February 5th, 2017 continued. It's been 450 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no.45, and 378 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
President the rich asshole went on the stump during a speech in Ohio on Monday and suggested that Democrats who didn’t clap for him are guilty of treason. In fact, that’s exactly what he said.
He spent a large portion of the speech not focusing on policy issues that might be of interest to voters, but instead of what he was observing while giving his State of the Union speech.
He said that people who didn’t clap for him were “un-American” and took it a step further when he said he agreed with the people who called it “treasonous.”
“Someone said it was treasonous. Yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
the rich asshole just displayed a common fallacy. If you don’t love him, that automatically means you don’t love the country.
the rich asshole will likely counter that he was merely joking, but there are some things that just aren’t funny.
Watch below:
the rich asshole just called Democrats ‘treasonous’ for not clapping at his State of the Union
The president, who has regularly used authoritarian rhetoric, said his opponents were “un-American” when they declined to applaud his statement about Black unemployment.
WASHINGTON—U.S. President some rich asshole says Democratic members of Congress were “un-American” and “treasonous” when they refused to clap for parts of his State of the Union address — the same speech during which he called for bipartisanship and national unity.
the rich asshole, delivering an Ohio speech on Monday that was supposed to be about his tax cuts, levelled the sensational and obviously inaccurate allegation at his opponents while complaining that they did not applaud six days prior even when he spoke of the record-low in the unemployment rate for Black residents.
Three days later, new government data showed that the Black unemployment rate had spiked, from the record 6.8 per cent to a non-record 7.7 per cent. But the rich asshole likened the Democrats’ silence to a capital crime.
“It’s very selfish. And it got to a point where I really didn’t even want to look too much during the speech over to that side because honestly, it was bad energy. It was bad energy. You’re up there, you’ve got half the room going totally crazy wild, they loved everything, they want to do something great for our country. And you have the other side, even on positive news, really positive news, like that, they were like — death, and un-American. Un-American,” he said.
“Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah, I guess, why not. Can we call that treason? Why not,” he said, throwing up one of his hands. “I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
In the State of the Union, the rich asshole said: “Tonight, I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground, and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people.”
Treason is a federal offence that does not cover behaviour such as non-clapping.
It is defined as someone who betrays America by assisting its enemies — who, “owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere.” The crime is punishable by death or at least five years in prison.
“This is North Korea-esq(ue),” former Hillary Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson said on Twitter. “You either rise and applaud what Dear Leader says or he thinks you’ve committed treason. He’s beyond an egomaniac. He’s ego-maniacal.”
the rich asshole has regularly used rhetoric more common from the leaders of authoritarian countries than from the president of the United States. As is his common practice, he did so this time in passing, with a kind of half-smile, before moving on to more conventional matters.
The frequency with which he uses such language has diminished its capacity to shock. The accusation did not receive heavy immediate coverage in the U.S. media, which was busy covering a rapid decline in U.S. stocks.
The rest of the speech was similarly uneven. In between talk about the growing economy, the rich asshole boasted of his campaign success, mocked Clinton, offered a kind of pre-emptive excuse for the possibility Republicans will lose the congressional midterm elections, delivered a series of false or misleading claims, and gleefully declared that Republicans had “embarrassed” unnamed people, presumably the FBI, with the memo they released last week that misleadingly alleged wrongdoing.
The federal judge whom President the rich asshole disparaged as a “Mexican” during his campaign will preside over a case brought against one of the president’s most highly touted initiatives: the U.S-Mexico border wall.
District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, who was targeted by the president while he was the judge of a class-action lawsuit against the president’s now-defunct the rich asshole University, will on Friday hear the case brought by the state of California, some environmental groups and Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.). It challenges waivers that were given to the federal branch more than 10 years ago to bypass some federal and state laws for border security.
The case, which was initially three separate lawsuits before being consolidated by Curiel, represents a substantial legal challenge to the construction of the rich asshole’s potential border wall.
Andrew Gordon, a former Department of Homeland Security lawyer during the Obama administration, told McClatchy, which first reported the story, that a ruling against the administration could slow plans for construction along the U.S.-Mexico border, even if the ruling is later overturned.
“This is a very significant case,” Gordon told the news service.
The groups that have brought the lawsuit have a significant legal burden to meet. The waivers they challenge were granted in 1996 and 2005 to allow the federal government to bypass some federal and state laws, including environmental statutes, in the name of border security.
Brian Segee, a lawyer with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs, told McClatchy that a key debate will be whether Congress meant to waive these laws into the distant future or only for specific projects ongoing at the time the waivers were issued.
California has said the construction of a border wall could do “irreparable harm” to its wildlife. Grijalva’s suit says previous environmental analyses are out of date and did not take into account updated border-security measures, including the potential construction of a border wall.
It is yet another showdown in federal court over the rich asshole’s immigration policies. The lawsuit also brings Curiel, whose court is in San Diego, back into the national spotlight on a case about a topic that is nearly as synonymous with the president as his defunct university.
The last time, as Curiel served as the judge over the case on some of the lawsuits which alleged fraud against the rich asshole University, the rich asshole began to attack him, when the presidential candidate was still considered by most to be a long shot for the position though he had secured the GOP nomination.
Perhaps most jarring was the rich asshole’s continued use of Curiel’s ethnicity to attack the federal judge’s impartiality. the rich asshole falsely asserted that Curiel was a “Mexican,” — Curiel was born in Indiana — and other times said that he was “Hispanic” and “Spanish,” seemingly as an attempt to argue that the judge was biased because of the rich asshole’s sharply conservative immigration ideas, including of course, the wall proposal.
“Look, he’s proud of his heritage, okay? I’m building a wall,” the rich asshole said of Curiel in June 2016 to CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “He’s a Mexican. We’re building a wall between here and Mexico.”
the rich asshole’s remarks, which he repeated at various points for months, drew some rebukes from his own party — even Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called the remarks “racist” — and prompted the candidate to issue a statement saying his comments were being misconstrued.
Curiel, whose parents were immigrants from Mexico, did not respond publicly to the rich asshole’s attacks. The fraud lawsuits ended in a $25 million settlement the rich asshole agreed to pay out shortly after the election.
Though the rich asshole insisted during his campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall, Congress has sought to secure funding from American taxpayers. The amount of money for the project is a subject of ongoing budget negotiations that have already shut the federal government down once.
Each week, USA TODAY's OnPolitics blog takes a look at how media from the left and the right reacted to a political news story, giving liberals and conservatives a peek into the other's media bubble.
This week analysts, pundits, and talking heads from the left and right debated the significance of the "Nunes memo" — a newly declassified document written at the direction of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif. alleging that the FBI abused its authority in setting up surveillance of members of some rich asshole’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Liberal commentators argued the memo, which was released Friday, was much ado about nothing and said it may have backfired on the rich asshole. But most conservatives thought the memo proved that anti-the rich asshole bias was rampant in the FBI and that the warrants granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on the rich asshole campaign officials were not honestly obtained.
Conservative bubble: Memo more damning than expected
After concerns that memo would be seen as a "dud" in the face of so much hype and high expectations, Rush Limbaugh thought, "if anything, the contents of this memo were underplayed."
"Now that I know what’s in this memo, you know what’s even more curious to me is that the FBI and the DOJ and the swamp didn’t make a greater effort to suppress this," Limbaugh said.
"I thought that since we’ve discussed it so much and pretty much informed you everything in it, I didn’t think I could be surprised. But I have been," he said. The dossier compiled on the rich asshole by former British spy Christopher Steele formed an "essential part" of the FISA warrant obtained to surveil former the rich asshole campaign adviser Carter Page, but the court was not told the dossier was a fundamentally political document, Limbaugh said.
Columnist: Nunes memo exposes abuse of power
Liberal bubble: The memo 'as thin as the rich asshole's coif'
"some rich asshole will destroy this entire country — its institutions and its safeguards, the rule of law and the customs of civility, the concept of truth and the inviolable nature of valor — to protect his own skin," Charles M. Blow wrote in The New York Times.
But far from discrediting the Mueller investigation into the the rich asshole campaign's contacts with Russians, "the memo seemed to bolster the credibility of that investigation," Blow said.
The tantalizing possibility that this memo would contain actual, accurate damning evidence that the investigation was corrupt just vanished. The contents of that memo are as thin as the rich asshole’s coif.His attempts to smear the truthseekers with lies are failing. Sure, some die-hards — millions of them actually — will continue to believe, but the truth is a funny thing: It will not forever be hidden. Everything eventually finds its way to the light.
Nunes memo release: What you need to know about the controversial document
Conservative bubble: the rich asshole's right, the memo vindicates him
"Whatever the media and Democratic detractors say, the memo released by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee Friday that revealed how the FBI and Justice Departments abused their powers to spy on the the rich asshole presidential campaign is breathtaking," wrote Robert Charles for Fox News Opinion.
Saying average Americans "were betrayed" and calling Nunes "one of the most daring whistleblowers in modern American history," Charles concluded the rich asshole was right in his tweet that claimed the memo "vindicates" him in the Russia probe.
It is "beyond understanding" why Democrats on the Intelligence Committee aren't more upset, Charles said. "Like the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks and even more than the Watergate scandal, Friday’s revelations should shake us."
Liberal bubble: The memo worked
The Nunes memo and its release are straight out of the "playbook of contemporary disinformation campaigns," wrote Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein.
"In the absence of a credible case, the rich asshole’s protectors are left with the 'doubt is our product' strategy — create so much chaos that at least some portion of the population will conclude you just can’t figure out where the truth is," Bauerlein said, comparing it to the tobacco industry's decades-long campaign to confuse the public about the dangers of smoking.
And the memo — with the help of countless Russian bots crying #ReleasetheMemo on social media — worked, because while there have been "233 stories a day about the Nunes memo for the last two weeks" how "many about Russian interference in congressional elections?"
Conservative bubble: FBI effort to block memo was 'scandalous'
No secret information was revealed in the Nunes memo, despite the FBI's efforts to block the release of the memo, ostensibly because it was classified. So, "what was the real reason the FBI opposed the memo's release?" Marc A. Thiessen wondered in The Washington Post.
