the rich asshole confidante Roger Stone is campaigning for GOP brothel owner’s Nevada state legislature bid
Republican operative Roger Stone (Facebook)
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Self-styled fashion icon and some rich asshole confidante Roger Stone is hitting the campaign trail for a brothel owner running for a seat in Nevada’s state legislature.
The Nevada Independent reported Thursday that Stone is attending a campaign rally later in April for Dennis Hof, a man best known as the subject of HBO’s short-lived series Cathouse about his legal brothel empire.
Hof is running in a hotly-contested primary against incumbent Assemblyman James Oscarson, and invited supporters to “come see, meet and hear” the the rich asshole adviser at the Nugget Hotel and Casino in Sparks, Nevada.
Stone has himself been in the headlines over the past weeks after reports emerged that he told fellow the rich asshole campaign aide Sam Nunberg in a 2016 email that he dined with WikiLeaks Julian Assange — only to deny that the meeting occurred and claim it was a “joke.”
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April 5, 2018
With their tax scam predictably failing, the rich asshole and his fellow Republicans are focused on bashing immigrants in a misguided attempt to close the Democratic enthusiasm advantage.
Republicans, led by the rich asshole, are abandoning their efforts to talk about the failing tax scam, and instead focusing their rhetoric on attacking and denigrating immigrants.
Republicans are on the wrong side of the enthusiasm gap, and desperate to excite their base. With the tax scam punishing the middle class while rewarding Wall Street executives, Republicans are turning to the same, tired playbook of fear-mongering racism aimed primarily at immigrants.
Republicans in Congress made grand boasts during the rushed efforts to pass their tax scam. One of the most popular was some version of what Rep. Mimi Walters (R-CA) said: that the bill would “allow hard-working Americans to keep more of their paychecks.”
Since the bill went into effect, three national surveys have come to the same conclusion: The majority of Americans aren’t seeing bigger paychecks.
In March, CNBC noted workers “should be well enough into the year” to notice a change. “But that’s not the case.”
Workers are left behind, while Wall Street is showered with cash. “American companies have lavished Wall Street with $171 billion of stock buyback announcements so far this year,” according to analysis by research firm Birinyi Associates. Workers are ignored, but “that money is enriching hedge funds, other Wall Street investors” and top executives, says Axios.
While Republican donors on Wall Street are seeing billion-dollar kickbacks, House Speaker Paul Ryan spends his time bragging about a secretary receiving an additional $1.50 per week. Six quarters is technically change, but nowhere near what the GOP promised.
The dynamic should not come as a shock.
“Democratic lawmakers who have been critical of the GOP bill have claimed it would be used for such things as share buybacks to enrich shareholders, rather than for capital expenditures or improving worker pay,” CNBC correctly noted.
The tax bill was supposed to be the GOP’s main legislative accomplishment to carry them to victory in the 2018 midterms. At the time the bill was signed into law, there was general Republican euphoria.
“I don’t think I’m going to have to travel too much to sell it,” the rich asshole said. “I think it’s selling itself.”
But in reality, the tax scam is a lot like a the rich asshole business: lots of flashy noise, but ultimately doomed to failure.
In two of the most scrutinized bellwether elections, Republicans saw their economic message crash and burn in spectacular fashion.
In the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial election, establishment candidate Ed Gillespie initially“ emphasized a large, across-the-board tax cut.” But after a narrow primary victory against a far-right tea party activist, he abandoned efforts to center his campaign on economics.
The Washington Post bluntly said Gillespie’s campaign was not “just a dog whistle to the intolerant, racially resentful parts of the Republican base” but “a mating call.” He flooded the airwaves with fear-mongering ads “embracing President the rich asshole’s inflammatory political tone and tenor with an advertising campaign that equated illegal immigrants with gang violence.”
Even after neo-Nazis led their hate-filled rally in Charlottesville, which resulted in the death of counter-protestor Heather Heyer, Gillespie sought to solidify the “GOP base while at the same time courting white nationalists already energized by some rich asshole’s race-baiting.”
Gillespie lost by nine points in a race that was supposed to be a nail-biter.
A similar narrative played out in the Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, where Democrat Conor Lamb sought an unlikely win deep in the rich asshole country. Republicans blasted the airwaves with commercials touting their tax scam, confident the message would be successful in a district the rich asshole won by 20 percent.
But soon, they realized voters weren’t as enthusiastic as Koch-funded lobbyists who showered Congress with campaign donations to help pass the bill. Turns out a tax bill aimed to give benefits to the top 1 percent didn’t play well in suburban and rural Pennsylvania.
In a matter of weeks, ads from the GOP mentioning taxes dropped from 66 percent to a mere 14 percent.
“GOP groups that once proudly declared the tax law would be the central fight of the midterms are now airing ads on so-called sanctuary cities,” noted Politico as Election Day neared.
In a race where the rich asshole twice campaigned for the Republican candidate, it was no surprise the GOP turned to dog-whistle ads about immigration, similar to the ones used in Virginia.
But it failed in Pennsylvania too. Lamb defeated millions of dollars of race-baiting fear-mongering ads and is now the congressman for Pennsylvania’s 18th.
These two examples point to a larger narrative playing out among Republicans as the 2018 midterms quickly approach.
As the failure of the tax scam becomes increasingly evident, not only are Republicans shying away from talking about it, but Democrats like California Rep. Ted Lieu are bringing attention to its failure at town halls.
Meanwhile, the rich asshole administration has gone out of its way to sow racial tension and launch racist attacks on the immigrant community.
The Department of Justice sued California over sanctuary laws.
the rich asshole vehemently abandoned Dreamers, young people who were provided legal protections under DACA, many of whom know no other home.
The 2020 census will contain a citizenship question designed to undercount both documented and undocumented immigrants.
the rich asshole went on a bizarre racist rant about migrants marching in Mexico.
And now he is threatening to send the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border.
As if to foreshadow the coming campaign, the rich asshole couldn’t even get through his opening remarks at a tax scam forum before launching into an anti-immigrant rant, praising himself for calling Mexicans “rapists” to launch his presidential campaign.
With a failing economic message, Republicans have shown there is only one other page in their playbook: an increase in race-baiting rhetoric.
It was a failing message in Virginia. It was a failing message in Pennsylvania.
Maybe after a massive blue wave at the ballot box in November, Republicans will finally learn their lesson and abandon their hateful and divisive message.
the rich asshole decides to triple tariffs to $150 billion after China threatens to match with their own tariffs
Members of border security forces stand in front of a docking cargo ship at Qingdao port in Shandong province, China March 8, 2018. China Daily via REUTERS
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President some rich asshole said on Thursday he had instructed U.S. trade officials to consider $100 billion in additional tariffs on China, fueling an already heated trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies.
the rich asshole said in a statement the further tariffs were being considered “in light of China’s unfair retaliation” against earlier U.S. trade actions that included $50 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods.
He added that the U.S. Trade Representative had determined that China “has repeatedly engaged in practices to unfairly obtain America’s intellectual property.”
U.S. stock index futures fell in reaction to the rich asshole’s latest statement. Financial markets have swung wildly over the past few days in response to fears of escalating trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.
“Rather than remedy its misconduct, China has chosen to harm our farmers and manufacturers,” the rich asshole said.
The tariffs are aimed at forcing changes to Chinese government policies aimed at transferring U.S. intellectual property to Chinese companies.
The USTR’s “Section 301” investigation authorizing the tariffs alleges China has systematically sought to misappropriate U.S. intellectual property through joint venture requirements that often cannot be negotiated without technology transfers, something China denies.
The tariffs have stirred fears that the two countries will spiral into a trade war that will crush global growth.
The the rich asshole administration this week proposed 25 percent tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese industrial and other products. China shot back with a list of similar duties on American imports including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals.
The retaliatory tariffs have left Republican lawmakers from Western and Midwestern states fearful of a big hit to U.S. farming exporters.
Reporting by Eric Beech and Caren Bohan in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney
POLITICS
the rich asshole Lauds Tax Cuts On Road Trip As Most Americans Still Don’t See A Benefit
Recent polls show that majorities say they are not seeing higher paychecks from the new law.
WASHINGTON – President some rich asshole hit the road Thursday to once again tout benefits of the tax cuts he signed into law late last year ― even as most Americans continue to believe there aren’t any.
“Your taxes went down. They went down a lot,” the rich asshole told a handpicked crowd of supporters in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. “It’s a lot of money for a lot of people.”
Unfortunately for congressional Republicans facing re-election this November, the majority of workers are still not buying that story, a full two months after they were supposed to see increases in their paychecks.
A recent HuffPost/YouGov poll found that only 25 percent of respondents have seen increases in their after-tax paychecks. More than twice that many ― 60 percent ― said they had not.
Those results mirror numbers from a CNBC poll released a week earlier in March, which found that 32 percent of employees noticed an increase in their take-home pay, compared to 52 percent who had not. And of that 32 percent, just over one-third said the extra pay helped them “a great deal” or a “fair amount.”
the rich asshole, nevertheless, has worked with House and Senate Republican leaders to pitch the tax cuts ― the only significant piece of legislation to pass in his presidency’s first year ― as the foundation of their midterm campaign strategy. the rich asshole has already this year traveled to Pennsylvania, Missouri and Ohio to highlight the tax cuts.
On stage with him Thursday were local company leaders who have given employees pay raises or bonuses, as well as some families who have benefited from the tax cuts.
“I can tell you our people know that your tax cuts have made a difference,” said Terry Dotson, CEO of the truck dealership Worldwide Equipment. “I can tell you that it’s not crumbs to them when they can pay their car payments and invest in their children’s future.”
“Crumbs” referred to the criticism by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the tax plan would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest and that middle- and lower-income taxpayers would receive little.
“This was much more than just crumbs,” echoed Hugh Hitchcock, president of the Davis Trust community bank in nearby Elkins.
But an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center of the tax cuts’ effects on actual families shows that middle- and lower-income taxpayers are, in fact, getting a smaller benefit than high-income taxpayers ― both in terms of a percentage reduction as well as in total dollars.
The poorest fifth of taxpayers, those making about $25,000 a year and less, are getting on average a $40 tax cut for the year, according to the analysis, or 0.3 percent of after-tax income. The middle fifth are receiving $780 per year ― about $16 per week – or 1.4 percent of their income. That group’s income ranges from $49,000 a year to $86,000.
But those with incomes ranging from $308,000 to $733,000 a year will benefit the most, with an average tax cut of $11,200, or 3.4 percent of their after-tax income, the analysis found.
Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies, the Republican-leaning firm that co-conducted CNBC’s poll, acknowledged that his party is having a tough time making the tax-cut message resonate with voters.
“I’m not sure wage-earners knew when to look for the increase in their paychecks or had an idea how much the increase was going to be,” Newhouse said “Keep in mind, $1,000 in additional pay per year would break down to just $38.46 per paycheck ― assuming people get paid every two weeks.”
Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster who worked with Newhouse on that survey, said one factor might be that Republicans have been hobbled by the inability of their party leader to stick to a consistent message.
“some rich asshole is a ‘whack-a-mole’ president. He is constantly taking his bully pulpit and smashing some new target,” Hart said, contrasting him with former President Ronald Reagan, whose 1981 tax cuts have served as model legislation for Republicans ever since. “Unlike Reagan, (when) themes were reinforced week-in-and-week out, there is no theme. Only chaos.”
Indeed, after his opening remarks in White Sulphur Springs on taxes, the rich asshole ranged far and wide in his comments. He literally threw away his prepared speech, saying it “would have been a little boring,” and went off-message.
Top EPA staff who criticized Scott Pruitt were either demoted or reassigned
A glimpse into how Pruitt dealt with his critics.
Five top Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees were either placed on leave or reassigned after raising concerns about Administrator Scott Pruitt’s spending and management habits.
The news, revealed by the New York Times on Thursday afternoon, shows high-ranking EPA officials repeatedly raised concerns about Pruitt’s exorbitant spending on first-class travel and office furniture, as well as certain demands made for increased security coverage, including expanding his protective detail to 20 people.
