February 23rd-24th, 2017. It's been 468-469 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 396-397 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
MSNBC analyst reveals why Kushner may face the same fate as Paul Manafort
Special counsel Robert Mueller and Jared Kushner.
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The editor-at-large for CNBC debunked the latest defenses coming from the White House during a Saturday appearance with Alex Witt on MSNBC.
“What do the recent developments tell you about how [Robert] Mueller is putting all the pieces together in this puzzle?” Witt asked John Harwood.
“Well Alex, we don’t know as a legal matter about collusion, but what we do know is that you had a campaign chairman who had been indirectly on Russia’s payroll through his work for Yanukovych in Ukraine. We know that the rich asshole organization itself has said that it was dependent on Russian money itself before the campaign started. We’ve got the National Security Adviser to the president having pled guilty and cooperating, and we have a president who has declined to implement sanctions that Congress passed against Russia, who has consistently declined to criticize Russia,” Harwood noted. “And we know that Russian hacking helped him win the election.”
“So the pieces are pretty clear that the Russians helped some rich asshole; some rich asshole is pursuing policies favorable to Russia,” Harwood continued. “There’s a steadily increasing amount of pressure, as Jill [Colvin] was just saying, that renders what the White House is saying as nonsense.”
The panel also discussed White House senior advisor Jared Kushner’s inability to get a permanent security clearance.
“Alex, I want to say that the common thread here that relates to the previous conversation is financial distress. Jared Kushner and his family company have a tremendous liability for building in New York and distress makes you vulnerable to pressure from people abroad,” Harwood continued.
“You mean like blackmail? Witt asked. “That’s what they’re worried about?”
“Yes, exactly so,” Harwood answered.
“His situation is very problematic, not just as a matter of security clearance for working in the White House,” Harwood explained, “but we don’t know where Robert Mueller is going to go with respect to Jared Kushner and his finances.”
Watch:
Gun owners freaking out over the rich asshole’s ‘betrayal’ of pushing bump stock ban and new gun regulations
some rich asshole (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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Some of some rich asshole’s staunchest supporters are having a a meltdown after the president made a proposal to ban bump stocks that can turn a semi-automatic weapon to full-automatic along with other modest changes to gun regulations.
According to CBS Miami, guns supporters and organized gun groups are accusing the president of “betrayal” after he belatedly responded to the shooting in Parkland, Florida, that claimed 17 lives.
Saturday morning, the rich asshole retweeted himself from Feb 22, with a statement that read: “I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue – I hope!”
“Out in the firearms community there is a great feeling of betrayal and abandonment, because of the support he was given in his campaign for president,” Tony Fabian, president of the Colorado Sports Shooting Association, said in a statement Friday.
Additionally, Gun Owners of America sent out an email urging its 1.5 million members to call the White House and “Tell the rich asshole to OPPOSE All Gun Control!” adding that gun control groups aided by congressional Democrats are working to convince the president he should “support their disastrous gun control efforts.”
“When they feel gun ownership is threatened, then they’re going to respond as if that’s the pre-eminent issue,” explained Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for the Virginia-based group.
Paul Paradis, a rich asshole supporter who owns a gun store in Colorado Springs, is furious that bump-stocks may be banned.
“the rich asshole can propose anything he wants but it’s got to get through two houses of Congress and the Supreme Court,” Paradis stated.
You can read the whole report here
Samuel L. Jackson mocks the rich asshole’s proposal to arm teachers
BY LUIS SANCHEZ - 02/24/18 12:07 PM EST
Samuel L. Jackson took to Twitter to criticize President the rich asshole after he made repeated pushes for arming trained teachers as a way to address school shootings.
“Can someone that’s been in a Gunfight tell that Muthaf---- that’s Never been in a Gunfight, the flaws of his Arm The Teachers plan??!!” Jackson tweeted on Friday.
Can someone that’s been in a Gunfight tell that Muthafukka that’s Never been in a Gunfight, the flaws of his Arm The Teachers plan??!!
the rich asshole tweeted on Thursday that highly trained teachers would serve as a deterrent to school shootings following the deadly attack at a Florida high school last week.
The president called for 20 percent of teachers — with military or special training experience — to be allowed to carry concealed guns.
Student survivors of the Florida school shooting that left 17 people dead have led reignited calls for action on gun violence.
On Wednesday, the rich asshole held a listening session at the White House with students and parents affected by school shootings to discuss solutions.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, the rich asshole doubled down on his proposal to arm teachers who have had firearms training.
“The teachers and the coaches and other people in the building, the dean, the assistant principal, the principal, they love their people, they want to protect these kids,” the rich asshole said.
the rich asshole added of the suspected gunman: “A teacher would have shot the hell out of him."
Jackson and the rich asshole have sparred before. In 2016, Jackson said the rich asshole cheats at golf and that he received a surprise bill from the rich asshole for being a member of one of his courses.
I don’t know @SamuelLJackson, to best of my knowledge haven't played golf w/him & think he does too many TV commercials—boring. Not a fan.
I had supposed President the rich asshole was causing only his opponents to freak out, not his supporters. Then I heard Wayne LaPierre.
To see the National Rifle Association boss speak this week at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference was to see a man in urgent need of mental-health intervention. He turned a conventional speech about guns (specifically, the need for more of them in schools) into a paranoid fantasy about a socialist takeover of the United States.
He saw a “tidal wave” of “European-style socialists bearing down upon us,” creating a “captive society,” eliminating “resistance,” making a “list” in a cloud database of those who spank their children, expunging the “fundamental concept of moral behavior,” controlling speech through “safe zones.”
With this “new socialist wave in America,” he said, “it’s just a short hop to the systematic destruction of our most basic freedoms.”
Had LaPierre fallen on his head and awakened in 1964? All that was missing was for him to quote General Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove” on “the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”
And just who is perpetrating this red invasion, 27 years after the Soviet Union fell? Our billionaire president, who with his Cabinet and staff of billionaires and Goldman Sachs executives just secured a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the rich? The Republican-controlled Congress, which seeks to dismantle the social-safety net and business regulations? The pro-business majority on the Supreme Court?
LaPierre singled out three billionaire capitalists to blame for the socialist revolution: George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. But he saw conspirators everywhere in the government — the rich asshole’s government: the FBI (with its “corruption” and “rogue leadership”) the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the intelligence agencies. He also blamed the Democrats, media, Hollywood, universities, classrooms, Black Lives Matter, elites and Keith Ellison.
Even the CPAC audience seemed to be stunned by this unhinged time-traveler from the Cold War. “You know, I hear a lot of quiet in this room, and I sense your anxiety,” he said. “And you should be anxious, and you should be frightened.”
LaPierre was so frightened and anxious that CPAC wouldn’t list a time for his speech in advance, to avoid protests. He travels with a huge security entourage, even though his opponents eschew guns. Does he think he will be pelted with sprouted quinoa?
And it isn’t just LaPierre. His group’s spokeswoman, Dana Loesch, exhorted the CPAC crowd to turn against reporters in the room, saying “many in the legacy media love mass shootings” because “crying white mothers are ratings gold.”
Nor is it just CPAC. Jack Kingston, formerly a mild-mannered and sensible Republican member of Congress, went on social media and TV this week to echo a conspiracy theory that the grieving students in Parkland are leftist stooges.
I am empathetic. None of us are at our best these days. We are on edge — even those who like the rich asshole. We can’t help it; it’s in our brain chemistry.
A new book by neuropsychologist William Stixrud and my friend Ned Johnson provides an explanation. The book, “The Self-Driven Child,” explains how calm parents give their kids more sense of control and help them perform better.
The science is simple. If you are calm, your executive functions handled by the brain’s prefrontal cortex — organizing, problem-solving, self-control, decision-making — perform well. If you are overly stressed, those functions decline as your brain floods with cortisol. Stress is contagious, and if you are in the presence of somebody who is out of control — a parent, an employer or, say, a president — your own executive functions decline.
“It’s a terrible thing for a chief executive of anything to be fear-mongering or emotionally reactive,” Johnson explains, “because all the bright capable people around you become less bright and less capable if they’re overly stressed.”
You don’t have to be the focus of the person’s ire or in the person’s physical presence for the stress to spread. A 2014 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that those who watched six hours or more of media about the Boston Marathon bombings reported higher stress than those present at the bombings. And the rich asshole is almost a perfect stress-inducing machine, hitting all the buttons that University of Montreal psychiatry professor Sonia Lupien lists as causes of stress: novelty, unpredictability, perceived threat to safety or ego, and a low sense of control.
In theory, some who support the rich asshole would be less affected, because they might feel comforted by an I-alone-can-fix-it authority figure. But, as poor Wayne LaPierre shows, no one is immune.
Being led by a man who rages out of control makes all of us — friend and foe alike — more like that ourselves.
Twitter: @Milbank
You are wrong about ‘Trump Country’
BY KRYSTAL BALL, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 02/23/18 09:30 AM EST
When Democrats think about so-called “Trump Country,” they see a land of hopeless Trump-loving racists who insist on voting against their self-interest. Republicans see the kind of older, whiter electorate that can be led like sheep if you just say the magic words: coal, guns, abortion. Cable news networks see only what Trump happened to Tweet about within the past hour.
All of them are wrong.
By the thousands, a grassroots army flooded the Capitol in Charleston yesterday, chanting: “We’ll remember in November!” and “Tax your friends!” Oh, and they’re coming back today, and they were there last week, and they’ll be there next week.
Let me just be clear about the type of folks who showed up to protest. Imagine the world’s largest PTA meeting sprinkled with some dudes with tattoos in camo hats. This wasn’t some hippie, lefty, Berkeley-looking group. And they certainly weren’t bused in from out of state, as some on the right suggested. They are ordinary West Virginians who have the support of their communities and are disgusted with the Republican-dominated legislature and Gov. Jim Justice, a coal company owner who is one of the state’s few billionaires.
So, note to Republicans: Yelling “War on Coal” may not be enough to keep you in office this November. And while West Virginia isn’t the most diverse place in the world, what diversity it has was on full display, with black and white standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, demanding better. I suspect plenty of my friends on the left would be a bit surprised that a massive action could happen in the Mountaineer State that didn’t involve Confederate flags and David Duke.
If you polled the teachers who showed up to protest, odds are good that the majority voted for Trump and don’t regret it. At the same time, the hero of their movement is a Democrat named Richard Ojeda, a state senator who is running for Congress (my organization has endorsed him). Let this sink in, the Trump-loving voters of West Virginia are having t-shirts made with Democratic Sen. Ojeda’s face on them and chasing him down for selfies like he’s Justin Bieber.
In fact, this same week in “Trump Country,” voters in one Kentucky House district went right from voting 73 percent for Trump to giving nearly the same percentage to Democrat Linda Belcher. Perhaps it’s time cable news outlets rethink their one-dimensional storylines about how citizens have become partisan automatons who just do whatever their team tells them to do.
Actually, let’s just dispatch with a view of our country that centers everything around this cancer of a president. There is no “Trump Country.” As it turns out, people in the heart of this alleged Trump-centric nation are not just sitting around worshipping the dear leader and waiting for a job in the coal mines. This week, for example, every county in West Virginia came together to make sure kids were fed while schools were closed. And today, I spent the entire day in the Capitol with thousands of West Virginians and did not hear the name “Trump” once.
West Virginia is not “Trump Country.” It’s part of OUR country. And like the women who marched on Washington and the students in Parkland, Florida, West Virginia teachers have decided to take matters into their own hands.
Krystal Ball is president of The People’s House Project, which recruits Democratic candidates in Republican-held congressional districts of the Midwest and Appalachia. A former candidate for Congress in Virginia and host on MSNBC’s “The Cycle,” she is a video host for the soon-to-be-launched Hill.TV project. Follow her on Twitter @krystalball.
CNN releases emails to push back on claim about ‘scripted’ town hall question
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 02/23/18 11:02 PM EST
CNN released emails from a network producer on Friday that contradict a Florida high school student's claim that the network scripted a question that he was supposed to ask at a televised town hall event this week.
Colton Haab, a survivor of last week's mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., said Thursday on Fox News that CNN had initially asked him to "write a speech and ask questions” for the event but that a producer ultimately scripted a question for him. CNN has denied that claim.
According to Business Insider, CNN and Haab agreed on the question that he would ask at the town hall. His father, Glenn Haab, pulled his son out of the event after the network refused to let the student read a lengthy speech.
The Haabs also appeared to provide doctored emails to media outlets to back up the claim that CNN scripted the questions, Business Insider reported. CNN's version of the email showed that the producer wrote she wanted the student to stick to a question "that he submitted," but that phrase was omitted in the version released by the family.
The family of a Parkland shooting survivor appears to have provided doctored emails to Fox and HuffPost in an attempt to support their claim that CNN "scripted" its Wednesday town hall. read.bi/2EQlKrv
"It is unfortunate that an effort to discredit CNN and the town hall with doctored emails has taken any attention away from the purpose of the event," a CNN spokesman said, according to Business Insider.
"However, when presented with doctored email exchanges, we felt the need to set the record straight."
President the rich asshole on Thursday night seized on the claim that CNN rewrote Haab's question, calling the network "Fake News."
“Just like so much of CNN, Fake News. That’s why their ratings are so bad! MSNBC may be worse,” the rich asshole tweeted.
