North Korean official says country will rethink US summit if pressured to abandon nuclear program
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 05/15/18 11:02 PM EDT
North Korea will reconsider a planned summit with President the rich asshole if it continues to be pressured to "unilaterally" abandon its nuclear program, according to a senior North Korean official.
Yonhap News Agency reported on Tuesday that North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan says the country will not accept a U.S. deal that will force the country to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for the relaxation of economic sanctions.
the rich asshole accepted an offer for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier this year, stunning Washington, D.C., and the world after months of tough talk aimed at the North Korean government.
The statement came hours after the country announced it was suspending talks with South Korea, with which it had been engaged in unprecedented negotiations for weeks.
"The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities," North Korean state media said in a statement Tuesday, according to Yonhap.
The White House released a statement in response to the news on Tuesday afternoon, saying it “will look at” North Korea’s comments as the story develops.
“We are aware of the South Korean media report. The United States will look at what North Korea has said independently, and continue to coordinate closely with our allies,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
Saccone loses GOP primary comeback bid in Pa.
BY BEN KAMISAR - 05/15/18 11:00 PM EDT
Republican State Sen. Guy Reschenthaler is projected to win the GOP primary for Pennsylvania’s 14th Congressional District, a victory that puts him in strong position to win a spot in the House of Representatives come November.
The result also deals another damaging blow to the political career of GOP state Rep. Rick Saccone, who had looked to this primary for redemption after an embarrassing loss in a closely watched special election just weeks ago.
With 97 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Reschenthaler led Saccone by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent.
Saccone gave a teary concession speech, telling the crowd at his election night party that "I don't think we could have fought any harder," according to Pittsburgh's NPR affiliate WESA.
In the aftermath, Republicans lambasted Saccone as a weak candidate and openly mused about whether Reschenthaler would have fared better if he had won the nomination instead.
Reschenthaler built off of that sentiment to run again for the 14th District after new congressional boundaries drawn by the state Supreme Court went into effect. This time, with the decision in the hands of the voters instead of party insiders, he emerged victorious. Among his backers was former Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), whose resignation amid reports he asked a mistress to get an abortion triggered the March special election. Much of Murphy's former district is now a part of the new 14th District.
The state senator will be considered the heavy favorite in the district, which President the rich asshole won by almost 30 points in 2016.
the rich asshole-backed congressman wins GOP Senate primary in Pa.
BY LISA HAGEN - 05/15/18 09:44 PM EDT
Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) is projected to win the GOP primary in the marquee race for the Pennsylvania Senate seat now held by Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D).
The Associated Press called the race for Barletta at 9:41 p.m. EDT.
Barletta, who was backed by President the rich asshole and the Pennsylvania Republican Party, defeated little-known challenger state Rep. Jim Christiana Tuesday for the Republican nomination. Barletta, who has served in the House since 2011, will now face Casey in November.
Days ahead of Tuesday’s primary, the rich asshole recorded a robocall for Barletta, lauding the congressman as an immigration hard-liner and touting his support for the GOP’s tax plan.
Christiana pitched himself as a fresh alternative to both Barletta and Casey, who have both been in Washington for years. But the rich asshole's endorsement of Barletta, coupled with Christiana's low name recognition and fundraising, kept the state legislator from gaining traction.
While Barletta was heavily favored to win on Tuesday, the congressman still faced scrutiny during the primary campaign, particularly over his lackluster fundraising. Republicans had major concerns about Barletta's prospects against Casey after Barletta raised only a half-million dollars in the last three months of 2017.
Barletta stepped up his fundraising, however, raising more than twice that in the first quarter of this year. But Barletta is still far behind Casey, who has brought in more than $10 million since the beginning of the cycle.
Barletta also faced some damaging headlines, which will likely be fodder for Democrats in the general election.