The revelations add to a growing picture that numerous officials within the agency were aware of, and voiced their objection to, Pruitt’s ethically questionable habits. And yet, nothing appears to have been done to change course. Instead, critics were demoted.
Kevin Chmielewski, a the rich asshole administration political appointee, was placed on administrative leave without pay after bringing his concerns about Pruitt’s conduct directly to the White House personnel office. Chmielewski reportedly objected to the idea of buying a $100,000-a-month charter aircraft membership for the administrator, as well as spending $70,000 to replace two desks in his office.
Eric Weese questioned some of Pruitt’s security requests, including the use of lights and sirens when he was running late — on one occasion, so he could get to dinner at the popular D.C. restaurant Le Diplomate, according to the Times report. Weese was moved off Pruitt’s security detail.
An EPA spokesperson denied that the reassignments were connected to the staff members’ push-back on Pruitt’s extravagant spending and unreasonable requests.
Pruitt’s repeated denials regarding the numerous allegations of ethical misconduct he is currently facing stand on increasingly thin ground as more information emerges.
Earlier this week, news came out that Pruitt went around the White House to approve significant pay increases for two of his closest aides. When asked by Fox News why he went around President the rich asshole to give the pay raises, Pruitt denied he approved the salary increases. “I did not,” he said. “My staff did. And I found out about that yesterday and I changed it.”
During the Fox News interview, Pruitt was also questioned about whether it might be an issue that he had rented a Capitol Hill condo — for below market value — linked to an energy lobbyist. Pruitt dodged, saying “Mr. Hart has no clients who have business before this agency.”
In reality, Steven Hart is a high-profile lobbyist for Williams & Jensen whose clients include Canadian pipeline company Enbridge. As it happens, during the same period of time that Pruitt was renting the condo, the EPA signed off on a pipeline approval for Enbridge.
And according to The Daily Beast, Hart was part of a team of four lobbyists at Williams & Jensen that reported lobbying the EPA on behalf of a glass bottle manufacturer, Owens-Illinois, which had paid almost $40 million in 2012 to settle allegations it faced from the EPA about Clean Air Act violations by one of its subsidiary.
New reporting Thursday revealed Steven Hart’s name was on Pruitt’s original leaseand was crossed out and replaced with his wife Vicki’s, undermining Pruitt’s defense of his living arrangements.
Despite the ever-unfolding series of controversies surrounding Pruitt, the rich asshole continues to voice support for him.
“I think Scott has done a fantastic job. I think he’s a fantastic person. You know, I just left coal and energy country,” the rich asshole told reporters Thursday. “They love Scott Pruitt. They feel very strongly about Scott Pruitt. And they love Scott Pruitt. Thank you very much everybody.”
Hannity talked smack about Fox colleague Shep Smith to the rich asshole at Mar-a-Lago — and he ‘ate it up’
Shep Smith and Sean Hannity
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While cavorting at Mar-a-Lago, Fox News host Sean Hannity reportedly denounced colleague Shep Smith to some rich asshole — and the president loved it.
Vanity Fair reported on the anecdote Thursday in an article about internal strife at Fox News, which was exemplified by citing Smith’s Time magazine interview earlier this year where he criticized opinion hosts at the network.
“Hannity still hasn’t forgotten the remarks,” the report read, noting that “Hannity was overheard trashing Smith to the rich asshole” during a Mar-a-Lago visit last weekend.
“Hannity was denouncing Shep and the rich asshole was eating it up,” someone familiar with the conversation told Vanity Fair. When reached for comment, the Fox News host said the anecdote was “a total lie.”
Without proof, the rich asshole claims immigrant women are being raped at level ‘nobody has ever seen before’
It was not immediately clear to what the president was referring.
During a tax law roundtable event in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia on Thursday, President the rich asshole claimed that women marching north through Mexico to the southern U.S. border with a caravan of Honduran immigrants were being raped “at levels that nobody has ever seen before.”
“Remember my opening remarks at the rich asshole Tower when I [kicked off my presidential campaign]? Everybody said, ‘Oh, he was so tough.’ And I used the word ‘rape,'” he said. “And yesterday it came out where, this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before. They don’t want to mention that. So we have to change our laws, and the Democrats, what they’re doing, it’s insanity.”
It wasn’t immediately clear to what the president was referring, although as BuzzFeed’s Nidhi Prakash and other reporters present at the event noted, it appeared as though the rich asshole was insinuating one of three things: that the caravan itself was to blame for the alleged rapes, that people within the caravan — many of them immigration activists — were committing the acts themselves, or that Mexican citizens were raping the Honduran immigrants.
As BuzzFeed News reporter Adolfo Flores, who has been embedded with the caravan for nearly two weeks, noted on Thursday, “I’ve been with the caravan for 12 days and haven’t seen or heard of anyone being ‘raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before.'”
The president’s remarks on Thursday echoed his comments from earlier on the campaign trail. As he himself noted, during his campaign announcement in June 2015, the rich asshole referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and drug dealers, drawing sharp criticism from both immigration advocates and the public.
It is true that many Central American immigrants seeking to enter the United States through Mexico face harsh conditions and an ever-present threat of sexual violence. According to many migrant shelter directors who spoke with Fusion in 2014, around 80 percent of women and girls crossing into Mexico are raped on their journey to the U.S. border. An Amnesty International report published in 2010 estimated that number at around 60 percent.
“Many criminal gangs appear to use sexual violence as part of the ‘price’ demanded of migrants,” the report read. “According to some experts, the prevalence of rape is such that people smugglers may require women to have a contraceptive injection prior to the journey as a precaution […].”
However, whether or not those traveling with the immigrant caravan have been subjected to similar treatment is unclear. As BuzzFeed reporter Flores clarified, “To be clear I haven’t heard of anyone being raped in or around the caravan.”
The caravan itself is mostly made up of Honduran immigrants participating in an annual pilgrimage to the southern U.S. border, seeking asylum, in an act of protest. They say they hope to draw attention to the dangers many immigrants face when trekking north through Mexico to get to the United States.
Mexican authorities halted the group on Monday, registering some of the travelers, and assigning more “vulnerable” individuals — pregnant women and those with disabilities — with humanitarian visas. The rest were instructed to leave the country within 10 days.
After learning of the caravan’s existence earlier in the week, the president posted a series of angry tweets, condemning Mexico for not doing more to stop it.
“Mexico has the absolute power not to let these large ‘Caravans’ of people enter their country. They must stop them at their Northern Border, which they can do because their border laws work, not allow them to pass through into our country, which has no effective border laws,” he tweeted on Monday.
He later added, “Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. Getting more dangerous. ‘Caravans’ coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW.”
POLITICS Ex-CIA officer Phil Mudd lights up the rich asshole for being the ‘liar-in-chief’ on voter conspiracy theory
Former CIA officer Phil Mudd (Photo: Screen capture)
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President Donald the rich asshole continued to spout his conspiracy theory that 3 million people voted illegally in the 2016 election. The president made the remark during a West Virginia stop in which he was supposed to discuss the GOP’s tax law.
“Not a conspiracy theory,” the rich asshole claimed of the conspiracy theory that has been debunked over and over.
“He’s looking at this with a simple perspective,” Mudd began. “Being the liar-in-chief works. It’s worked from day one. You open a campaign saying ‘The president, the former president isn’t really an American citizen’. People still believe that in this country.”
Mudd also recalled that within the first 24 to 48 hours of being in the White House, the rich asshole demanded the staff invent the size of his inauguration audience.
“‘The media’s on me, they’re misrepresenting how many people showed up at my inauguration.’ That was a lie,” Mudd continued. “Governors across the country said we’re not participating in this sham of a way to determine whether more people vote in the election illegally. That’s a joke. People still believe that. The president talked about that in the last day or so.”
Watch the full discussion below:
Here’s how some rich asshole could have just helped Stormy Daniels’ legal case
President some rich asshole and adult actress Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name was Stormy Daniels, in a 2006 Myspace photo.
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President Donald the rich asshole broke his silence about his alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels aboard Air Force One on Thursday by saying he had no knowledge of the “hush agreement” issued by his lawyer — and that admission could have legal ramifications for the actress’ lawsuit against him.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Rebecca Balhaus noted on Twitter that if it’s true that the president had no knowledge of the $130,000 payout sent from his attorney Michael Cohen to Daniels that accompanied a nondisclosure agreement she signed just before the 2016 election, then it could free her from said NDA.
“the rich asshole’s denial of any knowledge of the payment could help Stormy Daniels’s argument that her NDA is invalid, according to legal experts who say the contract language require’s the rich asshole assent,” Balhaus wrote.
Trump’s denial of any knowledge of the payment could help Stormy Daniels’s argument that her NDA is invalid, according to legal experts who say the contract language require’s Trump assent. wsj.com/articles/trump…
the rich asshole claims his favorite conspiracy theory is ‘not a conspiracy theory’
It's a conspiracy theory.
During a roundtable event in West Virginia purportedly about tax cuts on Thursday, President the rich asshole claimed that “millions and millions” of illegal votes are routinely cast in American elections.
“In many places, like California, the same person votes many times,” the rich asshole said. “They always like to say, ‘Oh, that’s a conspiracy theory.’ Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people.”
"We cannot let people enter our country. We have no idea who they are, what they do, where they came from," President Trump says of strengthening the border. We don't know if they are murderers, if they're killers, if they're MS-13." cbsn.ws/2GB0Dy3 pic.twitter.com/1iqDmCYwpl
President Trump claims voter fraud is happening around the country: "In many places, like California, the same person votes many times. They always like to say, 'Oh, that's a conspiracy theory.' Not a conspiracy theory, folks." cbsn.ws/2GB0Dy3 pic.twitter.com/lDPuYi1noM
the rich asshole’s claim about voter fraud is as baseless now as when he first made it shortly after the 2016 election, when he claimed that illegal votes cost him the popular vote.
The conspiracy theory doesn’t withstand the least bit of scrutiny. During a recent federal trial, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) — a the rich asshole ally who has claimed that academic studies back up his claims about illegal voting — struggled to defend a law requiring documentary proof of citizenship from residents that he argued is necessary because of the threat of non-citizens casting ballots.
During testimony, expert witnesses who Kobach has previously relied upon to corroborate his claims couldn’t cite a single instance in which illegal votes swung an election, and admitted that studies indicating otherwise haven’t been peer reviewed and rely on small sample sizes.
Before it was embraced by the rich asshole, the claim that millions of illegal votes were cast during the 2016 election was popularized by InfoWars, a site that has spread conspiracy theories about mass shootings and pedophilia rings. InfoWars sourced the claim to a “report” on VoteFraud.org that made baseless claims about “more than three million votes cast by non-citizens” without providing any evidence in support.
Last summer, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway was pressed about the rich asshole’s voter fraud lie during a CNN interview. She defended the president by saying he “doesn’t think he’s lying about those issues, and you know it” — as if the mere fact that the rich asshole believes the conspiracy theory is true makes it true.
‘I’m not answering your f*cking question!’: rich asshole stooge Lewandowski loses it at House intel Dems during their last Russia interview
Corey Lewandowski on MSNBC_ screenshot
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During the House Intelligence Committee’s final interview in their soon-to-be-closed Russia investigation, former the rich asshole campaign manager Corey Lewandowski reportedly shouted a curse word at Democrats on the panel while refusing to answer her question.
CNN reported Thursday that Lewandowski shouted he wouldn’t answer Democrats’ “f*cking” question when they pressed him on a topic he would not discuss. It was his second time before the panel after he agreed in March to return for questioning after he refused to answer any questions about events that occurred after he left the campaign in June of 2016.
This story is developing …
At Least 23 Ethical Issues Are Dogging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt
It’s a lot deeper than his $50-a-night rental from industry lobbyists.
Scott Pruitt is facing mounting pressure to resign from the Environmental Protection Agency amid intensifying scrutiny of his alleged ethical lapses.
On Tuesday, two Republican House members joined Democrats and environmental groups in calling for Pruitt to step down. On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that “the president thinks that he’s done a good job, particularly on the deregulation front,” but added that “we take this seriously and we’re looking into it.” On Thursday, Hogan Gidley, a deputy White House press secretary, said on Fox News that he “can’t speak to the future of Scott Pruitt.”