“School shooting survivor says he quit @CNN Town Hall after refusing scripted question.” @TuckerCarlson. Just like so much of CNN, Fake News. That’s why their ratings are so bad! MSNBC may be worse.
But, Republicans aren't racist, right?
Michael Steele addresses CPAC official's 'painfully stupid' comment about race
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 02/23/18 10:27 PM EST
Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele on Friday blasted a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) spokesman's comment that the RNC picked Steele to lead the party because "he was a black guy."
"I wanted to talk to [CPAC chairman] Matt Schlapp first, but I think it’s painfully stupid what he said," Steele told the Observer when asked about a remark CPAC communications director Ian Walters made at a dinner during the conference.
"If he feels that way I’d like him to come say that to my face," Steele added. "And then I’d like him to look at my record and see what I did. I can’t believe an official of CPAC would go onstage in front of an audience and say something like that. I’ve been a strong supporter of CPAC for many years and I thought they raised them better than that here."
In a speech at CPAC's Ronald Reagan dinner on Friday, Walters reportedly criticized Republican thinking surrounding the decision to pick Steele to lead the RNC.
“We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy, that was the wrong thing to do,” Walters said in a comment reportedly met with gasps.
CPAC communication director Ian Walters at Reagan dinner
“We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy, that was the wrong thing to do”
“We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy, that was the wrong thing to do”
Walters did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment on Friday night.
Steele told the Observer that Walters's comment "shows a lack of maturity and a lack of understanding of the work we did and the work we continue to do."
"My skin color has nothing to do with that even if he thinks it does," Steele said.
Steele, who led the RNC from 2009 until 2011, has spoken critically of President the rich asshole in the past, including on Friday, when he blasted the rich asshole's proposal to arm trained teachers on school campuses as "delusional."
the rich asshole to meet with Arab leaders in push for Qatar peace deal: report
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 02/23/18 09:29 PM EST
President the rich asshole is reportedly set to field a series of meetings with Arab leaders in an effort to reach a peace deal over Qatar.
Axios reported Friday that the rich asshole will host leaders from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in separate meetings in hopes of ending a squabble that has lasted for months.
The goal is to reach a peace deal at a summit in Washington or Camp David in the late spring, according to Axios.
The list of leaders expected to visit Washington includes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar.
A number of Arab countries have been locked in a diplomatic dispute with Qatar for months. That dispute began in June, when several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, cut ties with the small Gulf nation.
At issue is Qatar's relations with Iran and what other Gulf states say is its support for terrorism. Qatar has acknowledged that it has supported Islamist organizations, but denies backing militant groups.
The countries issued a list of 13 demands for Qatar as a requirement for re-establishing diplomatic relations, though Doha has largely refused the demands.
NRA strikes back at Florida sheriff: 'Your office failed this community'
BY JESSE BYRNES - 02/23/18 07:13 PM EST
The National Rifle Association (NRA) on Friday slammed a local sheriff in Florida, saying his office failed to protect students in last week's high school shooting.
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel had knocked the gun lobby during a televised town hall on Wednesday night, accusing the group of "not standing up for these students."
“I understand you’re standing up for the NRA and I understand that’s what you’re supposed to do,” Israel told NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch at the CNN town hall.
“But you just told this group of people that you are standing up for them. You are not standing up for them until you say, ‘I want less weapons,’ ” Israel said, prompting a standing ovation.
"No Sheriff Israel you were the one that didn’t PROTECT these children and that is your job. You run the largest fully accredited sheriff's office in the United States, yet your office failed this community," the NRA responded in a tweet Friday.
No Sheriff Israel you were the one that didn’t PROTECT these children and that is your job. You run the largest fully accredited sheriff's office in the United States, yet your office failed this community. twitter.com/browardsheriff…
Gun activists went on the offensive this week after the NRA faced days of scrutiny following the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Supporters of the gun group seized on news Thursday from the Broward County sheriff that one of his officers stationed at the high school was on campus but failed to go in as the shooter killed 17 people and wounded more than a dozen others.
“Scot Peterson was absolutely on campus through this entire event. He was armed. He was in uniform,” Israel said at a press conference Thursday, the day after the CNN town hall event that featured the NRA spokeswoman, several elected officials and student survivors from the shooting.
Israel said the deputy, who has since resigned, should have "went in, addressed the killer, killed the killer.” The sheriff said the fact that he didn't left him “sick to [his] stomach” and feeling “devastated.”
“There are no words,” he said.
Broward County deputies also acknowledged receiving 18 calls from 2008 to 2017 warning them about Nikolas Cruz — who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder — including concerns that he "planned to shoot up the school." The sheriff's office has opened two internal probes into whether the calls were handled according to the department's standards.
Student survivors and others affected by the shooting in Parkland have urged Congress to pass new gun laws, with President the rich asshole this week voicing his support for a range of policies that would put him at odds with the NRA.
Six companies dump the NRA in just 24 hours
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The mass boycott by NRA business partners is another sign that this time the conversation is different.
As teenage school shooting survivors channeled their anger into a national movement, #BoycottNRA exploded across Twitter this week, and companies that once partnered with the National Rifle Association pulled out one by one.
It started with First National Bank of Omaha on Thursday night, which canceled their NRA-branded Visa cards. This was followed by rental car conglomerate Enterprise Holdings, which revoked its NRA member discounts for Enterprise, National, and Alamo.
On Friday, the list grew longer as the hashtag started to blow up.
Symantec, the security company that sells Norton Antivirus and LifeLock identify theft protection, terminated its NRA member discount. Soon after, Chubb, a casualty insurance company, announced that it had stopped underwriting NRA insurance policies.
MetLife announced it was ending its discount program. Then Hertz followed the lead of Enterprise and canceled its car rental partnership.
Many of the NRA’s partners, as documented by ThinkProgress, still remain. But the pressure is not letting up.
And the loss of these companies could be a serious blow. The NRA, much like AARP or AAA, uses corporate partnerships like these to get people to join and pay dues, and the perks are often attractive. For example, some of the rental car discounts were up to 25 percent off.
The NRA has drawn nationwide outrage for its response to the Parkland shooting. The group came out against raising the age limit to buy assault weapons, a measure so basic even Republicans are considering it.
And NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch did the group no favors with her speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where she claimed that “many in legacy media love mass shootings” because “crying white mothers are ratings gold.”
Some NRA members, including veterans, are now shredding their memberships out of disgust with how the group has tried to cram guns into our communities and our classrooms.
The years of empty words, deflection, and acceptance of gun violence as normal are over. The conversation has finally shifted, and it is time to hold accountable the extremist group that has allowed this bloodshed.
the rich asshole eyeing 24 percent tariff on steel imports: report
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 02/23/18 05:45 PM EST
President the rich asshole is angling to impose a 24 percent tariff on all steel imports, the sternest of three recommendations made last month by the Commerce Department.
Bloomberg reported Friday that the rich asshole has told confidants that he wants to impose harsh tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from all countries.
The aluminum tariff could be as high as 10 percent, according to Bloomberg, higher than the recommendation put forward by the Commerce Department.
White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah told Bloomberg that the rich asshole has not made a final decision on the tariffs and that he is still weighing his options.
"As with every decision he makes, the security of the American people and the American economy will be the president’s primary concerns while he considers his potential options," he said. "President the rich asshole is committed to achieving fair and reciprocal trade relationships that protect the American worker and grow our economy."
The Commerce Department released a report last month declaring steel and aluminum imports from China and elsewhere a national security threat.
That report included an array of recommendations for the rich asshole that included potential quotas and tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. the rich asshole must decide what action to take on steel by April 11 and what action to take on aluminum by April 19.
the rich asshole campaigned on a promise to bolster manufacturing in the U.S., including steel manufacturing. He has long complained that cheap imports from China and elsewhere hurt the American steel industry.
Rosenstein alerted White House two weeks ago on Kushner clearance issues: report
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 02/23/18 05:51 PM EST
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein warned White House officials two weeks ago of additional issues with senior White House aide Jared Kushner's security clearance that would further delay his application, The Washington Post reported Friday.
Rosenstein allegedly spoke with White House counsel Don McGahn on Feb. 9, telling him that additional information was required from Kushner that would cause further delays for President the rich asshole's son-in-law, who has been using a temporary security clearance since joining the White House.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department told the Post that Rosenstein did not explain to McGahn what new information the Justice Department had obtained or what new investigation needed to occur.
“The deputy attorney general has not referenced to the White House any specific concerns relating to this individual’s security clearance process,” Sarah Isgur Flores said.
The call from Rosenstein came a week before White House chief of staff John Kelly announced that those officials working in the White House on temporary clearances, including Kushner, would no longer be able to view top-secret information until their security checks are finalized.
The policy change came amid an uproar over ousted White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who allegedly was allowed to handle classified information despite an FBI background check that found credible accusations of domestic abuse.
Porter resigned on Feb. 7, the same week multiple news outlets ran stories in which both of his ex-wives accused him of physical abuse, including one who offered a photo of a black eye she says he gave her.
CNN reported one week later that more than 100 White House staffers were operating on temporary security clearances as late as November.
the rich asshole said Friday that he would allow Kelly to make the final decision on Kushner's security clearance, despite it being within his power to let the senior adviser continue working without one.
“Gen. Kelly respects Jared a lot,” the rich asshole said.
“I will let Gen. Kelly make that decision,” he added. “And he's going to do what's right for the country. And I have no doubt he will make the right decision.”
New Manafort indictment alleges secret payments to European politicians
BY MORGAN CHALFANT - 02/23/18 05:16 PM EST
A new indictment has been unsealed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s criminal case against former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
The indictment was filed in mid-February and unsealed Friday, shortly after former the rich asshole campaign aide Richard Gates pleaded guilty as part of Mueller’s sprawling investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The latest indictment accuses Manafort, with Gates’s help, of secretly retaining a group of former senior European politicians to take positions that were favorable to Ukraine as part of their illegal lobbying work for Kiev’s government. That work included lobbying in the United States.
“Although the former politicians would appear to be providing their independent assessments of Government of Ukraine actions, in fact they were paid lobbyists for Ukraine,” the indictment says.
Manafort wired more than $2 million from his offshore accounts to pay these former politicians, the indictment alleges.
The indictment also contains several details about financial-related charges leveled against Manafort that were previously public. The charges are related to the work Manafort and Gates did on behalf of pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Yanukovych.
The indictment alleges that Manafort and Gates concealed their scheme to avoid registering as a foreign agent in the United States by providing a “false and misleading” statement to two unnamed lobbying firms they retained. They allegedly stated that the European organization they worked with in their lobbying work was not linked or funded in any way by a foreign government.
The organization, known as the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, “was created in or about 2012 in Belgium as a mouthpiece for Yanukovych and the Party of Regions,” his political party, the indictment says.
The U.S. lobbying firms hired by Manafort and Gates, identified only as Company A and Company B, are widely reported to be the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs.
On Friday, Gates pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington, D.C., to one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of lying to FBI agents investigating Russian interference. His guilty plea paves the way for his cooperation in Mueller’s probe.
Manafort and Gates initially pleaded not guilty to Mueller’s first round of charges in October.
The new indictment removes charges against Gates. It accuses Manafort on five counts: conspiracy against the United States; conspiracy to launder money; failing to register as a foreign agent; making false and misleading statements related to the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA; and making false statements to U.S. officials.
Manafort has maintained his innocence and on Friday expressed disbelief in Gates's guilty plea.
"I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me,” Manafort said.
DHS deputy head Elaine Duke to leave the rich asshole administration
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 02/23/18 04:43 PM EST
Elaine Duke, the No. 2 official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is stepping down from her post in the rich asshole administration.
Duke, the agency's deputy secretary who played a key role at the helm of DHS last year, is set to leave in April, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced Friday afternoon.
"Elaine has selflessly served the federal government for three decades, and this Department for more than 10 years spanning multiple Secretaries," Nielsen said in a statement.
"Since taking office, she has been instrumental in helping the Department address emerging threats and in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from the 2017 hurricane season."
Duke is leaving the rich asshole administration after serving in the federal government for nearly three decades, under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
President the rich asshole nominated her for the No. 2 position at DHS in January 2017, and she formally took office in April. She later would serve for several months at the helm of DHS as acting secretary after the rich asshole tapped then-DHS Secretary John Kelly as his new White House chief of staff. Duke served in the post until Nielsen was confirmed in December.
During her time as the top DHS official starting in late July, Duke oversaw the department's response to a series of hurricanes that devastated parts of Texas, Louisiana and Florida, as well as U.S. territories in the Caribbean.
Duke came under fire, however, after she suggested that the federal response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico, was a "good news story."
Duke also reportedly faced pressure from Kelly, who urged her in November to deport thousands of Hondurans residing in the U.S. after DHS extended temporary protected status for the residents.
According to a Washington Post report, that episode angered Duke, who refused to reverse the decision to extend the residency permits.
the rich asshole says he discussed gun control reform with GOP leaders
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 02/23/18 04:03 PM EST
President the rich asshole said Friday that he spoke with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about his gun control proposals, an indication that he’s ramping up pressure on Congress to pass legislation to address mass shootings.
“People are looking really energized,” the rich asshole said at a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. “I know this has been going on for a long time, many, many years. And you've had people in my position and they would mention things but not a lot of things got done, obviously. We take it very seriously. We want to put an end to it.”
