CNN’s Santorum blows off fate of Kelly Sadler — then unleashes his fury at ‘reprehensible’ leaker who exposed her
Kate Bolduan, Reed Galen, Joan Walsh, Rick Santorum -- screengrab
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During a CNN panel discussion about the fate of President some rich asshole aide Kelly Sadler –who made a grotesque joke about Arizona Sen. John McCain dying — former GOP Senator Rick Santorum saved his rage for the White House leaker who exposed her, calling their actions “reprehensible.”
After sharing a clip of McCain’s daughter, Meghan, saying on The View, “I don’t understand what kind of environment you’re working in when that would be acceptable and then you can come to work the next day and still have a job,” CNN’s Kate Bolduan asked Santorum to weigh in.
“Do you think the staffer should be fired?” the CNN host bluntly asked.
“If she said it, then there should have been some discipline, fired, I don’t know,” Santorum waffled. “There should have been some disciplinary action and they should have owned up to it and you know, there’s plenty of blame to go around here. The person who leaked is reprehensible in my mind. Reprehensible because you obviously leaked something that’s going to hurt the president.”
“Obviously it was a rude and foul thing to say that we don’t need in our public discourse,” he continued. “Who is this leaker that supposedly works in the White House? That to me is equally atrocious.”
“But senator, is it equal the fact the comment was said or the fact that someone leaked it out?” a baffled Bolduan asked. “You think those things are equally egregious?”
“Everyone’s going to say, ‘Oh, no one ever says anything foul or crude at internal meetings,'” Santorum protested. “It happens all the time, unfortunately. And it shouldn’t but it does. and the reality is that the person who leaked it took something that was a private thing that would never have gotten out and put it out there in the public stage. and so yes, I think they are very, very culpable in this situation. They’ve added fuel to the fire.”
Watch the video below via CNN:
POLITICS
Giuliani Says Cohen Never Spoke With the rich asshole About His Big-Dollar Clients
The president’s new lead lawyer sees this as proof the rich asshole is draining the swamp.
WASHINGTON – some rich asshole’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen was paid millions of dollars in consulting fees by corporate clients, but never discussed those clients with the president, the rich asshole’s new lawyer said Friday.
“The president had no knowledge of it,” Rudy Giuliani told HuffPost in an interview.
Cohen received $600,000 from AT&T, $1.2 million from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis and $500,000 from an investment bank affiliated with a Russian oligarch, all following the rich asshole’s unexpected election win in 2016.
Giuliani said Cohen’s business relationships did not contradict the rich asshole’s campaign promises to end “pay-to-play” schemes and to “drain the swamp” because Cohen did not get for his newfound clients what they wanted.
“Whatever lobbying was done didn’t reach the president,” Giuliani said, offering as proof the fact that AT&T’s proposed merger with Time-Warner has not gone through. “He did drain the swamp ... The president denied the merger. They didn’t get the result they wanted.”
AT&T forced out the head of its Washington office Friday, while its CEO issued a statement acknowledging that hiring Cohen – who was long known as the rich asshole’s “fixer” in New York – was “a big mistake.” Novartis had earlier said that it realized Cohen could not offer any real expertise on health care, but that it felt obligated to continue paying his $100,000 a month fee under the contract they had signed until it expired earlier this year.
The FBI raided Cohen’s office last month and federal prosecutors in New York are investigating him. Both AT&T and Novartis said that special counsel Robert Mueller’s office contacted them last year.
Mueller was appointed to continue an investigation into Russian intelligence agencies’ work to help the rich asshole win the 2016 election after the rich asshole fired FBI director James Comey, who had been leading the probe. the rich asshole later told NBC News and top Russian diplomats visiting the Oval Office that firing Comey was related to the Russia investigation.
Giuliani, the former U.S. Attorney of the office now investigating Cohen and also a former New York City mayor, took charge of the rich asshole’s private legal team handling the Mueller investigation last month with the hope of wrapping it up quickly. He said Friday he doubts that the rich asshole would have time to speak to Mueller before the newly announced summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on June 12. although it’s possible he and the rich asshole could decide by then whether the president would, in fact, sit down to speak with Mueller at all.
Giuliani said he based his previous estimate of a quick ending on the belief that Mueller was essentially done with his investigation. “There’s no point in being interviewed if they’re not near the end,” he said.
He said the fact that Cohen has become involved in the probe shows that Mueller has been unable to make headway on the idea of collusion between the the rich asshole campaign and Russia. He blamed much of Cohen’s involvement on adult film actress Stormy Daniels and her new lawyer, Michael Avenatti. They have been trying to break a non-disclosure agreement she signed promising not to discuss an affair she said she had with the rich asshole a decade ago in return for $130,000.
“I think she feels she was cheated. She thinks she could have gotten more,” Giuliani said.
Cohen drew up the agreement, complete with fake names for the rich asshole and Daniels, and paid the money using a shell company he registered in Delaware just days earlier. Cohen started using that same shell company a few weeks later to start receiving payments from his corporate clients.
Giuliani said he represents the rich asshole, not Cohen, but nevertheless believes Cohen did nothing wrong. “They’re buying his advice. It can turn out to be good or bad,” he said. “There’s a lot of people in Washington who are paid for their advice.”
He added that Cohen does not deserve what is happening to him. “The guy is under severe emotional pressure. The guy is really collateral damage,” Giuliani said.
Cohen did not respond to a HuffPost query. He has not been charged in the investigation
Mueller seeking documents from Ford Motor Company over failed Michael Cohen pitch for work: report
Special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller. Image via Tim Sloan/AFP.
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President the rich asshole’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, requested to provide consulting services to Ford Motor Co. in January 2017, the Wall Street Journalreports.
Now, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has requested documents from Ford , such as emails and records that detail the companies communication and purpose for working with Cohen.
Ford declined to work with Cohen or use his services, and Muller’s team wants to know why. According to a source, Muller has already interviewed, Ziad Ojakli, head of government affairs at Ford.
Ojakli only said that he declined Cohen’s offer and would not provide any further details on their interaction.
It was discovered recently that Cohen allegedly was “selling access” to the president.
Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti released bombshell documents that claimed Cohen created a shell company, Essential Consultants, LLC, that paid Daniels “hush money,” and received payments from a Russian oligarch in 2016.
NRA Tells Members To ‘Protect The Crown’ As the rich asshole Once Again Talks Lifelong Presidency
The the rich asshole presidency is becoming pretty goddamn scary. On Thursday, the rich asshole once again “joked” about his presidency lasting more than two terms. At the same time, the NRA warned members that the rich asshole would likely be impeached and that the time may soon come to take up arms in his defense. No, this isn’t a joke.
“Make absolutely no mistake: If we lose the House, this president will, in fact, be impeached, there’s no question about it,” NRATV host Dan Bongino said. “It’s time for us to protect the crown, too.”
Realizing that he accidentally referred to the rich asshole as an autocrat and suggested that members do their thing to defend him, Bongino later amended his statement, telling gun-toting neanderthalic NRA members simply, “Get out and vote.”
"If we lose this election, make absolutely no mistake. If we lose the House, @realDonaldTrump will in fact, be impeached. There's no question about it. It's time for us to protect the crown." —@dbongino #IngrahamAngle
On its own, this might just appear like some jackass right-winger screaming about a revolution like it’s literally any day ending in “y.” But these remarks came following the rich asshole’s latest comment about being President for Life.
“The new embassy, I said ‘when is it going to be open.’ They said ‘anywhere from five to 10 years,’ ” the rich asshole said. “So, I said, ‘unless they give me an extension for the presidency, which I don’t think the fake news media would be too happy about.”
This, as mentioned, is only the rich asshole’s most recent reference to lifelong presidency.
“I think it’s great,” the rich asshole said recently after Chinese Communist President Xi Jinping managed to abolish term limits and effectively became President-for-Life. “Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.”
These remarks at a time the rich asshole is floating the idea that media should have press credentials stripped for reporting negatively about him are downright frightening, and the longer we ignore the fascist elephant in the room, the worse they will get.
the rich asshole wants to be “President-for-Life.” The NRA is gearing its armed and insane members up to resist any effort to remove him. This has the potential to get messy fast.
Watch the rich asshole’s latest “President-for-Life” remarks below:
Michael Cohen pal: He’d rather ‘go to jail’ than flip on the rich asshole
President some rich asshole and Michael Cohen, composite image. (Photo of the rich asshole by Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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President the rich asshole’s lawyer Michael Cohen’s name has been swirling around headlines this week.
Cohen has done a lot over the years, including claims that he sold access to the president and payed off adult film star Stormy Daniels hush money to keep quiet about an alleged affair with President the rich asshole.
According to a close friend of Cohen there is one thing he will not do — betray the president.
The New York Daily News reported that a source close to Cohen said that he would rather go to jail before he oust the rich asshole and loses his loyalty card.
Cohen’s friend conceded Cohen might have done some questionable things, but maintained he likely didn’t do it knowing he was breaking the law.
“Did he do something stupid? He probably did,” the longtime Cohen buddy told The News. “Did he do it knowing it could be illegal? No.”
“Someone of his character, he would rather go to jail than present information on the rich asshole,” the source said.
It’s unknown how the claims made against him will turn out, but if convicted for bank fraud he could face up to 30 years in prison.
the rich asshole close to wiping out TPS program for immigrants
BY RAFAEL BERNAL - 05/11/18 06:48 PM EDT
With the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 56,000 Hondurans earlier this month, the nearly 30-year-old immigration program is essentially dead.
TPS had survived under several Republican and Democratic administrations, which mainly used the program as a pressure valve to allow Central American and Caribbean immigrants to live and work in the United States, often sending remittances home.
But the the rich asshole administration says the program has been abused, allowing people to stay in the United States long after crisis conditions have ended in their home countries.
The the rich asshole administration has ordered the end of TPS for over 300,000 immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has so far ordered the end of TPS benefits to all but about 7,000 people from four countries, nearly booting the entire TPS population.
Under the program, immigrants from countries that have suffered a natural or man-made disaster are allowed to live and work in the United States while their home country recovers.
When ending the TPS status, the the rich asshole administration has given the immigrants time to leave the country. The wind-down periods have ranged from a year to 18 months for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal and Sudan whose TPS designations have been terminated.
Previous administrations interpreted TPS rules to allow beneficiaries to stay in the United States as long as their return would imply a significant burden on their home countries. But the the rich asshole administration has used a stricter interpretation, ending TPS based on countries' recovery from the original disaster that triggered their designation.
The move has left hundreds of thousands of Caribbean and Central American TPS recipients in limbo, with many searching for a way to stay in the United States with their families.
The nearly-200,000 Salvadorans protected by TPS, for instance, have been allowed to live and work in the United States since at least 2001, after two earthquakes ravaged the country.
They now have until September of 2019 to either apply for different immigration status — a tall order, since TPS does not create a path toward permanent residency or citizenship — or leave the country.
Immigration activists have long argued that TPS holders, particularly those who've been in the United States for decades, should be given a path to citizenship.
TPS holders were included as a second priority — only after so-called "Dreamers" — as lawmakers sought over the past decade to negotiate a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
Several proposals to make permanent TPS benefits have been floated in Congress, but they've been overshadowed by talks to legislate to protect Dreamers — undocumented immigrants brought to the country as minors.
In the past, successive administrations renewed TPS — especially for countries in the Western Hemisphere — in a more or less perfunctory manner.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly introduced the the rich asshole administration's stricter interpretation of TPS statute when he became DHS secretary in 2017. He put the onus on Congress to help the TPS recipients, telling lawmakers they should change the laws they don't like.
In an NPR interview Thursday, Kelly explicitly said for the first time that longtime TPS holders should be given a path to citizenship.
"I think we should fold all of the TPS people that have been here for a considerable period of time and find a way for them to be [on] a path to citizenship," he said.
