the rich asshole ousts Shulkin at VA, taps White House physician
BY JORDAN FABIAN AND REBECCA KHEEL - 03/28/18 05:34 PM EDT
President the rich asshole said Wednesday he is removing Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary David Shulkin and tapping White House physician Adm. Ronny Jackson as his replacement, ending weeks of uncertainty at the embattled agency.
the rich asshole announced the decision on Twitter, a move that caps off a stunning fall for Shulkin, who had once been among the rich asshole’s favorite Cabinet secretaries.
“I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs,” the rich asshole tweeted.
The president thanked Shulkin for “service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS” and said that Robert Wilkie, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, would serve as interim VA secretary until Jackson is confirmed.
I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs....
"Congrats to Admiral Ronny Jackson, MD. Thank you Dr. David Shulkin for your dedication and service to helping our veterans," Vice President Pence tweeted.
Jackson has served as the presidential physician since 2013, when former President Obama was in office. His experience in the White House goes back to the George W. Bush administration and he was also in charge of resuscitative medicine for a trauma-response unit during the Iraq War.
The doctor gained national attention in January when he gave an hourlong press conference praising the rich asshole’s health and crediting his "good genes."
the rich asshole said Jackson, who has no experience running a large organization, "is highly trained and qualified" and as a service member himself "has seen firsthand the tremendous sacrifice our veterans make."
Shulkin’s ouster adds to the shake-up in the rich asshole administration that has already resulted in the departures of the rich asshole's secretary of State, top economic aide and his second national security adviser.
The only Cabinet holdover from the Obama administration, Shulkin had been in the hot seat for months over a scathing report accusing him of misusing taxpayer dollars.
But a White House spokesman said as recently as Monday that the rich asshole retained confidence in the secretary, responding to reports that the president was telling associates that Shulkin was on the way out.
Shulkin is the second Cabinet secretary to be forced out over travel abuses, following Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price's exit in September.
The moderate former hospital executive initially appeared to be the least controversial of the rich asshole’s Cabinet members.
Shulkin was confirmed unanimously and appeared frequently in the White House briefing room during the rich asshole’s first year to tout accomplishments, including legislation that makes it easier for the 360,000-person agency to fire bad employees.
the rich asshole remarked in June that he’d “never have to use” his reality show catchphrase, “You’re fired,” on Shulkin.
“I appreciate the work of Dr. David Shulkin and the many great things we did together at Veterans Affairs, including the VA Accountability Act that he was helpful in getting passed,” the rich asshole said in a prepared statement Wednesday. “He has been a great supporter of veterans across the country and I am grateful for his service.”
Feelings on Shulkin began to sour in February, when the VA’s inspector general released a report on a trip to Europe over the summer that found Shulkin spent most of his time sightseeing rather than conducting official business and improperly accepted tickets to a Wimbledon tennis match as a gift.
It also said a top aide, who has since resigned, altered an email to gain approval to use taxpayer money to pay for Shulkin’s wife to accompany him on the trip.
After the report’s release, Shulkin said he would reimburse the government for his wife’s travel and the Wimbledon tickets.
But he also went on a media blitz blaming the report on an internal rebellion by some the rich asshole appointees. The interviews led long-bubbling tensions to break into the open, with reports surfacing that two senior VA officials tried to oust Shulkin late last year.
More bad news for Shulkin has since piled up, including reports of another inspector general investigation into an allegation that Shulkin asked a member of his security detail to accompany him to a Home Depot and carry furniture items into his home.
Some rich asshole political appointees seized the opportunity to try and force Shulkin out over policy disagreements.
Top Republicans in Congress, including the chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs committees, had stuck by Shulkin, as did leading veterans organizations. Supporters said Shulkin had done a good job reforming a department that has been plagued by scandal.
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, praised Shulkin in a statement following Wednesday's announcement.
“Dr. Shulkin has made a tremendous impact toward improving the lives of veterans during his time at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs," Isakson said. "He has been instrumental in all that we have accomplished in the last year, and I thank Dr. Shulkin for his dedicated service to our country and our veterans. I look forward to meeting Admiral Jackson and learning more about him.”
Democrats and veterans organizations also looked at Shulkin as the bulwark against privatization of the VA.
At the heart of the dispute between Shulkin and the rich asshole appointees were changes to a program known as Choice that allows some veterans to seek private health care. Shulkin favored a modest expansion of the program that would still leave it up to VA doctors whether patients can seek private care.
Shulkin’s opponents, though, say that approach is out of step with sweeping reforms the rich asshole promised during his presidential campaign. They want a more aggressive change to the Choice program that critics say would amount to privatization of the VA.
The agency has been under fire since 2014, when it was revealed that some veterans waited months for doctor appointments at the Phoenix VA. Some officials created secret records to cover up the long delays.
the rich asshole administration picks new fight with California
BY MIRANDA GREEN AND TIMOTHY CAMA -
The rich asshole administration is picking a new fight with California, this time over global warming and emissions standards for cars.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is expected this week to declare that having the nation’s auto fleet meet an average 54.5 mpg standard by 2025 is too strict, two people familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill.
The decision could have huge ramifications for California, which negotiated the target with the Obama administration in 2011 after winning a waiver from the Clean Air Act to impose its own in-state fuel economy standards.
If Pruitt decides the standard is too high, the EPA is likely to lower the target and could even seek to eliminate California’s waiver.
In California, the fight is seen as just the latest attack on a state that prides itself as ground zero for resistance to President the rich asshole ever since Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton defeated the rich asshole there by more than 4 million votes.
“The the rich asshole administration certainly is looking for every opportunity to stick to it California,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) told The Hill Wednesday.
California is seeking to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent by 2030, a goal that would be in jeopardy if it cannot hold cars to a high fuel standard.
“You’re really attacking California’s environmental identity,” said Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the UCLA.
California in the 20th century witnessed firsthand the negative effects of air pollution through crippling smog. High vehicle emissions paired with the state’s unique geography consistently rank it atop the list of states with the worst air quality.
Since the administration announced formally in August that the EPA was considering rewriting the rule for cars and light trucks made between 2021 and 2025, California representatives have taken a wait-and-see approach. But in the lead up to the decision's deadline on Sunday, Golden State representatives are starting to take a combative stance.
“We are troubled about the rumors that the EPA has found the standards to be too aggressive and that they need to be weakened,” said Stanley Young, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, the state agency responsible for emissions rules. “We feel strongly that weakening the program will waste fuel, increase emissions, and cost consumers more money.”
The fight over emission standards would be just the latest battle between the rich asshole and California, where the president’s policies on immigration in particular have prompted Attorney General Jeff Sessions to warn that there is “no secession” from the United States.
On Monday night, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to add a question about legal residence to the 2020 census sparked new talk of a lawsuit from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D), who has already launched dozens of legal challenges against the administration.
Becerra said California is prepared to sue if the EPA moves to weaken the vehicle emissions standards.
“We are going to do everything that can been done to defend these standards,” Becerra told Reuters Tuesday. “So far, when we have been challenged on environmental standards we have had a good record in court. We haven’t lost a case.”
Pruitt has taken a combative approach, arguing the Obama administration gave California too much say in the standards.
“California is not the arbiter of these issues,” Pruitt told Bloomberg News this month, adding that it “shouldn’t and can’t dictate to the rest of the country what these levels are going to be.”
If California were allowed to target a higher fuel efficiency standard than the rest of the country, it would create real problems for automakers that would prefer one national standard.
It’s also likely that other states would follow California’s lead.
Twelve states currently follow California’s rules on greenhouse gases from cars. Together, the bloc amounts for about a third of the nation’s car market.
Companies don’t want to be left with the choice of either making different vehicles for different states or letting California set the de facto national rules.
“That might mean that certain vehicles can’t be sold in California,” said Gloria Bergquist, spokeswoman for the Auto Alliance.
Bergquist argued that retaining one standard for the whole country is “better for everyone.”
Andrew Linhardt, the Sierra Club’s deputy director for clean transportation, said the EPA’s biggest challenge in arguing to change the fuel efficiency standards will be in showing that doing so is legal.
The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to grant California a waiver if the state has “compelling and extraordinary circumstances,” which the Obama administration said it does. A change of course would require the EPA to demonstrate that the circumstances are no longer there.