The president did not get into specifics when pressed on which measures he hopes to achieve through legislation.
the rich asshole said Friday he wants to be “very powerful” on background checks and ensure that “we are dealing with the mentally ill.”
The president also said that that he wants to ban bump stocks — a device that can be attached to a semi-automatic gun to make it fire more rapidly. And he has advocated raising the age restriction on purchasing guns to 21 years old. Federal law currently allows some gun purchases at 18 years old.
Still, the rich asshole has not said whether he supports expanding the background checks system or potentially passing a bill that would provide incentives to enforce the current law on the books.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) supports a House-passed bill that would incentivize agencies to utilize the current national guns database but opposes further expanding background checks.
The NRA also opposes raising the age of purchase or banning bump stocks.
Raising the age of purchase has gained steam as a legislative reform idea among lawmakers on Capitol Hill in recent days.
Experts say banning bump stocks would similarly require legislation, although the rich asshole has instructed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate whether they can be banned through the regulatory process.
the rich asshole’s most controversial proposal would arm school officials who have been trained to handle guns so that they can fight back when there is an attack on school grounds.
Gun control advocates oppose putting more guns on schools grounds, but the rich asshole has argued strenuously in recent days for arming school officials.
“Very, very important that we have offensive capability as well as defensive capability within the schools,” the rich asshole said. “When you have a gun-free zone, you're really inviting people to come in and do whatever you have to do and often times get out.”
the rich asshole has said he was moved to action on gun control after meeting with the survivors and families of victims from a high school shooting in Florida that left 17 people dead last week.
Manafort says he doesn't understand why Gates pleaded guilty
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 02/23/18 03:17 PM EST
Former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort issued a statement Friday expressing disappointment over the decision of his long-tme business associate, Richard Gates, to plead guilty to two charges stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
In the statement, Manafort maintained his innocence and said that he had hoped Gates would have had the "strength" to fight the charges against them at trial.
"Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence," Manafort wrote.
"I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me,” he added.
Gates pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiracy against the United States and making a false statement to lawyers from the special counsel's office.
In a letter, Gates wrote that a "change of heart" and a desire to spare his family the cost of an extended legal battle led to his decision.
“Despite my initial desire to vigorously defend myself, I have had a change of heart,” Gates wrote. “The reality of how long this legal process will likely take, the cost, and the circus-like atmosphere of an anticipated trial are too much. I will better serve my family moving forward by exiting this process.”
Gates's deal with prosecutors came one day after a new superseding indictment from a Virginia grand jury brought the total number of charges against Gates and Manafort to 32.
Mueller first indicted the two former the rich asshole aides last year, with both men initially pleading not guilty.
They are accused of making millions of dollars while lobbying in Ukraine for over a decade, then concealing the money from the U.S. government, among other things.
Former the rich asshole adviser pleads guilty in Mueller probe
BY OLIVIA BEAVERS AND MORGAN CHALFANT - 02/23/18 02:49 PM EST
Former the rich asshole campaign adviser Richard Gates pleaded guilty Friday afternoon as part of a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian interference in the election.
Gates pleaded guilty to two charges brought against him by Mueller’s team in federal court in Washington, D.C.: one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of making a false statement to the FBI agents investigating Russian interference.
As part of the plea deal, Gates has agreed to cooperate “fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly” with the special counsel’s office as well as other law enforcement officials, according to court documents.
He is required to turn over relevant documents, go to meeting when requested and testify when requested both before and after he is sentenced. By agreeing to "fully cooperate," additional criminal charges will not be brought against him.
According to the criminal information filed by Mueller on Friday shortly before Gates pleaded guilty, Gates lied to federal investigators about a March 2013 meeting during which former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort, an unnamed member of Congress, reported by the Los Angeles Times to be Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), and an unnamed lobbyist discussed Ukraine.
Mueller filed the criminal information one day after he unveiled a new superseding indictment charging Gates and Manafort with a slew of financial-related crimes stemming from their work for pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine over the past decade. The alleged crimes are unrelated to the work Manafort and Gates did for the rich asshole campaign.
Mueller accused the two longtime business associates of laundering more than $30 million dollars in income that they hid from the U.S. government.
Speculation has mounted over the past week that Gates would plead guilty and cooperate in Mueller’s probe, making him a key witness who could testify in the criminal case against Manafort. The development is expected to ratchet up pressure on Manafort to cooperate in Mueller’s probe.
Manafort, who resigned as the rich asshole’s campaign chairman in August 2016 after reports surfaced about his work for Russian-backed Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Yanukovych, could offer key details about the campaign relevant to Mueller’s broader inquiry into whether the rich asshole campaign associates colluded with Moscow.
Manafort issued a statement in response to Gates's guilty plea saying he is innocent.
“Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence," Manafort said. "I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me.”
Gates served as Manafort’s deputy on the campaign and went on to work for the rich asshole's transition team.
In a letter obtained by ABC News earlier Friday, Gates told friends and family that he had decided to plead guilty for the sake of his children.
“Despite my initial desire to vigorously defend myself, I have had a change of heart,” Gates wrote. “The reality of how long this legal process will likely take, the cost, and the circus-like atmosphere of an anticipated trial are too much. I will better serve my family moving forward by exiting this process.”
“Despite my initial desire to vigorously defend myself, I have had a change of heart,” Gates wrote. “The reality of how long this legal process will likely take, the cost, and the circus-like atmosphere of an anticipated trial are too much. I will better serve my family moving forward by exiting this process.”
- Updated at 5:54 p.m.
the rich asshole cuts loose in rollicking address to conservatives
BY JONATHAN EASLEY AND BEN KAMISAR - 02/23/18 01:18 PM EST
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — President the rich asshole went into campaign mode on Friday with a freewheeling speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) aimed at energizing Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.
In a rollicking 75-minute address to the premier annual gathering of grass-roots conservatives, the rich asshole smashed his enemies, joked about his hair, defended his controversial new gun proposals and warned conservatives against electoral complacency.
“Historically, if you win the presidency you don’t do well two years later,” the rich asshole said. “You know what? We can’t let that happen. We need more Republicans. That’s why you have to go out there and fight for 2018.”
the rich asshole appeared in his element before a friendly crowd, taking the stage with a beaming smile and repeatedly cutting away from his scripted remarks to offer jokes or to muse about the trials of his presidency.
The president even joked about his famously-sculpted coiffure, pointing to his image on the big screen and joking that he had taken care to conceal a “bald spot.”
Moving away from the podium, the president turned his back to the crowd and brought his hands to his hair.
“Doesn’t look bad,” the rich asshole said. “We’re hanging in.”
Minutes later, the president gleefully fulminated about how the media would make a big deal out of a protester removed during the speech.
“For the media, the fake news back there, they took very good care of them, they were very gentle,” the rich asshole said. “He was very obnoxious.”
The Gaylord National Harbor hotel’s event hall was packed to the brim with thousands of the rich asshole’s supporters. Organizers removed a temporary wall in the back to open up the hall to more attendees who had to stand in the back.
The audience leapt into chants of “build the wall” and “lock her up,” the latter a jab at 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
the rich asshole basked in an electoral victory that is now nearly 16 months old, pointedly mocking Clinton for ignoring Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, three states he won after decades of GOP defeats.
He also read a fable about a snake tricking a woman into nursing him back to health so he can kill her — a parable about the need for tougher immigration laws that the rich asshole regularly read at campaign rallies.
The room erupted as the rich asshole wrapped his speech and walked off stage to The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” a signature song from his presidential campaign.
The annual CPAC gathering has long been a barometer of GOP enthusiasm and it was clear that the 2018 midterm elections weighed heavily on the rich asshole.
Republicans face stiff political headwinds in 2018 and the president said that if the party loses the House or the Senate, Democrats will be eager to roll back the gains Republicans have made during their two years in power.
Many conservatives are warning that if the president thinks his job is difficult now, he is in store for a rude awakening if Democrats take control of either chamber and suddenly have chairmanships and subpoena powers.
the rich asshole warned about the consequences of Democrats taking power, saying they’d “take away your Second Amendment rights” and roll back the GOP’s tax cuts.
the rich asshole touched on several hot-button topics of interest to the conservative crowd, including guns, immigration, ObamaCare and the culture wars.
“We salute our great American flag, we put our hands on our hearts for the Pledge of Allegiance and we all proudly stand for the national anthem,” the rich asshole said to cheers.
the rich asshole said that under his watch, Republicans had stocked the courts with conservative justices, dismantled ObamaCare “piece by piece,” eliminated scores of regulations, “knocked out” the Paris climate agreement and sent the economy and stock market soaring.
“I think I proved I'm a conservative,” the rich asshole said.
He blamed Democrats for a lack of progress on saving a program that defers deportation for certain immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
"Senate Democrats and the House Democrats have totally abandoned DACA. They don’t even talk to me about it; they’ve totally abandoned it," the rich asshole said.
"We want to do something about DACA, get it solved after all these years. The Democrats have been totally unresponsive. They don't want to do anything about DACA. It’s very possible DACA won’t happen; it’s not because of Republicans, it’s because of Democrats.”
Days after a dramatic White House meeting with survivors and the friends and family of victims of the Florida high school shooting, the rich asshole said he had been moved by what he heard.
“The senseless act of mass murder has shocked our nation and broken our hearts,” he said. “We will act. We will do something.”
The president has made several proposals that put him at odds with the National Rifle Association (NRA) — one of his biggest boosters in the 2016 election. the rich asshole has called for banning bump stocks, a device that can be attached to a semi-automatic rifle to speed up its firing rate. He has also proposed raising age restrictions on gun purchases and expanding background checks.
The president has said he’s been in touch with the NRA and that they will get on board with his proposals, although the group has publicly come out in opposition to raising the age limit.
But the rich asshole spent a great deal of time on Friday promoting his call to arm teachers and administrators in American schools, something he and the NRA agree upon.
Echoing speakers from the NRA who addressed CPAC on Thursday, the rich asshole argued that airports, banks and government building are protected by armed guards, and that gun-free zones attract deranged shooters, who know they can rampage without return fire until the police show up.
“This would be a major deterrent, because these people are inherently cowards,” the rich asshole said. “If they thought — like, if this guy thought that other people would be shooting bullets back at him, he wouldn't have gone to that school. He wouldn't have gone there. It is a gun-free zone.”
The idea of arming school officials is highly controversial and has angered gun control activists, who say that more guns on school grounds is not the solution to preventing further shootings.
the rich asshole said he is calling for only 10 or 20 percent of school officials to be armed and said that firearms should only be given to “very adept gun people.”
“I don't want to have 100 guards standing with rifles all over the school,” he said. “You do a conceal carry permit.”
An armed school official would have “shot the hell out of” the Florida gunman, the rich asshole said.
Unhinged the rich asshole threatens ‘the world’ after his disastrous week
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Once again, the rich asshole is hinting at world war.
On Friday, the rich asshole spoke at a rare joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and when asked what he would do if his proposed North Korean sanctions fail, his response was truly alarming.
the rich asshole seemed to be arguing, in his vague way, that he was thinking about a military strike on a nuclear power and a multilateral global conflict — something he has been flippant about in the past.
This is a horrifying comment, and it comes at the end of another week that, by most accounts, was an abject disaster for the rich asshole.
For starters, he had to deal with the continuing activism and anger following the Parkland school shooting and his own insensitive reponse. The position he has staked out to arm teachers rather than deal with guns is bitterly unpopular.
Then, the rich asshole campaign aide Rick Gates pled guilty in the Special Counsel investigation as Robert Mueller pursues 32 new charges against campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Even if the rich asshole was not privy to their wrongdoing, his judgment in hiring them in the first place was fantastically incompetent, and looking worse and worse as the charges rack up.
To cap it all, the rich asshole’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, put in a top White House role through naked nepotism, could be on the verge of losing his security clearance.
the rich asshole has previously played with the media about the idea he might wage war. But he will not be able to use this strategy to hide from every terrible week. He’s visibly imploding, but his threats only make things worse for him.
Florida governor bucks NRA on age restrictions in new gun proposal
BY REID WILSON - 02/23/18 12:14 PM EST
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) on Friday proposed spending half a billion dollars to boost school security and mental health care funding, in hopes of preventing shootings like the massacre at a Parkland, Fla., high school that claimed 17 lives last week.
Notably, the governor's plan would raise the age to purchase all firearms to 21, which is in direct opposition to the National Rifle Association's stance on firearm purchases.
Current Florida law requires those purchasing handguns to be 21, but residents as young as 18 can still purchase rifles like the one used by the Parkland shooter.
Scott also called on the state legislature to implement criminal penalties for threats to schools made on social media. And he wants the legislature to ban bump stocks, the modification that allows a semi-automatic weapon to shoot more rapidly.
“This is a time when I believe we must all come together, and even cross party lines,” Scott told reporters at a news conference in Tallahassee. “Of course, we won’t all agree on every issue, but I do believe this is a moment when our state can come together around a commonsense set of actions.”
The proposal seems to be in line with many of the thoughts President the rich asshole has expressed since the shooting. The president has called for stronger backgrounds checks, raising the age to purchase a gun to 21 and a ban on bump stocks.
the rich asshole has also floated the idea of arming teachers as a way to deter would-be attackers, a plan that Scott has said he does not endorse.
