May the 4th be with you.
Usually, Fridays are a slow day for news and such. Not with this administration.
NRA crowd cheers wildly as the rich asshole mocks John Kerry for breaking his leg in unhinged speech
the rich asshole addresses the NRA (Screenshot)
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An NRA crowd erupted in applause on Friday after President some rich asshole recalled former Secretary of State John Kerry breaking his leg.
During his speech, the president criticized Kerry for his handling on the Iran nuclear deal.
“Not the best negotiator we’ve ever seen. He never walked away from the table. Except when he went to the bicycle race, where he fell and broke his leg,” the rich asshole said.
Watch video below:
‘Rudy can fail’: the rich asshole lawyer Giuliani roasted over his humiliating ‘clarification’ of Stormy Daniels claim
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani -- (CNN screencapture)
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the rich asshole attorney Rudy Giuliani on Friday issued a “clarification” to his claims made earlier in the week about President some rich asshole reimbursing attorney Michael Cohen for paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
However, Giuliani’s clarification failed to clarify much, as he still didn’t address when the rich asshole learned of the payment to Daniels, and he said that he was only speaking of his own understanding of the Daniels situation, not the president’s understanding.
Given that Giuliani’s clarification left people more confused than ever, Twitter users erupted with mockery at the former New York City mayor, who was thrown under the bus by the rich asshole on Friday when he said that Giuliani didn’t know all the facts about the Daniels payment.
Check out some of the top reactions below.
Uh, no. Rudy can't put that 10-pound shit-genie back in a 5-pound bottle.
the noises coming from my mouth were not in fact what you heard, but rather, your understanding of what you heard, a common mistake, thank you, i am rudy, it is indisputably 2:19 pm twitter.com/ABC/status/992…
Why is the Media & Press calling Rudy Giuliani’s new lie a claification?
Michelle Wolf told us why
netw3rkRudy Giuliani offers a clarification of his Stormy Daniels timeline that clarifies nothing
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York speaking at a forum titled “Countering Iran’s Nuclear Terrorist Threats” hosted by the Iranian American Community of Arizona in Phoenix, Arizona. (Gage Skidmoer/Flickr)
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some rich asshole’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Friday issued a correction to his previous claim that the president repaid his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, $130,000 given to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
In a statement to ABC News, Giuliani said “the payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president’s family. It would have been done in any event, whether he was the candidate or not.”
Previously, Giuliani had told Fox News’ Sean Hannity to “Imagine if [the Daniels affair] came out on October 15, 2016 in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.”
Giuliani went on to say he was not describing the rich asshole’s knowledge of the Daniels matter, but his own, personal understanding.
Giuliani ended his statement with a dig at James Comey, arguing, “recent revelations about Comey further confirm the wisdom of the president’s decision” to fire the former FBI director.
Read Giuliani’s full statement below:
JUST IN: Rudy Giuliani issues statement "intended to clarify the views I expressed over the past few days." abcn.ws/2rlTDuv
The strangest thing about the unhinged Rudy Giuliani interview
Attorney for the president Rudy Giuliani on Fox News (Screenshot)
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Let’s give everyone the benefit of the doubt and agree that Rudy Giuliani’s bombshell pronouncements to Sean Hannity were actually part of a plan.
What else could it be?
The redoubtable Robert Costa of The Washington Post tweets that White House aides were “bewildered” watching Giuliani tell Sean Hannity that the rich asshole himself had paid back Michael Cohen for the Stormy Daniels hush money. They were similarly stunned to watch Giuliani admit to Hannity that the reason the rich asshole fired Jim Comey was because the then-FBI director wouldn’t publicly say that the rich asshole was not a target of the investigation.
Assuming this was a plan, it was one so tightly held that they didn’t even let the toady Hannity in on it. Hannity was, as one observer rightly pointed out, entirely gobsmacked by the entire interview. It was so tightly held that you have to wonder whether the rich asshole was even in on it.
Like the rest of us, Hannity couldn’t believe what he was hearing — which was Giuliani conceding that the rich asshole had lied about Comey and Stormy and Cohen and, we are left to presume, probably everything else. OK, we already knew that, but now we know that.
If you accept that it was a plan, what was the purpose? It couldn’t have been just to bury the bizarre story about the rich asshole’s doctor saying the rich asshole aides raided his office, which had to be embarrassing for the rich asshole but which basically sounded like a Peter Sellers movie plot. The smart people explain that the rich asshole was under such political and possible-criminal heat that he desperately needed another story. And maybe the truth, or at least another stab at the truth, was what was required.
So, Giuliani-tells-Hannity is the perfect way to do this.
Whatever he’s saying and wherever he’s saying it — Giuliani also predictably told Hannity that both Hillary Clinton and Jim Comey should be in jail — Giuliani is always unabashed and unembarrassed. Hannity, meanwhile, is dependably credulous and would, as Michael Cohen once said, take a bullet — at least a figurative one, possibly on 5th Avenue — for the rich asshole, meaning there would be no examination of the implications of Giuliani’s attempt at offhandedly delivering all that explosive news.
I was taken in. It looked to me as if Giuliani had gone off the rails because, let’s face it, he’s fully capable of doing that. As I might have tweeted myself, maybe the rich asshole should have paid Rudy the hush money.
But then you start putting it together. Rudy tells us of the “stormtrooper” raid of Cohen’s papers — yeah, the FBI-agents-as-Nazis meme — and we have to understand what the raid must have yielded. We can imagine that Cohen’s papers would show that the rich asshole had paid him back for the hush money, meaning that Cohen had lied and that the rich asshole — who would have you believe his lawyer paid out the $130,000 hush money to Stormy and that he repaid the lawyer for the hush money to Stormy without him knowing anything about Stormy — had lied.
The failure to report the Cohen hush money — which must be reported if he used it to help the campaign, and why else would Cohen have shut Daniels up just before the election? — would be a campaign finance violation. Those lawyers who don’t work for the rich asshole are saying that the rich asshole’s failure to report the Cohen money is still a violation whether the rich asshole paid back what amounts to a loan. According to Giuliani, he paid back the $130,000 with hundreds of thousands of dollars to spare, which leads us to wonder who else was being paid off. The finance violation is not a huge thing in and of itself, unless, of course, someone lied about it to the wrong people. Which may be why the rich asshole won’t be talking to Robert Mueller.
Then there’s the Comey issue. One of the issues Mueller is apparently exploring is whether the rich asshole’s firing of Comey amounted to obstruction of justice. We remember that the White House’s first explanation was that Comey was fired for having treated Hillary Clinton unfairly. Funny, right? Michelle Wolf wouldn’t have had the nerve to make that joke. So, not long after, the rich asshole told NBC’s Lester Holt the firing was about the “Russia thing,” which left the rich asshole admitting he fired Comey to get him off his back about the Russia probe. Obstruction, right?
To resolve the obstruction angle, Giuliani says the rich asshole fired Comey out of, well, personal pique because Comey had refused to publicly let the rich asshole off the hook.
Here’s Rudy: “He’s entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that, and he couldn’t get that. So he fired him, and he said, ‘I’m free of this guy.’”
That’s their story. Or their latest one. He fired Comey because he’s “free of this guy,” which may not the best way to end the obstruction story, but it’s apparently the best they could come up with.
But my favorite part of the Rudy affair came Thursday morning, the day after, with Giuliani’s appearance on – where else? — Fox and Friends, during which he tried to clean up the reasoning behind why the Stormy Daniels hush money shouldn’t be considered a campaign contribution.
“If we had to defend this as not being a campaign contribution, I think we could do that,” Giuliani said. “This was for personal reasons. The president had been hurt personally, not politically, personally so much and the first lady by the false allegations.”
So, this wasn’t about politics?
Well, here’s what he said moments later: “However, imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton. Cohen didn’t even ask. Cohen made it go away. He did his job.”
So, this was about politics?
As Giuliani said, Cohen did his job. And as now seems clear, Giuliani, as the rich asshole’s new lawyer, was trying to do his. When he wasn’t explaining away all of the rich asshole’s lies, he was explaining why the rich asshole probably wouldn’t sit down to answer Mueller’s questions.
“What they’re trying to do is trap him into perjury,” Giuliani said, “and we’re not suckers.”
