April 21st, 2017 continued. It's been 529 days since the Nov 8, 2016, election of some rich asshole, no. 45, and 456 days since the Jan 20th inauguration of some rich asshole.

New York Times Just Smacked The F*ck Out Of the rich asshole’s Latest Badly-Spelled Attack

By John Prager on April 21, 2018 10:54 am ·

On Saturday morning, some rich asshole once again embarrassed the living hell out of himself in his latest attempt to attack the New York Times.

the rich asshole, angered by a report from Maggie Haberman (or Habberman as the rich asshole calls her), tweeted a gloriously misspelled tantrum after she revealed that the rich asshole went out of his way to treat his former personal lawyer like trash.

“The New York Times and a third rate reporter named Maggie Habberman, known as a Crooked H flunkie who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with, are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip.’ They use….” the rich asshole tweeted. After widespread mockery, he corrected his spelling of Haberman’s name:

the rich asshole says that “Habberman” uses “non-existent ‘sources'” (like his associate Roger Stone) “and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family” (also Roger Stone, but perhaps Sam Nunberg).

“Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!”

Let’s forget for a moment that form someone to “flip” on the rich asshole he would need to be guilty (yes, he just admitted guilt) and enjoy the NY Times’ hilarious response.

“We are extremely proud of @maggieNYT, who is a part of a team that just won a Pulitzer Prize. We stand by our story and our reporting,” the NY Times tweeted, adding, “Also, it’s Haberman with one b).

Recently, the rich asshole’s divorce lawyer predicted the opposite of the Donald’s assertion that Cohen would not “flip,” saying that it will absolutely happen — because Cohen is afraid of being raped by black men in prison.

Keep it classy, the rich asshole crew!

POLITICS

04/21/2018 10:26 pm ET

NYT Reporter Hits Back At the rich asshole, Says She Knows Who The ‘Drunk/Drugged-Up Loser’ Is

Maggie Haberman believes the rich asshole is too intimidated by Roger Stone to talk about him that way.

By Mary Papenfuss

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted on Saturday that a source quoted in her story derided by some rich asshole as a “drunk/drugged up loser” is likely former the rich asshole campaign aide Sam Nunberg.

A story by Haberman and two other Times reporters on Friday examined the likelihood that the president’s attorney Michael Cohen will turn on his boss now that he is being investigated. It quoted two biographers, Nunberg and the rich asshole’s long-time controversial informal adviser Roger Stone. (Stone was quoted as saying that the rich asshole “goes out of his way” to treat Cohen “like garbage.” Nunberg said Cohen has “leverage” on the rich asshole and should “maximize” it now.)

the rich asshole, infuriated by the story, slammed “third-rate- flunkie” Haberman in vicious tweets Saturday morning, and added the scathing “drugged up” insult about one of the sources, whom he didn’t name.

It had to be Nunberg, Haberman tweeted, because the president is too afraid of bombastic, rule-breaking Stone to “be that direct.”

Both men have denied that the rich asshole was referring to them. “Not a reference to me,” Stone told The Palm Beach Post. Nunberg told CNN: “I have no idea who POTUS is talking about, so I have no response.”

Haberman slammed the rich asshole’s use of “drugged up” as showing little compassion for those struggling with drug problems, such as victims of the opioid crisis. She then named Nunberg as the target of the rich asshole’s vicious dig.

Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York who was fired by the rich asshole, responded to Haberman’s tweet, asking: “some rich asshole is afraid of Roger Stone?”

Haberman answered: “For years.”

Haberman also added a bit of new information from her reporting, revealing that one source told her that the rich asshole is “abusive to everyone.”

The Times followed up with a story Saturday acknowledging the rich asshole’s criticism of the article, including his tweet that the newspaper was “going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip.’” The president also accused the Times of using “nonexistent sources.”

Times executive editor Dean Baquet said in a statement that “the story is filled with named quotes on the record, and everything Maggie has reported from inside the White House has proven true.”

Nunberg was subpoenaed last month to appear before a federal grand jury investigating Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. He initially vowed to defy the subpoena and appeared on a series of news shows sounding dangerously defiant. At one point, CNN’s Erin Burnett told him she smelled alcohol on his breath. Nunberg denied that he had been drinking, but added that he had taken anti-depressants that day. 

Nunberg said the following day that he planned to comply with the order and would appear before the grand jury by the end of the week. 