“[California] has always said they’d be willing to look at new data, but that data doesn’t exist and EPA knows that,” Linhardt said. “Again they would have to directly contradict previously findings that they did less than two years ago. The automakers had huge amounts of input into that. It’s hard for me to foresee where that technical data would be coming from.”
Carlson expects California to sue if the EPA revokes its waiver, and the case is likely to get appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
“The really important substantive question is, does California have ‘compelling and extraordinary circumstances’ to issue standards that are more stringent than the federal government’s,” she said.
Becerra said the law is on California’s side.
“Threats are par for the course for California in this administration,” he told reporters last month. "At the end of the day, they can threaten. But what they can do under the law is something else.”
Updated at 6:38 p.m.
some rich asshole personally called Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on revival show’s ‘huge’ ratings: report
Roseanne Barr on Jimmy Kimmel/Screenshot
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some rich asshole on Wednesday personally called supporter Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on her the “huge” ratings for the “Roseanne” revival, the New York Times reports.
The call came after “the show’s first episode averaged 18.2 million viewers,” according to the Times.
Barr’s character on “Roseanne” plays a supporter of the president; in its first return episode, the show grappled with the divide between the rich asshole supporters and defenders of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Barr told the New York Times on Tuesday that she “wanted to have that dialogue about families torn apart by the election and their political differences of opinion and how we handle it.”
In an interview with ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel last week, the late night host confronted Barr over her support for the president.
“I’m shocked, because I know you were a very socially liberal person in general,” Kimmel said.
“I’m still the same—you all moved,” Barr replied. “You all went so f*cking far out you lost everybody.”
In her interview with the Times published Tuesday, Barr insisted the rich asshole shares the socially progressive views of her “Roseanne” character, including support same-sex marriage and abortion rights.
“I think he voices them quite well,” she argued.
As the Times reports, the rich asshole has never publicly endorsed same-sex marriage. He also no longer supports abortion rights, despite having done so in the past.
Dan Rather predicts the rich asshole will try to fire Mueller: ‘Hard to imagine a scenario where he doesn’t at least try’
Dan Rather (Photo: screen capture)
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Legendary journalist Dan Rather on Wednesday predicted that some rich asshole will indeed try to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, a move he said will hinge on the presidents assessment of how Congress will react to such a move.
“Some people think he is going to try to Mueller,” CNN’s Don Lemon introduced. “Is he going to try to get rid of Mueller?”
“The answer is yes, I think he will,” Rather said. “He may not do it directly. He may try to have someone else do it, for example, bring in a new attorney general who will not have to recuse himself. And the attorney general will reach a decision, quote unquote.”
“But it’s hard to imagine a scenario going forward where he doesn’t at least try to get rid of Mueller,” Rather continued. “I don’t know whether he succeeds or not, but that echoes the Nixon administration and Watergate, the famous Saturday Night Massacre when the president did fire the special prosecutor. And it was a firestorm that resulted, in many ways, in Nixon losing the presidency.”
Rather suggested someone has told the rich asshole to “be careful because in the Nixon case it led to his end.”
“Part of the answer to whether President the rich asshole fires Mueller or not will be his judgment of how many people in Congress would back it or how many would take the Lindsey Graham position,” Rather continued.
Sen. Graham (R-SC) has said the rich asshole firing Mueller would be the “beginning of the end” of his presidency.”
Watch below:
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow outlines how the rich asshole’s new national security adviser is already in legal trouble
MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow holding an imaginary phone.
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It’s been less than a week since President some rich asshole announced that he’s appointing neo-conservative Fox News pundit John Bolton to be his new national security adviser — and he’s already found himself in legal hot water.
As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted, a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commision claims the Bolton Super PAC, which paid shady British data firm Cambridge Analytica $1.4 million since 2014 for their services, violated campaign finance law by using the GOP megadonor-funded group to run data operations.
Bolton’s PAC, which was also funded by Republican megadonor Robert Mercer alongside Cambridge Analytica, is a small piece of the story surrounding the British group’s involvement in American politics. Because they receive so much money from the Mercers, Maddow explained, they can charge relatively little for their services — thus making the case that their data work for American campaigns counts as in-kind donations from a foreign-based entity.
As noted by the Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance watchdog group that is filing an FEC complaint about the Bolton Super PAC tomorrow, the “convoluted relationship” between the new national security adviser and Cambridge Analytica justifies the government’s elections board to open an investigation into both.
“Super PACs can accept unlimited contributions if they are independent but if super PACs can coordinate spending with campaigns, they can get around laws that limit the amount of money candidates can take,” the group noted on Twitter. “That’s what the John Bolton Super PAC did here.”
Our complaint says the John Bolton super PAC violated election laws. Thom Tillis/NC GOP & John Bolton Super PAC used Cambridge Analytica’s services. It seems @CamAnalytica used information from its work for Thom Tillis/NC GOP to develop the John Bolton Super PAC pro-Tillis ads.
Super PACS can accept unlimited contributions if they are independent but if super PACs can coordinate spending with campaigns, they can get around laws that limit the amount of money candidates can take. That’s what the John Bolton Super PAC did here.
Along with the CLC complaint that the Bolton Super PAC circumvented campaign finance law to help elect candidates like Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Maddow also pointed out that if the rich asshole “didn’t want to end up in a Michael Flynn situation” where his nation security adviser had a checkered past, “Bolton might be an odd pick.”
She then played a clip of the Bush-era adviser in a 2013 video published by a Russian gun rights group — the same group whose founder is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for allegedly funneling money from Russia to the National Rifle Association.
Watch below, via MSNBC:
Former US attorney lays out why the rich asshole can’t find a lawyer: ‘He’s a terrible boss and a terrible client’
The former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara on AC360.
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The former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara explained why President some rich asshole has been unable to hire qualified defense attorneys like O.J. Simpson’s dream team, during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“I’m wondering what you make of these alleged conversations about pardons,” Cooper said.
“I think like a lot of people, you find it kind of crazy,” Bharara replied. “I think that the way you exercise your pardon power in a way that doesn’t have the optics of looking like it’s a quid-pro-quo, in other words the president will buy your silence by giving you a pardon if you agree in advance not to say anything bad about him and not to cooperate with the Mueller investigation.”
“I have to imagine that the Mueller team has now talked to Flynn and talked to Flynn’s lawyer and said, ‘Well, what happened with respect to words used? Was there an offer made? Was there a wink? Was there a hint? Also, more importantly, was it clear that John Dowd was speaking on behalf of the president?'” he listed. “Was the president the one who was directing this, and that makes a lot of difference, I think.”
“It seems not quite kosher,” Bharara added.
“Just lastly on another subject, why do you think the president seems to be having such difficulty getting a legal team together here?” Cooper asked. “I mean O.J. Simpson got a dream team of attorneys.”
“He did,” Bharara agreed.
“The simplest reason is he’s a terrible boss, he’s a terrible client,” the former prosecutor explained. “He doesn’t listen to his lawyers, sometimes he doesn’t pay his lawyers, he fires them ignominiously.”
“These people aren’t treated well, and some people may decide, I have money, I have a reputation, I don’t want to do it,'” Bharara added.
Watch:
BUSTED: the rich asshole caught tweeting old photos in post hailing ‘the start’ of his border wall
some rich asshole at a rally in Ottumwa, Iowa (Evan Guest/Flickr)
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President some rich asshole, who ran for president on a pledge that Mexico would pay for his border wall, was busted on Wednesday claiming that work had begun on his wall.
“Great briefing this afternoon on the start of our Southern Border WALL!” the rich asshole tweeted.
As Buzzfeed fact-checked, this was not actually the start of the rich asshole’s wall, but a repair effort that was started back in 2009 to fix a portion of existing fence that was built in the 1990s.
“Although the existing wall has proven effective at deterring unlawful cross border activity, smuggling organizations damaged and breached this outdated version of a border wall several hundred times during the last two years,” CBP said when announcing the project.
As yet, construction has not yet started on the rich asshole’s border wall.
And to-date, Mexico has been adamant that they will not be paying for his wall.
Watch Ann Coulter melt down over ‘ignoramus’ the rich asshole’s border wall backdown: ‘All he wants is Goldman Sachs to like him’
Far-right personality Ann Coulter on Fox Business
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Far-right personality Ann Coulter lashed out at President some rich asshole during a Wednesday appearance with Fox Business anchor Lou Dobbs.