They don’t think they’re suckers. But do you ever get the feeling that they’re pretty sure the rest of us are?
the rich asshole team demands China slash US trade surplus by $200 billion, cut tariffs
US President some rich asshole, warmly welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to what the US leader likes to call the "Winter White House," the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. (AFP / JIM WATSON)
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The United States has demanded that China cut its U.S. trade surplus by $200 billion, end subsidies for advanced technology industries and sharply cut import tariffs to U.S. levels, two people familiar with U.S.-China trade talks said on Friday.
The lengthy list of demands was presented to Beijing prior to the start of talks Thursday and Friday between top-level the rich asshole administration officials and their Chinese counterparts to try to sort out disputes that have threatened a damaging trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
The talks ended with China’s Xinhua news agency describing them as “constructive, candid and efficient” but with disagreements that remain “relatively big.”
The U.S. side has yet to give its account of the talks, and there was no sign that President some rich asshole would back off on his threat to impose tariffs on up to $150 billion in Chinese goods over allegations of intellectual property theft.
Speaking with reporters in Washington on Friday, the rich asshole said he was determined to bring fairness to the U.S.-China trading relationship.
“We’re going to have some incredible trade deals announced,” the rich asshole said, adding he had “great respect” for China’s President Xi Jinping. “That’s why we’re being so nice, because we have a great relationship.
The United States has proposed tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods under its “Section 301” intellectual property probe. Those could go into effect in June following the completion of a 60-day consultation period, but activation plans have been kept vague.
China has said its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, including soybeans and aircraft, will go into effect if the U.S. duties are imposed.
PUNITIVE ACTION
the rich asshole on Thursday praised his relationship with Chinese President Xi as the U.S delegation began their talks, which were held at a state guest house in the western part of the Chinese capital.
the rich asshole on Thursday praised his relationship with Chinese President Xi as the U.S delegation began their talks, which were held at a state guest house in the western part of the Chinese capital.
U.S. complaints about Chinese intellectual property abuses are at the core of the current dispute. The rich asshole administration says U.S. companies lose hundreds of billions of dollars annually to China’s theft of trade secrets.
Some economists noted that the deficit with China was the natural result of the large amount of manufacturing assembly of U.S. products, such as iPhones, that takes place in China.
“As long as China remains the assembly hub of the world, it’s always going to have a large trade surplus with developed consumer countries like the U.S. and the E.U. and that’s not necessarily a problem,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics.
Reporting by Sue-Lin Wong and David Lawder; Editing by Andrea Ricci
‘This is not going well’: Fox panel admits Stormy Daniels scandal is devolving into chaos for the White House
Fox News' Outnumbered cast
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A Fox News panel on Friday was stunned by some rich asshole’s excuse as to why Rudy Giuliani contradicted the White House’s claim he was unaware of any payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, noting the president’s legal strategy “is not going well.”
During a press scrum Friday, the rich asshole walked backed Giuliani’s admission that the president repaid his longtime attorney Michael Cohen the $130,000 to Daniels. The president argued Giuliani is a new member of his legal team and will “get his facts straight.”
Discussing the president’s legal whiplash, co-host Melissa Francis exclaimed, “Whew, alright.”
“I know I fell off my chair in my office when I heard that,” Francis said. “Guy [Benson] what did you think?”
“Well, for the president to have his new lawyer come out and mount a new defense on the Stormy Daniels stuff all over television—particularly on this network, and then the rich asshole comes out and says, ‘Well, he’s new here, he’ll get his facts straight,’ that’s not usually the order you want to do things in,” Benson replied.
“This is not going well,” Benson said.
Former deputy spokesperson of the State Department, Marie Harf, said the issue with the rich asshole and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is one of credibility. Discussing Sanders’ claim that she answered questions with the “best information available” at the time, Harf said that’s not good enough.
“What else is she not in the know about?” Harf asked. “As someone who stood at that podium, I feel bad for her in that instance, if someone didn’t tell her the truth and sent her out with bad information that’s not fair to her.”
Watch below, via Fox News:
WATCH: Entire CNN panel cracks up at latest story of the rich asshole EPA chief’s ‘beyond laughable’ corruption
A CNN panel laughs at EPA chief Scott Pruitt's latest scandal (Screen cap).
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An entire CNN panel on Friday burst into laughter while discussing the latest scandals swirling around the rich asshole Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt.
In particular, the panel cracked up when host John King recapped a report in The Atlantic about a Pruitt aide giving reporters dirt on a fellow the rich asshole cabinet member, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, as a way to distract from his own boss’s numerous scandals.
“I mean, come on!” King said before he and the entire panel started laughing hysterically.
“This guy has, like, nine lives!” exclaimed CNN reporter Caitlin Collins. “None of these scandals will make him lose his job!”
Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender then said that Pruitt would have been fired by basically any other administration at this point — but he said that top GOP donors have been telling the White House to stick with Pruitt because they love the work he’s doing.
King replied that this nonetheless makes a mockery of the rich asshole’s campaign promises to end corruption in Washington DC.
“It makes the ‘drain the swamp’ thing just beyond laughable,” he said. “Only in some rich asshole’s America.”
Watch the video below.
the rich asshole surprised Russia — and everyone else — by repeatedly inviting Putin to the White House
White House publicity photo of Pres. the rich asshole 'working' in the Oval Office (Screen capture)
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President some rich asshole surprised aides and allies alike by inviting his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to the White House for a one-on-one meeting.
The offer came at the end of a jocular, 41-minute phone call March 20 between the U.S. and Russian presidents, which caught the rich asshole’s aides off guard and surprised the Kremlin, reported The New Yorker.
A national security expert told the magazine that John Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, was surprised by the invitation, and both he and a senior adviser on Kremlin policy had expected the call to focus on Russian assistance on North Korea.
the rich asshole instead went off script while chatting with Putin, and disregarded a written warning not to congratulate the Russian leader for his re-election win in a disputed election — and the president fired national security adviser H.R. McMaster the day after the ignored talking point leaked.
The White House didn’t reveal the rich asshole’s invitation in a readout of the call, but was instead announced days later by the Kremlin in an apparent effort to embarrass the president after the U.S. and its European allies expelled dozens of Russian diplomats over a nerve agent attack in Britain.
State Department officials worked to convince European allies to expel more diplomats to keep the rich asshole from becoming angry that the U.S. was kicking out more — which is exactly what happened, according to the Washington Post.
“Europeans, for their part, were also shocked,” reported The New Yorker. “Here was the President of the United States not only refusing to take up America’s traditional leadership role but once again appearing to pull back from confronting Putin. When the Kremlin immediately put out the news of the rich asshole’s invitation to Putin, it seemed to confirm that interpretation.”
U.S. officials told the magazine that the rich asshole remains committed to the Oval Office invitation, although Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton don’t share his enthusiasm.
“the rich asshole’s true feelings were reflected in that proposal,” said Alexander Vershbow, who served as George W. Bush’s ambassador to Russia. “He still feels hemmed in from establishing this great relationship with Putin.”
The Russians have sent envoys to advocate for a meeting around Washington, and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov recently described the rich asshole’s invitation in detail.
“He returned to this topic a couple of times,” Lavrov said in an invitation posted on the Russian foreign ministry’s website. “So we let our American colleagues know that we do not want to impose, but we also do not want to be impolite, and that considering that President the rich asshole made this proposal, we proceed from the position that he will make it concrete.”
Vershbow told the magazine that Russia was “increasingly despondent” about improving relations with the U.S., but are holding out hope that the rich asshole will disregard his administration to pursue his own Kremlin policy.
One Republican adviser frequently consulted by the president told The New Yorker that the rich asshole may have invited Putin to the White House to upstage his predecessors.
“the rich asshole has a similar view that the last three Presidents had, which is, ‘All the problems related to Russia are the fault of my stupid predecessor,’” the adviser said, “‘and, through the power of my personal charm and charisma, I will be able to get him to fall in line with us.’”
Mike Pence’s doctor abruptly resigns after she reportedly ratted out the rich asshole’s VA pick for misconduct
Mike Pence speaks to ABC News (screen grab)
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Dr. Jen Peña, the personal doctor of Vice President Mike Pence, has abruptly resigned amid reports that she blew the whistle on misconduct allegations against Ronny Jackson, who was President some rich asshole’s pick to run the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“The Vice President’s office was informed today by the White House Medical Unit of the resignation,” Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said in a statement given to Politico. “Physicians assigned to the Vice President report to the White House Medical Unit and thus any resignation would go entirely through the Medical Unit, not the Vice President’s office.”
