sister was raising four children in the same converted farmhouse where Crooks had grown up. Everybody in town knew her family — four generations of Crooks clustered within a few square blocks — so a local newspaper had interviewed community members about Crooks’s allegations against the rich asshole. “A fine, wholesome young girl,” her high school volleyball coach told the paper, and that seemed to Crooks like the most Ohio compliment of all. But then the story ended and the comments began, and Crooks kept reading because she knew some of the commenters, too.
“I’m a friend of the family. She’s lying.”
“If he was going to make a move on a woman, it wouldn’t be her!”
“We know the rich asshole has class, so why would he waste his time on some average chick like this?”
In her “values-first” community, it now felt to Crooks as if politics had become a fissure that was always deepening, the facts distorted by both sides, until even her own family no longer agreed on what or whom to believe. Her parents and sister supported her, even if they disliked talking about politics. Her grandmother, a staunch conservative, hugged Crooks after reading the original article about the rich asshole’s harassment in the New York Times but then sometimes talked admiringly about the rich asshole. Another of her relatives was often posting laudatory stories about the president on Facebook and dismissing many of the attacks against him as purely political, until one day Crooks decided to email her.
“Your candidate of choice kissed me without my consent,” Crooks wrote, and then she began to wonder whether there was some way to tell her story, or some piece of evidence, that could change her relative’s mind. During one news conference, she had asked the rich asshole to release the security videotapes from the 24th floor that day, but he never responded. She had not heard from him, or anyone representing him, since she came home from New York. “What can I ever do to prove this happened and that it impacted my life?” she said.
Maybe the proof was the email she had sent to her mother, from the Bayrock office in New York, at 1:27 that afternoon in 2006: “Hey Ma, my day started off rough…had a weird incident with some rich asshole.”
Or the email she sent a few hours later to her sister at 3:05 p.m.: “I must just appear to be some dumb girl that he can take advantage of…ugh!”
Or the email she sent a few days after that to another relative: “Ah yes, the Donald kiss…very creepy man, let me tell you!”
Or the recorded conversation between the rich asshole and Billy Bush on an “Access Hollywood” bus late in 2005, months before Crooks says she met the rich asshole by the elevators: “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women. I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
“By all means, have your opinions,” Crooks wrote to her relative instead, because more and more she believed no version of her story could bridge the widening divide.
“It makes me ill, to be quite honest with you . . . when my own family members not only vote for but publicly defend this person,” she wrote. “For my own sanity, I will not engage you further on this.”
Rachel Crooks, back right, meets with the Get Rachel Elected group at her home in Tiffin. Crooks announced in early February that she is running for state representative in Ohio.
And then there was one of her other relatives, her aunt, Barbara Radebaugh, who was often encouraging her niece to engage and to fight. “Keep speaking your truth!” Radebaugh wrote to her, and she invited Crooks to Columbus in late January to participate in the second annual Women’s March. The two of them had traveled together from Ohio to the inaugural march in Washington on a bus with several dozen strangers, and now many of those women gathered again in Columbus for a small reunion a few hours before the march.
“What a transformative, empowering year,” Radebaugh said to the group, because one of the women from that bus ride had become a Democratic fundraiser, another had started volunteering for reproductive rights, another had joined the board of the local Pride parade, and two more were running for seats in the Ohio House of Representatives. Crooks had yet to officially launch her campaign, but Mary Relotto had already raised $20,000, knocked on thousands of doors and filed all of her paperwork. She was scheduled to give a kickoff speech in Columbus, and now she asked Crooks whether she would be willing to share her story about the rich asshole during the march.
“You are an inspiration to me,” Relotto told her. “I want to champion you, to champion each other. Your voice and your story in this is huge.”
“Thank you,” Crooks said. “I don’t always feel that way, but —”
“It’s huge. So let me ask you: Do you want to engage with the people?”
“I don’t know. This feels more like your moment.”
“Thank you, but the people need to see a face. You have a powerful story. It’s up to you how far you want to take it. What do you want to do?”