Scott asked the legislature to appropriate $450 million for stronger school safety measures, including an initiative to place at least one law enforcement officer in every public school. The money would also pay for mandatory active shooter training and drills, to be held twice a year for both faculty and students.
The package of legislation would include a new statewide hotline that would allow students or teachers to report suspect behavior. And it would provide dedicated mental health counselors at every school.
“Some will say it’s too much, and some will say it’s not enough,” Scott said of his proposals.
Scott also called for $50 million in funding for expanded mental health service teams to treat early or serious mental illness through counseling and crisis management.
Despite the difference on age restrictions, Scott is a close ally of the NRA and on Friday affirmed he would resist calls to roll back gun rights.
“I know there are some who are advocating a mass takeaway of Second Amendment rights for all Americans. That is not the answer,” Scott said. “Keeping guns away from dangerous people and people with mental health issues is what we need to do.”
Gun control groups are not likely to be mollified by the steps Scott outlined Friday. The state legislature earlier this week voted down a package of gun control measures backed by groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, even as students from Parkland watched in the gallery.
“More funding for school security could be good, but what we want is background checks, red flag laws and [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] denial legislation,” said Jamie Ito, a Tallahassee lawyer who works with Moms Demand Action, a group that advocates for stricter gun controls.
Florida has among the most permissive gun laws in the nation, and more than a million state residents have a concealed carry permit.
Even modest reforms to Florida’s gun laws are likely to face stiff headwinds in the Republican-controlled state legislature, where many members are already eyeing runs for higher office. Legislators only have a short window to act on Scott’s proposals: This year’s session is scheduled to end March 9.
Why Richard Gates is a key player in the Mueller probe
BY MORGAN CHALFANT AND OLIVIA BEAVERS - 02/23/18 06:00 AM EST
Richard Gates has emerged as a key figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia's interference in the presidential election.
Mueller on Thursday unveiled new criminal charges against Gates and Paul Manafort, his longtime business partner and President the rich asshole's former campaign chairman, accusing them of a series of financial crimes including tax evasion, bank fraud and money laundering.
Observers for weeks had been expecting that Gates, a onetime the rich asshole campaign aide, might strike an agreement with Mueller to avoid going to trial.
The superseding indictment released Thursday deepens the legal peril for Gates.
“It is designed to continue to ratchet up the pressure on Manafort and Gates to flip,” he said.
Waxman said the new filings suggest Mueller is likely sending a clear signal to Gates “that he is not messing around."
Gates is a key figure for Mueller because of his close relationship with Manafort.
Gates and Manafort worked hand-in-hand for more than a decade, including on lobbying work for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine, so his testimony at trial could prove especially damaging for Manafort.
“If Manafort really did have a second in command comparable to a close confidant, you don’t get much better than that,” said Steven Cash, a lawyer at Day Pitney who specializes in criminal litigation and national security-related matters. “It’s like having the second in command of a company testify against the CEO.”
A plea agreement with Gates would put heavy pressure on Manafort to cut a deal of his own. If he flipped, it’s possible he could give Mueller inside information about any contact between the rich asshole campaign and Moscow during the summer of 2016, a key period when Russia began orchestrating the release of hacked Democratic emails.
“The Manafort indictment is serious, is ugly and is very likely backed by large volumes of evidence,” said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director. “Gates can drive a final nail.”
the rich asshole has flatly denied any collusion between his campaign and Russia, describing the allegations as a “hoax.”
Mueller’s team first unveiled an indictment against Manafort and Gates in late October.
That indictment, which included bank transactions, accused Manafort and Gates of money laundering, bank fraud and other financial crimes stemming from work overseas that pre-dated their involvement in the rich asshole’s presidential campaign.
Both men pleaded not guilty last year.
Former prosecutors say Gates’s testimony, should he choose to cooperate, could help prosecutors sort through their evidence against Manafort. He could also fill in holes in timelines and help walk prosecutors through some of the complex financial transactions that he and Manafort are accused of carrying out.
“In most businesses and white-collar cases, the government really needs a cooperator to explain events,” said Jack Sharman, a former Whitewater special counsel.
The possibility of Gates on the witness stand could be enough to get Manafort to cooperate with Mueller’s prosecutors, which is likely their main goal.
Manafort worked for the rich asshole’s campaign for six months before resigning under pressure in August 2016 over reports of his dealings with a pro-Russia oligarch in Ukraine. He was in the room for a June 2016 meeting at the rich asshole Tower with a Russian lawyer who had promised some rich asshole Jr. damaging information on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and could provide inside information about any contact between the campaign and Russia.
If Gates were to strike a plea deal, he would be the fourth known witness to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation, in addition to former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former the rich asshole campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and a California man ensnared in the probe for selling bank account numbers to foreigners committing identity fraud.
“I think the question is not are there going to be more indictments and guilty pleas. I think there will be,” Sharman said.
“The larger question is ultimately what is the relation of any of those offenses to the original core mission of the special counsel, who was appointed because of concerns over presidential campaign involvement.”
the rich asshole says security clearance process is actually too rigorous
He says the system is "broken" -- because his officials aren't getting clearances fast enough.
A week after his chief of staff ordered an overhaul of the process for granting White House security clearances, President some rich asshole on Friday blamed an overly rigorous background vetting process for holding up the approval of his son-in-law’s permanent security clearance.
“It’s a broken system and it shouldn’t take this long,” said the rich asshole during a joint news conference at the White House with visiting Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
the rich asshole’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is one of the president’s top advisers and works on a myriad of high-level and sensitive national security issues such as brokering peace in the Middle East. And more than a year into the rich asshole’s presidency, Kushner continues to work under an interim security clearance, which gives him access to highly sensitive intelligence information.
The issues with granting such access on an interim basis came under scrutiny earlier this month after one of the rich asshole’s top aides, Rob Porter, was forced to step down amidst allegations of spousal abuse that were revealed in media reports. Porter was likewise operating under an interim security clearance, and the ordeal exposed serious flaws and shortcomings in the White House’s handling of those allegations and security clearance process. Several top White House officials were told numerous times about the allegations against Porter and the fact that they were holding up his clearance.
In a memo distributed to White House staff last Friday, Chief of Staff John Kelly announced that all White House employees with background investigations pending since June 1 will have their temporary clearances revoked as of today, the New York Times reported.
But earlier this week, White House officials said that crackdown won’t affect Kushner or the work he’s doing, according to a USA Today report that noted Kushner has had to amend a national security questionnaire after he failed to disclose contacts with Russian nationals and others.
Administration officials have tried to portray the delay in Kushner’s security clearance as normal, and told Politico that high level administration officials who require the highest clearance undergo heightened scrutiny.
But on Friday, CNN revealed that Kushner hasn’t obtained a full security clearance partly because of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and that Kushner likely won’t receive full clearance while the probe is underway.
On Friday, the Washington Post also reported that a top Justice Department official alerted the White House two weeks ago that “significant information requiring additional investigation” would further delay Kushner’s security clearance process.
The issues with Kushner’s security clearance process has left some senators concerned, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
Earlier this month, after CNN reported that several dozen other the rich asshole administration appointees lack full security clearance, Blumenthal and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) asked the inspector general for the intelligence community to investigate the rich asshole administration’s security clearance procedures.
“We are concerned over the apparent low and inconsistent threshold the rich asshole White House uses for obtaining an interim security clearance,” the senators wrote in the letter.
On Friday, at the White House news conference, the rich asshole complained that the vetting process takes “months and months and months” even for people who don’t have complex financial issues.
“Do you know how many people are on that list. People with not a problem in the world,” said the rich asshole. “So that will be up to General Kelly… General Kelly respects Jared a lot, and General Kelly will make that call. I won’t make that call.”
Parkland survivor calls out Melania the rich asshole for failed anti-bullying effort
Melania's stepson, some rich asshole Jr., liked a post accusing David Hogg of being a Deep State plant.
The younger sister of teenage gun control advocate David Hogg called out the First Lady’s silence on the relentless cyberbullying that the Parkland survivors are now facing — a campaign supported on Twitter by some rich asshole Jr.
Lauren Hogg, who was in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with her brother last week when a gunman killed 17 people, took to Twitter on Friday to call out Melania the rich asshole’s silence on the cyberbullying she and other survivors are being forced to endure. One major accusation is that the students now advocating for gun control are in fact “crisis actors” — an accusation the rich asshole Jr. supported with several Twitter likes.
“He liked a post about a false conspiracy theory which in turn put a target on my back,” Hogg tweeted. “I’m 14, I should never have had to deal with any of this and even though I thought it couldn’t get any worse it has because of your family.”
Hey @FLOTUS you say that your mission as First Lady is to stop cyber bullying, well then, don’t you think it would have been smart to have a convo with your step-son @DonaldJTrumpJr before he liked a post about a false conspiracy theory which in turn put a target on my back
&created a safe space for people all over the world to call me and my family horrific things that constantly re-victimizes us and our community. I’m 14 I should never have had to deal with any of this and even though I thought it couldn’t get worse it has because of your family.
When some rich asshole was campaigning back in 2016, Melania announced that one of her focuses would be to combat cyberbullying. “We must find better ways to honor and support the basic goodness of our children, especially in social media,” she said to a crowd in Pennsylvania. “It will be one of the main focuses of my work if I’m privileged enough to become your First Lady.”
This week would seem to present the perfect opportunity for the First Lady to revive her fledgling anti-bullying campaign. As the students of Marjory Douglas Stoneman High serious action on gun control after the mass shooting at their school, they have been subject to cruel and relentless trolling. Death threats have forced some students to abandon Facebook, while others have been accused of being “crisis actors,” propagating anti-gun propaganda.
But the First Lady has been completely silent. Meanwhile, her stepson, the rich asshole Jr., liked a story which appeared on the Gateway Pundit suggesting that David Hogg is “running cover” for the FBI and that his anti-gun advocacy is part of an FBI plot “only looking to curb YOUR Constitutional rights and INCREASE their power.” the rich asshole Jr. also liked a post featuring a re-tweet of Jack Posobiec, a “citizen investigator” perhaps most notorious for pushing the Pizzagate conspiracy theory that there’s a child sex dungeon under Comet Pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C.
Earlier in the week, shooting survivor Cameron Kasky said he’d decided to quit Facebook because “there’s not character count so the death threats from the NRA cultists are a bit more graphic than those on Twitter.” The Hogg family has also been receiving threats, with David’s mother, Rebecca Boldrick, telling The Washington Post it was near overwhelming.
“I’m under so much stress,” she said. “I’m angry and exhausted. Angry, exhausted and proud.”
White House makes it official: The United States is not a ‘nation of immigrants’
The rich asshole administration's stance has been clear long before now.
In a move formalizing more than a year of hardline anti-immigration rhetoric from the White House, the agency responsible for overseeing both green cards and citizenship has wiped a key line framing the United States as a “nation of immigrants” from its mission statement.
In a letter sent Thursday, Lee Francis Cissna, the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), told employees that the statement had been altered to “guide us in the years ahead.”
“U.S.C.I.S. secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system,” read the agency’s original mission statement.
The new offering is notably altered: “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland and honoring our values.”
That new statement, Cissna said, “clearly defines the agency’s role in our country’s lawful immigration system and the commitment we have to the American people.”
In addition to the removal of the “nation of immigrants” phrase, the statement has also eliminated any reference to non-U.S. nationals as “customers” — a decision Cissna said served as “a reminder that we are always working for the American people.”
The phrase “nation of immigrants” is not without controversy — many Native Americans have argued against the saying, as have Black Americans, arguing that the arrival of colonizers and slaves should not be conflated with immigration more broadly. But the phrase has become a rallying cry for many contemporary proponents of immigration, which helps to diversify the United States and keep the economy strong. Its removal formalizes an agenda long pursued by the rich asshole administration, which has made cracking down on immigration a key pillar of its tenure.
Even before taking office, the rich asshole vowed to curb immigration repeatedly, often singling out Muslim and Latinx communities. As president, those threats have translated into a harsh reality. Less than a month into office, the rich asshole rolled out the first version of a travel ban targeting all refugees and citizens from a number of majority Muslim countries. Two additional versions of the ban later followed, after outcry and numerous legal threats.
The White House also singled out undocumented immigrants, ramping up raids and deportations while targeting so-called sanctuary cities. In September, the rich asshole announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era directive that granted temporary protections to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
Other programs have also come under fire. The White House has rolled back Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for recipients from multiple countries, including Haiti, El Salvador, and Nicaragua — all of whom came to the United States amid severe turmoil in their home countries. Hundreds of thousands must now uproot their lives, returning to places where they are likely to face many of the same conditions they fled.
The rich asshole administration has cracked down on documented immigration more broadly. The president has endorsed the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act, which would cut immigration in half, from approximately 1 million people per year to 500,000. the rich asshole has also actively targeted the diversity visa program, something many without U.S. family ties have long seen as their only chance to immigrate.
Highly skilled immigrants haven’t been spared either. the rich asshole has repeatedly argued for a merit-based system, slamming family-based migration. But the administration has targeted H-1B visa recipients, highly-skilled workers in a number of sectors, many of whom disproportionately come from India. Experts and employers alike say that crusade could have a devastating impact on the U.S. economy and workforce.