Pressure escalated Thursday afternoon as two new reports alleged that Pruitt tried to abuse his vehicle’s emergency sirens to cut through traffic, and that five EPA officials who challenged Pruitt’s “unusually large spending” were either reassigned, demoted or forced out.
If Pruitt exits, he will have served the shortest term of any EPA administrator in history, and will be the first forced out since Anne Gorsuch Burford, President Ronald Reagan’s first EPA administrator, resigned in disgrace in 1983. Burford was EPA’s first female administrator (not to mention the mother of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch), and stepped down after being cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over Superfund records.
Pruitt’s aggressive attempts to roll back environmental regulations, undermine critical work on climate change and disqualify huge swathes of scientific research in favor of industry-backed science have defined his 14 months at the agency. Yet his future in the the rich asshole administration now hinges on an ongoing White House review of his spending, his use of loopholes to give political appointees unapproved raises, and links to lobbyists who gave him a great deal on a Capitol Hill rental.
To give a sense of just how many questions are now swirling about Pruitt, here’s a short list of issues that raise concerns over his leadership as the nation’s top environmental regulator:
1. His Washington housing arrangement.
At the center of Pruitt’s ballooning ethics crisis is his $50-a-night sweetheart deal to rent a room in a luxury Capitol Hill townhouse linked to a fossil fuel industry lobbying firm, Williams & Jensen. The EPA’s ethics lawyers scrambled to approve the arrangement, but struggled to defend the administrator after news broke that his adult daughter also stayed at the residence. But those EPA lawyers walked back the approval in a Wednesday memo, arguing that they did not have all the necessary information to consider the arrangement. During the time Pruitt stayed at the condominium, Williams & Jensen’s clients won approval from the EPA for a pipeline-extension project.
2. A shady real estate deal in Oklahoma.
In 2011, Pruitt and his wife, Margaret, bought a property in Tulsa, Oklahoma, days before a court ruled that it had been fraudulently transferred by a Las Vegas developer who was on the hook for a $3.6 million loan default, according to a report the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy published Thursday in Salon. Pruitt, then Oklahoma attorney general, flipped the property four months later, selling it to a shell company set up by a major campaign donor, Tulsa business magnate and Oklahoma Republican Party finance chair Kevin Hern.
3. Giving unapproved raises.
Pruitt used a loophole in the Safe Drinking Water Act to give two of his longtime aides raises of $56,765 and $28,130 after the White House rejected his request for the salary increases. The law includes a provision that allows the administrator to hire up to 30 people without White House or congressional approval for work related to the law. In a contentious Fox News interview on Wednesday, Pruitt insisted the action was taken without his knowledge, and said he didn’t know who made the decision. But the law dictates that the administrator must approve the hires, calling his exasperated statements on the rich asshole’s favorite cable channel into question.
4. His first-class travel ― and his explanation.
Federal regulations dictate that government employees be “prudent” when “making official travel arrangements,” and book “the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs.” Yet Pruitt routinely spent between $1,400 and $4,000 on flights to Boston, New York and Corpus Christi, Texas, according to The Washington Post. He regularly stayed in luxury hotels. His international travel expenses soared into the six figures. In June, a trip to an environmental summit in Italy cost more than $120,000, while a December trip to Morocco to promote liquefied natural gas ― a bizarre responsibility for the nation’s environmental regulator to take on ― reportedly cost nearly $40,000 with staff. In February, Pruitt defended his first-class airfare, insisting angry members of the public heckled him in economy class.
5. His frequent trips back home to Oklahoma.
The EPA shelled out between $2,000 and $2,600 for Pruitt’s first-class flights to his home state of Oklahoma, where he spent 43 out of 92 days last spring. The trips cost a total of more than $12,000 in airfare, according to records released last year. His frequent travel triggered a probe from the EPA inspector general, and prompted speculation that the former Oklahoma attorney general was using the EPA’s budget to lay the groundwork for an eventual campaign for governor or Senate in the Sooner State.
6. About that Morocco trip...
The EPA inspector general recently expanded its inquiry into Pruitt’s travel costs to include expenses related to the December trip to Morocco to promote liquefied natural gas. The trip also attracted new scrutiny in light of Pruitt’s Washington housing arrangement. The EPA denied that Pruitt met with officials from Cheniere Energy Inc., a gas firm that paid Williams & Jensen $80,000 for lobbying, or the lobbying firm itself. But Democrats called the trip outrageous, and one insisted, “This is not an area within his portfolio. He’s not supposed to be globetrotting to promote the sale of LNG.”
7. A private jet?
The EPA considered spending roughly $100,000 a month to lease Pruitt a private jet, according to The Washington Post. Aides ultimately scuttled the idea before Tom Price resigned as secretary of health and human services in September after revelations that he routinely took costly chartered flights.
8. Around-the-clock security.
Pruitt isn’t just afraid of airplane hecklers. He’s uniquely paranoid about threats from protesters. Last year, the EPA approved Pruitt’s request for roughly 30 full-time, around-the-clock security guards, costing the agency at least $2 million per year, according to CNN. That doesn’t count the cost of flying the guards in first class, which the EPA confirmed last month. No Cabinet member in U.S. history has ever been assassinated.
9. Spending $120,000 to hire an opposition researcher for the media.
Pruitt cultivated a contentious relationship with reporters early on, granting interviews primarily to friendly outlets such as Fox News, Breitbart News and The Daily Caller, while declining to provide even basic information about his schedule or actions to mainstream news organizations. Last year, he signed off on a $120,000 no-bid contract with a firm whose president boasts being “a master of opposition research” and whose senior vice president, as Earther noted, took part in a campaign to shape negative opinions about Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) through “scathing op-eds and online hot takes.” The EPA canceled the contract after Mother Jones exposed the deal.
10. Spending roughly $43,000 on a soundproof phone booth.
Pruitt’s secretiveness comes at a high price. Last fall, he installed a soundproof phone booth in his office. Pruitt defended the expense, initially estimated at $25,000, in a congressional hearing, where he said, “It’s necessary for me to be able to do my job.” Last month, The Washington Post reported that the cost was nearly double the original price, at nearly $43,000.
11. He tried to use emergency sirens to cut through D.C. traffic.
Pruitt asked his security team to use his vehicle’s emergency lights and sirens to speed through traffic in Washington to get to an official appointment, CBS News reported on Thursday. The lead security agent told him not to, advising the Pruitt that the sirens were only to be used in emergencies. The agent was reassigned less than two weeks later.
12. Punishing EPA staffers who challenged his spending.
Pruitt reassigned, demoted or forced out five agency officials who challenged his “unusually large spending on office furniture and first-class travel,” The New York Times reported on Thursday afternoon.
13. Allowing an aide to moonlight as a media consultant.
The EPA ethics office in August gave John Konkus, a top Pruitt aide, approval to work as a media consultant outside the agency. But, after E&E News broke the story, the EPA refused to disclose the identities of Konkus’ clients.
14. His naked political ambitions.
Pruitt’s interest in becoming Oklahoma’s governor, or replacing Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) when his fifth term ends in 2020, has been widely discussed for months. But, more recently, the EPA administrator appeared to have even loftier ambitions. In January, Politico reported that he was eyeing the job of U.S. attorney general as Jeff Sessions’ relationship with the president frayed. A profile in The New York Times last month quoted sources saying Pruitt had been plotting to make a bid for president as early as 2024.
15. His past ties to natural gas companies.
Pruitt’s decision to live under the roof of a gas industry lobbyist is less surprising when you consider that Pruitt allowed Devon Energy Corp., an Oklahoma City-based gas giant, to write a complaint to the EPA under his letterhead as the state attorney general in 2011. He barely changed a word before signing and sending the complaint as his own, The New York Times reported in 2014. Emails released days after he was confirmed as EPA administrator showed a long history of chummy conversations between Pruitt’s office and gas companies in his state.
16. Meeting more with fossil fuel companies than with health advocates.
Pruitt spent more time meeting with oil, gas and coal industry officials than with environmental and public health advocates during his first few weeks in office, according to calendars reviewed by HuffPost. That trend continued. During his first 10 months in office, Pruitt gave more than 30 speeches to industry groups and companies regulated by the EPA, but did not speak once before an environmental or public health group during the same period, according to a report by ThinkProgress.
17. Withholding his appointment calendars.
The EPA has refused to release Pruitt’s calendars for months, breaking with a precedent set by the previous administration. During Pruitt’s first year in office, plaintiffs, including news outlets and environmental groups, filed 55 public records lawsuits against the EPA, making it the busiest year for litigation since 1992, according to Politico.
18. Refusing to recuse himself.
Of the 14 times Pruitt sued the EPA as Oklahoma attorney general, four lawsuits aimed to block the Clean Power Plan, the signature Obama administration regulation to cut emissions from the utility sector. Despite this, Pruitt refused to recuse himself from the EPA’s effort to repeal the rule once he took office.
19. His “red team-blue team” debate on climate science.
Pruitt proposed hosting a televised debate on climate science, pitting a “red team” against a “blue team,” and running a military-style exercise to offer the American people an “objective” perspective on global warming. The plan was widely panned by scientists and researchers, who said it gave undue weight to industry-backed climate deniers whose views are not backed up by overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is human-caused. White House chief of staff John Kelly killed the idea, which he considered ill-conceived and politically risky, according to The New York Times.
20. His embrace of the right-wing Heartland Institute.
Since Pruitt took office, the EPA has worked closely with the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank that transformed itself from a defender of Big Tobacco under the auspice of “smokers’ rights” to a leading proponent of climate change denial. The group receives funding from conservative donors, including Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the billionaires who bankrolled the rich asshole’s presidential campaign. Last year, the group submitted a list of names to the EPA for Pruitt’s red team-blue team debate. It included a convicted child sex offender. Heartland has been a lightning rod for controversy. In January, HuffPost reported that the group protected a former executive charged with stalking and harassing a female colleague half his age.
21. Booting scientists off EPA advisory boards without telling them.
Pruitt announced plans late last year to bar scientists who receive EPA research funding from serving on the agency’s advisory boards, a move widely seen as an attempt to give industry-paid researchers more control over the regulatory process. In doing so, Pruitt named new scientists to head the Science Advisory Board, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the Board of Scientific Counselors. But the previous leaders of those boards told HuffPost the EPA never alerted them before they were booted.
22. Spending a lot of election money on luxury travel before joining the EPA.
From 2002 to 2016, Pruitt, then Oklahoma attorney general, received more than $300,000 in donations from the oil, gas and coal industries. Even more went to a political action committee and a super PAC set up to help him get re-elected and fund like-minded politicians. Yet only a fraction of the money went to campaigns, while the fundraising groups paid for Pruitt to take trips to places such as Hawaii and New Orleans, where he stayed in luxury hotels, according to filings HuffPost reviewed in January.
23. Naming a coal lobbyist as his No. 2 ― the man who could replace him.
If Pruitt is fired or resigns, his likely successor is a coal lobbyist he picked as his No. 2. Andrew Wheeler, who previously lobbied for the coal giant Murray Energy. Wheeler is a climate change denier and is considered an actor with the skills to execute the same deregulatory agenda Pruitt has pursued. Wheeler spent four years working at the EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, earning him a reputation as someone who, unlike Pruitt, knows the agency he would be running.
This story has been updated with news of additional allegations against Scott Pruitt.
the rich asshole: See? I told you Mexicans were rapists
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the rich asshole replays one of his most despicable hits from his campaign days.
On Thursday afternoon, he traveled to West Virginia for what was billed as a “Roundtable Discussion on Tax Reform,” but turned into a nasty political rally that reached rock bottom rather quickly.
During an extended riff about his current immigration freakout, he explicitly referenced his disgusting campaign kickoff speech.
“Remember my opening remarks at the rich asshole Tower?” he said. “I used the word ‘rape.’ And yesterday it came out where, this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”
the rich asshole has been on a particularly racist tear since this past weekend, when he began tweeting about a group of human rights protesters who were marching through Mexico. He accused them of trying to “take advantage” of DACA — a program that protected young immigrants from deportation, which he rescinded last fall and for which the marchers would not have been eligible anyway.