Government officials can't make something classified simply because it is embarrassing or politically biased, Thiessen said.
The real threat to national security came not from the memo's release, but from the FBI effort to suppress it ...Democrats and the FBI should be able to offer their versions of story. But trying to keep this information from the public is corrupt, undemocratic, and arguably unlawful. Let the American people see the evidence and decide who is right.
Liberal bubble: The memo was a dud
The Nunes was "massively overhyped" the dud may not only have disappointed the rich asshole, it also led him to needlessly antagonize the FBI and "added to the perception that he is obstructing the Russia probe, with little political payoff," wrote Abigail Tracy in Vanity Fair.
"While Memo-gate may now fizzle, the long-term implications of the episode could be dire," Tracy said. "Wray’s tenure at the F.B.I., however long he remains, is now dented, the latest casualty in the rich asshole’s long, drawn-out version of a Saturday Night Massacre—a slow chipping-away at the D.O.J. that has claimed Comey, prompted McCabe to resign, and targeted Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions."
President the rich asshole Has Convinced His Voters He’s Being Persecuted By The FBI
Last week’s memo only solidified the impression.
WASHINGTON ― President some rich asshole and his fellow Republicans’ sweeping attacks on the nation’s premier law enforcement agency appear to be working: Nearly three-quarters of the rich asshole voters ― 74 percent ― say the FBI is biased against the president, a new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds.
Just under one-third of the rich asshole voters say they have even a “fair amount” of trust in the FBI, while 64 percent say they don’t trust the FBI very much or at all.
The majority of the rich asshole voters, 59 percent, strongly disapprove of the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation, with an additional 20 percent somewhat disapproving of the job the bureau has been doing on the Russia probe.
the rich asshole voters have also largely adopted the rich asshole’s stance on the contents of a controversial Republican-authored memo, declassified by the president, that argues that the FBI and Justice Department acted improperly by getting permission from a court to surveil a former the rich asshole campaign aide with longstanding ties to Russia. The memo makes the disputed claim that high-ranking FBI and Justice Department officials failed to disclose that information cited in their Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application came from a partisan source.
Partisans’ reactions to the memo largely mirror their pre-existing feelings about the bureau itself. Of those the rich asshole voters who’ve heard about the memo, 79 percent think it shows that the FBI did something wrong, and more than 80 percent describe the memo’s contents as accurate.
By contrast, although Hillary Clinton’s voters believe the FBI had a negative impact on her electoral chances, most still say they trust the FBI ― and just 5 percent believe that the FBI is biased against the rich asshole. And among those who’ve heard about the memo, just 16 percent think it’s even somewhat accurate, with only 4 percent believing it shows wrongdoing on the part of the agency.
The two groups are also getting their news about the memo from distinctly different places. A majority of both Clinton and the rich asshole voters who’ve followed the story say that cable TV was among the sources they relied on. But while those Clinton voters tuned in largely to CNN and MSNBC, the the rich asshole voters who watched cable coverage of the story were overwhelmingly likely to say they’d seen it on Fox News.
Fox covered the memo extensively; Sean Hannity, a Fox host, tweeted that the memo was “explosive” and revelatory of an “unprecedented Government abuse of power,” describing the conduct revealed in the memo as “Watergate times a thousand.” And Republican members of Congress lined up to make explosive claims about the memo’s contents ahead of its release.
Now that the memo has been released, just under 70 percent of Americans now say they’ve heard of it, up from less than 60 percent in a previous survey. (Non-voters have largely tuned out the controversy altogether ― just 18 percent say they’ve heard a lot about the memo, and those who’ve heard at least something are relatively split about its accuracy.)
Devin Nunes Can’t Stop Humiliating Himself on National Television
And Fox News keeps allowing him to get away with it.
Devin Nunes, an unremarkable California legislator who has improbably become one of some rich asshole's most important allies in Congress thanks to his inability to feel shame, took to Fox News this morning to continue his full-throated defense of The Memo. By any objective standard, it did not go well. Since it took place on Fox News, however, it won't matter.
Nunes began by repeating the same logically bankrupt line of reasoning he's been pushing for weeks: "The Democrats and the Hillary campaign paid for dirt," he urged, "that the FBI then used to get a warrant on an American citizen to spy on another campaign." It is an argument that ignores, among many other things too numerous to list here, that the Russia investigation was already under way when the Bureau sought a FISA warrant on the rich asshole campaign official Carter Page; that FISA judges have authorized the renewal of the Page warrant three separate times since; and that the FBI disclosed to the FISA judge that some of its information came from a politically motivated source. Incredibly, the Republican Party's continued treatment of opposition research—a fundamental component of every political campaign in modern American history—as evidence of an intricate Deep State plot to take down some rich asshole somehow doesn't even crack a top-ten list of its most disingenuous talking points.
From there, Nunes moved on to his Democratic counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, whose own memo on the subject of the FISA warrant Nunes has steadfastly refused to release to the public. His response is some version of the old "I'm like rubber, you're like glue" rhyme, except without the rhetorical flourish.
Mr. Schiff knows that he's spreading a false narrative there, but that's not new for him. He's spread a false narrative the entire time. The Democrats were well aware that I did not leak information, however, for a year they stayed quiet and advocated for my removal from the Committee. And why is that? It's because we've been successful at getting to the bottom of real problems in the institutions of our government. There's no question [the Democrats] want me gone, but whatever they accuse you of doing is what they're doing.
“We’ve been successful at getting to the bottom of real problems with the institutions in our government” -@DevinNunes
Later, on the subject of the role of admitted criminal George Papadopoulos in attracting the attention of law enforcement, Nunes dismissed such concerns by stating that "as far as we can tell, Papadopoulos never even knew who the rich asshole was—never even met with the president." One minor problem with this assertion is that the president of the United States has tweeted photographic evidence of himself meeting with, among others, George Papadopoulos! (Fox News elected not to highlight this particular exchange on social media, for some reason.)
The most telling line, however, came toward the end of the segment. "It actually helps—we actually enjoy the criticism," Nunes explained. "When you're being criticized by all the major networks, and being attacked by the left, we know that we're getting close to the truth."
“American people are just beginning to learn the truth about the Hillary campaign and the Democratic Party and their involvement in how they corrupted our institutions” -@DevinNunes
Herein lies the fundamental problem with The Memo, and the Russia investigation, and everything else some rich asshole says and does, really: Fox News is a machine that quietly and efficiently filters out any information that might portray the president in a negative light. The reason Nunes can make a demonstrably false claim on national television like this is because he knows that no one at the network will even ask him a hard question, let alone have the audacity to fact-check him. Making a few vague allusions to the lamestream media and "the left" is all he has to do to earn knowing nods from the likes of Brian Kilmeade, who solemnly muttered, "He's taking the fire" as Nunes, his battle-weary brother-in-arms, signed off. This pitch-perfect performance for an audience of one—the most powerful Fox & Friends viewer in the world—did not go unnoticed.
Representative Devin Nunes, a man of tremendous courage and grit, may someday be recognized as a Great American Hero for what he has exposed and what he has had to endure!
Facts only matter if Americans are able to hear them, process them, and make their own judgments about what they mean. And as Fox News has ably demonstrated, when it comes to information that doesn't fit its preferred narrative, it will simply act as if that information doesn't exist.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth: ‘Cadet Bone Spurs’ Won’t Tell Me When To Clap
The wounded veteran bristles at the suggestion that not applauding him is “treasonous.”
Iraq War veteran and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) criticized President some rich asshole for calling Democrats who did not clap during his State of the Union address “treasonous” on Monday.
“We don’t live in a dictatorship or a monarchy,” Duckworth tweeted soon after he made the comment. “I swore an oath ― in the military and in the Senate ― to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to mindlessly cater to the whims of Cadet Bone Spurs and clap when he demands I clap.”
We don't live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. I swore an oath—in the military and in the Senate—to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to mindlessly cater to the whims of Cadet Bone Spurs and clap when he demands I clap twitter.com/mitchellreport…
This is not the first time Duckworth, a Black Hawk helicopter pilot who received the Purple Heart after she lost both her legs in Iraq when her helicopter was stuck by a grenade, has referred to the rich asshole as “Cadet Bone Spurs,” a reference to the rich asshole’s stated reason for not being drafted during the Vietnam War.
During a floor speech last month, she also called the rich asshole a “five-deferment draft dodger” as she slammed the president for criticizing Democrats’ support for the military.
“I spent my entire adult life looking out for the well-being, the training, the equipping of the troops for whom I was responsible,” she said. “I will not be lectured about what our military needs by a five-deferment draft dodger.”
ROUND TWO
Your Move, the rich asshole: House Intel OKs Release of Dems’ Memo
Last week, Republicans voted to keep secret a rebuttal to Devin Nunes’ controversial surveillance memo. On Monday, the GOP reps changed course—despite the rich asshole’s tweeted taunts.
02.05.18 7:11 PM ET
#ReleaseTheMemo is set to happen again.
Just days after releasing a memo sowing doubt about the integrity of those investigating ties between President the rich asshole and Russia, the House intelligence committee agreed to declassify a Democratic rebuttal.
The original memo—penned by the staff of chairman Devin Nunes and released after fierce objections from both the Justice Department and the FBI—was immediately championed by the rich asshole as a vindication.
But the top Democratic on the panel, Rep. Adam Schiff, claimed after prevailing in a unanimous committee vote on Monday that his document would reveal “many distortions and inaccuracies in the [Republican] memo.”
The vote came hours after the rich asshole taunted Schiff on Twitter. And it was an abrupt reversal for the committee Republicans, all of whom voted against releasing the Democratic document last week—something their Democratic colleagues said was a political stunt to ensure the pro-the rich asshole narrative laid out in the Nunes memo had days to circulate unrebutted. Schiff said Monday night that the Republicans’ transparency rhetoric placed them in an “unsupportable position” to reject the Democratic memo.
Much as with last week’s disclosure of Nunes’ memo, the rich asshole now has five days to object to the release of the Democratic counter-memo. Should he, the full House can vote to override the rich asshole and release it. Asked ahead of the Monday committee vote if the FBI had reservations about the release of the Democratic memo, the bureau declined comment.