“Even though I was on a tweet storm last night, I got in rather late and I’m sorry about some of the language, however, I was right on the law,” Coulter claimed.
Coulter also said the rich asshole had changed since being elected president.
“The shallow coarse ignoramus, yes it was a selling point because he didn’t care what people thought of him and now all he wants is for Goldman Sachs to like him,” Coulter claimed. “I don’t know what happened, but that’s a different president. I haven’t changed, he has.”
“Everything gets better with a wall and deportations,” Coulter claimed.
While Coulter was highly critical of President the rich asshole, the Fox Business host seemed quite content with the commander in chief.
“I find everything easier with this president in the White House, doing his level best,” Dobbs admitted.
“He needs a few other people in the White House who don’t oppose everything he said about immigration in the campaign,” Coulter replied.
“Terrific recommendation,” Dobbs replied, asking Coulter for a list of staffing recommendations for the White House.
Watch:
Michael Cohen’s attorney just made a huge admission that could release Stormy Daniels from her ‘hush agreement’
Adult film actress Stormy Daniels (left, via Shutterstock) and the rich asshole's personal lawyer Michael Cohen (right, via screengrab).
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In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, David Schwartz, the attorney that represents some rich asshole’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen, made a huge admission that could free up adult actress Stormy Daniels from her non-disclosure agreement about her alleged affair with the president.
“[the rich asshole] was not aware of any of it, wasn’t told about it,” Schwartz argued when making the case that the rich asshole didn’t know about the $130,000 “hush agreement” his client paid Daniels just before the 2016 election. “Michael Cohen left the option open. That’s why he left that signature line, the option open to go to him. He chose not to. He chose to bind the LLC, EC LLC and Stormy Daniels into the contract.”
Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, noted on Twitter that Schwartz’s gambit may have backfired.
“Michael Cohen’s attorney just claimed on @OutFrontCNN that the rich asshole was not aware of the Stormy Daniels agreement or the payment, which means that there was no contract between the rich asshole and Daniels, and Daniels can release the materials,” he tweeted. “Why would he admit this on national television?”
Michael Cohen's attorney just claimed on @OutFrontCNN that Trump was not aware of the Stormy Daniels agreement or the payment, which means that there was no contract between Trump and Daniels, and Daniels can release the materials. Why would he admit this on national television?
In response to his tweet, author C.H. Armstrong asked if the admission shows, if nothing else, that Cohen broke American Bar Association regulations that prohibit attorneys from giving money to or making payments on behalf of a client. Mariotti responded that if this were true, the rich asshole’s lawyer did indeed break that regulation, linking to an explanation of the rule.
Doesn’t it also mean that Cohen has violated some type of Bar regulation? Something about giving money to a client or paying expenses for a client? Not to mention acting on behalf of a client without his knowledge?
Watch the video of Schwartz’s strange legal strategy below, via CNN:
‘Creep factor up the wazoo’: MSNBC panel explains why voters are revolted by the rich asshole’s crush on Ivanka
Ivanka the rich asshole appears on Fox New (screen grab)
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MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace noted that her non-political friends continue to be intrigued by reports of some rich asshole’s extramarital affairs — and creeped out by the president’s about his daughter, senior White House advisor Ivanka the rich asshole.
“But when I leave my life as a newsperson and a political person, all of my normal friends want to know about is whether the president’s affairs are true,” Wallace noted “and whether he said to women that he was about to sleep with, ‘you are so great, you remind me of my daughter.'”
“And that just creeps everyone out,” Time magazine contributor and MSNBC analyst Elise Jordan said. “You can’t help but just to be — like, no, I don’t want to remember that you said that.”
‘You want to unhear that,” Wallace noted. “Twice!” To Ms. McDougal and Stormy Daniels.”
“And in public interviews over the years, he frequently talks about his daughters,” Jordan added.
“Super gross,” Wallce replied.
“Yes, the creep factor out the wazoo,” Jordan replied.
Watch:
Russian Agents Posted ‘Pro-the rich asshole Furry Porn’ On Tumblr Because Why The F*ck Not At This Point
The Russian government did some really weird sh*t while they were trying to win the election for some rich asshole in 2016. Really weird shit.
As you’ve probably noticed, various social networks like Facebook and Twitter have been notifying users if they made an oopsie and shared Russian propaganda while they screeched incoherently about Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s age despite her being younger than the orange-skinned buffoon currently occupying the Oval Office.
Well, New Statesman‘s Mic Wright just had the privilege of writing one of the most simultaneously hilarious and sad pairs of sentences I have ever read while noting the content of some of the blogs his friend followed that were run by Russians:
The image of Boris and Natasha hunched over a laptop generating pro-the rich asshole furry porn is too delicious. But at a certain level this is just as worrying as any of the other concealed influence exerted by foreign agents on our societies.
You see, Tumblr just sent out a round of notifications informing their users of Russian propaganda efforts, and one of his colleagues just received a notification that he or she had followed blogs “which have, upon further inspection, been linked to Russian-state-linked actors” — a some of which dealt with “Furries.”
Yes, fursuit fetishists may seem like a weird demographic to court, but that’s apparently what happened. Russian agents operated digital playgrounds like “fullyfurrymiracle.” Forgetting for a second that the author’s colleague followed furry porn on Tumblr, whom do you think the guy who ran that blog pissed off to be stuck with that job?
Oddly, a group of Nazi furries made headlines last year when they stood up for some rich asshole at fursuit conventions. Newsweek reported in November:
The alt-furries started as a joke on Twitter, as right-leaning furries used the #AltFurries hashtag to share pro-the rich asshole, furry-themed memes and promote satirical policies, like a ban on “species mixing.” But as the popularity of the hashtag grew, it attracted people who critics say are racist.Today, most alt-furries interact only online, but some have taken their ideas into the real world. This past summer, one man came to Anthrocon, the world’s largest furry convention, in a Confederate flag “fursuit,” holding a the rich asshole sign, and some people distributed alt-furry pamphlets at an Orlando, Florida, furry convention. Others have started wearing armbands strikingly similar to those worn by Nazis. To many furries, what started as an online joke isn’t funny anymore.Before Junius arrived in Philly, alt-furries had threatened him online for slamming them on social media, calling them bigots and fascists; some said they wanted to “break his neck.” One forum group attempted to find his personal information and release it online. The threats don’t frighten him—but he is worried that a growing number of furries are vulnerable to recruitment by white supremacists. “Nazis are looking for these same types of alienated white dudes,” he says. (Like most furries Newsweek spoke to, he didn’t want his real name used in print.) “These people just want to hurt and incite—and are beginning to take their trolling offline.”
So, yeah. This is where we’re at as a country. Russians pretending to be furries posting pro-the rich asshole furry porn to destabilize the ever-so-important “cleaning ‘love stains’ out of a thousand-dollar animal costume'” demographic(yes, furries, I am prepared for the usual onslaught of emails insisting that you’re into it for the “art”).
If this sort of shit is “great,” I don’t want America to ever be great.
Leaked memo shows EPA told employees to lie about climate science
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EPA Director Scott Pruitt just upped the ante of his war on science.
A leaked memo reveals that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent employees a list of talking points on Tuesday instructing them to cast doubt on the scientific consensus about climate change.
The internal EPA memo, which was obtained by Huff Post, includes a set of eight “approved talking points” sent to EPA staffers by the agency’s Office of Public Affairs.
The talking points instruct employees to highlight scientific uncertainty and lack of evidence linking human activity to climate change — statements that are contradicted by the 2017 federal climate assessment, which concluded that “it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
One of the talking points in the memo encourages EPA staffers to question whether fossil fuel emissions directly contribute to climate change, stating incorrectly that “clear gaps remain including our understanding of the role of human activity and what we can do about it.”
The memo also casts doubt on the scientific consensus surrounding climate change, claiming that the “degree and extent” of human impact on climate change “are subject to continuing debate and dialogue.”
In reality, 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that the warming trends observed over the past century “are extremely likely due to human activities.”
The leaked memo represents an escalation of EPA Director Scott Pruitt’s war on science, indicating that his anti-science views are about to become part of official EPA communications. In effect, misinformation will be given the appearance of legitimacy with the stamp of a respected government agency.