That Fox News-fueled rampage culminated in the announcement that the rich asshole would be sending troops to our border with Mexico, despite historically low border apprehensions.
the rich asshole’s overtly racist rhetoric about immigrants backfired on him in court recently, giving one federal judge a reason to allow a lawsuit trying to preserve DACA to proceed.
“One might reasonably infer that a candidate who makes overtly bigoted statements on the campaign trail might be more likely to engage in similarly bigoted action in office,” U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis wrote.
That the rich asshole — now in office — has doubled down on one of his most racist statements ever won’t likely help his cause in court. But it might succeed in its true purpose of appeasing the rich asshole’s resentful base voters, even as the majority of the country continues to be disgusted by him.
Stormy Daniels lawyer trolls the rich asshole after president breaks his silence on Cohen’s hush money
Attorney Michael Avenatti speaks on CNN (Screen cap).
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After President some rich asshole sounded off to the White House press corpsabout adult film star Stormy Daniels, her attorney took a shot in response.
“We very much look forward to testing the truthfulness of some rich asshole’s feigned lack of knowledge concerning the $130k payment as stated on Air Force One,” Michael Avenatti tweeted Thursday. “As history teaches us, it is one thing to deceive the press and quite another to do so under oath. #searchforthetruth #basta”
We very much look forward to testing the truthfulness of Mr. Trump's feigned lack of knowledge concerning the $130k payment as stated on Air Force One. As history teaches us, it is one thing to deceive the press and quite another to do so under oath. #searchforthetruth #basta
POLITICS
Oregon Gov. Will ‘Say No’ If the rich asshole Asks Her To Send National Guard Troops To Border
“I’m deeply troubled by the rich asshole’s plan to militarize our border,” Gov. Kate Brown said.
President some rich asshole’s announcement Wednesday that he would be sending National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border has met with resistance in at least one governor’s office.
If the rich asshole asks Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to send troops, she tweeted Wednesday, she will “say no.”
“As Commander of Oregon’s Guard, I’m deeply troubled by the rich asshole’s plan to militarize our border,” she said.
If @realDonaldTrump asks me to deploy Oregon Guard troops to the Mexico border, I’ll say no. As Commander of Oregon’s Guard, I’m deeply troubled by Trump’s plan to militarize our border.
the rich asshole signed a proclamation on Wednesday that uses a provision in the U.S. Code called Title 32 to send National Guard troops to the Mexican border.
Under this provision, which does not “federalize” the Guard, the rich asshole can only request that state governors provide troops to help bolster border security. That means governors like Brown can refuse to comply.
Brown said on Twitter that the president has not reached out to her with a deployment request, but added she has “no intention of allowing Oregon’s guard troops to be used to distract from his troubles in Washington” even if he does.
There’s been no outreach by the President or federal officials, and I have no intention of allowing Oregon’s guard troops to be used to distract from his troubles in Washington.
The White House has given few details about what the Guard deployment might involve.
On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the total number of troops had yet to be determined. “We’re going to be sending as many troops as we need,” she said, according to The Associated Press.
It remains unclear whether the deployed guardsmen will be armed.
Nielsen said she was working with governors of the southern-border states to determine where and how troops will be deployed. Texas, Arizona and New Mexico appear to support the plan, the AP reported. Nielsen said she would be speaking with California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Thursday in hopes of getting his support.
The administration has not indicated whether it will ask other states to provide troops for the deployment effort.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said Thursday that the California governor, who has previously accused the rich asshole administration of “basically going to war” with his state over immigration policy, could say no to the deployment request.
Proclamation by @realDonaldTrump doesn't actually send National Guard troops to the border. Because @POTUS is using Title 32 authority--instead of federalizing the Guard under Title 10--this is a REQUEST for state Governors to send troops.
That means @JerryBrownGov can say no. twitter.com/cnni/status/98…
Although the rich asshole has suggested that his plan to send troops to the border is an exceptional move, past presidents ― including Barack Obama and George W. Bush ― also deployed the National Guard to the Mexican border during their time in office.
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April 5, 2018
With EPA administrator Scott Pruitt facing multiple new scandals on a daily basis, the rich asshole still has his back.
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has become the center of a firestorm for his lavish personal use of taxpayer money and acceptance of a below-market real estate rental from a lobbyist.
But to hear it from the rich asshole, Pruitt is not corrupt. In fact, the rich asshole thinks he is “very courageous.”
Those were his exact words when reporters aboard Air Force One asked him to comment on new allegations the EPA retaliated against multiple senior officials who questioned Pruitt’s conflicts of interest and misuse of public funds.
“He’s a good man, he’s done a terrific job,” the rich asshole added. “But I’ll take a look at it.”
This reaction is standard fare. While the rich asshole did accept the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price after his own luxury travel scandal, he has resolutely stuck by his other senior officials in the face of shocking allegations.
For example, he has not gotten rid of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, despite accusations that he discriminated against Native Americans and used wildfire funds to take a private helicopter ride.
He has stood by Housing Secretary Ben Carson, who wasted public funds on a $31,000 dining set and then lied about it.
And he has kept counselor Kellyanne Conway, despite multiple violations of White House ethics laws.
Unfortunately, in Congress — where under normal circumstances committees would investigate abuses in the executive branch — many Republicans are taking their cue from the rich asshole and circling the wagons.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) tweeted that Pruitt is “likely the bravest and most conservative member of the rich asshole’s cabinet,” who is needed to “drain the regulatory swamp.” And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) simply blamed the whole thing on President Obama.
Every day the rich asshole keeps excusing Pruitt’s behavior, he sends the message that every ethics rule is made to be broken and every member of his administration is for sale.
POLITICS
the rich asshole Throws Away His Notes, Regurgitates False Claims From Campaign Instead
The president quickly derailed a tax roundtable by riffing on many of his favorite fake or exaggerated ideas.
President some rich asshole on Thursday turned a roundtable event on taxes into a campaign speech, rambling on about a range of issues, many of which he’d raised during his 2016 campaign, which ended 17 months ago.
In his opening remarks at the event in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the president briefly touched on taxes and the opioid epidemic, which has ravaged that state. But for the most part, he chose to air his grievances on a variety of topics and regurgitate a string of false claims.
At one point, he physically threw away his notes, saying that his prepared remarks “would have been a little boring.”
Here is a summary of the president’s other head-spinning remarks.
He attacked West Virginia’s Democratic senator, Joe Manchin.
The roundtable was officially a policy event and not a campaign stop, yet the rich asshole used the opportunity to lay into Manchin, who is up for re-election this year. He criticized the senator for not voting for the GOP tax overhaul.
“Your senator, he voted against, Joe, he votes against everything, and he voted against our tax cuts,” the rich asshole said. “You’re going to have a chance to get a senator that’s going to vote [for] our program.”
He ranted about immigration, bringing up a series of false or exaggerated claims.
Riffing on this week’s announcement that he plans to deploy National Guard troops to the southern border ― a move that was likely inspired in part by a Fox News segment ― the rich asshole made several spurious claims about the U.S. immigration system.
He falsely stated that the U.S. does not have merit-based immigration and exaggerated the scope of the diversity visa lottery system, complaining that the U.S. does not receive enough “good ones.”
He regurgitated some other classic lines from his campaign, such as his assertion that Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents detain undocumented immigrants by “throwing” them into “the paddy wagon.” He also suggested that the U.S. should reconsider the concept of birthright citizenship, an issue he first raised in 2015.
He suggested that because of illegal immigration, “women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before.”
Bringing up his infamous 2015 campaign announcement speech, when he referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” the rich asshole claimed without evidence that migrants who have been traveling through Mexico in a large group this week are responsible for rampant amounts of rape.
“I used the word ‘rape.’ And yesterday it came out where, this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before,” he said. “They don’t want to mention that.”
He repeated his unfounded and unsubstantiated claim that “millions and millions of people” voted illegally in 2016.
“In many places, like California, the same person votes many times,” the rich asshole said, again without evidence. “They always like to say that’s a conspiracy theory. It’s not a conspiracy theory, folks.”
He invited roundtable participants to publicly praise him.
As he often does, the president called on other people seated at the table to lavish compliments on him.
Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.), one of the GOP Senate candidates hoping to challenge Manchin this fall, described the rich asshole as “a man keeping your promises” and told him that “I was a proud, early supporter of your candidacy.”
Another Senate candidate, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R), lauded the rich asshole for several achievements, including “focusing on the opioid epidemic with a laser beam.” the rich asshole and his administration have actually provided few specifics on how they plan to address the crisis.
“The the rich asshole administration is delivering,” Morrisey said.
‘This is a tragedy’: MSNBC’s GOP analyst blasts the rich asshole for sounding like ‘a drunk guy in Queens’ during tax speech
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt -- MSNBC screengrab
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Responding to President some rich asshole’s most recent bombastic remarks that attempted to smear Central American migrants as rapists, GOP strategist and MSNBC analyst Steve Schmidt suggested the comments were more undignified than usual.
Referencing the rich asshole’s statement about a so-called migrant “caravan” — a Fox News talking point that has since been debunked as an annual activist publicity stunt— being full of sexual assault, Schmidt said the remarks showed an “appalling lack of dignity.”
“That’s the president of the United States of America,” the Republican strategist said. “It’s just extraordinary.”
During the comments, which took place at a roundtable discussion that was supposed to be about taxes on Thursday, Schmidt said the rich asshole’s sounded “like a drunk guy in queens at the end of the bar talking complete and total nonsense.”
“It’s inherent racism, this notion of people are coming here and they’re black and they’re brown and they’re rapists and they’re murderers,” Schmidt said. “That’s what this is. That’s what he’s doing he is speaking to the ugliest threats in the country’s history.”
“He has no conception about the greatness of the country and why it’s great,” the GOP operative said. “And that is a tragedy.”
Watch below, via MSNBC:
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April 5, 2018
There is no onslaught at the southern border, but the rich asshole is channeling the idiocy of Fox News and forcing the National Guard to be used as props to satisfy his delusions.
Infantile, despotic, third-rate dictators and tyrants throughout history have often been enabled by teams of servile underlings.
One of the roles of these underlings is to move heaven and earth to construct a dog and pony show to feed the egos of insecure leaders.
The dog and pony show has now come to America, and it is operating on a grandiose scale that has made the country an international laughingstock.
There is no crisis at the border. There are more than enough agents deployed along the southern border to deal with migrants seeking refuge in the United States.
Yet, the Department of Homeland Security has been forced to quickly scramble and coordinate with state governments and the National Guard to arrange some sort of deployment to the border region.
Why will thousands, if not millions, of dollars have to be spent to put on a show for the rich asshole and his backers in the Republican Party?
Because he can’t stop watching television.
While millions of Americans are otherwise occupied with making themselves and their families productive citizens, the rich asshole indulges in “executive time,” his team’s moniker for when the most senior-ranking federal official watches Fox News.
We know the rich asshole spends so much time doing this because he doesn’t even have the decency or insight to pretend otherwise. He live-tweets Fox News, spreading the right-wing network’s lies further than its cable/satellite signal goes.
It is on Fox where the rich asshole got the idea that a caravan of Latinos was headed for the border wall. He did not bother to look into what the caravan actually is — a human rights march highlighting the problems with violence in Central America.
All it took was some imagery and typical Fox News scaremongering, and the rich asshole was again pounding the table for a militarized southern border.
When he just a talking head on television, his penchant for believing conspiracies was stupid but not harmful.
Now, with the resources of the federal government at his disposal, there is a toxic brew of resources and stupidity.
The Department of Homeland Security is now working along with local governments to figure out how to send National Guard troops to the border. They won’t be armed, and they will have little to do.
There aren’t any masses of people for them to apprehend or turn back. the rich asshole may as well have told America that he was deploying the National Guard to prevent the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus from entering the continental United States.
When thugs like Hugo Chavez or Kim Jong Un make absurd assertions that are parroted and regurgitated by their inner circles, the world widely and rightly ridicules and condemns it.
