The internet lights up Jared Kushner for Israel speech: ‘He doesn’t even have security clearance’
Jared Kushner
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Jared Kushner spoke at the dedication of a new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem as Israeli forces killed Palestinians protesting the controversial move — and social media users roasted the president’s son-in-law.
President some rich asshole was represented at Monday’s dedication ceremony by his eldest daughter, Ivanka the rich asshole, and her husband, who serve as senior White House advisers despite their inability to obtain permanent clearance to view the most highly classified materials.
Twitter users asked why Kushner and Ivanka the rich asshole were present at the event.
Someone please remind me again why Jared Kushkush, who doesn't even have a security clearance, is delivering a speech at that embassy right now like he's the Secretary of State??
Jared looks like he’s not getting any sleep anymore. #Mueller
Stands in the heart of the #TrumpRussia criminal investigation.
Has no security clearance.
No diplomatic experience.
Born a third generation multimillionaire.
Married Trump’s daughter.
Why is Jared Kushner speaking for the United States in Israel while Palestine burns?
Jared’s Middle East peace plan is working so well. Tell me again why someone who can’t get security clearance is speaking in Israel representing the US.
I need some handcuffs to bring Jared’s wrists together… twitter.com/cnnpolitics/st…
I missed the part where I voted for Jared Kushner, or he had the background to be the voice of the United States, or heck, even security clearance. And then I remembered, we live in an authoritarian regime now, so of course a family member is speaking for us. twitter.com/NBCPolitics/st…
‘Did they get to Judge Nap too?’: Fox viewers fume after legal analyst defends Mueller probe
Andrew Napolitano (Fox News)
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After Fox News analyst and former judge Andrew Napolitano defended special counsel Robert Mueller‘s duty to see his investigation to completion, the network’s conservative viewers expressed their distaste for his pragmatic words.
Napolitano said the White House’s new strategy of claiming the Mueller investigation has gone on too long is a new strategy that likely is a result of “the addition of Mayor Rudy Giuliani to the president’s legal team.”
"They’re on offense, not defense,” the judge said. “They will be challenging Bob Mueller at every turn. For those of us who watch these things from a professional point of view, I must tell you Bob Mueller has no duty to tip his hand and show his cards until the end of his investigation. And he does have a duty to complete the investigation.”
“It will take a while,” Napolitano said — and in doing so, incited the rage of Fox viewers who now suspect him of being a member of the “deep state.”
“What’s happened to Judge Napolitano?” one Twitter user wrote. “He’s siding with Mueller. Did they get to Judge Nap too?”
“I think it’s time that someone finally tells good old Judge Napolitano to STOP with his one-sided CRAP,” another tweeted, “and STOP acting like he is America’s legal authority on EVERYTHING. He simply is NOT!”
@BillHemmer I think it's time that someone finally tells good old Judge Napolitano to STOP with his one-sided CRAP...and STOP acting like he is America's legal authority on EVERYTHING. He simply is NOT!
Even Michael Flynn Jr., son of President some rich asshole’s controversial former aide, joined in on the fun, claiming Napolitano is a “sensationalist” and agreeing with another user who accused him of offering “obtuse” commentary.
MFLYNNJR
Watch video of Napolitano’s defense of Mueller and read Fox viewers’ commentary on it below:
What would we ever do if we didn't get to hear Judge Napolitano defend Muella EVERYDAY all day long on @FoxNews & @FBNlive ? I know what I do............mute him! He is just another #NeverTrumper living in #TheSwamp or #DeepState
@Judgenap @BillHemmer Starting to think Judge Nap is rooting for Mueller. He is right it will end someday. It will end when Trump leaves office. He is intentionally keeping open to keep shadow over presidency. Be used as political weapon. I believe that!
If I hear Judge Napolitano say Mueller has a "treasure trove" of information again, I may change my position on freedom of speech. He keeps defending Mueller, while obvious corruption is clouding the whole investigation. Doesn't @FoxNews have a junior para legal to replace him?
So glad to hear someone else state this. I have ALWAYS thought @Judgenap was a HIllary Shill. What a MORON. For him to be a judge and NOT see this for what it is. #EndTheWitchHuntNow #MAGA twitter.com/tjoy7/status/9…
There is no doubt in my mind that @Judgenap is a #NEVERTRUMPER. Anyone who truly supports the president will NOT support the continuation of this ridiculous witch hunt. The judge supports keeping the people who are funding this fishing expedition in the dark. Judge is losing CRED
US officially opens its Jerusalem embassy in ceremony
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claps as Ivanka the rich asshole unveils a plaque during the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, 2018 AFP / Menahem KAHANA
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The United States officially opened its deeply controversial Jerusalem embassy on Monday in a ceremony that included a video address by President some rich asshole.
the rich asshole told the ceremony that the United States remained committed to reaching a lasting Middle East peace though the move of its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has provoked outrage.
A plaque and seal was unveiled at the ceremony officially opening the embassy.
Earlier in the day, violent clashes erupted along the Gaza Strip’s border, leaving 37 Palestinians dead from Israeli fire and hundreds wounded in the conflict’s bloodiest day in years.
Tens of thousands had gathered near the border in protest while smaller numbers of stone-throwing Palestinians approached the fence and sought to break through, with Israeli snipers positioned on the other side.
US ambassador to Israel David Friedman also spoke at the ceremony in Jerusalem and the rich asshole was given a standing ovation when he mentioned him.
Friedman referred to the embassy’s location as “Jerusalem, Israel” drawing wild applause.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan led the Washington delegation at the inauguration that also included the rich asshole’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, both White House aides, as well as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Some 800 guests were attending the ceremony.
Jerusalem’s status is perhaps the thorniest issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Jared Kushner calls 40 Palestinians killed outside Jerusalem embassy opening ‘part of the problem’
Jared Kushner speaks in Jerusalem (MSNBC/screen grab)
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Jared Kushner, an adviser to President some rich asshole, suggested on Monday that dozens Palestinians who were killed while protesting the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem were “part of the problem” in the Middle East.
While speaking at the dedication for the controversial new embassy, Kushner referred to the protests outside the celebration, where more than 40 Palestinian demonstrators have reportedly been killed.