In a separate NPR interview, DHS Secretary Kirsjen Nielsen said she was bound by law to end TPS designations, but also said Congress should give permanent status to longtime TPS holders.
"Congress should pass a law to give permanent status to those who've had Temporary Protected Status. I am not going to bow to political pressure, however, to break the law to do Congress's job. They need to do it," she said.
But activists say neither Kelly nor Nielsen were bound by statute to end the designations. They say it’s matter of interpretation on whether the law says TPS designations must end when a country recovers from the initial disaster, or whether general humanitarians conditions in a country allow the administration to extend TPS.
Jill Bussey, director of advocacy at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, criticized DHS's approach of terminating designations as a way to force legislative action.
"I find the approach inhumane," she said.
And Democrats in the Senate are investigating whether the termination reviews for Haiti, Honduras and El Salvador — the bulk of the 300,000-plus TPS holders — were conducted according to statute.
By law, DHS has to consult with other agencies, normally the State Department, to determine whether terminating TPS designation and sending beneficiaries would destabilize recipient countries.
According to a Washington Post investigation, diplomatic cables sent by U.S. diplomats in Haiti warned against repatriating the country's 50,000 TPS beneficiaries, but the Department of State under then-Secretary Rex Tillerson recommended the end of Haiti's designation anyway.
“I am concerned that then-Secretary Tillerson recommended that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) terminate the TPS designations for El Salvador, Haiti, and Honduras in deliberate disregard of the counsel and expertise of State Department officials in Washington and at the U.S. Embassies in all three countries," said Foreign Relations Ranking Member Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) in a memo sent Friday.
In that memo, reviewed by The Hill, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democratic staff concluded that the White House actively sought a "pre-determined" outcome despite warnings from in-country diplomats.
TPS has been a lifeline for parts of the Western Hemisphere, both because it's allowed some of their citizens to flee their countries and because TPS holders send a substantial amount of money home as remittances.
"You're going to have countries that I think are going to have a very difficult time accepting those folks without serious instability," said Rep. Mario Diaz Balart (R-Fla.), who's been central to immigration negotiations over the past decade.
Still, administration officials say it’s up to Congress to change immigration laws to fix what both the right and left view as a "broken system."
In his NPR interview, Kelly promoted the "four pillars" approach suggested by the White House in immigration negotiations earlier this year.
Under that approach, recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — and potentially TPS holders — would receive a path to citizenship in exchange for border wall funding, a change from family-based to merit-based migration and cancellation of the diversity visa lottery.
"Right now, I would like to see legislatively the four pillars enacted," Kelly said. "And I think those that did not grasp the four pillars and pass it have let down 1.8 million DACA people."
Here’s why the rich asshole doesn’t fight back against Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Avenatti
some rich asshole, Michael Avenatti -- scrteenshots
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Michael Avenatti has become a near-ubiquitous presence on cable news in recent weeks and months, so much so that speculation has inevitably arisen suggesting he may get his own network show. This week he even broke a major story in his own right, revealing that President some rich asshole’s lawyer Michael Cohen used a shell company since the election to take payments from major companies, including one backed by a Russian oligarch.
But while Avenatti attracts substantial attention and has created serious problems for the president, the rich asshole largely ignores the media-savvy attorney.
Since the rich asshole prides himself on “counterpunching” and going after his critics, it is suspicious that he remains silent on the man representing Stephanie Clifford, who is better known as Stormy Daniels. Clifford is suing the rich asshole and Cohen to break a non-disclosure agreement she signed that requires her to keep quiet about an affair she says she had with the president in 2006.
According to the Daily Beast, sources close to the president say he has no interest in going after Avenatti, whom he calls a “total loser.” Some Republicans reportedly believe that attacking Avenatti would only raise his status. But the rich asshole famously attacked former Miss Universe contestant Alicia Machado during the 2016 campaign, even though there was clearly no benefit in doing so. It seemed, then, that he couldn’t help himself.
Perhaps the rich asshole has learned to control himself, if only somewhat. But there’s also the possibility that the rich asshole is genuinely afraid of what Avenatti could find out. This week’s revelations — which have been largely corroborated — prove that the lawyer had a stronger hand than it initially appeared.
Cohen may be a major weak link in any defense the rich asshole tries to build against his legal troubles. Reports suggest that the rich asshole was infuriated when Cohen’s office was raided by federal investigators in a case that was supposedly connected to Clifford’s lawsuit. But the newest revelations indicate that Mueller may actually be more involved in the Cohen case than previously assumed, which raises even more legal perils for the president.
As New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said in an interview Friday, Cohen comes from the rich asshole’s business with a “seedy underbelly.” the rich asshole likely fears Avenatti could be the one to expose that underbelly — and it’s hard to say what he’ll find.
By
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May 11, 2018
Republicans promised their tax scam would benefit workers, but tech giant Qualcomm is laying off 1,500 employees while lining the pockets of its Wall Street investors.
Despite the promise from Republicans that their tax scam would dramatically grow the economy, more than 1,500 Californians are set to lose their jobs with technology company Qualcomm.
One group that doesn’t have to worry is Wall Street investors, as Qualcomm also announced a massive stock buyback initiative. In other words, rich corporate investors are set to profit, while workers in San Diego and San Jose are out of luck.
When the Republicans passed their tax scam, it was sold as “rocket fuel” for the economy.
Two California Republicans who voted for the bill — Reps. Mimi Walters and Steve Knight — echoed those promises. Walters boasted the tax bill would “generate significant economic growth.” Knight declared it would be “a tax code that puts American families first.”
Just a couple months after the bill passed, Speaker Paul Ryan infamously boasted about a high school secretary whose paycheck had increased by $1.50 a week as evidence of the tax scam’s supposed success.
But the empty rhetoric means little to workers who will soon receive a pink slip. The layoffs — 289 in San Jose, and 1,231 in San Diego — are part of an effort by the multinational company to trim $1 billion in costs, according to CNN.
When the bill was moving through Congress, critics warned that corporations would not use the massive kickbacks from the bill to invest in workers, but would instead use the cash to enrich shareholders.
“Democratic lawmakers who have been critical of the GOP bill have claimed it would be used for such things as share buybacks to enrich shareholders, rather than for capital expenditures or improving worker pay,” CNBC noted at the time.
Qualcomm proved the critics right.
Not even a month after announcing the massive layoffs, Qualcomm announced $10 billion stock buyback plan. In its announcement, the priority of the company could not be clearer: “Consistent with our commitment to return capital to our stockholders, we are pleased that our Board has approved a new stock repurchase authorization.”
Stock buybacks are used by companies to boost the price of their stock, thus benefitting wealthy investors and executives with lucrative stock options. Rather than invest in workers, Qualcomm joins other companies in lining the pockets of investors.
“Share buybacks in 2018 have averaged $4.8 billion a day, double the pace for the same period last year, according to market data firm TrimTabs,” reports CNBC. Some pharmaceutical companies are increasing the prices of their medicine while at the same time lavishing Wall Street investors with stock buybacks.
Republicans made big promises around the tax scam, but the reality doesn’t match the hype. Job growth isn’t booming and wages continue to grow at the same rate as before the bill became law.
Wealthy corporations and rich Wall Street investors are growing even more wealthy. For the rest of America, the only thing growing is our national deficit — to the tune of more than $1 trillion.
CNN is right: “Shareholders, not workers, are far bigger direct winners from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.”
MSNBC’s John Heilemann: ‘I’d slit my throat’ if I had to attend more than two Huckabee Sanders briefings
MSNBC analyst John Heilemann -- screenshot
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White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, added more fuel to the fire when she refused to comment on White House aide Kelly Sadler’s grotesque “joke” about Arizona Sen. John McCain “dying.”
After the White House press briefing on Friday, reporters left even more disgruntled about how Sanders chooses to release information.
So much so that MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace compared her to Baghdad Bob.
“I don’t know the difference anymore between Baghdad Bob and Sarah Sanders,” Wallace said
Baghdad Bob was a nickname given to former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahha for his confusing and propaganda filled press briefings during the Second Gulf War.
“Neither do I, I don’t know the difference.” John Heilemann, MSNBC analyst said.
Heilemann went on to call the press briefings a “horror show,” and that if he had to work in the White House he would “slit his throat.”
“They do valiant work every day trying to get some semblance of truth or to at least expose the hypocrisy and lies, the Baghdad Bobness of it from the podium,” Heilemann said. “But if you’re asking me how they tolerate it, how they live with it…they have more fortitude than I have.”
Watch his interview below.
By
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May 11, 2018
The international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders issued a stinging rebuke of the rich asshole's plan to address prescription drug costs by pandering to the pharmaceutical industry.
The international medical humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) slammed the rich asshole’s speech on prescription drug prices Friday, using the White House’s own words to savage the sham proposal.
In a statement, MSF said the rich asshole’s proposed plan to address prescription drug costs “fails to address the root problem” of rising prices and could make medicine unaffordable for the world’s most vulnerable populations while still not reducing costs in the U.S.
The group also hit back at the rich asshole’s suggestion that drug prices in the U.S. are high because other countries aren’t paying their fair share — a suggestion that mirrors the rich asshole’s misguided statements about NATO members.
“Other countries aren’t ‘free-riding,’ and lifesaving medicines aren’t more expensive here because they cost less elsewhere,” MSF said.
MSF’s fiery response is a direct rebuttal to the language used by the White House to describe the problem of rising drug costs.
In February, the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report saying that “free-riding” from other countries is “the root of the problem.” In its attempt to blame other countries for the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S., the White House report used the phrases “free-ride” and “free-riding” 15 times.
While the rich asshole has previously identified pharmaceutical companies as the primary culprit behind rising drug prices, he has changed his tune in recent days and become much more sympathetic to the $446 billion industry.
The change comes after a series of meetings between the rich asshole and the very same pharmaceutical industry leaders he once denounced. It also follows the recent news that the rich asshole’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, sold access to the White House to pharmaceutical giant Novartis for a price tag of $1.2 million.
Instead of holding drug-makers accountable for the cost of prescription medication, the rich asshole now thinks the solution to high drug prices in the U.S. is to raise prices everywhere else.
Defending the pharmaceutical industry’s practice of marking up the price of prescription drugs, the rich asshole claims that prices in the U.S. are high because the money is needed to fund medical research and innovation — an assertion that lets drug companies off the hook entirely.
But when researchers examined his claim in a recent study, they found that pharmaceutical companies earn “substantially more” than what they invest in research and innovation.
The study concluded that drug companies could easily lower U.S. prices without raising the cost of drugs overseas, while still maintaining the same level of investment in research and innovation.
MSF slammed the rich asshole for giving the pharmaceutical industry a pass, saying he is missing “the root problem,” which it identifies as “a broken research and development system that allows companies to benefit from taxpayer-funded research while charging whatever prices they want.”
the rich asshole promised on Friday that “we are going to see those prices go down” — but his speech was so favorable to the industry that it sent drug stocks soaring immediately afterwards.
In denouncing the rich asshole’s prescription drug scam, MSF — which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 — is fulfilling its mission of giving a voice to the voiceless and speaking truth to power. Meanwhile, the rich asshole is doing what the rich asshole does best: standing up for powerful big money interests and making taxpayers foot the bill.
Rudy Giuliani slurs Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti as a ‘pimp’ in war of words
Attorney for the president Rudy Giuliani on Fox News (Screenshot)
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Rudy Giuliani lashed out at Stormy Daniels and her attorney Friday afternoon, suggesting the adult film actress with whom President some rich asshole allegedly had an affair is a prostitute. It’s unclear how the President would feel about that characterization.
Giuliani, now the President’s personal attorney hired to help defend him in the Mueller investigation, was responding to Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ lawyer. Avenatti tweeted earlier this week that he would like to debate the former NYC mayor.
In an interview with Business Insider published Friday, Giuliani declined Avenatti’s invitation, saying, “I don’t get involved with pimps.”
