Republicans want to know the rich asshole’s endgame on trade
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 04/09/18 09:06 PM EDT
Republican senators want to know if President the rich asshole has an endgame in the escalating trade fight with China.
The fight over tariffs has sent markets into turmoil and clouded economic prospects, worrying senators ahead of the midterm elections.
Prices for soybeans, corn and wheat dropped in anticipation that China will hit U.S. exports hard if the rich asshole goes through with a plan to impose tariffs on another $100 billion in Chinese imports.
“This is a big deal. In South Dakota we can’t afford to have that kind of loss in the markets just on speculation we might end up in a trade war,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
Worse, from the point of view of Rounds and others, is that it’s not clear where the fight is headed.
“My question, very respectfully, to the president is, ‘What’s your game plan? What’s your endgame on this?’ ” said Rounds. “I think the administration needs to be able to explain their logic on why they’re doing it this way and whether there’s any logic to it.”
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) on Monday called on the administration to define “a solid path toward an end result in our trade negotiations with China.”
“We cannot escalate a fight between a significant purchaser of what we produce in Kansas with no real end goal,” he warned in an op-ed published in The Hill.
Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) said he and his colleagues are concerned about how carefully the rich asshole has thought out his tactics.
“I don’t know that there’s a real plan or strategy in place that gets the result that they want,” he said. “It seems like this is, ‘OK, there’s a trade deficit, we know China cheats and we’re going to punish them.’ ”
“It seems to me there needs to be a lot of thought given to unintended consequences,” he added. “My impression is that hasn’t happened.”
Lawmakers representing farm states were unlikely to grow confident from the statements coming Monday from the rich asshole and his top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow.
the rich asshole blasted China and previous administrations for trade policies that had harmed U.S. workers and businesses, adding that U.S. farmers would “understand” if they suffered from a trade fight that might ultimately move them forward. If China sought to hurt U.S. farmers in order to hurt the rich asshole, the president said, “I wouldn’t say that’s nice.”
But he said farmers were “patriots” who would understand.
“These are great patriots. They understand that they’re doing this for the country,” the rich asshole said. “And we’ll make it up to them. And in the end, they’re going to be much stronger than they are right now.”
Kudlow, for his part, downplayed the trade dispute by insisting the United States wasn’t in a trade war since while tariffs have been discussed and planned, they have not been put into place.
“I don’t know if we’ll have tariffs or not,” the rich asshole’s economic adviser told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”
the rich asshole said that farmers have been “trending downward over an eight-year period” but that, because of his actions on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and China, “farmers will be better off than they ever were.”
the rich asshole’s more protectionist outlook on trade has always been a note of contention in his relationship with GOP leaders in Congress, and the recent fights have brought it into focus.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) says he will hold hearings on the rich asshole’s tariff policy but didn’t announce a date.
“My personal feeling is I wish they wouldn’t go through. I don’t think they help. I think he’s getting bad advice,” Hatch said of the proposed tariffs. “I haven’t seen tariffs work in any way over the years.”
“We’ll probably have to have hearings. You can’t just ignore it,” he said.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) plans to hold hearings April 12 on the rich asshole’s proposal to place tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who met with the rich asshole in January to dissuade the administration of moving ahead with tariffs and warn about the impact on Senate-battleground farm states, expressed dismay over last week’s posturing on trade.
“I don’t think tariffs are the right way to go,” said Gardner, who is charged with protecting the GOP’s Senate majority. “What we need to do is work with a coalition of nations to condemn Chinese trade practices and find a solution, but I think tariffs will hurt the very people they’re trying to help.”
Republican senators say they hope for a cooling-off period in the next several weeks and several are urging the rich asshole to take a multi-lateral approach to trade issues with China, instead of plunging into a one-on-one exchange of retaliatory trade measures.
“There’s time for negotiation and I certainly hope those negotiations are fruitful and that we come to an agreement where China says we’re going to stop stealing [U.S.] companies blind when it comes to intellectual theft and they agree to fair trade practices,” Gardner said.
Rounds is publicly urging the rich asshole to revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement between the United States and 11 Pacific Rim countries, including Japan, Singapore and Vietnam, to gain more leverage in negotiations with China.
He said the United States should also settle its trade status with Canada and Mexico, two of its biggest partners. The both nations’ statuses are shrouded in uncertainty because of attempts to renegotiate NAFTA.
He argues that expanded access to those markets would leave U.S. exporters less vulnerable to retaliatory trade measures.
“It would be really good if we had those allies on board with us and we had working relationships with them, trade agreements with them, when we tackle the big dog, which is China,” Rounds said.
“It would be really good if we had those allies on board with us and we had working relationships with them, trade agreements with them, when we tackle the big dog, which is China,” Rounds said.
the rich asshole pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership shortly after taking office last year, vowing to negotiate bilateral trade agreements to replace it.
The Memo: Syria debate exposes fissures in the rich asshole's circle
BY NIALL STANAGE - 04/09/18 08:48 PM EDT
President the rich asshole is widely expected to take action against Syria following a suspected chemical attack on Saturday that is being blamed on forces loyal to Bashar Assad.
But the debate is exposing fissures among the rich asshole’s team about his broader foreign policy stances.
On one side, conservatives worry that the rich asshole’s isolationist instincts and unpredictable nature will give up hard-won gains in Syria and across the region, especially against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“Strategically, much as I can sympathize with anyone who says the Middle East is just a vale of tears and we should stay out, we find that when we do that we get dragged back in on more adverse terms,” said Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of Defense who advocated for intervention in Iraq during President George W. Bush’s administration.
“Our enemies certainly seemed to have figured out that they have interests there,” Wolfowitz added.
Others contend that moves in the direction favored by Wolfowitz would amount to a betrayal of the promises that got the rich asshole elected, crystallized in his "America First" slogan.
“The centerpiece of ‘America First’ is that overseas engagement is only going to happen where there is a vital national security interest of the United States,” said one GOP operative who believes the situation in Syria does not meet that threshold.
Complicating the dynamic further is the arrival of John Bolton as national security adviser. Bolton, whose official first day in the job was Monday, is a hawkish figure who, like Wolfowitz, was closely identified with the war in Iraq under Bush.
Bolton has commented less about Syria in recent years than he has about other U.S. foes including North Korea, Iran and Russia.
But given that the latter two are heavily involved in Syria as supporters of Assad, it is widely assumed that Bolton would favor a vigorous response.
In February, Bolton tweeted “it should surprise no-one that the Syrian government continues to develop new chemical weapons.” He added that the international community “hasn’t done enough to deter this continuing behavior.”
Wolfowitz praised the rich asshole’s decision almost exactly one year ago to respond to a chemical attack from Syrian forces by launching a missile strike against an airfield. That, he said, was “a step in the right direction.”
But the GOP operative, who spoke on background in order to speak candidly, said that the rich asshole was cut from very different cloth from Bush — and that many of the president’s supporters were acutely skeptical of the interventionist stances of figures such as Bush, Wolfowitz and Bolton.
“I’d be shocked if Bolton was pushing military engagement. There's a whole part of the the rich asshole movement that looks at Bolton with very suspicious eyes. Bolton is really auditioning here for a number of different audiences,” the source said.
the rich asshole expressed horror on Monday about the apparent gas attack on the town of Douma. The president described it as “atrocious” and “horrible” during brief remarks to reporters before a Cabinet meeting.
He also indicated that a decision was imminent as to whether the U.S. would take action against Syria as a result.
But, underlining the rich asshole’s sometimes impulsive approach to such matters, it was only late last month that he said — to the apparent surprise of some of his own senior officials — that he wanted to exit Syria “very soon.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), a frequent the rich asshole critic, said those comments had emboldened Assad — an assertion that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pushed back against vigorously during Monday’s media briefing.
Still, the rich asshole’s shifts and impetuosity discomforts some conservative thinkers as well as the more predictable liberal critics.
Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute said, “At the very least, we should not be pulling out of Syria. We should be working to organize allies on the ground and to empower those who want to join the fight against both ISIS and Assad.”
Asked if she were content with the rich asshole’s approach to the Middle East generally, Pletka say she was not.
“I think we need to engage more in Syria, more in Iran, more in Yemen,” she said. “The president has said that he is no Barack Obama when it comes to meeting these challenges. That remains to be seen.”
Liberal critics would disagree with Pletka and the rich asshole’s characterization of Obama as weak on Syria or the Middle East generally. But some acknowledge that the challenges in Syria pose hard choices.
“Syria is a failing state that has not produced regime change,” said Rudy deLeon, a senior vice president of National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “As long as ISIS is defeated, or no longer consequential, do the Americans depart or is there some kind of stabilization effort?”
Wolfowitz acknowledged that the situation is difficult and that the U.S. had fewer options than it had several years ago. But he insisted that some kind of retaliation for the chemical attack is a strategic and moral necessity.
“We could do some good for suffering Syrians,” he said, “and at the same time make the Russians and Iranians pay a price.”
the rich asshole: 'Many people have said' I should fire Mueller
BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 04/09/18 06:56 PM EDT
President the rich asshole said Monday said "many people" have suggested he fire Robert Mueller, renewing speculation over the fate of the special counsel's probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
During a meeting with military officials, the rich asshole was asked about Mueller, who issued a referral that helped lead to a Monday FBI raid on Michael Cohen, the rich asshole's personal attorney.
“We’ll see what happens. Many people have said, 'you should fire him.' Again, they found nothing and in finding nothing that’s a big statement,” the rich asshole said, claiming Mueller's team is biased and has "the biggest conflicts of interest I have ever seen."
Agents reportedly seized communications between Cohen and the rich asshole, tax documents and records related to Cohen's $130,000 payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels.
The Washington Post reported that Cohen is being investigated for possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations.
The $130,000 payment, of which the rich asshole says he was unaware, came weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Cohen says he made the nondisclosure payment out of his own funds.
the rich asshole has repeatedly denied collusion between his campaign and Russia, and has argued Mueller's probe should never have started. On Monday, he again dismissed the special counsel as a "witch hunt."
“It’s a real disgrace,” the rich asshole told reporters. “It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”
the rich asshole's frequent attacks on the special counsel periodically sparked concern from Democrats that he will seek to fire Mueller before he can conclude his investigation.
Republican have brushed aside those concerns, and rejected calls for legislation that would prevent the rich asshole from firing the special counsel, saying such a measure is "not necessary."
the rich asshole ordered Mueller's firing last June, but backed off the idea when White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign.
Legal experts say the rich asshole cannot directly fire the special counsel, who reports to the Justice Department and specifically Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation.
On Monday, the rich asshole again hit Sessions for that recusal.
“The attorney general made a terrible mistake when he did this ... He certainly should have let us know if he was going to recuse himself, and we would have put a different attorney general in,” the president said. “So he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country.”
Mueller has so far secured indictments or guilty pleas from three former the rich asshole associates. He also filed charges against 13 Russian nationals for allegedly attempting to interfere in the 2016 election.
Mueller reportedly told the rich asshole's lawyers last month that he does not consider the president to be a criminal target at this point in his investigation, but he still considers the rich asshole to be a subject.
He is also said to be preparing a report about the rich asshole's actions in the White House and whether he sought to obstruct justice.
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April 9, 2018
the rich asshole's rhetoric against special counsel Robert Mueller continues to ramp up as the investigations close in. But if he tries to follow through on his implied threat, Americans are ready to push back.
the rich asshole’s admiration for dictators may have led him to think he can get away with behaving like one. But his attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller are likely to backfire resoundingly.
Because if he tries to fire Mueller, Americans across all 50 states are vowing to protest.
After the FBI executed a raid on the office of the rich asshole’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, the rich asshole launched another unhinged rant. He called the raid “an attack on our country” and “a whole new level of unfairness.”
And when asked if he planned to fire Mueller, he responded cryptically with “We’ll see what happens.”
As CNN reports, “A source close to the White House warned that Mueller’s decision could push the rich asshole in the direction of taking action against the special counsel’s office.”
It’s part of a pattern from the rich asshole, even as he’s been warned by some in his own party that firing Mueller would be “the beginning of the end of his presidency.”
And in the latest sign of massive resistance to the rich asshole — from the Women’s Marches to the March For Our Lives — thousands of Americans are ready to make that warning a reality.
300,000 people across the country have signed up to protest if the rich asshole makes good on his apparent wish. Protests are planned at more than 800 locations in all 50 states.
Republican leaders have stubbornly refused to even accept the idea that Mueller needs to be protected from the rich asshole’s recklessness. But Mueller’s aggressive new approach — and now the raid on the rich asshole’s lawyer and hush-money man — has clearly gotten even further under the rich asshole’s skin. His near-constant meltdowns seem directly tied to the progress of the investigations.
the rich asshole cares little for the norms of the office he occupies. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the country has forgotten about them.