“Nunes dodged a question last week from a Democratic colleague as to whether the White House aided in his memo’s creation. He reportedly did the same thing in Monday afternoon’s committee hearing.”
Nunes’ four-page document, released on Friday after a weeks-long hasthtag campaign, claimed that senior Justice Department and FBI officials manipulated a process for securing court-authorized surveillance against the rich asshole campaign foreign-policy adviser Carter Page. It confirmed that Page had indeed been the subject of foreign-agent surveillance, something intelligence agencies and their oversight committees are typically loath to discuss. Nunes’ memo insinuated that ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s dossier of accusations against the rich asshole aides was the genesis of the Russia investigation that ex-FBI director James Comey has testified began in July 2016.
SORRY OLD BOY
Britain Claps Back at the rich asshole: Our Health System Is Better Than Yours
the rich asshole tweet claimed the NHS was “going broke and not working.”
The spinning roulette wheel of what some rich asshole is angry about landed on the U.K.’s National Health Service on Monday morning—prompting the president to lash out on Twitter, where he claimed it was “going broke and not working.”
The president’s NHS research apparently consisted of watching a segment on Fox & Friends featuring Brexit figurehead and former leader of the U.K. Independence Party Nigel Farage. Like everything else, Farage blamed strains in the health service on “unconditional migration” rather than rising life expectancy and medical advances.
“The big problem we’ve got is a population crisis caused by the government policy on immigration,” said Farage. “So we have a population of 65 million increasing by half a million people every single year. Over three quarters of that is directly attributed to immigration over the last few years.”
However, the “thousands of people marching” referred to by both Fox & Friends and the rich asshole was actually a rally over the weekend that saw thousands of health workers, pro-NHS activists, and trade unionists take to the streets in London to urge the government to protect the NHS.
The NHS has been experiencing a “winter crisis” in recent weeks caused by flu outbreaks, with 95 percent of hospital beds around the country full. The U.K. government and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt have come under strong criticism for failing to increase funding to help deal with the crisis.
Despite the criticism, Hunt won plaudits for hitting back at the rich asshole and making it clear that no one in the U.K. wants to lose universal health care.
Directly comparing the NHS to U.S. health care, the health secretary tweeted: “The NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage—where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance.”
Devin Nunes' Democratic opponent is raising money off his memo
By Dexter Thomas Feb 5, 2018
Within 72 hours of Rep. Devin Nunes’ dropping, his Democratic opponent raked in over $300,000 in protest contributions.
Andrew Janz is a first-time candidate, running as a Democrat to take over the Congressional seat in California's Central Valley from incumbent Devin Nunes, the Republican leader of the House Intelligence Committee, which released a classified memo last week that alleged the FBI's surveillance of some rich asshole aide was politically motivated.
But you would be forgiven for not knowing much about Janz’s platform — his campaign’s first big win came from putting up a billboard making fun of Nunes and the rich asshole.
This seems like a bad idea in a traditionally Republican district in which Nunes won handily last time around, and where some rich asshole has a strong support base.
But it seems to be working. Janz just opened up his official campaign office on Friday, and Nunes’ memo has had the effect of actually getting his opponent extra attention.
“Every time he opens his mouth,” Janz says, “we set records raising money.”
VICE News went to Clovis to find out how the memo is affecting Central Californian politics.
The segment originally aired February 5, 2018 on VICE News Tonight on HBO.
POLITICS
Devin Nunes Gets A Pretty Basic Fact Wrong In Defending His Memo
Nunes suggested that some rich asshole had never met with George Papadopoulos. There’s a photo of them sitting at the same table.
WASHINGTON ― Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), responsible for the much-hyped but ultimately underwhelming GOP memo alleging FBI bias against President some rich asshole, on Monday continued to defend the memo on the rich asshole-friendly Fox News.
But he may want to get his basic facts straight.
the rich asshole authorized House Republicans to release the memo on Friday, as part of a broader effort to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the rich asshole’s presidential campaign and Russian officials. Nunes was widely maligned for basing the memo on cherry-picked evidence, and the document’s contents mostly confirmed previous reporting about the investigation, rather than revealing any new bombshells.
Among other details, the memo corroborated The New York Times’ reporting that the original FBI investigation into the rich asshole’s campaign began with then-campaign adviser George Papadopoulos drunkenly admitting to an Australian diplomat that he’d been informed that Russian officials had “dirt” on the rich asshole’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Papadopoulos, who served on a foreign policy advisory council for the rich asshole’s campaign, pleaded guilty in October for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia, a major turning point in Mueller’s investigation.
While appearing on Monday’s edition of “Fox & Friends,” Nunes tried to downplay Papadopoulos’ role in the rich asshole’s campaign.
“As far as we can tell, Papadopoulos never even had met with the president,” Nunes said.
One slight problem with Nunes’ claim: There is photographic evidence of him meeting with the rich asshole during the campaign, from a March 2016 gathering of the council on which Papadopoulos served.
Papadopoulos is seated four places to the rich asshole’s right in the above photo.
POLITICS
some rich asshole Attacks Democrats Not Clapping At State Of The Union As ‘Treasonous’
At a jobs event in Ohio, the rich asshole went full campaign mode, delivering a speech aimed directly at his base.
WASHINGTON ― President some rich asshole accused Democrats on Monday of being “un-American” and “treasonous” in a campaign-style speech in Cincinnati that was actually meant to tout the recent GOP tax bill and the economy.
“Can we call that treason?” the rich asshole said, referring to Democrats who did not clap for him during his State of the Union address last week. “Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
At the State of the Union address, it is typical for politicians of the president’s party to enthusiastically applaud, while lawmakers in the opposite party usually have a muted response.
A handful of Democratic lawmakers did not attend last Tuesday’s address to protest the rich asshole.
the rich asshole suggested on Monday that Democrats were “very selfish” in not clapping for him. “They would rather see the rich asshole do badly, OK, than our country do well,” he said.
Earlier in the speech, the president claimed that he was “non-braggadocious” after bragging about his first year in office.
the rich asshole spoke at length about the midterm elections, even though White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters before the speech, held at a factory, that “this isn’t a political event.”
Interspersed with remarks about jobs and the economy, the rich asshole brought up popular issues for his base, including the “fake news media” in attendance and the lack of players kneeling during the national anthem at Sunday’s Super Bowl, which he appeared to take some credit for.
“We’re one team, one people and one family, and we’re saluting one great American flag. And everybody stood up yesterday,” he said. “There was nobody kneeling at the beginning of the Super Bowl. We’ve made a lot of improvement, haven’t we? That is a big improvement, and on top of that, it was a good game. So a lot of good things happened. There was no kneeling before that Super Bowl.”
This story has been updated with additional details from the rich asshole’s speech.
POLITICS
Emails Show FBI Saddened, Stunned By Comey’s Firing, Contradicting the rich asshole’s Claims
“He made us better when we needed it the most,” one former FBI colleague said.
Over 100 pages of emails written by FBI agents last year, shortly after President some rich asshole fired FBI director James Comey, reveal a stunned and saddened bureau, sharply contrasting with the president’s statements that Comey was unpopular with most FBI employees.
Security analyst Benjamin Wittes, editor of the legal affairs blog Lawfare and a friend of Comey’s, obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. The request sought FBI managers’ messages about the firing, and the agency turned over 103 pages of emails out of 116 it identified.
“We are not going to let this defeat us ... it will only make us stronger,” the head of the Knoxville field office told her team in one email Lawfare obtained. “I know you all know our director stood for what is right and what is true. He truly made us better when we needed it the most.”
“Many of you have inquired about how to get a message to director Comey,” a Los Angeles field office leader wrote after the May 9 firing. “I have spoken to his staff that assured me any emails and letters sent to the director’s office will be collected and delivered to him.”
The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit office emailed: “I hope this is an instance of fake news.”
“Our hearts may be heavy but we must continue to do what we do best, which is to protect and serve the American people,” wrote the assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Victim Assistance.
Despite the sentiments in the emails, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was deputy White House press secretary at the time of Comey’s firing, insisted he was ousted because the president and the bureau had lost faith in him. the rich asshole claimed at a press conference that Comey was “very unpopular with most people.”
But Andrew McCabe, who served as acting FBI director before returning to his role as deputy director and recently resigning, testified otherwise before the Senate Intelligence Committee just days after Comey’s firing, saying Comey “enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does.”
Many observers believe the rich asshole’s decision to fire Comey could become a centerpiece of an obstruction of justice case against the president by special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last June that before the rich asshole fired him, the president had pressed him for a declaration of loyalty. He also disputed the rich asshole’s statements that the FBI was struggling and had lost faith in him, calling the remarks “lies, plain and simple.”
In an NBC interview aired after Comey’s firing, the rich asshole called the former director a “show boat” and said the bureau was “in turmoil.” But in the same interview, the rich asshole implied that he’d fired Comey because of “this Russian thing.”
“When I decided to just do it [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with the rich asshole and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election,’” the president said.
The New York Times reported that a week after firing Comey, the rich asshole had told Russian officials in the Oval Office that Comey was a “nut job,” adding: “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
the rich asshole’s ‘Little Adam Schiff’ Insult Has People Worried He’s ‘Losing His Touch’
“Have we exhausted all the bully words in your head?” one Twitter user asked.
some rich asshole may be sorely lacking as a president, but no one can deny he’s an insult artist like no other.
During the 2016 campaign, the rich asshole managed to ding his competition by calling Marco Rubio “Little Marco,” Ted Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted” and Hillary Clinton as “Crooked Hillary.”
And who can forget when he referred to ex-chief strategist Steve Bannon as “Sloppy Steve”?
Yes, the ability to make schoolyard-level insults stick is President the rich asshole’s superpower.
Which is why many people on Twitter felt something was amiss Monday when the President attacked Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) by calling him “Little Adam Schiff.”
Twitter users wondered what was up with the rich asshole’s regurgitated putdown.
Are you recycling your insults now? “Little” Adam Schiff. Grow up #POTUS. Make me proud of my country again.
Hey, Mr. "President", you already used the nickname "Little" with Marco. You can't reuse it, that's not how nicknames work. May I suggest: "The Impeacher Adam @RepAdamSchiff!