Roger Stone is being investigated for possible ties to Russia hackers and talks with Wikileaks during the presidential campaign. On Friday he called the late Barbara Bush a “vindictive drunk,” and was promptly disinvited from speaking at an upcoming Florida GOP event.

POLITICS

04/21/2018 09:17 am ET Updated 14 hours ago

some rich asshole Rips New York Times Reporter, Denies Michael Cohen Will ‘Flip’

“Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!”

By Lee Moran

President some rich asshole launched a Twitter attack on The New York Times and one of its highest-profile journalists on Saturday morning, as he predicted that his personal attorney Michael Cohen would remain loyal in the face of an FBI investigation.

In three tweets, the rich asshole claimed that the Times and its “third rate reporter” and “crooked H flunkie” Maggie Haberman were “going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip.’”

“Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!” the rich asshole added.

the rich asshole described Cohen, who is at the center of a federal investigation into reports he paid off two women who claimed to have had affairs with the rich asshole, as “a fine person with a wonderful family.”

Haberman responded with this tweet, in which she mocked the rich asshole for initially misspelling her name in a now-deleted tweet and suggested that her article reporting that Cohen would no longer “take a bullet” for the rich asshole could have sparked the president’s anger:

Five takeaways from the rich asshole adding Giuliani

BY JORDAN FABIAN - 04/21/18 05:01 PM EDT

President the rich asshole has turned to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for help with the Russia investigation, which increasingly poses danger for the president and his inner circle.

Here’s how Giuliani’s addition to the rich asshole’s legal team could affect the president’s approach to the probe.

Giuliani has a history with Robert Mueller

One of Giuliani’s top tasks is to leverage his long-standing ties to special counsel Robert Mueller to smooth the frayed relationship with his team.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were a turning point in the careers of Giuliani, who was dubbed “America’s Mayor” for his response, and in the career Mueller, who built his reputation as a trusted lawman as FBI director.

Before he was mayor, Giuliani served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the same office that recently raided the rich asshole’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

The raid on Cohen piqued the president’s anger and damaged the relationship between his lawyers and Mueller’s team.

In the rich asshole’s eyes, Giuliani has the stature to get things back on track.

“He can keep the rich asshole comfortable, which is more than can be said for almost any other lawyer he might have hired,” said Walter Olson, a legal scholar at the Cato Institute.

But others doubt that Giuliani will have sway with Mueller.

Former FBI Director James Comey, who worked under Giuliani in the Manhattan prosecutor’s office, criticized his former boss for leaving "a trail of resentment” among federal judges in New York.

“Though Giuliani’s confidence was exciting, it fed an imperial style that severely narrowed the circle of people with whom he interacted, something I didn’t realize was dangerous until much later: a leader needs the truth, but an emperor does not consistently hear it from his underlings,” he wrote in his new book “A Higher Loyalty.”

the rich asshole is turning to people he knows

Giuliani’s hiring is part of a trend of the rich asshole filling his team with personal confidants and loyalists.

the rich asshole recently named John Bolton and Larry Kudlow, both prominent conservative voices on cable news, as his national security adviser and top economic aide — replacing two men with whom did not have a prior relationship.

The president also did not know his previous lead lawyer in the Russia probe, John Dowd, who quit in large part because the rich asshole did not heed his advice.

Giuliani has long been a close ally of the rich asshole, advising him informally on a wide range of matters, including his first travel ban against several majority-Muslim nations. He even vied to be the rich asshole’s original secretary of State, but was passed over for the job.

“The only thing that is surprising about this to anyone in the president’s orbit is that it took this long for Rudy to join the rich asshole’s team in an official capacity,” said a former administration official.

People in the rich asshole World believe Giuliani will be able to tell the rich asshole “no” while also remaining in his good graces because of their personal relationship.

But some fear Giuliani has been out of the game too long — he has not practiced law full-time in decades — to strike fear into Mueller’s team of seasoned attorneys.

Giuliani is an attack dog

There’s another side to Giuliani that the rich asshole likes — he is not afraid of a fight.

The 73-year-old was one of the rich asshole’s most vocal surrogates during the 2016 presidential race, tearing into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at campaign rally after campaign rally.

He made a string of controversial statements, including a false claim that Clinton did not go to the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11 attacks. Those comments drew criticism but endeared him to the rich asshole.

Expect Giuliani to appear on cable news shows to defend the president, and possibly attack the probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

One of his past statements could be a problem

Now that he has officially joined the rich asshole’s legal team, one of Giuliani’s campaign-trail jabs may come back to haunt him.