That’s not all. Earlier this month, reports circulated that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing to scrutinize the use of public assistance funds when making immigration decisions regarding permanent residency status — even when the funds in question are used for U.S. citizen children.
That hardline approach to immigration is seemingly at odds with the realities of the president’s own administration and extended circle. the rich asshole is the grandson of Scottish and German immigrants. His wife, Melania, is an immigrant from Slovenia; her parents appear to be U.S. permanent residents. Cissna, the USCIS director, is himself the son of an immigrant from Peru and he grew up speaking Spanish at home.
“Our family is literally a product of our nation’s legal immigration system,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May. “Should I be confirmed, these experiences will undoubtedly illuminate everything I do as USCIS director.”
That illumination seems to look differently for Cissna, who advocates for ending both family-based immigration and the diversity visa program, than it does for immigration advocates. Many panned Thursday’s announcement that “nation of immigrants” would be missing from the USCIS statement.
“Our nation is one built by immigrants—removing this language does nothing to change that fact, it only reveals the insidious racism harbored by those in this administration,” said Eleanor Acer, director of refugee protection at Washington-based advocacy group Human Rights First, in a statement.
Immigration opponents, by contrast, cheered the altered statement. “The biggest problem with our immigration system is that it lacks a clear national interest objective,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the anti-immigration Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR. Mehlman said the new statement offered more clarity.
The United States has been the top international migration destination since 1960, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Around 44 million immigrants lived in the United States in 2016. More recent numbers indicate that one-fifth of the world’s immigrants lived in the country as of 2017.
Former RNC chair Michael Steele says GOP is ‘clearly’ more racist: ‘How quickly they revert to race as a weapon’
Ex-RNC head Michael Steele -- screenshot
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During the Ronald Reagan dinner at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference Friday night, Ian Walters, the communications director of the conference, attacked former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele.
“We elected Mike Steele as chairman because he was a black guy, that was the wrong thing to do,” Walters said in a comment reportedly met with gasps, according to Jonathan Levine, of The Wrap.
Steele told MSNBC’s Joy Reid he was shocked by the
“Of course I had one of those moments where you just go, what the?” Steele said. “So, yeah, a little shocked, a little disappointed. Surprised that people still in the party feel this way and look at the contributions that anyone would make to the party through the principle of race. It’s unfortunate, it’s stupid, it’s immature. And I’m waiting to speak to [conference chair] Matt Schlap about it.”
He noted he’s spoken at CPAC in the past and “I think also, Joy, to make up of what is going on in this country as well, and how quickly people revert to race as a weapon.” He called it “ignorant.”
“That’s the question I was going to ask you,” Reid confessed. “You have been a Republican a long time, do you sense that the party has changed and shifted toward more openness with these kind of views in your view?”
Steele confessed, “clearly” the party has moved in this direction.
“I think that is something that will be concerning going forward,” he continued. “It will play itself out during the campaign, and we did see that. So, it is sad, but look, we’re going to do as much as we can, and education starts from within.”
Steele said that Walters called him to apologize and related it back to the election of Barack Obama.
Listen to Steele speak with Reid below:
‘They should be ashamed’: Don Lemon rips the rich asshole and CPAC crowd for ‘low blow’ attacking John McCain while he’s ‘fighting for his life’
CNN's Don Lemon
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President some rich asshole had promised Meghan McCain and Cindy McCain that he would refrain from attacking Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) while he’s fighting glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer that has a very low survival rate.
Political contributor Chris Cilizza noted he once thought the rich asshole’s campaign was “over” when he attacked McCain for “getting captured.”
“I think he does not like John McCain and John McCain hasn’t really made it a secret he doesn’t like Trumpism either,” he said simply. “some rich asshole broke his word to Meghan McCain and Cindy McCain he wouldn’t attack John McCain any longer given the struggle against brain cancer. It shouldn’t be that surprising. Joan [Walsh] mentioned the last segment this is some rich asshole in front of the most raw meat crowd you could have as a Republican president. He likes applause.”
“It’s just unnecessary,” Lemon said. “It’s a low below, unnecessary, and he should be ashamed of himself and the people should be ashamed of themselves for applauding. Here is John McCain –”
“Literally fighting for his life,” Walsh cut in.
“Thank you,” Lemon said to Walsh. “And it’s just gauche, to say the least.”
Watch the commentary below:
Former US Attorney explains how Mueller can build a case of conspiracy against the rich asshole campaign
Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade (MSNBC screenshot)
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Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade told MSNBC’s Joy Reid Friday that the plea deal from Rick Gates could be the beginning of the end for President some rich asshole.
“I think it’s a significant development to the detriment of Paul Manafort,” she began her explanation. “It was such a document based case. Documents don’t lie, it’s easy to prove them objectively. Now that you have this very close associate, Rick Gates pleading guilty now you have someone who can connect the dots, who can provide a narrator for a trial.”
She argued that Gates likely knows things that happened between he and Manafort that would be devastating to Manafort’s defense. She also explained that when Gates accepted a plea agreement he must state in his own words what was done that made him believe he was guilty of the crime charged.
Tim O’Brien, author of “Trumpnation,” said that he is more skeptical about how much Manafort actually knows that could be disastrous about the president. However, one thing he noted was “this consolation of two-bit advisers around the president is perhaps the most felonious group of characters you’ve seen in an administration, certainly since the [former President Richard] Nixon.”
McQuade, however, explained it what’s known as a Klein Conspiracy, “to defraud the United States by obstructing the administration of an agency of the United States.”
The crime that the 13 Russian nationals were charged with last week was to obstruct the functioning of the Federal Election Commission. She explained that if there are ties to those Russians, that it would prove conspiracy.
“If they are soliciting things from a foreign government, receiving things of value from a foreign national, that would disrupt the fair administrations of our elections and could be conspiracy to defraud the United States,” she continued. “I think the indictment that was handed down last week, naming the 13 Russians, provides that foundation on which Robert Mueller can build if he finds the evidence linking Americans to be co-conspirators with the Russians.”
Watch her full explanation below:
Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez just gave the GOP another reason to be afraid of her generation
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior Emma Gonzalez during a press conference. Image via screengrab.
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Parkland massacre survivor Emma Gonzalez reminded CNN viewers Friday night that she and her peers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School aren’t just coming for the National Rifle Association — they’re also marching to the ballot box.
Though Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) and other politicians are breaking with the NRA’s party line to call for age restrictions on assault-style rifles like that which Parkland shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz used to gun down his former classmates, Gonzalez said those measures are baby steps.
“I do think those are good first steps,” she told CNN host John Berman. “A lot of us in this community are happy to hear this is starting to move in a good direction. But it’s not enough.”
Semi-automatic weapons in general, rather than age regulations, should be targeted by lawmakers, Gonzalez said.
The high school senior admitted that she and her fellow outspoken classmates “are definitely making a difference” — and not just when it comes to guns.
“People are being inspired by what the kids at our school are doing,” she said. “They’re getting out there, they’re getting registered to vote, they’re getting preregistered to vote, they’re talking to parents and members of their community.”
“Look anywhere,” Gonzalez implored. “It’s right outside your window.”
Watch below, via CNN:
The NRA just honored the rich asshole’s FCC chair Ajit Pai with rifle for killing ‘net neutrality’
Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Ajit Pai speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., February 23, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
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The National Rifle Association (NRA) on Friday honored the head of the Federal Communications Commission with a rifle after braving death threats and other opposition as he worked to undo the Obama administration’s 2015 net neutrality rules.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was honored at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hills, Maryland, by the NRA with the “Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award,” an honor named for the late actor who was an NRA president.
The award is a Kentucky long rifle that will stay at the NRA’s museum in Fairfax, Virginia. The NRA was not allowed to bring the weapon on stage, said Carolyn Meadows, an NRA official.
It was not immediately clear why the NRA was not able to present the long gun to the FCC chairman. The FCC, CPAC and the NRA did not immediately respond to questions.
A Reuters reporter at the event said there were no visible prohibitions against weapons at the event but metal detectors were present before President some rich asshole’s address earlier on Friday.
At the event, Pai defended his aggressive approach to undoing numerous telecommunications regulations put in place under former President Barack Obama.
“Some people urged me to go for sacrifice bunts and singles and try to nibble around the edges — make some minor changes,” Pai said. “But I don’t play small ball.”
Pai canceled his appearance in January at a large consumer electronics event in Las Vegas after receiving deaths threats, sources told Reuters.
The repeal of the net neutrality rules was a victory for internet service providers like AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc, conferring power over what content consumers can access and allowing them to offer paid fast lanes for certain content.
On the other side, technology companies including Alphabet Inc and Facebook Inc have thrown their weight behind the congressional bid to reverse the net neutrality repeal.
On Thursday, 22 state attorneys general filed sued to block the repeal.
Fight for the Future, a group that backs net neutrality, said in a tweet the NRA gave Pai an award that will “allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to censor websites and information about guns.”
Several corporations have cut ties with the NRA after the group launched a counter-offensive against a student-led campaign for tighter U.S. gun ownership laws after a gunman killed 17 people at a Florida high-school.
Insurer Chubb Ltd said on Friday that it would stop underwriting an NRA-branded insurance policy for gun owners that covers legal costs in self-defense shootings. Insurance company MetLife Inc ended an auto and home incentive program for NRA members, while several rental car companies announced they were ending discount programs for NRA members.
‘Blue Lives Matter’ and the rich asshole fans are behind #FireSheriffIsrael hate after he shouted at NRA spokeswoman
Broward county sheriff Scott Israel (Photo: Screen capture)
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On Friday night, hashtags calling for the firing or resignation of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel began trending on Twitter — and they appear to be directed by both fans of President some rich asshole and, peculiarly, proponents of the so-called “Blue Lives Matter” movement.
Israel has been thrust into the spotlight this week in response to the mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school where suspect Nikolas Cruz used an AR-15 assault rifle to gun down 17 people. Days after, Israel came out in support of a ban on assault-style rifles. On Wednesday, he shouted in the face of National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch during a CNN town hall, accusing her and her organization of “not standing up” for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students and teachers lost to gun violence on Valentine’s Day.
His critical stance on the powerful gun group appears to have made him some right-wing enemies. Just two days after the massacre, Fox News ran an article on a statement he made whose headline read “Florida sheriff Scott Israel says lawmakers ‘won’t get re-elected’ if they don’t push for gun control.”
In the intervening days, right-wing sites have repeatedly published articles critical of Israel, and Twitter has followed suit. Not only are fans of President some rich asshole and pro-gun voters rallying around cries for the sheriff’s removal, but people who ascribe to the racist “Blue Lives Matter” pro-police mentality are as well.
“Sheriff Scott Israel and his Band of Bumbling Broward Buffoons & the FBI are the poster boys as to WHY AMERICANS NEED TO PROTECT THEMSELVES,” an account purporting to be a former chief of the New York Police Department tweeted in response to both Fox News host Tucker Carlson and CNN Friday evening.
Sheriff Scott Israel and his Band of Bumbling Broward Buffoons & the FBI are the poster boys as to WHY AMERICANS NEED TO PROTECT THEMSELVES
The @sundnce99 account tweeted more than a dozen times about Israel, often responding to unrelated or loosely-related posts made by other users to berate the sheriff, often in all caps.
#CNNtownhall was a set-up. A bully-fest.
Sheriff CYA throws whomever comes within reach under the proverbial bus
Here ya go- Bingo!
twitter.com/ThomasWictor/s…
SHERIFF ISRAEL SCREWED UP 39 CALLS FOR POLICE HELP AND HE NEVER ONCE ARRESTED CRUZ DESPITE THE CALLS FOR HELP. 1 ARREST WOULD HAVE PREVENTED CRUZ FROM BUYING A GUN. LETS COMPARE 911 CALLS TO FINAL DISPOSITIONS AND INTERVIEW OF COMPLAINANTS
The #ResignSheriffIsrael hashtag appears to have been started by Ben Shapiro, the former Breitbart writer and founder of the conservative Daily Wire.
“It seems to me that Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel deserves a hashtag far more than the NRA,” he tweeted Friday night.
It seems to me that Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel deserves a hashtag far more than the NRA. So #ResignSheriffIsrael it is.
Shapiro has tweeted in support of so-called “Blue Lives” at least once, claiming in late 2014 that “a political infrastructure that defends criminals and lies about cops has blood on its hands.”
A political infrastructure that defends criminals and lies about cops has blood on its hands. #BlueLivesMatter
Florida Gov. Rick Scott proposes new gun sale limits after Parkland school shooting
Florida Gov. Rick Scott addresses an economic summit in Orlando, Florida, in this June 2, 2015 file photo. (Reuters/Steve Nesius)
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Florida Governor Rick Scott, a loyal ally of the U.S. gun lobby under mounting pressure to act in the aftermath of last week’s deadly mass shooting, urged state lawmakers on Friday to tighten access to firearms for young people and the mentally disturbed.
Scott said he would work with the Republican-controlled legislature over the next two weeks to raise the minimum legal age for buying any gun in Florida from 18 to 21, with some exceptions for younger individuals serving in the military or law enforcement.
That proposal put the Republican governor at odds with the National Rifle Association, which has opposed higher age limits in Florida, where a person must be at least 21 to buy a handgun but can be as young as 18 to purchase an assault rifle.
