February 9th-February 10th, 2017. It's been 454-455 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 382-383 days since the Jan 20th inauguration.
Journalists push back after the rich asshole tweets lives being destroyed by 'mere allegation'
BY JOSH DELK - 02/10/18 01:10 PM EST
Journalists pushed back against President the rich asshole's tweet Saturday saying people's lives are being destroyed by "a mere allegation," a comment that sparked backlash on social media.
the rich asshole decried how people's "lives are being shattered and destroyed be a mere allegation" after two White House aides abruptly resigned this week following claims of past domestic abuse.
While the rich asshole did not mention any specific allegations, he wrote: "Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?"
Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?
the rich asshole's tweet came after the White House grappled with controversy this week surrounding allegations of past domestic abuse against staff secretary Rob Porter from his two ex-wives.
Porter denied the allegations after his two ex-wives came forward to accuse him of physically and emotionally abusing them during their marriages. He resigned on Wednesday after photos emerged showing his first wife with a bruised face.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper rebuffed the rich asshole's complaints of allegations being accepted as facts, writing Saturday, "In point of fact, 2 ex-wives talking on the record to journalists and to the FBI and one ex-girlfriend on background, with a photo of a black eye and a police report, is not 'a mere allegation.' "
"I think he misspelled 'restraining order and photos of a black eye,'" tweeted David Martosko, a political editor for Daily Mail, the publication that first published the stories of Porter's ex-wives this week.
In point of fact, 2 ex-wives talking on the record to journalists and to the FBI and one ex-girlfriend on background, with a photo of a black eye and a police report, is not “a mere allegation.” twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
I think he misspelled "restraining order and photos of a black eye" twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
Other journalists were quick to point out the connection between the rich asshole's comments on Porter and his stance on the case of the Central Park Five, five black men who were exonerated after being falsely accused of raping and beating a woman in Central Park in 1989.
CC: The Central Park Five twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
During his 2016 presidential campaign, the rich asshole insisted that the men were still guilty despite their exoneration after another man confessed, pointing to their original confessions of guilt and the police's original belief they were guilty. The men said that their confessions were coerced.
"President the rich asshole continues to claim the 5 Black men from the Central Park jogger case are guilty. They were vindicated in 2002, a court vacated their convictions. A convicted murderer/rapist confessed. DNA evidence confirmed him. They won $41 mil from NYC," tweeted veteran journalist Soledad O'Brien.
President Trump continues to claim the 5 Black men from the Central Park jogger case are guilty. They were vindicated in 2002, a court vacated their convictions. A convicted murderer/rapist confessed. DNA evidence confirmed him. They won $41 mil from NYC. twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
the rich asshole on Friday wished Porter well following his departure from the administration. The president highlighted the former aide's denial of the abuse allegations this week, and caught flak from critics for not mentioning the two ex-wives who accused Porter of abuse.
It took mere minutes for the rich asshole to undermine RNC spokesperson’s claim that he’s a champion of women
An RNC spokesman tried to defend the president's praise of an alleged abuser. It didn't age well.
During an MSNBC interview on Saturday morning, Republican National Committee spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany said that the rich asshole White House “stands with women, unmistakably.”
About an hour later, the rich asshole completely undercut McEnany’s talking point with a tweet in which he defended men accused of sexual assault.
“Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation,” the rich asshole said, alluding to two White House staffers who departed this week amid accusations of domestic assault.
McEnany’s MSNBC appearance came the morning after the rich asshole praised Rob Porter, the former top White House aide who was publicly accused of domestic abuse by both of his ex-wives this week. Porter’s first wife, Colbie Holderness, provided media outlets with a photo of her with a black eye she said Porter gave her in 2005, while his second, Jennifer Willoughby, said she got a restraining order against Porter after they separated. Apparently, the rich asshole does not find that evidence persuasive.
During his comments on Friday, the president completely ignored Porter’s alleged victims and emphasized that he “says he’s innocent and you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent.”
Saturday morning, MSNBC host Alex Witt asked McEnany if she understands “why some people are upset at the president because he didn’t acknowledge the women or the abuse that they allegedly took.”
“Absolutely not,” McEnany replied. “This is a president that’s hired women at record rates, he appreciates women, he’s empowered them throughout his administration.”
Witt pushed back, pointing out that the rich asshole’s staffing decisions aside, “there seems to be a tone deafness” involved in responding to abuse allegations by praising the abuser and ignoring the victims.
Later, Witt brought up the broader context in which the president is defending an alleged abuser — the rich asshole himself denies each of the 14 sexual assault allegations against him, but has been recorded bragging about grabbing women by the genitals without their consent.
But McEnany disputed Witt’s contention that the Access Hollywood is evidence of the rich asshole admitting to wrongdoing.
“That was not an admission of anything, that was locker room talk,” McEnany said, alluding to the term the rich asshole used to dismiss the significance of the recording during the campaign
Witt closed by asking McEnany if she’s “comfortable with the tenor of the things that have been said and done by this president.”
“Just looking at the Access Hollywood tape — I mean, that is irrefutable, despite the fact that he tried to question whether or not it is a legitimate tape,” Witt added.
But McEnany wouldn’t budge. She again dismissed the tape as “words” that the rich asshole “apologized for,” before insisting that “this is a White House that stands with women, unmistakably.”
“I understand that people want to go back to the past and relitigate a campaign issue, but the fact is the American people elected some rich asshole as president of the United States and his administration has stood for women.”
A short time later, however, the rich asshole signaled that he believes the real victim in the Rob Porter scandal is Porter himself — not the women he allegedly abused.
the rich asshole questions lack of 'due process' after two aides resign over past allegations
BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 02/10/18 10:45 AM EST
President the rich asshole on Saturday raised questions about a lack of due process after two White House aides resigned this week following allegations of past domestic abuse.
"Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new," the rich asshole tweeted.
"There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?"
Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?
the rich asshole's comments come in the wake of former White House staff secretary Rob Porter resigning Wednesday after his two ex-wives came forward with allegations that he abused them physically and emotionally during their marriages.
The president on Friday praised Porter, saying he hopes the former aide has a "great career ahead of him." He also said Porter did a "very good job" during his time in the White House and highlighted that Porter "says he's innocent."
Critics of the president noted that the rich asshole failed to mention either of Porter's alleged victims in his statement. One of Porter's ex-wives provided media outlets with photos of herself with bruises she said were inflicted by Porter.
The Washington Post reported Friday that White House speechwriter David Sorensen had also resigned after his former wife said he was violent and emotionally abusive during their marriage. Sorensen denied the allegations, saying he was the abuse victim.
"Before we were contacted by the media, we learned last night that there were allegations. We immediately confronted the staffer, he denied the allegations and he resigned today," White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said in a statement.
The White House faced heavy criticism this week from Republicans and Democrats after it was reported that White House chief of staff John Kelly knew about Porter's allegations for months before they surfaced in the Daily Mail.
Kelly initially defended Porter before his resignation, but later said he was "shocked" by the allegations and insisted that there is "no place for domestic violence in our society."
Porter, meanwhile, has denied the allegations and claimed that he was the target of an "coordinated smear campaign" in a statement announcing his resignation Wednesday.
“These outrageous allegations are simply false. I took the photos given to the media nearly 15 years ago and the reality behind them is nowhere close to what is being described. I have been transparent and truthful about these vile claims, but I will not further engage publicly with a coordinated smear campaign,” Porter said.
— John Bowden contributed
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro blames Barack Obama for Rob Porter wife-beating scandal
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro (Screenshot)
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Fox News host Jeanine Pirro suggested that former President Barack Obama was to blame for the scandal surrounding ex-the rich asshole aide Rob Porter.
Porter never received full security clearance and was ousted from his position Thursday after reports surfaced that he physically abused two ex-wives. White House chief of staff John Kelly initially defended Porter as a “man of true integrity and honor.” But he later expressed shock at the allegations and reportedly forced him to resign.
According to Pirro, however, Kelly should not be blamed for the Porter scandal — but the previous president should.
“You want to stop a four-star general who is running the White House, who believes in chain of command, who makes a decision within forty minutes, because you hate President the rich asshole? Find another scapegoat. You might want to look at the last president,” she said.