It was the same question Crooks’s sister had asked over the phone that morning in 2006, minutes after the rich asshole got onto his elevator and Crooks retreated back to an empty office at Bayrock to call home. “What do you want to do?” her sister had asked, and together they had gone through the options. Report the harassment to building security guards who wore the rich asshole’s name on their uniforms? Tell her managers at Bayrock, where the rich asshole was a key business partner? Confide in Bayrock’s founder, Tevfik Arif, a personal friend of the rich asshole and his wife, Melania?
The only thing she could think to do instead of reporting it was go quietly back to her desk for the afternoon and then back to the rental house to tell Hackenburg. Maybe she had done something to encourage the rich asshole, she said. Maybe she wasn’t coming across as smart, serious or professional. “Her self-confidence was absolutely rocked,” Hackenburg said.
She went back to Bayrock during the next weeks and tried to duck into the office kitchen whenever she noticed the rich asshole waiting at the elevator. She remembered him smiling at her one day and smiling politely back. She remembered him coming in another day to ask for her phone number, saying he wanted to pass it along to a modeling agency, and because her co-workers were standing nearby and she couldn’t think up an excuse, she gave it to him. Why couldn’t she stand up for herself? What was wrong with her? Why hadn’t she shouted at him, or quit her job, or pushed him away, or bit his lip? She blamed the rich asshole for making her feel powerless. She blamed herself for caving into shame and self-doubt. Ten months after moving to New York, she was on her way back to rural Ohio — the place she had never imagined living, and the place she had remained ever since.
Rachel Crooks plays with her dog Carlow at the Tiffin Bark Park.
She didn’t think of it as a tragedy. She had gone on to graduate school in Ohio, bought a home close to her family, in the nearby town of Tiffin, and begun a career that allowed to her travel around the world, but she also believed some small part of her had never come back from New York. “It was one of the first real failures or defeats of my life, where the world wasn’t what I hoped it was going to be, and I started to really doubt myself,” she said.
For several years she had barely told anybody about the rich asshole, because she assumed nothing would come of her story. Now she had spent 18 months repeating it and proving herself right.
“I am not sure I’ve changed one person’s mind,” she said.
But what choice did she have, except to let it go silent as if it never happened at all? She didn’t want to retreat anymore from that moment, to cycle back into self-doubt. So she would go on television. She would speak at the news conferences. She would deal with the hate mail. She would run for office. She would repeat her story over and over whenever she was asked, even now, to a few women in Columbus marching alongside her in the snow.
“It happened right by the elevators,” she said, beginning the story again, even if she was telling it mostly for herself.
‘This is not a man who wants to die in prison’: Don Lemon panel predicts Manafort now poised to flip on the rich asshole
Don Lemon
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As part of a CNN panel discussing the sketchy financial dealings of associates of President some rich asshole that may be under investigation by the FBI, talk turned to the biggest fish caught so far: former the rich asshole campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Reacting to news that Manafort associate Richard Gates has reached a plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to testify against his former partner, host Don Lemon asked what that portends for the already-indicted the rich asshole confidante.
“I want you to explain, why Manafort is in bigger trouble than we might think,” the CNN host asked contributor Garrett Graff
“Well, Gates can bring new pressure,” Graff began. “But we also saw evidence on Friday that Bob Mueller’s team said that they have evidence of new bank fraud that Paul Manafort might be involved in.”
“This is a 68-year-old man, even 10, 12, 15 years in federal prison could be a death sentence for him,” Graff continued. “There is nothing about Paul Manafort that we’ve seen that says to me that this is someone who wants to risk dying in federal prison.”
Addressing CNN legal analyst Laura Coartes, Lemon asked, “The White House says they’re not worried because Gates is flipping against Manafort. Should they be?”
“Yes, they should be if there is reason to be — and that is kind of an innocuous way of putting it,” Coates quipped. “It may be that Manafort is the biggest fish in the category of money laundering, but if Rick Gates is able to give information — remember, he outlasted Manafort in the campaign, worked with the inaugural committee as well.”
“If there’s something that ties into the rich asshole administration, we’re talking about a whole different kit and caboodle than with Manafort,” she added. “But it could be two separate tracks. Gates flipping on Manafort may not mean Manafort will flip on the rich asshole, but it will make some rich asshole’s transition team and the inauguration team very nervous.”