In January, CNN reported that, when he was mayor of Hazleton, Pa., Barletta did an interview with American Free Press, a weekly newspaper that promotes anti-Semitic views. Barletta’s deputy campaign manager said the congressman was “not aware of these individuals’ background” when he did the interview, saying the candidate has always condemned “hate, bigotry and racial supremacy in all its forms.”
Casey, who has served in the upper chamber since 2007, is one of 10 Senate Democrats up for reelection in a state the rich asshole won in 2016. But while Pennsylvania trended red in 2016, the rich asshole only won the state by less than 1 point.
Casey goes into the general election with an edge — especially if the rich asshole’s approval ratings continue to remain underwater closer to the November election.
Ex-the rich asshole lawyer says president shouldn't have hired Giuliani
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 05/15/18 09:10 PM EDT
One of President the rich asshole's former lawyers said Tuesday that the president made an error in hiring former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) to his legal team amid the ongoing special counsel investigation into possible collusion between the rich asshole campaign and Russia.
Jay Goldberg, a longtime lawyer for the rich asshole who represented the president during his 1992 divorce from Ivana the rich asshole, told MSNBC's "The Beat with Ari Melber" that Giuliani is trying to “aggrandize himself” and hog the spotlight instead of representing the president to the best of his ability.
"For him to go on Sean Hannity without debriefing the president seems to me to be the height of unpreparedness," Goldberg said of Giuliani's now-infamous interview with Hannity, during which he revealed the rich asshole had repaid his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, for the $130,000 payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement.
"That's one thing I mentioned [to the rich asshole]," Goldberg continued. "That I thought Rudy would come into the case with the intent to take the spotlight off the rich asshole. And in some ways, seek to aggrandize himself, either at the expense of the rich asshole or not."
Goldberg has previously lashed out at other members of the rich asshole's legal team, including Cohen, who facilitated the payment to Daniels in weeks before the 2016 presidential election to keep her quiet about an alleged affair she says she had with the rich asshole in 2006.
In an April phone call, he reportedly told the rich asshole that on a scale of 1 to 100, where 100 represents full protection of the president, Cohen "isn't even a 1."
"Michael will never stand up [for you]," Goldberg said he told the rich asshole at the time.
Goldberg last month told CNN that he suspected Cohen would likely flip and cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors in order to avoid prison time. Cohen himself is under investigation for bank fraud.
"Prison has a racial overtone ... and someone like Michael doesn't see himself walking down Broadway while people are clamoring, 'You're going to be my wife,'" Goldberg said.
"A witness in Michael's position is able to glean what it would take to get a letter of cooperation from the government," he added. "And thereby avoid a lengthy prison term."
Activist praised by the rich asshole once ran online publication that mocked him: report
BY LUIS SANCHEZ - 05/15/18 08:46 PM EDT
A conservative activist who was recently praised by President the rich asshole ran an online publication less than two years ago that frequently mocked him, BuzzFeed News reported Tuesday.
Candace Owens served as the CEO of a now-defunct website called Degree180 that ran a series of posts expressing displeasure with the rich asshole, BuzzFeed reported, citing content preserved by the Internet Archive.
“Serious Question: Is some rich asshole a Social Experiment?” read the title of one story from 2015, while another reportedly detailed a mock "investigation" into the size of his penis, among other stories.
BuzzFeed said Owens did not respond to requests for comment. In tweets, she called the author of the BuzzFeed story a “despicable creature” and stressed that the people who worked at the now defunct site were young liberal girls who voted for Hillary Clinton.
“I will not submit to your version of what I should be as a black woman in this society, or else feel the whip of a political hit piece,” Owens wrote in another tweet. “I am free & I choose to be a PROUD supporter of President some rich asshole.”
Buzzfeed now verifying that it is “their job” to threaten to publish names of private young women who refuse to give quotes about their political targets.