People worried it was the end of an era.
LITTLE Adam Schiff?? Have we exhausted all the bully words in your head, and are now rehashing the same old lines to attack your latest round of political enemies? #LittleBully
Others thought it was time for an intervention.
Some decided to give the rich asshole a taste of his own medicine.
i see President Ragetweet McProjection is on the Golden Throne this morning. twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
Some people tried to get inside the president’s mind.
Journalist Nora Younkin wanted to make sure she had the correct spelling of the insult.
So it’s “Little Marco” and “Little Adam Schiff” but “Liddle’ Bob Corker.” Have I got that right?
What is the correct @APStylebook rendering?
Even the rich asshole supporters were a little disappointed by the president’s insult and gently offered suggestions (but not in a manner that might make the chief executive turn on them instead).
@Johnny_Congress
I would have preferred "Shifty Adam Schiff", but that's OK. @potus @realDonaldTrump!
Schiff responded with his own tweet a short while later, but preferred to insult the president’s policies rather than come up with a nasty nickname.
Mr. President, I see you’ve had a busy morning of “Executive Time.” Instead of tweeting false smears, the American people would appreciate it if you turned off the TV and helped solve the funding crisis, protected Dreamers or...really anything else. twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
Pennsylvania GOP lawmaker: Impeach justices for ruling against gerrymander scheme
When you can't win by cheating, sue others.
FEBRUARY 5, 2018
This is a shocking and dangerous assault on the judiciary.
The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to Pennsylvania Republicans Monday, rejecting the party’s desperate attempt to save gerrymandered congressional maps that the state supreme court had ruled illegally discriminated against Democratic voters.
But rather than accept the ruling from the state’s highest court, or from the nation’s highest court, one Republican state representative has a different plan: impeachment.
In a memorandum sent Monday evening to all members of the state house, with the subject line “Impeachment of five PA Supreme Court Justices,” Rep. Cris Dush alleges “the five Justices who signed this order that blatantly and clearly contradicts the plan language of the Pennsylvania Constitution, engaged in misbehavior in office.”
He claims “each is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office and disqualification to hold any office or trust or profit under this Commonwealth.”
Never mind that far-right conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito refused to say the state court’s ruling. Dush is calling on his fellow legislators to join him in his impeachment legislation.
“This is a usurpation of the sovereign power of the legislature under the Pennsylvania Constitution,” he said. “In the Constitution, it’s a contract between the people and the government that they hired to oversee them. And the sovereigns in this issue are God, the people, and the legislature — in that order.”
It’s a stunning and radical move in the face of a resounding legal defeat. The Republican gerrymandering scheme is illegal, according to the highest court in the state. And the highest court in the land did not see fit to second-guess the judgment of the highest court in the state.
But rather than redraw the maps, as the GOP-controlled legislature has been ordered to do, Republicans are stonewalling. And now at least one of them is seeking to remove those justices simply for issuing a ruling he does not like because it means Republicans will have a harder time maintaining control of all the seats they current hold.
This is the kind of attack on the judiciary that no one, regardless of party, should support. Sadly, the leader of the Republican Party has openly and repeatedly attacked judges who do not rule in his favor, setting a dangerous example for the rest of his party.
Pennsylvania Republicans should denounce their colleague and refuse to follow him down this dark path.
A major defeat for Pennsylvania Republicans just increased Democrats’ chances of retaking the House.
Democrats in Pennsylvania got more good news ahead of the midterm elections on Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the state Supreme Court’s recent ruling that Pennsylvania’s congressional districts must be immediately redrawn in a fairer manner.
Last month, Pennsylvania’s top court ruled that the congressional map drawn by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2011 “clearly, plainly and palpably violates” the commonwealth’s Constitution, and demanded a quick redrawing of the lines so that 2018 elections could be held using more common-sense looking districts.
The GOP went to court, arguing there was no rush and that the drawing should be delayed until after the 2018 cycle.
But on Monday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, whose jurisdiction for emergency requests includes Pennsylvania, denied the request, without comment.
Pennsylvania is shaping up to be among the key battleground states as Republicans desperately try to hang onto their majority in the House.
Democrats need to flip 24 seats to gain control of the House. According to the Cook Political Report, of the 62 Republican-held districts currently deemed to be “competitive” in November, 25 are located in California, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
And that’s why for Republicans, Monday’s ruling couldn’t have come at a worse time, and it couldn’t have come in a more vulnerable state.
Election experts predict that when the news districts are redrawn this spring and the GOP’s extreme gerrymandering blueprint gets torn up, Democrats could pick up between one and six seats in the state come November.
For the last decade in particular, Republicans have leaned heavily on a radical form of district drawing in order to maintain power.
Democrats vastly outnumber registered Republicans in the Keystone state, yet Republicans enjoy control of 13 of the state’s 18 Congressional seats. And a lot of that is because of radical gerrymandering.
Meanwhile, some rich asshole has become personally invested in a Pennsylvania special election set for March 2018. The White House is scrambling to make sure GOP candidate Rick Saccone fends off a young Democratic challenger, Conor Lamb, a Marine Corps veterans, in the 18th Congressional District.
That election is to replace former GOP incumbent Rep. Tim Murphy, who resigned last year after the extreme conservative was caught urging his mistress to get an abortion just days after pushing an abortion ban through the House.
More recently, the career of Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Pat Meehan imploded when it was revealed he used taxpayer dollars to settle a sexual harassment claim made by a former, much younger aide who claimed the Congressman had pursued her romantically and then turned on her when she entered a relationship with another man.
Meehan announced two weeks ago that he’s not running for re-election.
“Without Meehan on the ballot, his suburban 7th District seat would likely be a nightmare for the GOP to hold in a special election or in November, based on the current enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans and circumstances surrounding this particular vacancy,” Roll Call reported.
For Democrats in Pennsylvania, the news keeps getting better.
CBS News tracked down the woman Paul Ryan used to promote his tax bill, who got $1.50 extra a week. She wasn't impressed.
House Speaker Paul Ryan made a huge blunder when he boasted that his $1.5 trillion tax cut for corporations and billionaires was working by citing a high school secretary’s pay that went up by $1.50 a week.
The comment prompted a wave of backlash on social media, which forced him to delete his tweet and spurred thousands of people to give $1.50 donations to his Democratic challenger Randy Bryce.
But the embarrassment for Ryan did not end there. On Monday, CBS News managed to track down the $1.50-a-week richer secretary from the Associated Press report Ryan shared, and she did not exactly give his comments, or the GOP tax bill, a warm endorsement.
“I’m really surprised, actually,” said the secretary, Julia Ketchum, to reporters in a video call interview. “Because the paragraph above my quote and the paragraph below my quote, those folks got hundreds more. Hundreds. And I got a — I get a $1.50 per paycheck more.”
“So it shows me that he might not have read the whole article,” Ketchum concluded.
Ketchum was, if anything, understating things. There are a few people who will fare way, way better under the GOP tax scam than anyone in the AP article. Among them is Paul Ryan himself, who stands to get a $19,000 tax cut. And then there are the Koch brothers, who according to Americans for Tax Fairness could reap as much as $1.4 billion and who made out a gift of $500,000 to Ryan’s election committee as soon as the bill passed.
And a lot of people will do worse under the new tax plan.
Take the 5,000 workers who are losing their jobs as Kimberly-Clark uses their tax break to facilitate layoffs. Or the workers at the Kansas City Harley-Davidson plant that’s shuttering partly due to the GOP’s tax changes. Or millions of Americans who will see their health insurance premiums spike or lose coverage entirely because Republicans repealed the individual mandate.
Ryan is clearly regretting his choice to hold up Ketchum’s $1.50 pay raise as an example of the miracles of his tax plan. But as far as Ryan’s claims go, that one ended up being more honest than most.
A week ago, they were trying to block it to cover for the rich asshole.
The House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously on Monday to release a Democratic memo rebutting the GOP’s own memo alleging surveillance abuses against members of the the rich asshole campaign.
The unanimous vote came after Republicans were widely criticized for releasing their own memo on Friday while voting to keep the Democratic memo under wraps.
The document will now be sent to the White House, where the rich asshole has five days to either release it — as he did with the Republican version — or keep it hidden from the public. It’s not yet known what he will do.
As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pointed out in a tweet Monday afternoon, “The Schiff memo is based on the same underlying docs as the partisan #NunesMemo, so there should be no question as to whether or not [the rich asshole] will approve the new memo’s release. If he refuses, the American people will be forced to wonder: what is he trying to hide?”
The Republican memo, which was drafted by House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes, turned out to be an embarrassing flop for the rich asshole and his Republican allies. Not only did it not live up to the hype — it actually ended up backfiring and debunking some of the GOP’s own attacks on the Russia investigation.
Furthermore, just hours after releasing the memo, Nunes was forced to admit that he hadn’t even seen the underlying intelligence upon which he based the document. In contrast, Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has read the intelligence that is summarized in the Democratic memo he prepared.
The Democratic memo is expected to deliver a detailed, point-by-point rebuttal of the claims in the GOP memo. It’s also expected to lay out the case for why the FBI had good reason to request a surveillance warrant for the rich asshole aide Carter Page as part of its ongoing counterintelligence probe into the the rich asshole campaign’s ties to Russia.
A move by the the rich asshole White House to block the release of the Democratic memo would give the appearance that the rich asshole had only declassified the material in the GOP document to provide political cover for himself — bolstering a potential obstruction of justice case against him.
Releasing the Democratic memo, on the other hand, is likely to show just how inaccurate the Republican version was.
Either way, the GOP-led memo stunt is not going to turn out well for the rich asshole White House.
White House spokesman called the rich asshole a ‘deplorable’ and worked to undermine his nomination: report
White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah. Image via Twitter.
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah touted the release of the Access Hollywood tape as “justice” and referred to some rich asshole as a “deplorable”during the lead-up to the 2016 election, messages acquired by New York Magazinereveal.
As a Republican National Committee employee during the election, Shah, who previously worked with a political action committee that spawned numerous Jeb Bush staffers, reportedly notified a colleague of the existence of a CNN clip where the rich asshole praised then-president-elect Barack Obama in December 2008.