Porter was hired as a White House staff secretary for the rich asshole on January 20, 2017 and reportedly had one of “the most important behind-the-scenes job in the administration.” He had previously worked for Republican senators.
She later interviewed Sebastian Gorka, a Fox News national security analyst and former deputy assistant to the rich asshole, who claimed that federal officials had conspired to bog down security reviews.
“If they want to gum up the works and make the rich asshole administration’s job harder and harder, they play bureaucratic slow rolls.”
“It might be a deliberate minefield put in place where they know somebody like this has skeletons in their closet and they slow roll everything to make things like this explode a few months later,” Gorka told Pirro.
the rich asshole’s ambassador to Israel flips out on Haaretz newspaper
US ambassador David Friedman visits the Western Wall in the old city of Jerusalem on May 15, 2017 (AFP Photo/Menahem KAHANA)
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The American ambassador to Israel attacked an Israeli leftwing newspaper Friday, questioning whether it had any “dignity” after a vitriolic column.
The quarrel erupted after Haaretz newspaper criticised US Ambassador David Friedman, personally selected by President some rich asshole, for his support of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In the wake of the murder of an Israeli rabbi and father of four from the Har Bracha settlement on Monday, Friedman tweeted that he had provided an ambulance for the community 20 years ago.
Friedman then criticised Palestinian “leaders” for praising the killing, although Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said nothing about it.
In response Haaretz, which opposes settlement building in the Palestinian territories, ran a column by commentator Gideon Levy saying that “with Friedman’s ambulance or without it, Har Bracha (literally, ‘Mountain of Blessing’) is a mountain of curses.”
It accused Friedman, who was the rich asshole’s personal lawyer before being confirmed as ambassador in May 2017, of “encouraging and funding war crimes and violations of international law”.
“What has become of .@Haaretz ? Four young children are sitting shiva (mourning) for their murdered father and this publication calls their community a ‘mountain of curses.’ Have they no decency?” Friedman tweeted on Friday.
In a reply on Twitter, Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken said on Twitter that “Gideon Levy is right” and that the US administration’s support for Israel and its settlement policies was causing bloodshed.
“As long as the policy of Israel that your Government and yourself support is obstructing (the) peace process, practical annexation of the territories, perpetuating apartheid, fighting terror but willing to pay its price, there will be more Shivas,” Schocken wrote.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem that are considered illegal under international law.
Relations between Washington and the Palestinians have been severely strained since the rich asshole’s December decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy there.
In remarks published Friday, the rich asshole called the Jerusalem move “a very big point” in his first year as president.
Speaking to the Israel Hayom daily, the rich asshole said that both Israel and the Palestinians “will have to make hard compromises to reach a peace agreement.”
the rich asshole’s selective outrage about ‘due process’ is hard to miss
the rich asshole worries about the damage allegations of abuse can do to men, but he has no problem recklessly declaring many others guilty.
President the rich asshole kicked off Saturday morning with a series of tweets on his favorite subjects — taking credit for low unemployment rates in the U.S., slamming the FBI’s investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 elections, and defending abusive men.
No doubt alluding to the two now-booted White House staffers accused of domestic abuse — White House Secretary Rob Porter and speechwriter David Sorensen — the president lamented the travesty of justice that would force a man like Porter (accused by his ex-wives of being physically, verbally and psychologically abusive) out of a job:
the rich asshole’s defense of men accused of abuse is nothing new: He stood by Roy Moore, the Alabama judge accused by a number of women of sexual abuse against them when they were teenagers and Moore was in his 30s.
He called Roger Ailes, former (and now deceased) head of Fox News accused by several women of sexual harassment and forced to step down from his position in disgrace, a “very, very good person.”
Indeed, he has defended Mike Tyson (who served time for a rape charge), calling his conviction a “travesty,” and said he felt that Fox host Bill O’Reilly, who has a decades-long record of sexually harassing women and settling out of court, had “done nothing wrong.”
Twitter noticed.
What do Rob Porter, Roy Moore, Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, and Mike Tyson have in common?
They're all accused (or convicted) abusers.
They all have a defender in the White House.
shareblue.com/trump-unleashe…
Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?
TRUMP: False allegations are dangerous.
ALSO TRUMP: Obama is a foreigner. Central Park Five are guilty. Rafael Cruz killed JFK. Judge Curiel can’t be fair because he’s Mexican. Gold Star widow Myeshia Johnson lied about our phone call. People who didn’t applaud committed treason
That the president, himself accused of sexual misconduct by no fewer of 14 women, shows no empathy for the women who find themselves in the position to speak out against the men they say have beaten, raped, and otherwise abused them is perhaps not so surprising.
What is remarkable is his call for due process for a very specific subset of people, and not say, Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 elections against whom his supporters chanted “lock her up” (even though she was never charged with anything).
Even when people go through some kind of due process and are found to be innocent, such as the Central Park Five (five men convicted of a rape in 1989 who were ultimately exonerated by DNA evidence) the rich asshole considers them guilty. After another man confessed to the crime, the men settled with the state of New York for $41 million, and this was something the rich asshole found unacceptable.
In 1990, the rich asshole went as far as to take out a full-page ad calling for the state to reinstate the death penalty, insisting that the Central Park Five were guilty.
the rich asshole also considers most Muslims, refugees, and migrants from Central America criminals, and wants to either keep them out of the U.S. or deport them.
He’s often referred to those who protest against him as “thugs” even when they’ve not broken any laws.
He extends his harsh judgement on refugees in other countries too, such as the ones detained by Australia on offshore prisons.
the rich asshole told Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull: “I guarantee you they [the refugees] are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.” None of these refugees has been charged with a crime in Australia, stood trial nor been locked up for any reason other than the fact that they arrived on the country’s shores by irregular means.
“Indians are less than 1% of the population. Yet images and names of Indians are everywhere. How is it that Indians can be so present and so absent in American life?”
This is the question posed by Americans, a new exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, exploring how Native Americans have been central to America’s sense of itself even as they were systematically persecuted, marginalised and erased.
The myth-busting show contains an array of nearly 300 objects and images of Indians and Indian stereotypes. They include a Tomahawk flight-test missile, a 1948 Indian Chief motorcycle, a Washington Redskins football team baby blanket, photos of presidents and celebrities wearing feather headdresses, footage from westerns and scale models of Chinook, Kiowa and Apache Longbow helicopters.
Americans was conceived during Barack Obama’s presidency but arrives in the shadow of some rich asshole. Many Native American activists praised Obama for doing more than any other US president to recognise their grievances, including the government’s historical neglect of treaty obligations. the rich asshole’s biggest impression so far, as a bang-up-to-date digital display acknowledges, is using the term “Pocahontas” to insult Senator Elizabeth Warren over her claims to Cherokee ancestry.
But even as Native Americans find their rights under renewed threat, for example from the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines, their cultural voice is growing stronger. Last month the Cleveland Indians baseball team announced that they will drop the red-faced Chief Wahoo caricature from their uniforms next year, bowing to decades of complaints. One of Washington’s leading theatres is staging Sovereignty, a new play that incorporates Cherokee language and is written by Mary Kathryn Nagle, a playwright, lawyer and citizen of Cherokee nation.
Speaking on a panel with the author and cast on the first day of rehearsal, Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage, said: “I have to tell you there’s a big upswing in Native American plays being produced around the country. It is your time. So it’s pretty thrilling that this voice is now being heard.”
She added: “I think it’s a big part of our national shame that a lot of these stories have not only not been uncovered but that there has never been a real apology to Native Americans here in our country for what happened.” Until the stories are uncovered, she added, there will be no change.
The play darts back and forth between the 1830s and near future with characters including President Andrew Jackson, who signed the Indian Removal Act and whose portrait now hangs in the Oval Office, and a violent drunkard wearing a “the rich asshole” T-shirt.
Kyla Garcia, who plays a character based on Nagle, recalled an incident in which the rich asshole branded Warren “Pocahontas” during a White House ceremony honouring Navajo code talkers, who served in the Marines during the second world war and used the Navajo language to transmit encoded information.
“It just inspired me with fury,” Garcia said during the panel discussion. “Because it solidified even more why we’re telling this story and why we’re up here. Because for that to be happening and for people not to know the history behind that: there were some people who didn’t even realise Andrew Jackson was in the back in that moment, and what that means.