Btw- these young girls are all liberals who voted for Hillary. I am trying to get them to come forward publicly about this. twitter.com/buzzfeednews/s…
Btw- these young girls are all liberals who voted for Hillary. I am trying to get them to come forward publicly about this. twitter.com/buzzfeednews/s…
For the record @BuzzFeed, you do not scare me. I will not submit to your version of what I should be as a black woman in this society, or else feel the whip of a political hit piece.
I am free & I choose to be a PROUD supporter of President Donald J. Trump. #FreeThinker
I am free & I choose to be a PROUD supporter of President Donald J. Trump. #FreeThinker
Owens, who works for the conservative organization Turning Point USA, drew increased attention last month after rapper Kanye West tweeted his approval of her ideas. the rich asshole also praised Owens, listing her among “very smart 'thinkers' " in a tweet last week.
Candace Owens of Turning Point USA is having a big impact on politics in our Country. She represents an ever expanding group of very smart “thinkers,” and it is wonderful to watch and hear the dialogue going on...so good for our Country!
I love the way Candace Owens thinks
Owens's recent popularity on the right is largely attributed to her rejection of liberal ideas surrounding issues like structural racism, inequality and identity politics, BuzzFeed noted.
The news outlet noted that much of her own writing on the defunct website was personal and didn’t focus on politics.
Giuliani: the rich asshole to use anniversary of Mueller appointment to press for end of Russia probe
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 05/15/18 07:59 PM EDT
President the rich asshole’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani says the rich asshole and his legal team plan to use the one-year anniversary of the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller on Thursday to push for the end of the federal Russia probe.
“We are going to try as best we can to put the message out there that it has been a year, there has been no evidence presented of collusion or obstruction, and it is about time for them to end the investigation,” Giuliani told Bloomberg.
“We don’t want to signal our action if this doesn’t work — we are going to hope they listen to us — but obviously we have a Plan B and C,” he added.
Mueller was appointed by the Justice Department as special counsel on May 17, 2017, eight days after the rich asshole fired former FBI Director James Comey, who was at the time leading the federal probe into ties between the rich asshole campaign associates and Russia.
Giuliani told Bloomberg on Tuesday that he doesn’t believe that the president needs to interview with Mueller in order for the special counsel probe to end, arguing that Mueller needs to prove why he needs an interview when his office has already received more than 1.2 million documents for the probe.
If the rich asshole were to agree to interview with Mueller, Giuliani said, the president would need to be promised that the investigation would conclude soon after the questioning.
“It is hard to recommend an interview when the questions presented indicate they have no evidence, and it is hard not to get at least the appearance they are attempting to trap him into perjury,” Giuliani told Bloomberg.
Mueller had reportedly suggested to the rich asshole’s legal team earlier this year that he would subpoena the president if he refused to sit down for an interview.
Giuliani claimed this month that the rich asshole wouldn’t have to comply with a possible subpoena from the special counsel.
the rich asshole has long blasted the Russia probe, calling it a “witch hunt.” In a tweet last month, the president called for the special counsel investigation to end.
the rich asshole pushed to evacuate military families from S. Korea ahead of Olympics: report
BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 05/15/18 07:20 PM EDT
President the rich asshole ordered top national security officials to prepare to evacuate U.S. military families living in South Korea ahead of the Winter Olympics earlier this year, CNN reported Tuesday.
CNN, citing four current and former administration officials, reported that the rich asshole issued the directive earlier this year to then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster during a daily intelligence briefing.
McMaster reportedly directed National Security Council staff to prepare a presidential memorandum ordering the nearly 8,000 military dependents in South Korea to leave the country. The memo was then sent to White house chief of staff John Kelly.
“It was an order. It wasn't, ‘I'm thinking about it,'” one senior administration official told CNN, referring to the directive. “We saw it as a done deal.”
However, top national security officials — concerned that North Korea would interpret the move as the U.S. preparing for war — worked on a compromise behind the scenes, sources told CNN.
Defense Secretary James Mattis and Kelly reportedly convinced the rich asshole to agree to an alternate directive that would instead stop U.S. military personnel from bringing their families to South Korea during future tours.