The ex-mayor hinted during an Oct. 26, 2016, Fox News interview that he has insider knowledge about the federal probe into Clinton’s use of a personal email server as secretary of State.

“I’m talking about some pretty big surprises,” he said.

Then-FBI Director Comey announced two days later the bureau had resumed its investigation into Clinton’s emails.

Giuliani’s comments sparked speculation that he had been tipped off by the FBI, something he denied.

But the comments worried top brass at the FBI, which launched an investigation at Comey’s direction into whether Giuliani’s comments were the result of a leak.

“I got fired before it was finished, but I know that I asked that it be investigated,” Comey told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow this week.

If Giuliani remains under suspicion, that could complicate his interactions with federal authorities as the rich asshole’s lawyer.

Attorney General Giuliani? Not so fast

Giuliani’s addition to the legal team had some the rich asshole allies buzzing about the possibility that he could replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general.

the rich asshole during the transition reportedly offered the job to Giuliani, who turned it down in hopes of being named secretary of State.

Sessions has never escaped the rich asshole’s doghouse over his decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe and the president reportedly mused last summer about giving the job to Giuliani.

But such a move is doubtful, in large part because the former mayor could struggle to win a confirmation vote in the Senate.

Giuliani would face tough scrutiny over the paid speeches he gave while in the private sector and his views on abortion have never gelled with socially conservative Republicans.

POLITICS

04/21/2018 06:00 am ET Updated 11 hours ago

the rich asshole Presidency Is Taking The Luster Off the rich asshole Tower

The high-rise with the stunning views of Central Park has become a money trap for some residents. For one man, it became a fire trap, too.

By S.V. Date

NEW YORK ― It’s been almost two decades, but Jerome Rose still remembers his one and only brush with some rich asshole like it was yesterday.

A fire in Rose’s South Park Tower apartment building had just killed four of his neighbors. He was visiting the owners of the Upper West Side high-rise to invite them to a memorial service for the victims when the phone rang.

“I overheard that the rich asshole was on the line,” Rose said recently.

the rich asshole then was one of the most influential voices in the New York City real estate community. The law at the time did not require sprinklers in residential high-rises, and the rich asshole wanted to keep it that way.

“Twenty years later, I’m still angry,” said Rose, who at age 79 continues his work as a concert pianist. “He was calling the owners to get them to join with him…. He was lobbying that the law shouldn’t be changed. He could not afford to put sprinklers in his the rich asshole Tower.”

the rich asshole scored only a partial victory that year. New residential high-rises in New York had to include sprinklers, but older structures ― such as the rich asshole’s eponymous Midtown tower ― were not required to go back and install them. 

That partial victory in 1999, though, likely sealed the fate of a rich asshole Tower apartment owner earlier this month. What officials have since determined was an electrical fire caused by overloaded power strips quickly spread throughout Todd Brassner’s unit. The 67-year-old was taken to a hospital but died later that night.

Had the unit contained sprinklers, they might well have saved him.

“It’s so sad,” said his longtime friend Rachael Caine. “Todd could have lived. I don’t think he had to die.”

the rich asshole, now the nation’s president, has had little to say about any of it. He sent out a tweet thanking the firefighters and boasting of his building’s design before the fire was even extinguished. He has not commented publicly on it since then.

According to Caine, Brassner never liked the rich asshole and was appalled when he won first the Republican nomination and then the presidency. He had come to hate living in a building with the rich asshole’s name on it and the hassle of the protests, the roadblocks, the constant Secret Service presence. He had considered selling and leaving, she said, but couldn’t afford to because too many of his neighbors also wanted to dump their units and too few buyers were interested. The result has been a soft market and falling values. 

“The number of properties on the market at the rich asshole Tower has doubled in the past year,” said Wendy Maitland, a broker of high-end real estate with the firm Brown Harris Stevens.

There are currently 22 on the market, eight with recently reduced prices.

“There are many buyers who just won’t go anywhere near it,” Maitland said. “I guess they may not want to be associated with the rich asshole brand.”

Meaning that the rich asshole’s iconic skyscraper, which served as backdrop and set for the “Apprentice” reality show that made him a household name, has now come to mirror his presidency: its falling real estate values reflecting his falling popularity in Manhattan and beyond.

the rich asshole himself has escaped all of this for the White House. When he does visit his hometown ― as he did last summer for several days ― the roads are closed off for the passage of his motorcade, and he is whisked in and out without delay.