That is the company America now keeps, thanks to the rich asshole’s detachment from facts and reality.
It is one thing for him and his team to roll around in the muck of ignorance, but the entire nation is now being smeared by their collective delusion and drawn into their web of lies and deception.
the rich asshole spokesperson throws Scott Pruitt under the bus after disastrous Fox interview: ‘I can’t speak to the future’
Hogan Gidley (Fox News/screen grab)
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White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley on Thursday refused to defend EPA Director Scott Pruitt after his disastrous interview with Fox News correspondent Ed Henry.
During an appearance on Fox News, Gidley was asked about the recent reports that President some rich asshole could fire Pruitt.
“I can’t speak to the future of Scott Pruitt,” Gidley admitted. “I can just talk about where we are now. And that is that the White House is aware of these reports [of alleged corruption]. We’re obviously looking into those. We don’t have any announcements as regards to staffing right now. But we’re aware. And we believe that some of these questions need to be answered.”
“What is it that you’re aware of?” Fox News host Sandra Smith asked the White House spokesperson.
“Well, we’ve seen the reports,” Gidley replied. “I mean, Ed Henry did an interview [on Fox News] obviously last night. You played a clip of it there. We’ve seen it. We know some of the news reports that have come out in some of the publications chronicling issues going on over there [at the EPA].”
Gidley insisted that the rich asshole demands “the highest level of ethics” from all of his staffers.
“But in the meantime, we’re looking into this,” he said. “Because the president wants that level of accountability.”
“Has Scott Pruitt been maintaining the highest ethical standards?” Smith pressed.
“We’re looking into this,” Gidley repeated. “There’s process in place to review some of these actions. We’re doing that. But right now, I do have no staff announcements.”
Watch the video below from Fox News.
the rich asshole got ‘tired of being told no’ by John Kelly — so now he doesn’t tell his chief of staff anything
President some rich asshole (left) and WH chief of staff John Kelly (right). Image via Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP.
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A chagrined President Donald the rich asshole has increasingly left White House chief of staff John Kelly out of the loop because he felt “shackled” by him.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that according to White House insiders, the rich asshole was “tired of being told no” by Kelly — and many of his more controversial recent decisions, such as congratulating Russian President Vladimir Putin on winning what many consider a “sham” election, were made without the chief of staff’s input.
According to another of the dozen insiders the AP spoke to on condition of anonymity, “once the rumors begin that an aide’s exit is forthcoming, the ‘stink’ on that staffer never leaves” in the rich asshole’s West Wing. Because such speculation has been circulated about Kelly, people inside the White House fear that “chaos could return” as the chief of staff’s “public profile and behind-the-scenes influence has faded.”
The AP’s report noted that although Kelly lobbied the president to oust former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, he advised him against hiring neoconservative pundit John Bolton. the rich asshole, however, offered Bolton the job in a private Oval Office meeting — and told his chief of staff about it after the fact.
In the early days of his tenure as chief of staff, Kelly was able to reign in the rich asshole from speaking to and seeing controversial ex-aides. Recently, four of AP’s sources said, the rich asshole shirked Kelly’s control and allowed controversial former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski into the White House after the chief of staff was “overruled.”
the rich asshole, AP reported, has “privately contemplated about recreating the freewheeling nature of his campaign and the rich asshole Tower office.”
the rich asshole is still ‘protecting’ EPA head Scott Pruitt because he wants him to replace Jeff Sessions
EPA chief Scott Pruitt (left, via Zach Gibson/AFP) and AG Jeff Sessions (right, via Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals).
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Despite the increasing controversy surrounding Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, President some rich asshole has, as recently as this week, floated the idea of him replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
CNN reported Thursday that White House sources said the rich asshole continues to defend the embattled EPA chief because he’s a potential backup attorney general.
“He was 100% still trying to protect Pruitt because Pruitt is his fill-in for Sessions,” a source familiar with the president’s thinking told CNN.
the rich asshole has been known to float “several people a day for multiple positions in his administration that are already occupied,” CNN noted — but this “proposition reveals just how frustrated the rich asshole remains with Sessions because of his decision to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation more than a year ago, while signaling how confident he has remained in Pruitt despite a dizzying number of ethics issues.”
Those issues appeared to reach a head over the past week after reports revealed Pruitt was renting a Capitol Hill condo for $50 a night from the wife of an oil lobbyist. Since those initial reports, more information about Pruitt’s relationship to the lobbyist has come to light, including that fundraisers were held at the condo during the time EPA head used it in 2017.
On Tuesday, The Atlantic reported that Pruitt circumvented the White House to give large raises to two EPA aides that he knew from Oklahoma. The next day, Fox News interviewer Ed Henry grilled him about the raises, which Pruitt claimed he had just learned about.
‘Not a conspiracy theory’: the rich asshole rabidly claims ‘millions and millions’ of people voted illegally in California
some rich asshole appears at a roundtable discussion in West Virginia (screen grab)
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President some rich asshole on Thursday asserted that conspiracy between the states had enabled “millions and millions” of immigrants to cast illegal votes.
During a so-called “roundtable discussion” on taxes in White Sulphur Springs, W.V. on Thursday, the rich asshole veered off the topic at hand to discuss illegal immigration.
According to the rich asshole, one immigrant brought 22 “people with him” through “chain migration.”
“So this guy, because he’s here, now can get the mother and that father and the grandmother and the cousins and the brothers and the sisters and the aunts and the uncles,” the rich asshole opined. “This is what the Democrats are doing to you. And they like it because they think they’re going to vote Democrat, okay?”
The line earned the president a round of applause. Then, he continued.
“They are doing it for that reason,” he remarked. “Because they’re not going to be voting with us for the most part. A lot of them aren’t going to be voting. A lot of times it doesn’t matter because in many places, like California, the same person votes many times. You probably heard about that.”
“They always like to say, oh, that’s a conspiracy theory,” the rich asshole said with a mocking tone. “Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people [vote illegally]. And it’s very hard because the state guards their records.”
Watch the video below.
the rich asshole denies knowledge of Stormy Daniels payment
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 04/05/18 04:58 PM EDT
President the rich asshole on Thursday broke his silence on Stormy Daniels, saying he had no knowledge of a $130,000 payment his personal attorney made to the porn star days before the 2016 election.
The president said he did not know where his attorney Michael Cohen got the money to pay Daniels, which was part of an agreement to block her from publicly alleging she had an affair with the rich asshole.
“No,” the rich asshole told a reporter aboard Air Force One who asked if he knew about the payment.
The president spoke aboard the presidential aircraft while traveling back to Washington from an event in West Virginia.
Never shy about sharing his opinions, the rich asshole had remained conspicuously silent about Daniels during weeks of press coverage.
Asked why his lawyer made the payment to Daniels, the rich asshole responded “you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael.”
The president said he does not know where Cohen got the money.
“No, I don’t know,” he said.
Cohen has previously said he made the payment personally using money from a home equity line of credit.
The adult film actress said in an interview that aired last month that she was threatened after she tried to go public with her story about sleeping with the rich asshole at a golf outing in 2006.
The alleged incident took place shortly after the rich asshole’s wife, Melania the rich asshole, gave birth to their son, Barron.
The White House has said that the rich asshole denies the allegations, but the president has never personally addressed them.
Even though the affair allegedly took place more than a decade ago, it has generated new troubles for the rich asshole.
Government ethics watchdogs have filed campaign finance complaints, alleging that the payout amounted to an in-kind contribution to the rich asshole’s presidential campaign. Democrats on Capitol Hill have also grilled Cohen about the payment.
Cohen has insisted the rich asshole had nothing to do with the settlement agreement. But he used his the rich asshole Organization email address in negotiations with the actress, according to NBC News.
- Updated at 5:53 p.m.
the rich asshole: Dodd-Frank rollback 'should be done fairly quickly'
BY SYLVAN LANE - 04/05/18 04:01 PM EDT
President the rich asshole on Thursday said bipartisan efforts to loosen strict banking rules enacted after the 2008 financial crisis “should be done fairly quickly.”
the rich asshole said during a West Virginia event on tax policy that his administration is pushing to ease lending restrictions imposed by the Dodd-Frank Act. He appeared to refer to a bipartisan Senate bill to rollback Dodd-Frank that passed in March, but that House Republicans have refused to pass without further changes.
the rich asshole went on to attack Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who was an original co-sponsor of the bill the president appeared to tout.
“Does anybody believe that?” the rich asshole said, referring to the bipartisan support for the Dodd-Frank rollback. “Maybe Joe won’t, but most people.”
the rich asshole has called for “dismantling” Dodd-Frank and loosening lending restrictions imposed by the 2010 law signed by former President Obama.
the rich asshole said his administration has already “made it a lot easier to for you to lend now,” but no major changes to Dodd-Frank have passed both chambers of Congress during the rich asshole’s term.
“A short period of time ago, you were not able to lend because of rules, regulation and you were lending to people you didn’t even want to lend,” the rich asshole said.
“You have some incredible people who want to borrow money, they could never borrow money to start a business.”
The bipartisan Senate bill passed last month exempts smaller banks from several Dodd-Frank lending restrictions meant to prevent banks from extending risky loans. Critics of Dodd-Frank say the rules prevented community banks with no systemic risk to the larger financial system from serving trustworthy customers who had fallen on hard times.
The bill, introduced by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo(R-Idaho), passed with the support of more than a dozen Democrats. It is the most sweeping changes to Dodd-Frank to earn bipartisan support and the product of several years of bipartisan negotiations.
The White House said in March that the rich asshole supports the Crapo bill and would sign it into law. But the statement also gave some support to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Republicans who have vowed to block the deal unless the Senate agrees to add bills from the House Financial Services Committee.
“The President looks forward to discussing any further revisions the House is interested in making, with the goal of bipartisan, pro-growth Dodd-Frank relief reaching his desk as soon as possible,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a March 14 statement.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and his deputies are have asked senators to choose from a list of more than two dozen bills from his panel that have earned bipartisan support. Hensarling, a close ally of Ryan, said the Speaker would freeze the bill until Senate agrees to deal.
"We're not rubber-stamping the Senate bill,” Hensarling said in March. “Their bill is staying on the Speaker's desk unless and until they're willing to negotiate with the House."
Senators backing the bill say they won’t negotiate with the House and insist that further changes would shatter the fragile bipartisan deal. Lobbyists for community and regional banks that stand to benefit the most from the Senate bill are pressuring the House to pass the bipartisan deal without delay.
here
the rich asshole: Women crossing border 'raped at levels nobody has ever seen before'
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 04/05/18 03:27 PM EDT
President the rich asshole claimed on Thursday that women emigrating from Central America to the U.S. are "raped at levels nobody's ever seen before," hearkening back to his controversial 2015 campaign announcement, in which he called some immigrants "rapists"
"Remember my opening remarks at the rich asshole Tower, when I opened, everybody said, 'oh, he was so tough.' And I used the word 'rape,' " the rich asshole said at a roundtable event Thursday in West Virginia, referring to his 2015 speech announcing his presidential run. "And yesterday it came out where this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody's ever seen before. They don't want to mention that."
the rich asshole has warned in recent days of a "caravan" of Central American migrants heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border. That caravan stalled in Mexico City on Wednesday, with organizers saying that the number of people made it too difficult to continue.
the rich asshole's comments on Thursday were his latest decrying illegal border crossings and calling for tougher immigration laws.
He has ramped up his rhetoric on the matter in recent days, announcing that he had closed the door on a deal with lawmakers on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and would send U.S. troops to the southern border.
In his remarks in West Virginia on Thursday, the rich asshole also criticized the so-called visa lottery, saying that countries aren't "putting their good ones" into the program. That comment appeared to echo part of his 2015 campaign announcement, in which he said Mexico was not "sending its best people" to the U.S.
the rich asshole’s off-script remarks touched on so-called sanctuary cities, as well. He said such jurisdictions, which do not fully cooperate with federal immigration officials, are intended to protect “bad people.” the rich asshole then pointed to the case of a Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old woman who was shot and killed by an immigrant in the country illegally in California in 2015.