"President the rich asshole was very clear that his decision [to move the embassy] and today’s celebration do not reflect a departure from our strong commitment to lasting peace,” Kushner told the crowd. “A peace that overcomes the conflicts of the past to give our children a brighter and more boundless future.”
“As we have seen from the protests of the last month and even today, those provoking violence are part of the problem and not part of the solution,” he added, prompting applause from the audience.
Watch the video below
A historian of Germany explains why the rich asshole’s ‘cultivation of dishonesty’ is strongly reminiscent of the Nazis
President some rich asshole wears a "Make America Great Again" hat at a golf tournament held at one of his properties. (Image via Saul Loeb/AFP.)
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Mark Twain may have been correct: History does not repeat itself but it often does rhymes.
This article was originally published at Salon
some rich asshole’s behavior is drawn from a familiar authoritarian playbook: threats of violence against his political enemies, contempt for the rule of law, incessant lies and corruption, militant nationalism, disdain for a free press, and the portrayal of his supporters as “real citizens” over and against lesser others. the rich asshole has merely adapted those most vulgar of political tactics to fit America’s political culture.
But there are more sinister echoes from one of the darkest moments in modern history in some rich asshole’s version of American fascism. Some people hide behind sophomoric rules of internet culture, where to compare anything in American life to the horrors of Hitler and the Nazi era is automatically dismissed. That is functional surrender. Real resistance requires facing America’s present circumstances with open eyes.
How is some rich asshole’s political style and agenda similar (or not) to that of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler? What parallels and comparisons exist between the economic and social crisis in German society and democracy during the 1920s and 1930s and the United States in the age of the rich asshole? How did mainstream right-wing German politicians — like Republicans today — enable Hitler’s rise to power? How are anxiety and guilt among the dominant group regarding their treatment of minority groups used by right-wing authoritarians? What lessons do that earlier era of “fake news” and “the big lie” hold for America now?
In an effort to answer those questions, I recently spoke with Benjamin Carter Hett. He is a professor of history at Hunter College and the City University of New York and author of the new book “The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
How do you explain some rich asshole’s rise to power and eventual election to the presidency?
I am a historian of Germany, particularly the time of Hitler. When I look at what happened in the 1920s and the 1930s, what strikes me about the downfall of democracy in Germany and the rise of the Nazis was how they attracted a lot of support and particularly angry protests against the effects of economic globalization. When people initially voted for the Nazi Party their votes were motivated by discontent with what they felt the global political situation was doing to them.
But that would not have gotten Hitler into power if it had not been for a number of very powerful people in high positions in government and in business. They looked around and said, basically, “This guy Hitler is kind of crude and he’s kind of rough — but we can use him.” It was elite accommodation that allowed Hitler to get through the doors of power. You could draw a kind of rough and ready analogy from that to how mainstream Republicans have found themselves either wanting the rich asshole or feeling compelled to adopt the rich asshole and his base as a means of keeping themselves in power.
There is another aspect that is also a striking parallel. The Nazis were very much involved with cultivating deliberate lies for political purposes. In a way I think you could say the Nazis were the inventors of “fake news” as a political tool.
some rich asshole has been unapologetic and transparent about his authoritarian values. Yet so many Republicans and other conservatives have supported him, despite all the ways the rich asshole is a dangerous and disruptive presence in American politics and society. How will history remember them?
A certain segment of elite conservatives put Hitler in power and soon started to grasp the scale of the disaster that he represented and how to get out of it.
I think the strongest example of this was a neoconservative intellectual named Edgar Julius Jung. Jung wrote a book in 1927 which was his critique of democracy called “The Rule of the Inferior.” He was a vehement opponent of the democracy of the Weimar Republic. But as soon as Hitler was in power Jung said to a friend, “We are partly responsible for this guy being in power. We have to get rid of him.” The first resistance movement that had a real chance of getting Hitler out of power came from people who were inside the system, highly placed governmental and political operatives.
They started to feel like their duty was to remove Hitler from power but they were mostly killed in the process.
How did Germans who lived through the rise of Nazism make sense of that moment? Who were the supporters? What were Hitler’s detractors, and soon-to-be victims, thinking during those years?
As a general rule you could say that as soon as Hitler came into power he was greeted by more support and enthusiasm across the spectrum than greeted the rich asshole. the rich asshole has a pretty good hold on 35 percent or maybe 40 percent of the electorate and the rest really doesn’t like him. Hitler was almost certainly doing much better than that through most of his time in power.
Hitler was able to enjoy very strong support among Germans and this actually held up to a very great degree even through to the end of the war.
As you detail in your book, there are many parallels between the rise of Hitler in Germany during the 1930s and the rise of some rich asshole in America today. How do we navigate the metaphorical minefield that is summoned into existence by such a comparison?
I’m not pessimistic enough to think that we are heading straight into World War III and genocide. But there are warning signs in that some rich asshole is pulling on some of the same emotional chords as Hitler. For example, resenting what the rest of the world is doing to you. Racism and the hostility that a majority group might feel towards a minority group are also similar.
the rich asshole had strong support from white voters across the socioeconomic spectrum. This is comparable to how Christian Germans felt about Jews in the 1920s or 1930s. This is a kind of resentment of the minority which can be mobilized as political passion. That is never going to lead anywhere good. It obviously led somewhere spectacularly bad in Germany in that era. It’s not going to lead anywhere good for us.
The other thing that really does trouble me about this moment under the rich asshole is the deliberate cultivation of dishonesty. This is something that Hitler famously talked about when he wrote that a politician would be well advised to use a big lie, not a little lie — because that will get seen through. People won’t be able to grasp that you are putting forward such a massive falsehood. Hitler and his chief propagandist [Joseph Goebbels] were masters of this, and this is something that we have seen with the rich asshole.
I fear that American political life is being actively degenerated by the rich asshole and his propagandists.
some rich asshole and the broader conservative movement in America are largely propelled by a commitment to anti-intellectualism. In general, do they represent a backlash against or rejection of the Enlightenment?
There is a parallel where a lot of the people who backed Hitler were very conscious of rebelling against the Enlightenment. Edgar Julius Jung, whom I mentioned earlier, saw this as a reaction against the Enlightenment, which he saw as being French and foreign and thus not German.