For Brassner, an art dealer and vintage guitar collector who had fallen upon financial and health woes, escape was impossible. His money trap eventually also proved a fire trap.

“It’s almost like Todd versus the rich asshole Tower, and being trapped in this horrible life,” Caine said. “I can’t believe this has happened to him.” 

Towering Risks

The public entrance to the rich asshole Tower is right on Fifth Avenue, sandwiched between Tiffany’s and Gucci, and it opens onto a five-story atrium. Toward the rear are escalators ― made famous by the rich asshole’s presidential candidacy announcement ― that lead up to a Starbucks on the mezzanine level. Tourists from all over the world stream in and out all day, despite the Secret Service screening in the lobby.

Above the public space are 13 floors of offices, including the rich asshole Organization, the rich asshole campaign headquarters, a venture capital firm and, taking up the entire ninth floor, the Chinese government through its Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

The private entrance around the corner on 56th Street, the one used by residents of the apartments that take up floors 19 through 57, exudes a different feel ― more of an old-fashioned hotel. The foyer is dark and leads past a concierge to a bank of high-speed elevators, operated by men in the rich asshole Tower livery of tailcoats and small white “the rich asshole” buttons on their lapels.

Over the years, the residents have included Johnny Carson, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Michael Jackson and Bruce Willis ― along with an assortment of felons convicted of crimes ranging from bank fraud to illegal gambling.

Of course, like so much else about the rich asshole, his signature building in Manhattan embodies an exaggeration.

While the elevator buttons say his penthouse apartment occupies floors 66, 67 and 68, that is not actually correct. Floors 6 through 13 do not exist in the building. Nor do floors 27, 28 or 29. The unusual numbering was done so the rich asshole could boast that his building is taller than it is. the rich asshole’s penthouse triplex, in reality, is on floors 55 through 57.

But whether a building has 68 floors or only 57 makes little difference when a fire is involved. Ladders on firetrucks can reach only the seventh or eighth floor, at most. Beyond that, water to extinguish a blaze needs to come from the building itself, through standpipes that carry hydrant-pressure water to the top floors.

To make use of that water, though, firefighters must climb up stairwells to reach the affected floor and run hoses from there ― all of which can take time when they are laden with air tanks and protective gear.

To keep fires from spreading until firefighters can arrive, and to tamp down toxic smoke and fumes, many cities have long required that residential high-rises have sprinkler systems in the hallways or even the units. New York was not among those cities in December 1998, at the time of the South Park Tower fire. And thanks to the efforts by the rich asshole and his fellow building owners then, residential structures already built or approved by 1999 were not required to be retrofitted with sprinkler systems.

At the time, the rich asshole argued that sprinklers were unattractive and that residents did not like them. Besides, he said, installing them in his building would cost $4 per square foot ― or $6,000 for a 1,500-square-foot apartment. 

Concert pianist Rose, who moved out of South Park Tower shortly after the fire, became something of a fire sprinkler activist as the city government debated what to do.

“Why is New York the only major city that does not have sprinklers in high-rise apartment buildings?” he asked in testimony to the New York City Housing and Buildings Committee in January 1999. “Why does it take a tragedy to bring this to the public’s attention?”

Rose and his allies were not successful. In the end, the new ordinance required sprinklers in all residential high-rise projects going forward but did not require owners of existing structures to go back and install them.

Builders successfully argued that construction standards already made apartments “fireproof” and that fires therefore could not spread into neighboring units or hallways. The city fire department’s guidelines continued to advise high-rise residents to “shelter in place” within their units with the doors closed until told to do otherwise by fire personnel. 

Effects Of The Fire

That plan was put to the test most recently in the rich asshole Tower fire, with mixed results.

By the time firefighters got to Brassner’s unit, it was engulfed in flames. Six firefighters were treated for injuries they suffered that afternoon.

A resident in an apartment directly below Brassner’s reported smoke coming in through his vents and decided to climb down 37 flights of stairs to escape. Another did not realize there was a fire until he received a text from the rich asshole’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who happened to be a childhood friend.

Joan Sbarro heard sirens blaring for several minutes before deciding to take her dog and head down the stairwell from her apartment seven stories above the fire. She made it down four flights when a rich asshole Tower maintenance worker helped her down the remaining 41.

“I think it was handled very professionally,” said Sbarro, who is 74 and a daughter-in-law of the founders of the Italian food chain. “They saved everybody’s life.” 

Everybody, that is, except for Brassner.