“So to be at the forefront of these kinds of stories right now I feel is the most sincere form of activism I can do and that makes it an absolute honour and privilege to be telling this story, and to be educating people as I go. When people say, ‘What are you working on?’, I’m like: ‘You have a minute?’”
The backdrop to Sovereignty is Jackson’s refusal to enforce an 1832 supreme court decision to uphold the right of Cherokee nation to prosecute anyone who came on Cherokee lands and committed a crime. In 1978, the supreme court formally took that right away, ruling that tribal nations historically did not exercise criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians. Aware that tribal governments were now powerless to prosecute them, non-Indian offenders acted with impunity and violence against Native women soared.
Nagle writes in the programme notes: “Today Native women face rates of domestic violence and sexual assault higher than any other population in the United States. It took 140 years to full come into effect, but Andrew Jackson’s campaign to eliminate tribal jurisdiction has reaped devastating, life-and-death consequences for Native women.”
In an interview on Friday, Garcia, who has indigenous roots on her father’s side, added: “The experience of Native American women has been missing from the #MeToo movement when they suffer the highest rates of abuse. The only way to understand an epidemic is to acknowledge those who are most vulnerable.”
the rich asshole, she continued, is far from alone in his fundamental ignorance of Indians’ place in the American story. “The leader in office represents the majority of the American public. For him to make jokes about Pocahontas, all that tells me is he doesn’t understand history.”
Pocahontas has been portrayed and warped by popular culture, from a frieze in the rotunda of the US Capitol to Disney’s 1995 animated film, but the reality is less romantic, the Smithsonian display shows.
She was born in 1595 in what is now Virginia. Her father, Powhatan, was the leader of a powerful confederacy when, in 1607, a hundred Englishmen landed. The child Pocahontas impressed the English with her self-confidence and, in her teens, she brought food to save the settlers from starvation.
But Pocahontas was abducted by the colonists, learned English, converted to Christianity and married the tobacco planter John Rolfe. She travelled with him to London, where she was presented to society as a “civilised savage” and restored the confidence of English investors in the new colonies. She died young, aged only about 21.
Such was the cultural mythology around her that when Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, criminalising interracial marriage and requiring that every birth be recorded by race (“white” or “coloured”), it made exceptions for whites who proudly claimed Native ancestry from Pocahontas. In a startling example of humans’ capacity for hypocrisy, Native Americans themselves did not enjoy this privilege.
The museum also investigates the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which proposed that Indians living inside the country’s then boundaries should leave in return for payment and new land west of the Mississippi river. This was despite the US having made treaties with many Native nations in which it recognised their sovereign territories. One consequence was the forced relocation of about 16,000 Cherokees in 1838–39, which became known as the Trail of Tears.
Though Jackson signed the legislation with relish, he also reflected a school of thought that went all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, who referred in the Declaration of Independence to “merciless Indian savages” and has been dubbed “the founding father of Indian removal”. Overall, the vast, systematic campaign of forced displacement affected 67,000 Indians across the terms of nine presidents at a cost of $100m.
Cécile Ganteaume, associate curator at the museum, said: “It shows that Andrew Jackson wasn’t alone in his thinking. That’s why we wanted to contextualise the Indian Removal Act, which he signed. There were others and the country went into this with eyes wide open.”
The exhibition raises the question of why US popular culture regards Native Americans as authentically American yet simultaneously objectifies and exoticises them. Their image became fodder for advertising and supermarket products in the post-war consumer boom. They are everywhere and nowhere.
“Most Americans think they have nothing to do with American Indians and American Indians have nothing to do with them,” said Ganteaume. “We’re saying the exact opposite is true: they have a deeply entangled history.
“No other country in the world, as far as we know, is so fixated with one segment of the population that it is constantly creating representations of them. It’s a deep paradox: for Americans, American Indians are essential to their own sense of themselves, but while imagery of American Indians is everywhere, it’s a curtain to prevent Americans knowing who American Indians truly are.”
‘Ominous’: Law prof explains why DOJ’s latest abrupt resignation spells trouble for FBI’s the rich asshole-Russia investigation
some rich asshole speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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After Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, the third-highest-ranking official in the Department of Justice, abruptly resigned on Friday, professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law Steve Vladeck worried about President some rich asshole further attempting to obstruct justice in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Writing in a new opinion piece for NBC News, Prof. Vladeck analyzed how “Brand’s departure raises questions about who will succeed her and what her departure (and her replacement’s selection) might portend for the future of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
Associate AG Brand’s unique position within the Department of Justice, and the Vacancies Reform Act of 1988, may have significant ramifications.
“The reason why all of this matters is because the associate attorney general is the designated successor to the Justice Department’s second-highest ranking official, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. And it is Rosenstein, thanks to the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who authorized Mueller’s investigation in the first place — and who is the only government official with the legal authority to directly fire Mueller and otherwise terminate his investigation,” Prof. Vladeck explained. “In other words, Rosenstein is the crucial fulcrum between the political leadership of the the rich asshole administration and the quasi-independent special counsel. The president cannot directly interfere with the special counsel’s investigation without going through — or getting rid of — Rosenstein.”
“Thus, for those worried that the president might try to prevent the Russia investigation from running its course, Brand’s resignation reduces the number of Senate-confirmed officials who would have to agree with the president (or whom the president would have to fire) to bring about that result,” Prof. Vladeck concluded.
He noted, “the more officials who have to be forced out before the president can achieve a particular result, the greater the political costs. And so with every presumably voluntary departure of someone like Brand, the political costs of direct presidential interference with the Russia investigation may well go down.”
“But even if Brand’s departure ends up having no bearing on the Russia investigation, specifically, it’s still an ominous sign more generally,” Prof. Vladeck noted. “If someone as smart and accomplished as Brand came to the conclusion that the best way to protect her career was to leave the the rich asshole administration, one can only imagine — the Russia investigation aside — exactly what she is trying to protect her career from.”
On “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC Friday night, similar worries were also examined.
Watch:
CNN host shuts down Jack Kingston as he defends the rich asshole’s bullying with bizarre rant about Hillary on the Grammys
Jack Kingston (CNN)
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A former Republican congressman from Georgia was shut down on CNN after attacks on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during a bizarre defense of President some rich asshole’s authoritarianism.
“So some rich asshole’s presidency, it has some critics raising the question, ‘is our democracy in danger?’ Specifically Harvard professors who’ve studied democracies for decades, because they say the answer is yes,” CNN anchor Christi Paul explained.
The warning signs include weak commitment to democratic rules, denying the legitimacy of opponents, tolerates violence and is willing to curtail civil liberties.
“We wrote this book, How Democracies Die, inspired in part by the campaign and that checklist you just gave us, during the campaign season, he went after the media, he condoned violence at election rallies, he said he wouldn’t necessarily accept the results of the election,” Daniel Ziblatt, a professor of government at Harvard, explained.
“We — having looked around the world — this set off alarm bells for us, because we’ve seen when democracies die around the world, often political leaders come to power displaying these same tendencies,” Prof. Ziblatt continued.
“So Jack, do you see him edging toward demeaning democracy in some way? Or disintegrating it?” Paul asked former Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA), who served as a senior advisor to the rich asshole campaign.
“No, I don’t,” Kingston argued. “If you want to look at violence, why aren’t we looking at antifa, the violence of the resistance, who are denying the election results?”
“How come the conversations of eastern liberalism always conveniently leaves that out and then finds things about some rich asshole?” Kingston asked. “He is moving on, he has got a great cabinet, he has got a great agenda, and…”
“Wait a minute,” CNN anchor Victor Blackwell interrupted.
“I was going to let you run there, but to characterize the president as having moved on…moving on is not objectively the way to describe President the rich asshole’s view of his political opponents,” Blackwell fact-checked.
“She won’t go away,” Kingston claimed, referring to 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. “And neither will Joe Biden.”
“Joe Biden is out there now,” Kingston complained. “I mean, Hillary Clinton shows up at the Grammys reading a book.”
Kingston then went on to attack Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Prof. Ziblatt explained how Kingston’s tirade was exactly what political scientists would predict.