“Sanctuary cities — it’s the worst,” the rich asshole said. “It’s basically a city to protect a lot of people that are bad people. Really bad.”
The rich asshole administration sued California last month over the state’s so-called sanctuary laws, which Justice Department officials argue impede federal immigration agents from doing their jobs.
Flyover at Nationals opening game canceled so that the rich asshole can go to Mar-a-Lago
File photo of Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Tommy Hanson throwing in the first inning during their MLB National League baseball game against the Washington Nationals at Turner Field in Atlanta, Georgia September 15, 2012. REUTERS/Tami Chappell
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The traditional military flyover at the Nationals opening game has been reportedly canceled this year because President some rich asshole decided to use his helicopter for a trip to Mar-a-Lago.
According to reports, Nationals TV announced on Thursday that the flyover had been canceled.
The report said that the rich asshole wanted to use the Marine Two helicopter to travel to Andrews Air Force Base before flying from there to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.
The flyover could have presumably occurred if the rich asshole had decided to take a motorcade to Andrews.
According to the Nationals TV broadcast just now, they had to cancel their Opening Day flyover because the rich asshole wanted to use Marine One to fly to Andrews AFB to take Air Force One to Mar-A-Lago.— Rob Day (@cleantechinv) April 5, 2018crossing border
CNN’s Brianna Keilar corners a flailing border patrol leader over claim Obama holdovers are sabotaging the rich asshole
Brianna Keilar and Art Del Cueto (CNN / Screengrab)
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CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Thursday cornered vice president of the National Border Patrol Council co-founder Art Del Cueto over his claim that holdovers from Barack Obama’s administration who are intentionally ignoring some rich asshole’s edict on border security.
Del Cueto told Keilar that the rich asshole’s plan to send the National Guard to the border “would provide us an extra set of eyes or ears,” before noting Obama also asked the states to send National Guard forces to the border.
“Why President the rich asshole is now being attacked and, you know, second guessed so much is beyond me,” Del Cueto said. “But the reality is the men and women of the border patrol are very grateful that they have a commander-in-chief that is putting the security of our country at the forefront to anything else.”
Del Cueto went on to blame “leadership” and “Obama holdovers” for not fully enforcing immigration laws.
“Maybe their plans, maybe their way of doing business is not necessarily the way that President the rich asshole has asked.” Del Cueto surmised. “And I think that’s what needs to be done to begin with to also secure the border. We need to get rid of some of the Obama holdovers that are still within our organization that are not following some of President the rich asshole’s plan.”
“So who is doing that?” Keilar asked. “Who are the holdovers, or are you just surmising there are some?”
“There are some,” Del Cueto replied. “There are definitely some. There was some talk—you can see—it’s been apparent in Twitter posts prior to the election where, you know, leaders within the organization would go as far as to, you know, make fun of President the rich asshole and those individuals are still within our leadership. I think they’re undermining some of the things that need to be done.”
“Who are you referring to?” the CNN host pressed.
“There’s different members within the organization,” he replied. “There’s leaders within the organization that I believe.”
“Do you have names?” Keilar asked. “Is there someone specifically that you’re thinking of?”
“Do you know the names but you’re just not sharing them or are you just surmising that there are people whose names you’re not aware of?” she continued after Del Cueto declined to offer any specifics.
“There’s people out there that if you do the proper research you’ll see there are people who would undermine President the rich asshole prior to him becoming president,” he insisted.
“Do you know who they are?” she wondered.
Del Cueto continued to say he would not provide names, but said he definitely knows who he’s talking about. He later issued another full-throated defense of the president’s performance.
“[We] have a president that has a good, clear idea of what needs to be done for border security and I think that it’s unfair that he gets second guessed continuously on these issues,” Del Cueto said. “I think he’s doing a fantastic job and perhaps he gets second guessed because there are still members within our agency that are holdovers from the last administration.”
Watch the clip below:
the rich asshole says Oakland mayor committed 'obstruction of justice'
BY JOSH DELK - 04/05/18 03:37 PM EDT
President the rich asshole on Thursday suggested the mayor of Oakland, Calif., was guilty of obstruction of justice for her role in tipping off immigrants in the country illegally to an upcoming federal immigration raid.
"How about the mayor of Oakland, where she tells a thousand people to 'get going, law enforcement's coming to get you.' And this was all planned. And many of them scattered," the rich asshole said during a roundtable discussion on tax reform.
"To me that's obstruction of justice, and something should happen there. And it hasn't and I don't know why it hasn't," the rich asshole added.
Pres. Trump says Oakland mayor guilty of "obstruction of justice" for warning of raid by federal deportation officers last month.
"Something should happen there. And it hasn't and I don't know why it hasn't."
The president has previously called Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf (D) a "disgrace" for warning residents of a planned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation.
According to ICE, Schaaf's warning prevented the agency from capturing nearly 800 immigrants considered to be "public safety threats."
In his March announcement of a Justice Department lawsuit against the state for its so-called sanctuary policies, which allow local law enforcement to not comply with federal immigration officials, Attorney General Jeff Sessions also panned the move as reckless.
“How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of our law enforcement officers to promote a radical open borders agenda,” Sessions said.
Schaaf has expressed no regret for her email to residents instructing them to "prepare, not panic" for the raid.
“I continue to feel confident that what I did was the right thing and it was legal,” Schaaf said at a press conference in February.
‘They’re being pussies’: Rupert Murdoch reportedly ordered Fox execs to ‘forcefully’ support Laura Ingraham
Rupert Murdoch (Creative Commons) and Laura Ingraham (photo by Gage Skidmore)
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Rupert Murdoch himself intervened in the controversy around Laura Ingraham, who is on “vacation” this week after an advertiser boycott targeted her show following her insults of Parkland survivor David Hogg.
According to a deep report on the controversy by Vanity Fair, over the weekend Murdoch wrote to Fox News co-president Jack Abernethy and ordered him to support Ingraham. The network fired off a statement with Abernethy’s name attached that said that the station “cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts.”
“We look forward to having Laura Ingraham back hosting her program next Monday when she returns from spring vacation with her children,” the statement read.
Murdoch apparently thinks Fox’s post-Ailes management “has been too quick to cave to the network’s many critics.”
“Rupert’s been annoyed by what he perceives as cowardly behavior by his executives,” a source close to Murdoch told Vanity Fair. “He thinks they’re being pussies.”
15 AGs sue the rich asshole EPA for not enforcing pollution controls
BY MORGAN GSTALTER - 04/05/18 02:37 PM EDT
Fifteen attorneys general and the city of Chicago filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Administrator Scott Pruitton Thursday for not controlling methane emissions.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement that the group is fighting back against the rich asshole administration for “ignoring its legal duty to control emissions of methane — and extremely potent greenhouse gas — from existing oil and gas operations.”
The EPA’s refusal to control methane pollution is illegal, Schneiderman said in a statement.
It also “threatens our public health and environment, and squanders savings of over $100 million annually.”
The suit was filed Thursday in a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It was brought forth by the attorneys general of New York, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia, as well as the City of Chicago.
Schneiderman has sued the rich asshole administration dozens of times over the past year. He pledged in February to lead a “multistage” lawsuit against Pruitt for delaying a major water pollution rule.
The EPA is facing a record-breaking number of anti-secrecy lawsuits and many other for rolling back certain Obama-era pollution regulations.
Last month, seven Democratic states threatened to sue the rich asshole administration for its delay in enforcing a 2016 rule on landfill methane pollutions.
In March, the administration asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit against Pruitt for his new policy that prevents EPA grant recipients from serving on external committees.
‘This is boring’: the rich asshole literally tosses out his prepared remarks during tax roundtable-turned immigration rant
some rich asshole tosses paper at tax roundtable
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some rich asshole on Thursday threw out his prepared speech at a tax roundtable on in West Virginia.
“I’m reading off the first paragraph, I said, ‘This is boring. Come on. We have to tell it like it is,’” the rich asshole explained, tossing up a page of written words purportedly intended to be spoken at the event.
During those remarks, the president accused a migrant caravan of raping women at record levels and expressed anger at a provision of the Citizenship Clause in the Constitution that declares children born on U.S. soil are American citizens.
“If you have a baby on our land, congratulations that baby is a United States citizen,” the rich asshole lamented.
the rich asshole also repeated the false claim of widespread voter fraud in California and boasted he knows “Indonesia very well.”
Watch the clip below:
WATCH LIVE: the rich asshole holds ’roundtable discussion’ on tax reform
U.S. President some rich asshole holds sample tax forms as he promotes a newly unveiled Republican tax plan with House Republican leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., November 2, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
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President some rich asshole will host what the White House says is a roundtable discussion on tax reform from White Sulphur Springs, WV.
The event is scheduled to begin at 2:25 p.m. ET.
Watch below.
the rich asshole says he has confidence in Pruitt
BY JORDAN FABIAN AND TIMOTHY CAMA - 04/05/18 01:09 PM EDT
President the rich asshole said Thursday he has confidence in embattled Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt.
“I do,” the rich asshole said when asked before boarding Air Force One.
The president and his allies, however, have sent mixed signals about the standing of Pruitt, who is under fire for a growing number of missteps.
Administration officials were not pleased with a series of media interviews Pruitt gave on Tuesday and Wednesday in which he admitted no wrongdoing and blamed the controversies on his political opponents.
“I can’t speak to the future of Scott Pruitt,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told Fox News on Thursday, just hours before the rich asshole gave the EPA chief a vote of confidence.
"I can just talk about where we are now and that is that the White House is aware of these reports and we’re obviously looking into those,” Gidley added.
Pruitt is facing an internal investigation and a congressional probe into low rent he paid on a Washington condo owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist. He paid only $50 for each night he slept at the Capitol Hill property, and let his adult daughter stay there too for a time period. But EPA officials have defended the arrangement and say it was above-board.
He is also under scrutiny for raises authorized for two of his top staffers and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars spent on foreign travel.
Lawmakers in both parties are calling for Pruitt’s ouster over the scandals.
Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) said Tuesday that Pruitt’s “corruption scandals are an embarrassment to the Administration, and his conduct is grossly disrespectful to American taxpayers. It's time for him to resign or for [the rich asshole] to dismiss him.”
The administrator’s conservative allies have been standing up for him, telling the rich asshole that Pruitt is one of the most effective allies in the Cabinet and that it would be difficult to replace him.
Pruitt embarked on a media tour to defend himself. But Fox News’s Ed Henry was combative in a 25-minute interview with a defensive Pruitt, asking how he could not have known about the controversial raises, among other topics.
Ethics controversies surrounding members of the rich asshole’s Cabinet have become a headache for the rich asshole administration.
The president ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin last week after a blistering internal report found that taxpayers picked up the bill for his wife to accompany him on a European business trip.
Later, aboard Air Force One as the rich asshole was flying to West Virginia to tout the GOP's tax reform law, Gidley said it will be clear if the rich asshole's mind changes on Pruitt.
"We all serve at the pleasure of the president. You guys know that. And when he’s not pleased, you’ll know it," he told reporters. "Obviously reports are in the news that we’re aware of and we’re looking into, but the president himself said he has confidence, so that’s where we stand today."
Gidley said he hasn't discussed with the rich asshole whether the president saw Pruitt's recent media interviews, including the one on Fox News.
"And the president demands the highest levels of ethical standards for his entire staff, that includes Cabinet, and we expect him to adhere to that," he said.
Copy of Scott Pruitt’s condo lease reveals problems with EPA’s story
Pruitt's condo story is falling apart.
New details have emerged about Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt’s condo deal with the wife of an energy industry lobbyist, raising fresh questions about the ethics of the rental arrangement.
According to the Associated Press, the original lease agreement for the condo — which Pruitt rented for $50 a night for a period of about six months during his first year in Washington — had the name of Steve Hart, the energy industry lobbyist, as the landlord.
Steve’s name was apparently crossed out, and his wife Vicki’s name was written in instead. Vicki is a health care lobbyist who doesn’t have any connected companies with business before the EPA; Steve, on the other hand, is chairman of Williams & Jensen, a lobbying firm that counts among its clients energy companies like ExxonMobil and Canadian pipeline company Enbridge.