Watch the video below via CNN:
MSNBC’s Maddow shames the rich asshole White House aides for admitting Florida massacre was an ‘awesome relief’
The host of the 'Rachel Maddow Show' on MSNBC
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MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow blasted some rich asshole White House on Monday for believing that the shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland was a reprieve for the embattled administration.
“The Washington Post has a stomach-churning story on the front-page of the website right now. This is the actual headline, ‘For the weary White House, Florida shooting offered a ‘reprieve’ from scandals.'” Maddow reported.
Maddow read from the story, which began, “The White House was under siege. Domestic abuse allegations against a senior aide were ignored, pointing to a potential high-level coverup. Two Cabinet secretaries were caught charging taxpayers for luxury travel. A Playboy centerfold alleged an extramarital affair with the president. And the special counsel’s Russia investigation was intensifying. The tumult was so intense that there was fervent speculation that President the rich asshole might fire his chief of staff.”
Then Maddow got to the offensive quotes.
“For everyone, it was a distraction or a reprieve,” said the White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal conversations. “A lot of people here felt like it was a reprieve from seven or eight days of just getting pummeled.”
“But as we all know, sadly, when the coverage dies down a little bit, we’ll be back through the chaos,” the official said.
“Eventually the coverage will die down and the White House will be sad about that, because for them, it’s been an awesome relief to have this massacre in the news,” Maddow noted.
“Look at that headline there again,” Maddow said, putting an image of the quote back on screen, before adding, “Outside the White House, people see that massacre differently.”
Watch:
Chelsea Handler tweeted a hilariously vulgar response to some rich asshole’s President’s Day call for ‘reflection’
Matt Naham
Posted with permission from Rare
wot
Days after blaming the Republicans Party for the mass shooting in Florida that left 17 dead and calling President Donald Trump “mentally disturbed” on Twitter, comedian Chelsea Handler tripled down by calling Trump a “giant red a**hole” under his President’s Day tweet.
Trump tweeted “have a great, but very reflective, President’s Day” just before 9 a.m. on Monday.
Have a great, but very reflective, President’s Day!
Here’s how Chelsea Handler replied:
Yes, reflection. Thats a good word for you. Start with the mirror, because you look like a giant red asshole. If you think it’s ok to go out like that, then your reality is warped. Which explains why you can’t get do anything of merit or have one ounce of dignity. twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
“Yes, reflection. Thats a good word for you. Start with the mirror, because you look like a giant red asshole. If you think it’s ok to go out like that, then your reality is warped. Which explains why you can’t get do anything of merit or have one ounce of dignity,” she said.
Previously, Handler reacted to the news of the Valentine’s Day massacre in Florida by calling out the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Republicans, saying they had “blood on [their] hands.”
We have to elect candidates that are not funded by the NRA in November. We have an opportunity to elect candidates who won’t allow kids to go to school and get shot. It is disgusting how many times this has happened and Republicans do nothing. You all have blood on your hands.
The next day, Handler said “We will always have mentally disturbed people, especially now that one sits in the Oval Office.”
We will always have mentally disturbed people, especially now that one sits in the Oval Office. Better not to have guns for them to use, since you are also cutting funds for the mentally disabled. Do something decent while you are in office. Anything. twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
‘Simply not true’: Watch Anderson Cooper take apart the rich asshole’s entire ‘factually-challenged weekend Twitter rampage’
CNN "AC 360" host Anderson Cooper.
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CNN anchor Anderson Cooper questioned the ‘humanity’ of President some rich asshole after the White House’s ham-handed response to the shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
“Good evening, President some rich asshole went on a Twitter rampage over the weekend, and it continued today.
“He said a lot of things that simply are not true and we’ll talk about that. We do it because, obviously he is the President of the United States, because what a president says matters — still — and whether those statements can be trusted, well that certainly matters,” Cooper explained.
The host explained two victims of the Parkland shooting massacre, Luke Hoyer, 15, and Alaina Petty, 14, were buried today.
“Keeping them honest, beyond just their raw factuality — or their lack of it — is what all these tweets reveal about the thinking of the most powerful man in the world, and his priorities. And some would say his humanity. You can draw your own conclusion about,” Cooper noticed.
The “AC360” host then methodically fact-checked the rich asshole’s weekend at Mar-a-Lago on Twitter.