And hundreds of thousands of citizens are ready to give the rich asshole a very loud reminder should he cross the line from bluster into dangerous action.
the rich asshole: FBI raid on Cohen 'a disgrace'
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 04/09/18 06:28 PM EDT
President the rich asshole on Monday blasted the FBI for raiding the office of his personal attorney Michael Cohen, calling it a “disgrace” and a “pure and simple witch hunt.”
“It’s a real disgrace,” the rich asshole told reporters at the White House as Vice President Pence, national security adviser John Bolton and other officials looked on. “It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”
The president spoke shortly after an attorney for Cohen announced that federal investigators executed a series of search warrants to seize records from the rich asshole’s longtime lawyer and fixer.
The attorney, Stephen Ryan, said federal prosecutors in New York acted on a “referral” from special counsel Robert Mueller.
The fiery comments from the rich asshole immediately led to speculation that the FBI raid on Cohen’s office could lead the rich asshole to take steps to fire Mueller, a step lawmakers in both parties have repeatedly warned the president would lead to a constitutional crisis.
“We’ll see what happens. … Many people have said ‘you should fire him,’ ” the rich asshole said when asked if he will ax Mueller. “Again, they found nothing and in finding nothing, that’s a big statement.”
The special counsel’s office reportedly made the referral with the approval of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whom the rich asshole criticized for signing a surveillance warrant for his former campaign adviser Carter Page.
If the rich asshole were to try to get rid of Mueller, he would need a signoff from Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel’s office because of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to recuse himself.
the rich asshole once again took aim at the Russia probe led by Mueller, calling his team “the most biased group of people” for refusing to investigate 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of State.
“We’ve had that hanging over us from the very, very beginning,” the president said. “And yet the other side, they’re not even looking. And the other side is where there are crimes, and those crimes are obvious.”
The president was clearly angry and frustrated at the raid, which reportedly seized records on topics that included a $130,000 payment Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels, who says she had sex with the rich asshole in 2006.
the rich asshole said last week he was unaware of the payment.
Speaking with his arms folded and shoulders slumped, the rich asshole brought up the raid unprompted during a previously scheduled meeting with military leaders to discuss the apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria. He used the word “disgrace” to describe it at least five times.
The raid is a sign that federal authorities are conducting a criminal investigation involving Cohen, but the focus of the probe remains unclear. The search warrant for the raid of Cohen’s office was approved by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is led by Geoffrey Berman, a rich asshole appointee.
Watchdog groups have sued the rich asshole campaign alleging that the payment to Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, may have violated campaign finance laws.
Cohen has also come under scrutiny from investigators looking into whether rich asshole campaign colluded with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, in part due to his involvement with a failed plan by the rich asshole Organization to build a tower in Moscow.
the rich asshole repeated his belief that investigators have “found no collusion whatsoever with Russia” and took aim at a wide array of targets he feels are responsible for the probe, including Sessions.
The president said Sessions “made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country” by recusing himself from the Russia probe, a decision that helped lead to the appointment of Mueller.
Monday’s raid underscored how the mounting legal woes surrounding the rich asshole are weighing on the president.
the rich asshole remarked that stocks plunged on Monday afternoon, something he blamed on the news of the Cohen raid. News of the Cohen raid broke 30 minutes after markets closed.
“The stock market dropped a lot today as soon as they heard the noise, you know, of this nonsense that was going on. It dropped a lot. It was up — it was way up. It dropped quite a bit at the end,” he said.
The raid — and the rich asshole’s response to it — also overshadowed his plans to counter the chemical attack in Syria, which killed at least 40 people.
the rich asshole said the attack will be “met forcefully” and indicated a decision will come Monday night.
“It’s a real disgrace,” the rich asshole told reporters at the White House as Vice President Pence, national security adviser John Bolton and other officials looked on. “It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”
The president spoke shortly after an attorney for Cohen announced that federal investigators executed a series of search warrants to seize records from the rich asshole’s longtime lawyer and fixer.
The attorney, Stephen Ryan, said federal prosecutors in New York acted on a “referral” from special counsel Robert Mueller.
The fiery comments from the rich asshole immediately led to speculation that the FBI raid on Cohen’s office could lead the rich asshole to take steps to fire Mueller, a step lawmakers in both parties have repeatedly warned the president would lead to a constitutional crisis.
“We’ll see what happens. … Many people have said ‘you should fire him,’ ” the rich asshole said when asked if he will ax Mueller. “Again, they found nothing and in finding nothing, that’s a big statement.”
The special counsel’s office reportedly made the referral with the approval of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whom the rich asshole criticized for signing a surveillance warrant for his former campaign adviser Carter Page.
If the rich asshole were to try to get rid of Mueller, he would need a signoff from Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel’s office because of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to recuse himself.
the rich asshole once again took aim at the Russia probe led by Mueller, calling his team “the most biased group of people” for refusing to investigate 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of State.
“We’ve had that hanging over us from the very, very beginning,” the president said. “And yet the other side, they’re not even looking. And the other side is where there are crimes, and those crimes are obvious.”
The president was clearly angry and frustrated at the raid, which reportedly seized records on topics that included a $130,000 payment Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels, who says she had sex with the rich asshole in 2006.
the rich asshole said last week he was unaware of the payment.
Speaking with his arms folded and shoulders slumped, the rich asshole brought up the raid unprompted during a previously scheduled meeting with military leaders to discuss the apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria. He used the word “disgrace” to describe it at least five times.
The raid is a sign that federal authorities are conducting a criminal investigation involving Cohen, but the focus of the probe remains unclear. The search warrant for the raid of Cohen’s office was approved by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is led by Geoffrey Berman, a rich asshole appointee.
Watchdog groups have sued the rich asshole campaign alleging that the payment to Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, may have violated campaign finance laws.
Cohen has also come under scrutiny from investigators looking into whether rich asshole campaign colluded with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, in part due to his involvement with a failed plan by the rich asshole Organization to build a tower in Moscow.
the rich asshole repeated his belief that investigators have “found no collusion whatsoever with Russia” and took aim at a wide array of targets he feels are responsible for the probe, including Sessions.
The president said Sessions “made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country” by recusing himself from the Russia probe, a decision that helped lead to the appointment of Mueller.
Monday’s raid underscored how the mounting legal woes surrounding the rich asshole are weighing on the president.
the rich asshole remarked that stocks plunged on Monday afternoon, something he blamed on the news of the Cohen raid. News of the Cohen raid broke 30 minutes after markets closed.
“The stock market dropped a lot today as soon as they heard the noise, you know, of this nonsense that was going on. It dropped a lot. It was up — it was way up. It dropped quite a bit at the end,” he said.
The raid — and the rich asshole’s response to it — also overshadowed his plans to counter the chemical attack in Syria, which killed at least 40 people.
the rich asshole said the attack will be “met forcefully” and indicated a decision will come Monday night.
Updated at 8:20 p.m.color of bra
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April 9, 2018
A new poll shows 63 percent of Orange County residents disapprove of some rich asshole. It no longer looks like a reliable Republican stronghold.
Orange County was once a Republican stronghold, but times are changing. Democrats are focused on several congressional seats currently held by Republicans, and it increasingly looks like their bets may pay off.
The latest piece of bad news for Republicans is a new poll showing more than 6 in 10 Orange County residents disapprove of the rich asshole, with an anemic 37 percent approving of him. On top of those numbers, more residents want Democrats to control Congress than want Republicans to control it.
Orange County voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the first Democrat to win there in more than 80 years. This new poll, and other analyses, paint this shift more as the start of a trend than a one-time anomaly.
“It’s one more indication we are no longer a red county,” said Fred Smoller, a Chapman University associate professor of political science and lead researcher for the poll.
“Republicans should be worried about the effect the rich asshole is having on California,” said Mark DiCamillo, a poll director at UC-Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. “There’s an undercurrent that what’s happening in Washington is negatively affecting California.”
Embattled California Republicans with strong connections to the rich asshole, like Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Mimi Walters, have plenty to fret about as well.
The rich asshole-led Republican tax bill is a disaster, including in Orange County, where homeowners face a tax hike upwards of $4,500. Changes to health care policy are leading to skyrocketing premiums, with Californians looking at a premium hike of up to 30 percent next year — while other parts of the country could see increases of up to 94 percent in the coming years.
DiCamillo conducted a separate poll pegging Dana Rohrabacher’s staunch support of the rich asshole as one of the reasons his numbers are faltering, especially with women in his district.
And, according to McClatchy, “Rohrabacher’s web of ties to Russia have drawn the attention of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team. But his connection to the rich asshole may be equally, if not more, damaging.”
the rich asshole and complicit congressional Republicans are such a disaster that even residents of Orange County, formerly one of the most reliably red areas in the country, can’t stomach it.
National Republicans know their situation is tenuous. Rather than face voters again in November, two Orange County Republicans, Reps. Darrell Issa and Ed Royce, decided to retire. Republicans rushed to open a field office in Orange County, spending time and resources defending multiple seats once thought to be safe.
“Orange County is changing,” says Smoller. Democrats are hoping a blue wave in November will accelerate the change, and help them regain control of the House of Representatives.
FBI raids the rich asshole lawyer's office
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 04/09/18 04:00 PM EDT
The FBI on Monday raided the office of President the rich asshole's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and seized emails, tax documents and records related to his payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels.
Cohen's lawyer, Stephen Ryan, said in a statement that federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained a search warrant after receiving a referral "in part" from special counsel Robert Mueller. Ryan called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.”
The New York Times reported that the payment to Daniels is just one of "many topics" being looked at by the FBI.
Other seized documents include business records and communications between Cohen and the rich asshole, but the raid does not appear to be directly connected to Mueller’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to The Times.
Among the materials agents secured are those related to Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement related to her alleged 2006 affair with the rich asshole.
The payment went through just days before the 2016 election. Cohen has admitted to paying Daniels, but denied it violated campaign finance laws.
Last week, the rich asshole denied knowing about the payment. It was the first time he had addressed the issue publicly.
"You'll have to ask Michael Cohen," the rich asshole said. "Michael is my attorney. You'll have to ask Michael."
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, filed a lawsuit last month claiming that a nondisclosure agreement she signed regarding the alleged affair is invalid because the rich asshole never signed it. Her lawyer on Sunday filed a renewed motion to depose the rich asshole and Cohen over the payment.
Cohen, who has been the rich asshole's attorney for years, has previously been of interest in some aspects of the special counsel's probe.
Mueller reportedly sought documents and spoke to witnesses about Cohen’s involvement in negotiations to build a rich asshole Tower in Moscow. Cohen was reportedly in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chief spokesman about moving forward on the project, but did not receive a response.
Negotiations about the property fell apart in early 2016.
Updated at 4:26 p.m.
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April 9, 2018
the rich asshole's feeling the heat of Mueller's investigation, and it shows.
the rich asshole is not taking the news that the FBI raided his personal attorney’s office well.
In fact, he’s taking it very poorly and lashing out in truly Trumpian fashion.
On Monday, the FBI seized documents from the home and office of Michael Cohen, the rich asshole’s longtime personal attorney and “fixer,” whose many fixes included paying $130,000 of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her extramarital affair with the rich asshole a secret.
According to the rich asshole, that raid — for which federal prosecutors obtained a warrant — is not only “a disgrace,” but an “attack on our country.”
the rich asshole ranted for several minutes: about special counsel Robert Mueller’s “witch hunt”; about Hillary Clinton’s emails, which are still being investigated, thanks to Republicans; and about a vague “they” who should be “looking at the other side.”
“Its a disgrace, it’s frankly a real disgrace,” he said. “It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”
He called the raid “a whole new level of unfairness,” and launched into his familiar tirade of insisting there is no collusion.
“This is the most biased group of people,” he insisted. “These people have the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen.”
He also launched into a rant about Attorney General Jeff Sessions — insisting, as he has for the better part of a year — that Sessions never should have recused himself from the Russia investigation.
Not only is Sessions implicated in the Russia investigation, but he’s also been investigated for lying under oath about it.
Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, whom Sessions fired just days before McCabe was set to retire, had authorized a criminal investigation into Sessions’ false statements to the Senate about his communications with Russian officials while he was advising the rich asshole’s presidential campaign.
To the rich asshole, though, it’s all just a “witch hunt.”
Asked whether he will fire Mueller, the rich asshole said, “We’ll see what happens.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer immediately issued a warning not to fire Mueller.
“Special counsel Mueller, a Republican, has uncovered a deep and detailed pattern of Russian interference in our elections that has led to indictments and guilty pleas,” Schumer said.
“The investigation is critical to the health of our democracy, and must be allowed to continue.”
Incredibly, some Republicans in Congress are still resisting calls to formally protect the Mueller investigation, waiting to see if it’s really necessary. the rich asshole’s panicked rant and thinly veiled threat should make it clear they cannot afford to wait a minute longer.