A memo written by Peña and obtained by CNN last month “accused Jackson of overstepping his authority and inappropriately intervening in a medical situation involving the second lady as well as potentially violating federal privacy rights by briefing White House staff and disclosing details to other medical providers — but not appropriately consulting with the vice president’s physician.”
Additionally, according to CNN, Peña “later wrote in a memo of feeling intimidated by an irate Jackson during a confrontation over the physician’s concerns.”
Giuliani tries to fix disastrous interview tour, continues to make things worse
It was a challenge for Giuliani to make things even less clear, but he managed to do it.
After a series of disastrous media interviews, Rudy Giuliani, the rich asshole’s newly minted lead attorney, issued on Friday afternoon a new statement which he promised would “correct” his previous comments.
The three-point statement clarifies precisely nothing.
JUST IN: Rudy Giuliani issues statement "intended to clarify the views I expressed over the past few days." abcn.ws/2rmtbAW
Giuliani’s first point
Giuliani starts by making a conclusory statement about campaign law. He then says the payment was made to Stormy Daniels to “resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president’s family.” Giuliani claims the payment would have been made whether or not the rich asshole was a candidate for president.
But on Thursday on Fox and Friends, Giuliani had a much different story. “Imagine if that came out of October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton…Cohen made it go away. He did his job,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani did not explain why, yesterday, he claimed the payment was influenced by the election.
He also did not explain how he knows the purpose of the payment at all. According to Giuliani and others, the payment was made by Cohen without consulting the rich asshole. Giuliani says he has not spoken to Cohen about the payment, so it’s unclear how he would know the actual motivation for the initial payment.
Giuliani’s second point
Giuliani claimed on Wednesday and throughout the day on Thursday that the rich asshole first learned that he reimbursed Cohen for the Stormy Daniels payment a few days ago, even though the rich asshole reimbursed Cohen in 2017. This was hard to believe.
Friday morning on MSNBC, advertising executive Donny Deutsch said that he spoke to Cohen on Thursday night and Cohen told him that Giuliani had no idea what he was talking about.
Then, the rich asshole threw Giuliani under the bus and said he was not familiar with the facts.
Now Giuliani is saying his understanding of when the rich asshole found out about the payments might be wrong. But he’s not saying it is wrong or what is right.
In other words, we still have no idea of when Cohen first discussed his payments to Stormy Daniels, or the rich asshole’s reimbursement, with the rich asshole.
Giuliani’s third point
Giuliani strengthened a potential obstruction case against the rich asshole by offering a third, contradictory explanation for why the rich asshole fired Comey. As ThinkProgress reported:
Early in the interview, Giuliani said that the rich asshole fired James Comey as FBI director because “Comey would not — among other things — say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation.” Giuliani said the rich asshole was “entitled to that.”
This rationale was not mentioned either in the official memo explaining Comey’s dismissal or the rich asshole’s statements to NBC’s Lester Holt. Avoiding an obstruction charge requires the rich asshole to present a “a consistent, and legal, explanation for the firing.”
In his statement, Giuliani skirts around the issue by claiming the rich asshole had the ability to fire Comey for any purpose, even if his motives were corrupt. This is a legal argument many experts reject.
US judge questions special counsel’s powers in Paul Manafort case
A federal judge on Friday sharply criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s criminal case in Virginia against President the rich asshole’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and openly questioned whether Mueller exceeded his prosecutorial powers by bringing it.
“I don’t see what relationship this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis in the Eastern District of Virginia said.
At tense hearing at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, the judge said Mueller should not have “unfettered power” in his Russia probe and that the charges against Manafort did not arise from the investigation into Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
Manafort is facing charges in both Virginia and Washington. The Virginia case charges him with offenses including tax and bank fraud. The other case accuses him of conspiring to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent when he lobbied for the pro-Russia Ukrainian government.
None of the charges relate, however, to the rich asshole’s 2016 presidential campaign or possible collusion with Russia. the rich asshole has denied any collusion.
Lawyers for Manafort asked the judge in the Virginia case to dismiss an indictment filed against him in what was their third effort to beat back criminal charges by attacking Mueller’s authority.
The judge questioned why Manafort’s case there could not be handled by the U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia, rather than the special counsel’s office.
He also asked the special counsel’s office to share privately with him a copy of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein’s August 2017 memo elaborating on the scope of Mueller’s Russia probe. He said the current version he has been heavily redacted.
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; writing by Susan Heavey; editing by Jonathan Oatis
Ex-ethics chief takes on ‘House GOP the rich asshole enablers’ threatening Rosenstein’s impeachment in scathing op-ed
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC)
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Norm Eisen, the former chief White House ethics lawyer for the Barack Obama administration, and Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21 on Friday accused Republican Reps. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) of violating the House of Representatives’ code of conduct after the pair threatened to file articles of impeachment against deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
In an op-ed for USA Today, Eisen and Wertheimer write that “throughout our nation’s history, the House has recognized that impeachment power was not intended to be used for political, partisan or ideological purposes.” but warned the GOP congressmen’s impeachment threat—though unlikely to result in impeachment proceedings against Rosenstein—nonetheless threatens the rule of law.
Eisen and Wertheimer note Rostenstein’s “supposed offense” was that he “had the temerity to refuse to throw open Justice Department files related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing criminal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.”
“Members of Congress simply have no business injecting themselves into the middle of a Justice Department criminal investigation,” Eisen and Wertheimer said. “Such actions can seriously undermine the investigation and provide assistance to its subjects and targets.”
The pair said the demands from “House GOP the rich asshole enablers” are “part of a transparent effort to attack and discredit the special counsel investigation.”
“Shortly after Meadows and Jordan met with Rosenstein to pressure him on obtaining documents, Meadows reportedly spoke to President the rich asshole. Meadows refused to reveal the details of the conversation,” Eisen and Wertheimer wrote.
Arguing that “Meadows, Jordan and their coterie are out to protect the rich asshole at all costs,” Eisen and Wertheimer said “they also apparently are out to provide phony cover for the rich asshole to fire Rosenstein or Mueller in the event he decides to do this.”
According to the legal experts: “The actions of Meadows, Jordan and their ilk constitute a gross abuse of their offices. They are attempting to misuse the impeachment process as a weapon for intimidation of Justice Department officials and to pervert the process in a manner never envisioned by the Founding Fathers or previously undertaken by the House.”
“This time they are out to sabotage the Mueller Russia investigation at any cost,” the paid added. “And to do so they are directly attacking a rule-of-law principle by attempting to interfere with an executive branch criminal investigation.”
Further, they argue that Jordan and Meadows are violating the Code of Official Conduct of the House of Representatives indicating they “shall behave at all times in a manner which shall reflect creditably on the House.”
“Meadows and Jordan have violated this ethics rule and should be held accountable by their House colleagues for bringing discredit on the institution in which they serve,” Eisen and Wertheimer said.
The View’s Meghan McCain offers a litany of excuses for Sarah Huckabee Sanders — but Joy Behar shuts her down
Meghan McCain (ABC)
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“The View” host Meghan McCain offered a litany of excuses for her friend Sarah Huckabee Sanders — but co-host Joy Behar didn’t want to hear them.
The White House press secretary insisted she offered “the best information that we have at the time” after Rudy Giuliani revealed President some rich asshole and Sanders had been lying for weeks about a hush money payout to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
“There seems to be no narrative, or at least cohesion within the surrogates,” McCain said.
McCain said Sanders would be the first to admit the White House lacked message discipline, and she defended her friend as a good person.
“I have always liked Sarah Huckabee Sanders,” McCain said. “She is actually very shrewd in politics. She ran her dad’s ground game in the Iowa caucus, and she has been very respected in politics, and sometimes it’s hard for me to watch her in this position because she is very smart.”
She blamed other White House officials for putting Sanders in a difficult situation.
“I think she is being put in an untenable position where she is not being communicated with in the right way,” McCain said. “She is my age, and has three kids.”
Then she imagined a scenario where she didn’t have to defend the indefensible as the panel’s outspoken conservative.
“I have this fantasy sometimes where I wake up and I’m, like, what if Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley were president and vice president?” McCain said. “My job on the show would be a hell of a lot easier, because I don’t know how to explain this. This is not traditional politics, which I know is his appeal, but you look at Josh Ernst, all the press secretaries past, they are not tabloid sensations.”