While Pruitt claims that he believes in climate change, he denies the science linking it to human activity. Under his direction, the EPA has worked to roll back critical environmental regulations that experts warn will speed up the rate of climate change.
In addition to unraveling climate-related regulations, Pruitt has also dismantled fundamental clean air and water mandates. According to Inside Climate News, “Over the past 13 months, Pruitt’s EPA has taken at least 15 major actions on air pollution—all to delay, weaken or repeal protections, and all opposed by the American Lung Association and other health groups.”
At the same time, Pruitt has taken steps to censor scientific information that might reveal the harmful impact of the rich asshole administration’s environmental policies. This started shortly after Pruitt’s confirmation as head of the EPA, when he personally approved the removal of references to climate change and climate-related government programs from the EPA’s website.
Heather Zichal, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, and previously President Barack Obama’s top White House adviser on energy and climate change, described the actions taken by Pruitt’s EPA as “an unprecedented attempt to delete or bury credible scientific information they find politically inconvenient.”
Just last week, Pruitt announced plans to restrict the EPA’s use of scientific research in writing environmental rules — a move that two former top EPA officials blasted as an “attack on science.”
Now, it appears that Pruitt is upping the ante of his assault on his science, using misinformation and deceptive talking points to spread his anti-science beliefs throughout EPA offices nationwide.
the rich asshole cowers behind Twitter to fire yet another Cabinet secretary
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the rich asshole just used Twitter to fire a Cabinet secretary — the third time he's done so this month.
the rich asshole took to Twitter Wednesday evening to announce the ouster of Veteran Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, marking the third time this month that the rich asshole has fired a top Cabinet official via tweet.
In a series of tweets posted just after 5:30 p.m., the rich asshole said he planned to nominate “highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs.”
“In the interim, Hon. Robert Wilkie of DOD will serve as Acting Secretary,” the rich asshole tweeted. “I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin’s service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!”
the rich asshole’s new nominee for VA secretary, Ronny Jackson, currently works as the White House doctor. Earlier this year, the White House appeared to fake a doctor’s note from Jackson after he performed a physical exam on the rich asshole.
Shulkin’s firing doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. He is one of several Cabinet secretaries embroiled in scandal for misusing taxpayer dollars to pay for personal expenses including lavish hotel stays and vacations — though in the rich asshole administration, abuse of tax dollars is far from a fireable offense.
Nor is it surprising that the rich asshole chose to blurt out the news of Shulkin’s ouster on Twitter.
the rich asshole debuted his fire-by-tweet method in July, when he announced that he would be replacing then-chief of staff Reince Priebus with John Kelly.
More recently, the rich asshole announced in a tweet two weeks ago that he was firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The White House tried to spin the story, saying that Tillerson had been advised of his ouster before the rich asshole blurted it out on Twitter. A State Department official knocked down that narrative when he publicly confirmed that Tillerson had only found out about his firing after the rich asshole tweeted about it. That employee was promptly fired for contradicting the White House.
the rich asshole also took to Twitter to announce the ouster of his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, less than a week ago.
While not surprising, none of this is normal. Firing people and intentionally creating chaos may make for good reality TV, but it makes the U.S. government look dysfunctional — and in this case, looks are not deceiving.
GOP forces FBI to double its efforts investigating Hillary’s emails
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For House Republicans, the FBI's top priority should be digging into Hillary Clinton's emails.
The FBI, the federal agency tasked with defending American citizens against criminals and terrorists, is instead being forced by Republicans to devote time and resources into investigating Hillary Clinton.
Clinton has not held a position in government for over five years. But apparently, still upset that she earned millions more votes than the rich asshole, Republicans still have an axe to grind against her.
Responding to threats from House Republicans, the FBI announced it is doubling the number of staffers going through documents related to Clinton’s email server, from 27 to 54.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, subpoenaed the Justice Department to get records pertaining to the review of Clinton, complaining that the investigation wasn’t moving fast enough.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote a letter describing Goodlatte’s subpoena as a “significant deviation” from how interactions between Congress and the Department of Justice have been handled in the past.
He noted that some of the documents that were requested contained “highly sensitive law enforcement and national security.”
In other words, Goodlatte and his fellow Republicans are forcing the FBI to double its efforts to dig into Clinton’s emails — which have already been exhaustively examined — and bucking tradition and possibly national security to do it.
Goodlatte also asked the agency for documents relating to the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. the rich asshole and his fellow Republicans spent months attacking and smearing McCabe, to discredit him and his involvement in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the rich asshole’s ties to Russian election interference.
After the rich asshole fired him, McCabe noted there was “a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally.”
Goodlatte and other House Republicans are part of that effort. They’re trying to short circuit investigations into the rich asshole while pushing wasteful probes of his political rivals like Clinton, even as the rich asshole’s inner circle faces indictments and convictions.
Instead of standing up for the law and justice, Republicans are trying to get the heat off of the head of their party and waste tax dollars and valuable time in yet another attempt to “get” Clinton.
the rich asshole’s indicted campaign manager seems to think he’ll get a pardon
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Paul Manafort is reportedly betting on a presidential pardon, something the rich asshole's past words and actions indicate is a very real possibility.
The evidence is mounting against former the rich asshole campaign manager Paul Manafort. And his longtime deputy Rick Gates is cooperating with the special counsel investigation, after pleading guilty last month to conspiracy and lying to the FBI.
But Manafort is reportedly hoping that a presidential pardon will be his get-out-of-jail ticket.
“Former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort is now betting his future on a presidential pardon,” CBS News reported Wednesday. “Manafort expects that the President would grant him a pardon. Legal sources close to the case — but not representing Manafort — believe that is a reasonable expectation.”
Speculation about a possible Manafort pardon has been swirling for months.
And on Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the rich asshole’s personal attorney was in touch with Manafort’s attorney last year and broached the idea of a pardon.
The discussions “raise questions about whether the lawyer, John Dowd, was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation,” according to the Times.
Manafort pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, money laundering, and tax and bank fraud charges related to his lobbying work for a Russian-friendly political party in Ukraine. He’s currently awaiting trial later this year.
The CBS report came just hours after Robert Mueller’s office released new court filings that document ongoing ties between Manafort, Gates, and Russian intelligence during the closing months of the 2016 campaign.
The men discussed the stolen Democratic National Committee emails with the Russian contact — emails that were stolen by Russian operatives.
Gates, who is cooperating with Mueller’s probe, .
Observers suggest Gates’ cooperation has increased the pressure on Manafort to cooperate with Mueller as he zeroes in on the rich asshole. But if Manafort is confident a the rich asshole pardon is looming, there’s less incentive to cooperate with Mueller.
Pardoning Manafort, especially preemptively before any trial even took place, could ignite a political firestorm. It could also bring a legal challenge, since it would virtually nullify Mueller’s case against Manafort.
the rich asshole would have to rip up protocols for issuing presidential pardons, which call for a five-year waiting period between a conviction and a pardon appeal. The guidelines also require the person seeking a pardon take responsibilities for their crimes, something Manafort would unlikely do.
But the rich asshole has already ignored pardon guidelines in order to reward his crooked, political allies.
Last year, the rich asshole pardoned Arizona’s disgraced former sheriff and full-fledged birther Joe Arpaio after he was convicted for refusing to cease racial profiling. Arpaio then lost his re-election bid, but is now running for the U.S. Senate.
Democrats saw the Arpaio pardon as a possible sign of future, weightier pardons.
“The concern I have is that he’s sending a message to people that may be under investigation by Bob Mueller, that ‘I have your back and I’ve got a pardon waiting for you,'” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told MSNBC last year.
And last winter, the rich asshole seemed to signal that disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn might receive a pardon.
Manafort may be relying on getting the same support from the rich asshole that Arpaio and Flynn did.
But expecting loyalty from the rich asshole is not exactly a safe bet.
the rich asshole ousts his V.A. secretary, opening the door to privatize the agency
David Shulkin will be replaced by Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson.
Adding to the long list of recent staff departures and dismissals, President some rich asshole fired Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin Wednesday and announced that he would be nominating Rear Admiral Ronny L. Jackson to replace him.