A new memorandum on the compromise was drafted, CNN reported, but it was never implemented.
The evacuation order reportedly came as the rich asshole and his advisers were debating the potential to conduct a targeted strike against sites in North Korea in a "bloody nose" strategy.
A former senior administration official told CNN that they believed that the rich asshole at the time wanted to send a signal to the Pentagon that “he was serious about studying military options for North Korea.”
Another administration official told the network that the rich asshole believed it wouldn’t be smart to keep military families in South Korea if tensions spiraled into military action.
The CNN report underscores the aggressive measures that were reportedly under consideration by the rich asshole before the warming in relations between the U.S. and North Korea in recent weeks.
the rich asshole plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a summit in Singapore next month in what would be the first-ever meeting between a North Korean leader and sitting U.S. president.
the rich asshole has repeatedly touted the meeting in recent weeks as part of efforts to see Pyongyang end its nuclear program, but North Korea on Tuesday seemingly threatened that the summit may be at risk because of joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises.
North Korea's Korean Central News Agency said the drills between the U.S. and South Korean air forces are an "intentional military provocation" to undermine recent diplomatic talks.
The White House released a statement in response saying it “will look at” North Korea’s comments as it moves forward.
Neo-conservative rails against ‘pathetic’ GOP senators who ‘just roll over for the rich asshole’ instead of sticking up for McCain
Frank Bruni, Don Lemon and Bill Kristol (Photo: Screen capture)
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CNN commentator Bill Kristol had some choice words for President some rich asshole’s long history of not apologizing and only being forced to admit he’s wrong for PR purposes.
During Tuesday’s Don Lemon show, the host began by explaining that Republican members of Congress showed their true colors when they proved they were unwilling to stand up to the rich asshole during the meeting today.
“I think they’d love to demand that the president apologize for what happened, but they’re not going to get anywhere,” said New York Times writer Frank Bruni. “It’s just fascinating because the White House, over the last four or five days, has never said that the remark about McCain was not made. And having no one apologize, not apologizing yourself — that would make sense if you were denying it was made, but no one’s denying it was made.”
He explained that it’s obvious the White House sees it as a sign of weakness and noted that this is just more of them thumbing their nose at tradition and the establishment.
The neo-conservative political commentator said that the Republican senators had an opportunity to not go along with it or say something, but instead they asked two “pathetic” questions and moved on.
“Whoever asked the question needs to say, ‘Mr. President, you should or could you please explain why you haven’t apologized or asked your chief of staff to apologize for what your chief of staff said about one of our colleagues?'” Kristol continued. He went on to claim that the rich asshole may have demeaned the Office of the President with this incident, but “the Republican senators demean, in my opinion, the Republican Party by the way they do nothing. They just rollover for the rich asshole. It’s pathetic.”
Bruni noted that Kristol might feel that way but Republicans have been doing the same thing for over a year.
“Well, they should stop,” Kristol concluded.
“I think it’s important that when outlandish things happen you shouldn’t normalize it,” Lemon cut in. “You shouldn’t say it’s OK. This is not OK.”
Bruni said that is exactly what both he and Kristol are doing. “I think, at this point they are so beaten down, and they have shown themselves in a year and a half honestly to be cowards with this president,” he said.
Lemon recalled the infamous “Access Hollywood” apology, that he then tried to take back by claiming it might not have been his voice on the recording. When the rich asshole decided former President Barack Obama was actually born in the United States and the whole “birther” movement was a lie, he did it after talking about his amazing hotels for the majority of his press conference.
“He was inventing a whole scenario by which his apology was unnecessary because it wasn’t him,” Bruni observed.
“No ‘I’m sorry for spreading lies and being a horrible human being to a sitting president,'” Lemon noted. “If you can be outraged and call people ‘sons of b*tches’ for because they take a knee because they think something is important in this country and should be addressed — and then, saying you can’t apologize or have someone apologize for saying that ‘he’s dying anyway’ to someone who is a war hero and served his country to the fullest extent. That is hypocrisy at its fullest on display.”