“The president tweeted and played golf today, a day that saw two families bury their children. He did not mention them in his tweets,” Cooper reported.
“This morning, he tweeted, quote ‘have a great, but very reflective President’s Day,” and then went to play golf, while they held funerals for two teenagers, nearby,” Cooper concluded.
Watch:
the rich asshole: Why didn't Obama 'do something about Russian meddling?'
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 02/19/18 03:24 PM EST
President the rich asshole questioned Monday why former President Obama didn’t take action on Russian interference in the 2016 election, despite Obama having implemented sanctions against the country over its meddling.
Obama was President up to, and beyond, the 2016 Election. So why didn’t he do something about Russian meddling?
The tweet comes just days after special counsel Robert Mueller indicted more than a dozen Russians and three Russian groups for election interference.
the rich asshole has tweeted about Moscow's hacking and the U.S. investigations into it multiple times across the Presidents Day weekend, which he is spending at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida.
I never said Russia did not meddle in the election, I said “it may be Russia, or China or another country or group, or it may be a 400 pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer.” The Russian “hoax” was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia - it never did!
If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S. then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!
Obama issued sanctions against Russia for the meddling after U.S. intelligence officials said they had found evidence that the country had hacked U.S. groups and leaked emails in an effort to influence the 2016 vote.
He also expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and ordered two Russian compounds to be closed.
Former Vice President Joe Biden said earlier this year that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to join a bipartisan statement warning Russia against the interference during the election.
Some Democrats, including Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), have acknowledged that the Obama administration could have done more to prevent the election meddling.
Now that Adam Schiff is starting to blame President Obama for Russian meddling in the election, he is probably doing so as yet another excuse that the Democrats, lead by their fearless leader, Crooked Hillary Clinton, lost the 2016 election. But wasn’t I a great candidate?
Democrats have criticized the rich asshole for declining to implement new sanctions against Russia that passed Congress last year by overwhelming, bipartisan margins.
A State Department spokesperson said earlier this year that the legislation allowing for the sanctions was already "serving as a deterrent" and there was no need to penalize Russia further at this time.
the rich asshole responds to Parkland massacre by announcing support for NRA-backed gun legislation
Politics as usual.
Days after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida resulted in the deaths of 17 people, President the rich asshole has seemingly come around to the idea of strengthening the federal background check system.
But if history is any indication, it’s probably too soon to celebrate.
In a statement on Monday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said that “While discussions are ongoing and revisions are being considered, the President is supportive of efforts to improve the federal background check system.”
The apparent change of heart comes after days of outcry from teenage survivors of the shooting, many of whom have called on the president and lawmakers to take action on gun control. The Washington Post reported Sunday that the rich asshole was closely monitoring the media appearances by the students from the Mar-A-Lago club, where he spent the weekend.
On Monday morning, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), a longtime advocate for gun control, tweeted that “the rich asshole’s support for the FixNICS Act, my bill with @JohnCornyn, is another sign the politics of gun violence are shifting rapidly”, referring to a bipartisan bill introduced last year that would penalize federal agencies that do not properly report relevant criminal history records.
Interesting morning. Two quick thoughts: 1/ Trump's support for the FixNICS Act, my bill with @JohnCornyn, is another sign the politics of gun violence are shifting rapidly. 2/ No one should pretend this bill alone is an adequate response to this epidemic.
Murphy may be right. Uproar from students following the shooting seems to be achieving something rarely seen following mass shootings in the United States: holding politicians accountable for their lack of action on gun control. During an appearance on CNN Sunday morning, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) — who held an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) during his 2016 presidential campaign — called for “commonsense gun control” and questioned the need for semi-automatic weapons. Former Florida Rep. David Jolly (R) who ran for office with the NRA’s support and longtime GOP donor Al Hoffman Jr. have also made similar comments.
But, as Murphy also acknowledged, the Fix NICS bill alone — which is supported by the NRA and was passed in the House in December — is not enough to address the mass shooting “epidemic” in the United States. The bill doesn’t add any new background check requirements and the House version includes a “Concealed Carry Reciprocity” provision, which would force states to let people carry concealed firearms in public, regardless of their individual history or training experience.