Shulkin was the only holdover from the Obama era in the rich asshole’s cabinet, having been appointed in 2015 to lead the V.A.’s health system. His replacement is the current White House physician who previously lauded the president’s health, but has no experience running a major bureaucratic agency.
Shulkin’s tenure as V.A. secretary had reportedly been in peril for months. In February, his chief of staff resigned after being accused of “serious derelictions” in expenses during a 10-day trip to Europe in 2017 — including improperly accepting tickets to the Wimbledon tennis championship. Later in February, reports surfaced that senior aides within the V.A. were actively conspiring to have him removed.
But the major controversy within the V.A. centers around the the rich asshole administration’s plans to offer veterans more privatized medical care at the expense of taxpayers. During his confirmation hearing, Shulkin vowed to resist any privatization efforts, which had been a the rich asshole campaign promise.
“V.A. is a unique national resource that is worth saving,” Shulkin told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee last February during his confirmation hearing. “The Department of Veterans Affairs will not be privatized under my watch.”
During the 2016 presidential election, the rich asshole labeled the V.A. “the most corrupt agency in the United States.” But after he won the presidential election, major veterans groups banded together to ask the rich asshole to keep Obama’s secretary, Robert A. McDonald.
“We all want McDonald,” Joe Chenelly, executive director of Amvets, told the New York Times in December 2016. “He has a good business mind, he is experienced and we feel we can trust him.” the rich asshole replaced him anyway.
Democratic lawmakers warned Wednesday night that Shulkin’s removal paved the way for the rich asshole to move forward with his goal of privatizing the agency. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the removal was “a troubling step towards the the rich asshole Administration’s ultimate goal of V.A. privatization,” while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that “the struggle at the Veterans Administration is about the rich asshole’s desire to privatize the VA and his belief that Secretary David Shulkin is not moving fast enough in that direction.”
Veterans groups have also been adamantly opposed to privatization. “We can’t see the number of veterans that VA sees on a regular basis if we’re going to pay the same rates that other health care industries pay in the community,” Verna Jones, executive director for the American Legion, said earlier in March. “One of the things we’re most concerned about is an increased contracting out, when we should be able to do that on VA campuses that will deplete the amount of money that’s available to see veterans.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs is the government’s second-largest agency. It is responsible for more than 1,700 health facilities and 9 million military veterans.
‘What is co-conspirator?’: Internet buries Eric the rich asshole after he posts Jeopardy! clue about himself and Jared Kushner
Eric the rich asshole
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some rich asshole’s son Eric the rich asshole on Wednesday posted a seemingly-innocuous “Jeopardy! question” about himself and top White House aide Jared Kushner.
“Always fun being a Jeopardy question,” Eric the rich asshole posted along with a screengrab featuring himself and his brother-in-law.
: Who is “brother in law.” 
As an aside, what Eric the rich asshole actually posted is a “Jeopardy!” clue and the responses are offered in the form of a question.
The Internet had a hell of a time providing fitting questions for the “Jeopardy!” clue. Read the best responses below:
Blockbuster story on pardons in Mueller investigation leaves White House walking a tightrope
How to make it seem like you are denying something without actually saying anything.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that an attorney for President some rich asshole discussed the possibility of pardoning key witnesses in the Russia investigation, including former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former the rich asshole campaign manager Paul Manafort. The bombshell report raises the question of whether the rich asshole’s personal attorney at the time, John Dowd, was seeking to persuade Flynn or Manafort against cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller. The efforts, if true, could be seen as obstruction of justice.
During Wednesday’s White House press briefing, Sarah Sanders was asked repeatedly about the report. Each time, she simply referred the questioner back to the statement White House counsel Ty Cobb provided to the New York Times.
This is the statement Cobb released:
I have only been asked about pardons by the press and have routinely responded on the record that no pardons are under discussion or under consideration at the White House.
The key word in this statement is “are.” Cobb’s statement applies only to the present. He does not address the actual report, which is that the possibility of pardons were floated to key witnesses in the past.
Matthew Miller, a Justice Department official in the Obama administration, told ThinkProgress that Cobb’s statement — and Sanders’ reliance on it — was a “typical dodge.”
Eventually, Sanders was called out on this evasion. NBC’s Kristen Welker noted that “Ty Cobb’s statement is about the present” and asked whether “the president directed John Dowd to talk to the attorneys of Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn about potential pardons.”
Sanders responded with another evasion, saying that “I’m not aware of any conversation of that nature.”
Miller told ThinkProgress that since Dowd was the rich asshole’s personal attorney, his conversations with the rich asshole would be privileged. Sanders saying she isn’t “aware” of privileged conversations is saying nothing at all. It’s a way of appearing to deny the report without actually denying anything.
the rich asshole, for his part, has openly discussed the possibility of pardoning Flynn.
“I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens,” the rich asshole said publicly on December 15.
Reagan-era Justice Department lawyer leaves the rich asshole administration to fight Sessions’ LGBT attacks
Outgoing DOJ lawyer Diana Flynn. Image via screengrab.
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After a decades-long career in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, attorney Diana Flynn is leaving the DOJ to work for LGBT rights advocacy group Lambda Legal.
BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday that Flynn’s decision to leave the department she’s worked for since the Reagan administration came as a surprise — especially to her.
“I never really expected to leave,” Flynn, who is a transgender woman, told BuzzFeed. “But it appears to me — at this crucial time for LGBT rights — to make the arguments I want to make and take positions I want to take, I would be much better situated at Lambda Legal than I am at Justice.”
The report noted that although DOJ turnover is not unusual, Flynn’s departure to work for an organization that may put her at odds with Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ anti-LGBT policies is unusual.
Though she did not comment specifically on Sessions or the the rich asshole administration’s policies, she appeared to reference them when discussing the importance of keeping LGBT anti-discrimination laws intact.
“I see a danger to some of the principles that have been established in the civil rights arena generally,” Flynn told BuzzFeed. “I see attempts to roll back specifically LGBT rights in the courts and society, and I want to be in the position where I can aggressively resist that and make the arguments that I think will be most effective.”
“If I find myself on the opposite side of the courtroom from someone I had worked with, it would be something different,” she continued. “It would be strange, but it’s something we could deal with.”
Vanita Gupta, who led the DOJ’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama, said she’s not surprised the rich asshole administration is losing a career civil servant who fought for LGBT rights like Flynn.
“With this administration devolving further into chaos,” Gupta told BuzzFeed, “it comes as no surprise that the administration continues to lose incredibly talented attorneys like Diana.”
Lambda Legal, whose staff Flynn will join in May, is currently fighting the rich asshole administration’s transgender military ban in court
Sarah Sanders flat-out refuses to answer questions about Stormy Daniels
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Sarah Huckabee Sanders had nothing to say to repeated questions about Stormy Daniels' interview Sunday night.
the rich asshole’s extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels continues to dominate the news cycle. But he and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders are responding to it by saying nothing.
Several weeks ago, the rich asshole tried to get clever about the story by sending Sanders out to pretend that the rich asshole had already beaten Daniels in arbitration. Since that tactic blew up in their faces, the rich asshole has hidden from reporters, and Sanders has relied on tightly scripted stonewalling.
“We’ve addressed this extensively and I don’t have anything else to add,” she replied twice when asked about Daniels at a briefing on March 9.
At Tuesday’s briefing, the first since Daniels’ “60 Minutes” interview, she kept up the avoidance.
Reporters asked about the Daniels affair five times. Each time, Sanders responded with variations of “Look, I can tell you that the president’s denied the allegations. Anything beyond that I would refer you to the president’s outside counsel.”
And on Wednesday, reporters brought up the subject at least three more times. Yet Sanders again claimed that she had addressed the questions she has refused to answer, falsely insisted that the rich asshole has denied the affair, and referred reporters to counsel.
the rich asshole’s conspicuous silence and Sanders’ inartful dodging demonstrate just how frightened this White House is of the Stormy Daniels story.
The affair itself could be extremely damaging to Republicans politically. But the rich asshole’s effort to silence Daniels could also place him in serious legal jeopardy. According to former the rich asshole aide Sam Nunberg, special counsel Robert Mueller is asking witnesses about the rich asshole’s payments to multiple women. And Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti has made clear there is much more evidence than his client’s word.