New Memo From EPA Ethics Official Suggests The Scott Pruitt Scandal May Not Be Over, my latest for @BuzzFeedNews buzzfeed.com/zahrahirji/epa…
Odd that the landlord on the lease is a crossed out "S̶t̶e̶v̶e̶" Hart, replaced by "Vicki" Hart. Energy lobbyist Steve Hart previously said “I have no ownership interest.” abcnews.go.com/Politics/exclu… pic.twitter.com/ucP7gRoUH5
When ABC News broke the condo story last week, Steve Hart denied having any ownership of the unit, saying instead that his wife co-owns the condo with an unspecified second party.
But the lease agreement reported by the AP suggests that Steve Hart had a more hands-on approach to the condo.
According to federal lobbying disclosures, Hart’s firm was involved in lobbying on issues related to energy and EPA regulations while Pruitt was staying in the condo. The New York Times has also reported that the EPA signed off on a pipeline connected to Hart’s lobbying firm while Pruitt was living at the condo.
It’s also unclear why the lease was changed, why the change was not initialed, and why the mistake was left on the lease rather than having a new lease drawn up.
Pruitt has said that the EPA signed off on the ethics of the agreement before he moved into the condo, saying that the $50 per night rate was found to be at market value for similar properties nearby.
But a memo sent on April 4 by Kevin Minoli, a top ethics official in the EPA’s Office of General Counsel, said that the agency lacked crucial details about the deal that might have changed their calculus — namely, that Pruitt’s daughter apparently also stayed at the condo while interning at the White House last summer, making the $50 a night deal well-below market value for two people.
Minoli’s memo also said that the initial ethics designation was based purely on the terms of the lease, and did not take into account any issues related to the impartiality rule, which “requires an employee to consider appearance concerns before participating in a particular matter if someone close to the employee is involved as a party to that matter.”
Pruitt has faced calls to resign over the condo scandal from both Democrats and Republicans. On Wednesday, when asked whether the president was okay with Pruitt’s condo agreement, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the president “is not” and that the White House was looking into the details of the agreement.
Still, even as the scandal deepens, Pruitt continues to go about his work pushing the administration’s deregulatory agenda. On Tuesday, he announced that the EPA would be reconsidering fuel efficiency standards set under the Obama administration, and has teased an announcement regarding the EPA’s regulation of certain air pollutants that could come as soon as Friday.
the rich asshole doubles down on trade threats against China
BY JORDAN FABIAN AND MAX GREENWOOD - 04/05/18 09:29 AM EDT
President the rich asshole on Thursday again rattled his saber at China, even as his own administration is trying to calm fears over a possible trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
the rich asshole took to Twitter to criticize news reports about China’s retaliation against proposed U.S. tariffs on a variety of Chinese goods.
“The Fake News Washington Post, Amazon’s ‘chief lobbyist,’ has another (of many) phony headlines, ‘the rich asshole Defiant As China Adds Trade Penalties.’ WRONG!” the president tweeted. “Should read, ‘the rich asshole Defiant as U.S. Adds Trade Penalties, Will End Barriers And Massive I.P. Theft.’ Typically bad reporting!”
The Fake News Washington Post, Amazon’s “chief lobbyist,” has another (of many) phony headlines, “Trump Defiant As China Adds Trade Penalties.” WRONG! Should read, “Trump Defiant as U.S. Adds Trade Penalties, Will End Barriers And Massive I.P. Theft.” Typically bad reporting!
Stock markets have slumped in recent days as the U.S. and China have escalated their tariff threats.
Minutes before the rich asshole’s tweet, his new economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, tried to soothe those fears.
"Technically, both countries have just proposed tariffs. Nothing’s been enacted,” he told reporters at the White House. “I think that's an important point. Nothing around the corner. There's going to be a big discussion about it."
The rich asshole administration last week unveiled a list of about $50 billion worth of Chinese products that it plans to impose tariffs on. The tariffs are in response to what administration officials say is China’s discriminatory and improper trade practices, as well as its theft of American intellectual property.
China responded on Wednesday by announcing plans to levy tariffs on soybeans, airplanes and cars from the U.S. The tit-for-tat between Beijing and Washington has raised fears of an all-out trade war between two countries that are each other's largest trading partner.
the rich asshole’s Thursday tweet also took a swipe at Amazon, which has become a frequent target of the president’s since late last month.
He has accused the tech giant in recent days of scamming the U.S. Postal Service, failing to collect sales taxes on products sold to consumers in states with such duties and using The Washington Post as a lobbying tool.
Amazon’s stock value has taken a hit since Axios first reported last week that the rich asshole had privately expressed interest in cracking down on the retailer, which he has previously criticized for its “monopolistic tendencies.”
Joe Biden tells donors he’ll run in 2020 — but only if then-74-year-old the rich asshole doesn’t drop out: report
Former Vice President Joe Biden (Photo: Shutterstock)
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Former Vice President Joe Biden is ready to throw his hat into the 2020 president race — but only if President some rich asshole is the Republican nominee, according to a report.
Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino reported on Thursday that Biden had told friends on Wall Street that he was preparing for a presidential bid. But according to the sources, Biden will only enter the race if President some rich asshole runs as the GOP pick.
“He’s going to his Wall Street friends/associates, he has a lot of connections there — people that would raise money for him — and saying, ‘Listen, I am seriously considering running for president, but only if one candidate runs,” Gasparino told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto.
Gasparino noted that Biden will be nearly 78 in 2020. the rich asshole will be 74 when the next election occurs.
“He said the age difference between he and the rich asshole is not that great, age won’t be an issue,” the Fox Business reporter explained. “He is actually saying this. He’s going around to Wall Street guys. And by the way, Wall Street guys always liked Biden.”
Watch the video clip below.
The Memo: Kelly said to be losing influence with the rich asshole
BY NIALL STANAGE - 04/05/18 06:00 AM EDT
White House chief of staff John Kelly has lost significant influence with President the rich asshole, according to several sources within the rich asshole’s orbit.
Those sources tell The Hill that the rich asshole has proven increasingly resistant to the discipline that Kelly has sought to impose on the White House since he took over from Reince Priebus last summer.
One former administration official said that Kelly had “ruled the West Wing with an iron fist” during the first six months of his tenure but added, “I don’t think that is the case any longer.”
A difference source within the rich asshole’s orbit said, “John, I think, is frustrated because his influence has been diminished and he cannot control what the president does.”
As examples of the rich asshole chafing at his chief of staff, insiders cite some off-the-cuff policy pronouncements from the president that seemed aimed, at least in part, at demonstrating defiance of Kelly.
They also point to personnel changes that have weakened Kelly’s position internally. Likeminded figures such as national security adviser H.R. McMaster are on the way out. Kelly is said to have limited input or influence over new arrivals such as McMaster’s replacement, John Bolton, or Larry Kudlow, who is replacing Gary Cohn as chief economic adviser.
Two sources also said Kelly had been championing Mercedes Schlapp for the position of communications director recently vacated by Hope Hicks. The fact that he has not, so far, won that battle is asserted to be another example of his diminished clout.
In the telling of several sources among a half-dozen who spoke to The Hill, the president’s willingness to follow his instincts has risen to greater heights than ever in recent weeks.
“Now the rich asshole isn’t talking to Kelly about this stuff anymore — ‘What is your opinion on the Syria issue?’ — because what the president is becoming more comfortable with is his intuition, his gut. That’s what is driving him,” said the source within the rich asshole’s orbit.
Confusion has reigned over precisely what the administration’s policy is on Syria since the rich asshole announced last week — to the apparent surprise of senior members of his staff — that he wanted the U.S. out of the war-torn nation “very soon.” He made the remark during a speech in Ohio that was mainly about infrastructure.
This week, the rich asshole reiterated during a Tuesday news conference with the leaders of three Baltic nations, “I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home. … It’s time.”
But those statements came in the wake of a January statement from then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that “it is vital for the United States to remain engaged in Syria.” The Associated Press has reported that the rich asshole signed off on that speech.
A Wednesday statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sought, with limited success, to clarify the situation.
Referring to the battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Sanders said that "the military mission to eradicate ISIS in Syria is coming to a rapid end."
But, she added, “the United States and our partners remain committed to eliminating the small ISIS presence in Syria that our forces have not already eradicated.”
Reflecting the confusion, some news outlets emphasized the rich asshole drawing down in Syria, while others contended that he was walking back his earlier pledge by declining to set a timetable for withdrawal.
Either way, sources told The Hill that the to-ing and fro-ing was anathema to Kelly, a retired Marine general.
Kelly is in little immediate danger of being fired, but there are growing questions about how long he will be willing to endure the current situation, where his advice can be disregarded and his sensibilities defied.
One GOP operative went so far as to say that Kelly is “gone in fact, if not in title.”
But Kelly still has allies on staff and in the wider the rich asshole world.
Those allies insist that enemies with agendas are greatly exaggerating the possibility of Kelly’s demise, in part in the hope of restoring their own access to the rich asshole.
The pro-Kelly voices also raise eyebrows at why, if the chief of staff is so weakened, his critics are only willing to speak under cover of anonymity.
“People say he restricts the information flow, but his job is not controlling the president,” said Michael Caputo, a longtime the rich asshole friend. “I don’t know why people are saying this, but I know they are saying it off the record, which tells you all you need to know about their courage.”
Barry Bennett, a senior adviser to the rich asshole’s 2016 campaign, wryly noted that “no one has ever restrained some rich asshole.”
He also pushed back at the idea that Kelly is a diminished presence.
“I don’t think John Kelly is less powerful. Everybody still reports to him. The president is always going to be the same guy he was — he likes being in control. But I don’t think that is any measure of John Kelly.”
Even if that is so, however, it is common knowledge that Kelly sought to clean house when he was first appointed. Chief strategist Stephen Bannon departed soon after he arrived, as did former “Apprentice” star Omarosa Manigault Newman, who served as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison.
Numerous sources noted that Kelly’s broader efforts to limit the number of people who had access to the president sat uneasily with the way the rich asshole had managed his business empire for decades.
Some expressed sympathy with Kelly’s instincts to impose order on the unruly atmosphere that had festered during Priebus’s time as chief of staff.
“Early on — typically, in any administration — you would have less than 10 people with walk-in rights,” said a source who worked closely with the rich asshole’s transition team. With the rich asshole “even from the get-go, there were maybe 30 people with walk-in rights, because he wanted to have the same structure he had in the the rich asshole Organization.”
This source added, “From a government perspective, that seems to create a bit of a chaotic environment. You need them to focus.”
Bennett, the former campaign adviser, argued that the rich asshole understands someone needs to do the kind of job that is now Kelly’s.
“I guarantee you that some rich asshole wants nothing to do with the daily management of all those people — department heads and others. some rich asshole is very happy that John Kelly is doing all of that. But people who think that he can tell some rich asshole not to tweet? That’s foolish.”
Still, others insist that the rich asshole needs a more free-flowing atmosphere than Kelly is willing to provide.
The two are on a collision course, they say — and it will end badly sooner or later.
“What [the rich asshole] has expressed is missing the opportunity to interact with individuals,” the source within the rich asshole’s orbit said. “All these stories of the White House in chaos are missing the point.
"To him, it is stagnation because he is getting his information now from two or three people. He is used to being inundated with people all day long."
"He doesn’t see that as chaos," the source said — before adding that when the rich asshole contemplates the current, more buttoned-down atmosphere "he sees it as a morgue.”
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on some rich asshole’s presidency.
How to make sense of all of the rich asshole’s statements on Syria this week
The president has not yet presented a coherent strategy for his desire to leave Syria, leaving his generals fuming and fumbling.
President some rich asshole’s lack of a strategy in Syria was put into sharp focus this past week when he repeatedly called for U.S. troops to leave the county, against the recommendations of his security advisors.
At a rally in Ohio last week, the rich asshole surprised the Pentagon and the State Department by saying U.S. troops would be out of Syria “very soon.” On Wednesday afternoon, that timetable changed to maybe six months, after reports emerged of a tense meeting between the rich asshole and his generals.