Watch the full segment below:
Court appears skeptical of allowing the rich asshole to end DACA
BY LYDIA WHEELER - 05/15/18 07:10 PM EDT
A California-based federal appeals court on Tuesday appeared unlikely to toss out a lower court order that forces the rich asshole administration to maintain the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program nationwide.
At least two of the three judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to agree the acting secretary of Homeland Security’s September decision to rescind the program violates the immigrants' rights to equal protection of the laws.
“Let’s say I think your equal protection claim is strong,” Judge John Owens, an appointee of President Obama's, said after starting out a hypothetical in which he asked one of the challengers’ attorneys if the court could uphold the lower court’s injunction on that argument.
Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, another Obama appointee, meanwhile, noted that hundreds of thousands of people have come to rely on the program, which has provided young people who were brought into the country illegally as children the opportunity to live and work in the U.S.
“To what extent do we look at the reliance issue in analyzing these issues?” she asked.
Attorney Mark Rosenbaum, who argued on behalf of the individual DACA recipients, told Nguyen he loved the question because it goes to the heart of the way the program works.
“They said that you could walk freely, but they did not say you could walk freely with the risk that by doing so you are handing over the keys to effectively remove you from the country,” he said.
In addition to individual DACA recipients, the states of California, Maine, Maryland and Minnesota and the University of California regents are also challenging the policy change, which has been blocked by three separate district court judges.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Hashim Mooppan faced a difficult challenge in convincing the court to strike down the nationwide injunction. All three judges on Tuesday’s panel were appointed by Democratic presidents.
Mooppan argued that the Department of Homeland Security was well within its rights to end DACA, given the agency's broad discretion over federal immigration policies.
But Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, an appointee of President Clinton, noted that when former Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly rescinded the Obama-era Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program, one of the reasons he gave was that it had not gone into effect.
“Whereas with respect to DACA, clearly it's gone into effect, yet nowhere does the acting secretary give any weight to that fact,” she said. “It seemed to weigh a lot to Director Kelly so I’m trying to understand that."
Mooppan said there’s nothing in the Immigration and Nationality Act that requires the Department of Homeland Security to consider peoples’ reliance on the program.
“I would point your honor to the fact the DACA policy doesn’t consider costs at all. There’s not one word in the DACA policy about what costs there are with potentially allowing 700,000 illegal aliens to work in this country despite the fact that there’s an act of Congress that says they’re not supposed to work,” he said.
“There is not one word in DACA that considers whether it's legal despite the serious concerns about the legality.”
Attorneys for the challengers were quick to use Mooppan’s own words against him in arguing for the injunction to be upheld.
“The record reflects not one word of consideration for the 700,000 DACA recipients, not one word of consideration about the welfare of their families, including their 200,000 U.S. citizen children, not one word of consideration about the schools they attend, their employers or even the national economy,” said Jeffrey Davidson, who argued on behalf of the University of California plaintiffs.
Not all the judges, however, appeared convinced that the administration’s decision was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. They also grappled with whether the court even has jurisdiction to review the agency’s decision and if they should consider President the rich asshole's tweets.
Without the 9th Circuit’s immediate intervention, the administration has argued in court briefs that the lower court’s injunction could remain in place for months, if not more than a year, while an appeal is heard, given the court’s calendar.
Lawsuits to keep the program in place have been brought in New York, Maryland and the District of Columbia. The state of Texas, meanwhile, has filed a lawsuit in federal district court arguing the DACA program should be struck down as unlawful.
"What happens if the Texas court declares DACA unlawful and you have four or five other decisions saying the rescission of DACA is unlawful?" Wardlaw asked Mooppan.
He said this is one of many reasons why nationwide injunctions are not appropriate for courts to issue.