I do think we have that going on now. I think perhaps it is what happens when the present reality just seems absolutely unacceptable to a lot of people. That was certainly the case in Germany in the 1920s. Certainly America right now is not experiencing anything like the crisis that Germany experienced after World War I. But I think there are a lot of people who are not doing well economically, which paradoxically is largely a product of Republican policies over the last four years.
some rich asshole positioned himself as a defender of the supposedly “lost” and “forgotten” white American working class. Yet instead of “draining the swamp,” the rich asshole appears to be running a Mafia-like protection racket where he personally benefits from the office and fattens . his and his family’s bank accounts shakedown money. Nevertheless, his voters are devoted to him.
The Republicans and the rich asshole have succeeded in changing the discourse away from what’s really happening with the American economy.
This too is something that has strong parallels to Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. This is something the Nazis succeeded at very well. The Nazis depicted themselves as being of the people and against the system. And of course for the Nazis “the system” was something which is directed by the elites who they don’t like. Obviously, they also present “the system” as being a product of Jews as a people, Jewish capital, Jewish intellectuals and so on.
From time to time the Nazis could actually sound very radical in their anti-business, anti-corporate, anti-elite rhetoric. Of course they drop that as soon as they get into power, because Hitler understands perfectly well that he needs big business — especially the big arms businesses — to create the kind of military forces that he wants. So once Hitler’s in power, the policies of his regime are really quite corporate-friendly and not very worker-friendly.
As a scholar who has studied the rise of the Nazis, when you hear the rich asshole’s rhetoric about immigrants and nonwhites, or that of his supporters, what are you thinking?
There is a kind of projection onto a group of people who really are not powerful, to say nothing of not being threatening. Ye, the projection involves labeling those people as “thugs” or “rapists.” This is not dissimilar from the politics of Germany in the 1920s and the 1930s, with its rhetoric about migrants and refugees as well as the security of the border — which was another huge theme in the Weimar Republic.
What came to mind as you watched young white men riot in Charlottesville while chanting Nazi slogans?
It was deeply revealing that some rich asshole said that there was violence equally on both sides. And of course the rich asshole also said there were “very fine people” on both sides — which included Nazis and other white supremacists. In Germany, the Nazis had their own band of thugs — the “brown shirts” known as the SA — who instigated a good deal of violence. Their job was to go out and beat up Nazi opponents. At one point the president of the Weimar Republic, when confronted with a dossier on the violence that the brown shirts were committing, said, “The violence is on all sides it’s not just the Nazis.” What took place in Charlottesville evoked the pattern of political mobilization which the Nazis made their trademark.
White people — especially white male conservatives — are the dominant social, political and economic group in the United States. Yet, reflecting back on the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, the rise of the “alt-right” and the rich asshole’s victory, it seems clear that white men of a certain stripe are angry and believe they have somehow been victimized and oppressed.
You can’t be alive and awake and halfway attentive to the news in our country without being deeply aware of the profoundly systematic ways that our society discriminates against African-Americans, other nonwhites, women and other marginalized groups.
So, I think there is something else going on which actually reminds me a little bit of how many Germans thought about Jews after World War II. When you are a German who survives World War II and you are also not Jewish there is guilt. The victims — in this case Jews — are resented because of those feelings of guilt. This resentment can become something even worse depending on the individual’s personality and values. To that point, there was anti-Semitism in Germany after World War II. I believe this applies in America at present.
We must also remember that Germans in 1933 don’t know exactly where this is going to go. They also have a national feeling that Germany is a land of high culture, law and order. They are a good people and so the rise of Hitler and the Nazis cannot go anywhere very bad.
I think we Americans have very much the same problem. With American exceptionalism, we believe that our values are good. We are after all the people of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We think we are a democracy. Nothing we do can go anywhere very bad. But the fact is that it can. And we ought to know better because America has committed genocide against native peoples and enslaved black people. There is a kind of dangerous innocence that Americans possess which ignores how bad things can become when the politics of racial division are stoked.
There are some people who would instinctively reject any comparison between the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the rise of some rich asshole in America. How would you rebut their claims?
Well, the parallel doesn’t and won’t hold 100 percent. But there is a deeper structure which is similar. The cultivation of hatred against minorities, against the vulnerable, against immigrants and so on. The deliberate cultivation of flagrant falsehoods. The manipulation of alienation and a sense of aggrievement among a group you then use to oppress others.
How do you deal with folks who have no real expertise about the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party but nevertheless feel empowered to confidently offer their opinions on such a serious and complicated topic?
I wish I had a really good answer to that. There is a gentleman I talk to on occasion who will try to use evidence and arguments from online sources, really unreliable fly-by-night websites. I always try and think about how I can try to get this gentleman to a different place. The one time I think I had some success was when he made some ridiculous claims and I then asked, “What’s your source for that?” He paused. That threw him off a little bit.
It’s a reflex for a historian or anyone who studies something rigorously. It’s always a reflex to think: What’s the source? Is the source reliable? Does the source have an agenda? That’s always the point I try to drive home with my students or anyone I am talking to. At the end of the day, all you can do is press people to think about the information they consume, and think about it really critically. You are never going to reach everybody. So much of this is driven by emotions that are not accessible to rational argument.
Here is an example of that phenomenon. The NRA and other gun obsessives love to argue that if the Jews in Germany had had guns, they would have been able to stop Hitler. By implication, America should never have serious gun control.
The idea that there wouldn’t have been a Holocaust if there had not been gun control is so historically illiterate on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start. There were between 5.5 million and 6 million victims of the Holocaust. Of those, only — I hate to say “only” in this context, but relatively speaking — only a couple of hundred thousand were German, meaning only a couple of hundred thousand lived in a country where the Nazi laws were actually relevant. The great majority of Holocaust victims were from Poland or the Soviet Union, so German laws had nothing to do with them. So NRA types would have to take their complaints and theories to Joseph Stalin
Then you have to consider the circumstances under which people died in the Holocaust. I actually read a comment where someone actually said, “If people had guns when the Nazis came to get them to put them on trains and send them to the camps then they could have fought back.” Well, by no means did everybody who was killed in the Holocaust die that way. Nearly half of Holocaust victims died at the hands of mobile killing squads. These were basically massive forces of police officers who swept through areas like Poland and the Soviet Union just behind the German army as it advanced. They would roll into a village and identify the people they wanted to kill. This would happen very quickly. The mobile killing squads would enter an area and a few hours later tens of thousands of people are dead.