“The argument that we make in our book, is that when powerful politicians use this kind of rhetoric, it is dangerous on its own, but it also provokes a counter reaction,” Ziblatt explained. “We look around the world, when authoritarian leaders use this recipe, democratic opposition radicalizes and you get a kind of spiraling politics exactly the kind of thing Mr. Kingston is worried about.”
“This kind of polarized rhetoric that Mr. Kingston, frankly, is using is a predictable response to this kind of politics,” Ziblatt continued. “And the president has a particular moral responsibility to not engage in that kind of rhetoric.”
Watch:
The official tasked with overseeing train safety for millions of Americans resigned after he was caught taking in secret payments while on the government payroll, in violation of federal ethics guidelines.
The official handpicked by the rich asshole to oversee the safety of millions of railway passengers has been forced to resign in disgrace, highlighting once again the administration’s neglect of the federal government and its ongoing mismanagement of the public trust.
Heath Hall, acting head of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) resigned after reporters from Politico raised questions about him working as a public relations consultant while drawing a federal paycheck.
The Department of Transportation told the outlet that Hall’s resignation was “effective immediately.”
Hall is from Madison County, Mississippi, where he was working as a spokesman for a sheriff while also serving in his FRA role.
Hall — who owns a public relations and consulting firm in Madison County — pledged on a federal ethics form that the company would be “dormant” while he worked at the Department of Transportation. But as Politico noted, the firm took in payments from July to December of 2017.
The cavalier attitude towards ethics echoes the rich asshole himself, who has refused to divest from his company’s holdings. This has turned his properties into a dumping ground for influence peddlers and big business hoping to get the rich asshole to put his thumb on the scales on their behalf.
During the rich asshole’s first year in office, the FRA has not had a permanent leader. Hall was picked to be the deputy administrator of the agency in June 2017. He had a background in public relations, marketing, and ran for a congressional seat as a Republican in 1998 but was not successful.
The debacle comes just after three people were killed and 100 others were injured in an Amtrak crash in Washington state.
In addition to not filling positions at the industry overseeing rail safety, the rich asshole has been pushing to roll back or delay safety regulations.
Recently, the Transportation Department ruled that train cars transporting crude oil do not have to be outfitted with an electronic braking system. Regulations passed by the Obama administration had imposed the safety requirement. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) called the move “a senseless decision that endangers our communities by making oil by rail transportation less safe.”
the rich asshole has installed corrupt officials to oversee agencies with vital safety responsibilities, while working to undo existing safety regulations. Alone, both approaches are dangerous. Together, millions of lives will be at stake.
Dan Rather shreds the rich asshole using his ‘incredible cocoon of privilege’ to defend accused former White House wife beater
Dan Rather (Photo: screen capture)
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Broadcasting legend Dan Rather, the longtime anchor for the CBS Evening News, took to Facebook on Saturday to blast the “madness” in President some rich asshole’s White House.
“The Rob Porter wife beating scandal that has the White House under siege is a heat-seeking missile to the heart of many of President the rich asshole’s biggest fears and vulnerabilities,” Rather reported.
Rather said the scandal reminds everyone that “some rich asshole too has been credibly accused of assault (by multiple women)” and that “there have been several other people close to the rich asshole accused of sexual and physical assault.”
Rather served as White House correspondent for CBS News during President Richard Nixon’s Watergate era and covered four more presidents while anchoring the evening news.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was singled out for criticism.
“A chief of staff who was brought in to create order is now spreading chaos,” Rather observed. “some rich asshole’s vow to bring in only the ‘best people’ to work with him rings hollow, and the administration is having a tough time finding people to work in the White House.”
“Meanwhile the incredible cocoon of privilege and ego with which the President envelopes himself blinds him to the sheer horror of his statements in defense of Mr. Porter,” Rather noted. “What about the lives of these women? Have they not been ‘shattered and destroyed’?”
“some rich asshole once again proves he is indifferent to the fate of anyone other than himself,” Rather suggested.
“Debating whether credibly accused wife beaters should be allowed the honor (and that is what it is) to serve in the White House isn’t democracy. It’s madness – and a moment of sadness for the country,” Rather concluded.
‘Bullies, posers and bad boys’: the rich asshole’s ‘best people’ smacked down in scathing editorial
Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn looks at President-elect some rich asshole as he talks with the media at Mar-a-Lago estate where the rich asshole attends meetings, in Palm Beach, Florida, December 21, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
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Writing for CNN, Michael D’Antonio — author of the book “Never Enough: some rich asshole and the Pursuit of Success” — claims there should be no surprise at revelations that two White House staffers have been dismissed over credible allegations of sexual abuse in their pasts, saying those type of people appeal to President some rich asshole.
“It’s time to ask a simple question: How many appalling characters must be wrung out of the West Wing before we recognize that the problem is the man at the top, who sets the tone for the workplace culture?” D’Antonio began before adding the President’s comments on Porter manifest the long held belief that “Decades of this practice trained many people to accept ‘the rich asshole being the rich asshole,’ which meant they discounted his racist, sexist comments and tweets. More importantly, the more the rich asshole got away with his outrageous behavior, the more he came to regard this trait as something positive — and he brought into his inner circle men with the same bully-boy ways.”
“In staffing his campaign for president and later his administration, the rich asshole either attracted or sought out men with attitudes similar to his own. In this crowd it was okay to be overly aggressive, or burdened with a sketchy background, just as long as you were truly useful to the President and didn’t upstage him,” he continued before ticking off the rich asshole acolytes known of their bullying ways including, Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Sebastian Gorka.
And now Robert Porter has been exposed by a former wife who shared pictures of her bruised face and who was defended by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
“As sensible people responded with alarm to the news that the White House employed Porter even after red flags were raised about his past, Kelly defended him as “a man of true integrity and honor.” Kelly’s statement, and reports that he encouraged Porter to stay on the job, reveal the inclinations of a man ruled by attitude, not sober reflection. These actions also threatened Kelly’s own reputation,” D’Antonio wrote.
“Whether Kelly stays or goes, he is now yet another example of the toxic workplace culture created by some rich asshole, who clearly brought into his administration the kinds of men who make him feel at ease<" he continued. "the rich asshole has a lifelong record of bullying, aggression, lying, and extremism. (He is, remember, the man who joked about sexually assaulting women on the infamous 'Access Hollywood' tape.) The six men noted above, and a host of other figures in the administration, have come out of the rich asshole mold and proven incapable of better." You can read the whole commentary here
Mike Pence's snub of South Korea at the opening ceremony of the Olympics is an example of how the rich asshole has fouled up diplomacy in the region and endangered the world.
After over a year in office, the rich asshole still does not have a permanent American ambassador in South Korea. The failure to have an official representative working with one of America’s closest allies was on full display during Mike Pence’s visit to the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
North Korea’s flirtation with nuclear weapons, combined with the autocratic regime’s repeated threats to the free world, would on its surface appear to be a diplomatic priority for America. But then the rich asshole administration, after installing Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, has made clear that international diplomacy is not on its priority list.
Diplomatic posts remain unfilled after the rich asshole’s first year, including the key position of ambassador to South Korea. This vacancy has become even more glaring as the Olympics have gotten underway.
At the VIP reception before the games, Pence showed up late, and there was no seat available for him even though he was supposed to have dinner with the American athletes. Instead, Pence had to awkwardly walk around the table to greet and shake hands with others in attendance.
This led him to skip Kim Yong-nam, the sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. She was seated between United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and International Olympic Committee chairman Thomas Bach.
An ambassador would traditionally have made advance preparations for a vice president’s seating arrangements, as well as working out diplomatic meeting protocol.
Washington Post Tokyo bureau chief Anna Fifield described the dinner as a “major screw-up.”
And the problems continued from there.
At the opening ceremony, the delegations for North and South Korea entered the stadium together, echoing South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s statement that he wants an “Olympic games of peace.”
But in the audience, Pence did not applaud or stand when the team entered, despite the close relations between America and South Korea. The Associated Press described Pence’s demeanor as “stone-faced.”
“Asia experts said the vice president’s refusal to stand could be seen as disrespectful to the hosts,” the report noted.