WATCH: Fox’s Lou Dobbs melts down while calling for the rich asshole to fire Rosenstein and Mueller
Fox Business host Lou Dobbs (Fox News/screen grab)
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It only took Fox Business host Lou Dobbs a few hours after news broke that the FBI had raided the residence and office of the rich asshole attorney Michael Cohen to pin the blame on the Justice Department and call for the president to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.
Speaking with Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, Dobbs claimed that the raid is “an absolutely abhorrent breach of what law and order is supposed to stand for.” The analyst agreed — and said that those responsible should be punished.
“The attorney general is incompetent, the FBI is corrupt and Robert Mueller and [Deputy AG] Rod Rosenstein are unethical and abusive of the legal process,” Jarrett said. “All of them deserve to be fired.”
“Not that I’m suggesting the president should do it,” the Fox News analyst said, “because there would be a political fallout from that.”
Dobbs then charged Mueller with “charging through referral to the U.S. attorney” in an attempt to “take on the president’s personal attorney.” The host did not mention that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which reportedly issued the warrant for the raid, is led by a Republican appointed by the rich asshole himself after the president fired the office’s former leader, Preet Bharara.
Watch below:
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April 9, 2018
In a chilling moment, Bassam Rifai of the Syrian American Council looked directly into the television cameras and begged the rich asshole to go to war with Syria.
A Fox News guest used his live appearance to urge the U.S. to drop bombs on war-torn Syria. And he did so in a disturbing fashion, speaking directly into the television camera to appeal directly to the rich asshole.
Bassam Rifai of the Syrian American Council told host Eric Shawn he would be “surprised” if there were no strikes against Syria. And he said the rich asshole “needs to take swift and decisive action” against the regime.
He then made his chilling appeal even more pointed.
“President the rich asshole, I am speaking to you directly,” Rifai said, looking into the camera. “Do not make the same mistakes that President Obama had made. What we need to do right now is take out [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad’s air force. If we ground all his air force, he won’t have the capability to attack Syrians by the air anymore.”
The surreal plea is all the more troubling, considering the fact that the rich asshole remains completely enthralled by Fox News. And he apparently no longer listens to counsel from his chief of staff and other top advisers.
No previous president has spent as many hours as the rich asshole does camped out in front of the television, switching from channel to channel, obsessively listening to what people are saying about him.
the rich asshole is also famously averse to detailed briefings of any kind.
So it might make some bizarre sense for Fox News guests and hosts to make their urgent pleas directly to the camera. But that’s not how the executive branch is supposed to function in the United Sates. It’s not supposed to be swallowed up by a closed loop that revolves around a dishonest cable television channel.
But it does now.
the rich asshole just launched a hysterical push to secure America’s already secure southern border after he saw a series of false and misleading Fox News reports about a “caravan” of immigrants heading for the U.S.
And now the fear is that the rich asshole will start dropping bombs in the Middle East based solely on his Fox News habit.
“Aides sometimes plot to have guests make points on Fox that they have been unable to get the president to agree to in person,” the Washington Post noted recently. A senior administration official said that the rich asshole “will listen more when it is on TV.”
Indeed, in recent months the rich asshole seems to have moved beyond regurgitating Fox News talking points. Now he’s actually launching crucial policy initiatives based almost entirely on the network’s incoherent and false reports.
the rich asshole spent Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago hanging out with a number of anti-immigration Fox News players. The meetings seemed to have prompted the rich asshole’s latest hateful Twitter tantrum on Mexico and the border wall.
But it didn’t end there. Within days, the rich asshole announced he was dispatching National Guard troops to supposedly fend off a dangerous immigrant invasion. In truth, arrests at the southern border hit a 46-year low in 2017.
the rich asshole has always wanted to turn the White House in a reality TV show. Now it seems guests on Fox News have started directly auditioning for roles.
CNN’s Preet Bharara nails how the rich asshole’s ‘hand-picked’ federal prosecutors turned on him with Cohen raid
Preet Bharara on CNN -- screeenshot
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Former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara pointed out Monday that the Justice Department officials who approved the warrant to raid the president’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen were “hand-picked” by some rich asshole himself — and that they may be turning against him.
Bharara, who was fired by the rich asshole last year from his role leading the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the people chosen to replace him and his deputy June Kim “are all people who are Republican and are all people who were basically hand-picked by some rich asshole.”
It’s “very sensitive” to search an attorney’s residence and office, Bharara noted, and it “requires the personal approval of the United States attorney himself” and the DOJ’s criminal justice division.
“If it’s true that the Southern District of New York has taken over this part of the investigation based on a referral from [special counsel Robert] Mueller’s office, it’s being done because people think it’s very serious, people think it’s totally warranted and people think there’s evidence of a significant enough nature that you’ll risk doing something sensitive like raiding a law office.”
Watch below, via CNN:
Directly contradicting White House lawyers, the rich asshole says he’s considering firing Mueller
The unhinged rant happened while the president was meeting with his "war cabinet" about Syria.
In a press availability that was ostensibly about what the United States would do to respond to the grievous chemical attack in Syria, President some rich asshole took the opportunity to speak out strongly against the FBI for raiding the offices and home of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
He also left the door open to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the former FBI director appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to oversee the investigation into whether the rich asshole campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.
“Why don’t you just fire Mueller?,” a reporter asked at the end of the rich asshole’s lengthy rant.
“Well, I think it’s a disgrace what’s going on,” the rich asshole said. “We’ll see what happens, but it’s really a sad situation when you look at what happened. And many people have said, ‘You should fire him.'”
the rich asshole argued that “they found nothing,” bringing up Rosenstein’s letter which recommended former FBI Director James Comey’s firing, something the rich asshole attempted to defend at length.
“So we’ll see what happens,” the rich asshole concluded. “I think it’s disgraceful and so does a lot of other people. This is a pure and simple witch hunt. Thank you very much.”
This is more uncertainty than the rich asshole White House or the rich asshole himself has usually treated the question of whether he would try to sack the special counsel.
Last June, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the rich asshole had confidence in Mueller and had no intention of firing him. In July, she said twice the president had no intention of firing Muller, and that she had no reason to doubt Mueller was conducting a fair investigation.
In October, the rich asshole told reporters that he was not considering firing Mueller “at all.”
In January, the White House switched to a different line, repeatedly telling reporters that the White House would be “fully cooperative” with the special counsel.
Last month, one of the few remaining lawyers on the rich asshole’s legal team, Ty Cobb, denied that the rich asshole was considering firing Mueller, despite a series of tweets wherein the president attacked the Mueller probe by name.
Earlier in Monday’s press gaggle, the rich asshole talked about the fact that the FBI raided the office of Michael Cohen, “one of my personal attorneys, good man, and it’s a disgraceful situation,” the rich asshole said.
He continued, actually likening the FBI raiding the offices of his personal attorney to an attack on the country. “It’s frankly, a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for,” the rich asshole told reporters. “So when I saw this and when I heard it, I heard it like you did. I said, that is really now in a whole new level of unfairness.
the rich asshole then asserted that “they found no collusion whatsoever with Russia,” though he didn’t specify to whom he was referring.
He asserted that “this” — it was unclear if the rich asshole incorrectly meant the staff working in the Office of Special Counsel — “is the most biased group of people” … “Democrats all, or just about all either Democrats or a couple of Republicans that work for President Obama, they’re not looking at the other side.”
the rich asshole then argued that no one was looking at the supposed “crimes” committed by Hillary Clinton. He said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions “made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country, but you’ll figure that out.”
Again and again lamenting the whole situation a “disgrace,” the rich asshole described what he considered the “fantastic job” his administration had done, and pointing to the news of the FBI raid as the reason for Monday’s stock market fall (instead of, say, the CBO report which found that the federal budget deficit would grow to $1 trillion two years faster than originally expected).
the rich asshole was ‘captivated’ by cable news reports on Cohen raids — and it set him off on his anti-FBI tirade
VP Mike Pence (left), President some rich asshole (center) and national security adviser John Bolton (right). Image via screengrab.
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According to CNN sources, President some rich asshole was, as usual, watching cable news as the story broke that his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen was raided by the FBI — and as White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny noted, his mood may have been affected by the news.
“I‘m told this afternoon the president was watching news coverage of this happening in the residence of the White House and now in the West Wing,” the correspondent told Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer.
Zeleny noted that the rich asshole did learn about the raid before it was reported — but not before it happened. It remains unclear how the president learned of the raid, but given that Cohen is “essentially a family member,” the correspondent noted, they were likely in touch soon after it happened. During the president’s televised comments responding to the raid, however, the rich asshole suggested he learned of the raids from news reports.
“This is captivating the president’s time and attention and also likely to spark anger from him,” Zeleny said. “This is signed off by the Department of Justice and [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein.”
Indeed, the rich asshole took aim at Attorney General Jeff Sessions in response to the news, saying he had made a “huge mistake.”
Watch below, via CNN:
Fox News explains exactly why the Michael Cohen raid should terrify some rich asshole
Attorney-client privilege doesn't apply if there's "a serious allegation of illegal activity."
On Monday, FBI agents raided the office and residences of Michael Cohen, President some rich asshole’s longtime personal attorney. The search warrants reportedly included conversations between Cohen and the rich asshole, who has been Cohen’s only client for years.
The search reportedly included, possibly among other things, documents related a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, which Cohen made just days before the 2016 election. Daniels, an adult film actress, says she had an affair with the rich asshole in 2006.
But it was the approval of the search warrants themselves that should terrify the rich asshole. The best explanation, remarkably, came from Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News legal analyst. Napolitano explained that, under normal circumstances, communications between the rich asshole and his attorney are privileged. But this privilege does not apply if there is “a serious allegation of illegal activity, by the lawyer with the client,” he said.
“There must be some evidence presented to a federal judge here in New York City sufficient to persuade that judge to sign a search warrant to permit the FBI in broad daylight to raid an attorney’s office, particularly when that attorney has one client and it happens to be the president of the United States,” Napolitano told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto.
“That evidence would have to be such as to persuade a neutral observer, the federal judge, that it is more likely than not, that among these seized documents is evidence of crimes by Mr. Cohen or Mr. Cohen and the president,” he continued.
The crime in question, Napolitano speculated, could be related to the $130,000 payment to Daniels.
Napolitano did echo some of Fox News’ favorite arguments about the ongoing investigation into whether the rich asshole campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, saying there “seems to be no limit” to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. But then Napolitano reiterated that a judge would only issue the warrant if there was sufficient “evidence of crimes.”
“You’re talking about the most confidential and protected relationship there is — lawyer and client — and the federal government has just invaded that with the express authority and approval of a federal judge, who may only permit that invasion when she or he, the federal judge, has been satisfied that it’s more likely than not that in those materials are evidence of crimes,” he said.
It would be a crime, Napolitano went on to say, if the rich asshole campaign accepted a gift of $130,000, and if the funds came from the campaign. In that instance, “all bets are off,” as Cavuto put it.
What makes Napolitano’s comments Monday even more interesting is that when Napolitano talks, the rich asshole listens. the rich asshole directly echoed Napolitano’s arguments on Fox in a recent tweet about government surveillance shortly after Napolitano appeared on the network, and the White House has cited Napolitano’s claim, without evidence, that British intelligence operatives had surveilled the rich asshole Tower as a favor to Barack Obama during the 2016 campaign.
According a Daily Beast report from February, the president and Napolitano have spoken a number of times in recent months, as well.
the rich asshole sounds off on FBI’s ‘disgraceful’ raid of his personal lawyer Michael Cohen: ‘An attack on our country’
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Responding to news that his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen had been raided by the FBI, President some rich asshole called the search a “disgrace” and an “attack on our country.”
Seated between Vice President Mike Pence and his new national security adviser John Bolton, the rich asshole told reporters the raid was a “disgraceful situation,” a “witch hunt” and a “whole new level of unfairness.” He then switched gears to point the finger at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who he said made a “terrible mistake.”
the rich asshole also suggested that he learned of the raid on Cohen’s office and residence by the FBI from news reports — a claim refuted by prior reporting by CNN, who said he knew about the raid after it happened but before it was publicized.
The comments came during a national security meeting pegged to a potential military response to the alleged chemical attack in Syria over the weekend. Watch below:
FBI raids office of the rich asshole lawyer who paid off Stormy Daniels
Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to the adult film actress shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
FBI agents raided the office of longtime the rich asshole lawyer Michael D. Cohen on Monday. The property seized includes documents related to a $130,000 payment he made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, a.k.a. Stephanie Clifford, just before the 2016 presidential election.
According to The New York Times, the raid was instigated following a referral from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating allegations of collusion between the rich asshole campaign and Russian officials. The Times report specifies that the raid “does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation” but more likely was the result of information Cohen gave to prosecutors in New York.
Other items seized during the raid included personal emails, tax documents, and business records, a person with knowledge of the investigation told the Times.