Avenotti has also hinted that any explicit denial from the rich asshole could lead to the release of such evidence.
the rich asshole can’t hide forever, and conspicuous lack of a vehement denial direct from the rich asshole of Daniels’ allegations is notable.
This story is likely to get more difficult for the rich asshole — and more awkward for Sanders.
On Wednesday, Laura Ingraham, host of the primetime Fox News show Ingraham Angle, mocked 17-year-old Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg for getting rejected by four colleges.
“David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it,” Ingraham tweeted. “(Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.)”
Ingraham’s tweet links to a Daily Wire aggregation of an interview Hogg did with TMZ in which he discussed getting rejected from four University of California schools.
“It’s not been too great for me and some of the other members of the movement, like Ryan Deitsch,” Hogg said, alluding to how his application process is going after 17 of his classmates were killed in the shooting on February 14. “It’s been kind of annoying having to deal with that and everything else that’s been going on but at this point, you know, we’re changing the world. We’re too busy. Right now it’s hard to focus on that.”
In the six weeks since the shooting, Hogg has emerged as a leading student voice for gun control. As ThinkProgress has detailed, his efforts have sparked a smear campaign against him that started on the fringes of the internet but has become more mainstream, with right-wing voices going as far as to portray him as an aspiring fascist who sends secret messages to followers.
Ingraham’s tweet isn’t the first time Fox News has smeared Parkland survivors. Last month, The Five host Greg Gutfeld amplified a conspiracy theory about Hogg and his fellow students being puppets of larger, nefarious forces that originated with Gateway Pundit.
It also isn’t the first time Ingraham has attacked Hogg personally. The day before Hogg spoke at the March For Our Lives, Ingraham mocked him for using profanity in a video interview in which he called politicians who refuse to consider gun control “sick fuckers.”
And on March 15, Ingraham posted a condescending tweet about Hogg’s grammar and suggested his “15 Minutes” of fame had expired.
Your 15 Minutes is Up: Perhaps if one stayed in school, one would know to use the plural.... “Parkland Student David Hogg in New Ad: 'What If Our Politicians Weren’t the Bitch of the NRA?'” mediaite.com/online/parklan…
some rich asshole Jr. has also embraced a conspiracy theory about Hogg. Late last month, the rich asshole Jr. “liked” a tweet suggesting Hogg is “running cover” for the FBI because his father works for the FBI. (Hogg’s father is in fact retired.) the rich asshole Jr. reportedly advised his father on gun control policy following the Parkland shooting.
The NRA has also personally attacked Hogg in a video in which the gun lobby dismisses his viewpoint as “childish.”
John Dowd praised Mueller as ‘terrific’ after he stepped down from the rich asshole’s legal team
the rich asshole lawyer John Dowd (Photo: Emory University)
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John Dowd, who formerly headed some rich asshole’s legal team in special counsel’s Robert Mueller’s Russia prone, praised the chief prosecutor investigating his former client after he resigned from his role on the president’s defense, the National Law Journal reports.
“I have said before and I’ll say again: We had a terrific relationship with Mueller—the best that I can recall in my 50 years of practice,” Dowd said. “It was terrific, completely open, people trusted each other, and we had no misunderstandings.”
Dowd spoke with the National Law Journal five days after he stepped down from his role.
“I’m not going to discuss why I resigned,” Dowd said. “It was very hard work. You had to pay attention every day.”
Asked who is spearheading the the rich asshole team’s conversations with Mueller, the Dowd said he expects Jay Sekulow “is doing that now.”
“I really do wish [the rich asshole] well,” Dowd insisted. “I’m in his corner.”
Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Dowd had floated the idea of issuing pardons for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Dowd denied that report.
Jeb Bush rips the rich asshole with brutal one-liner: At least I have kids ‘who actually love me’
Presidential candidate Jeb Bush talking with reporters (Screenshot/ABC News)
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Former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) slammed President some rich asshole during a lecture sponsored by the The William F. Buckley, Jr. program at Yale University, the Yale Daily News reported Wednesday.
Bush said that — unlike the rich asshole — he goes home every day to children “who actually love me.”
The former governor is son of President George H.W. Bush and is the brother of President George W. Bush, who both attending the university.
“The 21st-century conservative agenda cannot be nostalgic about the past,” Bush said.
the rich asshole bested Jeb Bush during the 2016 GOP presidential primaries.
“I’m not going to talk about the 2016 election,” Bush joked. “I’m still in therapy.”
‘A distraction tactic’: MSNBC’s Katy Tur nails why the rich asshole fired Shulkin in light of Flynn pardon report
some rich asshole speaking at the Iowa Republican Party's 2015 Lincoln Dinner at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, Iowa. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele said that President some rich asshole’s firing of Veterans Administration Secretary David Shulkin was designed to distract from whether the commander in chief will pardon Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.
“Why does Ronnie L. Jackson sound familiar to you, dear viewer?” Tur asked. “Because that is the doctor that the president gets to use, that is the doctor that came to the podium and talked about the president’s physical the other day, his mental status.
Dr. Jackson was featured in the Saturday Night Live cold-open on the one-year anniversary of the rich asshole being sworn-in.
“And it is interesting timing, because everybody has been talking about that New York Times report that said that John Dowd, the president’s former lawyer in the Mueller investigation, was asking Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn’s lawyers about whether they were interested in a presidential pardon,” Tur noted. “Good idea to announce this to change the subject.”
“It does feel like a distraction tactic to me,” Tur noted.
“Totally,” former RNC Chair Michael Steele said.
“Am I crazy,” Tur asked.
“It is totally that,” Steele confirmed. “And folks were waking up this morning having a news that was breaking and now we’re talking about Shulkin.”
“How many more people can he fire in order to distract us from the Mueller investigation?” Tur asked.
Steele replied the rich asshole has “a good seven or eight more weeks of firing he can do here.”
Watch:
the rich asshole has a whole new reason to worry about obstruction case now
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Special counsel Robert Mueller may now have a new avenue of investigation: 'Whether the president corruptly considered a pardon to obstruct the investigation.'
If the rich asshole used pardons to influence the decisions of key witnesses like Michael Flynn in the Russia probe, he may have just handed special counsel Robert Mueller an entirely new line of investigation to pursue.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the rich asshole’s former lawyer, John Dowd, discussed the possibility last year of the rich asshole issuing pardons to his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
The talks between Dowd and lawyers for Flynn and Manafort took place as Mueller “was building cases against both men,” the Times reported. This raises “questions about whether [Dowd] was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation.”
While the rich asshole has the power to issue pardons, he does not have the right to do so with corrupt intent. New York University Law Professor Jeffrey Rosen made exactly this point on MSNBC Wednesday afternoon.
Rosen said the discussions about potentially pardoning Flynn and Manafort raise serious legal questions about whether the rich asshole’s alleged offer of a pardon in the middle of the investigation could constitute an obstruction of justice.
“What do you glean from all of this?” host Craig Melvin asked. “What’s the top-line takeaway?”
“That Mueller may have a new avenue of investigation: whether the president corruptly considered a pardon to obstruct the investigation,” Rosen said.
He added: “And if it’s a central concern of Mueller’s, it should be a new concern of President the rich asshole’s.”
The alleged offer of pardons to Flynn and Manafort has also caught the attention of congressional investigators, including Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA).
Responding to the Times’ report, Lieu — a member of the House Judiciary Committee — questioned what the rich asshole’s legal team might have been seeking to hide by dangling pardons in front of Flynn and Manfort.
“Why was former @realDonaldTrump lawyer John Dowd so concerned that he would discuss pardons for people who are not his clients?” Lieu asked in a tweet. “What information was Dowd trying to prevent Flynn and Manafort from disclosing about @POTUS to the Special Counsel?”
Mueller is reportedly already investigating the rich asshole for potentially obstructing justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey. Now, he may have an entirely new line of investigation in that probe.
All of this raises the question: If the rich asshole has nothing to hide, why is he going to such lengths to carry out a cover-up?
Mueller may soon discover the answer to that question.
the rich asshole replaces VA secretary Shulkin with his personal physician amid turmoil at the agency
Dr. David J. Shulkin testifies before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on February 1, 2017. VA photo by Robert Turtil.
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In a two-tweet thread issued Wednesday afternoon, President some rich asshole announced he is replacing Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin to lead the department with his official presidential physician.