CNN reported that the president “grew irritated with his top military brass and national security team on Tuesday when they advised him an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria would be unwise and could not provide a timeline for when American forces could exit.”
A public statement from White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday morning avoided any mention of a timeline for the withdrawal of troops. The statement said that U.S. troops would remain in Syria until “the small ISIS presence” was eliminated and vaguely referred to consulting with “allies and friends regarding future plans.”
The lack of clarity around U.S. troops in Syria is likely due to the administration’s general approach to the country. Other than fighting the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), President the rich asshole has never really had a strategy for Syria.
In fact, the closest the rich asshole administration has come to having a strategy on Syria was when former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in January said that U.S. goals in Syria include the defeat of ISIS, stability, and the countering of Iranian influence.
But now we’re in a policy space where the United States has gone from having a vague mission in Syria to one where the president is taking what appears to a hostile stance against his own team.
“Having political leadership misspeak or say things before decisions are made happens… having them repeatedly contradict themselves and contradict and undermine what much of their team is saying is a little bit special to this administration. It’s a common occurrence,” said Mara Karlin, Associate Professor of the Practice of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development).
What sort of message does this communicate to countries like Russia, Iran, and North Korea, with which the United States has increasingly tense relations?
“It send a signal of profound uncertainty of what U.S. policy is, how it is decided, and, frankly, it will continue along a certain trajectory. The idea of U.S. credibility is up in the air,” said Karlin.
Supporters of the rich asshole’s style tend to sell the uncertainty he creates around his decision-making as a plus, something that can knock adversaries off balance and give the United States an advantage. This lack of clarity, though, is bad news when it comes to military matters.
“To have U.S. troops somewhere, without a clear mandate, mission, and clear rules of engagement is problematic,” said Karlin.
Jeff Kubiak, senior fellow at Arizona State University’s Center on the Future of War, said top military brass are worried about what pulling out of Syria might mean in terms of either giving Iran, Turkey, and Russia an advantage or allowing the sort of power vacuum that would give rise to another insurgent group in the country.
“I don’t see President the rich asshole thinking the same way… or that he much cares about who controls the Middle East, as long as Israel seems safe — and Israel seems safe,” he said.
“Realistically, he thinks that 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria is going to cause him problems, politically. What’s going to happen is that they’re going to take some losses, and he’s not going to be able to answer what they’re doing there,” added Kubiak, who said that he does not “see this heading in a good direction.”
The United States had also promised $200 million for reconstruction and stabilization in Syria, but the rich asshole administration decided last week that the funds were being withheld.
The sum is minuscule. It’s been estimated that billions of dollars will be needed to reconstruct Mosul alone, which is in the far more stable neighboring Iraq.
“Everything I read says this is about money. But he sneezes and $200 million comes out — this isn’t a money issue,” said Kubiak, “There’s some principle there, there’s a point he’s trying to make from an ideological perspective, not from a pragmatic, financial standpoint.”
Karlin said what the rich asshole is essentially saying now is, “Look, we were only there for ISIS… and we don’t really care about the future of Syria.”
From the defense side, said Karlin, there are three people whose views would matter: Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis, Commander of U.S. Central Command Gen. Joseph Votel, and Commander of U.S. European Command Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti.
Mattis has said that he sees the U.S. mission in Syria as an open-ended one, Scaparrotti earlier this month said that the United States needs to not only counter ISIS influence but Russian influence as well, and Votel on Wednesday said that U.S. forces will remain in Syria as a stabilization force.
“You wouldn’t have President the rich asshole saying some of what he’s saying if [outgoing National Security Advisor] H.R. McMaster was going to stay in the position, if others around him [the rich asshole] had a better hold of the situation. It looks like those reigns have been loosed, and it looks like President the rich asshole is speaking his mind more regularly, and unconstrained,” said Kubiak, adding that regardless, the president “will have his way in some fashion.”
The exodus of U.S. troops would be great for pretty much everyone seen as security threat by the rich asshole administration.
“It would redouble the confidence of Tehran, of Assad, of Hezbollah, of Moscow, of the remnants of ISIS. It would further plummet the confidence of the Syrian opposition,” said Karlin.
“And given that it appears at least, to be absent a broader strategic approach to Syria, it’s calling into question U.S. credibility and U.S. commitment,” she added.
Kubiak said that the presence of U.S. troops in Syria could increase the chances of a war with Russia, who is backing the government of President Bashar al Assad. But pulling out might have consequences, not just within Syria, but on the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
In 2013, the rich asshole believed that the United States was doing Saudi’s “dirty work” in Syria. And on Wednesday, he said that Saudi Arabia should pay for anti-ISIS operations in Syria.
But Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman has said that the United States should keep troops in Syria for “at least the mid-term, if not the long-term.” And Saudi is a key U.S. ally in a region where the U.S. is diplomatically flailing.
Although he’s ambivalent about the presence of troops in Syria, Kubiak said that the rich asshole’s move reflects a perspective that “allies are not worth the U.S. expenditure to provide support or security.”
“And quite frankly, that’s a very myopic, very narrow understanding with what alliances are and the value they bring to U.S. security. And that narrowness is very troubling,” he added.
the rich asshole effect splits Senate and House GOP candidates
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 04/05/18 06:00 AM EDT
President the rich asshole is looming large over the midterm elections, and GOP candidates are scrambling to either maximize or minimize his impact, depending on their races.
Republican candidates, particularly those running in contested Senate primaries, are rushing to embrace the rich asshole, who is highly popular with the party base.
In contested Senate primaries in Indiana, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin, GOP candidates are portraying themselves as the rich asshole loyalists or likeminded outsiders ready to take on the D.C. political establishment.
In House races, especially where Republicans are looking past the primary to the general election, candidates are busy establishing an independent brand to survive a possible Democratic wave in November.
“It’s a tale of two cities in terms of the Senate and the House,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist. “In the battle for the Senate, the potential pickups are in states where the rich asshole is very popular.
“In the House, there’s no one-size-fits-all plan. If you’re in a rural area, you’re running to the rich asshole,” O’Connell said.
In suburban areas, GOP candidates “are running more on their own name,” he added.
In West Virginia, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is in a three-way fight for the Senate GOP nomination, has a new ad in which he declares, “Let’s not just change Washington, let’s blow it up and reinvent it.”
Morrisey has the backing of a pro-the rich asshole super PAC, 35th PAC, and is touting his meeting with the rich asshole on Thursday in White Sulphur Springs to “discuss issues important to all West Virginians.”
Don Blankenship, the former chairman of Massey Energy, who is running against Morrisey and Rep. Evan Jenkins for the nomination is trying to style himself as the most the rich asshole-like candidate in the field.
In an ad last month, Blankenship compares himself to the rich asshole, calling himself a true job creator and attacking Jenkins as a past supporter of cap-and-trade emissions controls and state laws that helped implement ObamaCare.
“the rich asshole looms pretty large over the state’s politics at the moment,” said Patrick Hickey, a professor of political science at West Virginia University.
“They’re all sort of trying to run as the the rich asshole candidate,” he said of the Senate GOP field. “Blankenship has embraced the rich asshole looking at his commercials. He’s trying to tie Jenkins to Democrats and say he isn’t a real anti-establishment the rich asshole Republican like he is.”
In Indiana, the site of another fiercely contested GOP primary, Rep. Todd Rokita has a new ad bashing his opponent, Rep. Luke Messer as a faux the rich asshole supporter.
Rokita dons a “Make America Great Again” hat and declares, “I’ll proudly stand with our president and Mike Pence to drain the swamp.”
Meanwhile, he accuses Messer of having “plotted” with so-called never the rich asshole Republicans in 2016 to steal the nomination and blasts his other opponent, state Rep. Mike Braun, as a “RINO” — a Republican in name only.
Braun has his own ad featuring two cardboard cut-outs of Rokita and Messer and portraying himself as an outsider businessman, drawing a parallel with the rich asshole.
In Wisconsin, Marine Corps veteran Kevin Nicholson and state Sen. Leah Vukmir are both portraying themselves as strong the rich asshole allies.
Nicholson has highlighted his support for the rich asshole in the 2016 presidential primary, seeking advantage from Vukmir’s initial support for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and then Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during the primary race.
Nicholson has also criticized Speaker Paul Ryan (R), a fellow Wisconsinite, for not embracing the rich asshole more enthusiastically.
In North Dakota, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R) is hewing closely to the rich asshole and attacking incumbent Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D) for voting with the president only a majority of the time.
“Here’s the good news about some rich asshole: Most of the time, he’s for North Dakota, and that’s my point where I’ve heard her say, ‘Gee, I voted with him 55 percent of the time,'” Cramer told a local radio host.
“Can you imagine going home and telling your wife, ‘I’ve been faithful to you 55 percent of the time'? Are you kidding me? Being wrong half the time is not a good answer.”
A major difference between Senate and House races is that Republicans are mostly playing offense in states that the rich asshole won by big margins in hopes of expanding their Senate majority, while they are playing defense in more than 20 districts won by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in order to keep control of the lower chamber.
The dynamic is much different in districts that Clinton carried in 2016, where GOP candidates are trying to build up their own brand by standing up to the rich asshole.
“You’ve got to create your own brand in your district, something that’s not necessarily Washington,” said Jim McLaughlin, a GOP consultant and public opinion expert.
He said it’s important to appeal to the rich asshole voters and give them a reason to vote in an election where party turnout will be important but that vulnerable House candidates also must “talk to swing voters and let them know what you’re doing is better than your opponent.”
One of McLaughlin’s clients, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), hasn’t hesitated to call out the rich asshole when he thought he was wrong.
Curbelo criticized the conservative immigration-reform bill drafted by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and backed by the rich asshole as “deeply flawed” and an “insufficient solution” to help young illegal immigrants facing deportation.
Curbelo has also called on the rich asshole to fire Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and last year even suggested that the rich asshole could be impeached if found guilty of obstruction of justice.
Clinton beat the rich asshole by 16 points in Curbelo’s district.
In Virginia’s 10th District, which Clinton won by 10 points, incumbent Rep. Barbara Comstock (R) has also distanced herself from the rich asshole when she felt it necessary.
She clashed with the rich asshole at a White House meeting in February after the rich asshole said he would “love to see a shutdown” if Democrats didn’t agree to fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
She told the rich asshole bluntly, “We don’t need a government shutdown on this.”
Comstock also distanced herself from the president after he characterized Haiti, El Salvador and African countries in disparaging terms during the immigration debate.
“What we need now is not division or discord, but finding a way we can come together and agree, as well as civilly disagree, as we tackle our diverse American challenges,” she said at the time.
“Both Carlos Curbelo and Barbara Comstock have their own brands in their districts and they connect with the average person,” said McLaughlin.
He said voters in Florida’s 26th District don’t view Curbelo “in terms of partisan politics.”
“This guy is Mr. Miami, Mr. South Florida. They view him as someone they can talk to,” he added.
Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), who is running in another pro-Clinton district, has criticized the rich asshole’s threats to shut down the government over the border wall and his support for a military parade through Washington, an idea that has drawn comparisons to the practices of former Soviet bloc dictators.
“No shutdowns, no parades. We need to focus on what moves us forward — cleaning up the #VA, fixing #DACA, securing our borders, and growing wages,” he tweeted in February.
More recently, Coffman pressured the rich asshole to fire Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin because of his controversial travel expenses.
At the same time, GOP strategists warn that even candidates in pro-Clinton districts can’t afford to alienate base voters in more liberal-leaning districts.
“In Republican primaries we’re seeing historically high support for the president in everything he does,” said Chip Saltsman, a GOP strategist who spent Wednesday touring with Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) through his conservative district.
Kustoff is running for reelection by running toward the rich asshole, featuring the president on his campaign literature.
“It’s OK to have a disagreement with the president from time to time, but what’s not okay is to run away from him as leader of the party and president,” Saltsman added.
Even Curbelo, who hasn’t been afraid to disagree with the rich asshole, said he would welcome the rich asshole campaigning for him in his Democratic-leaning district.
McLaughlin said, “You got to get your base motivated and you got to give those new the rich asshole voters a reason to vote between now and Election Day.”
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