NEW: FBI agents raid office of Michael Cohen, Pres. Trump's personal lawyer, according to New York Times report. cbsn.ws/2qhLCaj
Vanity Fair‘s Emily Jane Fox also reported on Monday afternoon that the FBI had raided Cohen’s hotel room at the Loews Regency on Park Avenue in New York, with a handful of agents present at the scene for several hours. According to CBS’ Pat Milton, agents additionally stormed the lawyer’s New York residence in search of documents and “other material” as specified in a court warrant.
Cohen’s attorney blasted the raid as inappropriate, in a statement shortly after the news broke.
“The decision by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York to conduct their investigation using search warrants is completely inappropriate and unnecessary,” attorney Stephen Ryan said. “It resulted in the seizure of protected attorney client communications between a lawyer and his clients. These government tactics are also wrong because Mr. Cohen has cooperated completely with all government entities, including providing thousands of non-privileged documents to the Congress and sitting for depositions under oath.”
Cohen’s role in the Stormy Daniels controversy stems back to October 2016, when Cohen made a $130,000 payment to the actress, reportedly as part of a signed non-disclosure agreement that barred Daniels from speaking out about an alleged affair she’d had with President the rich asshole in July 2006, a year after he married his third wife, Melania. Daniels and her lawyer have since claimed that the NDA is moot because it was signed by Cohen on behalf of the third-party LLC that he set up to pay the actress. the rich asshole did not sign the document himself.
As the Wall Street Journal reported in January, Cohen, a top the rich asshole Organization lawyer, later denied that any such affair had taken place, but admitted to making the payment out of his own pocket.
Since that time, the controversy has exploded: in March, NBC News reported that Cohen had used his personal the rich asshole Organization email to facilitate payment arrangements with Daniels. According to a source with knowledge of the investigation, Cohen also used that email address to correspond with Daniels about the NDA during the election. That same month, Cohen told ABC News that he had used his home-equity line of credit to arrange the $130,00 payment.
“The funds were taken from my home-equity line and transferred internally to my LLC account in the same bank,” he said at the time.
Monday’s FBI raid may signal that federal officials now have access to documents which could prove any of the alleged links between Cohen, Daniels, and possibly the rich asshole, if they exist, though Cohen maintains that the president had no part in the matter.
Later in March, Brent Blakely, a lawyer for Cohen, sent a cease and desist letter to Daniels after the actress appeared on 60 Minutes. In the letter, Blakely claimed that Daniels had defamed Cohen in the interview by suggesting he had threatened her not to go public about the affair back in 2011. Daniels, however, never made such a claim, as transcripts later showed, although the actress did recount an instance in which a man confronted her into a parking lot in Las Vegas, threatening her and her infant daughter unless she agreed to “forget the story.”
On Monday afternoon, Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, weighed in on the FBI raid, saying he had predicted things would only get worse for Cohen during an interview with MSNBC last week.
“An enormous amount of misplaced faith has been placed on [Michael Cohen’s] shoulders IMO,” he tweeted Monday. “If he does not hold up, this could end very very badly for [President the rich asshole] and others.”
See below and review my comments and predictions last week on CNN and MSNBC. An enormous amount of misplaced faith has been placed on MC's shoulders IMO. If he does not hold up, this could end very very badly for DJT and others. F.B.I. Raids Cohen Offices nyti.ms/2Hmha6j
Cohen’s part in the special counsel’s ongoing Russia investigation is more murky: in January 2017, Cohen’s name appeared in the now-infamous Steele Dossier, which contained allegations of conspiracy and misconduct between the rich asshole campaign and the Russian government. The document, compiled between June and December 2016, alleged that Cohen traveled to Prague in August 2016 to meet with Russian agents and “clean up the mess,” in an attempt “to prevent the full details of the rich asshole’s relationship with Russia being exposed.”
Cohen has repeatedly denied that he ever made the trip. As Vanity Fair noted, in January this year, Cohen filed defamation lawsuits against both Fusion GPS, the opposition firm which commissioned the dossier, and BuzzFeed News, which published the dossier online, claiming he had “sustained significant financial and reputational damages.”
the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen is being investigated for bank fraud and campaign finance violations: report
President some rich asshole's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen (Screen capture)
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some rich asshole’s attorney Michael Cohen “is being investigated for possible bank fraud, campaign finance violations,” the Washington Post reports.
The development, sourced to a person familiar with the case, comes after Cohen’s Manhattan office and residence were raided Monday by the FBI. Agents reportedly seized records related to a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels as well as privilege communications between Cohen and the rich asshole.
Stephen Ryan, an attorney for Cohen, told the Post the FBI raid was referred to federal prosecutors by special counsel Robert Mueller.
the rich asshole promised to eliminate the deficit, it’s set to rise to $1 trillion
He has his beloved tax cut to thank.
The federal deficit is getting tired of all this winning.
According to a report released Monday afternoon from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the annual U.S. budget deficit will rise above $1 trillion in 2020, two years earlier than previously forecast.
Last year, the CBO estimated the 2018 deficit would be $242 billion less than this year’s estimate. Why? The main reason is smaller tax revenues. The report explained that, “accounting for most of that difference is a $194 billion reduction in projected revenues, mainly because the 2017 tax act is expected to reduce collections of individual and corporate income taxes.”
This is far from what candidate the rich asshole told his supporters he would do:
- In his official campaign launch address, the rich asshole promised to “reduce our $18 trillion in debt,” which will not happen if annual deficits hit $1 trillion in two years.
- On the campaign trail, the rich asshole said he would “freeze the budget,” which has certainly not happened.
- Shortly before his inauguration, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he would “balance the budget very quickly… I think over a five-year period. And I don’t know, maybe I could even surprise you.”
- Previous to that, in March 2016, he told Bob Woodward that he could get rid of the debt “fairly quickly.” When pressed, he said, “Well, I would say over a period of eight years.” Since the rich asshole took office, his own budget director called that promise “hyperbole.”
- the rich asshole asserted during the second presidential debate that he would bring back energy companies, which would make so much money that they could pay off the national debt. This has not happened.
Cumulatively for the 2018-2027 period, the deficit will be $11.7 trillion, “$1.6 trillion larger than the $10.1 trillion that the agency anticipated in June,” the CBO report said.
Most of that deficit can be explained by the lost revenue caused by the tax cut legislation Congress passed and the rich asshole signed at the end of last year. At the same time, the 2018 budget passed earlier this year increases military and domestic spending by about $300 billion.
The federal government operated with a surplus in the 90s, then ran a medium deficit in the 00s, until the Great Recession required stimulus spending along with bank bailouts to rescue the economy. Those trillion-dollar-plus deficits shrank to back to average size in recent years but as this CBO graphic shows, the trendline, thanks to increased spending and large tax cuts, is for deficits to balloon out again.
The White House’s own budget proposal would run a $900 billion annual budget deficit into 2022 — but that didn’t stop White House spokesperson Raj Shah from claiming, erroneously, on Fox News that the the rich asshole budget “has over $3 trillion dollars in deficit reduction, which is the largest deficit reduction of a budget in terms of a 10-year outlay that we’ve ever seen.”
Ex-FBI agent shuts down the rich asshole-backer for spewing nonsense about no-knock raids: ‘That’s not true’
the rich asshole backer David Urban (left) and former FBI supervisory special agent Josh Campbell (right). Image via screengrab.
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Responding to news that the FBI raided President some rich asshole’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen, a former supervisory agent at the bureau sparred with a Republican over special counsel Robert Mueller’s no-knock raid on the home of another the rich asshole associate.
Former FBI supervisory special agent Josh Campbell noted that in the case of someone as high-profile as Cohen, someone at the highest level of the Justice Department had to sign off on the raid. In response, the rich asshole campaign aide David Urban completely switched gears.
Referencing the bureau’s “no-knock” raid on the home of former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort last year, Urban said law enforcement officials he knows claimed the FBI “reserve those kind of raids for bad guys with guns who are gonna put up a fight.”
“Is very rare for folks to do no-knock raids,” the rich asshole backer continued as Campbell insistently said “no” while shaking his head.
“That’s not true,” the CNN law enforcement analyst said.
“Josh, you had your chance,” Urban said before claiming that in the case of Manafort and deputy the rich asshole campaign chairman Rick Gates, the raids stemmed from “things that happened in 2013.”
Urban, Campbell said, “gets points for creativity” — but is totally wrong.
“If you’re a law enforcement officer and you’re focusing on a crime, it doesn’t just involve those that are dangerous — but involves those that may be destroying evidence,” the former special agent said.
“The point that was just made has nothing to do with what I just said,” Campbell concluded, causing the panel to dissolve into chaos as Urban attempted to speak over him.
Watch below, via CNN:
Talk show host threatens David Hogg in graphic tweet, loses major advertisers
It's not just Laura Ingraham.
Last week, while Fox News host Laura Ingraham was enjoying her unplanned vacation from the airwaves, a since-deleted tweet from a far-right St. Louis-based talk show host named Jamie Allman threatening 17-year-old Stoneman Douglas survivor David Hogg circulated widely around the region.
“I’ve been hanging out getting ready to ram a hot poker up David Hogg’s ass tomorrow,” tweeted Allman. “Busy working. Preparing.”
The tweet didn’t get much attention initially — a screenshot captured by local news organization Riverfront Times shows just one retweet and nine likes — but it did wind up in front of State Rep. Stacey Newman. The Democratic legislator condemned the message via Facebook and called for Missourians to pressure Allman’s advertisers, and by Monday morning, Newman’s efforts had paid off.
At least three of Allman’s sponsors publicly announced they were abandoning his shows, including Ruth’s Chris Steak House, a local real estate firm, and a health and wellness center in St. Louis.
On Sunday night, Rep. Newman shared another screenshot, this time showing that Twitter had taken action against Allman’s account for violating the site’s rules against threats of violence. By Monday, Allman’s Twitter account had been set to private.
Allman is just the latest in a growing list of conservative commentators who have been publicly undressed by David Hogg and other survivors of February’s mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Shortly after the incident, several survivors and their families faced off with representatives of the National Rifle Association (NRA) — including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — in a televised town hall, and exposed them for their disinterest in protecting the lives of children. Within hours, those same students managed to strip away nearly every single one of the NRA’s corporate partners.
Last week, Laura Ingraham took an unscheduled break from her eponymous show after more than a dozen advertisers abandoned ship in response to Ingraham’s comments attacking Hogg for not getting into one of California’s competitive public universities. She was quickly forced to apologize, but the damage continues to unfold.
It’s unclear what consequences — if any — Allman will face. His television show airs on KDNL, St. Louis’s ABC affiliate owned by far-right media conglomerate Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair is in the midst of its own public relations crisis as viewers continue to learn about the media company’s tendency to dabble in pro-the rich asshole propaganda rather than actual news.
Several current and former employees of Sinclair have revolted against their corporate directives. One affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin refused to air Sinclair’s “must-run” propaganda segment, while other former Sinclair employees have dished on the company’s sketchy tactics.
Fox News’ Judge Napolitano: FBI raid shows they could have ‘evidence of crimes by Cohen’ and possibly ‘the president’
Fox News' Judge Napolitano
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Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano on Monday laid out the implications of an FBI raid on the office and home of longtime some rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen, explaining that in order for a federal judge to green-light the raid, they had to believe “that among these seized documents is evidence of crimes by Mr. Cohen or Mr. Cohen and the president.”
Napolitano was speaking with Fox News host Neil Cavuto, who asked the judicial analyst to “make sense” of the news for him.
Napolitano pointed out that the first question people ask him is whether communications between Cohen and the rich asshole are protected by attorney-client privilege, noting that’s not the case “if there’s a serious allegation of unlawful activity by the lawyer with the client.”
Napolitano explained that in this case, the lawyer is Cohen and his client is “his only client— the president of the United States.” The judge noted Cohen’s office is located on the 26th floor of the rich asshole Tower and is hardly the “traditional” or “discreet” set-up one would expect from a lawyer.
“He works for some rich asshole the person, the the rich asshole Organization and it’s various entities,” Napolitano said. “And that, as far as I understand from sources, is all he works for.”
Napolitano then detailed what the FBI would have gone through to secure warrant to raid Cohen’s home and business.
“There must be some evidence presented to a federal judge here in New York City sufficient to persuade that judge to sign a search warrant to permit the FBI, in broad daylight, to raid an attorney’s office—particularly when that attorney has one client and it happens to be the president of the United States,” Napolitano said.
“That evidence would have to be such as to persuade a neutral observer, the federal judge, that it is more likely than not that among these seized documents is evidence of crimes by Mr. Cohen or Mr. Cohen and the president,” he added.
Watch below, via Fox News:
Sarah Sanders tried to defend 2 of the rich asshole’s most outrageous lies. It did not go well.
"The president still strongly feels that there was a large amount of voter fraud."