The missteps at the games follow the rich asshole’s State of the Union address, where he highlighted North Korean defector Ji Seong-ho, who sat in the first lady’s box. The Washington Post reports that South Korean diplomats were “blindsided” by the moment, and had not been given any warning that it was happening.
It is viewed by some as an action that harms diplomatic efforts by America and South Korea in the region, enhancing the nuclear threat instead of defusing it.
the rich asshole’s antagonistic and childish behavior — such as calling Kim Jong-un “rocket man” — certainly do not help, either.
Global security relies on serious diplomacy and leadership from America in dealing with North and South Korea. The rich asshole administration is putting America’s ally in danger thanks to their negligence, and it is making the entire world more unsafe.
the rich asshole is now using the length of the Democratic memo debunking his Russia cover up as an excuse to block its release. It is only 10 pages long.
In his latest excuse for blocking its release, some rich asshole is claiming that the 10-page Democratic memo rebutting the Republican Party’s spin on the Russia investigation is too long.
In a tweet posted Saturday morning, the rich asshole said the Democratic memo was “very political and long,” concluding that it was part of a plan to force his hand by including “sources and methods (and more)” so “they would blame the White House for lack of transparency.”
The excuse is just the latest in a series of moves orchestrated by the rich asshole to block the release of the document, while the partisan memo authored by his supporter Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) continues to be laughed at.
The rich asshole complaint also highlights recent reporting that has revealed the rich asshole can’t focus long enough on serious intelligence briefings that are being delivered to him.
The Washington Post reported that intelligence agencies are concerned that the rich asshole can’t focus on written briefings and is instead having oral summaries delivered to him every two to three days.
According to the Post, the rich asshole keeps bringing up his tweets as a topic of discussion with his briefers.
It is no wonder, then, that a 10-page memo feels like “War and Peace” to him.
the rich asshole’s tweet also unintentionally indicts his fellow Republicans in this conspiracy. The House Intelligence Committee, which is led by Republicans in the majority, voted unanimously for the release of the memo.
Does his opposition to the release mean that Republicans — who have been working on the committee to cover up for him — are also against him?
His flawed argument echoes a line of attack that has been promoted on Fox News for the past week: that the Democratic memo is a poison-pill document. Yet the rich asshole and fellow Republicans were happy to release the Republican memo, even as the FBI warned against its release.
The excuse-making is piling up and none of it makes sense. At the end of the day, this is nothing more than a toxic conspiracy theory intended to distract from the Russia investigation while the rich asshole continues to endanger national security with his infamously inattentive personality.
The longer the rich asshole drags out his fight to block the Democratic memo, the more people will question why he is trying so hard to conceal it.
The White House’s announcement on Friday that it would block the release of a Democratic rebuttal to the GOP memo it declassified last week was met with suspicion, as many lawmakers questioned what the rich asshole may be trying to hide by keeping the memo out of public view.
If the rich asshole is, indeed, trying to hide something, then his plan appears to have backfired spectacularly.
Almost immediately after the White House made its announcement on Friday evening, Google searches for the phrase “Democratic memo” spiked to a new high, reflecting a surge of interest in the topic.
The Associated Press reported on the announcement at 7:49 PM. Within the next 11 minutes, interest in the Democratic memo reached “peak popularity,” as indicated by a value of 100 on Google Trends’ search monitor, which tracks patterns in Google searches over time.
the rich asshole appears to have triggered a phenomenon known as the Streisand effect, which describes a scenario in which an effort to hide or censor a piece of information backfires and ends up publicizing the information more widely.
As Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer noted in a statement on Friday, the rich asshole’s move to block the release of the Democratic memo only made people more interested in seeing it.
“Millions of Americans are asking one simple question: What is he hiding?” Schumer said.
Unfortunately for the rich asshole, the Streisand effect only increases in intensity with further efforts to suppress information. The longer he drags out his fight to block the Democratic memo, the more people will question why he is trying so hard to conceal it.
the rich asshole Twitter-rages at Democrats over ‘transparency’ after he withholds memo critical of Nunes document
President some rich asshole gives speech about Jerusalem (Screen capture)
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Writing on Twitter Saturday morning, President some rich asshole blamed Democrats for his decision to withhold a memo that would be critical of a similar memo that was issued by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).
Late Friday night, the White House announced that the president would not sign off on releasing the memo created by Democratic members of the House Intel committee.
Saturday morning the rich asshole blamed the Democrats for his decision, writing, “The Democrats sent a very political and long response memo which they knew, because of sources and methods (and more), would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency. Told them to re-do and send back in proper form!”
You can see the tweet below:
‘If you hate Kelly, this is your moment’: White House insiders using chaos over Porter to oust the rich asshole chief of staff
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (Screen capture)
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President some rich asshole’s chaotic administration ended a “very turbulent” week in the White House, The Washington Post reported.
As Chief of Staff John Kelly has been “frantically trying to stop the bleeding” one West Wing staffer told The Post. “People are using it to their advantage,” an aide said. “If you hate Kelly, this is your moment.”
The chaos comes after six top administration officials left the rich asshole’s executive branch last week.
White House communications director Hope Hicks is also the target of renewed rivalries.
“Hope’s enemies are using it to go after her,” the West Wing aide continued.
There may be more vacancies to come as intra-staff fighting continues to rattle the administration.
MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace, who was White House communications director during the George W. Bush administration, wondered aloud on Friday why women in the administration don’t walk out.
“Where are the women?” Wallace asked.
“Where are the women in the White House, why don’t they walk out en masse?” she continued.
“Why don’t you walk out?” Wallace wondered. “Why don’t they leave?”
Chief of Staff Kelly reportedly offered to resign in response to the Rob Porter fallout. Kelly has also been accused of peddling a bogus story about Kelly’s role in overseeing Porter following long-standing domestic abuse allegations.
“Officials described Kelly as more endangered than Hicks, adding that the chief of staff had lost the trust and confidence of some on the senior staff,” The Post explained. “But advisers said they saw no evidence that the rich asshole was preparing to oust Kelly imminently; one of them suggested the president may try to publicly torment him for a while, which is the style of punishment he has given other aides when he is unsatisfied with their performances.”
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and businessman Thomas J. Barrack Jr. have all been mentioned as possible replacements for Kelly.
“The president has complete confidence in General Kelly and Hope Hicks,” the White House claimed in a statement.
Watch:
Defending accused abusers is the norm for the rich asshole.
the rich asshole took to Twitter Saturday morning to once again defend an accused abuser.
A day after the second White House aide in one week resigned amid allegations of domestic abuse, the rich asshole tweeted his concern about the accused — and remained silent on the plight of their alleged victims.
“Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new,” the rich asshole tweeted.
“There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”
This follows the rich asshole’s full-throated defense of former White House aide Rob Porter, who resigned this week amid allegations of verbal and physical abuse — including photographic evidence — from two ex-wives and one ex-girlfriend. According to the Daily Beast, the rich asshole has also privately expressed doubts about Porter’s accusers, despite seeing a picture of Porter’s wife with a black eye.
This is the disturbing norm for the rich asshole, who has repeatedly defended accused abusers while casting their alleged victims as liars.
Most recently, the rich asshole lined up behind accused serial child molester Roy Moore, who lost his bid for a Senate seat after the citizens of Alabama rejected him.
He has also publicly defended former Fox News chief Roger Ailes and former Fox host Bill O’Reilly against allegations of sexual harassment, and called Mike Tyson the victim after the former boxer was convicted of rape.
Of course, the rich asshole has his own reasons for defending alleged abusers and accusing their victims of lying: 19 different women have accused him of sexual misconduct, and the official position of the White House is that all of those women are completely making up their stories.
Thus the rich asshole’s immediate defense of other men accused of similar behavior is not surprising — but it is repugnant all the same.
‘Obstruction of justice’: the rich asshole faces heavy criticism for breaking promise to release Dem memo
The Democratic memo is "very political and long," the rich asshole says.
On Saturday morning, President the rich asshole accused Democrats of drafting a rebuttal to the Nunes memo that is too political, too long, and too sensitive that it would force him not to release it.
Describing the 10-page Democratic memo, the rich asshole tweeted: “The Democrats sent a very political and long response memo which they knew, because of sources and methods (and more), would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency. Told them to re-do and send back in proper form!”