But Scott, who has been endorsed by the NRA and received its highest rating for supporting the rights of gun owners, said he opposed an outright ban on assault rifles, as some gun control advocates have demanded.
His plan closely mirrored proposed measures unveiled on Friday by leaders of the state legislature.
The 17 people slain on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Parkland were shot with a semiautomatic AR-15-style assault weapon, which authorities say was purchased legally last year by the accused gunman, Nikolas Cruz, when he was 18 years of age.
Cruz, now 19, a former Stoneman Douglas student who authorities said had a history of run-ins with the law and was expelled from school for disciplinary problems, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office have since acknowledged receiving several tips over the past two years from callers saying they had reason to believe Cruz was inclined to commit a school shooting.
In addition to age limits, Scott said he wanted to change state laws to make it “virtually impossible for anyone who has mental issues to use a gun,” echoing similar calls by U.S. President some rich asshole.
The governor called in particular for a new program allowing a family member, police officer or community welfare expert to seek a special court order barring the purchase or possession of a firearm by anyone shown to pose a safety threat due to mental illness or violent behavior.
Scott also urged that state laws on involuntary commitment of the mentally ill be amended so that anyone hospitalized by court order is stripped of all access to firearms, with a court hearing required before their gun rights could be restored.
RENEWED FOCUS ON BACKGROUND CHECKS
Federal law bars possession of firearms by anyone found by a court or other legal authority to be a danger to themselves or others. Convicted felons, fugitives and people with a record of drug addiction also are banned from owning guns.
But many states have been slow in furnishing mental health records to the FBI database used in flagging prospective buyers who are supposed to be prohibited from owning a weapon.
The governor’s proposals come amid a reignited national debate on gun rights, led in part by some of the student survivors of last week’s massacre, ranked as the second deadliest U.S. public school shooting on record.
Students and parents calling for tougher gun controls traveled earlier this week to meet with politicians in Tallahassee, the state capital, and with the rich asshole at the White House.
the rich asshole has suggested arming teachers as a way of curbing gun violence in schools, as advocated by the NRA. He has also called for raising the legal age for buying rifles nationally to 21, and for beefing up background checks on prospective gun buyers.
On Capitol Hill on Friday, a group of 18 House Republicans urged House Speaker Paul Ryan to schedule a vote on legislation strengthening background checks.
The legislation already passed the House in December. But it was coupled with a controversial measure aimed at significantly expanding permits for carrying concealed weapons.
The group of House Republicans urged Ryan to bring it to the House floor as a stand-alone bill so that it will have a greater chance of approval by the Senate and enactment into law.
Scott also called for a mandatory law enforcement officer in every public school and for mandatory “active shooter training” for students and faculty.
He spoke as staff members were returning to Stoneman Douglas High School for the first time since the massacre.
“Everything was quiet, and looked like it was frozen in time,” said Greg Pittman, a social studies teacher. Some colleagues were still too shaken to return, he said.
Outside the school, some teachers gazed at the flowers and makeshift memorials to the victims. One woman who brought balloons to add to the memorials fell to her knees in tears.
Students are due to return to class next Wednesday, two weeks after the shooting. The building where the shooting occurred will remain closed.
In remarks to reporters on Friday, the rich asshole criticized the armed sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school for doing a “poor job.” The deputy, Scot Peterson, resigned after an internal investigation found he failed to go inside and confront the shooter, the Broward County sheriff said on Thursday.
“When it came time to get in there and do something, he didn’t have the courage or something happened,” the rich asshole said.
Gun control advocates welcomed Scott’s steps to tighten laws, but some wanted more.
Julie Kessel, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, told reporters that Scott’s proposals were “very small, incremental changes.”
“None of them gets to the heart of what would really change gun violence, which is to ban assault weapons and close these loopholes immediately in background checks,” Kessel said.
(Reporting Zachary Fagenson in Parkland, Florida, Richard Cowan in Washington and Jonathan Allen, Gina Cherelus and Dan Trotta in New York; Writing by Jonathan Allen and Steve Gorman; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Jonathan Oatis and Daniel Wallis)
CNN’s Toobin mocks ex-the rich asshole aide for ‘ridiculous, self-pitying’ statement: He ‘pleaded guilty is because he’s a criminal’
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin
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CNN’s Jeffrey Tobin on Friday mocked Rick Gates for his “ridiculous, self-pitying” statement after the former some rich asshole aide pleaded guilty in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“The reason Rick Gates pleaded guilty is because he’s a criminal,” Toobin said. “And because he’s guilty. That’s the only reason a judge will accept a guilty plea in our system. And I think we need to keep in mind that this is not just about ‘Oh, the prosecutors being so mean and using their resources.’ This was a criminal enterprise Gates was involved in. He clearly says that Manafort was involved in it, too. And the question we all want to know is, who else?”
Toobin also explained how entertained Gates and former the rich asshole chairman Paul Manafort are in Mueller’s indictment.
“In virtually every paragraph of the charges to which he pleaded guilty, Paul Manafort’s name appears. Manafort and Gates, Manafort and Gates,” Toobin said. “This was a collaborative criminal enterprise, and Gates is going to disclose it to the jury. I don’t see any way that Paul Manafort can actually take this case to trial at this point.”
“If you look at the charges, [Manafort and Gates] either paid taxes or on they didn’t,” Toobin added. “And Gates is saying, ‘We didn’t pay taxes. They’re supposed to disclose their lobbying activities. Gates is saying, ‘We didn’t disclose it.’ I don’t see how you defend that. I think the pressure on Manafort is going to be so enormous to plead guilty that I would be shocked at this point if he actually wound up going to trial.”
“What’s important to remember about these charges is that the conspiracy charge continued throughout the time that Manafort and Gates were working on the rich asshole campaign,” the CNN political analyst noted. “Every minute they were working on the rich asshole campaign, they were also engaged in a criminal conspiracy.”
Former the rich asshole campaign adviser Gates pleads guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI
More bad news for the president.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former the rich asshole campaign adviser Rick Gates pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of making false statements to the FBI and special prosecutor’s office, in the latest sign that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is heating up.
Standing before the judge with his lawyer, Thomas C. Green, Gates, wearing a dark blue suit and wine-colored tie, waived his right to a trial and confirmed in a series of punctuated statements that the information he had given authorities was true. He now faces between 57 and 71 months in prison as well as a fine of up to $200,000, although that punishment is likely to be reduced at sentencing, if he continues to work with investigators.
The government has said it is prepared to dismiss the remaining charges against Gates if he cooperates.
Gates was previously indicted alongside former the rich asshole campaign manager Paul Manafort in October on several counts — including conspiracy to launder money, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, making false and misleading statements to authorities, and failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. On Thursday, the two were indicted on 32 additional counts of money laundering and working as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine. The new round of indictments revealed that the two had laundered more than $75 million since 2006; Manafort allegedly funneled $30 million of that through offshore accounts, while Gates transferred approximately $3 million.
Gates’ lawyer this week honed in on that disparity to argue for a lesser sentence.
“The guidelines do not take into account the disproportionate conduct between my client and Mr. Manafort… the government has agreed I’ll have a right to argue that,” Green said in court.
A sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled.
Friday’s guilty plea signals a momentous shift in the Mueller investigation, which focuses on Russian interference in the 2016 election, as well as possible collusion between the rich asshole campaign and Russia. To date, several high-profile members of President the rich asshole’s campaign and administration have pleaded guilty to various charges, including lying to the FBI about their respective communications with Russian officials.
While Gates had previously pledged to fight the charges in court, he told friends and family in a letter obtained by ABC News this week that he felt it would be better to “[exit] the process” in order to protect them.
“Despite my initial desire to vigorously defend myself, I have had a change of heart,” he wrote. “The reality of how long this legal process will likely take, the cost, and the circus-like atmosphere of an anticipated trial are too much. I will better serve my family moving forward by exiting this process. … The consequence is the public humiliation, which at this moment seems like a small price to pay for what our children would have to endure otherwise.”
Gates’ decision could mean that he is willing to cooperate with the special counsel’s office in exchange for a lesser punishment. As The New York Times pointed out this week, it’s unclear exactly what kind of information an insider like Gates would offer Mueller’s team, although he was notably “present for the most significant periods of activity of the campaign,” including as the team began interacting more and more with users on various social media platforms. Gates also worked as a liaison between the Republican National Committee and the rich asshole transition team following its election victory on November 8, 2016.
Gates and Manafort were alleged to have worked in some capacity as a political consultants for former Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country in 2014, amid civil unrest following accusations of fraud and corruption. Both Manafort and Gates laundered the money they received from that work through various offshore bank accounts before transferring it to accounts in the United States to avoid paying taxes on it. As ThinkProgress previously reported, the indictment this week also revealed the intricate scheme the two men allegedly used to fool financial authorities in the United States, which included swapping and editing PDFs and Word documents.
During Friday’s hearing, the judge specifically recounted Gates’ testimony in which he admitted to lying to investigators about a March 19, 2013 meeting between Manafort, an unnamed lobbyist, and a member of Congress, during which the three discussed the topic of Ukraine. Asked by investigators about the meeting later, Gates said he initially lied when he said the topic of Ukraine had not come up during the meeting, despite the fact that Manafort had told him it had.
The congress member allegedly involved with that meeting was Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who received a $1,000 campaign donation from Manafort on March 22, 2013. Rohrabacher has long been a proponent of U.S.-Russian cooperation and has often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for his autocratic leadership style.
Gates is the third the rich asshole associate to plead guilty in the Mueller investigation. In October last year, former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian government agents while working for the rich asshole campaign; in December, former White House national security adviser and campaign surrogate Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials.
On Monday, Mueller’s team also indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities on charges of conspiring to defraud the United States. The indictment detailed a years-long effort to undermine the election through various fraudulent social media campaigns.
Insurance company will stop underwriting NRA-branded policies for gun owners as companies flee organization
NRA Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre speaks at the group's annual leadership forum on April 9, 2015. [YouTube]
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More than half a dozen U.S. companies have abruptly cut ties with the National Rifle Association as gun safety activists on Friday intensified calls for a boycott in the wake of last week’s Florida high school massacre.
The social media-fueled campaign has led a range of corporations, from a major insurer to three car rental brands, to sever relationships with the gun rights advocacy group.
Amazon.com Inc and other online streaming platforms are also facing demands to drop the online video channel NRATV, featuring programming produced by the group.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, founded after 20 first-graders were shot and killed at a school in Connecticut in December 2012, sent letters to Apple Inc, AT&T Inc, Amazon, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Roku Inc on Friday, asking them to drop NRATV from their products. None of the companies immediately responded to requests for comment on the letters.
“We have been just disgusted by NRATV since its beginning,” Shannon Watts, founder of the Moms Demand Action group, told Reuters. “It really propagates dangerous misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric. It tries to pit Americans against one another, all in an attempt to further their agenda of selling guns.”
The U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms. The NRA, which has long used campaign donations and effective lobbying to hold outsized political influence, argues that stricter gun control would erode individual rights. The group has not commented on companies cutting ties.
The question of gun control, and the NRA’s role in opposing it, became the focus of national debate on Feb. 14, when Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, returned there and killed 17 people, mostly students, with a legally purchased AR-15 rifle, according to authorities.
TRENDING ON TWITTER
Nearly two dozen corporations nationwide offer incentives to NRA members, according to ThinkProgress.com, a news site owned by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Symantec Corp said on Friday it ended an NRA discount program for its LifeLock identity theft product, while Boston-based home security company SimpliSafe also said it terminated its discount program for NRA members.
Insurer Chubb Ltd said on Friday it would stop underwriting a NRA-branded insurance policy for gun owners that covers legal costs in self-defense shootings. Insurance company MetLife Inc also said it had ended an auto and home incentive program for NRA members.
Rental car company Hertz said on Twitter it had told the NRA it was eliminating a discount program for members.
Those decisions came a day after three rental car brands owned by Enterprise Holdings Inc said they were ending discount programs for NRA members. First National Bank of Omaha also said on Thursday it would not renew a contract with the organization to issue an NRA-branded Visa card.
The hashtag #BoycottNRA was the top trending topic on Twitter on Friday morning. The campaign is the latest effort by activists to deploy social media and use economic pressure to force change.
Similar drives helped convince Fox News to terminate television host Bill O’Reilly, after sponsors dropped his show in the wake of sexual harassment allegations, and the National Football League bowed to improve its handling of domestic violence accusations against players.
David Hogg, one of the student survivors of last week’s attack who launched the #NeverAgain anti-gun violence movement, said the students would target any company with ties to the NRA, in addition to lawmakers who accept donations.
Florida Governor Rick Scott, who has been endorsed by the NRA, announced a proposal on Friday to increase restrictions on buying guns and to strengthen school safety measures.
Activists have also called on public pension funds to divest from gun maker stocks. Shares of gun makers were broadly lower on Friday.
Approximately a dozen companies with marketing ties to the NRA, including FedEx Corp, which offer discount programs, did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.
‘BAD BUSINESS’
NRATV, which describes itself as “America’s Most Patriotic Team on a Mission to Take Back The Truth,” features programming that leans heavily on speeches by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and spokeswoman Dana Loesch.