During the White House news briefing on Monday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was pressed to defend two lies President the rich asshole told last week — that women who were traveling with a group of undocumented immigrants through Mexico were “raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before,” and that “millions and millions” of illegal votes are cast in a typical presidential election.
After mentioning the rich asshole’s claim about undocumented immigrant rape, NBC’s Hallie Jackson told Sanders, “you actually, last fall, admonished reporters to make sure that we hold ourselves to a high standard of accuracy. Does the president also need to be held to that same standard of accuracy?”
Sanders began her response by saying “absolutely,” but then immediately pivoted to making a desperate defense of the president’s baseless claim about rapes among a “caravan” of undocumented immigrants — a remark the rich asshole made in an attempt to justify calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” during his campaign-launching speech in June 2015.
“It has been well documented that a number of those individuals going back even to 2014 where there were multiple articles and studies put out that said 80 percent of the women that make that, ah, that go through that process and try and enter the country are raped through that process,” Sanders said. “Something certainly that should be concerning to all of us and certainly something that the president has voiced concern about.”
While a Fusion story from 2014 estimated that around 80 percent of women and girls crossing into Mexico are raped on their journey to the U.S. border, reporters embedded with the “caravan” of undocumented immigrants that the rich asshole specifically referred to said that saw no evidence of anyone being raped.
So in an effort to justify her boss’ baseless remark, Sanders ended up defending a different claim entirely. More broadly, studies show no evidence that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
Jackson followed up by asking about the rich asshole’s voter fraud lie.
“And what about the voter fraud claim that the president made last week as well? Also not backed up by evidence,” Jackson said.
Sanders replied by talking about the rich asshole’s feelings.
“The president still strongly feels that there was a large amount of voter fraud and attempted to do a thorough review of it, but a lot of states didn’t want to cooperate or participate,” Sanders said. “We certainly know that there were a large number of instances reported but we can’t be sure how much, because we weren’t able to conduct the full review that the president wanted.”
But the rich asshole’s feelings aren’t evidence, and 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 — was unable to defend the notion that the 2016 election was plagued by large-scale voter fraud.
During testimony, expert witnesses who Kobach previously relied upon to corroborate his claims couldn’t cite a single instance in which illegal votes swung an election, and they 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.
Ex-federal prosecutor explains FBI’s ‘probable cause’ justification for raiding Cohen: ‘It’s not good news for the president’
the rich asshole's planned tariffs on steel and aluminium have triggered fears of a trade war. (AFP / MANDEL NGAN)
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Responding to news that President Donald the rich asshole’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen had been raided by the FBI, a former federal prosecutor outlined how the bureau likely got their warrant to search the lawyer — and why it spells trouble for the lawyer.
“Having a search warrant executed at your business on a Monday is never a good day,” former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Monday.
To acquire their warrant to search Cohen’s business and home, the former prosecutor said, “the government must have concluded two things: probable cause that a crime had been committed, and probable cause that stuff or evidence that would prove that crime would be located in Mr. Cohen’s office.”
According to the New York Times, who first reported on the raid, the warrant to search the attorney’s home and business came from a referral made by special counsel Robert Mueller. That bit of the story, Rosenberg noted, demonstrates that although the raid was related to allegations made in Cohen and the rich asshole’s case with Daniels, Mueller “followed the facts” and likely has something on the attorney.
“It’s not good news for Mr. Cohen and it’s not good news for the president,” Rosenberg concluded.
Watch below, via MSNBC:
White House stands behind the rich asshole voter fraud claims
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 04/09/18 03:31 PM EDT
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday defended President the rich asshole’s claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election and argued the administration has no evidence to back up the claims because states have refused to cooperate with a federal review.
“The president still strongly feels there was a large amount of voter fraud and attempted to do a thorough review of it. A lot of the states didn't want to cooperate and participate,” Sanders said.
“We certainly know there were a large number of incidents reported but we can't be sure exactly how much because we weren't able to conduct the full review that the president wanted because a number of states didn't want to cooperate and refused to participate.”
The president has refused to back down on his claim that millions of voters illegally cast ballots in the 2016 election, despite providing no evidence to support the assertion.
At a campaign-style event in West Virginia last week, the rich asshole doubled down, saying that individuals in California had voted “many times.”
“In many places, like California, the same person votes many times,” the rich asshole said. “You probably heard about that. They always like to say ‘oh that’s a conspiracy theory’. Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people. And it’s very hard because the state guards their records. They don’t want to see it.”
The president has previously stated without evidence that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions voting illegally.
Last year, the White House convened a commission to study voter fraud, but it was disbanded after several states protested by refusing to hand over voter information to the federal government.
White House: Criticism of the rich asshole's Syria stance 'outrageous'
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 04/09/18 03:10 PM EDT
The White House on Monday pushed back against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who accused President the rich asshole of emboldening Syrian President Bashar Assad by signaling he wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.
McCain's criticism came amid allegations that pro-Assad forces carried out a chemical weapons attack that killed roughly 40 people.
The comments come as the rich asshole is considering a military response to the chemical strike, which drew international condemnation.
But some the rich asshole critics, including McCain, have said the president has not done enough to deter Assad.
“President the rich asshole last week signaled to the world that the United States would prematurely withdraw from Syria," McCain said Sunday in a statement. “Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have heard him, and emboldened by American inaction, Assad has reportedly launched another chemical attack against innocent men, women and children.”
The president broke with his military advisers last week when he called for a troop pullout from Syria.
"I want to get out, I want to bring our troops back home," the rich asshole said last Tuesday.
The White House has not yet set a timeline for withdrawal for U.S. troops, who are fighting ISIS forces in Syria.
the rich asshole: Farmers will understand if they get hurt in China trade spat
BY LUIS SANCHEZ - 04/09/18 01:53 PM EDT
President the rich asshole on Monday acknowledged that U.S. farmers could take a hit from trade disputes with China but said they will ultimately "understand" why the confrontation is necessary.
“But if we do a deal with China, if, during the course of a negotiation they want to hit the farmers because they think that hits me, I wouldn’t say that's nice. But I tell you, our farmers are great patriots,” the rich asshole said.
“These are great patriots. They understand that they're doing this for the country," the rich asshole said. "And we'll make it up to them. And in the end, they're going to be much stronger than they are right now.”
The rich asshole administration has moved aggressively to levy tariffs on China, including $50 billion in penalties proposed early last week. After China retaliated by proposing $50 billion in tariffs on U.S. goods, including soybeans, the White House late Thursday said the rich asshole had ordered officials to look at another $100 billion in tariffs on China.
Many farmers have expressed fear that their livelihoods could be impacted in the escalating trade war, given that China is a major market for agricultural exports, particularly soybean and sorghum.
The Farm Bureau said in a statement to The Hill that it has been unambiguous in its opposition to tariffs and support for free trade.
"It’s our hope and expectation that both sides will eventually arrive at an agreement that does not include tariffs," a spokesperson for the Bureau said. "Whatever happens, you can be certain our policy will support the interests of farmers nationwide."
Earlier this month, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told a town hall in Ohio that the president had told him that farmers would not be hurt by the ongoing trade dispute with China.
“I talked to the president as recently as last night,” Perdue said. “And he said, ‘Sonny, you can assure your farmers out there that we're not going to allow them to be the casualties if this trade dispute escalates. We're going to take care of our American farmers. You can tell them that directly.’ ”
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April 9, 2018
Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey tried to get a straight answer from Sarah Huckabee Sanders about EPA chief Scott Pruitt's security expenses. But she had nothing coherent to offer.
The ongoing scandal surrounding EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s massive security expenditures continues to dog the rich asshole administration. And Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t do the White House any favors with her vague responses at Monday’s press briefing.
EPA spokespeople have insisted that Pruitt has faced an “unprecedented” number of death threats. And the rich asshole defended Pruitt over the weekend. “Scott Pruitt has received death threats because of his bold actions at EPA,” he tweeted.
Yet the best example of a specific “threat” Pruitt ever offered was someone yelling “You’re fucking up the environment” at him in an airport.
Further, a reporter from BuzzFeed submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the EPA to obtain records of the supposed litany of threats. The EPA told him there were zero records.
It’s unclear why an instance of heckling requires millions of dollars for security. And when pressed about it by Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey, Sanders didn’t shed any light on the issue.
Dawsey asked if the rich asshole was “OK” with Pruitt “taking first-class travel and tripling the size of [his] security detail.”
Sanders said the administration was still “reviewing the specifics.” And she again claimed that there was a “much larger number of security issues” than past EPA chiefs had encountered.
Dawsey then asked if those “security issues” were included in any police reports. “There’s been reporting that, across the country, no one found the death threats or police reports that jeopardized his life or safety.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked point-blank.
Sanders responded by vaguely referencing “questions” raised about Pruitt’s safety, saying the administration was “continuing to review that.”
She didn’t explain what exactly was under review, considering the EPA itself provided no documentation when asked.
And the Associated Press “found no case where anyone has been arrested or charged with threatening Pruitt” after reviewing state and federal court records.
Pruitt’s self-made scandals keep getting worse. Sanders attempted to make reasonable-sounding statements about the massive security expenses. But when the costs are based on what seems to be a complete fiction, it’s not easy to come up with an explanation that makes any logical sense.
FBI raids office of the rich asshole’s lawyer Michael Cohen and seizes records linked to Stormy Daniels payment
Michael Cohen (CNN)
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The FBI on Monday raided the office of Michael Cohen, who has served as some rich asshole’s personal lawyer for years.
The FBI also raided Cohen’s personal residence in New York, according to CBS News.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained search warrants after receiving a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, according to the New York Times, which first reported the raid.
Agents reportedly seized documents related to payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, along with other emails, tax documents and business records.
Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, has claimed she had an affair with the rich asshole but was paid $130,000 to keep quiet.
Daniels told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” last month that she had unprotected sex with the rich asshole after meeting him at an event in July 2006. She said she originally accepted the hush money because she was afraid.
Cohen has insisted that he made the payment to Daniels out of his own pocket. He has denied that the rich asshole Organization or the rich asshole campaign had any involvement.
The records seized from Cohen’s office also included communications between the rich asshole and Cohen, the Times reported.
The federal raid does not appear to be a part of Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, “but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York,” the Times explained.
Cohen’s lawyer described the search as “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.”
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April 9, 2018
the rich asshole is rewarding farmers who supported his campaign by demanding that they take a massive hit for him. And he's offering nothing but empty promises in return.
Suggesting it’s their patriotic duty to take an economic hit for America, the rich asshole on Monday conceded U.S. farmers will likely be hurt by the White House’s unfolding trade war with China.
But he stressed that farmers shouldn’t worry if their livelihoods dwindle because he promises to make it up to them.
“They want to hit the farmers because they think it hits me — I wouldn’t say that’s nice,” the rich asshole said of China. “But I’ll tell you, our farmers are great patriots. These are great patriots. They understand that they’re doing this for the country,” he added.
“We’ll make it up to them. And in the end, they’re going to be much stronger than they are now.”
In just one week, the rich asshole has already flip-flopped from his irrational claim that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.”
What’s obvious is that the rich asshole’s base is going to pay the biggest price for his reckless tariff rhetoric.
“Many of the farmers who helped propel some rich asshole to the presidency fear becoming pawns in his escalating trade war with China, which threatens markets for soybeans, corn and other lifeblood crops in the Upper Midwest,” the Washington Post reported on Monday.
Back on March 1, the rich asshole announced new tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. China responded last week by promising to impose 25 percent tariff on more than 100 goods. Many of those goods, including soybeans and pork, are closely associated with states that backed the rich asshole in 2016.
Suddenly, billions of dollars of pork exports are at risk, as well as thousands of jobs attached to that industry.
“It’s going to hurt American farmers, no doubt about it,” a 43-year-old dairy farmer announced at a recent Wisconsin town hall. “We were already looking at depressed prices for corn and soybeans before this. There’s no sector that’s showing good numbers.
A stinging editorial in the Quad City Times in Iowa declared that voters had been “conned” by the rich asshole on trade. “Eight of the country’s top 10 soybean producers voted for the rich asshole in 2016.”
Now he’s rewarding those farmers by demanding that they take a massive hit for him. And he’s offering nothing but empty promises in return.
‘It’s a proxy war’: Fox News’ Shep Smith calls out the rich asshole for his responsibility in latest Syrian chemical attacks
Shep Smith (Screengrab)
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After President some rich asshole vowed to swiftly make a “major decision” Monday following reported chemical attacks in Syria, Fox News’ Shep Smith noted that the United States’ role in the crisis is deeper than the president acknowledges.
“All of this comes less than a week after the president said he wanted U.S. troops out of Syria,” the host noted, adding that the White House also promised to “wipe out” the remaining Islamic State fighters in the region before the Americans pull out. Now, the rich asshole has said that the U.S. “cannot allow” these sorts of attacks to occur.