The president’s reaction comes after the White House announced Friday night that it would not be immediately releasing the Democratic memo, which was drafted as a response to a Republican memo that uses misleading information to suggest that the FBI’s investigation into the rich asshole campaign is rooted in political bias.
The news was met immediately with harsh criticism and accusations of double-standards. the rich asshole’s decision not to release the Democratic memo been described by Senate Democrats as “evidence of obstruction of justice” and “a stunningly brazen attempt to cover up the truth.”
This political ploy reveals the White House’s one-sided transparency. But the public sees through it - the #NunesMemo fell with a deafening thud.
Refusal to release Democratic response to #NunesMemo - evidence of obstruction of justice by Donald Trump happening in real time.
According to a letter by White House counsel Donald McGahn, the reason for not releasing the Democrat’s memo was because it “contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages.” The memo has been sent back to the House Intelligence Committee for revisions.
While the rich asshole claims that the Democratic memo is “very political,” the House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously on February 5 to release it. In fact, earlier on Friday the rich asshole promised to release the memo.
“It’s gonna be released soon,” he told reporters. “We’re going to release a letter.”
The contradicting treatment of the GOP’s and the Democratic memo comes despite repeated promises by the White House to treat the two memos equally.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders assured everyone on February 6 that, “As stated many times, the administration will follow the same process and procedure with this memorandum from the minority as it did last week, when it received the memorandum from the majority.”
But the White House didn’t follow through on those words.
After ignoring urging of FBI & DOJ not to release misleading Nunes memo because it omits material facts, @POTUS now expresses concerns over sharing precisely those facts with public and seeks to send it back to the same Majority that produced the flawed Nunes memo to begin with:
The decision to release the Republican memo on January 29 was taken despite the FBI’s taking the unusual step of expressing “grave concerns” about the misleading nature of the memo, which it said left out key facts. The Department of Justice warned House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes (R-VA) that releasing the memo without review by law enforcement would be “extraordinarily reckless.”
In response to the rich asshole’s decision, Sen. Mark Warner (VA), a top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted: “The fact that the President is only interested in ‘transparency’ when he thinks it ‘totally vindicates the rich asshole’ speaks volumes.”
In a statement, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the rich asshole’s decision to block the release of the Democrat’s memo “is a stunningly brazen attempt to cover up the truth about the rich asshole-Russia scandal from the American people.”
The decision is “part of a dangerous and desperate pattern of cover-up on the part of the President,” she added. “Clearly, the President has something to hide.”
Republicans have devised a new sinister way to cut Social Security
Ivanka the rich asshole speaking to Dr. Oz (Photo: Screen capture)
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They’re a cunning lot, these elected Republican officials. In their latest plot to revoke the fundamental benefits that have saved millions of seniors from falling into poverty, Republicans are now looking for ways to bribe Americans into forgoing their government-guaranteed retirement security.
Case in point: Ivanka the rich asshole and Marco Rubio recently unveiled their plan to provide parental leave to Americans who choose to postpone retirement age and forgo Social Security payments. It’s a clear attempt to chip away at Social Security, a long-standing target of the GOP.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, expressed dismay with the plan, saying, “It’s well past time for our country to join the rest of the world in providing workers with paid family and medical leave. But we should not undermine our retirement security to achieve it.”
This isn’t the first time Republicans have suggested Americans cut into their future Social Security benefits to pay for immediate needs. Rep. Tom Garrett’s similarly ridiculous proposal to “solve” the student debt crisis would allow young people struggling with college loan debt to stall their Social Security benefits until later on in life in exchange for loan forgiveness.
Progressives were outraged when Garrett announced his plan. Melissa Byrne, a former Bernie Sanders staffer and candidate for DNC vice-chair, told AlterNet, “Rep. Garrett’s plan is simply a fancy fraud on young people trying to start their lives….Social Security is a promise and no one should be able to limit that promise.”
The Garrett plan and the Ivanka-Rubio scheme are clearly linked. Social Security advocates have noticed that while Republicans are perfectly happy to continue direct attacks on Medicare, they’ve learned that Social Security will be much harder to dismantle, given its popularity. But that doesn’t mean they’re giving up their crusade. They’ve just found a new strategy: manipulating people into giving up their benefits in exchange for basic rights they should already have as workers.
Altman echoes this in a statement for AlterNet: “Proposing to cut an individual’s Social Security in exchange for other benefits is a new tactic in the ongoing Republican war on Social Security. Since the program is too popular for them to directly cut or privatize, they apparently are now testing a strategy of forcing people to choose between important economic needs. This involves treating Social Security like a piggy bank rather than the insurance that it is. The reality is that Americans should be able to educate themselves without incurring debt, take paid leave to care for children, and have a secure, adequate source of retirement income after a lifetime of contributing.”
Conservatives have openly admitted this change of tactic in their war against Social Security.
Carrie Lukas, who works for the Independent Women’s Forum, the Koch brothers-funded think tank that published the Ivanka-Rubio parental leave plan, recently wrote in an article for the Federalist that the plan is a first step toward privatizing Social Security. In her defense of the Ivanka-Rubio plan, she writes: “Encouraging people to think about Social Security’s assets as if those benefits are their property for use now or at retirement could even encourage people to want to move more in that direction and transform the current pay-as-you-go system into one that pre-funds future benefits and with assets that belong to individuals.”
The Johnson bill, a more traditional package of Republican Social Security cuts, was introduced in late 2016, but hasn’t made progress toward a vote. According to Social Security Works, this could be the reason the GOP is now experimenting with these dangerous new backdoor approaches. But a cut is a cut—don’t be fooled. There’s nothing generous or even fair about asking Americans to sacrifice their future security for the right to start a family or a career free of the burden of debt.
THE RICH ASSHOLE SOLD A $40 MILLION ESTATE TO A RUSSIAN OLIGARCH FOR $100 MILLION—AND A DEMOCRATIC SENATOR WANTS TO KNOW WHY
Kushner’s inability to get permanent security clearance is causing the White House serious headaches: report
Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to President some rich asshole. (DoD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro)
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President some rich asshole and White House counsel Don McGahn are growing increasingly irritated with the months-long inability for Jared Kushner to secure permanent security clearance, sources told The Boston Globe.
The Globe reported Friday that dozens of White House staffers still lack the necessary credentials to do the important work required of the president’s staff.
Typically, security clearance process can go on for several months because it requires in-person interviews and research. However, the current process has continued on far longer than expected.
Kushner and other close advisors have been permitted to see important materials in the daily briefing memos, despite the interim clearance levels. However, the problem is a source of ongoing consternation with the counsel’s office because other staffers’ investigations are dragging on as well. The counsel’s office has not gone to extreme lengths to expedite those and they fear they can’t do so because they didn’t accelerate Kushner’s.
when asked about it, deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley denied that characterization saying that the White House treats all security clearances “individually, neutrally and equally.”
“I have inquired and been told that there are a dozen or more people at Mr. Kushner’s level whose process is delayed like his; that it is not uncommon for this process to take this long in a new administration (some taking as long as two years); that Mr. Kushner’s will take longer than usual because of the extent of his holdings, travels and lengthy submissions; and that there was no concern about the process or Mr. Kushner’s ability to do his job. This is just the latest in unnamed sources quoting second-hand hearsay concerning Mr. Kushner that, like the others, will be shown to be untrue,” said Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell.
Due to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties to Russia and the possible collaboration between the rich asshole campaign and Russia, some believe Kushner will never receive permanent clearance status.
Genius Impersonators Show the rich asshole And A Dictator Acting Like Besties At Winter Olympics (IMAGES)
Everyone knows how much some rich asshole admires dictators like Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un. He is even going so far as to order the Pentagon to throw a grand military parade for him, and called the Democrats in Congress who didn’t clap at his State of the Union address “treasonous.” Yep, that is the stuff of dictatorships, not the United States of America. Well, it seems that a couple of people at the Winter Olympics in South Korea agree, because they turned up at the opening festivities in Pyeongchang dressed as the rich asshole and Kim Jong-un, and they were just as chummy as two peas in a pod.