Given the bill’s shortcomings, the rich asshole’s endorsement doesn’t really mark a shift in the president’s stance on gun control. But this isn’t the first time the rich asshole has expressed support for a particular policy amid public outcry. After 58 people were killed in the Las Vegas shooting in October, the rich asshole announced that he would be open to banning bump stocks, an attachment used by the shooter during that tragedy which enable a semiautomatic rifle to fire faster. In the time since, the White House has done little to advance the issue.
the rich asshole thinks he’s Honest Abe, but Lincoln warned us about demagogues like him
Lincoln warned only “a reverence for the constitution and laws" could stop them.
President some rich asshole loves to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe would disagree.
Just last month, at a gathering of GOP lawmakers, the rich asshole placed himself on Mount Rushmore again, asserting that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) “actually once said I’m the greatest president in the history of our country. I said, does that include Lincoln and Washington? He said yes.”
Seriously. Last January, the rich asshole even chose to be sworn in on the same bible Honest Abe used because he was “inspired by Lincoln’s words.”
On Presidents’ Day, though, it’s worth remembering Lincoln’s words, which make clear that the rich asshole is the anti-Lincoln (and anti-Washington). He is the demagogue that not only the Founding Fathers like Alexander Hamilton warned us about, but that Lincoln himself warned us about as well.
At Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln famously asked whether a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … can long endure.”
But Lincoln’s concern about the fate of the Republic — and the danger of a demagogue just like the rich asshole — dates much earlier. Way back in 1838, a 28-year-old Lincoln gave a talk on “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.”
He was trying to imagine what danger or threat could destroy this great nation — and “by what means shall we fortify against it.” Lincoln argued that “the approach of danger to be expected … if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad.” He warned that “if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”
Lincoln was worried about what “an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon” might do to this country.
“It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them.”
The most ambitious men during the birth of our nation who “sought celebrity and fame, and distinction … expected to find them in the success of that experiment.” But that time has passed. “The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot.”
Such a man “sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others,” but rather “thirsts and burns for distinction.”
“Distinction will be his paramount object, and [with] nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.”
Lincoln understood the psychology of those who have great ambition to lead, in part because he was one of them. Fortunately for us, Lincoln directed his enormous talent and ambition toward building up the country and preserving the Union.
the rich asshole, however, is a man who wants to pull down the unity of the nation, vilifying ethnic groups, demeaning women, attacking key institutions like the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) and saving his praise for neo-Nazis and Vladimir Putin, who his own top intelligence and DOJ officials say organized an attack on the integrity of our elections.
the rich asshole is a disuniter — the anti-Lincoln.
During the revolution, Lincoln explained, “the passions of the people” were given focus — “establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty.” This meant that “the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation.”
But, he warned “this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it.”
Lincoln was worried about the fading memory of George Washington’s spirit just a few decades after the Revolutionary War. Today, we are over two centuries removed from that war.
Lincoln noted of “that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator.” He believed that their “indubitable testimonies … in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related … were a fortress of strength” against any challenge to our liberty, such as a fame-seeking demagogue.
“They were the pillars of the temple of liberty,” he argued “and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.”
His speech ended with these powerful and prescient words:
Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence. — Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his [Washington’s] name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrae his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our Washington.
The last sentence is a reference to 1 Corinthians in the Bible: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible [imperishable], and we shall be changed.”
The last trump is sounded on the Day of Judgment to raise the dead, including George Washington. Lincoln was figuratively expressing hope, before Judgement Day, that Washington would never be disturbed or awoken by a “hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place.”
Tragically, we now have a rich asshole that is desecrating everything for which Washington fought and for which the Founders stood. Lincoln’s words are as true today as they were nearly two centuries ago.
This is America’s day of judgment. The only way to stop this desecrating demagogue before he goes too far is through “unimpassioned reason” and “a reverence for the constitution and laws.”
This is an update of a post originally published in February 2017.
the rich asshole calls Oprah ‘insecure’ at a moment of insecurity in his presidency
It's been a hectic week for the rich asshole.
From within the gilded walls of Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, President the rich asshole took to Twitter late Sunday evening to describe Oprah Winfrey as “very insecure.” The tweet seemingly came after he watched an interview the media proprietor conducted on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in which she spoke to voters about the rich asshole’s presidency.