Three days after sending the clip to his coworker, and seven years to the day the segment aired, it appeared in a Bush campaign ad titled “Happy Anniversary, Donald!” Andrew Hemming, the coworker Shah discussed the clip with, also left the RNC to work at the the rich asshole White House.
When discussing the Access Hollywood tape, Shah suggested to Hemming that he experienced schadenfreude watching the rich asshole get criticized for his comments.
“I’m kinda enjoying this, some justice. I honestly don’t think it’s the worst thing he’s done but he somehow got passes for the other acts,” he wrote. “the rich asshole is a deplorable.”
A trove of new emails from just after the rich asshole fired then-FBI Director James Comey offers the first definitive proof that the narrative spun by the White House was a complete and utter lie.
When some rich asshole fired James Comey from his position as FBI director last May, the White House sent Sarah Huckabee Sanders out to try to justify the move by claiming that rank-and-file FBI officers had “lost confidence in their director.”
While evidence suggesting that the White House was not being truthful emerged almost immediately, a new trove of emails uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request proves, once and for all, that Sanders was lying to the American people — and so was the rich asshole.
In the aftermath of Comey’s firing, Sanders — who at the time was working as the deputy White House press secretary — claimed to be speaking on behalf of FBI agents, saying that she had “heard from countless members of the FBI that are grateful and thankful for the president’s decision.” the rich asshole believed “Director Comey was not up to the task” and “that he wasn’t the right person in the job,” Sanders said, adding that he had fired Comey because he “wanted somebody that could bring credibility back to the FBI.”
According to the account offered by Sanders, rank-and-file FBI agents were largely in agreement with the rich asshole, who described Comey as a “showboat,” a “grandstander,” and a “nut job” who had left the FBI “in turmoil.”
The pushback was immediate, with current and former FBI employees coming out to publicly dispute the White House account. Andrew McCabe, who at the time was serving as the FBI’s acting director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee, that Comey “enjoyed broad support within the FBI” and “the vast majority of employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.”
But the new documents — obtained by Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution — offer the first definitive proof that the White House was lying and show that the cover-up surrounding Comey’s firing was in the works from the very start.
Wittes obtained the documents through a series of FOIA requests seeking communications from FBI leadership issued to the bureau’s workforce regarding Comey’s firing. After a brief legal battle, Wittes obtained over a hundred pages of records showing how leaders within the bureau responded to the firing of the director — and not a single word supports the story told by the White House.
As Lawfare noted on Monday:
[The documents] contain not a word that supports the notion that the FBI was in turmoil. They contain not a word that reflects gratitude to the president for removing a nut job. There is literally not a single sentence in any of these communications that reflects criticism of Comey’s leadership of the FBI. Not one special agent in charge describes Comey’s removal as some kind of opportunity for new leadership. And if any FBI official really got on the phone with Sanders to express gratitude or thanks “for the president’s decision,” nobody reported that to his or her staff.
According to the newly obtained records, on the same day that Sanders was telling the American people that the FBI had lost confidence in Comey, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Knoxville field office emailed FBI staff members, saying, “Unexpected news such as this is hard to understand but I know you all know our Director stood for what is right and what is true!!! … He truly made us better when we needed it the most.”
The next day, the same special agent sent a second email directing FBI staff to “Follow up with your squads” and “make sure our/your folks are doing OK. Check with them today, tomorrow ….you get the idea.”
Amy Hess, the special agent in charge in the FBI’s Louisville field office, hit back at the narrative spun by the White House, writing in an email: “On a personal note, I vehemently disagree with any negative assertions about the credibility of this institution or the people herein.”
Similar responses went out to FBI staff around the country. Michael DeLeon, the special agent in charge of the Phoenix field office, wrote that “everyone is surprised and we are certainly disappointed with the events surrounding this matter.”
“We all felt the pain associated with the loss of a leader who was fully engaged and took great pride in the FBI organization and our employees. Simply stated, Director Comey will be missed,” DeLeon wrote.
As Lawfare noted, the emails show an agency in shock and mourning over the loss of a director who was widely respected and revered within the bureau:
The first reaction the documents reflect is simple shock, confusion and disbelief. The words “unprecedented,” “tumultuous,” “shock” and “surprise” appear in a great many of the emails. Two days after the firing, the assistant director of the International Operations Division, almost certainly Carlos Cases (the author is identified in the documents only as “Carlos” but is identifiable from the division affiliated with the email address), described the period as “a whirlwind of shock at the suddenness of the departure of Director Comey and concern with what the future will hold.”
At the request of agents, multiple field offices even discussed plans to put together books containing personal notes written to Comey by FBI agents from around the country — not exactly the actions of employees who were thankful to see their director fired.
“The bottom line is that the documents tell a remarkably consistent story about the reaction inside the FBI to Comey’s firing, and it is not the story the White House has told about an agency in turmoil,” Lawfare concluded. “It’s very much the story, rather, that McCabe told the Senate a few days after Comey’s dismissal.”
“Someone, the documents show, stood before the American people the week of the firing and told the truth about the FBI. It just wasn’t Sarah Huckabee Sanders or some rich asshole.”
We now know, without a doubt, that the White House was lying about the rich asshole’s rationale for firing Comey from the very beginning. Not only does this further discredit anything the White House says about the Russia probe, but it also provides even more evidence that special counsel Robert Mueller is sure to look at as he investigates the rich asshole for potential obstruction of justice.
the rich asshole’s lawyers don’t want him to speak with Mueller because they’re worried he’ll perjure himself: report
some rich asshole (Screen Capture)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
some rich asshole’s lawyers want him to reject a request by special counsel Robert Mueller for a sit-down interview—a move that could prompt a subpoena and, potentially, a Supreme Court battle over the Russia probe, the New York Times reports.
According to the Times, the rich asshole’s lawyers John Dowd and Jay Sekulow want the president to “rebuff an interview request” from Mueller, citing concerns over his proclivity towards making false statements, as well as his hair of “contradicting himself.” That advice is at odds with the rich asshole’s public and private claims he’s willing to testify to Mueller.
As the Times reports, White House lawyer Ty Cobb is one of the few people lobbying for the president to sit down with Mueller, arguing the president should cooperate with Mueller’s investigation into the the rich asshole campaign’s ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice on the part of the president. Dowd and Sekulow, meanwhile, remain unconvinced that Mueller has the appropriate authority to probe “some of the matters he is investigating.”
Last month, the rich asshole told reporters he’s “looking forward” to speaking with Mueller.
"Can we call that treason? Why not!"
some rich asshole marked the week since his divisive State of the Union address with a speech in which he accused black lawmakers who refused to applaud him of “treason.”
Last Tuesday, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were among the Democrats who silently protested the rich asshole’s address, and they did not applaud when the rich asshole took credit for the lowering of the black unemployment rate that took place under President Obama — which rose sharply in January under the rich asshole.
At an official White House event in Ohio Monday afternoon, the rich asshole viciously attacked Democrats for not applauding him when he bragged about the unemployment rate.
“It got to a point where I really didn’t even want to look too much during the speech over to that side, cuz honestly, it was bad energy,” the rich asshole said. “No, it was bad energy. You’re up there, you’ve got half the room going totally crazy wild, they loved everything, they want to do something great for our country. And you have the other side, even on positive news — really positive news like that — they were like death. And un-American. Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. Yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not! I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
the rich asshole’s vicious attack is an appropriate bookend for a State of the Union speech in which he slammedblack athletes for protesting racism, insulted Dreamers, and tarred immigrants as criminals, all while paying empty lip service to “bipartisanship.”
the rich asshole’s ugly campaign speech Monday should be a wakeup call to any American who still thinks this man can govern a great country where the right of free expression is a cherished liberty, not “treason.”
CNN’s Cooper shuts down White House spokesman’s bizarre claim his Uber driver proves Americans don’t care about Russia
Anderson Cooper and Hogan Gidley
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday shut down Hogan Gidley after the White House deputy press secretary tried to use an anecdote about his Uber drive to claim Americans don’t care about the Russia investigation.
Gidley was discussing the memo, drafted by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), that purported to show surveillance abuses by the FBI and Department of Justice. Asked by Cooper whether some rich asshole will likewise declassify the Democratic memo, which counters some of the points summarized in the memo, Gidley demurred.
“I can say that the president will treat it exactly the same, using the same methods and the same mechanisms,” Gidley said. “You’ll recall, what he did was sit down with the White House counsel, also members of the national security team and go through it meticulously, [see] if there were any sources and methods that were revealed. If the Democrat memo comes over, we’ll have the same treatment.”
Cooper pointed out that the rich asshole said off-mic at the State of the Union he would “100 percent” release the Nunes memo and “supposedly he hadn’t even read it at that point.”
“I don’t know if he had read it at that point or not but the president will make the same accommodations for the Democrats as he did for the Republicans,” Gidley said. “He wants sunlight here, he wants this stuff to be out in the open and he’ll treat it as such.”
Cooper later asked Gidley why the president “feels vindicated” by the contents of the memo, prompting the White House spokesman to insist there were biases in the FBI and DOJ against the rich asshole and in favor of Hillary Clinton.
“You think James Comey was biased for Clinton?” Cooper asked.
Gidley said the “tweets” by FBI agent Peter Strzok—who sent text messages critical of the rich asshole to his lover, FBI lawyer Lisa Page—prove there were biases against the rich asshole. “Now we know from the that Nunes memo, for example, that a large portion of the case for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants were granted solely on the purpose of a discredited Hillary Clinton-funded document.”
Cooper pointed out “that’s not true” that the FISA warrants were based off the rich asshole-Russia dossier, forcing Gidley to correct himself. “I said largely,” Gidley insisted.
“How do you know largely?” Cooper asked. “In the Nunes memo it doesn’t include the other information, it is a very cherry picked memo.”
“Right,” Gidley replied.
“The American people have been concerned,” he later claimed. “I was in an Uber just yesterday. I was driving, the driver looked at me and asked me something about politics and I was making small talk. And he said, ‘I don’t like some rich asshole at all—he had no idea where I worked—but he said, ‘A whole year and nothing in the investigation? It is time for it to end.’ If there is no collusion is that no obstruction, it is time to quit spending time and, quite frankly, the American people’s money, on a witch hunt.”