In that kind of situation a person does not have time or knowledge to contemplate what is going to happen. Let’s leave aside the fact that Joe Citizen with a gun is not going to get very far against the German army. Most armies didn’t get very far against the German army in World War II. The Allies did not win until we had an enormous material superiority over the Germans.
Last but not least, let’s consider the fact that a great number of Holocaust victims were elderly people or children, and the perpetrators coming to kill them were healthy young men. A firefight is not going to go well under those circumstances. It’s so dumb on every possible level. Frankly, even by NRA standards that’s a dumb talking point.
Under the rich asshole there has also been a celebration by his voters and other allies of the cruelty by ICE enforcers against undocumented immigrants, their families and communities. What does history tell us about such casual cruelty and its impact on a given culture?
That too has parallels in the past. It’s one of the hardest things for many of us to fathom. How you could look at someone who maybe is a refugee from a place where they are going to get killed by a gang, or the government is going to torture them, and think it’s a good idea to turn them over to ICE. I don’t know how you get there, especially when it’s children. We hear horror stories about children escaping from various places and yet there are people who want to turn them back.
Of course this happened with the Nazis. It happened in the case of the Holocaust. It was remarkable how some Holocaust perpetrators seemed ready to revel in cruelty towards children.
When you hear the rhetoric which is emerging from some rich asshole or from people around him and from some of his supporters, that rhetoric really seeks to dehumanize people. It is a coded transmission that says, “It’s OK now, it’s open season on people. You can do this.” That certainly is what happened in Nazi Germany and I think we have a mild version of it happening here. But then there were good people too. The person who had an unfailing moral compass and would take risks to help a Jewish person hide or help them escape. I know we have those people too. I just hope those people outnumber those who would be cruel, who would dehumanize their neighbors.
Matt Schlapp scurries when NPR asks about his wife who defended mocking McCain: The ‘bigger issue’ is leaks
American Conservative Union's Matt Schlapp (screen capture)
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Conservative pundit Matt Schlapp argued on Monday that White House leaks are a “bigger” problem than the staffer who mocked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his brain cancer.
During an interview on NPR, Schlapp was confronted about his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, the White House director of strategic communications, after she defended staffer Kelly Sadler’s so-called “joke” about McCain dying. Sadler was quoted as saying McCain’s opposition to the rich asshole’s nominee for CIA director doesn’t matter because he’s dying of brain cancer.
"In all candor, Kelly does report to her,” Schlapp admitted. “And I think Kelly acknowledged that the words she used in this meeting were unfortunate and called Meghan McCain immediately to apologize.”
Schlapp failed to note that McCain’s daughter asked Sadler to publicly apologize but she has refused to do so. Instead, he argued that the “bigger issue” is that staffers are leaking details of White House meetings.
“The bigger issue the White House has is that they can’t have confidential meetings without people on their own staff leaking it,” Schlapp opined. “And that is a mortal threat to the success of this agenda.”
In a separate Monday morning appearance on CNN, Schlapp argued that Sadler was the “victim.”
“She showed character to immediately call to apologize, but she’s also a little bit of a victim here,” he said. “The people who leaked what she said are clearly people who have an animus against her and that’s the problem in this White House.”
Listen to the NPR interview below.
Foreign policy expert quakes with anger as he watches Ivanka partying in Israel while Gaza burns
Richard Haas (MSNBC)
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Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinians in Gaza as the U.S. Embassy officially opened in Jerusalem — and foreign policy expert Richard Haas grew visibly angry as he watched the two scenes unfold.
Haas, the longtime president of the Council on Foreign Relations, harshly criticized President some rich asshole’s decision as he watched a split-screen video of the president’s daughter and son-in-law taking part in the opening ceremony while violence raged in the Palestinian territory.
"Hard to watch these images on the screen and just not be worried about the future,” Haas said. “I see none of the seeds of progress there. What you see are the seeds of growing confrontation and violence, bad for the Palestinians and bad for Israel. What the United States is not doing is helping the situation.”
“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said the move undermined Israel’s security, and Haas interrupted with his voice quaking in anger as he slammed the rich asshole administrations diplomatic efforts.
“There’s a concept of medicine where doctors intervene and make patients worse,” Haas said. “The Middle East is a dying patient in many ways. It’s called iatrogenic illness when doctors intervene and hurt or kill patients. American diplomacy in the Middle East could be fairly charged with being iatrogenic.”
Newly-revealed interviews show the stunningly comprehensive scope of Mueller’s Russia probe
Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel overseeing the investigation into possible collusion between Russians and the rich asshole campaign in the 2016 election, continues to keep his cards close to his chest as his probe circles the White House AFP/File / SAUL LOEB
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While the big fish speared by special counsel Robert Mueller have relentlessly made headlines, his lesser-known potential witnesses may flesh out the story behind the rich asshole-Russia collusion probe.
The Atlantic‘s Natasha Bertrand wrote Monday that an associate of a shadowy professor linked to former the rich asshole campaign aide George Papadopoulos revealed in his new book that he’d been interviewed by Mueller’s team — and in doing so, showcased how “expansive” the special counsel’s probe has become.
In his book titled “The Faking of RUSSIA-GATE: The Papadopoulos Case,” German lawyer Stephan Roh — a close associate to Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, the man who allegedly told Papadopoulos that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton — wrote that Mueller’s team intercepted and interrogated him for “hours” last October in New York.
According to Bertrand’s report, two other “obscure players” — Ivan Timofeev, a program director at a Kremlin-funded think tank and Ted Malloch, a British academic tied to Roger Stone — were also interviewed by Mueller’s team. Roh and Malloch, who wrote a similar book aiming to “debunk” the Russia investigation titled “The Plot to Destroy the rich asshole: How the Deep State Fabricated the Russia Dossier to Subvert the President,” argue another conspiracy is at play — one involving “Western intelligence” planting figures like Papadopoulos to “trick” the rich asshole campaign into collusion.