And he described Avenatti as an attorney who is “pimping for money.”
Giuliani also offered a dig that some on the left might see as a compliment.
“I know Alan Dershowitz,” Giuliani said. “He’s no Alan Dershowitz.”
“The media loves to give him room because he makes these roundabout charges and they turn out to mean nothing,” Giuliani continued, issuing a warning: “I think he’s going to get himself in serious trouble.”
Avenatti, despite Giuliani’s claims, has actually been correct – or not proven wrong yet – on practically every charge he has made so far.
White House: Payments to Cohen’s shell company are actually evidence of the rich asshole ‘draining the swamp’
Irony thy name is Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
At the White House press briefing on Friday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended AT&T paying $600,000 to a shell company owned by President some rich asshole’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Sanders claimed the payments actually show that the president isn’t beholden to special interests.
“I think this further proves that the president is not going to be influenced by special interests,” Sanders said. “This is actually the definition of draining the swamp, something the president talked about repeatedly during the campaign.”
Sanders was then pressed on how a major corporation paying the rich asshole’s lawyer $600,000 for access constituted draining the swamp. “I think it’s pretty clear that the Department of Justice opposed the [AT&T and TimeWarner] merger,” she said. “Certainly the president has not been influenced by any, or his administration influenced by, any outside special interests.”
OMG -- Sanders says payments AT&T made to Michael Cohen's shell company is actually "evidence that Trump is draining the swamp" because AT&T's merger hasn't been approved yet. #WarIsPeace pic.twitter.com/u1rLvUhdz9
On Tuesday, it was revealed that Cohen had received a series of payments into his shell company, Essential Consulting, LLC. Among those who had deposited money were Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, who paid Cohen’s company $500,000, as well as drug company Novartis, and AT&T.
Later in the week, it was reported that the initial AT&T number was drastically lower than what was actually paid — AT&T gave Cohen $600,000 to advise the company on its proposed $85 billion merger with Time Warner, something the rich asshole had previously opposed.
But Cohen’s “lobbying” seemed to be nonexistent, especially since last November the Justice Department sued AT&T to block the bid, citing antitrust concerns. On Friday, AT&T’s chief executive, Randall L. Stephenson, even admitted such in a memo to employees.
“Our company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few days and our reputation has been damaged,” Stephenson said. “There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake.”
But whether or not Cohen was successful in his brief, acrimonious stint as a “political consultant” ignores the issues of whether or not Cohen was attempting to peddle influence within the White House, as well as whether Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels potentially violated campaign finance laws.
the rich asshole’s new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, admitted to Fox News’ Sean Hannity (who is also a client of Michael Cohen) that the president repaid the $130,000 to Cohen, which directly contradicted statements from both the rich asshole and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“[the rich asshole] did know about the general arrangement,” Giuliani said. “Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this for my clients. I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.”
‘Strategy? They have a strategy?’: Attorney Avenatti mocks the rich asshole legal team for losing the media battle with him
Michael Avenatti (MSNBC)
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Speaking with the Daily Beast, the attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels mocked the disorganized manner in which the rich asshole White House — and by extension President some rich asshole’s lawyers — have responded to his almost daily bombshells.
The piece that notes that the rich asshole-backing PACs have remained silent over the president’s legal difficulties with regard to Daniels’ accusation of receiving hush money from the rich asshole’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, with a GOP insider stating, “No one seems to understand why the RNC, America Rising and other GOP groups aren’t doing even basic political blocking and tackling with Avenatti.He’s essentially gotten a free pass from them.”
Asked to comment, the media-friendly Avenatti marveled at the lack of coordination between the rich asshole aides and his most vociferous backers to push back.
“Strategy? They have a strategy? I thought their approach was centered on tic tac toe,” the lawyer told The Beast.
According to the lawyer, he claims to have heard “from multiple people” that “the White House is prohibiting people close to the president from going on camera with me on any show.”
He added that it his understanding that cable TV bookers had the “plug pulled” on pre-booked appearances by the rich asshole advisors when they heard the attorney might appear for a counterpoint.
Avenatti went on to note that he has offered multiple times to appear on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show — but so far, no invitation.
New filing reveals the rich asshole had damning information on investigator overseeing the rich asshole University case
the rich asshole had inside information when he posted a cryptic tweet about Schneiderman in 2013.
A court filing indicates President the rich asshole had blackmail material on former New York Attorney General Eric Scheiderman while Schneiderman’s office conducted a years-long investigation into allegations that the rich asshole University was defrauding students.
Scheiderman’s investigation into the rich asshole’s now-defunct “university” — which was not an accredited school, but instead offered expensive real estate workshops and seminars — began in 2013 and ended just last month.
A New York attorney named Peter Gleason claims that two women contacted him “some years ago” to report that Schneiderman had been “sexually inappropriate with them,” followed by a third woman in 2013.
Gleason writes that he advised the third woman against reporting the incident to the Manhattan District Attorney Office “based on my past experience in reporting prima facie political corruption that was ignored by the office, some of which were ultimately prosecuted elsewhere.”
Instead, Gleason says he ultimately discussed accusations brought by the woman against Schneiderman with a retired journalist, Stephen Dunleavy, “who suggested and offered to discuss the matter with some rich asshole.”
Read the filing for yourself:
According to Gleason’s account, Dunleavy did eventually discuss the accusations with the rich asshole, because Gleason subsequently received a call from the rich asshole’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
“During my communications with Mr. Cohen I shared with him certain details of Schneiderman’s vile attacks” on the women, Gleason writes.
Gleason’s filing casts a years-old the rich asshole tweet in a different light. In September 2013 — one month after Schneiderman filed a $40 million civil fraud lawsuit against the rich asshole University — the rich asshole posted a cryptic tweet unfavorably comparing Schneiderman to two other New York political figures felled by scandal.
Earlier this week, after The New Yorker published a bombshell story detailing physical abuse allegations against Schneiderman by a number of women, conservative media publications and White House officials cited this tweet as evidence that the rich asshole knew something about Schneiderman that other people didn’t.
Schneiderman announced his resignation as New York attorney general just hours after The New Yorker piece was published.
In an interview with the New York Times, Gleason confirmed his conversation with Cohen occurred “shortly before” the rich asshole posted his cryptic tweet. Gleason recounted that Cohen told him that if the rich asshole “were to run for and be elected governor of New York, he would help bring to light the women’s accusations” against Schneiderman.
But the rich asshole never ran for governor. Instead, he kept the information to himself as Schneiderman investigated the rich asshole University, and as the rich asshole ran for president.
The rich asshole University investigation ended with a $25 million settlement on April 9. That same day, FBI agents raided Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room seeking records pertaining to a hush payment Cohen negotiated just before the 2016 election to a woman who claims she had an affair with the rich asshole.
Gleason’s recent filing was prompted by that raid. He’s asking U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood to grant “a protective order… regarding any and all records that may be contained in the seized files or Mr. Cohen regarding my discussions with Mr. Cohen” concerning his conversations with the women who told him about their Schneiderman accusations.
‘Not for $10 million’: Dismissive Rudy Giuliani shoots down any talk of debate with Michael Avenatti
Rudy Giuliani appears on ABC (screen grab)
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Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti wants to go head-to-head with President the rich asshole’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Avenatti has been in the spotlight over hush money claims that the rich asshole’s attorney Michael Cohen paid out Daniels.
On Twitter Avenatti said:
“I think it would be very helpful for the public to witness a discussion between Mr. Giuliani and me concerning the facts of the case, etc. I am willing to participate on any network provided both sides are provided a fair shake. I am also willing to do it on 12-hrs notice.”
Giuliani is not entertaining his request. In an interview with Politico, Giuliani said:
“I wouldn’t debate that guy if they paid me $10 million. He’s a liar. All he does is put out statements in the press and they fawn all over him.”
Fox News claims The New York Times ignored a story it actually broke
The Times was the first U.S. outlet to cover news that 5 ISIS leaders had been captured earlier in the spring.
Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth on Friday morning complained that mainstream media outlets had effectively ignored a recent story about five ISIS officials captured by Iraqi and American intelligence agents. The host singled out “the failing New York Times” in particular, rifling through the Times’ Friday print edition and noting that the news was nowhere to be found.
“I looked for the ‘five ISIS leaders captured’ in the failing New York Times, and in the print edition today, I have not seen it yet,” Hegseth said, employing President the rich asshole’s favored title for the 166-year-old newspaper.
Earlier in the segment, host Steve Doocy had asked why no one was “talking about” the capture or “giving the president credit.” Hegseth added that “the so-called mainstream media that loves to hate this president” had repeatedly swept aside other similar “successes on the battlefield.”
There was just one problem: the Times had, indeed, covered the story. In fact, as Mediaite pointed out, the outlet was the first American publication to report the story in the United States, directly after Iraqi state TV had run a segment about it Wednesday morning.
On May 9, the Times ran an article by Baghdad bureau chief Margaret Coker, titled “Five Top ISIS Officials Captured in U.S.-Iraqi Sting.” The report revealed details that led to the arrests of five officials — Ismail Alwaan al-Ithawi, Saddam Omar Yahya al-Jamal, Mohammed Hussein Hadar, Abdul Qader Ashour al-Zobaie, and Omar Shahab Hammad al-Karbouli — who were detained during a months-long operation carried out by Iraqi and American intelligence agents earlier this year.
Ithawi, a top aide to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was first arrested by Turkish security forces on February 15, after authorities received an intelligence file from the Iraqis, according to the Times report. The other four men were later captured by Iraqi authorities during a border crossing after being lured from their hiding spot in Syria.
Neither U.S. officials involved in the operation nor Iraqi authorities divulged exact timelines for the arrests, although the Times report noted that their captures followed a coordinated airstrike near the Deir al-Zour district of Syria in “mid-April” that left 39 suspected ISIS members dead.
Iraq state television later aired footage of the five men wearing yellow prison jumpsuits, some with long beards and other clean shaven, the Times wrote. “Each appeared to be in good health,” the outlet added.
“We are pleased to see that the international cooperation established in this regard is yielding important results,” Turkish diplomat Hami Aksoy said in a statement this week.
Fox News has not yet clarified or corrected Hegseth’s earlier statements about the Times from Friday’s Fox & Friends segment.
‘Willful ignorance’: CNN panel destroys Sarah Sanders for refusal to condemn White House aide’s ‘dying’ joke
Gloria Borger, Brianna Keilar -- screenshot
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Following White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ dismissive attitude towards questions about a the rich asshole aide making a joke about Sen. John McCain dying, a CNN panel began with the host Brianna Keilar asking, “What did we just witness?”
“That, is, that is a good question,” CNN regular Gloria Borger responded.
“Willful ignorance, I would say we just witnessed,” Keillar continued. “So Kelly Sadler is a somewhat low-level aide, she says in this meeting, according to a White House official that he is ‘dying anyways,’ about John McCain, dismissing his opposition to [CIA head nominee] Gina Haspel. And she says she’s not going to validate, Sarah Sanders did, a leak out of an internal staff meeting? We validated it, it’s been widely reported, we know this happened. What do you think of this?”
“For the life of me I can’t understand why after the staffer has admitted she did it,” Borger suggested. “Yes, it was a leak but it was accurate. And why the White House can’t say, ‘Look, we’ve spoken to her, we’ve told her we think this is inappropriate, we think we need to move on from this, this is not the way anyone in the White House ought to conduct themselves and then just move on.’ But by refusing to even say what she said was hurtful, wrong, tasteless, you know, use whatever adjective you want, you sort of extend this story and of course the underlying story, which is that the president and John McCain don’t get along.”
“She [Sanders] decided to say,’Well, I’m just not going to get into it because it was a leak.’ Well what does that tell you?” Borger added.
Watch the video below via CNN:
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May 11, 2018
For once, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was unwilling to defend the rich asshole's despicable attack on the free press.