Joy Behar interrupted her reverie with harsh reality.
“Her job description is to lie for a liar,” Behar said. “That’s her job.”
the rich asshole’s obsession with President Obama could drive gas prices over $3
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the rich asshole wants to undo the Iran deal to get back at President Barack Obama. But doing so would cause gas prices to skyrocket, hurting Americans all across the country.
the rich asshole is pushing for a change in U.S. policy that would skyrocket gas prices for the average family, while also making the world less safe.
For years, the rich asshole has complained about the Iran nuclear deal that was secured by President Barack Obama. Lately, he has been hinting that he intends to cancel the deal.
That decision would almost immediately hit Americans, raising fuel prices just as the summer travel season is set to begin.
Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, told Vox, “Gas prices nationally would rise to over $3 a gallon if the rich asshole places wide-ranging sanctions on Iran.”
Gas prices have already been increasing over the rich asshole’s time in office.
Since he was sworn in, prices have gone from a national average of $2.40/gallon to the current price of $2.83. That is the highest gas prices have been in nearly three years.
Stephen Brennock, oil analyst at PVM Oil Associates, referred to a “the rich asshole torpedo” aimed at oil prices.
As much as a million barrels of crude oil come from Iran to the United States every day, and killing the deal and reimposing sanctions would likely cut off that supply of goods.
International observers have repeatedly certified that Iran is keeping to the terms of the agreement, which prevents them from creating nuclear weapons that would be a threat to other nations in the region and the world.
But as part of his obsession with President Barack Obama, and his moves to undo the legacy of the Obama administration, the rich asshole has continued to beat up on the deal.
He is disinterested in the fallout from such a drastic move, and like his decision to impose tariffs on imports, the ripple effects will go far and wide.
the rich asshole looks at the Iran deal and sees an Obama accomplishment to be undone. He ignores the devastating impact the choice would have on millions of American drivers and plays down the dangerous prospect of a nuclearized Iran.
Rudy Giuliani’s goonish antics could accidentally deliver a fatal blow to this White House
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York speaking at a forum titled “Countering Iran’s Nuclear Terrorist Threats” hosted by the Iranian American Community of Arizona in Phoenix, Arizona. (Gage Skidmoer/Flickr)
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Rudy Giuliani, President the rich asshole’s new personal lawyer, went on Sean Hannity’s show and “Fox & Friends” this week, giving dense and baffling interviews about his client’s legal issues that nearly blew up the capital. And nobody in the White House except for the president knew he was going to do it. Evidently, Giuliani and the rich asshole cooked this strategy up all by themselves, bringing to mind one of those movies where the aging crooks sit in the diner and plan their last big heist, which. naturally enough, goes terribly wrong because their skills aren’t as sharp as they used to be.
This article was originally published at Salon
You’ll recall that at one time it was assumed that Giuliani would be in the cabinet, perhaps as attorney general. But gossip at the time held that the rich asshole noticed that Giuliani was dozing off in meetings and didn’t think he was sharp enough for a big job. So he put him in charge of some cyber-security program, which Giuliani promised to get right on as soon as he figured out how to set the clock on his brand new VCR. That was the last we heard about it.
Indeed, the former New York mayor and prosecutor hasn’t been heard from much at all during this presidency until the rich asshole decided to bring him on as one of his personal lawyers in the Russia probe. It’s clear that these two guys are happy to be back in the saddle doing what they do best: Working the tabloid media to get their names in the papers. The problem is that this particular talent is irrelevant at best, and likely counterproductive, when it comes to the problem they face today.
In a nutshell, Giuliani confirmed that the rich asshole had paid the Stormy Daniels hush money by “funneling” it through Cohen’s law firm in the form of monthly retainers paid out over the course of 2017 — while the rich asshole was president, mind you — in the amount of $470,000. Giuliani explained that this covered the Daniels payment and that Cohen would “get a little profit” and some money to pay taxes. Giuliani further claimed that this was entirely personal and the rich asshole knew nothing about it until after the raid on Cohen’s office, thus explaining why he had denied paying Daniels when asked about it on Air Force One a few weeks ago.
The upshot seems to be that the rich asshole routinely “funnels” large sums of money to Cohen to use as a slush fund to pay off people as necessary. Giuliani says that many wealthy people have such an arrangement and it’s all perfectly legal and had nothing to do with the presidential campaign. Essentially, it’s all just part of the Witch Hunt! Giuliani also suggested that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should “step in” and put a stop to the Cohen probe immediately, as if that would settle it.
One of the main problems with this story is that it involves some rich asshole, who personally signed every check for the rich asshole Organization even during the 2016 campaign and believed he could continue to do so as president. He has never left a nickel on the sidewalk. It is not credible that he gave Michael Cohen almost half a million dollars a year to “fix” things for him, with no questions asked.
Furthermore, nobody has exactly nailed down where Cohen got the original $130,000 to pay Daniels (which was later allegedly paid back by the rich asshole through these “monthly retainers.”) Cohen has claimed that he took out a home equity loan through his bank, and if he did that he must have lied about it. It seems unlikely that he told the lender he needed some temporary cash to pay off a porn star on someone else’s behalf. If he did lie to the bank about the purpose of the loan, that is a crime. What makes this more curious still is that Cohen is clearly a wealthy man and presumably could lay his hands on that amount of money without much trouble. That’s just one of the many mysteries that presumably will be unraveled in due course.
The most common assumption among the political analysts has been that Giuliani and the rich asshole are trying to finesse the campaign finance issue for both Cohen and the president. That may be true, but if so it represents a failure to grasp the bigger picture. It seems highly improbable that the FBI and the U.S. attorney in New York were able to persuade a judge to issue search warrants for the president’s lawyer, as they did, if all they were searching for was a single improper campaign contribution.
No, the likeliest scenario is that Giuliani and the rich asshole were sitting around in the Oval brainstorming about the best way to keep Cohen from flipping, and this is what they came up with. The president’s good friend David Pecker had thrown Cohen to the wolves on the front page of the National Enquirer and Giuliani probably convinced the rich asshole that they needed to do a little fence-mending. This is definitely not the kind of strategy you’d talk about with your real lawyers or the White House communications shop.
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace spoke with sources close to the rich asshole who said that the dynamic duo’s “ultimate goal, ultimate prize is to provide some cover, politically, legally, psychically, cosmically, emotionally for Michael Cohen.” The Washington Post’s Ashley Parker reported on Wallace’s show that there were three camps in the White House on this subject. The first camp thinks the two duffers were chewing the fat and just decided to “do something” and there really wasn’t much of a strategy at all. Another camp believes the Cohen campaign finance story was the real motivation. Then there’s the third camp, which suggests that all this is really about the rich asshole’s emotional needs:
All along, the president has craved someone out there being aggressive and it’s sort of the emotional strategy and emotional response that the president desires. It may not be great politically and it may create a lot of headaches for his staff but it’s nice to have someone finally out there defending him and it sort of scratches that itch that he has and often exhibits on Twitter.
I suspect that last has a great deal to do with it. But that doesn’t mean Giuliani and the rich asshole aren’t trying to respond to a very serious problem. According to an unnamed source quoted by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo, who identifies himself or herself as “steeped in anti-corruption enforcement,” this little scam about Cohen’s “retainer” speaks to a system for getting money to people “while insulating and giving deniability to the ultimate payor of the bribe.” Using a “dirty lawyer as a bagman provides a number of advantages,” the source explains. Bribe or blackmail money can be laundered as “legal services” and businesses can write them off as expenses, which would be tax evasion. Needless to say, attorney-client privilege provides the perfect mechanism to conceal such an illegal arrangement.
Rudy Giuliani was once the New York U.S. attorney himself, so he must know this could be a red flag for criminal behavior. But he’s deep into the rich asshole’s alternate reality today. They are two of a kind, close in age, scrappy New Yorkers who have become vulnerable to paranoia and conspiracy theories in their later years. They are both clearly in over their heads but are too egotistical to admit it. Giuliani’s display this week could be a lethal blow to this White House.
Humiliated the rich asshole tries to whitewash Giuliani’s trainwreck media tour
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'He'll get his facts straight,' the rich asshole said.
Welcome to the club, Rudy. Getting undermined by the rich asshole is a rite of passage in this administration.
Two days after creating a Washington, D.C., firestorm by conceding that the rich asshole paid back his attorney for the six-figure hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election, the rich asshole on Friday tried to fix the problems his new attorney had created.