After this weekend’s chemical gas attack, which was allegedly ordered by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, “first responders say they found entire families suffocating in their homes and shelters,” Smith said. The images from the attack, many of which Fox News would not air, are “horrifying,” he continued.
“Syrian and Russian government officials deny any involvement,” Smith said. “Remember: the Syrian government and the Russians work together with Iran.”
“It’s a proxy war,” he concluded. “The United States versus Syria, Iran and Russia.”
Watch below, via Fox News:
‘Hyperbole’: Jim Acosta calls out Sarah Sanders after she says the rich asshole ‘has always been tough on Russia’
Sarah Huckabee Sanders gets grilled by Jim Acosta (Screen cap).
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White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday insisted that President some rich asshole had “always been tough on Russia” after the country was implicated in a Syrian gas attack on civilians.
At Monday’s White House press briefing, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta noted that President the rich asshole had for the first time called out Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend. And on Monday, the rich asshole vowed that there would be a “price” to pay if Russia helped facilitate the attack.
“You’ve been saying this over the last couple of weeks, that nobody has been tougher on Russia and Vladimir Putin than the president,” Acosta said. “Isn’t there some hyperbole in that. Obviously, Ronald Reagan’s ‘tear down this wall’; John Kennedy put a blockade around Cuba; Carter boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.”
“There have been president of the course of the last several decades who have been tougher,” Acosta continued. “Also given the fact that the president, up until just recently, wasn’t really willing to criticize Putin by name. We all saw that over the weekend as a new development.”
For her part, Sanders read off a list of actions which she suggested were proof that the president has taken drastic actions against Russia, including expelling operatives and closing consulates.
“You named off one or two things,” Sanders told Acosta. “It is without dispute that this administration and this president have done a number of things to be tough on Russia.”
Watch the video below.
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April 9, 2018
The EPA chief's corrupt, lavish spending isn't going unnoticed.
the rich asshole and most Republicans won’t take action against crooked EPA chief Scott Pruitt. But the federal government’s top ethics cop just called him out and is demanding answer for why Pruitt is using tax dollars to support his extravagant lifestyle, including a family trip to Disneyland.
“The success of our government depends on maintaining the trust of the people we serve,” wrote David Apol, acting director of the Office of Government Ethics wrote in the letter sent Monday morning to the E.P.A. “The American public needs to have confidence that ethics violations, as well as the appearance of ethics violations, are investigated and appropriately addressed.”
Most recently, Pruitt became ensnared in scandal for “leasing” a luxury Washington D.C. condo on a per-night basis from an energy lobbyist at far below market value, even while the EPA approved a pipeline extension for a company represented by that lobbyist’s firm.
Pruitt’s daughter also benefited from the sweetheart condo deal, which cost just $50 a night.
Meanwhile, a recent report shows Pruitt employs a wildly oversized security detail consisting of 19 agents and a fleet of at least 19 vehicles — spending millions more than even the 9/11-era EPA chief. CNN notes that “with the cost of maintenance, gas, and training for agents, that leaves the dollar amount for his round-the-clock security in the millions.”
As for reports that Pruitt actively punished or demoted EPA officials who raised concerns about his run-away spending, ethics attorney Apol wrote, “If true, it is hard to imagine any action that could more effectively undermine an agency’s integrity than punishing or marginalizing employees who strive to ensure compliance with the laws and regulations that safeguard that integrity.”
The besieged Pruitt launched something of a public relations push last week. Granting interviews to only conservative media outlets, Pruitt tried to make the case that he was the real victim in all this and that he’s being unfairly targeted by liberal critics, insisting they are willing to “use any means” necessary to stop his agenda.
How liberals forced Pruitt to break the bank hiring 24-hour protection, demand the EPA purchase a five-figure cone of silence for his office, and book himself onto first class flights, Pruitt hasn’t bothered to explain.
But for now, the self-proclaimed martyr routine is working, at least on the rich asshole.
the rich asshole recently tweeted his public support of Pruitt. Obviously that could change. But the rich asshole seems to have dug in as the controversy widens. the rich asshole refuses to fire the beleaguered Pruitt even as his chief of staff, John Kelly, has urged him to do so.
So standing by Pruitt may be another way of the rich asshole signaling to his aides that he’s done listening to them.
Plus, it’s possible the rich asshole simply admires Pruitt’s blatant corruption and self dealing.
GOP congressman gets schooled on Fox News after saying Mueller is investigating the rich asshole for ‘winning the election’
Rep. Lee Zeldin and Jessica Tarlov (Fox News)
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Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) got more than he bargained when he showed up on Fox News armed with nothing more than a few flimsy talking points.
The New York Republican appeared Monday on “Outnumbered,” where the co-hosts caught him completely off-guard by challenging some of his claims about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President some rich asshole’s campaign ties to Russia.
“It’s hard to expect the (Department of Justice) and FBI to investigate themselves,” Zeldin said.
Co-host Harris Faulkner immediately called him out.
“Yeah, but they’re set up to do that, right?” she said.
Zeldin threw out a hunk of red meat in hopes of distracting the Fox News hosts.
“You can’t even compare it to anything else in the history of these agencies where it was this bad,” he said.
Harris declined to take the bait, so Zeldin mounted another campaign to rally the co-hosts to his side.
“You have a special counsel investigating the president for winning the election, without any evidence and any crime,” Zeldin claimed.
Co-host Jessica Tarlov cut him off, and Zeldin’s face fell.
“Congressman, it’s a little more than just now,” Tarlov said. “He’s looking into financial issues, obstruction of justice and collusion — that’s the scope. It’s a three-pronged scope: financial, collusion and obstruction of justice. That’s what’s doing on here. I’m not just investigating the president for winning.”
Mattis won't rule out airstrike over alleged Syria chemical attack
BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 04/09/18 01:27 PM EDT
Defense Secretary James Mattis said Monday that he would not rule out a possible airstrike on Syria in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack on residents over the weekend.
“I don’t rule out anything right now,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon prior to meeting with the emir of Qatar.
President Bashar Assad is suspected of a chemical gas attack over the weekend that killed at least 70, including women and children, in Douma, Syria.
The State Department said Monday that the symptoms of victims were “consistent with an asphyxiation agent and of a nerve agent of some type,” Reuters reported.
Mattis also indicated that Russia may have had some responsibility in the attack.
Under a deal between the United States and Russia, reached through the United Nations, Syria’s chemical weapons were to be removed from the country by 2014.
“The first thing we have to look at is why are chemical weapons still being used at all when Russia was the framework guarantor of removing all the chemical weapons,” Mattis said.
“And so, working with our allies and our partners from NATO to Qatar and elsewhere, we are going to address this issue.”
Following Mattis’s remarks, President the rich asshole announced that he would decide the U.S. response to the “heinous” chemical weapons attack in Syria “over the next 24 to 48 hours.”
the rich asshole said he plans to meet with his National Security Council later Monday to determine who is responsible and form a retaliation plan.
He later added that a decision would come “probably by the end of today.”
“If it’s the Russians, if it’s Syria, if it’s Iran, if it’s all of them together, we’ll figure it out,” he said.
the rich asshole, last April, responded militarily to reported chemical weapons use, ordering the U.S. military to launch Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield believed to be the launching point of a similar chemical weapons attack.
the rich asshole: Decision on Syria will be made in '24 to 48 hours'
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 04/09/18 11:55 AM EDT
President the rich asshole on Monday said he would decide the U.S. response to the “heinous” chemical weapons attack in Syria “over the next 24 to 48 hours.”
“It was an atrocious attack. It was horrible,” the rich asshole told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “This is about humanity and it can’t be allowed to happen.”
The comments were the rich asshole’s first in-person condemnation of the attack, which reportedly killed at least 40 people in a town controlled by opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
After saying it could take as long as two days to decide a U.S. response, the rich asshole later added a decision would come “probably by the end of today.”
The president said he plans to meet with his national security team and military brass later Monday to determine who is responsible and form a retaliation plan.
“If it’s the Russians, if it’s Syria, if it’s Iran, if it’s all of them together, we’ll figure it out,” he said.
the rich asshole added that Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad’s most prominent foreign ally, “may” share responsibility for the attack.
“Everybody is going to pay a price. He will, everybody will,” said the president, who has previously been reluctant to criticize Putin by name.
The reported chemical attack drew international condemnation and signs of a response were already underway early Monday.
The Syrian and Russian governments blamed Israel for an airstrike on a military base that reportedly killed 14 people. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
The United Nations Security Council was set to meet Monday to discuss an international response.
In April 2017, the rich asshole launched a barrage of cruise missiles at a Syrian air base after pro-Assad forces carried out a chemical attack that killed more than 80 people.
Updated at 12:29 p.m.
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April 9, 2018
If Republicans can't even count on older white voters, they've got no hope this November.
Republican prospects this November are so bad that some are already writing off the House and worrying about trying to hold on to the Senate.
And now there’s more evidence of trouble ahead: Their base of older, educated white voters is abandoning them.
A new Reuters poll shows a stunning 12-point swing, which Reuters calls “one of the largest shifts in support toward Democrats” in the past two years. And it’s not as if there are large untapped demographics where Republicans could make up the difference.
The main reason these voters are fleeing to Democrats? Health care. Multiple polls, including Reuters, show it’s the top concern for voters this election. And the GOP’s continued war on health care is driving those voters straight into the arms of Democrats.
Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, for example, is still threatening to repeal Obamacare if his party can hold or grow its majority. But that isn’t what voters want. Obamacare is more popular than ever — far more than the GOP itself.
Even without managing to repeal Obamacare, the rich asshole and Republicans have been steadily trying to sabotage it out of existence. Those efforts are hiking up drug prices and premiums for the very voters who are turning away from the GOP.
No wonder voters don’t trust them to handle their health care.
Then there’s the rich asshole’s one-man trade war that will hurt farmers and their families in critical states he carried in 2016. While some of those voters who supported the rich asshole are expressing their concern, the rich asshole let them know last week he couldn’t care less.
“I’m not saying there won’t be a little pain,” he said, “but the market’s gone up 40 percent, 42 percent, so we might lose a little bit of it, but we’re going to have a much stronger country when we’re finished.”
That’s unlikely to be of much comfort to the farmers who will feel that pain he so easily shrugged off.
Since the rich asshole took office, Republicans have been losing seats in deep red districts that were once so safe, Democrats often didn’t bother competing at all. Now, however, the GOP can take nothing for granted.
“The real core for the Republicans is white, older white, and if they’re losing ground there, they’re going to have a tsunami,” said political scientist Larry Sabato. “If that continues to November, they’re toast.”
The GOP is fighting for policies their own base doesn’t want. And the party shows no sign of reversing course. Which means the very people who put them in power are about to throw them out.
the rich asshole says he’ll make a decision on Syria in the next 48 hours. Here’s his record so far.
the rich asshole threatened that Syria and its allies will pay a "big price."
After images of yet another grisly chemical attack on Syrian civilians over the weekend, President some rich asshole fumed that Syria and its allies, Iran and Russia, would pay a “big price” for the atrocity.
By Monday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that no response would be ruled out, but that his primary responsibility was to work “with allies and partners” to figure out how to approach the situation. the rich asshole told reporters on Monday morning that he will make a decision on how to move forward in the next 48 hours.
The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency session on Monday night to figure out what to do about the “alleged attack.” Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, has already blamed the opposition for fabricating the attack, calling the images of dozens of dead children a “hoax” and is sure to use its veto power.
“Russia’s serial vetoes of resolutions on Syria have left the UN Security Council effectively impotent,” said Louis Charbonneau, United Nations director at Human Rights Watch, in response to ThinkProgress’s request for comment. “If the Council remains deadlocked, Secretary-General Guterres should step in on his own authority and immediately appoint investigators to identify the perpetrators behind chemical attacks in Syria, including the attack this past weekend.”
While the U.S. and the U.N. try to figure out what, if anything, they can do, there are reports of an early morning Israeli airstrike that hit an airbase in central Syria, killing 14 people, including Iranians. Israel has struck inside Syria over 100 times since 2012, targeting mostly Iranian or Hezbollah convoys — threatening to make the conflict even worse.
“Does Iran retaliate against Israel?… This increases the risk of the conflict becoming a broader regional conflict that pulls in more states,” said Reed M. Wood, an associate professor specializing in conflict at Arizona State University’s School of Politics and Global Studies. “That’s terribly concerning. If Iran and Israel exchange blows or Israel becomes more involves in Syria, then you could see a conflict that spirals out and produces even more casualties than we’ve observed to date.”
While he thinks the odds of this are not high, Wood also added that Israel has been “operating much more freely with the rich asshole in the White House.”
U.S. policy on Syria has always lacked clarity. When former President Barack Obama sent troops into the conflict in 2014, many thought he’d hesitated too long and was getting the United States mired in yet another conflict without a clear mission.