An online campaign using the Twitter hashtag #StopNRAmazon has also begun to pick up steam, applying pressure on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to drop the channel. Many of those tweeting are in the entertainment industry.
“Ironic how the @NRA likes to point a finger at what kids watch on TV … while they spew vile rhetoric on NRAtv, streamed on @Amazon and aimed solely at boosting gun sales,” wrote screenwriter Randi Mayem Singer.
Moms Demand Action posted an online petition using the hashtag #DumpNRATV.
“To be affiliated with them, whether you are a company or a lawmaker, it is not going to pay off in the long run,” said the Moms Demand Action founder Watts, signaling the start of a broader campaign. “Doing business with the NRA is clearly bad business.”
Angry student survivors of the shooting have confronted politicians from state lawmakers to U.S. President some rich asshole himself, demanding stricter gun control laws.
In response, the NRA and the rich asshole have suggested arming teachers who have received training to deter attackers, a proposal that has been met with skepticism by teachers unions and gun violence experts.
Shep Smith slams the rich asshole for ‘co-opting’ NRA language on school shootings: He’s parroting what LaPierre says
Fox News' Shep Smith
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In a segment with Fox News’ Chris Wallace (dubbed “Wisdom from Wallace”), Shep Smith on Friday explained how some rich asshole is “co-opting” the National Rifle Association’s language following the Parkland school massacre earlier this month.
Wallace explained that despite the rich asshole’s pledge to do something about the staggering rise in school shootings over the past few decades, he’s ability to act will be curbed by a Republican Congress.
“It’s not at all certain that Congress is going to go with these,” Wallace said of the rich asshole’s proposal, noting the lack of Congressional response after Sandy Hook in 2012.
“This president, yes does have clout with gun supporters that a Barack Obama didn’t have and some credibility with them, but let’s wait to see what happens when it gets to Congress,” Wallace suggested.
“I thought it was interesting around the edges, Chris,” Smith replied. “[NRA head] Wayne LaPierre, the spokesperson—and that’s what he is—for the NRA, which works by the way for the gun manufacturers, said we need to ‘harden’ our schools. I’d never heard the president use that word, I searched for it. And then after Wayne LaPierre said it, the president said it five or six times, ‘We need to harden the school.’ He is co-opting their language.”
“There’s some things he’s in line with the NRA, for instance having guns in schools,” Wallace said.
Wallace said after the massacre in Sandy Hook, it would have been “out there” to suggest arming teachers, “but that seems to be something that people are kind of agreeing on.”
“Obviously very controversial, the idea of arming teachers, the idea of armed people—whether it’s the teachers, security, whatever—-inside schools seams to be part of the solution here almost certainly,” Wallace said.
“Chris, there’s so many people that are so, so against that,” Smith said. “You actually think that they may end up arming, as the president put it, 20 to 40 percent of the able and trained people inside the schools? Seriously?”
‘He works for nothing!’ the rich asshole launches rambling defense of Jared Kushner amid security clearance scrutiny
President some rich asshole addresses the media (Screen cap).
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President some rich asshole on Friday issued a rambling defense of Jared Kushner after he was asked if his son-in-law should still be able to access classified information even if he does not receive a full security clearance.
In response to a question about whether he’d grant Kushner a waiver so he could keep working on sensitive foreign policy issues without a security clearance, the rich asshole said his son-in-law was a “high-quality person” who had been treated “very unfairly.”
As a way to show how valuable Kushner was, the rich asshole pointed out that his son-in-law has been doing all this work for free.
“He works for nothing,” he said. “Nobody ever reports that. He gets zero. He doesn’t get a salary, nor does Ivanka, who is now in South Korea.
the rich asshole then outlined why Kushner was integral to his grand plan to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
“But the hardest deal to make of any kind is between the Israelis and Palestinians,” the rich asshole said. “We’re actually making great head way. Jerusalem was the right thing to do. we took that off the table. Jared Kushner is right in the middle of that. He is an extraordinary deal maker. If he does that, that will be an incredible accomplishment and a very important thing for our country.”
So far, the rich asshole administration’s decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has only resulted in condemnation from Palestinian leaders, who have shown no indication that they are now more willing to work out a peace deal because of it.
After talking about Israel, the rich asshole pivoted back to praising Jared and First Daughter Ivanka the rich asshole, whom he said deserved praise for her selflessness.
“She gave up a very good, very strong, solid big business in order to come to Washington because she wanted to help families and she wanted to help women,” he said. “She said, ‘Dad, i want to go to Washington. I want to help women.’ And I said, you know, Washington is a mean place. She said, ‘I don’t care. I want to help women. I want to help families.'”
Watch the video below.
The RNC is paying the rich asshole nearly $40K a month for rent — for his reelection campaign
some rich asshole at the rich asshole Tower (Photo: Screen capture)
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Although they stopped paying the president’s legal bills in the Russia probe, the Republican National Committee is now paying him tens of thousands of dollars in rent for his reelection campaign.
CNBC reported Friday that the RNC is paying $37,000 a month to rent office space in the flagship the rich asshole Tower in Manhattan.
In addition to the hefty rent fees, the committee also pays a high monthly salary to Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John. The younger Pence appears to make $12,000 a month working for the rich asshole campaign per CNBC’s analysis of tax withholding information.
the rich asshole says law enforcement ‘coward’ is why we should arm teachers
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some rich asshole attacked the deputy who failed to stop the shooter in Parkland, Florida, while still arguing that teachers — who have even less training and experience — should carry guns in school.
the rich asshole attacked the deputy who failed to intervene in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Florida last week as a “coward,” but still wants to arm teachers.
Deputy Scot Peterson was suspended and then resigned after a review of the surveillance footage from the school revealed that he never entered the building where the shooting occurred.
“What he did, he trained his whole life. There’s an example. When it came time to get in there and do something, he didn’t have the courage, or something happened. But he certainly did a poor job,” the rich asshole said.
“That’s a case where somebody was outside, they’re trained, they didn’t act properly or under pressure or they were a coward.”
the rich asshole could not explain how teachers could be expected to show more “courage” than the armed deputy he attacked.
the rich asshole then praised the NRA, which donated over $30 million to support him in 2016, as “good people.” He went on to echo the extremist organization by renewing his call for teachers to be armed — apparently not understanding that he had just made the case for why this won’t solve the problem.
“The only way you’re going to get it fixed is you have to have a certain amount of offensive power within the school. It can’t only be defense,” he argued.
Pushing for more guns in school is a deflection tactic the NRA has adopted, and experts have repeatedly indicated that the idea makes schools less safe.
Brandon Friedman, a former Army captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, told BuzzFeed, “Learning how to fight, how to stand your ground when an aggressor is trying to kill you, that’s not something that comes naturally to people.”
Continuing, he noted, “So in order to teach, now you have to be a soldier? That’s insane.”
The reaction of the Florida deputy was used by the rich asshole to push the idea of cowardice, but it also showed how dangerous his idea of armed teachers is. But as is so often the case, the point flew way over the rich asshole’s head.
POLITICS
the rich asshole: Armed Teachers Would Have ‘Shot The Hell’ Out Of Florida Gunman
The president also attacked the armed security guard at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for not going after Nikolas Cruz.
President some rich asshole on Friday reiterated his call for some teachers to be armed with concealed weapons and criticized the armed security guard who never went insideMarjory Stoneman Douglas High School once gunman Nikolas Cruz began firing on students last week.
“A teacher would’ve shot the hell of out him before he knew what happened,” the rich asshole said during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
“I’d rather have somebody that loves their students and wants to protect their students than somebody standing outside that doesn’t know anybody and doesn’t know the students,” the rich asshole said, alluding to the school’s guard who stood outside of the school. That guard subsequently resigned in the aftermath of the shooting.
The president said schools should be “a much harder target for attackers” and that students are put in greater danger if schools are declared “gun-free.”
Only 10 or 20 percent of teachers should be armed, the rich asshole said. He referred to someone who had served in the Marines for decades before taking a teaching position as the type of person who would be well-equipped to carry a gun in a school.
Separately on Friday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) said that he opposes arming teachers in his state.
“My focus is law enforcement,” he said during a press conference. “Let teachers focus on teaching.”
Arizona GOP candidate compares Parkland survivors to Hitler — then asks reporter to put him in touch with teens
Former Sheriff Richard Mack (Gage Skidmore)
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A right-wing former lawman running for U.S. Congress compared teenage survivors of a Florida school shooting to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Richard Mack, who leads the anti-government “constitutional sheriffs” movement, attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he complained about students galvanized by their traumatic experience, reported SPLC’s Hatewatch.
“The talk that I’ve heard so far coming from either some of the students or from politicians or from the media is that gun control would make us safer,” Mack said. “I already told you that if you compare that to some of the rhetoric from Hitler and Stalin and Lenin, you’ll see the exact same kind of language used — that gun control will make you safer.”
Mack, who is running in Tuesday’s special Republican primary to replace Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) in Congress, issued a news release calling for an “adult conversation” about guns.
The former Arizona sheriff now teaches economics, constitutional government and criminal justice at the Heritage Academy, which has links to fringe Mormon theologian W. Cleon Skousen.
“I love kids, I love teaching and I hate violence and always have, and I’m looking for solutions just like they are,” Mack told Hatewatch.
Mack said he thought the teens were “rude” to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) during this week’s CNN town hall, and he insisted he did not intend to compare them to history’s most infamous dictators — before doing so again.
“The talk that I’ve heard so far coming from either some of the students or from politicians or from the media is that gun control would make us safer,” Mack told Hatewatch. “And I already told you that if you compare that to some of the rhetoric from Hitler and Stalin and Lenin, you’ll see the exact same kind of language used, that gun control will make you safer.”
He then asked the Hatewatch reporter to help put him in touch with the Douglas High School students, but the correspondent declined.
Mack is perhaps most recently famous for suggesting the use of women and children as human shields during the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff.
“I’m sorry, that sounds horrible,” Mack said at the time. “I would have put my own wife or daughters there, and I would have been screaming bloody murder to watch them die. I would have gone next, I would have been the next one to be killed. I’m not afraid to die here. I’m willing to die here.”
Fox News suddenly decides teachers deserve a raise — if they pack heat
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Suddenly concerned with teacher pay, Fox News likes the idea of flooding schools with guns.
Endorsing the rich asshole’s NRA-backed plan to “harden” American schools by weaponizing them through armed teachers, Fox News on Friday morning cheered the idea as good news for educators.
The “Fox & Friends” team presented the radical and potentially dangerous idea as a nice way for teachers to add a little money to their paycheck — in exchange for one day possibly being asked to open fire on their students.
Whereas some teachers supplement their incomes by becoming coaches or teaching driver’s education, Fox seems to think strapping on a gun before heading to work could be a way for teachers to earn a boost their paycheck.
In the wake of America’s latest mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 17 students and teachers, the rich asshole suggested educators would be paid “a little bit of a bonus” for being willing to risk their lives in the classroom.
“I want my schools protected just like I want my banks protected,” he said.
Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt liked that idea. “My sister’s a teacher in South Carolina. It’s giving teachers the option, you get a bonus. My sister doesn’t get paid — gosh, they don’t get paid enough,” she lamented.
Co-host Pete Hegseth quickly agreed. “Yeah, teachers don’t get paid much.”
“They really don’t,” Earnhard insisted. “And living paycheck to paycheck, that’s what our teachers are doing. This gives them an opportunity, if they feel comfortable, concealing and carrying — then they can get a bonus. ”
Fox’s newfound concern for teacher pay runs counter to years of teacher-bashing at the network, and specifically Fox News’ long history of attacking teacher unions, which work to secure top pay for their members.
Meanwhile, the idea of flooding schools with teachers’ guns has routinely, and emphatically, been met with strong resistance from teachers themselves.
And most Parkland survivors being interviewed have expressed strong opposition to the rich asshole’s radical idea of arming teachers.
“Madness. Just absolute madness,” student Sam Zeif told CNN Thursday when asked about the rich asshole’s radical, NRA fantasy plan.
Buy hey, Fox News thinks the spare change is worth it.
Republican governor realizes he has to save Obamacare to be re-elected
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Wisconsin's firebrand Republican governor Scott Walker is in trouble in the polls, and he's getting desperate.
After years of insurgent right-wing politics, new polls have spooked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker so badly that he is doing the unthinkable: proposing to save Obamacare.
According to a report in Politico, “Walker wants to prop up his Obamacare market with a $200 million program that would compensate health insurers for high-cost patients so they don’t hike premiums for everyone.”
He even wants to keep protections for people with pre-existing conditions, another critical part of Obamacare.
It’s a strange move for Walker, who built a proud reputation for blocking Wisconsinites from getting health coverage.
For years, he pushed to repeal Obamacare entirely. He endorsed Republican repeal proposals last year. He refused to either build a state insurance exchange or expand Medicaid. He even submitted a proposal to force Medicaid recipients to hold a job and to submit to drug tests, which the rich almost certain to let him do.
But Walker, who is seeking a third term in office, seems to have realized all of this is starting to put him in political trouble.
The bills to outright repeal Obamacare may have died last year. But the GOP is trying to blow it up with a bunch of smaller actions, from the repeal of the individual mandate in the GOP tax scam to the rich asshole’s expansion of junk “short-term” and “association” plans that would pull healthy people out of the market. So Republicans will now be on the hook for millions of real people who lose coverage.