Talking to reporters outside of the White House, and promptly appearing to undercut his new legal counsel, the rich asshole suggested Giuliani simply didn’t understand the facts of the Stormy Daniels pay-off case.
“Rudy knows it’s a witch hunt,” said the rich asshole. “He started yesterday. Ah, he’ll get his facts straight. He’s a great guy.”
Moments later the rich asshole added, “He wasn’t totally familiar with everything. He just started yesterday.”
The second part is false. The announcement of Giuliani’s hiring was two weeks ago, and he obviously has been making public — and occasionally incoherent —appearances all week in the role of the rich asshole’s attorney.
But lying about Giuliani’s start date was the least shocking part of the rich asshole’s performance, which was clearly prompted by the bipartisan backlash Giuliani produced this week.
“I’m in complete shock. I’ve never seen anything like this,” noted defense attorney Caroline Polisi on CNN, moments after the rich asshole publicly raised doubts about his own attorney.
Indeed, it’s stunning to watch the chaos unfold on an hourly basis, as the rich asshole feels the walls closing in, both regards to the Daniels lawsuit and Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
Giuliani was hired to help the rich asshole mop up his messes. But now the client has to clean up after the attorney.
Note that the rich asshole didn’t say which facts Giuliani got wrong. So now anyone trying to follow the White House’s endlessly changing explanations about the Daniel’s payoff has no idea which narrative is supposed to be the real one, which one has been flushed, and which news one might soon emerge.
Stay tuned.
the rich asshole says he can’t talk to Mueller unless it’s ‘fair’
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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U.S. President some rich asshole said on Friday shifted his position over possible talks with U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, saying his lawyers have advised him against any talks but that he would submit to questioning if it was “fair.”
the rich asshole has repeatedly said he wanted to talk to Mueller, a fellow Republican investigating alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 election and possible collusion by the rich asshole campaign.
“I would love to speak. I would love to. Nobody wants to speak more than me … because we’ve done nothing wrong,” the rich asshole told reporters at the White House. “But I have to find a way to be treated fairly.”
“If I thought it was fair, I would override my lawyer,” he added.
the rich asshole also defended Rudy Giuliani, who he recently hired to represent him in the matter. The former federal prosecutor, however, raised a number of questions about the rich asshole’s actions and motivations in a series of media interviews this week.
the rich asshole also defended Rudy Giuliani, who he recently hired to represent him in the matter. The former federal prosecutor, however, raised a number of questions about the rich asshole’s actions and motivations in a series of media interviews this week.
On Thursday, Giuliani said he wanted limits for any the rich asshole interview with Mueller.
“He started yesterday. He’ll get his facts straight. He’s a great guy,” the rich asshole told reporters. One of the rich asshole’s lawyers announced Giuliani’s addition to the team on April 19.
The president also repeated his assertion that there was no collusion by his team and that the federal probe led by Mueller was a “witch hunt.” Russia has also denied any interference, despite the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Giuliani’s “learning the subject matter. … He knows this is a witch hunt. That’s what he knows,” the rich asshole added.
Giuliani’s “learning the subject matter. … He knows this is a witch hunt. That’s what he knows,” the rich asshole added.
Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Tim Ahmann; writing by Susan Heavey; editing by Bernadette Baum and Jonathan Oatis
CNN panel stunned by the rich asshole’s crazed walkback of Rudy Giuliani’s Stormy story: ‘This has to make you cringe’
CNN's John Berman and Poppy Harlow (Screen cap).
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President some rich asshole on Friday threw attorney Rudy Giuliani under the buswhen he said that the former New York mayor had botched his story about the president reimbursing attorney Michael Cohen for hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
“Rudy is a great guy but he started a day ago,” the rich asshole told reporters about Giuliani’s infamous Wednesday night Fox News interview. “He’ll get his facts straight.”
Reacting to the rich asshole’s decision to completely contradict his own lawyer, panelists on CNN said they had never seen anything like what they just witnessed from any politician, let alone the president of the United States.
Host John Berman asked legal analyst Caroline Polisi for her take on the president’s latest rambling statement — and he noted that, “as an attorney, this has to make you cringe.”
“It’s just unbelievable, John, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “He’s trying to have it both ways, saying ‘Our story hasn’t changed,’ when, in fact, Rudy may have not been fully informed. I thought it was interesting that he repeated this familiar refrain that he’s not a target of the entire Mueller investigation. Remember, he might not be a target because Robert Mueller is operation under the assumption… that a sitting president cannot be indicted.”
Watch the video below.
Fox News, WSJ admit the rich asshole’s lies are crushing the GOP
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Fox News to the rich asshole: 'How can you drain the swamp if you're the one who keeps muddying the waters?'
The recent collapse of the rich asshole’s lies about his hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels has prompted conservative media outlets to hit the panic button.
Several right-wing outlets and personalities have taken a quick break from helping to prop up the rich asshole’s unpopular presidency to criticize how he and his team have handled the story.
Newly hired the rich asshole lawyer Rudy Giuliani has created yet another slow-motion trainwreck for this administration, this time consisting of a series of television appearances and newspaper interviews in which Giuliani admitted the rich asshole paid Michael Cohen to funnel money to Daniels in exchange for her pre-election silence.
Fox News host Neil Cavuto complained on-air in a commentary directed to the rich asshole: “How can you drain the swamp if you’re the one who keeps muddying the waters?”
Citing the rich asshole’s direct denials of the payments, in contrast to the evidence now known about the transaction, Cavuto said, “I’m having a devil of a time figuring out which news is fake.”
The criticism echoes some elements of press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ press briefing, where she effectively admitted that the rich asshole had lied about the details of the story when it first broke.
Cavuto told the rich asshole “your own words” give “lots of pause.” He concluded, “I guess you’re too busy draining the swamp to ever stop and smell the stink you’re creating. That’s your doing. That’s your stink. Mr. President, that’s your swamp.”
An editorial from the Wall Street Journal called out the rich asshole’s “public deceptions” and noted “the attempted cover-up has done greater harm than any affair would have.”
The conservative newspaper highlighted the crisis of credibility that the rich asshole has created as he repeatedly lied about the payoff, and now “wants everyone to believe a new story that he could have told the first time.”
In their conclusion, the Journal writes, “some rich asshole is compiling a record that increases the likelihood that few will believe him during a genuine crisis,” and, “some rich asshole should worry that Americans will stop believing anything he says.”
In National Review, senior writer David French warns voters on the religious right that the rich asshole is causing irrevocable harm to the entire conservative cause through his embrace of open deception.
French notes, “all too many fellow believers have torched their credibility and exposed immense hypocrisy through fear, faithlessness, and ambition.”
Referencing support for the rich asshole among those voters, he writes, “You’ll stand in the wreckage of your own reputation and ask yourself, ‘Was it worth it?’ The answer will be as clear then as it should be clear now. It’s not, and it never was.”
It isn’t that the rich asshole will be completely ostracized in the right-wing media world. And in all likelihood the sympathetic venues will continue to back him and make excuses for his failing administration (for instance, it’s unlikely a sycophant like Sean Hannity will ever rebuke the rich asshole). But these statements all make it clear that conservatives realize the rich asshole’s lies are hurting them.
Like the Republican candidates who lost races in states like Alabama, Virginia, and New Jersey and in congressional districts that voted for the rich asshole in Pennsylvania, he is weighing down the right-wing movement like an anchor.
Conservative media is trying to stop the rich asshole before he does more damage, and they’re trying to warn his core supporters to run away from the wreckage. Their protests are probably in vain.
Stormy Daniels owns the rich asshole-loving Roseanne for botching basic facts about her career
Stormy Daniels, left, and Roseanne Barr, right.
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Adult film star Stormy Daniels on Friday brutally owned the rich asshole-loving sitcom star Roseanne Barr for botching basic facts about her career in pornography.
The feud started when Barr claimed on Twitter that Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is “known for anal porn scenes.”
Following this logic -If she doesn’t represent “classy women” I guess that means the President represents classless men? Hmm. Interesting. ..
Daniels quickly shot back at Barr and called her an “ignorant twat” for not knowing anything about her work in the adult film industry.
“I don’t even do anal movies, you ignorant twat,” Daniels wrote. “That’s like saying you are known for your beautiful rendition of The Star Spangled Banner.”