Roh’s book also claims that Mifsud “has been requested to hide, not to communicate, and not to speak to the press” by the Italian secret services. Though that claim has not been corroborated, the professor has been so far out of the public eye that in February, BuzzFeed News reported that a woman claiming to be Mifsud’s fiancée believed him to be missing and hadn’t spoken to him in months.
the rich asshole administration so desperate for help that it’s stopped asking hires for professional references: report
Pres. some rich asshole (screen capture)
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The rich asshole administration has had trouble filling multiple key positions in the government — and now it’s drastically lowering its hiring standards to get them filled.
The New Yorker reports that the rich asshole administration has stopped asking prospective hires for professional references when they apply for jobs, which the publication describes as part of a broader effort at lowering barriers to bringing new people aboard.
The report notes that the Obama administration “had used a questionnaire with sixty-three queries about employment, finances, writings, and social-media posts” before it hired people, and it says that the rich asshole administration has slashed the number of questions by more than half, while removing questions about “loans, personal income, and real-estate holdings.”
The administration has also followed the president’s own lead and is not asking prospective hires to show their tax returns, the report claims.
One source also tells the New Yorker that the administration has sought creative ways for hires to get around potential concerns about conflicts of interest so that they could work for the administration without relinquishing their current investments.
“If you look at them as technical rules that lawyers should be able to ‘get around,’ that gives you a whole different approach,” one source explained. “It’s like tweeting after a couple of beers. It’s not going to end well.”
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May 14, 2018
Television made the rich asshole, but 'TV lawyers' won't save him.
As special counsel Robert Mueller closes in on the rich asshole and his minions, the rich asshole is reportedly hungry for more of what’s gotten him in the most trouble lately: “TV lawyers.”
A deeply reported piece by The Washington Post paints the picture of an investigation that is closing in fast, and has a lot of the goods on the rich asshole.
In interviews with witnesses and White House officials, the Post reported on a parade of witnesses, who were surprised at the amount of evidence — “including text messages and emails” — that accompanied the questioning.
But instead of worrying about the mountain of evidence and the parade of witnesses, the rich asshole is fretting about his legal presence … on television:
The president vents to associates about the FBI raids on his personal attorney Michael Cohen — as often as “20 times a day,” in the estimation of one confidant — and they frequently listen in silence, knowing little they say will soothe him. the rich asshole gripes that he needs better “TV lawyers” to defend him on cable news and is impatient to halt the “witch hunt” that he says undermines his legitimacy as president. And he plots his battle plans with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, his new legal consigliere.
Giuliani has been the television face of the rich asshole’s meager legal team for a few weeks now, and the results have been devastating for the rich asshole.
Giuliani was hired in mid-April, but came out from behind the curtains two weeks ago when special counsel Robert Mueller’s questions for the rich asshole were leaked to the media, an unwise move that observers suggest had Rudy’s fingerprints all over it.
Days later, Rudy stunned Sean Hannity with the bombshell revelation that the rich asshole reimbursed Michael Cohen for the hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, which would mean the rich asshole lied when he denied knowing about it.
The next morning, Giuliani gave another Fox interview, during which he drew an explicit connection between the payoff and the 2016 election; and that weekend, he confirmed that the rich asshole and attorney Michael Cohen have a “long history” of payments like the one made to Daniels.
But the rich asshole has thus far stuck with Giuliani, who even said, in that same Post story where the rich asshole complains about his “TV lawyers,” that he and the rich asshole are “on the same wavelength.”
Maybe Giuliani and the rich asshole haven’t noticed that the lawyers who quit over the rich asshole’s failure to follow sound legal advice are not the ones who went on TV for him. Jay Sekulow, who has repeatedly been caught lying for the rich asshole, is the only other “TV lawyer” on the rich asshole’s team.
If the rich asshole thinks there’s anything that will save him from Mueller, let alone that “TV lawyers” will do the trick, he’s deluding himself.
WATCH: White House fears Mueller will indict Don Jr and Jared — but the silence is making the rich asshole ‘crazy’
Morning Joe panel (MSNBC)
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The special counsel investigation has resulted in four guilty pleas and 19 indictments — but no one in Washington knows what could come next, because Robert Mueller isn’t talking.
Many the rich asshole aides and associates believe the president will ultimately be exonerated in the probe, but they told the Washington Post that some rich asshole Jr. and Jared Kushner could be indicted.
"The interactions with the Mueller team have been limited for this White House,” said the Post‘s Robert Costa, who reported the story. “Officials go in as witnesses, (Rudy) Giuliani, the former New York mayor, working as the president’s personal lawyer and interacting with some of the Mueller prosecutors and FBI agents.”
Costa told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that a meeting with a Russian attorney set up by the rich asshole Jr. and attended by both Kushner and Manafort remains under scrutiny by Mueller, who’s also looking into possible efforts by the president to obstruct the investigation of that the rich asshole Tower meeting.
“They also feel like there’s this variable inside the probe with regard to the president’s family,” Costa said. “Some of his advisers, they know about Gen. (Mike) Flynn, they know about others like (Paul) Manafort, who have been indicted and are about to go to trial. But those who haven’t even been interviewed, or with Mr. Kushner, they’re not sure where this is going, and that’s part of the problem for this White House. That’s why Giuliani said the president is trying to work on foreign affairs, because they just don’t know how long Mueller will take when it comes to the conduct question of the investigation and the collusion aspect.”
New York Times reporter Nick Confessore said Mueller may be the quietest but most powerful man in Washington, D.C., and MSNBC’s John Heilemann said that silence had driven the president mad.
“It makes the rich asshole crazy,” Heilemann said.
That leaves plenty of room for attorney Michael Avenatti, who’s suing the president on behalf of porn actress Stormy Daniels, to antagonize the president with findings from his own investigation.
“All he gets is more Avenatti in his face,” Heilemann said. “It’s like there’s a double teamed yin-yang thing going on that I think is part of the mental gamesmanship that’s put the rich asshole on defense.”