Walker no longer wants to be tied to that, and for good reason: His polls are terrible. A national survey by Morning Consult this month put Walker among the 10 most disliked governors in America, with a net negative approval rating of 7 points. In fact, after Illinois’ Bruce Rauner, Walker is the least popular incumbent Republican governor running for re-election this year.
It does not help that Walker’s economic record is among the worst in the nation, and that his desperate plan to bribe a foreign tech manufacturer to build a factory in his state is a flop.
Despite Walker’s reputation as a consummate survivor, this is not a storm he can afford to weather. He has not suddenly started caring about health insurance for all; he just doesn’t want to own the consequences of his party’s attacks on working families. Wisconsin should not be fooled, and treat his bid to save Obamacare for what it is: a repudiation of himself.
Republican candidate for Congress compares teen shooting victims to Hitler
By
Oliver Willis - February 23, 2018
A Republican running for Congress in Arizona said teenage survivors of the Florida school massacre sound like Hitler.
Richard Mack, Republican candidate for Congress, says teenage survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High shooting sound like Hitler in their calls for gun control.
Mack is a former sheriff running in the Republican primary in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. The seat was previously held by Rep. Trent Franks, who resigned after it was revealed he offered a staffer $5 million to carry his child.
In an interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mack was asked about the grassroots movement started by students after the mass shooting. He was not receptive.
“The talk that I’ve heard so far coming from either some of the students or from politicians or from the media is that gun control would make us safer,” Mack said.
“If you compare that to some of the rhetoric from Hitler and Stalin and Lenin, you’ll see the exact same kind of language used — that gun control will make you safer.”
Mack also accused politicians and the media reporting on the attack of sounding like the man who engineered the Holocaust that exterminated 6 million innocent Jewish people.
At the top of his official website, Mack has a photo and endorsement from NRA board member Ted Nugent. There is also a video of Nugent with Mack, calling Mack a “constitutional warrior.”
Nugent recently promoted the unfounded conspiracy theory that the school shooting survivors are actors.
National attention came to the students after they began their crusade for gun legislation.
For that, they have attracted attacks from a wide array of conspiracy theorists and the rich asshole allies who have lied about them and attracted death threats to the students and their families.
Mack has been a part of the conservative conspiracy circuit for several years. He heads the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which inaccurately argues that sheriffs are the highest elected authorities in the country and can ignore any laws they consider unconstitutional, including gun laws.
Mack has said the only gun regulations he would ever consider would be “if somebody could ever come up with one where we could throw all the guns in the bottom of the ocean and they can guarantee me that it’ll be everybody, I’m all for it.”
He is a strong supporter of the rich asshole. “Out of all the presidents that I’ve ever known, he’s done the most in his first year,” he told the Washington Post.
Like Mack, the rich asshole is a strong believer in multiple conspiracy theories, and for years was the most prominent “birther,” the group that falsely claims President Obama was not born in the United States.
Republican politics has often attracted those dwelling on the fringes. With the rich asshole now central to the party’s efforts, extremists like Mack have become its mainstream voice.
That means ludicrous ideas, like comparing student activists to Nazis, becomes the official Republican response to the world.
POLITICS
Rick Scott Breaks With the rich asshole, NRA With New Gun Control Proposals
Scott’s proposals come more than a week after 17 people died in a mass shooting at a Florida high school.
PARKLAND, Fla. (Reuters) - Florida Governor Rick Scott announced a proposal on Friday to increase restrictions on buying guns and to strengthen school safety measures after a gunman killed 17 people at a high school in the state last week.
Scott said he would work with state lawmakers during the next two weeks to raise the minimum age for buying any kind of gun in Florida to 21 years old, with some exceptions for younger military members and law enforcement officers. Long guns, including the semiautomatic AR-15-style assault rifle used in the Feb. 14 attack, can be bought by people as young as 18 under current law.
The Republican governor also said he would change laws to make it “virtually impossible for anyone who has mental issues to use a gun.” He wants to ban the sale and purchase of bump stocks, an accessory that transforms a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon able to fire hundreds of rounds a minute.
He called for a mandatory law enforcement officer in every public school and for mandatory “active shooter training” for student and faculty.
Staff members returned for the first time on Friday to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, now the site of one of the deadliest school attacks in U.S. history in which 14 students and three faculty were killed.
The attack at the school last week has inflamed the national debate about gun rights. Many of the student survivors of the massacre have since advocated for tougher gun-control laws. They have been widely interviewed on national television and have traveled to meet politicians in Tallahassee, the state capital, and U.S. President some rich asshole in the White House.
Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student at the school, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. Authorities have said that Cruz, who was expelled from Stoneman Douglas High last year for unspecified disciplinary problems.
(Reporting Zachary Fagenson in Parkland, Florida, and Jonathan Allen and Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool)
POLITICS
Former the rich asshole Campaign Aide Rick Gates Will Cooperate With Mueller Investigation
Gates is the latest member of the rich asshole’s inner circle to cut a deal.
WASHINGTON ― Rick Gates, a former campaign aide to President some rich asshole, pleaded guilty to two charges and will cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Gates pleaded guilty on Friday afternoon to conspiracy against the United States in connection with avoiding taxes as well as a charge of lying to the Special Counsel’s Office and the FBI.
Gates could be sentenced to about five years in federal prison under the sentencing guidelines, though there’s the potential he could get less time.
A criminal information filed Friday indicates that Gates will admit he lied in regard to what he knew about a March 2013 discussion between a member of Congress and a lobbyist. Gates will admit he lied to the FBI when he said he was “told by [former campaign chairman Paul] Manafort and a senior Company A lobbyist that there were no discussions of Ukraine” at the meeting, when in fact there had been discussions about Ukraine.
Manafort issued a defiant statement on Friday in which he continued to maintain his innocence and vowed to fight on.
“I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise,” Manafort said. “This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me.”
Gates is the latest member of the rich asshole’s inner circle to cooperate with the special counsel. Michael Flynn, the rich asshole’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December, signaling that he had cut a deal with Mueller. And George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the rich asshole, has been cooperating with the investigation for months after he pleaded guilty to a similar charge in October.
Gates, 45, was indicted in October alongside Manafort, and he has been under house arrest ever since. Both men were indicted on charges including money laundering and violating foreign lobbying laws, and pleaded not guilty at the time.
Gates reportedly had what’s known as a “Queen for a Day” interview, which typically allows a defendant to speak openly without facing additional charges.
Speculation grew about Gates’ involvement in the Mueller investigation after he added a new attorney, Tom Green, to his legal team. Green is a well-known defense lawyer known for working on plea deals and had worked on cases tied to Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal. CNN first reported that Green was seen at Mueller’s offices in Washington, D.C., twice in late January, and the outlet noted that Mueller’s team appeared to be using a “softer touch” with Gates compared to Manafort.
Green has continued to visit Mueller’s office over the past few weeks.
Three of Gates’ attorneys asked to be removed from his legal team earlier this month, filing a two-page motion they said would explain their reasoning for doing so, Politico reported at the time. The document was filed under seal with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
CNN noted Gates’ lawyers spoke in front of a judge in two additional sealed hearings in early February.
Mueller’s probe has heated up in recent days. Last Friday, the Justice Department announced a slew of charges against 13 Russians and three companies, detailing a sophisticated effort to sow discord among American voters in an effort to help elect the rich asshole.
Read the court filing on Gates below:
This post has been updated with details from Gates’ Friday afternoon appearance in court.
the rich asshole bizarrely asks CPAC attendees to choose between guns or tax cuts
"Taxes come and go, but once you take that Second Amendment away, it’s gone forever."
NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND — If you had to pick between Second Amendment or tax cuts, what would you choose? For attendees at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) Friday, the answer was surprisingly easy.
“[Democrats] will take away those massive tax cuts and they will take away your Second Amendment,” President the rich asshole said during a long, winding speech Friday morning.
“By the way,” he added, “if you only had a choice of one, what would you rather have? The Second Amendment or the tax cuts? Go ahead!”
From the podium, the rich asshole then shouted each — “Second Amendment! Tax cuts!” — and had the audience vote with their cheers. The Second Amendment overwhelmingly won the informal poll.
“I’m gonna leave it at the Second Amendment, I don’t want to get into that battle,” the rich asshole said after the cheers. “We’re gonna say you want the Second Amendment the most. But we’re gonna get them all.”
It’s not clear why the rich asshole pitted the Second Amendment and tax cuts against each other, as he has called for both throughout his presidency. But the Republican tax bill passed last year — which the rich asshole described as providing tax cuts to everyone — offers only temporary tax cuts for individuals, expiring after eight years.
But following the rich asshole’s speech, many CPAC attendees told ThinkProgress their choice between tax cuts and the Second Amendment was an easy one.
“If they take our Second Amendment — by the way, I’m working on my ninja skills, I don’t really care for guns… but I will defend our Second Amendment — but if they take our Second Amendment, they will take our First,” Tessa Mendoza, a member of the Deplorable Latinas group told ThinkProgress after the president’s speech.
Asked why she thought the rich asshole pitted two issues that have been central to his platform against each other, Mendoza said it was “so the media knows that this is what’s important to us.”
According to Mendoza, Democrats want to rewrite the Constitution, and the live poll Friday was the rich asshole’s way of sending a message that he won’t let that happen.
Leah Keller and Jessica Pearse, two college students going to school in Pennsylvania, took the poll as a way of taking a jab at liberals, teasing Democrats about what issues are most important to conservatives.
“I don’t think he meant much by it… It was a little quip,” Keller said, adding that she and everyone around her cheered for the Second Amendment.
“For me it comes back to the Constitution,” she said. “Second Amendment is in the Constitution, tax cuts aren’t in the Constitution.”
Keller said she thinks that, under the rich asshole, both things — tax cuts and fierce protection of the Second Amendment — are possible, but she acknowledged that they’ll be hard fights.
“They’re going to get tough,” she said. “So, Second Amendment.”
Cathy Kirk of the Macomb Michigan County Republican Organization also told ThinkProgress she’d pick the Second Amendment.
“Taxes come and go, but once you take that Second Amendment away, it’s gone forever, so it’s very important to liberty and freedom,” she said after the rich asshole finished his speech.
In the wake of Parkland, Kirk said she believes the Second Amendment is being “pulverized” and that the rich asshole’s poll was a way to gauge where conservatives were on the issue.
Kirk also said she likes the rich asshole’s plan for stopping another tragedy like Parkland.
“It was a horrible thing, nobody wants that to happen,” she said of the mass shooting that left 17 people dead last week. “I think [the rich asshole’s] on the right track. What do we do to keep our children safe? We do, we arm everything, but we don’t arm our schools. So to take guns away, that’s where these people go.”
At least one attendee said he cheered for tax cuts — but he also cheered for the Second Amendment.
“I clap for everything, and the reason why I do is because President the rich asshole makes me feel physically and mentally excellent,” said Jerry Feis, an attendee from Maryland who described himself as “76 years young.”
Feis said the rich asshole’s speech Friday made it clear that the “Second Amendment is number one,” but that despite the poll, he didn’t see it as having to pick just one, either the Second Amendment or tax cuts.
“I don’t look at it in that fashion,” Feis said. “I don’t look at these [as] trade-offs.”
That wasn’t Feis’s only take on the president’s appearance Friday.
“See, I’m of sincere belief, [the rich asshole’s] common sense and intellect, I believe his IQ is comparable to Einstein, because he’s very very smart,” Feis said. “Besides being physically and mentally excellent and alert, he analyzes and evaluates everything… I was fully satisfied with the speech.”
POLITICS
Teachers Tell the rich asshole What They Really Want To Be Armed With — And It’s Not Guns
The #ArmMeWith campaign has a message for Washington.
President some rich asshole has suggested that arming some teachers would help to stop deadly school shootings. But in a viral #ArmMeWith rallying cry, educators are calling on political leaders to “arm” them with they really need: books and school supplies as well as time and resources.
Teachers Olivia Bertels and Brittany Wheaton created the movement, USA Today reported.
“The vast majority of school personnel are uninterested in carrying a weapon into a building full of hundreds or thousands of children each day,” Bertels told the newspaper. “Those desires are not being reflected in the tone-deaf suggestions being made by lawmakers as a solution to America’s gun problem.”
Here are some of the #ArmMeWith responses to the rich asshole on social media:
You know what? While we’re at it, #ArmMeWith a support structure of colleagues, admin, students, parents, and community leaders who are passionate about activism and advocacy in measurable ways.
#ArmMeWith fair pay, an abundance of resources, excellent insurance, mental health treatment for TEACHERS, compassion from administration, less testing, more free will to teach my students to be GOOD HUMANS.
No. No. F**k no I will not carry a gun. You want to arm me? #ArmMeWith :
-students with full stomachs
-school nurses. Plural. Enough for the student population.
-never ending box of expo markers and copy paper.
Give us these things and we can move mountains.
I don’t need to be armed with a gun but rather #ArmMeWith
•legislature that puts our children’s lives before your guns
•funding to truly support my students
•more time to build a class community instead of inundating them with testing
•action not just thoughts and prayers
#ArmMeWith enough school psychologists, social workers, & teaching assistants to ensure my students are getting all of the help they need before it becomes too much for them #SpecialEducation #teacher
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