“I’m not sure the Uber driver is a scientific survey,” Cooper shot back.
Watch below:
House Intel votes to release Dem countermemo
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 02/05/18 06:16 PM EST
The House Intelligence Committee on Monday voted unanimously to release a memo drafted by Democrats to rebut a GOP-crafted document alleging surveillance abuses at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The 10-page classified document now goes to President the rich asshole, who has five days to block its release if he so chooses. It remains an open question whether he will.
the rich asshole on Friday declassified the Republican document, which was drafted by staff for House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). the rich asshole claimed the memo “totally vindicates” him in the ongoing investigation into his campaign’s alleged links to Russia.
The central thrust of the Nunes memo is that senior DOJ officials inappropriately relied on a piece of opposition research paid for in part by Hillary Clinton to obtain a surveillance warrant on the rich asshole campaign aide Carter Page. It claims that without the so-called Steele dossier, no surveillance warrants would have been sought.
The Democratic memo is expected to lay out a point-by-point rebuttal of the assertions in the Nunes memo and make the case that the FBI had good reason to spy on Page as part of the counterintelligence probe into the the rich asshole campaign.
A decision by the the rich asshole White House to block its publication would almost certainly set off a firestorm of accusations from Democrats that he is attempting to obstruct justice.
The White House has signaled that it is open to allowing the release of the Democratic memo, but included a caveat for national security protections.
“The administration stands ready to work with Congress to accommodate oversight requests consistent with applicable standards, including the need to protect intelligence sources and methods,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in reference to the Democrats' memo.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the panel, said on Monday that the FBI and DOJ already have a copy of the document, but that they had not yet provided any feedback. He expressed concerns that the White House would attempt to redact the document to protect itself.
“We want to make sure the White House does not redact our memo for political purposes and obviously that’s a deep concern,” Schiff told reporters after the vote.
Some committee Republicans who have seen the Democratic memo had previously said it is highly detailed and would need to be heavily redacted before release. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has also alluded to the need to protect intelligence sources and methods in offering tempered support for its release.
“If it is scrubbed to ensure it does not reveal sources and methods of our intelligence gathering, the speaker supports the release of the Democrats' memo,” AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Ryan, said in a statement last week.
Republicans appear split on the need for redactions in the document. According to Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), a senior member of the panel who is leading its investigation into Russia's election interference, the document has 36 footnotes that he believes “are way too precise” and will almost certainly have to be blacked out — although he noted the main body of the document is likely on sounder footing.
But, he noted, “Mr. Schiff thinks there are [things that should be redacted], otherwise he wouldn’t have made it such a big deal about having the FBI and Department of Justice scrub their memo.”
Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) told reporters that he did not think there was much material in the Democratic memo that would need to be redacted, but he said he did not think it was an accurate representation “for a million different reasons.”
“Just from my reading of it, I don’t think there was much in there that would be redacted,” he said. “I’m all for letting the people see it and decide for themselves.”
Nunes declined to speak to reporters after the vote.
If the rich asshole does block the document’s release, the full House can override him and force the publication of the memo.
Rooney told reporters after the vote that he did not anticipate the president to reject the publication of the document, but declined to comment on whether that would kickstart a full-chamber vote.
“I don’t think he’s going to do that but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.
Intelligence Committee Republicans last week voted down a measure that would have made the Democratic memo public at the same time as the Nunes memo.
The panel did vote to make the document available to the entire House, as it had previously done with the Republican memo.
“It is our expectation that our memo will be going to the White House tonight, so as of tonight, that five-day clock is ticking,” Schiff said.
Updated at 7:22 p.m.
The secretary from Paul Ryan’s infamous tweet isn’t thrilled with her $1.50
"I get a dollar-fifty more, so it shows me [Ryan] might not have read the whole article."
The school secretary cited in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s now-infamous tweet for making an additional $1.50 a week thanks to the Republican tax bill spoke to CBS News Monday, and she wasn’t exactly thrilled.
“I’m really surprised, actually. [People mentioned in] the paragraph above… my quote and the paragraph below my quote got hundreds more. Hundreds,” she said. “And I get a dollar-fifty more, so it shows me [Ryan] might not have read the whole article.”
So uh, @CBSNews tracked down the secretary who got the $1.50 @SpeakerRyan was so excited about and she doesn't seem super thrilled.
The woman, Julia Ketchum, told the Associated Press last Thursday that she was “pleasantly surprised” to see a $1.50 increase in her paychecks, adding up to $78 a year, “which she said will more than cover her Costco membership for the year,” the AP reported.
But, as Ketchum told CBS News, the people cited above and below her in the story both reportedly got an extra $200 in their paychecks.
In any case, Ryan shared the AP story Saturday morning and mentioned Ketchum specifically.
The tweet instantly got attention, but not for the reasons Ryan presumably hoped.
Ryan, President some rich asshole, and other Republicans have claimed time and time again that their tax plan, which was signed into law late last year, would put an additional $4,000 per year in the pockets of average American families. In reality, it does the opposite.
The bill gives corporations a permanent tax cut, but individual tax cuts expire in 2025. Many middle-class people will then see their taxes ultimately rise, reversing even the benefits of a tax cut that is already far less than was promised.
Ryan was quickly dragged for not understanding math and deleted the tweet.
But on Monday, Ryan’s national press secretary doubled down. Notably, though the tweet is different, the math remains the same: $78 more in an American’s pocket is not even close to $1,000.
The tweet has backfired in the real world, though, too — not just on Twitter.
In the 48 hours since Ryan tweeted and deleted his comments about Ketchum’s savings, the Randy Bryce for Congress campaign raised $150,000 from 12,253 individual donors after encouraging people to express their disapproval of Ryan’s tax reform plan by donating to help Bryce unseat Ryan.
Bryce, a Democrat, is looking to unseat Ryan this November, should he win the Democratic nomination. A poll commissioned by the campaign in December claimed Bryce trailed Ryan by just six points, 46 to 40.
Moments ago, @PRyan deleted this tweet after we told him just how out of touch he was. Show Paul Ryan what you think of his tax bill. Chip in $1.50 now to help us repeal and replace Ryan permanently this November.secure.actblue.com/donate/1.50?ut…
According to the Wisconsin Gazette, nearly half of the more than 12,000 contributions Bryce received after Ryan’s tweet were for $1.50.
some rich asshole says Democrats who didn’t applaud during his State of the Union speech are ‘treasonous’
President some rich asshole during a speech in Ohio (Screenshot)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
President some rich asshole on Monday suggested that Democrats could be guilty of treason because of their reaction to his State of the Union address.
the rich asshole complained during a speech in Ohio that Democrats had not applauded during his State of the Union. The president said it was “un-American” of Democrats not to give him an ovation when he spoke about topics like unemployment.
“It was bad energy… even on positive news, really positive news, they were like death, and un-American,” he said.
“Someone said ‘treasonous.’ I guess, why not?” the rich asshole added. “Can you call that treason? Why not. I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
“But you look at that, and it is really very, very sad.”
Watch video below:
the rich asshole accuses Dems of 'treasonous' behavior
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 02/05/18 03:12 PM EST
President the rich asshole on Monday accused Democrats of "treasonous" behavior during his State of the Union address, escalating partisan tensions during a crucial stretch for Congress.
the rich asshole took aim at Democratic lawmakers who refused to applaud during his speech last week when he mentioned his achievements during his first year in office, a reaction he called “un-American.”
"Can we call that treason? Why not?" the president said during a speech in Ohio. "They certainly didn't seem to love our country very much."
the rich asshole signaled that Democrats’ refusal to cheer “very positive news” in his speech, such as low unemployment rates for Hispanics and African-Americans, will make it difficult for him to work with them on government spending and immigration.
He said the Democrats "would rather see the rich asshole do badly than our country do well," calling their behavior "very selfish."
Lawmakers are facing a Thursday deadline to fund the government and must act by March 5 to preserve protections for young immigrants living illegally in the U.S., both issues that have been stalled by partisan gridlock.
The president used the 47-minute speech as a warm-up act for the 2018 midterm elections, even though the White House billed it as an official event, and not a political one, meaning taxpayers footed the bill.
He took repeated shots at Democratic congressional leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and praised Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Renacci, who is running for Senate in the fall.
the rich asshole also attacked Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown(Ohio) for voting against his tax overhaul, which the president said is bolstering the economy.
"We had no Democrats. Nobody. Not one, including your other senator. He voted against it,” the rich asshole said. “If they ever took over, your taxes would go way up and you would see some bad things happen.”
A jobs report released Friday showed the economy adding 200,000 jobs in January. It also showed some wage growth, another data point suggesting a strengthening economy.
But the rich asshole’s speech came against a backdrop of a precipitous sell-off in U.S. stock markets.
Cable networks showed the Dow Jones average plummet as the rich asshole spoke. Losses were around 500 to 600 points down when the rich asshole began his speech but was down more than 1,000 points when Fox News and CNN broke away to cover the market drop.
The Dow was down nearly 1,500 points at 3:12 p.m., after enduring a previous fall last week. But in a sign of the volatility, it rose about 400 points minutes later. It closed down more than 1,100 points, erasing its gains for the year.
Stocks are falling in part because investors fear rising inflation will lead the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.
But the rich asshole has repeatedly highlighted the rising stock market as a sign of his economic stewardship and Monday’s losses muddied his economic message.
the rich asshole spoke at Sheffer Corporation, a suburban Cincinnati manufacturer that handed out $1,000 bonuses to its 126 employees after the GOP tax reform bill became law.
The president invited a handful of workers on stage to share how the tax cut helped them and they mentioned using the money for pay for new houses and their children’s college educations.
The president took credit for enticing major corporations to invest in the U.S. states and create jobs, tying it to his economic agenda.
“You can work hard, but if you don’t have the right leader setting the right tone, in all fairness — I’m not even saying — I am nonbraggadocious,” he said.
The tone of Monday’s speech was a sharp break from the rich asshole’s State of the Union address when he appealed to Democrats and Republicans to work together to pass major legislation on immigration and infrastructure.