"It puts the government in this sort of conflicting position where we could be faced with injunctions going both ways," he said.
the rich asshole’s lasting legacy may be the destruction of the federal government as we know it
President of the United States some rich asshole speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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His “ethics reform” plan was:
First: I am going to re-institute a 5-year ban on all executive branch officials lobbying the government for 5 years after they leave government service. I am going to ask Congress to pass this ban into law so that it cannot be lifted by executive order.Second: I am going to ask Congress to institute its own 5-year ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and their staffs.Third: I am going to expand the definition of lobbyist so we close all the loopholes that former government officials use by labeling themselves consultants and advisors when we all know they are lobbyists.Fourth: I am going to issue a lifetime ban against senior executive branch officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.Fifth: I am going to ask Congress to pass a campaign finance reform that prevents registered foreign lobbyists from raising money in American elections.
His personal lawyer Michael Cohen obviously didn’t read the third item on that memo. And it’s interesting that someone in the rich asshole’s campaign thought it was important to pretend they cared about foreigners raising money in elections.
This article was originally published at Salon
That tweet came on the heels of the first time the rich asshole used the phrase “Drain the swamp” in the 2016 campaign — which was very late in the game, just three weeks from election day. He had said earlier, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” but he didn’t really run explicitly as a political reformer.
But as Newsweek reported, in October his message changed:
the rich asshole promised to “drain the swamp” at a rally that day [Oct. 17, 2016] in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the first time he did so during the campaign. He did it the next day, October 18, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In Fletcher, North Carolina, he called Clinton “the most corrupt person ever to seek the office of the Presidency.”
One week later, then-FBI Director James Comey announced that investigators had found emails from Clinton on former congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop. the rich asshole ran with it:
“Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before,” he said in New Hampshire. Later, in Maine, he said Clinton’s use of a private email server — which Comey had already decreed did not merit criminal charges — was the “biggest scandal since Watergate.”
The reason to bring this up isn’t to point out the rich asshole’s hypocrisy, which is shooting fish in a barrel. The fact is that despite his tiresome repetition of the slogan “Drain the swamp” since the election it wasn’t one of the rich asshole’s signature chants, like “Lock her up” or “Build the wall.” It was something of an afterthought, a sort of extension of his claims that the system was “rigged” against him to steal the election. As the various investigations into his nefarious doings unfold, it seems obvious that was another projection of his own foibles on to his opponents.
Nonetheless, it is an article of faith among many of the chattering classes that he ran as a reformer who promised to clean up Washington. But the the rich asshole administration’s approach to dealing with the institutions of government is much more old-fashioned. It is simply governing by way of personal loyalty and fealty to the president rather than expertise, experience or seniority. It’s a spoils system, and not a very efficient one.
This article by Evan Osnos in the New Yorker about the razing of the federal workforce at all levels is an eye opener:
Across the government, more than half of the six hundred and fifty-six most critical positions are still unfilled. “We’ve never seen vacancies at this scale,” Max Stier, the president and C.E.O. of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that works to make the government more effective, said. “Not anything close.”Some of the vacancies are deliberate. As a candidate, the rich asshole promised to “cut so much your head will spin.” Amid a strong economy, large numbers of employees are opting to leave the government rather than serve it. In the rich asshole’s first nine months, more than seventy-nine thousand full-time workers quit or retired—a forty-two-per-cent increase over that period in Obama’s Presidency. To the rich asshole and his allies, the departures have been liberating, a purge of obstructionists. “The President now has people around him who aren’t trying to subvert him,” Michael Caputo, a senior campaign adviser, told me. “The more real the rich asshole supporters who pop up in the White House phone book, the better off our nation will be.”