The impersonations were very good, and thanks to Twitter, those of use who are not in South Korea right now get to see them. Here are just a few images:
Of course, the photos are hilarious, and we can all kick back and have a good laugh at the rich asshole’s expense. But the more sinister implications here cannot be ignored. America is sliding into authoritarianism as we speak. The fact that an American president can be compared to a literal murderous dictator and it isn’t seen as absolutely absurd should alarm everyone in this great nation, and indeed anyone who cares about the preservation of western democracy as we know it.
some rich asshole never wanted to be president. He wants to rule the world. There is a very big difference between serving one’s country and serving one’s own ego. the rich asshole is doing the latter. He has no respect for the rule of law, and regularly complains about the guardrails that are in place to restrain him. He will accept nothing less than complete and utter world domination. Nothing else will do.
So, yes, laugh at these impersonators, but also realize that what makes a joke work is the kernel of truth that is in there – and there’s way too much truth here for comfort.
JUST IN: the rich asshole Campaign Chair In Kentucky Pleads Guilty To Sex Trafficking Of Minors
A former Kentucky campaign official for some rich asshole pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of minors. Former Judge Tim Nolan, a former leader in the Tea Party movement, pleaded guilty to 21 counts against 19 victims and will face 20 yrs in prison for felony trafficking of a minor, felony inducing a minor to engage in sex, giving alcohol to a minor, sodomy in the third degree, unlawful transaction of controlled substance with minors under 16 and 18, and rape.
According to the charges read in court by Judge Kathleen Lape, Nolan, 71, used drugs, threats of arrest and threats of eviction to force women and girls under the age of 18 into sex acts.
Under the plea agreement, in addition to facing 20 years in prison, Nolan will pay a $110,000 fine. His attorney said he will be eligible for parole in four years. The judge is scheduled to sentence him on March 29.
After Nolan’s guilty plea, he thanked his attorneys, the judge and a doctor who was involved in his case “who made me realize things.” Nolan previously claimed to be innocent of all charges.
“Thank you, judge, for your tolerance in this case,” Nolan said.
It took 10 minutes for Judge Lape to read all of the counts to Nolan, who in turn pleaded guilty to each one.
Cincinnati.com reports:
“The case has shocked the region. Nolan served as a district judge in the late 1970s and early 1980s and had become a well-known political figure. He campaigned locally for President some rich asshole, was vocal on many conservative/tea party issues, and was elected to the Campbell County School Board in 2016.”
Nolan was appointed to chair the rich asshole’s electoral campaign in Kentucky’s Campbell County and was also involved in choosing local delegates tasked with casting votes at the July 2016 Republican presidential primary according to documents obtained by Reuters last year.
We can certainly see why Nolan worked so hard to elect some rich asshole, a man who admitted to being a sexual predator in the Hollywood Access video. At least 22 women have accused the rich asshole of sexual misconduct between the 1970s and 2013. Two the rich asshole officials have resigned in the last 24 hours over accusations of domestic violence. We see a pattern here
America shames the rich asshole for smearing domestic violence victims
FEBRUARY 10, 2018
Americans from all walks of life had a message for the rich asshole: You don't speak for us.
the rich asshole used his Twitter platform on Saturday morning to broadcast his support for alleged abusers and cast doubt on the credibility of their accusers, once again showing his willingness to defend the indefensible.
But as he expressed his sympathy for accused perpetrators of domestic violence, the American people had their own message for the rich asshole: You don’t speak for us.
From journalists and politicians to activists and everyday Americans, people took to social media to stand up to the rich asshole and speak out against his shameful behavior.
The backlash had been building all week, as more details were revealed about the administration’s failure to act upon discovering that then-White House aide Rob Porter had been accused of domestic abuse by two ex-wives and one ex-girlfriend. The allegations, which ranged from choking to punching in the face to shaking violently, were accompanied by extensive evidence, including a photograph of one of Porter’s ex-wives with a black eye that he reportedly gave her.
Despite the fact that the FBI had not approved Porter’s security clearance due to those allegations, the White House invited him in to work in the Oval Office and reportedly even let him review classified material. It was only when the allegations became public that the White House even acknowledged the issue.
But even after Porter resigned this week, the rich asshole continued to defend, praise, and express his support for the accused abuser.
“He says he’s innocent, and I think you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent, so you’ll have to talk to him about that,” the rich asshole said of Porter on Friday. “It’s obviously a tough time for him, he did a very good job when he was in the White House and we hope he has a wonderful career, and hopefully he will have a great career ahead of him.”
On Saturday, the rich asshole doubled down on his defense of accused abusers, lamenting that their lives were “shattered and destroyed” but making no mention of the impact on the lives of the women who allegedly endured their abuse.
the rich asshole’s comments drew swift backlash from all corners of social media.
“What an incredibly tone deaf, self serving statement to make at a time when #MeToo has exposed so many powerful men for their abuse of women & finally given voice to the thousands of female victims who endured it,” wrote CNN political commentator and Stand Up Republic board member Tara Setmayer. “Shame on the rich asshole.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper pushed back with a fact-check, highlighting the evidence that the rich asshole ignored:
In point of fact, 2 ex-wives talking on the record to journalists and to the FBI and one ex-girlfriend on background, with a photo of a black eye and a police report, is not “a mere allegation.” twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
Echoing Tapper’s sentiment, David Martosko, an editor for the Daily Mail — the publication that first reported on the allegations of abuse from Porter’s ex-wives — quoted the rich asshole’s tweet from Saturday morning and sarcastically pointed out what the rich asshole failed to mention:
I think he misspelled "restraining order and photos of a black eye" twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
Steve Chapman, a member of the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board, wrote in an editorial that the entire incident “confirms the rich asshole’s incompetence.”
Meanwhile, former New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman pointed out that the rich asshole’s defense of accused abusers — and his lack of concern for victims — is part of a broader pattern of behavior.
“The fact that [the rich asshole] praised Porter and said not a word about his abusive behavior or his former wives is typical of the WH attitude toward women and abuse,” Whitman tweeted. “Our children must learn a different lesson.”
Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, summed up the sentiment that so many American women are clearly feeling, warning the rich asshole that he would see it, too — on election day:
Donald Trump may be sad, but American women are MAD. You have no idea how mad. But you’ll see in 269 days. twitter.com/stevenportnoy/…
One of the most powerful responses came from Dan Rather, who wrote in a Facebook post that the rich asshole’s disgraceful behavior “proves he is indifferent to the fate of anyone other than himself”:
[T]he incredible cocoon of privilege and ego with which the President envelopes himself blinds him to the sheer horror of his statements in defense of Mr. Porter. He rails against the injustice of these “accusations” (this from a man who accused President Obama of being a foreigner). He talks about how “Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation” but says nothing about the WOMEN victims. What about the lives of these women? Have they not been “shattered and destroyed”? And what about the lives of all of the women (and men) suffering in domestic violence situations?some rich asshole once again proves he is indifferent to the fate of anyone other than himself. This is a low for this country that is nothing about politics. We can debate tax cuts and immigration policy and how we fund education. We can disagree about the size of our military or the best balance for protecting the environment. That is democracy.Debating whether credibly accused wife beaters should be allowed the honor (and that is what it is) to serve in the White House isn’t democracy. It’s madness – and a moment of sadness for the country.
the rich asshole’s comments come amid a culture shift in American society, with movements like #MeToo, #TimesUp, and #BelieveWomen sweeping across the nation and opening people’s eyes to the injustices suffered by victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
the rich asshole, however, is apparently too concerned with shielding himself from his own history of sexual assault accusations to notice, or to care.
That’s why people are standing up and speaking out — and although the rich asshole has the bully pulpit, Americans showed today that they have the stage.
White House taps interim replacement for aide accused of abuse
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 02/09/18 06:55 PM EST
The White House late Friday announced an interim replacement for a senior aide who resigned this week after being accused of spousal abuse.
Deputy staff secretary Derek Lyons will take over for Rob Porter, who resigned as White House staff secretary Wednesday after two of his ex-wives went on the record in multiple media outlets to accuse him of physical abuse.
As acting staff secretary, Lyons will be responsible for handling sensitive material and deciding, along with chief of staff John Kelly, what makes it to the president's desk for review.