I don't even do anal movies, you ignorant twat. That's like saying you are known for your beautiful rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. twitter.com/therealroseann…
Daniels’ jab at Barr is a reference to her infamously botched 1990 rendition of the national anthem that occurred at a San Diego Padres baseball game.
Later in the thread, a follower called Daniels out for calling Roseanne a “twat,” on the basis that vaginas didn’t deserve to be insulted by being compared to her.
“Please send my sincerest apologies to your undercarriage,” Daniels responded. “It was insensitive of me.”
Hey! On behalf of my twat, please don’t insult twats by associating them with her.
After the rich asshole’s latest outrageous remark — it’s time for yet another history lesson from Nazi Germany
US President some rich asshole speaks during a meeting with senior military leaders at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 9, 2018. (AFP / NICHOLAS KAMM)
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Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler began a program that involved the selection of a particular group of people for extermination. They were people he considered undesirable and dangerous. First, they were transported to special facilities. Upon arrival, they were told to undress and then led into a room designed to look like showers. Once they were all inside, the doors were sealed and carbon monoxide gas was released into the chamber until all were dead. Afterward, the bodies were removed and burned.
What I’ve just described was not the Holocaust. The population targeted for extermination in this case was not German Jews. Instead, the targets for this program were German Christians —those with various physical and mental conditions that designated them, in the regime’s terminology, “life unworthy of life.”
As a historian of modern Germany, I felt compelled to write about this after seeing some rich asshole tell a crowd of Paralympic athletes visiting the White House on April 27 that it was “tough” to watch “too much” of the Paralympic games. Of course, this was not the first expression of the rich asshole’s disdain for the disabled. At a campaign rally in November 2015, he mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski in disgustingly crude fashion.
In writing this, however, I do not mean to imply that the President’s horrible comments will lead to gas chambers in our immediate future. The danger at present is exclusion—the marginalization and potential removal of various groups of people beyond the boundaries of the rich asshole’s national community. What happens after that we can’t foresee. That’s why it’s critical to pay attention now, to be alert to any efforts to de-value, to denigrate any group, because any group is a potential target.
Most people associate some rich asshole’s bigotry with groups such as Mexicans, African Americans, women, Muslims, and Jews, to name a few—and with good reason. But his disdain for the handicapped should also receive serious attention.
Those who see important parallels between some rich asshole’s America and Germany under Adolf Hitler (a comparison that is unfortunately not nearly as far-fetched as it once might have seemed) may not know about the tragic fate that befell tens of thousands of disabled people during the Third Reich. And if that’s the case, they would not know about the role it played in the evolution of Hitler’s murderous policies toward Jews and others he considered outside his desired national community.
The ideas that inspired Hitler’s policies toward the disabled were by no means new. During the late nineteenth century, ideas emerged to challenge the Enlightenment belief in equality. In addition to a new belief in the superiority and inferiority of races, there also developed concerns over more and less “valuable” members of individual races or nations. Those with various conditions that placed them beyond the boundaries of the “healthy” members of the community were felt to be holding the nation back, consuming resources that should go to those who could best put them to use.
Eugenics—the “science” of improving the race through selective breeding—appeared to provide the solution for those concerned about the danger of “useless eaters.” Advocates in Great Britain and the United States initially developed it to its furthest extent. In fact, some thirty-one states at one point had compulsory sterilization laws on the books. But Germany, too, had its proponents, and they were active well before Hitler came to power. Rather than being the inspiration for eugenics in Nazi Germany, the Führer served as the enabler.
Only months after coming to power, in fact, Hitler issued the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.” As a result, the authorities put together an entire bureaucracy to implement the program—a bureaucracy that involved most branches of the country’s health care system. By January 1934, when the program officially began, the hereditary health courts that were to decide the fate of the disabled were swamped with the names of hundreds of thousands of potential candidates for sterilization. Over the next five years the regime forcibly sterilized nearly 300,000 people. With the coming of war in 1939, prevention turned to elimination as Hitler authorized the killing program known as T-4, described above. By August 1941, they had murdered around 70,000 adults along with some 5,000 children.
By that point, as Hitler was making the decisions that would culminate in the Final Solution, those people from the T-4 program—people with expertise in the process of mass murder and a palpable self-interest in finding new categories of people to kill—would find themselves in demand as the regime sought methods and technologies to kill the millions of European Jews now targeted for elimination. What started with the disabled was thus be re-directed at a new group of people Hitler considered undesirable and dangerous. Had he won the war, others would undoubtedly have followed.
some rich asshole’s disdain for handicapped Americans has not remained solely at the level of rhetoric. His administration has adopted policies that appear to be nothing short of a concerted attack on the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). In October 2017, to give but one example, the Department of Education withdrew 72 documents that set out the rights of disabled students.
The heartlessness behind such prejudice can perhaps best be seen in the direct impact it’s already had on some of the most vulnerable individuals. In October 2017, for example, an undocumented 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who had just come out of surgery found herself in the custody of federal immigration officials. In another case, a six-year-old paraplegic boy faced the prospect of losing his only caregiver because immigration officials targeted the man for deportation.
Disabilities, of course, do not limit themselves to one ethnic, racial, or religious group. That’s one of the reasons that Germans spoke out against the euthanasia program as knowledge of its existence spread. As all those “real Germans” came to realize, it’s one thing when the government targets “those people.” It’s something else entirely when it turns to you and those in your group. And one of the most important things German history teaches us is that no group is safe once the state begins selecting and eliminating people.
some rich asshole knows what his national community looks like. He knows who’s in and who’s out. And we know that too because he makes it very clear with each insult, with each mocking gesture, and more ominously still, with each new policy, with each new regulation, and with each new law. Whether it goes further—from discrimination to removal—is up to all those armed with the knowledge of history and the sense of fellow feeling to understand that ultimately we’re all part of one single group.
Richard E. Frankel is an Associate Professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
This article was originally published at History News Network
the rich asshole: Troop withdrawal from South Korea 'not on the table'
BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 05/04/18 11:16 AM EDT
President the rich asshole said Friday that reducing the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea is “not on the table” in upcoming talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“Not really, not at this moment, certainly not,” the rich asshole said when asked if a reduction of American troops is a bargaining chip in the talks.
the rich asshole added that “we haven’t been asked” to reduce the military presence, but said a future withdrawal was still possible, citing the cost of U.S. forces upkeep.
The U.S. has roughly 28,000 soldiers stationed on the Korean peninsula, according to the Pentagon. U.S. forces have supported South Korea since the Korean War, but the rich asshole in the past has complained that Washington is not properly compensated for the cost of maintaining them.
South Korea currently pays more than $800 million a year, or about half the cost of upkeep, under an agreement with the United States that expires at the end of the year. The rich asshole administration says South Korea should pay the entire bill for keeping troops in the area.
The New York Times reported late Thursday that the rich asshole has asked Pentagon officials to look at options for reducing the troops on the Korean Peninsula, a report national security adviser John Bolton called “utter nonsense."
“The President has not asked the Pentagon to provide options for reducing American forces stationed in South Korea,” Bolton said in a statement.
And chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White dismissed the report at a briefing on Thursday.
“This department has not gotten any word on that,"” White said about a possible withdrawal. “Our posture remains the same.”
Kim and the rich asshole are expected to meet for an historic summit in the coming weeks as the U.S. pushes for the denuclearization of North Korea. the rich asshole would be the first American president to sit down with a North Korean leader.
the rich asshole said Friday that his administration has agreed to a date and a location for the meeting and will “be announcing it very soon."
What the exodus at EPA means for Scott Pruitt
This week, a string of high-profile departures rocked an already rocky Environmental Protection Agency.
Staff departures from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have become so common that they rarely make news anymore — since Administrator Scott Pruitt took control of the EPA in 2017, more than 700 employees have left the agency.
But this week, as federal investigations surrounding Pruitt’s ethical scandals continue to mount, four departures in particular made headlines, as officials with close ties to the administrator announced they would be moving on from the agency.
The high-profile departures come at a time when Pruitt appears to be fighting for his job in both public and private arenas. The departures are especially notable because three of the top officials appear — at least in some way — connected to one of the ethical scandals that have dogged Pruitt over the last month.
“Administrator Pruitt has repeatedly and unapologetically blamed his own staff for the crisis of leadership that he has created at EPA,” Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), the ranking Democratic lawmaker on the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on the Environment and a vocal critic of Pruitt’s, said in a statement emailed to ThinkProgress. “I don’t know why senior officials are abandoning him now in such great numbers, but many of these departing staff have overseen or directly contributed to mismanagement that has undermined public trust and the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission to protect public health.”