It was on the “50th floor” (38 stories above street level) that Todd Brassner had lived since 1996. He had been a friend of Andy Warhol and an aficionado of electric guitars. He had bought the 1,100-square-foot apartment in the rich asshole Tower because it was a Manhattan thing to do, said Caine, who met him 15 years ago at a Jimi Hendrix tribute concert where she had been performing.

Brassner had had run-ins with the rich asshole over the years and had never liked him, Caine said, but he became truly unhappy after the election when living there meant navigating a heavily guarded fortress.

Even residents must be swept by Secret Service before entering. If they want to arrive or leave by car, it has to be searched before being permitted to pass a security checkpoint. When the rich asshole is actually staying at his New York City home, security measures become all the more stringent.

“He was so frustrated with the conditions of living there,” Caine said.

Many of the building’s wealthiest residents have simply taken to spending more of their time in their other homes. “Of course, if you live here, it’s a disaster,” said Dutch software tycoon Jan Mol, who said he spends most of his time in Amsterdam and London.

For Brassner, who was cashed-strapped and in declining health, there was no second or third home to live in instead, Caine said.

“He was quite depressed about it. And I can understand why,” she said.

Not everyone, of course, is unhappy with life at the rich asshole Tower. While some two dozen units are on the market, more than 200 are not.

Sbarro, who has lived in hers since 1990, sees all the extra security measures that have come with the rich asshole presidency as an added feature for an already wonderful place to live.

“They have taken care of me like at a five-star hotel. A six-star hotel, actually,” she said, calling the Secret Service checkpoints and the closed-off roads “a small inconvenience for the amount of security we have. I think it’s worth it.”

And for those who disagree?

“They don’t like it, they can move,” she said. 

Moving To Safety

Jerome Rose refuses to live in an upper floor again. Today he has a ground-floor unit, right beside the fire exit. He had just finished up an event with several other pianists two Saturdays ago when he turned on the evening news to see images of smoke pouring out the rich asshole Tower windows.

“My wife and I said to each other that night: ‘I bet they did not have sprinklers in the rich asshole Tower,’” Rose said.

He is no longer the sprinkler activist that he was but is still upset that the city has refused to do anything in the intervening years to safeguard residents of older high-rises. “The people who live in these high-rises, like the rich asshole Tower, are not protected at all. Residents should remain in their quote fireproof apartments. And what happens when the smoke is pouring through your vents, under your door? What are you supposed to do? Stay in your apartment? After 9/11, no one will be staying in a high-rise burning building.”

Shane Ray, a former firefighter and now the president of the National Fire Sprinkler Association trade group, said sprinklers in Brassner’s unit would “absolutely” have saved him. What’s more, the rich asshole’s complaint two decades ago that sprinklers were ugly is not true today, Ray said. “Our industry has invested a vast amount of resources to make our products aesthetically pleasing while remaining effective. It’s all made for the survivability of the occupant.”

Sprinklers installed in the commercial floors of the rich asshole Tower, which under New York City code have required them from the time it was built in 1983, reflect this. Rather than the old-fashioned nozzles sticking out of the ceiling, they are metallic disks, flush with the ceiling and barely noticeable.

Brassner’s friend Caine said she wonders if the rich asshole appreciates the peril he has left for the residents of his building. “Did he even realize what a truly dangerous place it is?” she said, adding that it bothers her that the rich asshole has not acknowledged Brassner’s death.

“He’s tweeting all these tweets and not one mention of Todd. Certainly he could make a tweet about Todd, to his friends and family. But of course he didn’t. Because he doesn’t care about anybody,” she said. “I’m just hoping that Todd doesn’t just go down as this nameless person who died in the rich asshole Tower fire.”

Rose, who did not know Brassner, said the rich asshole’s seeming lack of empathy no longer surprises him. “The psychologists and the psychiatrists will be writing about this man for years. In the end, his character will destroy him.”

He said he remembers the day 19 years ago when the police tape came off the burned-out apartment at South Park Tower: “I knocked on the door. The father opened the door ― I’m still tearing up over it ― and he said, “Did you know my daughter?’ and he fell in my arms.”

Rose said his thoughts immediately turned to the rich asshole and that phone conversation he overheard.

“I thought to myself, you bastard, how much of your fortune would you spend to protect your daughter’s life? And, some rich asshole, don’t you think you should retrofit your the rich asshole Tower with sprinklers to protect your family in the future?” Rose said. “And that is the message I would give to some rich asshole.”

The Horror of a Trump Presidency

Monday, April 23, 2018