He noted that the rich asshole stopped his personal attacks last week and left Vice President Mike Pence, White House chief of staff John Kelly and attorney Rudy Giuliani to push back against the Mueller probe.
“That’s how a normal White House would go about making the argument, not have the president on Twitter or acting in a histrionic way,” Heilemann said. “You wonder if for all the other noise whether they’re finding their way towards a more conventional strategy of trying to undermine the various probes under which they’re operating.”
the rich asshole shill defends aide’s ‘perfectly logical’ attack on John McCain
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The White House aide who made the comment is 'a bit of a victim here,' of course.
While the rich asshole’s White House has refused to apologize for an aide’s horrific joke about Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) dying before he can cast a crucial vote, one prominent the rich asshole supporter is actually defending it as a “perfectly logical” thing to say.
During a closed-door meeting last Thursday, White House special assistant Kelly Sadler said the administration shouldn’t worry about McCain’s opposition to the rich asshole CIA director nominee Gina Haspel by saying, “It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.”
It was horrific enough to prompt backlash even from the hosts of “Fox & Friends.” And the remark caused outrage at the White House — but only because they got caught saying it.
On Monday morning’s edition of CNN’s “New Day,” CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp went several steps further than the White House’s refusal to apologize. He told host Chris Cuomo that Sadler is “a bit of a victim here” and tried to defend the logic of her remark.
“It was about the president’s nominee to head the CIA,” Schlapp said. “And it is true that when you’re counting heads in the Senate, and people are doing it on all types of issues, you’re trying to figure out who is going to be there on a given day.
“It’s a perfectly logical thing to say, ‘Hey, will there be a McCain replacement? Will there be a McCain? Will he not be able to come to Washington? She could have meant it very matter of factly.”
Panelist Bill Kristol destroyed that excuse with one question: “Then why not come in the show and explain it?”
Schlapp is no ordinary the rich asshole shill, though, so his musings may be more than mere speculation. He’s married to the rich asshole communications adviser Mercedes Schlapp, who told the rich asshole staffers, “You can put this on the record… I stand with Kelly Sadler.”
The White House’s refusal to apologize, and Schlapp’s attempt to defend the remark, are really a defense of the rich asshole brand.
the rich asshole has shown his contempt for the sacrifices of American heroes like John McCain since long before he took office. And he has continued to do so ever since.
But the rich asshole’s nastiness is a selling point for his fans, not a deterrent, and that’s all that matters to this White House.
‘I’m angry and scared’: the rich asshole-backing CEO whines that his proposed tariffs will ‘cripple my company’
Lucerne International CEO Mary Buchzeiger (Screen cap).
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Even though President some rich asshole made slapping tariffs on foreign goods one of his signature campaign promises, one the rich asshole-backing CEO now finds herself horrified that he’s actually going to go through with it.
Writing in Crain’s Detroit, Lucerne International CEO Mary Buchzeiger writes that the rich asshole’s proposed tariffs on Chinese goods could wind up ruining her business.
Even though Buchzeiger backed the rich asshole in 2016 and “supports” his “campaign to level U.S. trade imbalances,” she didn’t expect him to enact anything like what he has proposed.
“I am… angry, frustrated and a little scared, because the unintended consequences of the president’s $50 billion tariffs on China would cripple my business in Auburn Hills and strip my 50 employees of their good-paying jobs,” she writes. “This is crazy.”
She then goes on to explain how her company’s supply chain does have some jobs in Asia — but she says those jobs also pave the way for other jobs here in the United States. the rich asshole’s tariffs threaten to disrupt her whole supply chain, she says, which also puts her American employees’ jobs at risk.
“I’m angry and scared,” she writes. “Scared that my president is about to make a terrible mistake. Scared for my employees, who love their jobs, who make good money, and who get their college tuitions paid. Scared for my community and my country, which is about to be blindsided by a bad policy forged of best intentions.”
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May 14, 2018
the rich asshole's favorite Fox News sycophant Sean Hannity gets unlimited access and nightly calls.
the rich asshole is deeply lonely, and Sean Hannity suffers from insomnia, according to recent New York magazine reporting. Both men seethe with anger. So, in a way, it makes sense they talk nearly every night.
What makes no sense, however, is that someone who dropped out of college to become an AM talk show host is now considered the “leader” of the rich asshole’s shadow Cabinet, a powerful group of outside advisers who he constantly turns to for advice.
And, yes, lots of those shadow, or “kitchen,” Cabinet members work at the chronically hateful Fox News.
“Generally, the feeling is that Sean is the leader of the outside kitchen Cabinet,” one White House official told New York magazine.
The results? the rich asshole is often rattled by the hateful Fox News rhetoric, which often seems to instantly become translated into U.S. policy.
In March, after spending his Easter holiday weekend at Mar-a-Lago, hanging out with a number of radical, anti-immigration Fox News players that included Hannity and Jeanine Pirro, the rich asshole promptly unfurled a Tweet hate storm on the subject, which unfolded over days.
“What ends up happening is Judge Jeanine or Hannity fill him up with a bunch of crazy shit, and everyone on staff has to go and knock down all the fucking fires they started,” says one White House source.
Hannity’s grip on the rich asshole only seems to have tightened this year, as the rich asshole retreats further into a Fox News cocoon. Last year, when dealing with the intricacies of the Iran nuclear deal, the rich asshole reportedly called Hannity for insights.
He did this same this winter while the two plotted the release of the GOP’s so-called Nunes Memo, which turned out to be a political flop. (As noted in February, it’s highly doubtful that the rich asshole and Hannity’s nightly — and sensitive — calls are being conducted on secure lines.)
Hannity’s utter devotion to the rich asshole, which comes in the form of utterly fawning interviews, is often warmly repaid. Just last month, for example, the rich asshole urged his 50 million Twitter followers to tune into a special night of Hannity programming on April 11.
Meanwhile, the rich asshole remains obsessed with using Fox News hosts as advisers.
Earlier this year, the rich asshole summoned his then-Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin to the White House for a meeting. the rich asshole quickly stunned Shulkin by dialing up a “Fox & Friends” host and putting him on speakerphone so the TV talker could lend his advice.
It’s the blind leading the blind.