On Tuesday, both Pruitt’s head of security Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, and the head of the EPA’s Superfund program Albert “Kell” Kelly announced that they would be leaving the agency.
Perrotta’s resignation came just a day before he was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee regarding Pruitt’s spending on first-class travel and other expenses that the EPA has defended as necessary for security. According to Politico, Perrotta was a “driving force” behind much of Pruitt’s lavish spending on security measures, “goading” him into spending more for security and travel.
Kelly, who came to the EPA after being banned for life from the banking industry by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, had also been facing scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers over his appointment to streamline the EPA’s Superfund program, which handles cleanup of polluted sites across the country. Kelly also declined to testify before Congress regarding the EPA’s Superfund cleanup program.
But Kelly has long been a loyal supporter of Pruitt’s. In 2003, Kelly helped Pruitt finance a mortgage on a house that Pruitt bought from a retiring telecommunications lobbyist. Kelly reportedly also cancelled a trip to West Virginia — where he was scheduled to visit a town contaminated by toxic chemicals — to stay in D.C. and help Pruitt handle fallout from numerous controversies.
During oversight hearings before two Congressional committees last week, Pruitt was repeatedly asked questions about Kelly’s appointment to the EPA and whether Kelly would agree to testify before Congress.
Two days after Kelly and Perrotta announced their resignations, Liz Bowman, the top communications official at the EPA, announced that she would also be leaving the agency to take a job as communications director for Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).
Bowman was one of the agency employees who received a sizable raise last year via a provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act, which allows the EPA administrator to hire up to 30 employees without Congressional approval.
Pruitt has come under scrutiny for using the loophole to give raises to political appointees without approval from the White House. Initially, Pruitt said he did not know about the raises, but later admitted that he had given his chief of staff authority to authorize the pay increases. The raises are part of an ongoing investigation by the House Oversight Committee.
On Friday, an administration official told the Washington Examiner that John Konkus, the agency’s second highest-ranking communications official, would also be leaving the agency. Konkus was a political aide who had received approval to work as a media consultant for outside groups including a Republican firm.
Publicly, the EPA has been adamant that these departures do not reflect any kind of internal issues within the agency. Bowman, like Kelly and Perrotta, told reportersthat her departure has nothing to do with the ongoing investigations and scandals surrounding her boss. But at least one Democratic representative — Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) — points to the stream of resignations as proof of Pruitt’s failures as an EPA administrator.
“Scott Pruitt’s toxicity has infected the upper echelons of EPA leadership, and the process of cleaning this mess must begin with Pruitt’s dismissal,” Beyer said in a statement on Friday.
But what if instead of signaling a weakening of Pruitt’s leadership, the resignations are in fact a gambit to secure his position?
During his Congressional oversight hearings, Pruitt made a point of placing blame for a number of scandals squarely on the shoulders of EPA employees, rather than taking the blame himself.
By shedding himself of people associated with these scandals — particularly Perrotta, who has been implicated in the issues with taxpayer funds being spent on security, and Bowman, who is part of the raise scandal — Pruitt is effectively creating a firewall between himself and controversy that, at certain points, has seemed to threaten both his future as EPA administrator and his well-documented political aspirations.
The string of high-profile departures might be bad optics for Pruitt, at least in the short term, but they will allow the administrator to further remove himself from culpability with respect to various ethical scandals. It’s certainly a gamble — especially when Pruitt is trying to impress a boss who appears concerned with appearances above all else — but one that could ultimately help Pruitt cement his position at the helm of the EPA for years to come.
POLITICS
the rich asshole Throws Rudy Giuliani Under The Bus: ‘He’ll Get His Facts Straight’
The president contradicted his lead attorney in remarks Friday.
Rudy Giuliani put it all out on the table this week. President some rich asshole wants nothing more than to gather it all back in.
In remarks to the media Friday, the rich asshole contradicted statements the former New York City mayor made earlier in the week regarding a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election.
“He just started yesterday,” the rich asshole said of Giuliani, who started as the lead attorney regarding issues related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation in late April. “He’ll get his facts straight.”
On Wednesday, Giuliani made waves when he told Fox News the president had in fact repaid his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for the funds. the rich asshole had previously denied all knowledge of the payment.
As of Friday, though, the rich asshole’s explanation is apparently that Giuliani didn’t know what he was talking about.
“When Rudy made the statements ― he’s great ― but Rudy had just started and he wasn’t totally familiar with everything,” the rich asshole said. “And Rudy ― we love Rudy ― he’s a special guy. What he really understands is this is a witch hunt.”
“But when he made certain statements, he just started yesterday,” the president went on. “So that’s it.”
“It’s actually very simple,“ the rich asshole added. “I say, you know what, learn before you speak. It’s a lot easier.”
the rich asshole mentioned that Giuliani is “going to be issuing a statement,” though he didn’t offer details.
Watch excerpts from the president’s remarks below:
the rich asshole to speak with Mueller on guarantee he’ll ‘be treated fairly’
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 05/04/18 10:57 AM EDT
President the rich asshole on Friday said he would “love to” speak with special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation, but will only do so if he can be “treated fairly.”
Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn, the rich asshole said he has bucked his lawyers’ advice in seeking to talk to Mueller but indicated an interview may not occur.
“I would love to speak, but I have to find that we’re going to be treated fairly because everybody sees it right now and it is a pure witch hunt,” he said.
Whether to agree to an interview with Mueller is the No. 1 question facing his legal team, which is now led by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani and others close to the rich asshole are advising him against speaking to Mueller, worried that he could put himself in legal jeopardy.
the rich asshole reiterated his stance “there was no collusion with the Russians and “there was no obstruction” of the investigation, beliefs he thinks he could convince Mueller to accept.
But the president also indicated he might be willing to listen to the advice of his lawyers with regard to an interview.
the rich asshole repeatedly accused Mueller’s team of political bias, falsely stating the special counsel “worked for Obama for eight years.”
Ex-Obama official shreds the rich asshole and Giuliani: ‘The president is an idiot’ surrounded by ‘the dumbest of the dumb’
Jim Messina (MSNBC)
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The former deputy chief of staff for President Barack Obama said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders should no longer serve in her role.
Jim Messina, who also was Obama’s campaign manager during his 2012 re-election, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he would have offered Sanders two choices if he had been her boss.
“When I was deputy chief of staff for operations, I would have walked in and said to her, ‘Do you want to quit or do you want me to fire you?'” Messina said. “You have no ability to talk to the press anymore. It’s not her fault, right?”
Messina said the rich asshole administration was insufficiently staffed — and he blamed the president.
“It’s the leader of the country’s fault and there is no process in there,” he said. “There’s no communications director, there’s no functioning chief of staff.”
Messina pointed to Rudy Giuliani going on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program to blow up President some rich asshole’s legal defense in the Stormy Daniels case, which also shredded what was left of the press secretary’s credibility.
“In a modern white house, there would have been a process, we would have murder-boarded this for days, we would have known exactly what everyone was saying,” Messina said.
“When you decide to go out and say, ‘Oh, by the way, the president of the United States lied to the country,’ you have a strategy for this,” he added. “Instead, the only two people that seemed to know that strategy were the president and Rudy.”
Messina said Giuliani’s sudden re-emergence in the rich asshole’s inner circle showed the president was scraping the bottom of the barrel.
“That’s the problem across the administration,” he said. “You have all these jobs open and no competent people want to work in that administration. You’ve got kind of the dumbest of the dumb who want to hang out.”
According to White House chief of staff John Kelly, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, that includes the president himself.
“We were taught in America to respect generals and trust them,” Messina said. “I trusted him on Monday when he called the president an idiot, because he’s with him every day. So I believe the president is probably an idiot.”
Is the rich asshole a broke ‘billionaire’?
President some rich asshole takes a moment before taking the stage during a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., May 29, 2017. (DOD photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Brigitte N. Brantley)
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Was some rich asshole starved for cash in fall 2016, when 62 million voters cast ballots for a candidate who told them repeatedly that he was “rich — really, really rich.”
The way that the rich asshole “funneled” hush money to a porn actress just 11 days before the election sure makes it look that way. This would be consistent with four decades of the rich asshole claiming vast wealth, but not being able to pay his bills as they come due.