“Tonight, I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground, and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people,” the president said during his address. “This is really the key. These are the people we were elected to serve.”
But hope for bipartisan unity quickly faded after the divisive reception the speech received.
the rich asshole also stoked partisan tensions by authorizing the release of a memo drafted by congressional Republicans that accused the FBI of political bias in the Russia investigation.
The president appeared to reference the memo in his Ohio speech.
"Oh, but did we catch them in the act or not?” he said. “You know what I'm talking. Oh, did we catch them in the act? They are very embarrassed. They never thought they were going to get caught. We caught them. It's so much fun, like, the great sleuth."
Democrats have disputed the contents of the memo, saying it contains false and misleading information.
House Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is seeking to release a counter memo that is designed to rebut the GOP document. The White House has said it is open to approving its publication.
the rich asshole attacked the California Democrat on Twitter earlier Monday, writing that, “Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper!”
Dow falls more than 1,000 in biggest daily point-drop ever
BY SYLVAN LANE - 02/05/18 04:05 PM EST
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by more than 1,179 points Monday, the biggest daily loss by points in its history.
The Dow dropped more than 1,500 points before recovering to close at 24,345, a 1,175-point loss. The plunge broke the Dow’s previous record for the largest daily loss by points, set on Sept. 29, 2008, when the index dropped 777 points.
President the rich asshole was pitching the economic benefits of the GOP tax law in Cincinnati as the drop in the market intensified. The Dow fell 500 points while the rich asshole touted rising wages and accused Democrats who refused to applaud him during the State of the Union of being “treasonous.”
All three major cable networks showed the falling stock ticker on screen during the rich asshole’s speech, and Fox News cut into his remarks when the Dow's drop on the day hit 1,000.
The Dow lost 4.62 percent of its value, wiping out a month of gains that featured the quickest 1,000-point jump in the index’s history.
Still, despite the headline-grabbing numbers, Monday’s drop fell far short of the the record 22 percent loss set during the 1987 stock market crash.
Even so, Monday's losses came after the worst week for U.S stocks in two years. The Dow fell 665 points Friday and closed more than 1,000 points lower than the previous week’s record-high close at 26,616. It was the biggest single drop in a day for the Dow since June 2016.
Analysts have long warned of a potential bubble in the stock market, which means that Monday's drop could be the beginning of a correction.
That would be bad news for the the rich asshole administration, which has repeatedly pointed to gains in the stock market to make the case that their policies are boosting the economy.
the rich asshole most recently touted the market gains during his State of the Union address.
"The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion in value," the rich asshole said.
the rich asshole told reporters late last year that "the reason our stock market is so successful is because of me."
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, meanwhile, has said the market should be used as a scorecard for the administration's success.
U.S. stocks experienced heavy losses across the board Monday as investors fretted over a series of expected rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. The Nasdaq fell 273 points on the day (3.78 percent) while the S&P 500 erased its January gains with a 113-point (4.1 percent) loss.
The Dow opened 183 points lower than its Friday close of 25,520, starting the week at 25,337. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 also opened with losses, down 0.8 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively.
A White House official on Monday expressed confidence in the overall strength of the economy.
“We’re always concerned when the market loses any value, but we’re also confident in the economy’s fundamentals,” the official told CNBC.
“We’re always concerned when the market loses any value, but we’re also confident in the economy’s fundamentals,” the official told CNBC.
Investors are selling stocks in part because of signs of a strengthening economy, which many think will lead the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.
The Fed raised rates three times last year and is expected to raise rates at least three times in 2018. The Fed has seen inflation lag below a 2 percent target, but the growing economy has many convinced that inflation may gather steam. Interest rate hikes would be designed to keep inflation around 2 percent.
John Williams, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, said Friday that three or four hikes in 2018 were possible, but downplayed more aggressive rate hikes, according to Reuters.
“The expansion is proceeding at a good pace, unemployment is low, and inflation is finally headed in the right direction again,” he said after a speech in San Francisco.
Treasury bond yields have increased as the sell-off continues, reflecting investors' concerns about the depth of a stock market correction.
Analysts are also concerned that falling energy and commodities prices reflect a global lag in demand, which could stunt several years of global economic growth.
The Fed raised rates three times last year and is expected to raise rates at least three times in 2018. The Fed has seen inflation lag below a 2 percent target, but the growing economy has many convinced that inflation may gather steam. Interest rate hikes would be designed to keep inflation around 2 percent.
John Williams, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, said Friday that three or four hikes in 2018 were possible, but downplayed more aggressive rate hikes, according to Reuters.
“The expansion is proceeding at a good pace, unemployment is low, and inflation is finally headed in the right direction again,” he said after a speech in San Francisco.
Treasury bond yields have increased as the sell-off continues, reflecting investors' concerns about the depth of a stock market correction.
Analysts are also concerned that falling energy and commodities prices reflect a global lag in demand, which could stunt several years of global economic growth.
The stock market downturn could complicate the GOP’s efforts to use a strong economy and their tax law to boost their 2018 midterm election chances.
Broader indicators of the economy remain positive, with the unemployment rate at 4.1 percent, a 17-year low. Economic growth is forecast to increase this year, and hundreds of businesses have announced plans to expand and provide bonuses to their employees since the passage of the GOP's new tax law.
Yet the swings in the market can affect how voters feel about the economy.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said the stock downturn "reinforces that tax reform is growing this economy," citing higher wages and impending Fed rate hikes.
“Corrections like this are normal, and certainly in this case ... that’s a healthy picture," Brady said. “We want an economy where paychecks increase.”
- Updated at 4:51 p.m. Peter Sullivan contributed.
Fox News cuts away from the rich asshole economic speech to cover historic stock market drop
When reality intervenes.
During his State of the Union speech last Tuesday night, President the rich asshole bragged about how under his stewardship, the stock market “smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion in value.” Those comments were just the most recent of many examples of the president trying to take credit for a strong stock market.
Six days later, Fox News interrupted a live broadcast of a speech the rich asshole delivered in Ohio on Monday to tout the tax cut bill to instead cover a historic drop in the Dow Jones industrial average.
During the speech, the rich asshole said that the tax cut bill “set off a tidal wave of good news that continues to grow every single day.” But his message was contradicted by chyrons detailing the Dow’s plunge.
Monday’s stock market losses come on the heels of the Dow dropping 666 points on Friday. Not coincidentally, the rich asshole avoided any mention of the stock market during his speech in Ohio. Instead, he accused Democrats who didn’t applaud him during the State of the Union of treason, and bragged about how no players protested the national anthem at the Super Bowl.
“We’re saluting one great American flag and everybody stood up yesterday, there was nobody kneeling at the beginning of the Super Bowl,” the rich asshole said. “We’ve made a lot of improvement, haven’t we? That’s a big improvement, and on top of that it was a good game, so a lot of good things happen.”
the rich asshole’s conflation of the stock market and the broader economy was problematic to begin with, given that nearly half of the country has nothing invested in the market. And it never made sense for the rich asshole to take credit for a stock market that has been gaining steadily since it recovered from the financial collapse of 2008.
While the stock market made steady gains during the rich asshole’s first year in office, other metrics indicated that the economy wasn’t booming as much as he wanted believe to people. Job growth in 2017, for instance, was the most anemic since 2011, when the economy was still recovering from a recession. But that didn’t stop the rich asshole from pretending in recent speeches that he presided over a jobs boom.
Likewise, even as the market tanked on Monday, the rich asshole bragged about the impact the tax cut bill is having on the economy.
At close, the Dow Jones average was down over 1,100 points on Monday, the largest single day loss in history. The previous record was a 778 point drop on September 29, 2008, when the financial markets were in meltdown.
the rich asshole: Democrats Who Didn’t Clap For Me During My SOTU Committed ‘Treason’ (VIDEO)
The current occupant of the White House on Monday accused Democrats of “treason” for not clapping for him during the State of the Union address. Words mean things and that word fits the rich asshole, not the Democrats who refused to applaud his so-called achievements after his first year in office which consisted of race-baiting, lies, and attacks on his critics.
“Can we call that treason? Why not?” the former reality show star said during a speech in Ohio. “They certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
the rich asshole said Democrats “would rather see the rich asshole do badly than our country do well,” calling their behavior “very selfish.”
the rich asshole wondered why Democrats didn’t clap when he brought up ‘black unemployment’ during the SOTU. That would be because it has been declining for years, and declined more when former President Barack Obama was in office, in comparison to the Dotard’s first year.
We’re glad that 45 brought up the word ‘treason.’ the rich asshole is plagued with scandals and some his associates have been indicted. Colluding with a hostile foreign power is treasonous.
Treason is defined as “the crime of betraying one’s country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.”
The punishment for committing treason:
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
the rich asshole is a deeply flawed individual who seeks praise in order to feed his massive ego. Because of the love we share for our country, Democrats chose not to clap for him. Also, the freedoms we enjoy in this country affords us the right to clap or not clap.
the rich asshole should look up ‘obstruction of justice,’ too. The three articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon were for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.
Speaking of clap, the rich asshole should get tested for it since he had unprotected sex with a porn star.
the rich asshole says Democrats who didn’t applaud his speech are ‘treasonous’
"They certainly didn't seem to love our country very much."
Last week, some rich asshole in his first State of the Union address, called for bipartisanship and unity. “I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground, and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people we were elected to serve,” he urged in his speech.
On Monday, the rich asshole told an audience in Ohio that he believes Congressional Democrats to be “un-American,” and “treasonous,” because they didn’t applaud him during the address.
“You’ve got half the room going totally, crazy, wild. They loved everything,” the rich asshole recalled. But “even on positive news, really positive news,” the Democrats did not respond. “Shall we can that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”
Watch:
the rich asshole, the nominal author of The Art of The Deal, likely needs Congressional Democratic support to avoid another government shutdown on his watch this week, as the lastest continuing resolution will expire on Thursday. the rich asshole is also demanding those Democrats reach a “deal” with him on immigration to undo his own decision to strip DACA protections from children of undocumented immigrants and to pay the border wall he previously promised would be built entirely at Mexico’s expense. the rich asshole is also courting Democratic support for a bipartisan infrastructure proposal.
the rich asshole specifically called out Nancy Pelosi, who will likely need to provide him with critical votes in the House. “She’s really out there. I’m supposed to make a deal with her?” the rich asshole asked.