“I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs,” the president tweeted.
FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon Jr. noted that Jackson was appointed by President Barack Obama to be “the official physician to the president.”
Interesting. Jackson is the official physician to the president, a job he was appointed to originally by Obama. Not clear he has run a big, complicated bureaucracy like the VA. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronny_Jac… twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
“I serve at the discretion of the president,” Shulkin said in a statement following his public firing. “He should have a cabinet member that he is comfortable with.”
“In the interim,” the rich asshole’s thread continued, “Hon. Robert Wilkie of [the Defense Department” will serve as Acting Secretary.”
Echoing the tweet-firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the president went on to thank Shulkin for his “service to our country.”
I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs....
....In the interim, Hon. Robert Wilkie of DOD will serve as Acting Secretary. I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkin’s service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!
Days before the rich asshole announced that Shulkin was to be replaced, CNN reported that he was next on the chopping block. Along with other former and current the rich asshole cabinet officials, Shulkin has been under scrutiny for months over his taxpayer-funded travel habits after records revealed he spent $122,000 to go to Wimbledon with his wife
Ex-FBI deputy intel chief details how former the rich asshole lawyer John Dowd could be ‘exposed criminally’
President some rich asshole (Instagram) and lawyer John Dowd (Emory University). Composite image.
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Former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi explained on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House that special counsel Robert Mueller may be investigating former some rich asshole lawyer John Dowd for obstruction of justice.
Dowd, who quit last week, reportedly raised the possibility of pardoning former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and former the rich asshole campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“Does it suggest any legal exposure for Mr. Dowd?” anchor Nicolle Wallace asked. “Could he be someone who is now of interest to the special counsel? Would they be interested in knowing if he was dangling these potential pardons in front of known witnesses … Does Mr. Dowd have anything to worry about legally?”
“Yeah, this gets very complicated, as you know, when you’re talking about executive privilege, attorney/client privilege, all of this comes into play,” Figliuzzi reminded. “But I can tell you from knowing how Mueller operates and how his team sets out on a mission is they won’t be stymied by those concerns.”
“They’ll do it right, but they may indeed look at criminal exposure for Dowd, if they have supporting evidence that this was all about the intent to obstruct, and not merely, hey, you’ve asked us about a pardon, here’s how a pardon would work,” he explained.
“But understand they’ve got sources and methods that we don’t — we aren’t privy to right now,” Figliuzzi continued. “My guess is those sources and methods are telling them this probably was about obstruction and if that’s true, if that’s true, we could see Dowd exposed criminally.”
Watch:
White House staffers bemoan ‘insane’ atmosphere in the West Wing as Hope Hicks departs
President some rich asshole, Hope Hicks -- screenshot
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As outgoing White House communications director Hope Hicks prepares to depart, the rich asshole administration staffers are complaining about the “insane” atmosphere in the West Wing.
CBS News reported Wednesday that former and current White House officials are not only worried about what will happen now that Hicks is leaving, but also about the level of chaos the race to replace her has induced.
“She’s the glue to the entire place,” one White House official told CBS. “She helps keep the White House from fracturing. I don’t think people realize what’s about to happen once she leaves.”
Two people who may replace Hicks — Treasury Department spokesperson Tony Sayegh and strategic communications director Mercedes “Mercy” Schlapp — are reportedly at the center of their own White House intrigue.
“Woof! This is insane,” a White House source told CBS when accusations that Sayegh “manipulated and bullied” female staffers. The source said the rumors, which first appeared in the Washington Examiner, were planted to discredit him as he competed in the running for Hicks’ old job.
Schlapp, on the other hand, was accused of using news that Hicks’ then-boyfriend Rob Porter was an alleged abuser to “elevate herself in the White House hierarchy.” One source told CBS President some rich asshole himself was aware of the rumored tension between Schlapp and Hicks.
A former White House official, meanwhile, told CBS the minor scandals surrounding replacing Hicks are irrelevant because “the job is already filled” by the rich asshole himself.
“It’s filled by the president,” the ex-staffer told CBS. “And people who want to go to the mattresses for that position have to be real gluttons for punishment.”
WATCH: CNN’s Brooke Baldwin schools pro-the rich asshole pastor with devastating clip
CNN's Brooke Baldwin (left) and National Diversity Coalition for the rich asshole leader Darrell Scott (right). Image via screengrab.
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After the Christian leader of a pro-the rich asshole diversity coalition insisted the president “is not the same person he was 12 years ago” when he had his alleged affair with Stormy Daniels, CNN’s Brooke Baldwin confronted Pastor Darrell Scott with a damning clip from 2015.
“The apostle Paul, who has been called the greatest example of Christianity that Christianity ever produced, he was known for — he persecuted the church in his prior life,” Scott said, going on to use the apostle as a metaphor for some rich asshole being a different person now than he was in 2006 when he allegedly had the affair with Daniels.
“The rich asshole the rich asshole of today, President the rich asshole, is not the same as the some rich asshole from 12 years ago,” the leader of the National Diversity Coalition for the rich asshole said.
“How about something from three years ago?” Baldwin countered after Scott continued to insist the rich asshole has changed. She then played a clip of then-candidate the rich asshole being asked at the 2015 Family Leadership Summit whether he’s asked God for forgiveness.
“That’s a tough question,” the rich asshole said before appearing to stumble over his words and insist he’s a “religious person.” The host of the discussion asked him again whether he’s asked forgiveness to audience laughter, to which he responded, “I’m not sure I have.”
When asked for his opinion on the clip, Scott responded by saying “I don’t look to see how faithful an airplane pilot is before I let him fly the plane.”
Watch below, via CNN:
Poll: Majority of Americans say they are not seeing change in paychecks due to tax cuts
BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 03/28/18 07:50 AM EDT
A majority of Americans say they are not yet seeing President the rich asshole's tax cuts reflected in their paychecks, according to a new poll.
A CNBC All-America Economic Survey finds 52 percent of working adults say they haven't seen a change.
Just 32 percent of the working adults report taking home more money due to the tax cuts, which the rich asshole signed into law late last year.
Of those saying they are taking home more money, 38 percent say the extra pay they receive helps them a "great deal" or a "fair amount."
Forty percent say the extra pay helps "some" or "just a little," and 22 percent report that the extra pay "does not help much at all."
The poll was conducted from March 17 to 20 among 800 Americans, of which 60 percent were working adults. Its margin of error is 3.5 percentage points.
The Treasury Department and IRS released new guidance earlier this year that adjusted the amounts that companies set aside from their employees' paychecks for federal taxes.
Employers were instructed to adopt the new withholding tables by Feb. 15.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said that 90 percent of wage earners would see bigger paychecks due to the guidance.
This story was updated at 4:14 p.m.
CNN legal analyst reveals how Michael Cohen’s poorly drafted NDA could lead to the rich asshole’s criminal prosecution
Porn star Stormy Daniels claims she had an "intimate relationship" with some rich asshole in 2006 and 2007 GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File / MANDEL NGAN, Ethan Miller
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In a Wednesday panel discussion on CNN, attorney and legal analyst Page Pate walked through the reason President some rich asshole might be in trouble when it comes to the Stormy Daniels case.
“It is certainly an aggressive move to go ahead and file a motion with a federal judge to see if they will order the president and Michael Cohen to submit to a deposition,” he explained. “But I do think he has a good legal argument for it. This particular agreement does contain an arbitration clause.”
He went on to explain that in 99 percent of the arbitration clauses in contracts, judges uphold he contract. This case, however, is different.
“I think this arbitration clause and this entire nondisclosure agreement was so poorly drafted that now Stormy Daniels’ legal team does have a solid legal argument that there was never any deal in place,” Pate continued. “That is an issue that a federal judge has to pass on before the case is sent to arbitration. So, yes, now that there’s an issue for the federal judge, it is realistic and understandable to request some limited discovery, including depositions of the people who supposedly were parties to this agreement.”
Juana Summers, a senior political writer for CNN, explained that the polls on this don’t exactly matter when it comes to addressing the morality of the rich asshole.