After she was directly asked about the rich asshole’s latest media attack — insisting that all negative coverage of him is “fake news” — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders would not back up her boss.
Earlier in the week, the rich asshole whined on Twitter that “91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake),” and used that lie to suggest he would rescind press credentials for news outlets.
Even for the rich asshole, redefining any negative coverage as “fake news” was below his already low standards.
During the daily press briefing, Yahoo!’s Hunter Walker asked Sanders, “Do you have the view that all negative stories are fake?”
Sanders curtly answered “no,” and refused to answer when Walker followed up by asking why the rich asshole said such a thing.
Sanders was recently caught in an embarrassing moment where she had to admit that the rich asshole lied, as the revelations emerged that he paid off porn star mistress Stormy Daniels after flatly denying the story.
Maybe Sanders is feeling more cautious with her connection to the rich asshole.
The outright denial was certainly a departure for her. In the past, Sanders has embraced the rich asshole’s attacks on the press and launched several over her own.
In January, for example, Sanders viciously attacked a reporter who asked her to explain a series of the rich asshole tweets that contradicted each other.
Instead of addressing the disparity, Sanders snapped at the reporter.
“I think that the premise of your question is completely ridiculous and shows the lack of knowledge that you have on this process,” she said. Pressed further to explain the rich asshole’s apparent contradictions, she sneered at the reporter, “It wasn’t confusing to me. I’m sorry if it was for you.”
Last month, when a reporter asked about the chaos surrounding the the rich asshole administration and his haphazard (at best) decision-making process, Sanders told a reporter that the question was simply proof of “people that don’t understand I guess how civics works.”
Last year, after then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called the rich asshole a “moron,” the rich asshole said he should take an IQ test to prove he was smarter. Sanders was asked about the incident, and claimed the rich asshole “simply made a joke.”
“Maybe you guys should get a sense of humor and try it sometime,” she told reporters.
Based on her track record, disagreeing with the rich asshole’s childish attack on the press is a temporary blip as she continues to shill for him.
But refusing to parrot his taunt as the press directly asked her about it echoes his history of cowardice as well.
Fox News’ Chris Wallace mocks John Kelly for accidentally confirming that DHS chief nearly resigned over the rich asshole
Fox News host Chris Wallace (Screenshot)
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Fox News anchor Chris Wallace poked fun at White House chief of staff John Kelly on Friday for inadvertently confirming a report about Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
Fox News’ White House correspondent John Roberts reported that Kelly called Nielsen after President some rich asshole “blew up” at her this week over border security. The incident reportedly caused Nielsen to nearly resign.
“I just have to laugh at John Roberts discussion of his conversation with John Kelly, the chief of staff, because the White House is pushing back and DHS is pushing back on the notion that Secretary Nielsen was on the verge of quitting,” Wallace remarked.
“And now Kelly says to our own John Roberts — good reporting — ‘I wanted to call her to make sure she wasn’t going to quit.’ So I guess the cover story didn’t hold very long,” he added.
Watch video below:
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May 11, 2018
the rich asshole will lie to anybody, anywhere — even military spouses, during Military Spouse Appreciation Day, at the White House.
It takes a special kind of craven person to lie to the those married to U.S. military members about giving their spouses their first pay raise “in 10 years.” But that’s exactly what the rich asshole did this week.
On Friday, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle denounced the rich asshole’s pathological behavior.
“For those who say we don’t call the White House out, this is 100 percent a lie told by our president,” Ruhle announced.
The ugly incident unfolded inside the White House during a reception that featured a group of virtually all-white women, even though nearly half of today’s U.S. military is made up of non-white members. There, the rich asshole lied repeatedly about how he had single-handedly improved pay for service members.
Referencing his recent signing of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018, the rich asshole bragged, “I know you don’t care about this, but that also includes raises for our military — first time in 10 years.”
Moments later he insisted, “That is why, earlier this year, I was proud to sign that big pay raise that I’ve already spoken about. And I am proud of it. And I guess there will be others, too. Would you like one sooner, or do you want to wait another 10 years?”
The clear implication of the hideous lie was that during President Barack Obama’s two terms in office, U.S. military members were ignored and had to suffer through a decade of static pay.
But that’s not how any of this works.
By law, the military receives at least a 1 percent pay increase every year. And that has been true for the last three decades.
The most recent pay increase will be 2.4 percent. During 2009 and 2010, when Obama was president, military members received 3.9 and 3.4 percent raises, respectively.
the rich asshole has already logged more than 3,000 lies since taking office, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker, and he clearly couldn’t care less about adding to that tally. Even if that means manufacturing falsehoods to try to impress military spouses.
As Ruhle said, “No, thank you, Mr. President, for the lie.”
The escalation between Iran and Israel has everything to do with the rich asshole
Iran has been in Syria since 2011, so why are things escalating with Israel now?
Tensions have escalated at a frightening pace between Iran and Israel in the three days since President some rich asshole said he was pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal.
Although Israel has struck Iranian targets in Syria several times in the past, the rich asshole’s announcement to leave the multilateral Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) earlier this week has led Israel to intensify its assault. On Tuesday, Israel struck Iranian troops in Syria who back President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in their fight against rebel groups and the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
As it had said it would, Iran finally retaliated on Wednesday. By early Thursday, Israel returned fire and, as the Associated Press reported on Friday, it called on the U.N. Security Council to condemn Iran’s strikes.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman accused Israel of attacking Syria under “fabricated and baseless excuses,” breaching Syria’s sovereignty.
Worried about a new full-fledged war in the region between Iran and Israel, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to call for an immediate halt to “all hostile acts” after Israel and Iranian forces traded missile strikes in Syria and at the Golan Heights border.
Iran has been active in Syria since the start of the uprising in 2011, which led to the horrific civil war that continues to play out today. So why are things escalating now?
The answer, in a nutshell, is: some rich asshole.
“I think it was just opportunity because of the rich asshole announcement on the JCPOA,” said Hayat Alvi, associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, whose views do not reflect those of the U.S. War College, U.S. Navy, or Department of Defense.
“It’s almost as though [Israel] is saying, ‘Now that that announcement is made and we know that Iran is supporting Hezbollah … that it’s fair game to hit Iran inside Syria,'” Alvi told ThinkProgress, referring to the largely Shia Lebanese force present in Syria and fighting alongside Iran and Russia in support of Assad’s troops.
Overall, though, she said there’s a lack of clarity about what’s going on given that there have been periodic skirmishes in the Golan region in the past.
It does seem that Israel might be seeking this opportunity to subvert the upper hand recently gained by Iranian and Syrian forces against rebel strongholds around Damascus.
“This might be prime timing, with the rich asshole announcement, to try and undermine that leverage … because, clearly, they’ve crushed a lot of their opposition in Syria,” said Alvi.
Iran’s response too, is timed to President the rich asshole’s decision.
“some rich asshole’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal has freed Iran to retaliate for the scores of Israeli attacks on Iranian forces in Syria over the past few years,” said Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council.
“This is a dangerous moment and it will take real restraint on both sides to keep this from escalating into a major conflict,” she told ThinkProgress by email.
It seems, though, that having a stable Syria as a neighbor would be more important to Israel than any short-term goal achieved in striking Iranian forces — who, for better or worse, are fighting ISIS and other extremists groups.
“Israel has been profiting from the chaos in Syria for the past seven years — watching Sunni fundamentalists battle Assad and Iranian-backed forces. Israel has enormous military superiority and can hit anything it chooses,” said Slavin.
“But it does have to worry about a permanent large Iranian military presence in Syria and the potential for it turning into another Lebanon, with 100,000 rockets poised to hit Israel,” she said, adding, “So the Israelis have decided to make it clear to Iran that its presence in Syria must be limited. This is also a safer bet now that Assad has largely retaken control over the country.”
Even as Israel strains against Iran and Hezbollah having any kind of permanent military presence in Syria, its success there might depend on a major player who at the moment, remains an X-factor: Russia.
Russia has publicly denounced the rich asshole’s decision to pull out of the JCPOA and has proven itself to be an ally of Iran, both in Syria and on the U.N. Security Council. But, Alvi cautions, there’s little clarity on what Putin’s calculus is behind the scenes.
“He’s probably weighing the pros and cons of Russian, wholehearted support for Iran, and, by default, the Assad regime,” she said.
Fox News host Shep Smith stunned after Sarah Sanders refuses to even comment on Kelly Sadler
Fox News host Shepard Smith (Screenshot)
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Fox News host Shepard Smith on Friday expressed shock that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to comment on White House aide Kelly Sadler.
“She would not comment on a White House staffer, saying that John McCain does not matter because he was dying anyway. Again, wait — that was said by a White House staffer. She won’t comment on it,” the Fox News host said.
“A White House staffer said that,” he repeated.
“She does still have a job, Sarah Sanders did confirm that,” Smith added.
Sadler had allegedly mocked Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) battle with brain cancer. She was reportedly upset with McCain’s opposition to the nomination of Gina Haspel for CIA director.
Fox News reporter John Roberts told Smith there was little evidence to suggest that the White House would fire Sadler.
“I talked with a couple people over the course of the day and there doesn’t seem to be any move to push her out, Shep — so I assume that she will weather this storm,” Roberts said.
Watch video below:
White House: AT&T's Cohen payment shows the rich asshole can't be bought
BY BEN KAMISAR - 05/11/18 04:16 PM EDT
The White House pushed back on concerns regarding newly-discovered payments to President the rich asshole's lawyer Michael Cohen from corporations looking to lobby the White House, arguing that the episode proves the rich asshole will not cater to “special interests.”
Cohen has been at the center of a legal storm for weeks since federal agents raided his office following a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller.
This week, reports surfaced that corporate clients including AT&T and Novartis paid Cohen hundreds of thousands of dollars after the 2016 election after he promised access to the new administration.
"This further proves the president is not going to be influenced by special interests. This is actually the definition of 'draining the swamp,'" she said, directing other questions to the president's outside counsel.
"I think it's pretty clear the Department of Justice opposed the merger, so the president or his administration hasn’t been influenced by any outside special interest. ... He’s going to do what he finds to be in the best interest of Americans across the country,” Sanders said.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that AT&T paid $600,000 to Cohen's consulting firm in part to advise on the merger. In an internal AT&T email obtained by The Hill, the company said it hired “several consultants to help us understand how the President and his administration might approach a wide range of policy issues important to the company, including regulatory reform at the FCC, corporate tax reform and antitrust enforcement.”
“There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake,” CEO Randall Stephenson wrote in a memo to his employees on Friday. “To be clear, everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate. But the fact is, our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment.”
In the same letter, Stephenson announced the departure of Bob Quinn, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs.
The payments were first disclosed in a public report by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against Cohen and the rich asshole. Cohen has admitted to paying Daniels a $130,000 settlement not to discuss her allegations she had an affair with the rich asshole a decade ago.
Avanatti also first disclosed hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to Cohen from Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. CNN reported this week that Mueller's team has interviewed Vekselberg in relation to those payments.
The payment to Daniels reportedly came from Essential Consultants LLC, the same company to which AT&T, Novartis and Vekselberg made their payments.
the rich asshole breaks key campaign promise on Medicare
"If we have to bid out pharmaceuticals, we're bidding them out. We're going to save billions and billions and billions of dollars."
On the campaign trail, candidate the rich asshole promised to save hundreds of billions of dollars standing up to the pharmaceutical industry, and said he’d “negotiate like crazy” to bring down Medicare prescription drug prices.
Allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies for better prices has long been a goal for progressives, and when voters heard the rich asshole stray from the Republican party orthodoxy, railing against Big Pharma as he asked for their support, many likely thought his promises would mean something different in Washington, D.C. if he were elected president.
Sadly, they were wrong.
Ahead of the Friday speech announcing the plan, senior administration officials told reporters that “we are not calling for Medicare negotiation in the way that Democrats have called for,” instead characterizing the rich asshole’s plan as outlining “important changes that will dramatically improve the way negotiation takes place inside the Medicare program.”