The Porter controversy has consumed the White House, with Kelly under fire for initially defending Porter against the allegations and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders praising him from the briefing room this week even after pictures surfaced of one of Porter’s ex-wives with a black eye.
And there are questions about why Porter was granted a temporary security clearance to handle classified information after the FBI informed the White House about the allegations against him.
President the rich asshole spoke glowingly of Porter on Friday, telling reporters that “he worked very hard” and “we wish him well.” The president noted that Porter has denied the allegations.
"He says he's innocent, and I think you have to remember that,” the rich asshole said. “He said very strongly yesterday that he's innocent. So you'll have to talk to him about that. But we absolutely wish him well."
Friday’s announcement of Porter’s interim replacement came with a slew of other staff moves.
Kelly’s top aide, White House counsel Jim Carroll, who sources tell The Hill was involved in overseeing the security clearance process, will leave the West Wing to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
John DeStefano, the director of presidential personnel, has been promoted to assistant and counselor to the president.
Hogan Gidley, a deputy press secretary, will also serve as a special assistant to the president.
Ex-State Department official: the rich asshole may have helped Russia corrupt election — and ‘all Americans should be alarmed’
the rich asshole's relationship with Moscow has stalked the first year of his presidency, with key former aides under a US investigation for alleged collaboration with the Kremlin. (SPUTNIK/AFP / Mikhail KLIMENTYEV)
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Republican lawmakers are examining whether the State Department was involved the creation of a dossier alleging ties between the rich asshole campaign and Russia — but one of the figures now under investigation said the probe misses the point.
Jonathan Winer, a veteran State Department staffer, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post explaining that dossier author Christopher Steele and others probing those ties were genuinely concerned that the Republican presidential nominee had been compromised by a hostile foreign power.
“In the summer of 2016, Steele told me that he had learned of disturbing information regarding possible ties between some rich asshole, his campaign and senior Russian officials,” Winer wrote. “He did not provide details but made clear the information involved ‘active measures,’ a Soviet intelligence term for propaganda and related activities to influence events in other countries.”
He said Steele told him in September 2016 that his sources suggested the Kremlin had hacked the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, and also compromised the rich asshole and developed ties with his associates and campaign.
“In the 1990s, I was the senior official at the State Department responsible for combating transnational organized crime,” Winer said. “I became deeply concerned about Russian state operatives compromising and corrupting foreign political figures and businessmen from other countries. Their modus operandi was sexual entrapment and entrapment in too-good-to-be-true business deals.”
That’s exactly what Steele reported in his now-infamous dossier about the rich asshole and his associates, and Winer said he had trusted the former British spy’s findings after seeing his work in the 2010s after returning to the State Department.
Winer wrote up a two-page summary of Steele’s findings to show to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, and he spoke to old friend and longtime Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal — who had been hacked by Russia himself in 2013.
“While talking about that hacking, Blumenthal and I discussed Steele’s reports,” Winer said. “He showed me notes gathered by a journalist I did not know, Cody Shearer, that alleged the Russians had compromising information on the rich asshole of a sexual and financial nature. What struck me was how some of the material echoed Steele’s but appeared to involve different sources.”
He shared a copy of Shearer’s notes to Steele, who agreed the findings were similar but came from different sources, and the former British spy handed over that document to the FBI when asked to provide all the allegations against the rich asshole.
Winer said he was unable to determine whether the findings by Steele or Shearer were indeed accurate — but he said they were serious and alarming enough to warrant concern from everyone who saw them.
“I was alarmed at Russia’s role in the 2016 election, and so were U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials,” Winer said. “I believe all Americans should be alarmed — and united in the search for the truth about Russian interference in our democracy, and whether the rich asshole and his campaign had any part in it.”
One week after hyping the failed GOP memo, the White House, and much of the press, goes silent over the Democratic rebuttal.
One week after releasing its supposed blockbuster, “worse than Watergate” memo to smear the FBI that turned out to be an embarrassing dud, the rich asshole White House has gone quiet about the Democrats’ counter-memo.
Drafted in response to the GOP report, the new report will likely provide details debunking the Republicans’ failed effort last week to cast doubt on the FBI, and on special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigations.
The House Intelligence Committee, in a rare act of bipartisanship agreement, voted Monday to release the Democratic memo. But Republicans, led by committee chairman Devin Nunes of California, only did so after they released last week’s memo first, and without allowing Democrats to present their side in real time.
The memo was sent to the White House on Monday and, by law, the rich asshole has five days to review and decide whether to allow its release and, if so, whether to order parts of it redacted.
It’s the same review process that the rich asshole, touting “transparency,” used to release the Republican memo last week, which means it would be stunning if he blocked the Democratic report.
“Basic fairness” would dictate the rich asshole treat both documents similarly, CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin noted on Friday.
And according to a recent CNN report, “One White House aide told CNN there is an unspoken agreement that it will reflect poorly on the administration if the Republican memo gets released while the Democratic one does not.”
But the rich asshole often opts for the illogical and the unfair. And this White House constantly does things that “reflect poorly on the administration,” such as defend a wife-beater who works on staff without proper security clearance.
Note that the rich asshole released the GOP memo last week over the strong, public objection of the FBI, which warned that its omission made the documents incomplete. The bureau warned that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to make the memo public. The FBI has expressed no such reservations about the Democratic report.
In a strange way, the White House has benefited on the memo issue by a string of disastrous news stories — including a cratering stock market and the ethical collapse of the rich asshole’s chief of staff — that has shifted the media’s focus away from the crucial Democratic report.
Last Friday, the Republican memo was made public and widely derided as a GOP marketing flop. Then, early this week when the House voted to send the Democratic memo to the White House, the topic received urgent news coverage.
But not any more. And that could allow the rich asshole to refuse to release the memo at the end of the workweek and have it garner relatively little attention.
Earlier this week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wrote a letter to the rich asshole, insisting that if he does not release the Democrats’ memo, it “will confirm the American people’s worst fears that the release of Chairman Nunes’ memo was only intended to undermine Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation.”
For lots of Americans, that fear has already been confirmed.
the rich asshole decision on releasing Dem memo coming 'soon'
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 02/09/18 05:49 PM EST
President the rich asshole met with top law enforcement and legal officials on Friday ahead of a weekend deadline to release a classified Democratic memo that is meant to rebut a memo released last week by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.
The president met Friday with FBI Director Christopher Wray and top officials from the Justice Department, as well as the White House general counsel’s office to discuss declassifying the Democratic counter-memo.
The president met Friday with FBI Director Christopher Wray and top officials from the Justice Department, as well as the White House general counsel’s office to discuss declassifying the Democratic counter-memo.
“The president is weighing his options and will respond soon,” deputy press secretary Raj Shah said.
The president met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Tuesday to “discuss some of the differences” with the GOP document, the White House said earlier this week.
The president has until Saturday to block publication of the 10-page document, which the House Intelligence Committee voted to make public on Monday.
The White House declassified the GOP’s memo last week, which alleged that officials at the FBI and DOJ had abused their powers to spy on a rich asshole campaign official by hiding from surveillance courts their reliance on the so-called “Steele dossier,” which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The release of the GOP memo came over the objections of the FBI and the DOJ.
Democrats have said that the GOP memo is only the partial story and that their memo will prove that there were plenty of reasons to justify spying on the rich asshole campaign adviser Carter Page.
Furthermore, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, has said that claims that the FBI did not inform the surveillance court that the dossier was a political document “fails to provide vital context and information about that process.”
The president met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Tuesday to “discuss some of the differences” with the GOP document, the White House said earlier this week.
The president has until Saturday to block publication of the 10-page document, which the House Intelligence Committee voted to make public on Monday.
The White House declassified the GOP’s memo last week, which alleged that officials at the FBI and DOJ had abused their powers to spy on a rich asshole campaign official by hiding from surveillance courts their reliance on the so-called “Steele dossier,” which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The release of the GOP memo came over the objections of the FBI and the DOJ.
Democrats have said that the GOP memo is only the partial story and that their memo will prove that there were plenty of reasons to justify spying on the rich asshole campaign adviser Carter Page.
Furthermore, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, has said that claims that the FBI did not inform the surveillance court that the dossier was a political document “fails to provide vital context and information about that process.”
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