“Insecure” is a word the rich asshole has used often — to describe TV hosts, “losers,” and “haters.” But the president’s current accusation comes at what might be the most insecure moment in his presidency. And zeroing in on Oprah only serves to highlight what appears to be a lack of confidence in his own leadership.
It’s been a hectic week for the rich asshole. Following a mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, teenage survivors have been speaking out against both the president and GOP politicians more broadly for their inaction on gun control. In a powerful speech at a gun control rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on Saturday, Stoneman Douglas student Emma Gonzalez delivered an emotional rebuke of the president, blasting the rich asshole for the funds he has received from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and for rolling back an Obama-era regulation that would have barred many people with “severe mental disabilities” from purchasing such weapons.
While teenagers blast the president and demand gun control, the rich asshole himself seems torn. At Mar-A-Lago this weekend, the rich asshole “spent much of the time watching cable news” and “venting to friends”, according to The Washington Post. The president reportedly entertained the idea of gun control, choosing to survey club members about whether he should take action.
Worrying about the uproar following the Parkland shooting likely isn’t all the rich asshole has been up to this weekend. Ongoing fallout from the Russia investigation is also consuming the White House. On Friday, the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller accused 13 people and three Russian companies of “interference operations targeting the United States.” The 37-page indictment details the interference of Russian social media operations to support the rich asshole’s campaign and disparage former rival Hillary Clinton.
While Republicans and the rich asshole have done their best to downplay the indictment, claiming that there was “no collusion,” Mueller is continuing to investigate the rich asshole team and, as ThinkProgress’ Rebekah Entralgo previously reported, it is still a possibility that Mueller will indict Americans for knowingly colluding with Russia.
Only time will tell how this period in the rich asshole’s tenure is seen by history, but one thing’s for sure — the president has a lot more to be insecure about than Oprah.
He’s sinking into irrelevance’: CNN’s Phil Mudd claims the rich asshole’s weekend Twitter meltdown proves he has lost control
CNN's Phil Mudd (Screengrab)
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Speaking with CNN host Wolf Blitzer, former CIA official Phil Mudd said President some rich asshole’s Twitter meltdown over the weekend shows he lost control of his own administration that is getting nothing done and he is “sinking onto into irrelevance.”
Breaking his silence on the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting before attacking the FBI for letting it happen, the rich asshole set off a firestorm of criticism for making the shooting all about himself, attacking former President Barack Obama and, bizarrely challenging Oprah Winfrey to run against him in 2020.
According to Mudd, the rich asshole’s manic tweeting is sign of his decline.
It began with CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, explaining, “The president doesn’t operate by the rules of American politics. I mean, the idea that he is just continuing to attack law enforcement, attack the FBI when they are trying to solve the problems, some of which he created with his campaign, it’s just astonishing, and you know, attacking Oprah Winfrey, I mean, it is something that presidents have never done before and perhaps they’ll never do again.”
“He is sinking into irrelevance,” Mudd chipped in. “I am going to give you proof of that in a moment. He says things that don’t correspond to reality. For example, his characterization of the indictment. Now people say after 13 months of this, we don’t pay attention. This week the Pentagon will issue a report on how it is going to take steps forward on the president’s tweets about transgenders in the military.”
“I will lay my personal money on the table, a thousand bucks, my money to the charity of your choice if what the Pentagon says in terms of instituting policy on transgenders looks anything like the president tweeted,” he continued. “Let’s lay it on the table: I think what the president tweeted is irrelevant and the Pentagon will say something fundamentally different. And that will happen in two or three days.”
He then ridiculed some of the rich asshole’s other utterances.
“‘We’re going to tear up the Iran nuclear deal,’ no, we’re not,” he smirked. “‘Discussions with North Korea are irrelevant,’ no they’re not. ‘We are going to distance ourselves from NATO,’ no, we’re not. ‘Going to build a wall,’ no we’re not.'”
“Every time the guy talks, you say put you money where you mouth is, because it doesn’t happen,” he concluded.