Michael Cohen tried to get Uber to pay him by saying he’s ‘the president’s lawyer’ — and still got rejected
Michael Cohen (CNN)
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Michael Cohen last year tried to strong-arm transportation company Uber into paying him cash — but he still got rejected despite the fact that he told them he was President some rich asshole’s personal attorney.
According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Cohen approached Uber last year and told them that “you need to hire me” because “I have the best relationship with the president on the outside.”
However, the WSJ reports that Uber executives were wary of hiring Cohen, given his past and present work in the taxi industry.
“Mr. Cohen repeatedly pitched Uber, which said no, citing Mr. Cohen’s ownership of New York taxi medallions as a potential conflict of interest with the ride-hailing firm, a person close to the company said,” the publication writes. “He modified his pitch in response to those objections, reminding the company he was ‘the president’s lawyer,’ this person said.”
Despite this, however, Cohen was still rejected.
Even though Cohen couldn’t persuade Uber, he was successful in getting both pharmaceutical company Novartis and telecom giant AT&T to give him money in exchange for access to the president — and both companies have since acknowledged that paying Cohen anything was a massive mistake.
Mike Pence addresses one of the most LGBTQ-unfriendly colleges in the country
And he actually praised them for their nondiscrimination policies.
Vice President Mike Pence addressed the graduating class this weekend at Michigan’s Hillsdale College, which has been ranked as one of the most LGBTQ-unfriendly campus in the country. It’s the second time Pence has spoken there, belying his efforts to downplay his own anti-LGBTQ record.
In his commencement remarks, Pence ironically praised Hillsdale’s history of nondiscrimination protections. “In 1844, those men and women did what no other college had done up to that time,” he said of its founders. “Hillsdale College prohibited any discrimination based on race, religion, and gender — at its very founding.” This is true, but the sentiment has not held up for LGBTQ students.
In 2009, a group of Hillsdale students tried to form a Gay-Straight Alliance. The following year, the Hillsdale Board of Trustees explained why the club was prohibited in a news set of guidelines “regarding the mission and moral commitments of Hillsdale College.” The guidelines explain that “the College has always understood morally responsible sexual acts to be those occurring in marriage and between the sexes.” Same-sex marriage was, of course, not legal in Michigan at the time.
“This understanding has been unwavering, undergirds its policies regarding student conduct, and informs its institutional practices,” the guidelines continue. Pressure to counter the college’s commitment in that regard would “disrupt its good order” and would be inconsistent with “both its independence and its purpose.”
Hillsdale’s “independence” is notable. It does not allow students to take any federal funding to help pay their tuition, which means it is not bound by many federal education regulations — including those that govern how to respond to sexual assault as well as discrimination protections that, under the Obama administration at least, extended to LGBTQ students. Many other religious schools that do receive federal funding have obtained Title IX waivers so that they can also discriminate against LGBTQ students.
In 2015, a month before the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing marriage equality for same-sex couples nationwide, a Hillsdale chaplain sent an email to the campus community informing them that “ugly things are happening in the Supreme Court right now.” If Justice Anthony Kennedy supports marriage equality, Chaplain Peter Beckwith warned, “I do not even think we can imagine the effects this could have on our nation, the church, and families.” He invited all recipients to attend a gathering that day to pray “for evil to be revealed and destroyed” — i.e. for a ruling against marriage equality.
This is the school Pence called a “beacon of liberty and American ideals.”
It’s not a good look for Pence, who has repeatedly lied about his history of anti-LGBTQ positions. In 2000, Pence’s congressional campaign website said that he would only support HIV treatment funding if it was diverted from organizations that “celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus” and distributed instead to “institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” Over the past two years, Pence has rejected the characterization that he supported for ex-gay conversion therapies, insisting instead he wanted to support “groups that promoted safe sexual practices.” This is wholly unbelievable given Pence said in a 2002 interview that condoms don’t work and that ““the only truly safe sex…is no sex.”
Further undermining his contemporary claims, Pence offered a “religious freedom” amendment to a 2007 hate crimes bill that he hoped would protect “pro-family groups showing that many former homosexual people had found happiness in a heterosexual lifestyle.”
Pence did not discuss these topics this weekend, instead dedicating much of his remarks to boasting that “faith in America is rising again.” This is despite the fact that polls have repeatedly shown that the “nones” — those with no specific religious affiliation — are the fastest growing group, while Christian beliefs have been on the decline.
Pence concluded his remarks by urging the students to embrace their faith as part of the administration’s plan to “Make America Great Again.”
“If you hold fast to Him, if you live according to all that you have learned and the examples that you have seen in this special place, if you rededicate yourselves to the noble mission that has always animated the graduates of this college, I just know, at the bottom of my heart, right after we get done making this nation great again, your generation will make America greater than ever before.”
WATCH: Mike Pence says more Americans believe in God now because some rich asshole is president
Mike Pence (Youtube)
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Vice President Mike Pence delivered the commencement address to graduating students at a small, private, ultra-conservative Christian college in Michigan Saturday afternoon. Many consider the former Indiana governor a devout Catholic, and his speech certainly supported that perception.
The Vice President told the Hillsdale College graduating class that because some rich asshole is now president, more Americans believe in God.
"Faith in America is rising again because President the rich asshole and our entire administration have been advancing the very principles that you learned here in the halls of Hillsdale College,” Pence said. “The principles that have always been the source of America’s greatness and strength.”
“Facts are facts,” Pence also insisted. “Faith is rising across America.”
Hillsdale happens to have major ties to the family of Betsy DeVos. The college “considers itself a trustee of our Western philosophical and theological inheritance,” according to its website. The Education Secretary and her brother, Erik Prince, are graduates of the school. Prince, the founder of the Blackwater security services company, sits on its board. He has been questioned by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Pence also made other questionable claims – even claims that seemed to be at odds with other remarks in his own speech.
“Faith has always been the wellspring of hope for millions of Americans, and from our Founding, faith has been the foundation of our freedom, and religion essential to our republic,” the Vice President said.
“The percentage of Americans who live out their religion on a weekly basis – by praying, going to church, and reading and believing in the Bible – has remained remarkably consistent over the decades, even as the population of the United States has grown by leaps and bounds,” he claimed.