Under President some rich asshole, things have become all the more convoluted.
“It’s hard to discern a strategy from the rich asshole administration, particularly when it comes to international politics… There seem to be a lot of questions about whether he’s playing some sort of multidimensional chess or if he’s just winging it. I would tend to think that the latter is more realistic,” said Wood.
Apparently moved by the images of Syrian children killed in a chemical attack in Idlib’s Khan Sheikhoun last spring, the president ordered a strike on an airbase — 59 Tomahawk missiles hit the base almost one year ago, on April 7, 2017.
“What happened in Syria is truly one of the egregious crimes, and it shouldn’t have happened. And it shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” the president said at the time. The nearly $100 million worth of missiles that hit the Shayrat base in Homs. By April 9, the airbase was operational again.
“The U.S. posture has not been effective,” said Hayat Alvi, associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, and whose views do not reflect those of the college, the U.S. Navy nor the Department of Defense.
“Clearly, after the first the rich asshole administration strike last year, it has not deterred the [Syrian President Bashar al] Assad regime from using chemical weapons again,” she added, “…In words and actions, the rich asshole administration has been inconsistent relative to Syria. That gives Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime room to maneuver. In this particular case, Israel seems to have stepped in.”
Alvi said that neither the administration nor the U.N. have been effective in stopping chemical attacks in Syria, and dismissed the value of airstrikes against the regime.
“Assad and his comrades must be tried for war crimes,” said Alvi. “Anything else is cosmetic.”
By July, the rich asshole had ended a CIA program funding rebels fighting forces loyal to Syrian President Assad.
Two weeks ago, having decided that the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State was done and dusted, the president surprised the State Department and Pentagon by telling those gathered at a campaigning rally in Ohio that U.S. troops would be leaving Syria “very soon.” His generals have since floated a more realistic six-month timeline, although details are sparse.
“If we think about the conflict in Syria as a multi-actor bargaining situation, inconsistency is problematic, because it makes it difficult for other actors to predict what the U.S. will do and how the U.S. will respond to a new front opening up in the conflict, or Russia taking a hard line, or Russia sending more troops, or aircraft to back Assad, or Assad engaging in a chemical weapons attack,” said Wood.
“And more confusion tends to lead to more violence,” he said, noting that the gains of unpredictability or keeping one’s adversaries guessing are realized in only a very small subset of cases.
The only thing that has remained consistent is the rich asshole’s stance on banning Syrians from entering the United States. Syria, which has been embroiled in seven years of conflict, is among the Muslim countries targeted by President the rich asshole for his “travel” ban, and Syrians are not allowed to visit under an immigrant or non-immigrant visa.
The rich asshole administration has also set the refugee admissions cap to a historic low of just 45,000 refugees for 2018 — less than half of the 110,000 limit former President Barack Obama set in his last year in office.
Worried GOP views the rich asshole trade war with angst
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 04/09/18 06:00 AM EDT
Republican lawmakers are returning to Washington this week with their eyes focused on an escalating trade war with China that has roiled the stock market and put them on edge over the economy and this fall’s midterms.
Congressional aides say the rich asshole’s tariffs will be the hot topic of conversation at party caucus meetings this week, even as they wonder what leverage they can exert on a president who vowed to put his stamp on trade.
“I don’t know there’s much you can do there,” said one senior Senate GOP aide.
Democrats and Republicans alike believe November’s elections will be about the rich asshole’s presidency.
The White House and GOP have sought to make the contests as much about the economy as possible, believing strong economic growth and the Republican tax-cut law can overcome the ever-present controversies surrounding the rich asshole’s tenure.
the rich asshole’s trade actions are a threat to that narrative. They have already contributed to a sell-off on Wall Street, and they have raised fears that some economic gains from lower taxes could be lost to higher consumer prices triggered by tariffs.
An analysis by the right-leaning Tax Foundation said that in 2018, more than a quarter of the gains from the tax law could be lost because of the new tariffs.
Republican free-trade proponents hope they can persuade the rich asshole to focus more on using existing enforcement mechanisms and less on tariffs that invite retaliation on U.S. goods.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told a group of farmers in business leaders in Kentucky last week that the rich asshole’s threats were making him “nervous” and warned that even modest tariffs could become a “slippery slope” to an all-out trade war.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) was much more pointed.
“If he’s even half-serious, this is nuts,” Sasse said of the president’s actions. “This is the dumbest possible way to do this.”
Many other Republican lawmakers are leery about criticizing the rich asshole, who is popular with the party’s base.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has kept a low profile on the issue. Early last month, however, he came out strongly against the rich asshole’s announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and warned of “unintended consequences.”
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Friday took a relatively soft approach to the rich asshole’s proposal to slap tariffs on an additional $100 billion worth of Chinese imports. the rich asshole had already announced tariffs on $53 billon of Chinese imports.
Hatch blamed Beijing for instigating the trade battle by demanding that the U.S. transfer technologies and intellectual property to Chinese businesses as the price for doing business in China.
“It is China’s responsibility to end its technology transfer regime,” he said. “Until it does so, there will be a risk of a continuing cycle of retaliatory tariffs.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas), who also has jurisdiction on trade, has adopted a measured approach as well.
“In enforcing our trade laws, we should always take a targeted approach to address unfair practices while avoiding harm to U.S. workers and job creators,” he said in a statement Wednesday.
Brady’s panel will hold a hearing on April 12 to study how tariffs on steel and aluminum imports will affect the domestic economy.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) will return Monday from a congressional delegation trip he led to China over the recess where he raised concerns with government officials over what he called the country’s “unfair trade practices.”
Yet, as a member of the Agriculture Committee who represents a state with millions of dollars in wheat and beef exports, Daines also urged the president to take a cautious approach.
“We must take actions to level the playing field while also working to avoid or mitigate retaliation that would harm Montana’s farmers,” he said Friday.
Farm-state Republicans are some of the biggest GOP critics of the rich asshole’s actions.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) warned the president against playing a high-stakes game of chicken with a major importer of U.S. agricultural commodities.
He said posturing on trade is playing havoc with people’s livelihoods.
“These are real people, real families. You don’t use them as a playing card,” Roberts told The Kansas City Star.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a member of the Agriculture and Finance Committees, complained earlier this week that farmers and ranchers were taking the brunt of retaliation from China.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), another member of the Agriculture Committee, said he has stressed to the rich asshole and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue that “changes to our trade policy need to result in better deals for the U.S., but also avoid retaliatory tariffs on our agriculture exports.”
Alicia Machado claims the rich asshole tried to have sex with her
Cristina Maza
Posted with permission from Newsweek
As executive producer of the Miss Universe beauty pageant, Donald Trump made it his mission to publicly shame Alicia Machado, a Venezuelan national who won the 1996 Miss Universe competition, for her weight. But at the same time as he was making Machado’s life miserable by allegedly calling her "Miss Piggy" and forcing her to exercise in front of television cameras, the man who is now President of the United States was repeatedly trying to have sex with the then-teenage beauty queen, Machado claimed for the first time last week.
In an exclusive interview with the Spanish-language channel Telemundo, Machado explained that she had a preexisting contract with Miss Universe before Trump purchased the Miss Universe Organization in 1996. The purchase meant that Trump was now her boss, although he didn’t have the power to alter the terms of her employment, Machado said. Nevertheless, she noted that Trump disrespected her continuously throughout their time working together, and he also tried to sleep with her.
“I know Trump very well. I know him as a person,” Machado said during the interview, adding that she never had sexual relations with Trump.
“Did he try?” the Telemundo anchorman asked Machado.
“Yes, in many situations,” she replied. “But I’ve never talked about it.”
Machado has previously claimed that she developed an eating disorder and suffered psychological trauma due to Trump’s actions. The events were used by then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election when she accused Trump of sexism over his treatment of Machado. The former Miss Universe is now a successful actress in Latin America, and has started speaking out against Trump since he rose to political prominence.
“There are other Miss Universes that said he was lovely,” Machado said. “I don’t know, I speak for my personal experience…I think he knows in his heart that he hurt a young girl.”
In an exclusive interview with the Spanish-language channel Telemundo, Machado explained that she had a preexisting contract with Miss Universe before Trump purchased the Miss Universe Organization in 1996. The purchase meant that Trump was now her boss, although he didn’t have the power to alter the terms of her employment, Machado said. Nevertheless, she noted that Trump disrespected her continuously throughout their time working together, and he also tried to sleep with her.
“I know Trump very well. I know him as a person,” Machado said during the interview, adding that she never had sexual relations with Trump.
“Did he try?” the Telemundo anchorman asked Machado.
“Yes, in many situations,” she replied. “But I’ve never talked about it.”
Machado has previously claimed that she developed an eating disorder and suffered psychological trauma due to Trump’s actions. The events were used by then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election when she accused Trump of sexism over his treatment of Machado. The former Miss Universe is now a successful actress in Latin America, and has started speaking out against Trump since he rose to political prominence.
“There are other Miss Universes that said he was lovely,” Machado said. “I don’t know, I speak for my personal experience…I think he knows in his heart that he hurt a young girl.”
Scott Pruitt hasn’t saved taxpayers anything
Pruitt's allies are jumping to his defense by arguing that he has saved taxpayers more than he has spent. That's not true.
As Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a growing number of scandals tied to his rental of a Capitol Hill condo co-owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist, allies have begun mounting a new defense. They are arguing that the administrator’s lavish spending habits are offset by his success in rolling back environmental regulations.
On Meet the Press on Sunday, Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) argued that Pruitt should keep his job because he has been effective in implementing the rich asshole administration’s far-reaching deregulatory agenda. Pruitt’s use of taxpayer dollars for things like first class travel and office decorations, Rounds continued, was justified because Pruitt had saved taxpayers money through his deregulatory actions.
Sen. Rounds says on Meet the Press that Pruitt should keep his job “because he's following through with the policies that the president said he wanted to implement.”
Rounds argues that Pruitt has saved taxpayers more money by rolling back regulations compared to what he has cost them with security/flights pic.twitter.com/4Z4asNooHm
It’s a similar line of reasoning that Pruitt himself took up in January, when he cheered his agency’s deregulatory actions, claiming that they had saved the American public $300 million in regulatory costs.
.@EPA is working alongside @POTUS to provide the regulatory certainty the American people deserve.
We’ve made it easy for you to keep track of the actions we’re taking. Check out a full list hereepa.gov/laws-regulatio…
Over the past year @EPA has issued 20 deregulatory actions saving the American people more than $300 MILLION in regulatory costs. #EPABack2Basics
As Pruitt faces a growing number of calls to resign over the growing scandals, it’s not surprising that his allies would turn to regulatory costs as a reason for Pruitt to stay.
It’s an argument that combines two of conservatives’ favorite talking points when it comes to the environment — cutting regulatory burdens on business and saving the American taxpayer money. Even President the rich asshole himself got in on the action this weekend, tweeting that Pruitt’s tenure has seen “Record clean Air & Water while saving USA Billions of Dollars.”
There’s just one problem with that argument: It’s wildly misleading.
The defenses both overstate Pruitt’s effectiveness in rolling back environmental regulations and conflate monetary costs saved by industry with public health and environmental costs borne by the American public.
As a member of the rich asshole’s cabinet, Pruitt has certainly been effective in initiating a slew of environmental rollbacks, from beginning the repeal of the Clean Power Plan to convincing the rich asshole administration to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
In total, he has finalized 22 regulatory rollbacks, with 44 actions still pending. But regulatory rollbacks aren’t always immediately successful, and most of Pruitt’s actions have been met with a wall of resistance in both the public sphere and in courts.
The speed with which Pruitt has pursued regulatory rollbacks — often cheered by the president and Republican allies as a sign of his effectiveness — has left the agency little time to amass the body of evidence usually required for issuing a regulatory, or deregulatory, action. Already, a number of Pruitt’s rollbacks have been overturned in federal court on the basis of insufficient justification.
Still, even for the 22 regulatory actions that have been finalized under Pruitt’s leadership, the savings cheered by the rich asshole and Republican allies are mostly compliance costs — meaning that they would have been shouldered by industry, not the American taxpayer.
The Clean Power Plan, for instance, would have put limits on emissions from power plants and forced the shifting of electricity generation from emissions-intensive fuel like coal to more renewable sources of energy. Compliance costs from the Clean Power Plan would largely have been shouldered by coal or utilities, two sectors that lobbied hard against the rules and have cheered Pruitt’s steps to repeal.
Looking just at compliance costs also ignores the vast number of benefits — both economic and social — that regulations like the Clean Power Plan can have for society overall.
According to a 2017 analysis by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law, for instance, costs of the Clean Power Plan would have been about $5.1 and $8.4 billion annually, while benefits would have been about $54 billion annually. This means that the Clean Power Plan would have created a net economic benefit of between $45.6 billion and $48.9 billion.