“I think if more of this comes out, if the president does indeed have to go and be deposed, that it could speak to his credibility, his character,” she explained. “I think the bigger question here is what whether or not there is actually a legal question here. If Stormy Daniels was paid money by Michael Cohen for reasons related to the presidential campaign, then that goes into campaign finance territory, and that could have significant ramifications for this White House.”
Host Brianna Keilar wondered if Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti is losing credibility by going on news shows and antagonizing the rich asshole on Twitter. But Pate said that in the court it isn’t likely anyone will care. When it comes to the end of the case, Pate said that the rich asshole might want to bring Avenatti on as his own personal attorney.
“Because he is following the exact type of tactics we’ve seen the rich asshole’s legal teams use in the past when the rich asshole was a private citizen,” he said. “So, the more he presses, the more aggressive he is in this litigation, the more likely it is he’s going to get the rich asshole in a deposition, and then that’s where it becomes critically important. Any question that the president answers under oath falsely in a deposition could be grounds for criminal prosecution of perjury. Completely aside from any campaign finance violations or any Russia collusion. Lying under oath in a deposition is a crime.”
Watch the full conversation below:
Hillary foe turns heads with the rich asshole talk
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 03/28/18 06:00 AM EDT
It’s getting harder to figure out whose side Rep. Trey Gowdy is on.
A fierce Hillary Clinton critic who led the deeply polarizing investigation into the 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, the South Carolina Republican has more recently tweaked President the rich asshole publicly over the federal investigation into his campaign, exhorting him, “When you are innocent, act like it.”
Gowdy has been one of his party’s louder defenders of special counsel Robert Mueller and has called the rich asshole’s attacks on the Justice Department “not helpful.”
Yet the retiring lawmaker is also leading an investigation into alleged bias at the FBI that critics see as the partisan successor to the Benghazi investigation. Democrats say the probe is designed to divert attention from the Mueller investigation onto a familiar GOP punching bag — Clinton — and muddy the waters surrounding his work.
In an interview with The Hill, Gowdy, who holds the gavel of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, disputed the charge of partisanship and the notion that he has been liberated by his impending retirement to pursue the rich asshole administration.
Congress “is not a job that rewards fairness,” he often tells reporters. “I try to call balls and strikes.”
He is frustrated by suggestions that his probe of the Justice Department is politically motivated and disheartened that his oversight efforts have been viewed as “tension between a Republican president and Republican members of the House.”
“If you are at all critical of the bureau then you’re attacking law enforcement in today’s political discourse,” he complained. “If you have no curiosity whatsoever as to why [former FBI Director] Jim Comey would send two letters in the throes of a presidential race — that’s what I find amazing.”
He recalled a panel discussion with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) shortly after the election, at a fundraiser hosted by a Cotton-led super PAC, in which the two lawmakers envisioned Republicans reasserting Congress’s authority as a co-equal branch of government.
“We said this is a unique opportunity for this branch to depoliticize oversight and say this is a branch issue,” Gowdy said.
A former federal prosecutor himself, Gowdy’s role in the multiple GOP investigations into alleged Justice Department misconduct is sometimes murky.
Gowdy, who also sits on the Judiciary and Intelligence panels, is at the confluence of three powerful committees investigating the Justice Department in some capacity. He frequently says the allegations against the department “break his heart,” but behind the scenes, he has been a guiding force.
At least publicly, he claims to defer to Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) in the joint Judiciary-Oversight probe into the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) conduct during the 2016 presidential race, insisting that Goodlatte’s is the right committee to provide oversight of the department.
On the Intelligence Committee he has at times appeared to distance himself from Chairman Devin Nunes’s (R-Calif.) efforts to expose alleged anti-the rich asshole wrongdoing at the Justice Department.
Gowdy stepped in to edit a controversial memo spearheaded by staff for Nunes alleging misuse of U.S. surveillance authorities to obtain a court order to spy on former the rich asshole campaign adviser Carter Page.
In the weeks before Nunes revealed the document, rumors swirled that there was a group of committee Republicans researching alleged corruption at the FBI. Gowdy explicitly distanced himself from those efforts to reporters at the time, and he still appears uncomfortable with the four-page document, which was widely ripped by former intelligence officials.
“When a decision is made to do something and you are asked to edit it, that is involvement,” he said, when asked about his role in producing the final document. “I was asked to edit it and I did.”
He has also publicly contradicted Nunes’s assertion that lawmakers are investigating a “Phase Two” of wrongdoing at the State Department during the election. There is a “State Department component to this,” Gowdy said, but he also said he has “never subscribed to the second phase” described by Nunes. “To me, it’s all one big thing.”
At the same time, Gowdy is pursuing some of the core claims in the Nunes memo through his work with Goodlatte and has called for a second special counsel to look into the matter.
According to Gowdy, it is “pretty close to being a unanimously accepted fact” that senior Justice Department officials failed to vet a controversial piece of opposition research before using it in the surveillance warrant application for Page.
Such applications go through multiple layers of review, and Gowdy acknowledged that in order for the allegation to be true, the process would have to have failed at multiple levels.
“We’ve had a hard time nailing down exactly who at DOJ wants to take ownership” of the application, he said. “Was it [former Assistant Attorney General] John Carlin? Was it the bureau that represented it to a prosecutor, ‘Yes, we vetted this all out, you’re good to go’? Who was the affiant whose name has been redacted?”
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee who have read the underlying application say that the FBI provided the court with information from independent sources corroborating the claims from the opposition research dossier.
At the same time that he has been helping drive GOP investigations of the Justice Department, as Oversight chairman, Gowdy has launched multiple investigations into the the rich asshole administration.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former White House staff secretary Rob Porter and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price have all found themselves in his crosshairs.
No one is mistaking Gowdy for Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), perhaps the fiercest critic of the president among Republicans in Congress. But his oversight activity has not gone unnoticed by colleagues.
“I’ve noticed the things that you mentioned,” one Oversight member said, referring to the investigation into Porter’s security clearance and Gowdy’s conclusion that Russia was deliberately trying to harm Clinton’s presidential campaign.
This lawmaker said there has been no explicit conversation about turning up the heat on the rich asshole in meetings where the committee has discussed the year’s agenda.
Gowdy is a recognizable figure in the halls of the Capitol, with an ever-present plastic bottle of Diet Coke in his hand and a shock of silver hair that changes styles seemingly quarterly. He says “yes ma’am” and talks about shopping at the grocery store Publix in his native South Carolina, a country-boy style that does little to hide a reputation as canny and prosecutorial.
The specter of Benghazi has been difficult for him to shake — “God knows I don’t want to talk about Benghazi,” he says. When he closed that probe with no new findings of wrongdoing by Clinton, who was secretary of State at the time of the attacks, Democrats trumpeted it as evidence that the investigation had been a partisan witch hunt from the beginning.
The accusation clearly rankles him.
“I don’t care if you make fun of my hair, I don’t care if you say I’m not smart. I do care if you say I’m not fair. I think I have been — I think I have been,” he said, his voice dropping a little.
“But I don’t have enough self-awareness to know whether or not I somehow feel more liberated.”
Scott Wong contributed.
POLITICS
Spoof Craigslist Ad Seeks Lawyer For some rich asshole, And It’s Hilarious
“Prior appearances on Fox News a huge plus.”
President some rich asshole’s struggle to find lawyers to represent him is well documented.
So on Tuesday, a cheeky prankster attempted to give the rich asshole a helping hand by posting a spoof job ad on Craigslist.
The listing on the website’s District of Columbia jobs thread seeks “a lead attorney” to represent a “difficult client” at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who is involved in an ongoing Federal investigation.
“Working knowledge of social media, especially Twitter is a plus, as is a better than average knowledge of the adult film industry and a collection of Playboy magazines from 1985-2010,” the ad notes.
“Prior appearances on Fox News” would also be “a huge plus.”
Applicants “must be prepared to work with a client who is very forceful and opinionated about his defense” and who “is his own best counsel,” the listing adds. “Basically your job boils down to keeping him from testifying under oath and hoping the rest comes out in the wash.”
It’s unclear who created the ad. They did not respond immediately to HuffPost’s request for comment. The listing has, however, been well-received on Twitter:
OMG! This Craigslist ad for Trump's new lead attorney is an example of epic trolling!twitter.com/igorbobic/stat…
This is why I love Twitter.
Someone posted an ad for Trump an attorney on Craigslist
Koko 
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