If they cannot find a the rich asshole loyalist to fill a position they simply leave it empty.
the rich asshole’s definition of “populism” is unique. Osnos writes:
In the 2013 novel “A Delicate Truth,” John le Carré presents the “deep state” as a moneyed, cultured élite — the “non-governmental insiders from banking, industry, and commerce” whose access to information allows them to rule in secret. the rich asshole’s conception is quite different. A real-estate baron, with the wealthiest Cabinet in U.S. history, the rich asshole is at peace with the plutocracy but at war with the clerks — the apparatchiks who, he claims, are seeking to nullify the election by denying the prerogatives of his Administration.
This attack on “bureaucracy” is really an attack on law enforcement, the State Department, the intelligence community and ordinary bureaucrats who enforce regulations and monitor compliance with the law, along with anyone else the rich asshole and his henchmen see as enemies of the state. Even the usual suspects at the conservative think tanks who usually have the inside track on jobs in a new Republican administration (or, as with Iraq, a new occupied country) have been shut out because so many candidates were on record being critical of the rich asshole, which meant hiring them was out of the question.
Many people claim that underneath the bluster, some rich asshole is just another Republican who happens to have a big mouth and likes to use Twitter. But while he was made possible by the modern conservative movement and a political system that enabled such a man to become president, he is nonetheless sui generis. This evisceration of federal government institutions is nothing we’ve ever seen before.
The story Osnos tells about the elimination of experts and the deliberate erasure of institutional memory in department after department is chilling. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to replace these people even after the rich asshole is gone. His lasting legacy may be the destruction of the federal government as we know it.
Cohen falsely claimed in 2017 that the rich asshole Org had no recent activity in Russia
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 05/15/18 04:32 PM EDT
President the rich asshole's personal lawyer Michael Cohen falsely claimed in an interview last year that none of the rich asshole's confidantes were in contact with Russia during the campaign, omitting his own work with Russia on behalf of the rich asshole Organization.
In a January 2017 radio interview on The Sean Hannity Show reported by CNN on Tuesday, Cohen responded "no" when asked by Hannity whether anyone "within the campaign or around some rich asshole" had spoken to "anybody in Russia."
"There's no relationship," Cohen responded. "The last time that there was any activity between the rich asshole Organization — actually, wasn't even really the rich asshole Organization, it was the Miss Universe pageant, it was held in Moscow."
But later in 2017, CNN reported that Cohen was involved in an effort on behalf of the rich asshole Organization to pursue the construction of a rich asshole-branded tower in Russia, including a hotel with a spa to be named after Ivanka the rich asshole. The project was later scrapped.
Before the project was terminated, Cohen sent emails seeking Kremlin assistance in building the tower, according to CNN. Those emails took place at least in part during the rich asshole's successful 2016 run for president.
Cohen did not respond to CNN's request for comment on the omission.
The New York-based attorney is under investigation for bank fraud. Last month, Cohen's home and office were raided by FBI agents working off of a referral from Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible collusion between the rich asshole campaign and Russia.
Cohen and the rich asshole have both denounced the FBI raid and investigation as a breach of attorney-client privilege, and deny any wrongdoing.
Watch: Kamala Harris demands to know if the rich asshole ‘directed’ DHS Secretary Nielsen ‘to separate parents from their children’
C-SPAN footage of Sen. Kamala Harris
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On Tuesday, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen appeared in front of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee to talk about a range of issues, from the alleged use of drones by ISIS to the department’s deployment of more K-9s to intercede deadly fentanyl (even though there’s evidence that police dogs are not an effective method for finding drugs).
When it was US Senator Kamala Harris’ turn, she grilled Nielsen on one of the department’s most controversial policies: separating young children from their parents and putting them under state supervision.
"The President directed you to separate parents from their children as a deterrent. Is that correct?” Harris asked.
"The President directed you to separate parents from their children as a deterrent. Is that correct?” Harris asked.
Nielsen sharply denied that. “Anyone who breaks the law, you’ll be prosecuted. We will refer you to a prosecution if you have broken a US law,” she said.
“Your agency will be separating children from their parents” Harris insisted.