The United States spends over $300 billion on prescription drugs per year, and Medicare’s share of that total hit $110 billion in 2015. During the campaign, the rich asshole promised to save a large percentage of that.
“If we have to bid out pharmaceuticals, we’re bidding them out. We’re going to save billions and billions and billions of dollars,” then-candidate the rich asshole told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in February 2016. The same month, he told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that, “If we negotiated the price of drugs, Joe, we’d save $300 billion a year.” At a March 2016 debate in Michigan, the rich asshole said “I’m not only talking about drugs, I’m talking about other things. We’ll save more than $300 billion a year if we properly negotiate. We don’t do that, we don’t negotiate. We don’t negotiate anything.”
And at a campaign rally in Farmington, NH in January 2016, the rich asshole incredulously asked why Medicare didn’t negotiate prescription drug prices and said politicians, unlike the rich asshole himself, did not know how to make bids:
Well I can tell you one thing. We’re gonna be out there and some of it, like for instance drugs with Medicare. They don’t bid em out. They don’t bid em. They pay like this wholesale incredible number. Hundreds of — they say like 300 billion could be saved if we bid em out. We don’t do it. Why? Because of the drug companies folks. You take a look at the drug companies. Take a look at Johnson & Johnson, take a look at Pfizer, they’re leaving us and we’re still not doing anything. ‘Hey we’re leaving, by the way, don’t dare negotiate drugs.’ Excuse me? Excuse me? But we have so many instances like that. That’s one instance. Hundreds of billions of dollars. We don’t bid it out. We bid it out in the rich asshole but we don’t bid it out with politicians because we don’t even know what it means to bid out.
It’s not clear whether the rich asshole was arguing that his negotiating prowess would wipe out the entire $300 billion total spent on prescription drugs, or merely adding the savings a rich asshole administration would yield from negotiating drug prices to savings from other negotiations. Whatever the campaign math, the actual policy outcome that affects Medicare recipients struggling with paying their medical bills will essentially be the same as it was before.
The question of how to negotiate for the best prescription drug prices possible for older Americans is thorny and complex, with no real easy answers. The law that established Medicare Part D, which provides prescription drug plans, prevents the government from intervening as smaller health care providers attempt to negotiate with specific companies. This is the rule that the rich asshole referred to on the campaign trail. But Medicare is required to cover most drug treatments, and therefore has less leverage in negotiations because it cannot really say “no” as health care systems in other countries (such as the U.K.) can.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar described the proposals in big terms Friday morning on Fox News: “the single most comprehensive approach to making prescription drugs affordable of any president in the history of the United States.” Azar, whose previous job was as an executive at drugmaker Eli Lilly, said the proposals would push generics on the market faster, free up Medicare Part D plans to negotiate discounts like the private sector, reverse financial incentives to not lower list prices, and give consumers options to drop out-of-pocket costs.
However, the administration has made clear the specific promise to have Medicare negotiate for lower prices will be abandoned. And other exhortations from candidate the rich asshole have been equally insubstantial and incorrect, like so many other campaign chestnuts.
“I’m going to bring down drug prices,” the rich asshole told Time magazine in December 2016. “I don’t like what has happened with drug prices.”
According to projections from the Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, it would be a mistake to expect spending on drug prices to drop under the rich asshole administration.
“When it comes time to negotiate the cost of drugs, we are going to negotiate like crazy,” the rich asshole told a crowd in Exeter, New Hampshire in February 2016. “The drug companies probably have the second or third most powerful lobby in this country. They get the politicians, and every single one of them is getting money from them.”
One of the largest donors to the rich asshole’s re-election campaign is CVS Health Corp, which has a financial interest in keeping the government away from drug price negotiations. Health companies spent millions to contribute to the rich asshole’s inauguration committee.
“You go see this, lobbyists, almost guarantee they produce, with me, won’t happen folks,” the rich asshole told voters in Lacrosse, Wisconsin in April 2016. “With me, pharmaceuticals, you know there’s a bad bidding process on pharmaceuticals. There’s a bad bidding process for everything.”
The the rich asshole administration’s proposals have mirrored those of the pharma lobby.
In the end, it’s all about the bottom line. the rich asshole’s tough campaign talk affected the profits of pharmaceutical companies less than his actions did. In the rich asshole’s first year as president, biotech stocks rose about 41 percent — well above the 23 percent rise in the S&P index.
Sarah Sanders gives bizarre excuse as she’s grilled over White House staffer mocking a dying John McCain
Sarah Sanders -- screenshot
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Facing the White House press following an aide making a “joke” about Arizona Sen. John McCain “dying,” spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to address or condemn the comment, saying she “would not get into it,” and dismissing it as a leak.
Asked whether White House aide Kelly Sadler “still has a job,” Sanders replied, “I’m not going to comment on an internal staff meeting.”
Pressed again whether the White House believes the remark should be condemned, Sanders was dismissive, stating, “I’m not going to validate a leak one way or the other.”
You can watch the video below via Twitter:
White House grilled over aide's mocking of McCain
BY BEN KAMISAR - 05/11/18 03:59 PM EDT
The White House on Friday said special assistant Kelly Sadler has kept her job amid the controversy over her dismissive remarks about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has been battling brain cancer.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to address the issue on Friday amid calls for Sadler to publicly apologize or to be fired, saying it was a staff matter.
“I'm not going to validate a leak, one way or another, out of an internal staff meeting," Sanders said during her Friday press briefing as reporters peppered her with questions.
The Hill reported Thursday that Sadler, during a meeting at the White House, brushed aside McCain’s criticism of CIA director nominee Gina Haspel by noting “It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.”
The remarks have come under bipartisan criticism and have led to negative press for the White House. McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, criticized the comments and questioned why Sadler was still working at the White House.
Sadler called Meghan McCain to apologize after her remarks were published.
A public apology by the White House would likely settle the controversy, but Sanders instead declined to confirm or deny reports about the matter, which have blanketed cable news networks.
She said Sadler is still working at the White House, and defended the president when asked by Reuters reporter Jeff Mason if the rich asshole sets “a tone at the top” that gives staffers the feeling they can make derisive comments about the president’s political opponents.
“There is not a tone set here. We have respect for all Americans and that's what we try to put forward in everything we do, both in word and in action,” Sanders said.
When pressed on the same question shortly after, Sanders added that the president “supports all Americans” and is “working hard to make this country better.”
the rich asshole has had a rocky relationship with John McCain from the start of his presidential campaign. During an interview in 2015, he said John McCain is “not a war hero” even though he was captured and tortured during the Vietnam War.
He went on to add that “he was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
The comments have reverberated across Washington with criticism from both sides of the aisle.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, a one-time colleague of John McCain's in the Senate, called the report “rock bottom” for the administration, while Republican Rep. Walter Jones (N.C.) called on the White House and Sadler to issue a public apology.
At meeting with automakers, the rich asshole launches new attack on NAFTA
President some rich asshole (Screen cap).
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Ten American and foreign automakers went to the White House on Friday to push for a weakening of U.S. fuel efficiency standards through 2025, while President some rich asshole used the occasion to launch a fresh attack on the North American Free Trade Agreement that has benefited the companies.
A draft proposal circulated by the U.S. Transportation Department would freeze fuel efficiency requirements at 2020 levels through 2026, rather than allowing them to increase as previously planned. the rich asshole’s administration is expected to formally unveil the proposal later this month or in June.
“We’re working on CAFE standards, environmental controls,” the rich asshole told reporters at the top of the meeting, referring to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for cars and light trucks in the United States.
the rich asshole said he wants automakers to build more vehicles in the United States and export more vehicles.
But much of the hour-long meeting focused on NAFTA. the rich asshole blasted the pact involving the United States, Canada and Mexico as “terrible” and noted that negotiations to make changes sought by his administration were ongoing.
“NAFTA has been a horrible, horrible disaster for this country and we’ll see if we can make it reasonable,” the rich asshole said.
Automakers have called NAFTA a success, allowing them to integrate production throughout North America and make production competitive with Asia and Europe, and have noted the increase in auto production over the past two decades with the deal in place. They have warned that changing NAFTA too much could prompt some companies to move production out of the United States.
The chief executives of General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Fiat Chrysler, along with senior U.S. executives from Toyota Motor Corp, Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE), Hyundai Motor Co, Nissan Motor Co, Honda Motor Co, BMW AG and Daimler AG met with the rich asshole, as did the chief executives of two auto trade groups.
The chief executives of General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Fiat Chrysler, along with senior U.S. executives from Toyota Motor Corp, Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE), Hyundai Motor Co, Nissan Motor Co, Honda Motor Co, BMW AG and Daimler AG met with the rich asshole, as did the chief executives of two auto trade groups.
Major automakers reiterated this week they do not support freezing fuel efficiency requirements but said they want new flexibility and rule changes to address lower gasoline prices and the shift in U.S. consumer preferences to bigger, less fuel-efficient vehicles.
Fiat Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne told Reuters before the meeting his company is “fully supportive” of the rich asshole’s efforts to revise the rules and hoped for “an agreed way forward.”
Automakers also want the White House and California to reach agreement on maintaining national standards, fearing a prolonged legal battle could leave the companies facing two different sets of rules – and the state level and nationally – and extended uncertainty.
Hinrich Woebcken, chief executive of the North American region for VW, told Reuters the meeting was a “great opportunity” to have an exchange of ideas about the future of emissions rules.
California and 16 other states covering about 40 percent of the U.S. population filed suit last week to block the the rich asshole administration’s efforts to weaken the fuel efficiency requirements.
Marchionne said he still hopes the administration could reach a deal with California to maintain nationwide emissions standards.
‘MARKETPLACE REALITIES’
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt and White House aide Chris Liddell are among the administration officials who attended the meeting.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt and White House aide Chris Liddell are among the administration officials who attended the meeting.
Mitch Bainwol, who heads the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, told a congressional committee on Tuesday the industry supports “standards that increase year over year that also are consistent with marketplace realities.” Bainwol said the industry remains hopeful that there will be a “negotiation” between the White House, California and the auto industry.
The industry also notes it faces rising fuel efficiency standards around the globe and is spending billions of dollars to introduce new battery electric vehicles in the coming years.
Democrats and environmental advocates plan to aggressively challenge the the rich asshole administration’s plans to weaken the vehicle rules touted by Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration as one of its biggest actions to combat climate change by reducing planet-warming emissions.
The the rich asshole administration plans to argue the weaker rules will lead to cheaper vehicles, boost sales and employment and improve safety by prodding faster turnover of older vehicles.
The Obama-era rules adopted in 2012 sought to double average fleet-wide vehicle fuel efficiency to about 50 miles (80 km) per gallon by 2025, but included an evaluation due by April 2018 to determine if the rules were appropriate.
the rich asshole unveils plan to lower drug prices
BY PETER SULLIVAN - 05/11/18 02:41 PM EDT
President the rich asshole on Friday outlined his long-awaited plan to lower drug prices, a key campaign promise.
the rich asshole stopped short of the sweeping proposals he offered on the campaign trail, like having Medicare negotiate drug prices, instead offering a range of smaller ideas.
"The drug lobby is making an absolute fortune at the expense of American consumers," the rich asshole said in remarks from the White House Rose Garden. "We are putting American patients first."
The plan is not a major overhaul of drug companies' prices, but does include some proposals that companies will likely contest.
the rich asshole's immediate agenda includes stricter policing of delay tactics drug companies use to prevent less expensive generic drugs from reaching market, exploring whether to require companies to list drug prices in television ads, and cracking down on gag clauses that prevent information from getting to consumers at the pharmacy counter.
the rich asshole also went after "middlemen" known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBM), which drug companies have tried to shift blame onto.
"The middlemen became very, very rich," the rich asshole said of PBMs. "They're rich. They won't be so rich anymore."