But those benefits are largely public health and environmental benefits — things like lower healthcare costs from reduced air pollution, or fewer missed work days due to respiratory illness. Compliance costs would still have been shouldered by industry — which explains why when it comes to accounting for regulation, Pruitt and the rich asshole seem more concerned with the costs to industry than the benefits to public health.
In reality, Pruitt’s most effective legacy hasn’t been regulatory rollbacks to save money — it’s been in the cut-and-dry bureaucratic policy of the EPA, which has done more to undermine the agency’s ability to hold polluters accountable than save taxpayer dollars.
He has remade the way that the agency uses science in its regulatory decisions, announcing his intention in late March to ban the use of data that isn’t publicly available — effectively knee-capping the kinds of public health studies, which often rely on anonymous or confidential information, that agency scientists can employ.
He has also overseen a mass exodus of EPA staff, reducing the agency to employment numbers near Reagan-era levels. The offices hit hardest by Pruitt-era staffing numbers are offices that deal with chemical safety and pollution prevention, research and technology, and environmental enforcement.
In fact, Pruitt’s deference to industry has actually caused the EPA to leave money on the table, compared to previous administrations, when it comes to recouping damages from pollution and broken environmental laws.
Enforcement against polluters has dropped significantly under Pruitt’s leadership, with the EPA resolving just 48 civil cases in its first year under the rich asshole administration — compared with 71 civil cases under the Obama administration’s first year and 112 cases under the George W. Bush administration’s first year.
The penalties sought in those actions have also been significantly lower compared to the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. Under Pruitt’s first year, the EPA took in $30 million in penalties against polluters, versus $81 million in Obama’s first year and $70 million during George W. Bush’s first year.
But while Pruitt has been ineffective at the kinds of regulatory rollbacks that could save industry money — and effective at undercutting the kind of work the EPA does to hold polluters accountable for environmental damages — he has been extremely effective at spending taxpayer money for his own needs.
Since coming to the agency, Pruitt has demanded more security than any of his predecessors, requesting a round-the-clock security detail that has cost taxpayers nearly $3 million. Pruitt has also spent more than $168,000 on air travel during his first year in office, often flying first class while taxpayers footed the bill but preferring coach when he was paying the costs himself.
The reality is that when politicians like President the rich asshole or Senator Rounds talk about Pruitt’s track record of success, they aren’t referring to his work as EPA Administrator in a traditional sense.
Before Pruitt, the mission of the EPA was to protect public health and the environment — something the agency did through environmental regulations and enforcement actions against polluters. But now, under Pruitt, an extremely hard-line conservative vision for the EPA has taken hold. Pruitt might stumble when it comes to regulatory rollbacks, but he has been ruthlessly effective at turning the EPA into an agency captured by industry — and for some Republican lawmakers, that’s well worth the cost of Pruitt’s personal scandals.
WATCH: Fox News guest turns away from host to directly ask the rich asshole to bomb Syria
Bassam Rifai (Fox News)
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A Fox News guest broke the fourth wall during an interview to directly address the conservative network’s most famous viewer — President some rich asshole.
The president frequently watches and reacts to Fox News programming, and the public relations chairman of the Syrian American Council interrupted an interview Monday to ask the rich asshole to respond to the chemical weapon attack that killed dozens in Douma.
“I would be surprised if I didn’t see any strikes,” said Bassam Rifai, of the nonprofit Syrian American Council. “The president needs to take swift and decisive action right now.”
Rifai then turned away from host Eric Shawn and looked directly at the camera.
“President the rich asshole, I’m speaking to you directly,” Rifai said. “Do not take the same mistake that President Obama had made. The action that you had taken to take out the air base, that was important, that was strong — that was a very strong message. What we need to do right now is to take out Assad’s air force. If we ground all of his air force, we won’t have the capability to attack Syrians by the air anymore.”
Right-wing Sinclair airs ad from watchdog group, then claims it’s liberal propaganda
The company claimed that a recent ad from Allied Progress was full of "hysteria" and "hype."
Conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group agreed to air an ad critical of the media company and its notorious must-run segments this week, but bookended it with messages criticizing the ad as misleading hysteria from a biased group.
The ad, created by the left-leaning Allied Progress, lashed out at Sinclair, the nation’s largest owner of local news stations, for forcing anchors and reporters to read from a script denouncing “false news” and journalists who injected “personal agenda[s]” into their reporting. That script, leaked by KOMO-TV and published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was one of the many “must-run” segments Sinclair frequently forces its stations to air, which often contain misleading information, White House talking points, and right-wing propaganda. CNN first reported the script’s existence in early March.
“What happens when your local news isn’t local? This,” the ad states, before playing back a video compilation of dozens of Sinclair anchors repeating the same scripted words over one another. The video, created by Deadspin, expanded on an earlier video created by ThinkProgress, which highlighted the same pattern.
“Sinclair owns this station and and nearly 200 others. It forced dozens of anchors to recite the same political message, word for word. Now, Sinclair is trying to control local news stations in 72 percent of American homes,” the ad continues, referring to Sinclair’s proposed purchase of Tribune Media, which is awaiting approval by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The ad concludes by asking viewers to petition the FCC to stop the merger.
The ad was buffered by two 15-second spots from Sinclair itself, which warned viewers about the ad’s content.
“Sinclair Broadcast Group is proud to present both sides of issues. For that reason, we have agreed to air the ad you are about to see, opposing Sinclair’s acquisition of additional television stations,” the voiceover claims. “We think the ad is misleading, but wanted to let you decide.”
The second spot, aired directly after the Allied Progress ad, directly calls out the watchdog group for promoting “hysteria.”
“The misleading ad you just saw focused on a brief promotional message that simply said we’re a source for truthful news. It ignored thousands of hours of local news we produce each year to keep you informed,” it claims. “The ad was purchased by a group known for its liberal bias, and we hope you won’t buy into the hysteria and hype.”
It’s unusual for a media company to purchase an ad it believes is inherently false and directly precede it with a disclaimer saying as much. But aside from the peculiarity of the situation, Sinclair’s criticism of Allied Progress falls flat, considering that Sinclair itself frequently engages in right-wing propaganda.
“When we bought airtime with Sinclair we didn’t think they’d respond by admitting they actively push a partisan agenda. But that’s essentially what they’ve done by attacking Allied Progress for a supposed ‘liberal bias’ while simultaneously claiming they want viewers to hear the other side in their response,” Allied Progress executive director Karl Frisch said in a statement on Sunday. “…We’re clear about who we are. Sinclair is not. By claiming ‘both sides’ and attacking a critic’s liberal politics, they are acknowledging they actively disseminate partisan conservative propaganda, something clearly at odds with their repeated claims to the contrary.”
Frisch added that Sinclair had not sought Allied Progress’ permission before adding the content warnings before and after its ad.
“That did not happen here, which is hardly surprising coming from a company that doesn’t even subscribe to the basic pillars of independent journalistic integrity,” he stated.
Sinclair has come under heavy criticism for airing must-run segments favorable to the rich asshole administration, under the guise of real news. Oftentimes, the segments are aired in the middle of regular news broadcasts, injecting partisan talking points in between unbiased local reporting. Many of those segments feature former the rich asshole advisers like Boris Epshtyn repeating administration-friendly rhetoric on topics like extremism and immigration; one recent segment warned of the so-called “Deep State,” a popular right-wing conspiracy theory that federal bureaucrats are attempting to overthrow the rich asshole administration.
Since KOMO-TV’s script went public, Sinclair employees across the nation have come forward — many of them anonymously for fear of retribution — saying that the anchors and reporters subjected to the company’s must-run segments are unhappy, but unable to leave due to strict contracts Sinclair forces all new hires to sign. In at least a handful of cases, employees have said that they were threatened with lawsuits which would have required them to pay back up to 40 percent of their annual compensation to Sinclair if they attempted to leave before their contracts were up.
As of last week, Sinclair was still airing its must-run segments, one of them featuring pro-the rich asshole talking points about the impending trade war with China. Sinclair also currently has nearly a thousand active job listings for editorial positions at its many outlets, across both JournalismJobs and LinkedIn.
‘We’ll make it up to them’: the rich asshole offers vague assurance to US farmers worried about China tariffs
President some rich asshole talks about China (Screen cap).
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President some rich asshole on Monday said he was sorry to see farmers in the Midwest are being targeted by proposed tariffs from China — but he promised that he’d make it up to them somehow.
Speaking to the press, the rich asshole said that the proposed tariffs, which were made in response to tariffs that the rich asshole administration is planning to slap on Chinese goods, might hurt farmers in the short term.
“If during the course of a negotiation they want to hit the farmers because they think that hits me, I wouldn’t say that’s nice, but I tell you, our farmers are great patriots,” the rich asshole said. “These are great patriots. They understand that they’re doing this for the country. And we’ll make it up to them. In the end they’re going to be much stronger than they are right now.”
The president did not say how he and his administration would “make it up” to farmers who take a major economic hit from tariffs on their crops, but he did imply that former President Barack Obama was to blame for their current plight.
“Don’t forget, farmers have been trending downward,” the rich asshole said “Over an eight-year period their numbers have trended downward, in some cases significantly.”
Watch the video below.
Stormy Daniels’ lawyer is already using the rich asshole’s words against him in court
Michael Avenatti pounces.
On Friday, President some rich asshole spoke about Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who claims she had an affair with the rich asshole in 2006, for the first time. His words are already being used against him in court.
Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ lawyer, included a transcript of the rich asshole’s comments in a motion filed with the court on Sunday. the rich asshole claimed he had no idea why his attorney, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels’ $130,000, suggesting he had no knowledge of the contract. (Cohen has told a similar story.)
Avenatti argues that the rich asshole’s comments draw into a question whether a contract really exists at all. A basic premise of contract law is that a valid contract requires a “meeting of the minds,” which Avenatti says is impossible if the rich asshole doesn’t know about the contract.
the rich asshole and a shell corporation set up by Cohen, EC LLC, is seeking to move Daniels’ lawsuit from federal court into secret arbitration, based on a provision of the contract. Avenatti now says he should have the right to depose the rich asshole and Cohen for two hours each and obtain documents from them before the court considers that motion. The purpose of the deposition would be to see if a contract actually exists.
As a matter of basic contract law, the claim is very sound. It’s implausible for the rich asshole to be a party to a contract he professes to know nothing about.
It’s less certain that the court will agree to allow Avenatti to conduct discovery on an expedited basis. The court rejected Avenatti’s previous motion and admonished him that his case was not the most important before the court.
If the court rejects Avenatti’s renewed motion to depose the rich asshole, it doesn’t necessarily mean the court disagrees with his core argument. The court could decide there is enough on the face of the document (including the lack of signature) and in the rich asshole and Cohen’s public statements to invalidate it. If that’s the case, conducting discovery before ruling on the rich asshole’s motion to compel arbitration would be unnecessary.
Regardless of how the court rules, Avenatti seems to have some more tricks up his sleeve.
Stephanie Clifford @StormyDaniels with Lois Gibson, the foremost forensic artist in the world. #thugsearch #searchforthetruth #basta
Avenatti promised a “major announcement” in the coming days regarding the “thug” who approached Daniels in a parking lot in Las Vegas in 2011.
Advertisers drop conservative the rich asshole-loving radio host Jamie Allman after he attacks Parkland student David Hogg
Jamie Allman (Facebook)
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Jamie Allman is the latest conservative to think it’s acceptable to use their platform to attack the teens who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, The Riverfront Times reported.
Last week, Allman tweeted what he said was a joke that he was “getting ready to ram a hot poker” up the “ass” of the Parkland massacre survivor.
“When we kick their ass they all like to claim we’re drunk. I’ve been hanging out getting ready to ram a hot poker up David Hogg’s ass tomorrow. Busing working. Preparing,” he said in a since deleted tweet.
Since then, a boycott movement has convinced three advertisers to pull out of Allman’s shows. He hosts a morning show at 97.1 FM and The Allman Report on ABC-affiliated station KDNL.
Missouri state Rep. Stacey Newman was one of the outspoken critics of Allman.
“We demand advertisers stop being complicit,” Newman wrote. “Stop supporting an adult who spews such hate.”
The three companies that have pulled their advertising are PALM Health, Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and The Gellman Team, a real estate group.
This is a most unfortunate situation and what has taken place is contrary to PALM Health's core values. We have contacted the radio station not only to voice our concern, but we have also stopped advertising on Jamie Allman's show.
Thanks @staceynewman for bringing this to our attention. Upon further investigation, our franchise partner has stopped its advertising. Thank you again for your concern.
People, your voices work!@TheGellmanTeam has responded to the cruel attacks on kids by #JamieAllman on @971FMTalk. Pulling their $$$.
Great work, @drewmanshow @ProgWomen
Sign Petition here to remove more companies - bit.ly/2Eq3J23
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