As you read what follows keep two thoughts in mind.
First, would any billionaire need months to pay a $130,000 bill?
Second, there is not now and never has been a shred of verifiable evidence that the rich asshole is or ever was a billionaire, a myth I first demolished using his own net worth statement prepared for a lawsuit in spring 1990.
the rich asshole called me a liar back then for four months until he had to put into the public record his bankers’ assessment of his riches. The bankers calculated that the rich asshole was worth a negative $295 million.
Casino regulators concluded that without many tens of millions of new loans, the rich asshole could not pay his bills coming due over the next several years, not exactly the story of someone with a net worth in eight figures. This also is not the story one expects of anyone who owns three large casinos.
Rudy Giuliani revived the issue of whether the rich asshole merely poses as a billionaire during his Wednesday night chat with Fox entertainer Sean Hannity. No doubt that was not what he intended.
During a rambling chat full of legal nonsense, meandering syntax and ludicrous assertions that captivated reporters and pundits, Giuliani also revealed that the rich asshole took four months or more to pay the hush money to Stephanie Clifford, better known as the porn star Stormy Daniels. The news focused on the admission that the rich asshole did pay the hush money, showing that the president and the White House lied earlier.
But the more significant revelation came when Giuliani said that it took the rich asshole four months or more to pay the bill. Think of it as one of those 90-days same-as-cash deals that merchants with excess goods offer so they can generate enough immediate cash to pay their bills.
the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen “funneled it [the $130,000] through a law firm and the president repaid it,” Giuliani said, speaking with the rich asshole’s advance knowledge.
“You’re going to do a couple of checks for $130,000,” Giuliani said.
Why the rich asshole didn’t pay with a single check, as any mere multimillionaire could be expected to do. Giuliani didn’t say, and the entertainer Hannity didn’t ask even though his show appears on Fox News.
Some reporters and pundits cited the multiple payments as potential violations of the federal Cash Transaction Report rules on payments of more than $10,000. But those rules don’t apply to checks and do not apply to payments for services.
Then came the real news, however much unintended by Giuliani. His very next words: “When I heard Cohen’s retainer of $35,000 when he was doing no work for the president, I said that’s how he’s repaying — that’s how he’s repaying it with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes for Michael.”
“The president reimbursed that over a period of several months,” Giuliani said.
That makes clear that the hush money paid to keep her silent just before voters went to the polls was a loan from lawyer Cohen to the rich asshole. No such loan is disclosed in either the rich asshole’s ethics filings or campaign finance filings. That might cause legal problems for the rich asshole and Cohen, though keep in mind that “might” implies doubt.
There might also be federal gift tax violations, depending on the fine print of the transactions.
Maybe these comments will get political journalists to stop making a claim that the rich asshole has himself taken back and to look hard at whether his fortune is really just massive cash flow, not wealth. And much of that cash flow may be going to pay interests on debts that, because of loopholes in federal ethics and campaign finance laws, he has not been required to disclose.
As readers of DCReport know, the rich asshole last year claimed to be worth just $1.4 billion. That figure, attested to by the rich asshole under penalty of perjury, is a nearly 90 percent reduction from the more than $10 billion he touted on the campaign trail.
Even that much-reduced net worth figure is grossly inflated. For example, the rich asshole claims his Scottish golf courses are each worth more than $50 million. That’s odd because in recent years they have lost tens of millions of dollars, British disclosure statements show.
If put on the market the Scottish courses might well fail to attract any buyer because their value, including debt, appears to be less than zero.
Federal ethics laws are so riddled with loopholes that we have no idea how deeply the rich asshole is in debt. Debts owed via partnerships are not reported for example.
From the unreported debts we do know about, thanks to the diligence of New York Times reporters, we can report that the rich asshole’s net worth is significantly less than $1 billion.
So just keep asking yourself, and asking others: Have you ever heard of a multibillionaire who couldn’t pay a $130,000 bill and needed a 120-day or longer loan from his lawyer to cover the bill?
the rich asshole/Cohen Won’t Tell Their OWN Lawyers What Was Seized In Cohen Raid
What was seized in the raid of Michael Cohen’s office that has the rich asshole so worried?
On Wednesday, the New York Times’ Michael Schmidt appeared on Rachel Maddow’s program and dropped a bombshell: the rich asshole’s lawyers are going crazy because they can’t get Michael Cohen or President Stable Genius to talk about what they think was seized in the raid of Michael Cohen’s office.
“The think about the New York case is that they don’t know a lot about it,” Schmidt says, referencing the Michael Cohen criminal investigation. “They are very unnerved by it because Michael Cohen and the President will not talk about it; they will not disclose what’s in those documents…The President’s lawyers don’t really know what’s going on with that investigation but they are concerned about it.”
NYT's Michael Schmidt: Trump lawyers are nervous about the New York case because neither Trump nor Cohen will say what they think is in the papers taken in the raids of Cohen's home, hotel, and office.#BREAKING
What could be so bad that The rich asshole doesn’t even want to talk to his own lawyers about it? The mind boggles.
Recently, the rich asshole called in a pinch hitter to replace Ty Cobb, the lastest lawyer to flee his legal team. Cobb once predicted that the Russia investigation would be over by Christmas…2017
the rich asshole on Giuliani: He'll get his facts straight
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 05/04/18 10:37 AM EDT
President the rich asshole on Friday called his new personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a “great guy,” but suggested he may have gotten details wrong about a hush-money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
“He started yesterday,” the rich asshole incorrectly said of Giuliani, who was hired on April 19. “He’ll get his facts straight ... He’s a great guy.”
Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, the rich asshole said the former New York City mayor is “working hard, he’s learning the subject matter and he’s going to be issuing a statement too.”
the rich asshole said Giuliani shares his opinion that criminal investigations swirling around his presidency are a “witch hunt.”
Giuliani just one day earlier said the rich asshole reimbursed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels, contradicting the president’s previous claim that he did not know anything about the payment.
Giuliani said the rich asshole only learned recently about what the purpose of the payment, which was made in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election.
the rich asshole backed up Giuliani’s account in a series of tweets Thursday morning. That night, Giuliani told NBC News he coordinated his remarks with the rich asshole, who he said agreed with his decision to reveal the reimbursement.
"You're not going to see daylight between the president and me," the former mayor said. "We're going to work hard to have a consistent strategy."
But now, the rich asshole appears to be walking that account back, adding even more confusion about the payment that has dogged his presidency.
“Rudy had just started and he wasn’t totally familiar with everything,” the rich asshole said later at Joint Base Andrews when asked about Giuliani’s comments.
the rich asshole insisted “we’re not changing any stories” and urged reporters to go back to his statements early last month, when he flatly denied knowing about the payment and claimed he had no knowledge of the source of the money.
The White House has been under siege since Giuliani’s disclosure, with a stream of negative headlines about how the conflicting statements have undermined its credibility.
The payment is also the subject of a federal criminal investigation into Cohen, which the president’s allies fear could put him at grave legal risk. Investigators are examining whether the hush money constituted a campaign-finance violation.
Ex-CIA director warns those who work for ‘useful idiot’ the rich asshole to ‘take notes’ — and keep a resignation letter handy
some rich asshole during CNN debate (Photo: Screen capture via video)
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Ret. Gen. Michael Hayden on Friday warned his former colleagues not to take a job in some rich asshole’s administration, telling Yahoo! News it’s difficult to see the “personal credentials” of people like National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster “being threatened” by their time in the White House.
“The longer they were in the administration, the more their personal credentials were being threatened,” the former CIA director said on Yahoo! News’ Skullduggery podcast. “At what point do you stop being a guardrail and become an enabler and a legitimizer?”
Still, he said younger civic-minded people interested in government should join the administration—but warned they should “take notes.”
“Remember your own moral thresholds,” Hayden told Yahoo! News. “You may want to keep a draft letter [of resignation] in your desk drawer.”
Hayden, who’s currently on tour for his new book “The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies,” said the president is serving as a “useful idiot” of the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We’ve had presidents who lie, who have argued with us, who have disagreed with our version of objective reality,” Hayden said. “The difference here is this seems to be a president who bases a fair number of decisions on something other than a view of objective reality.”
“What we have is the president inarguably demanding of both the institutions and their leadership that their first priority is personal loyalty to him rather than to the norms that have governed their behavior for a couple of centuries,” Hayden explained.
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