Watch the video below via CNN:
MSNBC’s Katy Tur pours cold water on unreliable the rich asshole ever doing anything about changing gun laws
Katy Tur guest-hosting "Meet the Press Daily" on MSNBC.
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MSNBC anchor Katy Tur warned against getting “lost in any illusions” that President some rich asshole and the Republican Congress would address gun control in the wake of the Parkland shooting massacre.
“In this moment, is there movement on guns?” Tur wondered.
“Today, we’re seeing what could be a movement of teenagers, who are angry about gun violence and want lawmakers to listen,” the host noted. “And we’re also seeing what could be movement from those lawmakers who have yet another opportunity to do something — or nothing — about gun violence.”
“Now, though, the White House says the president is open to looking at what can be done to prevent this from happening again, announcing they’d get behind a bipartisan effort that’s aimed at making the background check system more effective,” Tur noted.
“Let’s not get lost in any illusions here, though. Remember, this bill has been out there since after the mass shootings in Texas and Las Vegas last fall,” she reminded. “Remember, that moment, a potential movement on guns came and went, without any action.”
“Remember, this bill, that the president is open to, wouldn’t necessarily have kept a gun out of the hands of Nikolas Cruz,” Tur continued.
“Remember, any action on anything related to guns is a serious uphill climb in Washington. Five years ago, a Democratic president couldn’t even pass background check legislation through a Democratic Senate,” the host recalled.
“Remember, we have a Republican president, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate,” Tur emphasized.
Watch:
GOP analyst: the rich asshole advisers have adopted a ‘don’t tell grandpa’ approach in order to get their work done
some rich asshole speaking at the Iowa Republican Party's 2015 Lincoln Dinner at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, Iowa. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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Appearing on MSNBC on Monday afternoon, the former spokesperson for Republican Speaker John Boehner blasted Republicans denial of reality when it comes to President some rich asshole.
“How challenging is it for this administration, for those that represent this country broadly around the world right now, to effectively say, pay no attention to what that guy is saying?” host Peter Alexander asked Michael Steel.
“It’s awful because you have people who are patriots, people are trying to protect the country, people are trying to get our economy stronger who are simultaneously trying to conserve the Constitution of the United States and serve at the pleasure of a president who lives in a somewhat parallel reality,” Steel explained.
“A president who has a yawning gap, a need to believe that things are as they aren’t, and that creates this dual vision that all of these guys have to deal with as they try and do the right thing for the country.
Fundamentally, ‘don’t tell granddad’ is a strategy to get through Thanksgiving, not a way to govern the country,” Steel explained.
“He has to face reality,” he concluded.
Watch:
Mueller probe focusing on Kushner seeking foreign investors while working on the rich asshole transition: report
666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan (left, image via Twitter) and the rich asshole's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner (right, via screengrab).
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Special counsel Robert Mueller has expanded his investigation into Jared Kushner beyond contacts with Russia, to include business dealings with two additional foreign powers during some rich asshole transition, CNN reported Monday.
Kushner, a senior White House advisor and presidential son-in-law, has been in crushing debt due to a real estate investment gone bad at 666 Fifth Ave in New York City.
Kushner allegedly sought out Chinese investors during the transition.
CNN also reports Mueller’s team is questioning witnesses about Kushner seeking financing from Qatar for the same property.
Watch:
White House official: School shooting gave us a ‘reprieve’ from being ‘pummeled’ on Rob Porter scandal
some rich asshole crosses arms when asked about Robert Mueller investigation (Photo: Screen capture)
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An anonymous White House official has told the Washington Post that last week’s horrific school shooting in Parkland, Florida felt like something of a “reprieve” for a White House staff that was deeply battered by scandal.
In an interview with the Washington Post, the official said that the mass shooting, which left 17 people dead, took some of the heat off the rich asshole White House for its handling of former staff secretary Rob Porter, whom the White House fired after credible allegations emerged that he beat his two former wives.
“For everyone, it was a distraction or a reprieve,” the official said. “A lot of people here felt like it was a reprieve from seven or eight days of just getting pummeled.”
However, the official also lamented that news coverage of the shooting would inevitably die down in the coming days, which would lead to more media focus on administration scandals.
“But as we all know, sadly, when the coverage dies down a little bit, we’ll be back through the chaos,” the official said.
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