Drug company stocks rose after the president's speech, an indication that the market does not view the announcement as a major threat to the industry's profits.
PBM stocks were also up, despite the rich asshole taking a shot at the industry.
Much of the rich asshole's proposal poses questions or outlines items the administration is considering, rather than setting immediate actions.
"A lot of good questions in the plan but very little actual action," tweeted Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy & Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh.
The proposal also calls for adding more competition into Medicare Part B, which covers drugs administered in doctors' offices, a program that is currently criticized as driving up costs. President Obama proposed reforms to Medicare Part B drug payments in 2016, but eventually scrapped the plan in the face of fierce resistance from doctors and drug companies.
Democrats blasted the rich asshole's proposal as not going far enough, saying the rich asshole is backing away from his bolder campaign promises.
“They’re breathing a sigh of relief in pharmaceutical board rooms across the country,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
“Today’s announcement is a far cry from what the rich asshole called for when he said the drug companies were ‘getting away with murder.’ It’s still open season for drug companies to set astronomical prices that families can’t afford.”
the rich asshole blasts drugmakers, payers for high US drug prices
President some rich asshole (AFP / NICHOLAS KAMM)
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U.S. President some rich asshole on Friday blasted drugmakers, health insurers and pharmacy benefits managers for making prescription drugs unaffordable for Americans, saying his government would take steps to increase competition and bring down prices.
the rich asshole said his administration would eliminate the “middlemen” in the drug industry who became “very very rich”, and said the pharmaceutical lobby is making an “absolute fortune” at the expense of American taxpayers.
“This is a total ripoff and we are ending it,” the rich asshole said in a speech delivered as his health deputies released a series of proposals to address high drug costs.
Giuliani: No decision on the rich asshole interview with Mueller until after North Korea summit
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 05/11/18 02:14 PM EDT
President the rich asshole's lawyer Rudy Giuliani says in a new interview that any decision on a possible interview between the president and special counsel Robert Mueller would likely take place after the rich asshole's planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In an interview with The Associated Press, the former New York City mayor calls the unprecedented summit between a North Korean leader and an American president "far more important" than the Mueller probe.
“Several things delayed us, with the primary one being the whole situation with North Korea,” Giuliani said of discussions over whether the rich asshole would meet with Mueller. “The president has been very busy. It really would be pretty close to impossible to spend the amount of time on it we would need.”
“I wouldn’t want to take his concentration off something far, far more important," Giuliani added, saying it “would be silly to make a decision” on whether the rich asshole would sit down with the special counsel's office with so little preparation done.
“It would take a while and he’s focused on North Korea,” he says.
Giuliani also tells the AP that Mueller's team, which is investigating possible links between the rich asshole campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, is nearly finished with its probe and likely views the president as the investigation's final witness.
“As far we know, we’re basically the last witness,” he says.
“Our understanding is that he’s pretty much finished,” Giuliani said. “Doing more interviews would be inconsistent with what he’s indicated would be the timeframe of the investigation.”
The special counsel has given no indication of when his investigation might be resolved.
Giuliani made headlines this month with a whirlwind of media appearances during which he admitted, for the first time publicly, that the rich asshole had reimbursed his lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film star who alleges a 2006 affair with the president.
The former mayor later clarified his remarks in subsequent interviews, claiming that the rich asshole had learned about the payment only in recent months.
Mueller is reportedly investigating payments made to Cohen by a mix of companies and foreign individuals in the weeks and months following the 2016 election. The payments were made to Essential Consultants, the same company through which Cohen paid Daniels.
GOP Mass. governor candidate says he’s received ‘spiritual confirmation’ that the rich asshole is now ‘a man of God’
Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Lively (Screen cap).
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Scott Lively, a fringe Republican Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate who has nonetheless received enough support at the recent Massachusetts Republican Party Convention to qualify for a primary run against incumbent Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, said this week that he’s received “spiritual confirmation” that President some rich asshole has gotten right with the Lord.
According to Right Wing Watch, Lively appeared on a local radio show to discuss his run for governor, and he singled out the rich asshole for praise not just as a president, but as a man of God.
“I’m a strong supporter of President the rich asshole,” Lively said. “I believe he was transformed from a somewhat reprobate New York liberal into a man of God, God’s man in the White House today. I saw the transformation myself—I had a spiritual confirmation, sort of an endorsement of the idea. He has shown the example of speaking boldly and not being intimidated and not backing down on the things that are important and essential.”
Lively is best known for writing a book called “Pink Swastika” that claims “militaristic” gay men within the Nazi party were the ones who were really behind the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. The book has been widely debunked by historians.
Politicians, media explode over White House aide's comments
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 05/11/18 02:13 PM EDT
A White House aide's dismissive comments about Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) health, made while downplaying McCain's opposition to President the rich asshole's pick to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, have sparked outrage in Washington.
Politicians demanded an apology from special assistant Kelly Sadler on Friday, after The Hill reported that she had disregarded McCain's opposition to Haspel's nomination by saying that "he's dying anyway."
"It's a sad day in this country when White House officials are mocking a man who, while serving his country, was tortured as a prisoner of war. He's more than earned the right to speak out on these matters," Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) said in a statement, demanding a public apology from the White House.
Former Vice President Joe Biden also chimed in on Friday, saying that Sadler's comments embodied President the rich asshole's own derisive remarks about McCain.
"People have wondered when decency would hit rock bottom with this administration," Biden said in a statement. "It happened yesterday."
"Given this White House’s trail of disrespect toward John and others, this staffer is not the exception to the rule; she is the epitome of it," he added.
Sadler's comments on McCain appeared likely to be the subject of intense questioning at the White House daily press briefing on Friday, as outrage continued to unfold in Washington. The White House has not denied Sadler's reported remarks.
McCain, 81, is currently battling an aggressive form of brain cancer.
He announced his opposition to Haspel's nomination on Wednesday, saying that he felt she had not sufficiently denounced a controversial detention and interrogation program ran by the CIA in the years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The White House has pushed hard for Haspel's confirmation in recent weeks as she has come under fire from some lawmakers — mostly Democrats — for her ties to the brutal interrogation program.
Sadler's remarks, reportedly made at a meeting on Thursday, drew a fierce rebuke from McCain's daughter, television host Meghan McCain, who suggested on ABC's "The View" on Friday that the White House aide be fired.
"I don't understand what kind of environment you're working in when that would be acceptable and then you could come to work the next day and still have a job," Meghan McCain said. "And that's all I have to say about it."
Sadler called Meghan McCain on Thursday night to apologize for the comments, a source told The Hill.
Sources said Sadler's comment about the senator was intended as a joke. Still, that mattered little to politicians in Washington, who widely revere McCain as a war hero and dedicated public servant.
McCain has long cast himself as a staunch opponent of brutal and coercive interrogation tactics. He was a victim of torture himself during his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, where he was brutally beaten and forced into falsely confessing to crimes.
Former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) demanded more than an apology from Sadler, and insisted instead that the White House aide be fired.
Fire Kelly Sadler. twitter.com/Acosta/status/…
Democratic lawmakers also rushed to McCain's defense on Thursday and Friday, declaring Sadler's remarks disgraceful. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) tweeted on Thursday that it was "unacceptable" to "cruelly mock veterans," like McCain.
"Unacceptable for the rich asshole Admin to cruelly mock veterans like @SenJohnMcCain," Reed tweeted. "They may disagree w/ him on issues, but he gave so much for our nation. He & his family deserve respect."
Unacceptable for Trump Admin to cruelly mock veterans like @SenJohnMcCain. They may disagree w/ him on issues, but he gave so much for our nation. He & his family deserve respect.thehill.com/homenews/admin…
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) denounced Sadler's comments as "vile and repugnant."
"Our politics may be different but John McCain is an American hero," he tweeted. "The vile and repugnant attacks we've seen from POTUS, WH staff and the far right are disgusting and show how small they are next to this honorable man."
Our politics may be different but John McCain is an American hero. The vile and repugnant attacks we've seen from POTUS, WH staff and the far right are disgusting and show how small they are next to this honorable man.
Sadler's comments also drew scorn in the media. In a combative interview with State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert on Friday, CNN "New Day" host Chris Cuomo said that condemning the insult was "about decency" rather than politics, after Nauert declined to comment on the matter.
"I’m letting you say what you want in response, that’s your choice," Cuomo told Nauert. "But this isn’t politics, this is about decency."
WATCH LIVE: Reporters to grill Sarah Huckabee Sanders at White House press briefing
Sarah Sanders (Screenshot)
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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is holding a news briefing with reporters on Friday, which is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. ET. Watch live video below:
the rich asshole knew of harassment allegations against NY AG years ago, says lawyer
BY AVERY ANAPOL - 05/11/18 12:55 PM EDT
An attorney is seeking a protective order on any correspondence that President the rich asshole's personal lawyer Michael Cohen may have had about two women who made allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D).
The filing by attorney Peter Gleason to U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood says that Cohen and the rich asshole both knew of allegations against Schneiderman years before they surfaced.
Gleason writes in a court filing that “some years ago,” his office was approached by multiple women who claimed that Schneiderman had been “sexually inappropriate with them.”
Schneiderman resigned earlier this week, hours after The New Yorker reported on the allegations of nonconsensual physical misconduct against him from four women.
Gleason writes that he discussed the allegations with Stephen Dunleavy, a retired journalist, who in turn offered to discuss the situation with the rich asshole.
Gleason says he knows that Dunleavy talked to the rich asshole about the matter because of a call from Cohen.
“Mr. Dunleavy did indeed discuss this very matter with some rich asshole as evidenced by a phone call I received from Attorney Michael Cohen,” Gleason writes in the filing. “During my communications with Mr. Cohen I shared with him certain details of Scheinderman’s [sic] vile attacks on these two women.”
Gleason is now seeking the protective order on any documents involving the Schneiderman allegations that may have been seized in the recent FBI raid of Cohen’s office.
The revelations from Gleason cast new light on a rich asshole tweet sent in September 2013.
“Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone - next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman,” the rich asshole wrote in the tweet. “Is he a crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner.”
Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone - next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman. Is he a crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner
As New York’s Democratic attorney general, Schneiderman was a prominent legal force against the rich asshole administration, leading numerous lawsuits against the president’s policies.
One of the authors of The New Yorker story said neither the rich asshole nor Cohen were sources for their story, and that their sources were also not people connected to the rich asshole.
Just to be clear: not one source for our story on Schneiderman has any ties to Trump or Michael Cohen. Our sources all are deeply opposed to Trump and deeply disappointed that Schneiderman let them and their Cause down.
the rich asshole says he still has confidence in EPA chief Scott Pruitt
FILE PHOTO - EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks during a meeting held by U.S. President some rich asshole on infrastructure at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
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U.S. President some rich asshole on Friday said that embattled Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt still has his confidence.
Pruitt has been criticized for a series of potential ethics lapses, including flying first class, excessive spending on security, and the rental of a room in a Washington condominium owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist.
Asked during a meeting of automakers at the White House if he still has confidence in Pruitt, the rich asshole responded: “Yes, I do.”
Reporting by James Oliphant
AT&T CEO says hiring the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen was 'a big mistake'
the rich asshole's lawyer was paid $600,000 to provide the telecom giant with insight into the president's thinking.
by Claire Atkinson and Michael Cappetta / / Updated
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said hiring President some rich asshole's personal lawyer as a consultant was "a big mistake," according to a company memo sent on Friday.
The telecom giant hired attorney Michael Cohen, who has worked for the rich asshole in a personal role for years, for advice on its pending merger with Time Warner. The company has said it paid Cohen $600,000 to gain "insights" into the president's thinking. The memo was first reported by Reuters.
In the employee memo, Stephenson admitted hiring Cohen's firm was an error.
"There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake," Stephenson wrote. "To be clear, everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate. But the fact is our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment."