“We’ll be prosecuting people who have broken law,” Nielson shot back. When Harris demanded to know what protocols they had in place to make sure the separations cause as little trauma as possible, Nielson said she’d provide the committee with the information at a later date.
Watch:
North Korea warns US it could pull out of planned summit with the rich asshole
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 05/15/18 03:04 PM EDT
North Korea on Tuesday said a planned summit next month between President the rich asshole and Kim Jong Un is at risk because of joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea.
North Korea said it was ending talks with South Korea, and a confusing statement from the country's state news agency strongly suggested that the drills threatened the fate of the historic summit.
"The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities," North Korea's Korean Central News Agency said in a statement first reported by the Yonhap News Agency in South Korea.
The news agency said the drills between the South Korean and U.S. air forces are an "intentional military provocation" to undermine recent diplomatic talks.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, however, said there had been no talks between the United States and North Korea about the statement attributed to the North Korean news agency.
“I just saw that report as I was coming out here,” said Nauert at an on-camera press briefing.
She said the military exercises are planned well in advance, and that Kim said previously that he understands the need and the utility of continuing the joint exercises.
“We have not heard anything from [the North Korean government] or the government of South Korea to indicate that we would not continue conducting these exercises or that we would not continue planning for our meeting between President the rich asshole and Kim Jong Un next month,” she said.
“What we have to go on is what Kim Jong Un had said before, that he understands and appreciates the importance to the United States of having these joint exercises.”
“We will continue to go ahead and plan the meeting between President the rich asshole and Kim Jong Un.”
During press briefing, @statedeptspox Heather Nauert says Kim Jong-un threatening to cancel U.S. summit b/c of U.S. military exercises is news to her, insists Kim "understands and appreciates the importance to the U.S. of having these joint exercises."
The Pentagon later issued a response to the reports, emphasizing that "the defensive nature" of the drills "has not changed."
"The purpose of the training is to enhance the ROK-U.S. Alliance's ability to defend the ROK and enhance interoperability and readiness," the Pentagon said, referring to South Korea, whose official name is the Republic of Korea. "While we will not discuss specifics, the defensive nature of these combined exercises has been clear for many decades and has not changed."
The drills have been a longtime aggravation for North Korea, which has previously condemned the exercises as acts of aggression.
But North Korea had indicated as part of the talks with South Korea and the United States that it would no longer oppose the joint military drills.
It is possible the statement is an attempt to use the planned summit in Singapore between the rich asshole and Kim as leverage to get the United States and South Korea to end the drills, at least for the time being.
Both the rich asshole and Kim appear to have much invested in the planned summit, which the rich asshole has repeatedly touted in recent weeks.
North Korea last week released three Americans detainees following a visit from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a step hailed by the rich asshole.
Foreign policy experts have been skeptical of North Korea’s sudden willingness to engage in discussions about abandoning its nuclear program, noting that the country has reneged on past promises.
Pompeo said Sunday that the U.S. was going into talks with “eyes wide open with respect to the fact that the North Koreans have not proved worthy of their promises.”
“But we’re hopeful that this will be different, that we don’t do the traditional model, where they do something, and we give them a bunch of money, and then both sides walk away,” he added.
the rich asshole, who has praised Kim as "very honorable" during the lead-up to their summit, has said he'd be willing to walk out of the meeting if negotiations were not fruitful.
The U.S. has been pushing for Pyongyang to fully and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear program.
In return, the U.S. would aid the North Korean economy by lifting sanctions and allowing private capital to flow into the country. Pompeo has emphasized that economic aid for North Korea would not come at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.
Leaders from North and South Korea had been scheduled to meet Wednesday at the Peace House along the border between the two countries, but those talks were scrapped, according to Yonhap.
The meeting was intended as a follow-up to an April 27 discussion in which leaders pledged to put an official end to the Korean War and work toward “complete denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula.
Updated: 4:50 p.m.
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