Pence also told the students that on a per capita basis, Americans are four times as religious as they were when the country was founded.
Aside from being able to get Vice President Pence as its commencement address speaker, Hillsdale college is famous another, albeit less distinguished reason. Last December Republicans tried to exempt the school from a tax on university endowments. The amendment was craftily worded to exclude from having to pay the tax an college or university that does not accept any federal funds. Hillsdale is the only college or university that does not accept any federal funds. Democrats were able to defeat the handout.
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Israeli embassy opens with prayer from American pastor who said ‘you can’t be saved by being a Jew’
Mitt Romney called Robert Jeffress a "religious bigot."
the rich asshole administration officials attended the opening ceremony of the controversial new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem on Monday — and invited several extreme Religious Right figures to play a major role in the events.
Giving the opening prayer in the world’s only Jewish nation, in a largely Muslim region, was a Dallas Southern Baptist preacher named Robert Jeffress. Another evangelical preacher, John Hagee, delivered the benediction.
The selection did not sit well with previous Republican presidential nominee and current U.S. Senate candidate Mitt Romney, who called Jeffress a “religious bigot” who “should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy of Jerusalem.”
Jeffress, who serves on the White House’s Evangelical Advisory Board, is one of some rich asshole’s most prominent faith advisers. Jeffress delivered a sermon at a private church service just prior to the rich asshole’s inauguration in January 2017. Jeffress also spoke before a the rich asshole rally in September 2016, after which the rich asshole said, “I love that guy!”
Jeffress has a history of extremely far-right views. He has called Islam “false religion” which is “inspired by Satan himself.” According to Jeffress, “you can’t be saved by being a Jew.” He said President Obama is guilty of “paving the way” for the Antichrist. He has called gay people “miserable” and “filthy.” To Jeffress, the rich asshole paying off an adult film star to stay quiet about an affair “doesn’t matter” because “evangelicals understand the concept of sin and forgiveness.” He’s said that protesting NFL players should “thank God” they haven’t been “shot in the head.” He has argued on Fox & Friends that the Bible gives the rich asshole the “moral authority use whatever force necessary, including assassination or even war, to topple an evil dictator like Kim Jong-un.”
Jeffress is also a proponent of the evangelical concept of dispensationalism, which is the idea that Jews returning to Israel is part of God’s plan to bring about the events in the New Testament’s Book of Revelations, which describes the end of the world.
The other pastor in attendance on Monday, Rev. John Hagee, is similarly extreme.
The GOP nominee before Romney, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), denounced Hagee in 2008 after Hagee endorsed him for president. McCain’s rationale is particularly relevant to the rich asshole’s decision to pick him to open the American embassy in Israel: He rejected Hagee’s endorsement because of a sermon Hagee gave in the late 1990s where he attempted to provide biblical support for the idea that Adolf Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews was part of God’s plan to push them to Israel.
In the sermon, Hagee quoted from the Book of Jeremiah that “they the hunters should hunt them [the Jews] … from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.” He concluded: “If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can’t see that.”
McCain, in rejecting Hagee’s endorsement, said he found “these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible.” Hagee withdrew his endorsement, saying the critics were “grossly misrepresenting my position on issues most near and dear to my heart if it serves their political ambitions.”
The president, who sent a delegation led by Jared Kushner, Ivanka the rich asshole, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (but including no Democrats) to the ceremony, played event promoter.
U.S. Embassy opening in Jerusalem will be covered live on @FoxNews & @FoxBusiness. Lead up to 9:00 A.M. (eastern) event has already begun. A great day for Israel!
More than 100 American Jews protested in the streets of Washington, D.C. Monday morning, calling the embassy move the “Embassy of Occupation.” In Gaza, where thousands are protesting the embassy move on the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence, one recent death toll hit 46, with 1,703 injuries. the rich asshole spoke to the ceremony in Jerusalem via video and did not mention the protests, before tweeting, “Big day for Israel! Congratulations!”
John Oliver: Michael Cohen is a lawyer that is so sh*tty it made the rich asshole say ‘get me someone good — Rudy Giuliani’
John Oliver (Photo: Screen capture)
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In his Sunday wrap-up, comedian John Oliver recapped the absurdity surrounding the ever-increasing public relations insanity surrounding notorious “the rich asshole fixer” Michael Cohen.
Oliver began by explaining that President some rich asshole’s personal attorney is “so sh*tty” that it has prompted him to seek out Rudy Giuliani as his latest top counselor.
Cohen was already in trouble with the campaign finance violations for the payout to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Then things got much worse. Novartis disclosed it’s contract with Cohen for $1.2 million. They were then followed by a slew of other companies that came clean about hiring Cohen for his influence over “swampy” the rich asshole.
Oliver mocked Cohen for calling his company “Essential Consultants, LLC,” because Cohen is neither essential nor a consultant. In fact, since Cohen is the sole employee, even the “s” in “consultants” is “a lie.”
One potential client pitched by Cohen promised an impact based on his closeness to the rich asshole but also his ability to influence the president. Oliver noted lawyers aren’t generally known for campaigning for potential clients by revealing things about their other clients.
“It’s like a doctor saying, ‘If you try me I’ll tell you about all of Larry King’s birth marks,'” Oliver quipped. “Well, first, you’re not supposed to be sharing that information. Second, ew! Ew!”
Russian-owned company Columbus Nova was one such company that hired Cohen’s services. Oliver explained that the world is still unclear what exactly Cohen’s expertise even is. “Other than wearing jackets that look like they should be worn by a leprechaun used car salesman.”
The HBO host went on to mock Cohen for meeting with Novartis one time before they decided they’d made a horrible mistake and “never wanted to see this man again. They paid $1 million not to talk to Michael Cohen. When you put it that way, actually, it kind of starts to sound like a bargain.”
AT&T, on the other hand, hired Cohen on the first business day that the rich asshole was in the White House. They said they sought counsel into understanding the president’s thinking.
“Which is just ridiculous. Because, if you want to explain the president’s thinking, have a donkey kick you in the head five times and then turn on Fox News,” Oliver said.
Watch his full opener below:
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