AT&T also announced that its top lobbyist, Bob Quinn, who hired Cohen, is retiring. A source familiar with the situation told NBC News that Quinn's retirement is "clearly in relation to this situation."
AT&T said the department that had been led by Quinn would now be overseen by the company's general counsel.
"In this instance, our Washington, D.C., team's vetting process clearly failed, and I take responsibility for that," Stephenson wrote in the memo.
A spokesperson for AT&T declined to respond to questions about the memo.
AT&T is currently in a precarious public relations situation because it is awaiting government approval to finalize its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner.
The Justice Department sued to block the merger, and AT&T is awaiting U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s ruling on whether the acquisition can proceed. His decision is expected on June 12.
AT&T has been on the defensive since Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, revealed the company had paid Cohen through Essential Consulting, a company Cohen set up in October 2016.
Essential Consulting then made a $130,000 payment to Daniels to stop her from publicly claiming that she had a sexual encounter with the rich asshole in 2006.
In the memo, AT&T said it had hired several consultants to “help us understand how the president and his administration might approach a wide range of policy issues important to the company, including regulatory reform at the FCC, corporate tax reform and anti-trust enforcement.”
Cohen did no legal or lobbying work, the company said, and the contract ended in December 2017.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Cohen had in fact offered to advise on the Time Warner merger.
AT&T isn’t the only firm to express regret at having gotten entangled with Cohen. The drug company Novartis said on Thursday that it was wrong to have agreed to pay Cohen $1.2 million for advice on health care policy.
“We made a mistake in entering into this engagement and, as a consequence, are being criticized by a world that expects more from us," Vasant Narasimhan, chief executive of Novartis, wrote in an email to employees.
The FBI raided the office and hotel room of Cohen last month, seizing documents as part of a search for information about the $130,000 payment made to Daniels.
Avenatti, the lawyer for Daniels, said in a phone interview that he expects more companies and consultants close to the rich asshole to be uncovered.
"I think this will be the first of many acknowledgements from various entities and individuals who attempted to buy influence with the president,” Avenatti said. “Sunlight is said to be the very best of disinfectant, and we're going to continue to bring sunlight."
Jeff Sessions revealed this week that he would begin inflicting terror across America — but nobody paid attention
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions (Photo by: Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals)
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There is a reason why Jeff Sessions continues to endure the indignities heaped upon him by President the rich asshole and Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Ever since his days as an Alabama prosecutor during the War on Drugs era, the rich asshole’s attorney general has been dead set on cracking down on poor people in a return to tough-on-crime law enforcement. There probably has been no better week for the fulfillment of that agenda than this one.
This article was originally published at Salon
On Monday, Sessions made official the rich asshole administration policy of ripping children from their families, if they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. On Tuesday, he traveled to Tennessee to taunt the 97 workers who were arrested during a recent immigration raid at a local meat processing plant. “I’m not shedding tears about them,” Sessions said of the detained workers, and the 160 children left without parents overnight.
On Wednesday, he faced a minor setback when Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee voted to advance a criminal justice reform bill he passionately opposes. (Sessions has emerged as the primary political obstacle to bipartisan sentencing reform on Capitol Hill.) But by Thursday he had bounced back, wrapping up his week of patient work in the background with quiet praise for law enforcement.
Out of the spotlight, obscured by the rich asshole’s other sidekicks and their latest scandals, Sessions has succeeded in centering immigration as the nation’s top law enforcement priority and at prioritizing criminal proceedings over their impact on crime. He’s quietly instructed prosecutors to go after low-level offenders and removed Department of Justice grants to study criminal justice reform. If his increasingly aggressive rhetoric is any indication, however, Sessions is eager to get credit for this crackdown on the most vulnerable people in our society.
“If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law,” Sessions said in officially announcing the policy that has been unofficially in effect for months. “If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”
It’s an explicit message meant to prevent parents from seeking asylum in the United States. Asylum seekers who turn themselves in at a point of entry and request asylum — the procedure outlined by international treaty — have broken no laws. But the rich asshole administration officials have said they believe the asylum process is overwhelmed and challenged by frivolous claims. So asylum seekers will pay the price.
As part of his “zero-tolerance policy” on border protection, Sessions traveled to Scottsdale, Arizona, and San Diego on Monday to boast that parents apprehended at the border will be placed into criminal custody and their children will be sent to federally funded shelters. In fact, this seemingly cruel policy has long been a goal of the the rich asshole administration.
One underreported element of the rich asshole’s so-called four-point immigration reform plan is the end of a 1997 federal consent decree that requires the U.S. government to release immigrant children from custody, if possible, or otherwise hold them in the “least restrictive setting” available. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Sessions is working with the Department of Homeland Security to expand the average stay in a detention facility from 14 days to 45 days, and claiming the authority to delay snacks and other provisions for children.
Roughly 700 children have been separated from their parents at the border since last October, according to data examined by the New York Times. “Last month, senators at a subcommittee testimony said almost 1,500 migrant children went missing after federal officials put them in the homes of adult sponsors around the country,” the paper reported.
This is of course an administration that hails former Phoenix sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted of offenses related to racial profiling (and then pardoned by the president) as a folk hero? Sessions’ gleeful announcement making these policies official, coincidentally timed to coordinate with the kickoff of Melania the rich asshole’s “take care of children” campaign, makes clear that America’s values are secondary to the war on immigrants. Sessions’ harsh message may well cut down on illegal border crossings. But the question is whether that’s how America wants the rest of the world to see us. The United States’ historical role as a beacon of hope and opportunity for refugees has been replaced by images of overcrowded detention centers, where children reportedly prey upon each other and form gangs for protection.
“If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple,” Sessions added, describing his new policy. “We are dealing with a massive influx of illegal aliens across our southwest border. But we’re not going to stand for this.”
But that’s not true. There’s no sudden crisis in “illegal” immigration. Apprehensions at the southwestern border remain near historic lows. And as Reuters reported Wednesday, border communities are concerned that Sessions’ promise will overwhelm the federal court systems in those areas.
Taunting his critics at a law enforcement conference in Tennessee on Tuesday, Sessions laughed at the “fuzzy-headed left” who have raised concerns about civil liberties. “You don’t get to get an advantage in this country by having large numbers of illegal workers working for you … You don’t get to benefit from being in this country and looking around the world for the cheapest worker you can find,” he said of a recent workplace raid in the area. But a month after the raid, no charges have been filed against the owners of the plant who apparently hired and then abused their immigrant labor force.
As Masha Gessen writes in the New Yorker this week, “hostage-taking is an instrument of terror.” While many of us were distracted by the confirmation hearings that may end with someone who oversaw the nation’s secret torture program under George W. Bush to lead the CIA, Jeff Sessions made it official U.S. policy to forcibly separate children from their mothers.
While he was speaking in San Diego, Sessions was interrupted by a heckler with a megaphone.
“We don’t want you in our state,” the man yelled. “Are you going to be separating families? Is that why you’re here? Why are you doing this? Do you have a heart? Do you have a soul? Why do you work for this administration?”
With all of the mess the media has to sift through every day under this administration — reporters who cover the Justice Department are inundated with Russia-probe news on nearly an hourly — one man with a megaphone isn’t enough to garner any real attention. As Jeff Sessions does his darnedest to get back in President the rich asshole’s good graces, one torn-apart family at a time, America’s supposed core values are being eroded away to nothing.
AT&T CEO says hiring Michael Cohen 'was a big mistake'
May 11, 2018: 11:04 AM ET
"AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake," the company's CEO Randall Stephenson said Friday morning.
AT&T paid Cohen, President the rich asshole's personal lawyer and fixer, $600,000 through a contract that ended in December 2017.
The payments are now under scrutiny in part because Cohen is under federal investigation.
"To be clear, everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate. But the fact is, our past association with Cohen was a serious misjudgment," Stephenson wrote in a memo to employees.
"In this instance, our Washington D.C. team's vetting process clearly failed, and I take responsibility for that," he added.
Stephenson announced that Bob Quinn, one of the executives involved in the Cohen deal, "will be retiring."
Quinn took charge of AT&T's legislative affairs operation in Washington less than two years ago. A source with knowledge of the matter said he is leaving under pressure.
Stephenson expressed regret to the company's employees, citing the negative attention around AT&T in recent days.
"To all of you who work tirelessly every day to serve customers and represent the brand proudly, thank you. My personal commitment to you is -- we will do better," he wrote.
Information about the business arrangement has trickled out for several days.
It was first revealed by Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti on Tuesday.
Avenatti said he was aware of four months of payments to Cohen totaling $200,000. But AT&T had Cohen under contract for virtually all of 2017 for $50,000 a month. On Thursday a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed that AT&T paid Cohen $600,000 for the year.
AT&T also provided new information about how the arrangement came about.
Cohen "approached" Quinn's Washington office of AT&T "during the post-election transition period and said he was going to leave the rich asshole Organization and do consulting for a select few companies that wanted his opinion on the new President and his administration -- the key players, their priorities, and how they think," AT&T said Friday.
These are the "insights" that AT&T previously said it hired Cohen for.
AT&T also said, "we didn't ask him to set up any meetings for us with anyone in the administration and he didn't offer to do so."
Another one of Cohen's corporate clients, Novartis, offered a similar explanation.
Novartis also said Cohen approached them and offered his consulting services.
"We made a mistake in entering into this engagement and, as a consequence, are being criticized by a world that expects more from us," Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan said in a memo to employees.
John McCain’s former top strategist demands White House fire Kelly Sadler — today
Michael Murphy is a Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, JFK School of Government at Harvard University.
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The Republican political strategist behind Sen. John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” campaign against then-Gov. George W. Bush (R-TX) for the 2000 presidential nomination, on Friday called for the GOP White House to fire Kelly Sadler by the end of the day.
Sadler reportedly joked about Sen. McCain dying in a strategy meeting over the nomination of Gina Haspel to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.
McCain, who was tortured as a Prisoner of War during the Vietnam War, opposes Haspel’s confirmation over her “refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality.”
“Mike, your initial reactions to all of this?” MSNBC anchor Judy Woodruff asked.
“Well, like a lot of people who know John McCain well, I’m pulling for him,” Murphy replied. “But I’m also very offended by what the White House staffer says.”
“This White House, regardless of party, has the lowest bar for staff qualifications that I’ve ever seen in politics,” charged Murphy, who was also a top strategist for former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “So we have a couple dregs over there and it’s amazing she’s still employed in the highest office in the land.”
“Hopefully that will get rectified today,” Murphy continued. “It was a horrible comment and it just shows the culture inside that place, which is a depressing thing.”
Mitchell also asked about controversial comments made by military analyst Thomas McInerney on Fox Business. McInerney urged Haspel’s confirmation by claiming torture works and citing “Songbird John” McCain.
“If you look at this through the prism of the extreme interrogation tactics, McCain has been clear for a long time about where he stands on it,” Murphy noted. “It’s a litmus test for him and I think it’s totally legitimate, from his point of view, to oppose her nomination.”
“He did it on factual grounds and for a childish White House response like this it’s — as I said, it’s depressing — but ultimately the culture is controlled by the president,” he concluded. “That’s how the culture in the White House is set and we’ve seen some rich asshole before, for a lot of people, not just Senator McCain, acting in a coarse and vulgar way, so that’s part of the new reality of the rich asshole presidency.”
Following the appearance, Murphy said that not only should Sadler be fired, but that the rich asshole also owes McCain an apology.
As I said on @mitchellreports, WH staffer Kelly Sadler’s comment re: Sen McCain are loathsome. Another depressing sign of the dark and vile culture of this WH. She should be fired. Trump owes McCain an apology.
Watch:
MEDIA
“Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth trashed the “failing New York Times” on Friday for supposedly not reporting on the recent capture of five ISIS leaders, apparently unaware the paper beat Fox News to the story.