WATCH: Melania Humiliates the rich asshole By Refusing To Hold His Hand AGAIN
Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahahaha. Poor some rich asshole can’t catch a break. On Monday as he and Melania were leaving the White House for their trip to Ohio, The rich asshole attempted to hold the First Lady’s hand for a photo — and apparently, he hasn’t yet learned his lesson about trying to get her to touch him.
Melania can be seen in the video ripping her hand away. He then grabs her by the waist and moves her around like a prop for the photo because he has no respect for womens’ body autonomy even when it comes to their ability to stand where they wish — but she steps far away from her husband.
It’s looking like Melania is still a little bit upset about that massive $130 million payoff from the rich asshole to a porn star for an affair that happened while Melania was recovering from childbirth.
This, of course, isn’t the first time Melania the rich asshole has refused to hold her husband’s hand or otherwise told him to fuck off in public, but it may be the funniest — not because of what actually happened, but because after it’s happened so many times conservatives just…can’t make excuses for it anymore.
Melania knows what the rest of us know: her husband is a terrible human being. Like the rest of us, we imagine she wishes she could be rid of him — but she’s there by choice for the money, and we’re just stuck with him thanks to a system that is in place primarily to protect the power of slave states.
Melania the rich asshole is not a heroine for her public rejection of The rich asshole, but Republicans in Congress could learn a lot from her. It’s time for them, like Melania, to refuse to hold his hand and to get as far away from him as possible.
Top Intel Democrat Torches the rich asshole After His Morning Twitter Meltdown Over Memo-Gate
Former reality show star some rich asshole took his angry little fingers to his Twitter account to lash out at the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat Monday as Democrats push to release a memo expected to rebut the flawed Nunes/GOP Memo. the rich asshole gave Adam Schiff (D-Calif) a nickname to mock his personal appearance – just like every president before him has never done.
But first, the rich asshole praised Fox & Friends for “exposing the truth.”
Thank you to @foxandfriends for exposing the truth. Perhaps that’s why your ratings are soooo much better than your untruthful competition!
“Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper! Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!” President Exclamation Mark tweeted.
Then, the rich asshole yelled at the world over his dumb wall.
“Any deal on DACA that does not include STRONG border security and the desperately needed WALL is a total waste of time,” the Dotard tweeted. “March 5th is rapidly approaching and the Dems seem not to care about DACA. Make a deal!”
Naturally, the rich asshole praised House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) even though his memo was widely derided.
“Representative Devin Nunes, a man of tremendous courage and grit, may someday be recognized as a Great American Hero for what he has exposed and what he has had to endure!” President Crazy Pants tweeted.
Schiff responded to the rich asshole’s childish tweet, telling him to turn off the TV.
Mr. President, I see you’ve had a busy morning of “Executive Time.” Instead of tweeting false smears, the American people would appreciate it if you turned off the TV and helped solve the funding crisis, protected Dreamers or...really anything else. twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
It’s almost as if the rich asshole helped to write the Nunes memo. Just after it was released, the rich asshole claimed that it vindicated him, but Republicans and Democrats disagreed with the so-called president. The fact is that Republicans scribbled things on a piece of paper to protect their president and now the rich asshole is essentially saying, ‘See, I’m totally innocent because my party wrote a note that clears me.’
Adam Schiff is a former U.S. prosecutor and calling him “Little” doesn’t bother him. Buckle up, some rich asshole, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Theresa May defends universal health system after the rich asshole attacks
BY JESSIE HELLMANN - 02/05/18 01:20 PM EST
British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday defended her country's National Health Service following comments from President the rich asshole.
“The prime minister is proud of our NHS, that is free at the point of delivery," a spokesman for May told The Washington Post.
The spokesman noted that funding for the universal health-care system is at a "record high" and was prioritized in the budget with an extra 2.8 billion pounds.
the rich asshole early Monday morning tweeted that "thousands of people are marching in the UK because their [universal] system is going broke and not working."
"Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!"
Britain's health system provides free health care at the point of delivery. The march the rich asshole referred to was organized by groups that wanted to increase funding for the program, not dismantle it.
British Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt also responded to the rich asshole's comments Monday, saying "not one" of the marchers wants to live in a system where 28 million people have no health coverage.
“NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage — where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance,” he added.
As US stocks plummet, the rich asshole goes silent on role in markets
President some rich asshole (AFP/File / Fabrice COFFRINI)
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
As U.S. stocks plunged on Monday, President some rich asshole was speaking at an event in Ohio but noticeably not taking credit for the market despite doing so repeatedly when stocks were rising.
The stark contrast was a sign that the rich asshole may be absorbing a tough message, underscored by former White House advisers, that American presidents traditionally have avoided commenting directly on Wall Street’s fickle trends.
Gene Sperling, a top economic adviser to Democratic former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, said the rich asshole erred in recent months by focusing so heavily on the stock market.
“Even though the stock market tripled under Bill Clinton, his view was that you should always focus your policies and your public messages on bread-and-butter kitchen table issues … and that focusing on the stock market would take your eye off the real economy,” Sperling said.
White House spokesman Raj Shah, in an adjustment to the administration’s message on stocks, told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to the rich asshole’s speaking event in Ohio, “Look, markets do fluctuate in the short term. We all know that … But the fundamentals of this economy are very strong and they’re headed in the right direction.”
(See the interactive graphic “the rich asshole takes credit for stock market records” here: //tmsnrt.rs/2E4FmaQ )
Throughout a speech at a factory in Blue Ash, Ohio, the rich asshole made no mention of stock markets. That departed sharply from past practice.
In his State of the Union address last week, the rich asshole said, “The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion and more in value in just this short period of time.”
‘TREMENDOUS BENEFITS’
On Jan. 7, he wrote on Twitter, “The Stock Market has been creating tremendous benefits for our country in the form of not only Record Setting Stock Prices, but present and future Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Seven TRILLION dollars of value created since our big election win!”
Three days before that, he tweeted, “Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing.” He had sent similar tweets for months.
The Republican president told Reuters in a Jan. 17 interview he has been getting kudos from people grateful for increased 401(k) retirement plan values and he believed the rise would not have happened if his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election.
“If the Democrats won the election, the stock market would have gone down 50 percent from where it was, and now look at the percentage increase. It’s a record increase,” the rich asshole said.
Once the markets closed, the White House issued a statement saying the rich asshole’s focus is “on our long-term economic fundamentals, which remain exceptionally strong, with strengthening U.S. economic growth, historically low unemployment, and increasing wages for American workers.”
“The president’s tax cuts and regulatory reforms will further enhance the U.S. economy and continue to increase prosperity for the American people,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.
The benchmark Dow Jones industrial average soared 42 percent between Election Day 2016, when the rich asshole won the presidency, and its historic peak a week ago above 26,400.
On Monday, the Dow fell to below 24,000 but regained some of its midday losses to close at 24,345. In the past five trading days, the index has erased all its gains since late November.
The benchmark S&P 500 <.SPX> has pulled back more than 6 percent from a Jan. 26 record high.
The “the rich asshole rally,” as some traders have dubbed it, has coincided with a sweeping tax code overhaul approved in December, which slashed corporate taxes, and a deregulation push.
The S&P 500 rose 34 percent from the rich asshole’s election to its recent high.
But stocks have been climbing since March 2009, when Obama inherited a serious financial crisis and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. At that time, the Dow was trading at around 6,500.
the rich asshole has also criticized his predecessor Obama’s effect on markets. In November 2012, the rich asshole tweeted, “The stock market and U.S. dollar are both plunging today. Welcome to @BarackObama’s second term.”
The S&P 500 rose 126 percent from Obama’s 2008 election to his final day in office in 2017.
Former Obama press secretary Jay Carney on Monday tweeted, “Good time to recall that in the previous administration, we NEVER boasted about the stock market — even though the Dow more than doubled on Obama’s watch — because we knew two things: 1) the stock market is not the economy; and 2) if you claim the rise, you own the fall.”
Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and a former economic adviser to 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, said, “The president shouldn’t comment about the stock market. Indeed if anyone is going to make major pronouncements about economic data, it should be the Treasury secretary or the agency releasing the data, so if they get it wrong you can get rid of them. You don’t want the president owning those things.”
(Reporting by Steve Holland in Washington and Trevor Hunnicutt in New York; Writing by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Will Dunham and James Dalgleish)
WH open to releasing Dem countermemo despite jab at Schiff
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 02/05/18 01:50 PM EST
The White House on Monday said it remains open to releasing a memo produced by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, despite the president’s criticism of the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff(Calif.).
"We will consider it on the same terms we considered the Nunes memo," White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One to Ohio with President the rich asshole.
Shah was referring to a memo authored by the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) that accused the FBI of political bias in the Russia probe, citing the way it obtained a surveillance warrant against a former the rich asshole campaign adviser.
The Democratic memo seeks to rebut the Nunes document, in part, by disputing its account of how the warrant was obtained.
The White House and congressional Republicans last week signaled they were open to releasing the Schiff memo, but that was called into question Monday after the rich asshole blasted the California Democrat.
“Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper!" the rich asshole tweeted. "Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!”
Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper! Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!
the rich asshole was referring to details regarding the Democratic memo that have appeared in the press, according to the White House.
“The president is just calling out Adam Schiff and others for what we see as a pattern of leaking and taking confidential information that is presented to them voluntarily and using it for partisan political purposes,” Shah said.
The spat came hours before the Intelligence Committee was set to vote on releasing the Democratic memo.
Republicans voted to release their document last week and the rich asshole approved its publication, which came Friday.
Democrats have criticized the way the rich asshole handled the release of the GOP memo, pointing to news reports that said the president decided to allow it to become public even before he read it.
the rich asshole was caught on tape after last week's State of the Union telling a GOP lawmaker that he "100 percent" supported releasing the memo. He spoke before the White House had concluded its review of the document.
If the panel votes to release the Democratic memo, it would undergo a "legal review" and a "national security review" led by the White House counsel’s office, according to Shah.
last
No comments:
Post a Comment