“I looked for the five ISIS leaders captured in the failing New York Times,” Hegseth said, flipping through the newspaper. “And in the print edition today, I have not seen it yet.”
Hegseth didn’t find the story in Friday’s New York Times because the paper covered it on Wednesday. Hegseth’s own station, Fox News, reported on the Times’ coverage a day later, on Thursday.
Here's Fox & Friends' Pete Hegseth mocking the New York Times for failing to cover the ISIS capture story the paper broke two days ago mediaite.com/a/nrilh
Hegseth and his co-hosts were discussing President some rich asshole’s tweet on Thursday announcing that ISIS five leaders were “just captured.”
So the Times reporting also beat the rich asshole’s. The paper published the news on Wednesday, describing Iraqi news broadcasts referring to a sting operation that took place earlier in the spring.
Like the president, though, Fox hosts have made it a pastime to label the Times and other media outlets they perceive as left-leaning as “failing” and “fake news.”
Hegseth borrowed his mocking nickname for the Times directly from the rich asshole.
In multiple instances, however, Fox News has itself confirmed reports about the president first covered by the Times.
In January, a Times report revealed that the rich asshole attempted to fire special counsel Robert Mueller last June, alleging conflicts of interest in Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Fox News and other media outlets quickly confirmed the report.
“Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt dismissed that report at the time, saying: “It’s something we have to tell you about because it is a headline in The New York Times.”
“What do you think about that? Do ya even care?” she asked.
Earhardt and her co-hosts didn’t mention that their own network had also confirmed the report. Instead, they showed a video of the rich asshole denying the story.
“Fake news, folks, fake news. Typical New York Times fake news story,” said the president, a well-known fan of “Fox & Friends.”
the rich asshole knew about Eric Schneiderman allegations since 2013 — according to new filing in Cohen case
(Photo: stock_photo_world / Shutterstock.com)
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President some rich asshole’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, knew about allegations of sexual misconduct against former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for about five years, according to a new court filing.
An attorney submitted a letter Friday in Manhattan federal court explaining that two women had come to him a year apart around 2013 complaining that they had been “sexually victimized” by Schneiderman, reported Bloomberg.
Attorney Peter Gleason advised the women not to report their allegations to Manhattan’s district attorney due to his own previous experience with political corruption cases.
Instead, the attorney said he discussed the women’s claims with retired New York Postreporter Stephen Dunleavy, who offered to discuss their allegations with the rich asshole — who cryptically tweeted about Schneiderman on Sept. 11, 2013 — and Cohen.
“Mr. Dunleavy did indeed discuss this very matter with some rich asshole as evidenced by a phone call I received from attorney Michael Cohen,” wrote Gleason, a lawyer in Mahopac, New York. “During my communications with Mr. Cohen I shared with him certain details of Schneiderman’s vile attacks on these two women.”
Gleason also told Cohen about the allegations against Schneiderman, according to the court filing.
The attorney submitted the letter to a judge overseeing the handling of files and records seized last month by the FBI from Cohen’s home and office.
Gleason asked for a protective order covering all conversations he had with Cohen about the women’s claims against Schneiderman.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article inaccurately reported that Gleason was Cohen’s attorney.
POLITICS
the rich asshole’s Plan On Prescription Drug Prices Looks Nothing Like What He Promised
So much for an all-out assault on Big Pharma.
Candidate some rich asshole promised Americans a war on the pharmaceutical industry. President some rich asshole isn’t going to give them one.
On Friday afternoon, the Department of Health and Human Services released a policy blueprint for helping Americans pay for prescription drugs that, with every passing year, get harder and harder to afford.
“Today, my administration is launching the most sweeping action in history to lower the price of prescription drugs for the American people,” the rich asshole said of the plan during a speech in the White House Rose Garden.
Whether and how much the approach will ultimately reduce drug prices is unclear, and will probably remain so for some time. But while some of the ideas the rich asshole endorsed have bipartisan support and the potential to help people, few experts expect the administration’s plan to have the kind of dramatic impact the rich asshole once promised.
The health care industry certainly doesn’t seem scared. Stocks climbed following the speech, while analysts dismissed it loudly, using phrases like “non-event” and “waste of time.”
A missive from the health care trading desk at Jeffries said simply, “Jay-Z’s Blueprint far more impactful than HHS version.”
the rich asshole’s speech and a 39-page blueprint have been weeks in the making, although their roots lie in the 2016 presidential campaign, when the rich asshole promoted himself as a different kind of Republican ― one who would stand up for average Americans and protect them from powerful corporate interests.
The drug industry was high on the list of predators. He railed against them regularly, even after taking office, famously saying drugmakers were “getting away with murder” by charging such high prices for life-saving medications.
More controversially, the rich asshole also endorsed an idea Democrats had long championed and Republicans had long opposed: having the federal government negotiate prices directly with drugmakers, just like the governments of other developed countries do. Name-brand drugs in those countries are far less expensive than they are in the U.S.
A year and a half into his presidency, and following some well-publicized meetings with precisely the sort of pharmaceutical industry leaders he once denounced, the rich asshole has backed away from that rhetoric. He’s no longer calling to have the federal government negotiate with drugmakers over prices and, more generally, he no longer identifies the drug industry as the primary culprit behind high prices.
Blaming Big Government More Than Big Pharma
Instead, the rich asshole has adopted a more nuanced and in many ways more traditionally Republican argument for why prescriptions are so expensive. This view, which the White House Council of Economic Advisers laid out in a February report, blames high prices more on the excesses of big government than on the excesses of Big Pharma.
According to this argument, government insurance programs make drugs unnecessarily expensive. An example is the requirement that Medicare Part D plans ― the private insurance policies that provide seniors with prescription coverage ― include at least two drugs from each class. If the insurers who provide those plans could have just one drug from each class, administration officials say, insurers would have more negotiating leverage and could cover drugs more cheaply.
Another issue is the way Medicare pays for drugs that specialty physicians, such as oncologists, deliver on an outpatient basis. the rich asshole administration officials say this payment scheme gives the doctors incentive to provide the most highly priced therapies when cheaper drugs might be just as good, if not better, on a clinical basis. the rich asshole is expected to call for restructuring those payments, in order to reduce that incentive.
The administration has some other changes in mind, too. It wants to straighten out a complicated scheme of rebates and payments among insurance companies, drugmakers and a group of middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers. PBMs have received a great deal of scrutiny in recent years, because their payment arrangements are secret.
In theory, they are supposed to help insurers bargain for lower prices, which can then benefit consumers. In practice, critics say, PBMs strike deals that drive up their own profits without providing much relief for the people who get drugs.
The precise details of how the administration plans to address these and other issues remain unclear, even in the blueprint. Absent more information, it’s impossible to know how aggressive the administration intends to be ― or what could be done through regulatory action, which the administration can handle on its own, versus legislation, which would require Congress to act.
But the break with campaign rhetoric is clear and, in this respect, the rich asshole’s approach to prescription drugs has a lot in common with the approach he has taken toward the insurance reforms of the Affordable Care Act.
Outsourcing Policy To The GOP Establishment Again
As a candidate, the rich asshole promised to replace “Obamacare” with a more generous, more comprehensive universal coverage scheme. At several points, he suggested he might just push for a European-style, single-payer system in which the government would simply insure everybody. “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now,” he said shortly after taking office.
Once in office, the rich asshole abandoned such promises. The repeal bills he tried to pass would have downsized existing government programs and stripped away regulations designed to make sure everybody can get decent coverage, regardless of pre-existing condition. Had one of those bills become law, millions of people would have lost coverage.
A common theme in the Obamacare repeal episode and, now, the effort on drug prices is the rich asshole’s willingness to outsource policymaking to the GOP establishment, which remains loyal and sympathetic to the big corporations the rich asshole attacked as a candidate.
Still, there are some critical differences as well.
With the repeal fight, the rich asshole was largely outsourcing to congressional leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). They promoted extremely conservative ideas, including structural changes to Medicaid that would have dramatically reduced its funding. At times, they seemed more focused on getting a bill ― any bill ― through Congress than attempting to construct a workable alternative for helping people to get insurance.
But in an administration full of ideological zeal and sometimes questionable competence, Gottlieb and now Azar have reputations for smarts, savvy and a serious commitment to governing.
On prescription drugs, it appears the rich asshole has largely turned policymaking over to a few key figures in his administration, chiefly Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and Scott Gottlieb, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Both are bona fide conservatives and have ties to the drug industry. Azar is a former Eli Lilly executive.
But in an administration full of ideological zeal and sometimes questionable competence, Gottlieb and now Azar have reputations for smarts, savvy and a serious commitment to governing. Gottlieb in particular has earned praise, even from Democrats, for the way he has managed the agency.
And so perhaps it is not surprising that at least some of the ideas they have put on the president’s agenda enjoy a great deal of support from across the political spectrum. These days, it’s difficult to find anybody who understands health policy who’s willing to defend current PBM practices. And those changes to reimbursement for cancer and other specialty drugs? The Obama administration tried to do something similar.
The administration also says it will seek to change the design of the Part D benefits, in ways that could make specialty drugs more affordable for the people who desperately need them but struggle to pay for them.
Each of these ideas comes with its own costs and potential dangers. Take the idea of changing the requirements on which drugs Part D plans cover, reducing the number from two to one in each class of treatment. The theory is that with two drugs, many people will take the more expensive one when they don’t need it. But if there’s just one, it could be harder for people who need a different drug to get one. (Think of somebody who needs a particular psychiatric drug in order to avoid certain side effects.)
The Trumpiest Part Of The Plan
There is one element of the administration’s drug strategy that has a distinctly Trumpian tinge to it: criticism of other countries.
The administration argues that drug companies charge Americans more because, in other countries with price controls, they have to charge less. In this view, those other countries are basically getting a free ride, because American consumers are subsidizing the research and development that leads to breakthroughs. Some have expected the rich asshole to promise to address that problem by somehow getting other countries to pay more of their fair share.
Presumably, this would entail making drug prices, already a subject of trade negotiations, an even bigger priority, though it’s not clear how much leverage the U.S. has. Also, most economists doubt the prices that drug companies can get abroad have much, if anything, to do with the prices they charge here.
What’s not on the table are any of the big, potentially game-changing ideas like having the negotiate directly with drugmakers.
What’s not on the table are any of the big, potentially game-changing ideas like having the government negotiate directly with drugmakers, or allowing imports of cheap drugs from other countries, or radically redesigning the patent system (which some economists believe is both the source of high prices in this country and the easiest way to bring them down).
There are reasons for this. Conservatives like Azar and Gottlieb say such measures would cause more harm than good ― stifling innovation, limiting choices and ultimately depriving people of medicine they need.
Lots of reasonable people agree with that view, or at least worry about the possible effects of the government meddling with prices. The economics of pharmaceuticals, like health care policy generally, is complicated and full of trade-offs.
But the contrast with what the rich asshole promised as a candidate could not be more stark.
Mueller now investigating millions of dollars worth of Russia-linked donations to the rich asshole’s inaugural committee
Special counsel and former FBI director Bob Mueller (image via screengrab).
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Special counsel Robert Mueller is now probing millions of dollars donated to President some rich asshole’s inaugural committee — including many made by donors connected to Russia and Middle Eastern countries.
ABC News reported Friday that among the “several” witnesses interviewed by the special counsel is the rich asshole’s longtime friend and business associate Thomas Barrack, the person responsible for overseeing the expensive inauguration in early 2017.
“According to a source who has sat with the Mueller team for interviews in recent weeks, the special counsel is examining donors who have either business or personal connections in Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar,” the report reads. “Several donors with those ties contributed large sums to the non-profit fundraising entity – gifts that topped out at $1 million dollars, accthew ording to public records.”
Mueller’s team has also asked witnesses questions about individual donors, “including American businessmen Leonard Blavatnik and Andrew Intrater,” the report noted. None have been accused of wrongdoing.
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